If you’re expecting to attract new people with your new building upgrade, you can bet that you’re attracting them from some other church. The non-believing world isn’t at home on Sunday because your fellowship hall or children’s wing isn’t nice enough.
If that’s what you’re going for, okay (maybe?). But please don’t suggest that it’s evangelistic.
Or we could offer the gospel!
This is the first of several posts on the Modern Pastor.
The methods we’re using to choose local pastors are a problem.
Most churches identify their pastors by some sort of “calling” method. That usually involves the equivalent of an extended job application process and some form of vote. If the church approves, they “call” the pastor. The United Methodist Church prides itself on “sending” pastors instead. We tout that as the better way, saying something like “pastors are called to be sent, not called to be called.”
Both methods have major problems and actually strike against the typical model found in the New Testament.
Whether a church’s pastor is identified by a “calling” model or a “sending” model, both tend to begin with the same assumption: the pastor is an outsider.
We start by assuming that whomever the church’s next pastor will be, he/she will come from somewhere else. We ask where a pastor is called to serve.
No Basis in the New Testament
The first major problem with this: it’s a model with no basis in the New Testament. From all that we see, we would reason that the local pastors mentioned in the New Testament (elders, sometimes called bishops) were existing members of a certain community who were appointed to give their community pastoral oversight. See Acts 14:23 and Titus 1:5. Scripture never suggests that one of these pastors is sent, or called, to another location.
A point while we’re on calling: no pastors in the New Testament are called. Calling is used in two ways in the New Testament. There are many references to the calling of all Christians, and twice, Paul writes about being called as an apostle. That’s it. We come across a number of elders and bishops, but never are they “called.” How much stock should we put in the pastoral “calling” that gets so much attention today?
Pastors as Outsiders
The second major problem: all of our pastors are outsiders. We have established a system where it is assumed that the pastor of a congregation is a temporary outsider. I recently heard someone tell the congregation’s pastor, “I was here before you got here, and I’ll be here after you leave.” She was right.
In the UMC, the pastor is not even considered a member of his/her local church. Therefore, the one providing our pastoral leadership is always someone sent from the outside and likely to be “sent” away from us. Someone who is specifically recognized as a non-member of the local community is sent to lead it. Is this a healthy system?
Furthermore, this system assumes that pastors are developed and come from somewhere else. What would it change if local congregations expected that their next pastor was someone in their midst? Would it give them an increased urgency to disciple and develop leaders?
Outsiders can certainly play an important role in the life of a community. They are able to see and speak from a different perspective. See Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and Galatians. The person from the outside with a certain prophetic authority is important. But that doesn’t negate the need for people who will shepherd a community from day to day.
Where Have the Apostles Gone?
The third major problem: we have lost the role of the itinerant apostle. Moving around is institutionalized in the UMC and relatively expected elsewhere, as pastors climb the proverbial career ladder (a whole other problem to deal with later). By making our pastors itinerant, we have not only lost the role of the truly local pastor, we have also forgotten the role of the itinerant apostle.
The roles of apostle and elder are distinct. Paul never claims the role of an elder. John Wesley noted that they were entirely separate roles, and claimed that his itinerant preachers were not pastors, but apostles who traveled “to proclaim glad tidings to all the world.”
Where are the true itinerant apostles in America today? Those who claim no pastoral authority over a particular congregation, but instead have the freedom to travel from community to community proclaiming good news? Those who are identifying and appointing local pastors to shepherd their communities?
The itinerant evangelist proclaims broadly. The local pastor disciples deeply. By taking these two roles and creating one hybrid itinerant pastor, what have we lost in the way of evangelism? What have we lost in discipleship?
What do you think? What questions or thoughts does this raise for you? Can the American Church re-embrace truly local pastors and traveling apostles? Should we?
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The original title for my blog was “Enterprise to Movement.” I fully believe the premise behind that title: that today’s American Church urgently needs to abandon its Enterprise mentality and get back to behaving as a movement. But I abandoned that title after just the first two weeks.
Why I Titled the Blog “Enterprise to Movement”
• We need to get serious again about evangelism. That’s not the same thing as marketing. We need to quit wasting our time and money on ad campaigns designed to convince church-hoppers to come our way and shift that energy to sharing the gospel with people wherever we can.
• The Church needs to reclaim unity and community as more than what the country club down the street means by them. Our aim isn’t a crowd of people smiling at a potluck. That’s easy. And keeps people happy. Our aim is deep relationships in which people’s lives are open to one another. That’s more difficult and much more messy. But I believe it’s our calling if we are a part of the great Christian movement and not just another social club.
• We need to call people to holiness. Holiness is our calling and standard. John Wesley called it “religion itself.” Want messy? Identify sin, call it sin, and urge people to repent. By the grace of God, the Christian movement has seen many sinners who were cut to the heart, repented, and (re)turned to a life of holiness in Christ. We’ve also seen several people who were confronted with their sins and decided they wanted nothing more to do with those calling for change.
I believe that graciously, but firmly, confronting people with their sins is an important part of our faith. But it’s often seen as bad business or bad social club policy, as the short-term results may include less money and fewer people. We also shy away from talking about sin when we misunderstand unity — when we think it means that our highest priority is to avoid offending or upsetting anyone.
Why I Changed the Title
• I’ve heard a lot of testimonies lately. In several of those testimonies, I heard about poor decisions people made. I’m regularly seeing that people made those decisions because they either (a) didn’t know any better – they were behaving the way they had learned to behave, or (b) were hurting, acting in crisis, or in some other way weren’t in a good personal situation to make wise decisions.
• I’ve been reflecting on the beatings church leaders take. I’ve seen several good people get verbally pummeled. Sometimes they had made bad decisions. Sometimes they had made unpopular, but good, decisions. Sometimes they had even made good and popular decisions that just happened to upset the wrong person(s). In all the cases I’m recalling, though, the person being assaulted was a good person with good intentions.
Because of these, I decided to move away from the title “Enterprise to Movement.” I worried that it was setting me up to start from a position of criticism. Yes, I believe that the North American Church is missing the mark considerably — and that the Enterprise mentality has a lot to do with that. But I believe that its leaders are mostly good people who mean well.
Where those leaders are running enterprises — giving more attention to how their worship can attract people than to how it can honor God, letting sin go unabated to avoid offending a large donor or key leader, spending lavishly to outdo the church down the street — I suspect that they’re making those decisions either because our world has taught them to think that way, or because they see a church in crisis and are flailing to do something about it. As my good friend Jonathan says, “No worship planner asks, ‘How can we worship poorly this Sunday?'” I think the large majority of us truly want what is best for the church, even if I also believe that much of our current attitude and focus is misguided.
The apostle Paul begins each of his letters in the New Testament with, “Grace to you and peace.” Many of those letters go on to include strong critiques. But Paul’s attitude to the recipients always begins with grace and peace. I’m glad Paul addressed the problems in those churches. They were serious departures from Christianity’s true message and calling. And as I see it appropriate, I plan to keep pointing out our own seeming departures from a more robust form of Christianity. But Paul’s larger goal was to point a way forward. That’s my larger goal, as well.
teddy ray 