January 23, 2015
Woe is Me
I’ve been reading a blog site
that is geared toward pastors. While some minister’s comments are in the form
of encouragement, many of the comments lately are simply pastors complaining to
one another about situations they’ve experienced, the people they serve, and
the hardships in ministry they endure. I have to laugh at their Moses-like
lament, “Then Moses cried out to the LORD, “What am I to do with these people?
They are almost ready to stone me” (Exodus 17:4 NIV).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----I’ve always thought it interesting how people pick a level of righteousness slightly higher than their normal own to consider as the blessed level of attaining God’s pleasure. We all know we don’t have to be Sister Teresa as long as we’re not Adolf Hitler. So we excuse ourselves to be who we are plus a little for the better because Christ died so we would be perfected through grace “then“, not now. Whether we’re in some stiff-laced, Puritan type church or some sloppy, swervy, mainstream, liberal affair, people are quite naturally going to frustrate church leaders who think God gave congregations to be holy platoons, battling brigades, and reliable regiments.
-----I think it should be easy to see that whatever moaning amongst a group of people some change makes indicates that the people are being pushed, not led. Fault: leaders. Oh for sure, the people are at fault for needing change - but that’s called falling short of the mark, why Christ came, and it admits the Sister Teresa thing. So it is also why leaders are given by the Lord, to lead change. Yet, the leader causes his own grief when leading by pushing.
-----And I understand not all of the lamentation you heard was about balky followers (pushees, that is.) There’s every expression of human failure within the lives of any congregation. Church is the fellowship for edifying one another to higher levels of God pleasing attitudes and behaviors. Even its moving towards “higher levels” admits the existence of lower levels. I like to think of church as a lifeboat at the scene of a shipwreck on the high sea. It is there for fishing folks out of the water and providing somewhat more secure shelter until they’re brought to shore. It isn’t a place of naturally blissful comfort. That place is the shore. Of course people recently fished into the boat will smell like seaweed. But, it just never seemed to me either beneficial or proper to complain about what comes natural. Beneficial complaint aims at what can be changed so that complaining will partake in a purposeful process rather than simply in an emotive one.
-----Speaking of lifeboats, in the last couple years I’ve learned “Jason” is roughly the Greek equivalent of “Joshua”, and “Jesus”. More accurately, it means “Healer”, which is way in the same ballpark. “Argo” is a company of travelers. And so it is that Christ steers His boat of Argonauts on to the victorious snatching of the prized golden fleece from the thieving, seven-headed hydra. And right there in the stars is that boat, Argo, of Cancer’s house, the crab which securely grasps its own. Before Argo are the big flock and the little flock, more commonly known by their early Hebrew names erroneously rendered as Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. And as the heavens tell the glory of God (Ps 19:1,) the pole star around which all other stars revolve “has moved” from the head of Hydra in Noah’s time to what we now call The North Star in the little flock in our time, near the time He returns to make this a place of bliss for His flock. My, my, my, my, my! Though His whole creation cries out in travail, it yet shouts forth the glory of the Gospel! Kinda just like us, we lamentable ones of many shepherds’ woes.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment