Something is wrong with the church in America. We stifle those who want to serve God and Pastors try to conform people to their own agenda. We have become a business, and those same skills we look for in the business world we look for in our Ministers. The following list is a tirade that I wrote at 1:00 in the morning about the idiotic ways the church looks for pastoral positions or volunteer ministry and seems oblivious about.
1. We have given up passion for “mission statements.”
2. We have traded in our calling for the discipleship of all people for “specialized ministry experience.”
3. We have given up the biblical qualifications of a bishop and traded it in for a Master’s degree.
4. We deride postmodernism as an invention of Satan and act as if Modernism was invented by Jesus.
5. We have no concept of promoting the varieties of gifts that we are given “for the common good.” (1 Cor 12:7) and instead only care about placing people into vacancies of our formulaic, uninspired “ministries”
6. We have Pastors and Elders that are disassociated from their own community of believers.
7. We desire candidates with 10 years of ministry experience, and an M.Div. and then want to pay him $20,000 a year.
8. We pass up those that want to serve because they do not have “full time staff” experience even though they have served in the church all their life.
10. We expect youth pastors to be cool, hip and relevant, but not so much that lives are actually changed apart from what the modernist elders want.
11. We say if you are young then you have to be a youth pastor, even though God has given different gifts to various people.
12. Those who wish to be youth pastors we then look down upon as immature and not as sophisticated as a “real pastor” even though that may be his gifting. I suppose we expect the least experienced person to teach our children.
13. The fact that we have any “entry level position” in a church.
14. The fact that we “hire” people as “employees” to service us instead of true pastors who are called of God to minister to the people of God.
Number 12 is so true! AS well as number 4! I really like your blogs Eric…..defend the truth for the Glory of God!
Amen brother, though I think it is on every person that is called be seek theological and ministerial training in order to make sure that they are prepared to the fullest to serve. I have known a few people that had passion to be ministers running out their ears who have gone to get the M. Div. and are now web designers and coffee shop managers. Passion comes and goes like the feeling of love in a marriage. The true test of calling is the ability and preparedness to minister when passion is the last thing you can find.
(2 Peter 2:1-3)
My concern is not so much the passion of the ministers as the leaving of biblical qualifications for invented ones. I plan on going to seminary, however I see the system as very flawed. The Biblical qualifications are those that can only be seen and examined through the community of the church and too many outsource this responsibility to learning institutions alone, assuming a M.Div. makes someone automatically fit for service. Some integrate the church into this with things such as teaching churches, this brings the community of the church into the process which is where it should be, otherwise we are treating what it takes to be a Pastor like that of an engineer or a dentist.