Friday, February 11
Friday, January 7
Pagan Christianity review II
I'm reviewing the book 'Pagan Christianity' written by Frank Viola and George Barna. I've already covered the first couple of chapters, so if you are just jumping into the conversation, you can go back and look at my earlier posts to get caught up.
Like I warned you in my last post, this one's going to get personal...maybe not for you, but certainly for me since I'm a pastor.
In chapters 4 and 5, our authors discuss the topics of the sermon and the office of the pastor (maybe you didn't even know there was an office of the pastor-it's not anything like the office of the President, but it's basically the same thing in theory).
Cutting to the chase, Viola and Barna believe that sitting each week listening to a sermon is a waste of time. I happen to agree with them on this. Sitting and listening each week to a pastor preaching a sermon IS a waste of time. However, sitting and listening to a sermon, then taking what was taught and APPLYING it to your life isn't a waste of time (provided that the pastor preached something from God's Word and not something else).
Unfortunately the authors have the Church sorta backed into a corner here because we don't have to do very much research to figure out that there's more sermon-kinda resource material out there today than ever, but there's STILL a huge gap between what people say they believe, and how they live like what they say they believe (if that makes sense).
Pastor Dave Ralph (a former DS) once gave me some great insight..."we have been educated [about the things of God] more than we have the ability to live out or act on."
So, I think that the authors have a point. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Without trained biblical specialists to help us sort through some very difficult stuff, we would be in real trouble. Without someone that makes it their calling in life to take care of a congregation, our world would be in even MORE despair than it is currently. Viola/Barna would probably say that those roles could be filled by unpaid people, and potentially, to some degree at least, that might be true. But from my vantage point it's not happening, in any great measure, outside of professional clergy.
Is this something that we should be striving toward? That these professional clergy should be training it's congregations to do? YES, YES, YES! But if you've ever worked with people, you know that something like this is a lifelong work in progress. Mobilizing and motivating people to be selfless and to desire to give themselves away on a daily basis is a task of biblical proportions (no pun intended--well, yes I guess I did).
While most pastors should minor on the sermons, and major on the people, doing away with them and their weekly sermons would be disastrous.
Let me fill in-between the lines of the book:
What about you? What would you do without a sermon each week? How would you compensate for a pastor-less society?
Like I warned you in my last post, this one's going to get personal...maybe not for you, but certainly for me since I'm a pastor.
In chapters 4 and 5, our authors discuss the topics of the sermon and the office of the pastor (maybe you didn't even know there was an office of the pastor-it's not anything like the office of the President, but it's basically the same thing in theory).
Cutting to the chase, Viola and Barna believe that sitting each week listening to a sermon is a waste of time. I happen to agree with them on this. Sitting and listening each week to a pastor preaching a sermon IS a waste of time. However, sitting and listening to a sermon, then taking what was taught and APPLYING it to your life isn't a waste of time (provided that the pastor preached something from God's Word and not something else).
Unfortunately the authors have the Church sorta backed into a corner here because we don't have to do very much research to figure out that there's more sermon-kinda resource material out there today than ever, but there's STILL a huge gap between what people say they believe, and how they live like what they say they believe (if that makes sense).
Pastor Dave Ralph (a former DS) once gave me some great insight..."we have been educated [about the things of God] more than we have the ability to live out or act on."
So, I think that the authors have a point. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Without trained biblical specialists to help us sort through some very difficult stuff, we would be in real trouble. Without someone that makes it their calling in life to take care of a congregation, our world would be in even MORE despair than it is currently. Viola/Barna would probably say that those roles could be filled by unpaid people, and potentially, to some degree at least, that might be true. But from my vantage point it's not happening, in any great measure, outside of professional clergy.
Is this something that we should be striving toward? That these professional clergy should be training it's congregations to do? YES, YES, YES! But if you've ever worked with people, you know that something like this is a lifelong work in progress. Mobilizing and motivating people to be selfless and to desire to give themselves away on a daily basis is a task of biblical proportions (no pun intended--well, yes I guess I did).
While most pastors should minor on the sermons, and major on the people, doing away with them and their weekly sermons would be disastrous.
Let me fill in-between the lines of the book:
- We could do with less sermons and more serving;
- Less preaching and more promotion of Jesus;
- Fewer lessons and more love.
What about you? What would you do without a sermon each week? How would you compensate for a pastor-less society?
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