June 19, 2015
Passing the Baton
When a pastor retires, or is
relieved of his duties, he often finds a different place to worship out of
respect for the incoming pastor and the congregation. It’s difficult for a
congregation, who may feel loyalty toward the old pastor, to fully support the
new preacher. During one of my church visits the new preacher, who is around
50 years old, has served the church for only a year. Of the 10 people in the
service, one was the former pastor, a man in his 80’s who had filled the same pulpit
for 38 years. I don’t know the leadership dynamics of the church; however, I
felt a definite patriarchal vibe when I was introduced to the former pastor.
I’m trying to imagine Timothy never getting out from under the tutorship of Paul,
or Aaron entering the Promised Land and staying in the shadow of Moses.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Maybe it’s a good thing for the younger pastor to remain in the patriarchal shadow of the older one. Who has the better experience and the more wisdom? We get hung up on “your turn” “my turn” and forget the point - it’s the Lord’s work. Even if the younger one has all of the older one’s bases covered, plus more, the older pastor becomes useless? And if ideas begin clashing between the two, they both are serving outside the Lord’s shadow. God does not call pastor’s into roles of shaping the church by their own ideas. A pastor is like everyone else in the Lord, his own ideas are for his own life with the Lord. The Word of God’s ideas are for shaping other’s. The desire for a pastor to see the church reflecting his own ideas even about the Word is yet prideful. Moreover, Paul only used military analogies in exhorting faith and commitment; he didn’t actually command the church to be a military regiment with the pastor as some kind of Sergeant. Peter agrees, “Tend the flock…not as domineering…but being examples.” (I Pet 5:2-3) Examples aren’t rulers, and more of them are at least as useful as less. Besides, by the way I Corinthians 14 reads, we’ve pretty much got the entire worship service messed up beyond what Paul would recognize.
-----The New Testament does not reveal pastors as dominating the message in the church. I Cor 14:26-33 portrays a worship service made of many contributing messengers. Ephesians 5:19 encourages us to address one another with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. It does not call us to go find a music leader to conduct the church in everything it sings. But that is what we do.
-----So, by hiring a pastor to initiate all of the church’s ideas and a music director to initiate all its singing, the body of the Lord itself looses its initiative to think and bring forth melody from its own heart, just like any unused muscle will atrophy. I am not really surprised to see the church entering its Laodicean phase.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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