September 19, 2011
Hired Hand
As a church grows, so does the number of staff. The church board gives
a lot of consideration into hiring associate pastors, youth ministers and
senior’s pastors. Paul describes the church as being one body made up of many
parts, “But in fact God
has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them
to be.” (1 Cor 12:18 NIV) I find it amusing that we, in all of our wisdom, set
about to hire a foot, a hand or an eye. I’m trying to think about what type of
questions I’d ask if I were to interview an ear.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Maybe it is that God has arranged the body part types as He wanted them to be, and we have to go hire people all taught and prepped with their little diplomas to come and be those types among us. Of course, it wouldn’t be this way so much if God hadn’t arranged all His teacher types to teach in Bible colleges. Now, I know that the bigger of the small mega-churches, like those you find in Grand Junction, might be able to scratch together a faculty of teacher types who could adequately teach the Bible backgrounds (such as Greek, Hebrew, and history) and applications (such as counseling, hermeneutics, and theology,) but could the littler ones? The rest of the churches smaller yet would have no chance of fielding enough teachers to train up body parts from within. So off to Bible colleges go the teacher types to where the students then must follow, and from where churches must hire.
-----Outside of the nuances of prestige, I don’t really know why the teacher types around a community like ours could not just work together using the best facility the churches of an area have to offer as a sort of informal campus. But I could give a more or less educated guess. Maybe the amount of effort required to actually teach is more than anyone would want to just volunteer as a teacher. I am sure many retirees want to step forward like that, and I am sure amidst all the capacity to hire youth leaders, senior pastors, music specialists, etc., etc., etc. in the area churches there is enough capacity to hire a few really good teachers. But even if retirees and some hired teachers would provide all the efforts needed, have you ever heard of all the various churches of an area actually working together as one on something more substantial than an annual Share-fest-horn-toot week?
-----I think we’ve come more to the heart of the problem now. Churches are jealous of their members, and church members are jealous of the church facilities constructed by their generous contributions. For either to be in any way effected by “outsiders” would be a travesty. “Somebody in my church might learn one of those blasphemous doctrines of your church!” Generally, they already know that doctrine. What they might learn is that it does have some Biblical underpinnings if you look at it the right way, and that the people of the “other church” have as much faith in the way they look at it as we have in the way we don’t look at it. So what we are not learning by not pooling our resources for quality education to train up body parts at home is less the education itself and more the attitudes of working, worshipping, and playing as one in the Lord.
-----If the Bible says that is what we are to be and we are not being that, what is it then the Bible says we are? The church does the best it can by hiring body parts, and it is at least doing something. So, what the Bible says we are is the Bride of Christ, perfectly loved even though faulty now, and surely forgiven, “ Let God be true though every man be false,” (Rom 3:4b) “...that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:10) You didn’t think His wisdom was shown through ours, did you? Of course not! It is shown through how much He is willing to forbear and forgive ours!
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment