This is a guest post from an author I really like: my wife, Kaye Sims, who asks some of the questions she has been wondering about lately. This one is addressed to church leaders who encourage cutting edge ministry... and then fail to support their pastors who actually implement innovative methods, some of them ultimately losing their jobs as a result.
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Why do you encourage missional thinking? Why do you bring in innovative thinkers with their radical and transformational ideas? Why do you invest so much time and energy getting pastors fired up to lead their churches into organic, refreshing, authentic ways of doing ministry? Why do you push these amazing, wonderful, life-changing concepts and encourage pastors to implement them? Why do you convince people that disciple-making is not a program, but that it is a radical way of thinking and living, a fresh but ancient wave of spiritual reproduction? Why do you challenge church leaders to dismantle their fortress mentality and to learn instead what it means to unleash the church - to BE the church outside the institutional walls?
But the real question is this: When pastors follow these principles and find themselves and many of their people invigorated and becoming more effective in reaching their community, and then when the local power brokers get up in arms about the inevitable break from tradition, why, oh why, do you refuse to stand with those pastors? Why in the world do you stand instead on the side of the status quo as yet another pastor gets kicked to the curb? Why do you blame him and the people who followed him into the new Spirit-led ministry that you introduced? Why do you label them rebellious - those who dared to venture out and live out these transformational disciple-making principles?
Why indeed do you encourage such innovative thinking that violently upsets the apple cart?
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| Innovative thinkers blow up the status quo. |
Wouldn't it be better to promote ways to keep things running smoothly? Wouldn't it make more sense to invest your leadership resources and energy in training pastors how to avoid making waves? Why don't you bring in speakers and organize conferences around the principles of compliance to authority? Forget finding the "man of peace" in a community who might be instrumental in welcoming a move of God that would transform that town. Instead why not train each pastor how to quickly recognize the "man of power" in the local congregation - the one who pulls the strings or at least holds them? Wouldn't a pastor benefit from learning the steps of how to keep that person happy?
Instead of challenging pastors and people to resist the status quo, maybe it would be smarter or safer to train them to submit to it. Wouldn't that be the way to keep the machinery oiled and running smoothly? The way to avoid church splits and to keep the statistics steady and the monthly reports rolling in on time. Isn't that what matters?
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Kaye Sims very much enjoyed serving in church ministry for pretty much all her life until suddenly finding herself on the outside. She has since discovered glorious freedom and loves to watch for opportunities to be involved in reconciliation, redemption, and restoration. She still finds herself wondering about lots of things and writes about some of them at her blog, Wondering Journey.
2 comments:
Why indeed, Kaye, Except perhaps deep in their guts they know something must change and talking about making changes somehow helps them feel better. Being the church takes ever so much more time, commitment and sacrifice than going to church. And when it comes right down to it, the sacrifice is too great for them, because life is no longer about you and getting your blessings ... it is about following Jesus into our communities, outside the walls. Giving everything we are, everything we have to love and serve expecting nothing in return, including people coming to church because we reached out to them. I think some really desire this and that's why they talk the talk... until it gets hard and the old ways seem threatened. Then it becomes impossible for them to walk the walk.
Good perspective, Jodi. Oh, the expectations we have. And yes, it takes sacrifice. As for the lack of follow-through, yep, I am certainly guilty of talking big, bigger than I actually do.
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