Pillars are Just Crutches

I’m reading an amazing book by Eugene Peterson entitled, “The Contemplative Pastor”.  I would suggest that anyone even thinking about going into pastoral ministry read this book.  It’s quite thought-provoking and profound.  Here’s a bit that I appreciated about evangelism (page 79).

The witness points, mute, so as not to interfere with the sound of silence … [Witness] is an important biblical word in frequent contemporary use.  It is a modest word saying what is there, honestly testifying to exactly what we see, what we hear.  But when we enlist in a cause, it is almost impossible to do it right: we embellish, we fill in the blanks, we varnish the dull passages, we gild the lily just a little to hold the attention of our auditors … important things are at stake – God, salvation – and we want so much to involve outsiders in these awesome realities that we leave the humble ground of witness and use our words to influence and motivate, to advertise and publicize.  Then we are no longer witnesses, but lawyers arguing the case, not always with scrupulous attention to detail.  After all, life and death issues are before the jury.

Another quote along the lines of quietness and silence is a quote that I have on my Facebook page which is attributed to A.W. Tozer:

Man has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity, and bluster make a man dear to God

I found ‘The Wounded Healer’ particularly insightful.  It took me longer than I expected to get through as the pages are weighed down with content heavy enough to support a book 3 times its size.  One thing is for sure, Henri J. M. Nouwen did not mince words!

At the end of his book he speaks of the loneliness of a minister, he says:

But the more I think about loneliness, the more I think that the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon-a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding.

Later he continues,

We get an idea of the kind of help a minister may offer.  A minister is not  doctor whose primary task is to take away pain.  Rather, he deepens the pain to a level where it can be shared.  When someone comes with his loneliness to the minister, he can only expect that his loneliness will be understood and felt, so that he no longer has to run away from it but can accept it as an expression of his basic human condition.

I am in the middle of reading another book by Henri Nouwen.  This one is entitled, “The Wounded Healer”.  Although the book has it ups and downs there are some really insightful moments in the book.  In one part, I have never read anyone articulate the need and dangers of formal ministry training so well.  He says:

More training and structure are just as necessary as more bread for the hungry.  But just as bread given without love can bring war instead of peace, professionalism without compassion will turn forgiveness into a gimmick, and the kingdom to come into a blindfold.

Then he goes on to describe exactly what I use to be like:

The man who does not know where he is going or what kind of world he is heading toward, who wonders if bringing forth children in this chaotic world is not an act cruelty rather than love, will often be tempted to become sarcastic or even cynical.  He laughs at his busy friends, but offes nothing in place of their activity.  He protests against many things, but does not know what to witness for.

I have found that the book is quite good at explaining the human condition still, even though it was written over 30 years ago.  Nouwen, to a large degree, manages to look past culture and talk about man.

I would recommend anyone in ministry or thinking about ministry to pick up this book.  If you can make your way past the first chapter the rest is quite insightful.

I am currently doing an internship for Pastoral Theology.  I’m loving it, the pastor I am interning under doesn’t have the typical church pastor role, which I like.  He has some crazy ideas and it’s cool to help and see them get off the ground.

One of my jobs is to phone local churches from a database that we’re helping with in order to update the information so that it is accurate.  Phone numbers stay the same (about 2% were disconnected), addresses stay the same (one address change – but that was a mistake on the database end) and even church name changes have been rare (about >1%).

The one thing that I have learned about churches through my calling is that they change pastors quite a lot!  In my calling a little less than 30% of churches had changed there pastors in the last 2 years.  That means in 6 years one out of every ten churches will have the pastor that was there 6 years ago.

And I’m only talking about senior Pastors.  In the Pentecostal assemblies of Canada the standard procedure for a senior pastor who resigns (or is asked to resign) is to ask for the resignation of all the other pastoral staff (whether the board accepts all their resignations is a different question).  Take that into account and all the other pastoral changes that happen while the senior is in office and that’s a big turnover rate.

Not that I haven’t heard it all before, but to hear, “actually, he’s not our pastor anymore” like a broken record is shocking!

And in case you wondering, if you phone a church between 10 am and 4 pm (Monday thru Friday) there is over a 50% chance that no one will answer the phone!!