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	<title>Epiphanies of a Common Man &#187; faults</title>
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		<title>14 Faults of the Church Relating to Ministry</title>
		<link>http://epiphaniesofacommonman.com/blog/archives/34</link>
		<comments>http://epiphaniesofacommonman.com/blog/archives/34#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:26:26 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Christian Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ministry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[employees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[faults]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fustrations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[youth]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://epiphaniesofacommonman.com/blog/?p=34</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[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 [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>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.<span id="more-34"></span></p>
<p>1. We have given up passion for &#8220;mission statements.&#8221;</p>
<p>2. We have traded in our calling for the discipleship of all people for &#8220;specialized ministry experience.&#8221;</p>
<p>3. We have given up the biblical qualifications of a bishop and traded it in for a Master&#8217;s degree.</p>
<p>4. We deride postmodernism as an invention of Satan and act as if Modernism was invented by Jesus.</p>
<p>5. We have no concept of promoting the varieties of gifts that we are given &#8220;for the common good.&#8221; (1 Cor 12:7) and instead only care about placing people into vacancies of our formulaic, uninspired &#8220;ministries&#8221;</p>
<p>6. We have Pastors and Elders that are disassociated from their own community of believers.</p>
<p>7. We desire candidates with 10 years of ministry experience, and an M.Div. and then want to pay him $20,000 a year.</p>
<p>8. We pass up those that want to serve because they do not have &#8220;full time staff&#8221; experience even though they have served in the church all their life.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>12. Those who wish to be youth pastors we then look down upon as immature and not as sophisticated as a &#8220;real pastor&#8221; even though that may be his gifting. I suppose we expect the least experienced person to teach our children.</p>
<p>13. The fact that we have any &#8220;entry level position&#8221; in a church.</p>
<p>14. The fact that we &#8220;hire&#8221; people as &#8220;employees&#8221; to service us instead of true pastors who are called of God to minister to the people of God.</p>
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