making the least the least
In the modern church people celebrate the best and brightest. The pastor is a good speaker or a good organizer or a good people manager. The people leading the music are the best singers and musicians that group has to offer (which sometimes isn’t much, but that is not the point). The guys who stand before the congregation to read that week’s bible passage are the best orators, the James Earl Jones of the group so to speak. Everyone puts on their best clothes and their best attitude and everyone comes together and celebrates the best.
Jesus hung out with drunks and thieves and prostitutes. He called uneducated fishermen to follow him and to share his message with the rest of us. He washed these people’s feet. He died in the most inglorious manner. he talked about the poor and the weak being blessed.
Paul carried on this concept. He told the people he wrote to that they didn’t have a lot of smart or rich people in their group. He said it like they knew it. He said it was good when we were weak. He said that his weakness showed God’s glory.
Now we celebrate the great speakers and the great writers. We buy their books and their mp3s and we go to their conferences. We eat up every word they say. We walk around telling everyone what these celebrities of the faith have to say.
Finally we’ve got things right. The weak move aside for the strong. The poor get pushed out to make room for the rich. The great speakers stand before us to show us the truth. The great singers and musicians step in to show us all how to properly worship. Finally this Christian thing is set straight. The least are made the least again.
When you are all about the show it becomes very important to promote a professional image.
Bob
I think Mark Driscoll would confirm that:
“our worship leader was a great guy and great musician but was unable to coordinate the multiple bands in the three locations, so we let him go. This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made because he was a very godly man who had worked very hard and would have been fine if the church had not gotten so crazy so quickly, and he and his very sweet wife were both close personal friends of mine. But I needed a worship pastor who could lead multiple bands, coordinate multiple services in multiple locations, and train multiple worship pastors while keeping up with a church that was growing so fast that we had no idea exactly where it was going.”
You can read more of that quote here: The Church or the Organization on The Assembling of the Church
Great pastors lead worship services, great parishes take the time and energy to bring customs and traditions to the people in the community. We are all baptized by faith in Christ to minister. Never fire the Pastor who works so hard he/she is overworked and exhausted trying to keep a community up to the standards of the Council. Praise the pastor who gets out of bed to serve the soul of the departing over the sounds of the Organist ad Choirs voices.
Great is thy faithfullness, and yes if you want to send me your needs, I am available.
RON M WEEKS
Cert Christian Studies
MCMaster University
Graduate 2004 Class
Ron, thanks for the comment. I am interested where you get your definitions for a great pastor and great parishes. Do you think that a pastor would be less likely to get burned out if the sole responsibility to keep the community of believers together was not put on his shoulders? If he did less leading and more serving and teaching others to teach and encourage and equip one another? To care for one another? To love one another?
The second part of that post is even more chilling:
“the needs of the organizational mission, not an individual in the organization, must continually remain the priority if there is to be continued success.”
This is about as cold and heartless as you can get.
Sounds like what a corporation says to justify laying people off.
If we don’t make someone the least. how will we know who is the greatest?
That’s a good point Fred, as we know it is very important to determine who is the greatest and most awesome.
When Jesus said, “It shall not be so among you,” what he really meant was, “Leaders are the top least while all others are the least least. So everyone are least, just some are more least while others are less least.”
Apparently, it makes sense to some people…
-Alan
I love this post. Almost as much as I love Alan’s comment. Bottom line, you are both more least than me.
more or less, yes.
Thanks for this Dan.
Thanks for reading it Travis!
Your comments are interesting to one aspect that the rich and trendy and supposedly well informed are sitting there in a pew, but are they paying attention. I work at a small parish here in Esquimalt that has a good congreagation of followers, and a change is happening,
More and more the emphasis is on what we can do in the commnuity at large daily to show our support. Two days a week I stand on the street at the front door of the Church, with the Priest and afew great friends and wave to the cars as 3000 people leave work each day. POeple at first wondered why we decided to do this? Because for the past 60 plus years they ahve driven by and never noticed that a parish is more about the individuals then the building.
If you drive by the pizza store with the young person holding a sign of $5.00 for a hot fresh meal, you are likely to stop. We are applying the same idea, stop in share a moment of your time to pray for only the same time it takes to pick up that meal on the go and your bound to find your trip is all the more comfortable as you make the trip home, in the afternoon rush hour, crawl.
If you like this ideas and want to know more about moving the parish out of the confines of sanctuary, you should stop in and visit your local church, for God is there for you too. I personally feel the will of sharing the Gospel, giving a wave or thanks and replying to the honk of a horn all the more active to sitting in a church on a lonely Sunday morning where you are afraid to turn to the person next to you to find out they are jsut as afraid your the perosn they think needs saving.
Random acts of Faith are more fun when you see a person reply to your invitation, for the day of their concerns and worries are more then you might guess. I hope you will read my blog and share a cup of coffee or a beer with someone who needs a few minutes of your time to know the Trinity experience is alive within us all.
Ron
Again, thank you for commenting and contributing to the conversation. I think a lot of your concepts to move the church outside of the building are well rooted, as we were never called to seclude ourselves in a sanctified building. I also like what you said about sharing a coffee or (especially) a beer.
A couple questions:
Is waving people into the building as valuable as living among others and sharing the love of Christ in their surroundings?
Is the role of the believer to sit and pay attention to what the pastor is preaching?
This is so true. My church has an elite choir that you can join by invitation only. Only the best musicians are asked to join. But being a good musician is not sufficient to qualify for membership in the elite choir. A person must also be part of the ruling clique or “in-group” to join.
Thanks Teri. I just don’t understand how anyone can think it is ok to act this way, but it happens all the time. The encouraging thing is that God seems to stand with those cast aside by the religious elite.