"The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades"
- Eugene Peterson, 'Working the Angles'
"The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades"
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that a dear friend who was once a pastor and is still a pioneer, even in his 70s, has seen all his children walk away from God, some actively, others drifting. I wonder if I've discipled too effectively at a time when my kids were growing. Or perhaps we're all just suffering an absence of the reality of God in the church here in England, and that's why there's so little belief any more, worked out in practical ways.
What does a pastor do when he gets the church together and God only shows up in emotions and feelings? That's not a barbed question BTW, but I noticed and commented to some of the other people involved in worship here that so many of the songs we sing are aspirational (i.e. not true, but we'd like them to be) with music designed to stir emotion by the bucketful. It bothers me more than a little, because I get the same emotions and feelings listening to Gary Moore play the blues as I got in church at times.
How does a pastor keep the people pointed at God, and God pointed at the people?
Sorry Toni, I didn't get the notification that there were comments waiting for publishing. Not good blogging that. I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteWe just had a worship committee meeting where we invited the committee to suggest some new songs and the songs requested seemed in the range of the melodies they liked. They liked the tunes and melodies, and Marc suggested that perhaps we should think about the words and what they look like as well. I dunno man, i feel kind of lost with it all. There is pressure to sing the songs the big names are producing and now the time between the creation of the song to the expected time to sing it locally has sped up so rapidly that its hard to vet them more carefully.
We may have signed up to the emotional piece more than we should have. I don't know. Life is a good deal more than hoping for good times from God. That doesn't pay the bills when things get tough in life. You know that.
Maybe its the sense of entitlement. Maybe we thought too much we were on the right side and everybody else was on the wrong. Maybe we did for God thinking we would get a better seat in heaven. There are many ways I suspect we in the west have failed at church.
So far the only way I've found to even attempt to do that pointing to God is to be oriented towards him myself, and in honesty there are good and bad days to that. There doesn't seem to be a formula to that, just life lived trying to be honest about it. I like your honesty about it all. Makes me feel like I can be honest too.