Church as a Team - Part II
So this book is great, right? Chapter 3 talks about how we are all just full-time ministers in disguise. You are a full-time minister disguised as a (insert your claim-to-fame here). Why? Well, who best to reach salespeople for Christ than salespeople? Who better to reach construction workers for Christ than construction workers? Who better to reach lawyers for Christ than fellow lawyers? Who better to reach stay-at-home moms and dads for Christ than stay-at-home moms and dads?
So if we are to reach our world for Jesus, it takes us all. The author (Wayne Cordeiro) maintains, and I agree, that pastors don't ofter reach many people for Christ. And, that isn't our calling. Our calling is to lead a congregation of full-time ministers-in-disguise to reach people for Christ!
Have we lost sight of that? Are we really doing church as a team, or are we paying the pastor to do it for us?
4 comments:
Amen. There's a real deficiency in pastoral theology, particularly the 20th century variety. Prosperous mainline churches got too comfortable with a more priestly, almost neo-Roman Catholic understanding of pastoral work, believing that pastors are paid to do the work of ministry on behalf of the parish.
More recent writers in the field (I commend the work of both Thomas Oden and Andrew Purves to you) have tried to recapture the notion of "the priesthood of all believers" and have emphasized that pastors are called (and ordained) to equip the saints for ministry, to proclaim the Word, to administer the sacraments, and to lead the ministry of the Church...not to do all the ministry of the Church. Your buddy Wayne Cordeiro seems right on in this regard.
We all too often put the pastor up on a pedastool and think that he is more "Godly" than us when in fact they are just regular sinners like the rest of us that happen to have the gift of teaching. We expect more from them so we think they should do more for us.
It seems like we put way too much focus on Sunday and what we are going to get out of the worship service (ie what's in it for me). Sunday should just be a refeuling for the rest of the week. Maybe instead of calling it Sunday worship we should call it a Weekly Refresher Course?
How true that we put too much emphasis on Sunday. We need to see that Sunday is only a small part of the big picture. We also use Sunday as the primary tool to include new people. I say, start in your small group. A small group is the most non-threatening way to get the unbeliever to show up and to start honest dialogue.
I’m going to disagree with Keith’s assessment of modern pastoral theology. If anything, I think that modern or perhaps post-modern leadership has moved away from the notion of the pastor as the “be all and do all”. And it’s moved away from that theology for one simple reason... it’s not effective anymore!
So now I will agree with Keith and Brett, it’s an important mind shift that the church needs to grasp. Unless we, you and I…the church…get involved, active and reaching out to a lost world we will be failing to do our job.
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