July 13, 2007
Circuit Preachers
My grandparents homesteaded in southeastern Colorado. Church was held the one-room community school house where folding chairs were transformed into pews on Sundays. There was no running water, but we did have ‘his’ and ‘hers’ outhouses. The school had a piano, but we didn’t have a pianist. I don’t ever recall having communion and if someone wanted to be baptized they’d go to a church in town that had a baptistery. Occasionally a circuit preacher would visit and if we were really lucky his wife knew how to play the piano. I’d like to see a church experiment with using circuit preachers. Many organizations pay speakers for a one time presentation, why wouldn’t the same work for preachers? Filling the pulpit with a different preacher/teacher each week would challenge the speaker to do his best and also challenge the audience to develop a discerning ear.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Just from a simple observational perspective, although I gather the Biblical drift to be towards a preacher serving a certain congregation (Timothy served at Ephesus 15 years to his death, Titus was placed on the Island of Crete to serve there), I think the churches of our day would be well served by an extended period of itinerant preachers. More than any other position in the church, preachers get the idea that the church is about their ideas. They then turn into little Kings of Id, intellectually throwing their minuscule weight around, intimidating those with ideas other than their own. Thinking that God ordained them to start and maintain programs, they shape a church by their own characters and ideas rather than simply presenting the Word of God and allowing the Holy Spirit to shape the church by His character. They take advantage of Biblically uneducated folks’ admiration and honor for them to set up a reign of overbearing ideology, turning and swaying the minds of these innocents into agreement with their own way of thinking rather than into agreement with each other. By subtle little acts of intimidation in their dark little dens they defeat anyone who may hold an idea different than their own. Then they go publicly stand in front of their slurping, mind controlled masses and pontificate about the unity of the congregation. Unity with their own idea, that is. Because they defeated the other ideas quietly, out of sight.
-----They truly are people conquerors - little Kings of Id. If this is not true, why then has the Holy Spirit led Christ’s own into doctrinal fights, sectarian divisions, and brutal wars. Today we call ourselves followers of one Lord, Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Nazarenes, American Baptists, Pentecostals, Campbellites, Seventh Day Adventists, Conservative Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Independent Baptists, Mennonites, Amish, Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Free Evangelicals, Presbyterians. This is unity? This is not division? Who ideologically supports this mess? The Holy Spirit? Or those who have the influential position in front of the various congregations of the mess? I doubt it is the Holy Spirit.
-----I may be wrong, but I think the tendency of the preacher to own the congregation would be much reduced by a good, couple-decade spell of itinerant preachers. About the time those itinerants would have discovered a way to re-employ their people-conquering, Nicolaitan grips upon the minds of the saints, we could switch back to the local preacher.
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