I feel...
the weight of this pastoring thing.
We're past our one year anniversary now. I guess we're no longer "newlyweds" on this church adventure. It looks like (fingers crossed) God is going to allow us to keep doing this thing for at least a little while longer.
The more "successful" something gets, the heavier it gets.
That having been said, it's a good heavy. It's the heavy of lifting only (or almost only) what I as pastor am supposed to lift.
But more and more I understand where things begin to change for some people... how they go from that pure small thing to that big corporate thing- from soul to commerce and from people to program.
Here it is- when there are 25 people in your church community, when you are the only one getting paid, when your community is a mix of mature core group people and non-Christians who are being taken care of by those core group people, church is light as a feather. Yes, there's the question of "Will we make it?" But your concern is for you, your family, your finances and you can always go and do something else. Those core people will be okay, the non-christians they are taking care of will continue to be taken care and wouldn't mourn the passing of your little church experiment.
But as the community grows, things change. Now, you're beginning to pay others. They are depending on you. Screw up, and people suffer. There are non-Christians who are becoming a part of your community (and good thing too- isn't that the whole purpose?) who need answers, who need connection to others, and hopefully the community will reach out to them, fold them in, love them and teach them... but you've got to at least monitor the process, keep your finger on a lot of different pulses.
I guess the weight I feel is the weight of souls. Those who need to hear things explained in a simple, understandable way, and who need the next step. And those who walked away from the simple- the irreduceable mystery of the Gospel boiled down to alliterated bullet points and step-by-step Christianity. How in the world do you speak to both of those people at the same time?
I felt this accutely yesterday as we worked through a happy little passage in 1st John. The antiChrist vs Christ, liars vs truth, essential black and white vs the experienced reality of a grey existence. (Inner dialogue: Don't screw this one up Bob...)
It just feels like it's counting more and more and more. Like as offerings grow and we think about paying the other pastors on staff, now it's not just me and my family but they and theirs. It's not just a small handful of people but more and more hurt Christians who may not give church (and God?) another chance, more non-Christians who need to find Jesus in and through us. More people being fed and clothed by our community...
What if I teach them wrong? What if I lead them wrong? What happens then?
In all this I have been comforted this weekend by the presence of the Holy Spirit both in the passage of 1st John we worked through and with me personally. I think Pentecost came at the right time this year :)
Ultimately, Christ is the pastor of these people and the Holy Spirit is the teacher of their souls. I'm a channel, not the source. It's not up to me.
I can help or I can hurt, but in the final equation, it's not my gig. It's not about me.
Whew.
If we give in to the programmatic impulse, it will be at these times (which will happen again and again) when our size has grown larger than our organic approach has allowed us to structure for. These will be the times we're tempted to impose some structure, buy a program, import a methodology, rather than allowing ourselves as a community to actually feel the tension and figure out our response to that tension. Structure will come, but from the community praying about a need and then figuring out what feels right for them, not the leadership figuring out what the next cool thing in that area of ministry is... structure in response to growth, not in advance of it. I know that seems like bad business practice...
But I know there is no economy of scale when it comes to people's souls. It's the work of a craftsman, not an assembly line. You can educate people in groups, but you form them one-on-one-on-one (you, the other person, and the Holy Spirit). You can standardize your approach to making certain things... I just don't know if "disciples" is one of them. And that means this will never be simple. There is no magic bullet. For as many people as we have, that's how many pastoral approaches will be called for.
Before we started this thing I would flippantly throw out the phrase "If your church disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice?" I never thought about the weight that would come if we were ever able to answer "yes."
We're past our one year anniversary now. I guess we're no longer "newlyweds" on this church adventure. It looks like (fingers crossed) God is going to allow us to keep doing this thing for at least a little while longer.
The more "successful" something gets, the heavier it gets.
That having been said, it's a good heavy. It's the heavy of lifting only (or almost only) what I as pastor am supposed to lift.
But more and more I understand where things begin to change for some people... how they go from that pure small thing to that big corporate thing- from soul to commerce and from people to program.
Here it is- when there are 25 people in your church community, when you are the only one getting paid, when your community is a mix of mature core group people and non-Christians who are being taken care of by those core group people, church is light as a feather. Yes, there's the question of "Will we make it?" But your concern is for you, your family, your finances and you can always go and do something else. Those core people will be okay, the non-christians they are taking care of will continue to be taken care and wouldn't mourn the passing of your little church experiment.
But as the community grows, things change. Now, you're beginning to pay others. They are depending on you. Screw up, and people suffer. There are non-Christians who are becoming a part of your community (and good thing too- isn't that the whole purpose?) who need answers, who need connection to others, and hopefully the community will reach out to them, fold them in, love them and teach them... but you've got to at least monitor the process, keep your finger on a lot of different pulses.
I guess the weight I feel is the weight of souls. Those who need to hear things explained in a simple, understandable way, and who need the next step. And those who walked away from the simple- the irreduceable mystery of the Gospel boiled down to alliterated bullet points and step-by-step Christianity. How in the world do you speak to both of those people at the same time?
I felt this accutely yesterday as we worked through a happy little passage in 1st John. The antiChrist vs Christ, liars vs truth, essential black and white vs the experienced reality of a grey existence. (Inner dialogue: Don't screw this one up Bob...)
It just feels like it's counting more and more and more. Like as offerings grow and we think about paying the other pastors on staff, now it's not just me and my family but they and theirs. It's not just a small handful of people but more and more hurt Christians who may not give church (and God?) another chance, more non-Christians who need to find Jesus in and through us. More people being fed and clothed by our community...
What if I teach them wrong? What if I lead them wrong? What happens then?
In all this I have been comforted this weekend by the presence of the Holy Spirit both in the passage of 1st John we worked through and with me personally. I think Pentecost came at the right time this year :)
Ultimately, Christ is the pastor of these people and the Holy Spirit is the teacher of their souls. I'm a channel, not the source. It's not up to me.
I can help or I can hurt, but in the final equation, it's not my gig. It's not about me.
Whew.
If we give in to the programmatic impulse, it will be at these times (which will happen again and again) when our size has grown larger than our organic approach has allowed us to structure for. These will be the times we're tempted to impose some structure, buy a program, import a methodology, rather than allowing ourselves as a community to actually feel the tension and figure out our response to that tension. Structure will come, but from the community praying about a need and then figuring out what feels right for them, not the leadership figuring out what the next cool thing in that area of ministry is... structure in response to growth, not in advance of it. I know that seems like bad business practice...
But I know there is no economy of scale when it comes to people's souls. It's the work of a craftsman, not an assembly line. You can educate people in groups, but you form them one-on-one-on-one (you, the other person, and the Holy Spirit). You can standardize your approach to making certain things... I just don't know if "disciples" is one of them. And that means this will never be simple. There is no magic bullet. For as many people as we have, that's how many pastoral approaches will be called for.
Before we started this thing I would flippantly throw out the phrase "If your church disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice?" I never thought about the weight that would come if we were ever able to answer "yes."
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