Why do we do this?
My friend Mike used a phrase in one of his comments..."We leave it to the professionals.."
Why do we leave "ministry" to the professionals?
posted by Bob Carder @ 10:15 AM
28 comments
Monday, August 18, 2008
Why do we leave "ministry" to the professionals?
28 Comments:
The authoritarian leadership structure communicates to the "Lay person" (I hate this word) that the ones at the top are more qualified, more skilled... When a Senior Pastor seeks this power he then promotes himself as indespensible. So we leave it to the professionals because they have convienced us that we will just make a mess of it.
I can see it from the other angle too. The laity (I hate this one as well) abdicate their responsibility to the paid professionals. How often have I heard congregants say, "That's what we pay you for, preacher." We have become a culture infatuated with and dependent on expertise. I think the professionals are allowed to run the show because the majority of church people do not want to do the work of ministry. Frankly, they'd rather play golf. Can't say that I blame them when most ministry is an effort to feed the machine.
We specialize as Martilou said for job protection and maintenance of power. Do you know what usually happens in nature when species specialize? Eventual extinction.
That's too simple -- or is it too complex?.
We have built a society on what let's call "Experticity." There is an expert for everything and, in order to perpetuate their business of being an expert, they have to make the rest of us feel that we just don't "do it" as well.
I mean, and lock up the kids, but do we really need "experts" to tell us how to have sex? Haven't we been "getting it right" for thousands of years at least? We must have. We're still around.
Does the church need church growth experts to tell it how to grow? Do we need greeter ministries to teach us how to be friendly?
We "consult" ourselves to death. Why? Why?
Here it comes.
We're lazy. We look for shortcuts. We want microwave solutions for crockpot meals. (Yeah, I stole that from Dave Ramsey...hope he doesn't get upset and sue me.)
Why put in the time ourselves when we can get the same results by hiring an expert?
True, yet I am finding these young adults out there that do not want the shortcuts. They are talking about surrender and making a difference. They want to slow down and love and serve people. I think in the next few years we are going to be surprised at a generation who begins to take the responsibility of ministry from the professionals --and perhaps will not even recognize that we need professions
Both of these things are true ... some Christians are lazy and would rather just pay someone to do the ministry, and sometimes the paid 'professionals' want to keep their jobs so they control and dominate the church.
But there are cases where the Body of Christ decides that it's strategically important to care for the financial needs of one of it's members in order to free them up to minister in a certain capacity full-time. They may free them up so that they can spend more time studying, leading, evangelizing, discipling, or whatever. But it's a strategic decision made by the Body - not to abdicate their responsibility and not because the paid person is more important in the Body.
Both Bob and I (hopefully) are examples of this. The Body cares for our financial needs not because we're more professional (though we should strive to the best we can be) or because they're lazy, but because there are certain ministries that can be done more effectively if someone is able to dedicate themselves to it full time.
Make sense?
Absolutely, honest2blog, absolutely. No argument here.
Martilou said:I think in the next few years we are going to be surprised at a generation who begins to take the responsibility of ministry from the professionals --and perhaps will not even recognize that we need professionals.
The Planter: This is one of the reasons the established church is defensive and angry with us. They fear they may lose their mere existence. Marti- I believe you are right in your prophetic statements here. The institutionally minded don't know what to do with this.
I pastor a church that has over 20 nationalities in it and is disciple-driven. I work with Asians, Africans, European, and North Americans - Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Christian of every stripe. I've done cross cultural discipleship for 16 years. I've studied multi-cultural ministry and theology at the graduage level. Does that make me a professional in this area of ministry? Probably.
All that means is that my experience and education in this area probably enable me to provide insight that others may not have.
Are education and experience a substitute for faith, the Holy Spirit, and the power that God's word has on people? Of course not.
Does that mean I'm better or even more fruitful than others? No.
But does it mean that I can bring something unique to the mix? Yes. Can God and the Body use my background? Yes ... when I submit it to Him in humility and use it to serve the Body rather than promote my own ego.
Life is never quite so black and white. Let's just trust God to use diverse people in diverse ways ... some who may even be 'professionals.'
:-)
1 Timothy and Titus also imply that not everyone can or should be a leader. The problem isn't that we've standards for leaders, but that maybe we have the wrong standards (or better ... incomplete standards). But this always has to be tempered with grace because even the best leaders fall short of Paul's standards.
What I always say to people who start wining about pastors who don't let them minister (and 9 times out of 10 that's what it is - wining)is that they should just start looking for people to serve - at church, work, home, neighborhood or whatever. Channel the negative energy into something positive.
I also don't understand the complaint that pastors or elders are stopping people from making disciples. Even if they try, who can stop you from sharing Christ with people you meet outside the church? How can stop you from discipling them? Just do it and let the pastors/elders do their thing.
H2B,
Yes! A point I've tried to make in this discussion (though not in this series of posts).
Thanks for that.
A careful reading of the pastoral epistles reveals that the qualifications for church leadership were weighted more for character and reputation than skills and knowledge. This is because values have a top-down effect. It was far more important that the elders and deacons demonstrate Christ-likness than teach it or strategize to reach others with the gospel. This is not to say that some level of skill is not important, but it is secondary to character.
Expertise can be a good thing. The problem arises when people come to depend on the expert rather than take responsibility. In our culture the experts can feed this system by not reproducing themselves. There is great job security in it. But when the expert leaves or dies, what happens to the ministry?
Professionals are good if they're constantly working themselves out of a job by giving themselves away to the people they serve. A mentor once told me that as pastors our task is to work more ON ministry than IN ministry. In my experience lots of ministry professionals are more focused on doing ministry (sometimes out of good motives, sometimes to create their own little niche)than giving it away to others.
Couldn't agree more! :-)
What is better left to the "professionals" are administrative tasks like facilities management and tithe collection.
Here's an idea: employ a facilities manager who pays for his/her salary by using your church and its assets to turn a profit. Put a bar and casino in, some gambling machines and hold the occasional strip tease evening.
That'll bring the masses in. And it will provide a real test for your faith. Two benefits rolled into one.
Oh David, David ... you do amuse, I'll give you that.
I think David has a good point. His suggestions would scratch the itch of felt needs of seekers. We'd have no trouble with ministry volunteers. (We could finally get the men invovled.) I feel a vision for ministry coming on here.
I'm excited, for sure, at these comments. I do love sarcasm!
Maybe im a little confused, or maybe im just lost by my lack of the spiritual gift of sarcasm, but isnt all this talk about "professionals" missing the point that the Lord is the one who builds His church, including the leadership. If God is indeed electing (Him, not us) our leadership, the apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, pastoral and teacher leaders should be being raised as God ordains them, not as we see them as being needed.
and to david, i know some truly professional people who dont have a truly administrative bone in their body. shouldnt the functions of the body belong to those who God made to do so? Maybe my view is different since coming from such a small church where there are seldom less tasks that need doing than we have memebers, or did i miss something?
Zach, you are right on and you did not miss anything. Keep speaking our language, my friend.
I haven't seen the strip tease stuff, but I've seen all the other stuff like casinos and concerts with secular rock bands showcased at churches.
I'm amazed that more pastors don't understand the concept of "what you save them with is what you save them to".
Oh, chadpeterson, remember the main game is to reduce the rate of souls entering Hell. Just a tiny little bit is all you can hope for, of course.
Doesn't matter how you save them, just get out there and do it. Extreme torture is justified, after all, human torture will never be as bad as what God has in store.
Isn't it strange that God designed the world so that 99.999999% of humanity get eternally tormented?
Hey Bob, how about a series of blog entries on Hell?
Thanks for the comments! You must be going through a strong spiritual battle. Most people I see with your hostility towards God are on the verge on falling on their knees and repenting. Can't wait to welcome you into the Kingdom!
I'm with Chad, we do love you David. You love my spunky-ness and I love yours too.
We do this because we are stupid. We think the laity have no real gifts and abilities to lead better than us. Isn't that just a sad commentary. I love to blame seminaries for making us pastors feel so needed and special.
How will the church survive without the professionals who have done so welll......Saracasm and more sarcasm.
this also goes back to constantine, does it not? the body was taken out of an organic setting where EVERY member was allowed to function within their gifting to throwing them in a temple (roman by the way, not Jewish) where only the preists (who were funded by rome) could minister the truth.
i think the real tragedy here is what this does to the office of pastor. One human is expected to be nurturing as a pastor, be a perfect teacher, be a stellar evangelist while maintainig a prophetic perspective and an apostolic vision. Ultimately, one man cant do all of this (unless that one is Jesus), so they do the only humanly possible thing to do: the evangelistic call is limited in its range, the apostolic vision is cut extremely short, teaching all has a pastoral focus (if any focus at all) and prophetic perspecive is all but lost. In addition, the pastor (if they are even pastorally gifted) has stretched themselves so thin that they dont even have energy for pastoral care and ministry. Or the almost reverse could happen and someone who is NOT pastoral gets the office and there is a whole congregation without pastoral care. and THAT thought makes me shudder.
Thanks to the net and blogs, I have read many descriptions of the dynamics of group interaction amongst Christians - the problems and challenges they face as a church community.
What strikes me is the similarity to any group of people, of whatever background. Politics is politics everwhere.
This is somewhat surprising when considered against the claim of Christians, that the Holy Spirit and/or the Word of God provide additional help and illumination. One would expect a higher standard of behaviour, a generally greater awareness of other people amongst Christians as they interact with each other and the outside world.
Now your rejoinder may be that Christians are only imperfect humans too. Think about this type of reply.
I very much suspect the influence of God/Jesus/Holy Spirit is illusionary. The above is further evidence that invisible spiritual entities do not exist; further evidence that Christians suffer from mass delusion.
Why are Christians not honest with themselves? Do they at least not see the need for objective study into these areas? Do they see the need to move away from the subjective?
my response to you , david, is not that we are imperfect, but that the Church as a whole is decidedly NOT listening to the Holy Spirit. and are NOT actually living what they confess with their tongues. The great shame is that politics HAS begun to rule what truly belongs to God alone.
The problem with the net and blogs- a lot of information is out there, much of it is completely off base and wrong, and there are very few ways to discern between them.
David, Satan brings accusations to the brethren or children of God. But in those accusations there seems to always be a hint of truth.
As for politics, it really doesn't matter who wins because God is going to win anyway.
Oh David! I need to lead you to Jesus very soon. You will like Him!
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