Primary Care Pastor
Posted on May 2nd, 2008
Upon entering seminary, all newcomers at the time went through a Myers Briggs Type Indicator seminar to learn our personality types and how we would relate to our fellow seminarians and professors. I myself am an INTJ. Whether it is true of all INTJs or not I am not sure, but I have a strong bent on the “I” part of the personality – introversion. And I have a tendency to eschew people at times, especially those I don’t know. I am awkward in conversation with the unfamiliar. In crowded rooms, I find a corner to escape to where I can see all “lines of attack” in my directions so I can prepare for when someone heads my way. Most extreme example: during loud concerts, I generally sit in my seat and (literally) fall asleep.
All of which can make it pretty awkward to be a pastor. Can you imagine the person I just described in the last paragraph when he enters a new church as a new minister for the very first time? Let’s just say it’s very energy-draining when I have to force myself to reach out and engage people, especially a lot of people or over an extended period of time (say once a week, every week).
I’ve excused myself from the typical role of the pastor as care giver, the pastor as the one who visits the sick in the hospital room, the pastor who leads the way in evangelism. I’ve excused myself by relying on the passage in Acts where the Jerusalem church leaders divide the work of the ministry among the deacons who minister to the poor and widows and the elders who focus on the ministry of the word. I’ve just understood my role as that of an elder rather than what was called in that passage a deacon.
So today I’m reading through the latest issue of Outreach Magazine, and I come to an article by Ed Stetzer called “Questions for McChurch.” The article is about the problems he sees with the multi-site movement among churches. (Actually, it’s rather interesting – the article leaves the impression that he’s in favor of the multi-site movement, but his contract with Outreach requires him to take the “contratrian” [his word] position, so he has to find things to be negative about the movement.) His first criticism on the multi-site movement among churches is about the pastoral role, and how the multi-site church really limits the amount of ministering the senior pastor can do in the traditional pastoral care roles such as praying over the sick, watching over the flock, and breaking bread with one another. And he goes on to say that, in the multi-site church, the senior pastor is rarely the primary care pastor.
That phrase struck me. Maybe it’s because doctors and medical care have suddenly taken on an explosive new role in the lives of my spouse and me because of the new bundle of joy we’ll be holding in a just a few more weeks, but I had never thought of the pastor in such terms. When all of those forms ask about a primary care physician, I had never thought of the idea of a primary care pastor. Who is that? Should it be the senior pastor always? Is it appropriate to have a pastor of pastoral care who handles all of that while another teaching pastor takes on the role of the sermons (like my ideal church setting would have it)? Were is the place for pastoral care in the role of senior pastor (or whatever you call that)? If the day comes for me to be a senior pastor, whose primary care pastor will I be? Do I need to be a primary care pastor for a set of people even now in my associate role?
Lots of questions. Few answers.
Tags: church, Ministry, personality, sociology
Filed under Church & Theology, Life, Ponderings | No Comments »
Leah
Posted on May 1st, 2008
I was struck today while reading about Leah and Rachel’s competition in son-bearing that Leah praised God when her fourth son was born. The first three sons Scripture records her using as means to buy Jacob’s love, which Rachel had stolen before Jacob even met Leah. Finally, by the fourth son, Leah relinquishes that – at least for the moment – and rather than thinking that Judah would turn Jacob’s eye to her, she simply praised God for another son.
I am struck by a couple of aspects. One, that she praised God at all. I’m sure it was a pretty normal thing in the culture of the day to praise a deity for the gift of a child, particularly of the male variety. I guess she thought that since Rachel was barren (apparently), and she now had four sons for Jacob, that he status was secured, even if Jacob never loved her as he loved Rachel. In a way, I guess the praise feels “left over.” Like an afterthought or something. Especially since, when Rachel hands over her maidservant, the competition starts all over again with renewed vigor.
The other thing that strikes me, and contributes to the “left over” feeling, is that it took her to son number four before she gave praise to God. The first three were all about Jacob. Even her fifth and sixth sons she counted as wages due her by God for some action she had taken – something God provided for her on account of her circumstances, rather than an undeserved blessing for her simply to be thankful for.
And I guess I’m struck because I have the same tendency. God is down on the list. I eventually think of Him and even thank Him for the good things in life – the blessings. But it’s after they are here for a while, and I’ve enjoyed gloating over them or showing them off to someone else. It’s about me getting my status right first. Then I’ll give God the glory and the honor. Once I’m set up the way I want to be set up, then I’ll turn over the praise.
More ramblings that probably have little or nothing to do with what Rachel and Leah actually were dealing with in their lives. Besides, there are so many reasons that I cannot understand or comprehend what they were going through…beginning with my chromosome set.
Tags: Life, Old Testament, Worship
Filed under Life, Old Testament, worship | No Comments »
Moses
Posted on April 30th, 2008
I was reading today’s e-mail devotional from Back to the Bible, from the devotional by Theodore Epp called Strength for the Journey. I haven’t really been enjoying this devotional, but I also haven’t taken the time to unsubscribe yet. I much prefer the Powered by 4 that I mention here. But today’s entry may change that.
It is titled “Train a Child; Affect the World” and the Scripture passage is Exodus 2:1-15. It’s about Moses being reared by his own mother in Pharaoh’s household. The line that gets me is this:
It was doubtlessly under his mother’s care that Moses trusted God for his salvation.
Pardon me? People in the Old Testament knew about trusting God for salvation? This is the guy who spent the first 40 years of his life as an Egyptian prince and the next forty years as a fugitive desert sheepherder for his father-in-law. It wasn’t until God encountered Moses in a burning bush – God being the actor here – that Moses’ life really took a dramatic turn. And he didn’t exactly leap at the opportunity to follow and serve God – he demanded a surrogate speaker from the God who can burn a bush without consuming it! That doesn’t exactly sound like “trusting for salvation” to me.
And I think the last forty years of Moses’ life had a lot more to do with the burning bush, ten plagues, divided sea, hand-carved commandment stones, rock-struck streams, and face-to-face conversations with a God who left his face glowing so much he needed a veil than anything from the first eighty years of his life. I think his mother’s rearing probably had a lot to do with his murdering an Egyptian guard at 40…..but personal trust in God as his Savior? That’s way too AD twentieth-century evangelistic crusade for me to believe it had anything to do with Moses’ spiritual life.
Besides, God, especially in the Old Testament, seems much more concerned with people groups (families, tribes, and nations) than with particular individuals apart from those groups.
Just my own thoughts and reactions.
Tags: God, Old Testament, salvation, theology
Filed under Church & Theology, Life, Old Testament | No Comments »
Bethel
Posted on April 29th, 2008
Today’s Scripture is from Genesis 28, when God introduces himself to Jacob for the first time and promises to fulfill the covenant He made with Abraham and Isaac through Jacob. The devotional thought that came with the text suggested that this is Jacob’s first encounter with God. I don’t know that I buy that – probably the first encounter with God of this kind, but probably not his first encounter, having grown up as the grandson of Abraham and son of Isaac. Perhaps the first personal encounter? Maybe that’s what the editor meant.
In any event, the thought went on to ask the question about the reader’s own first encounter with God. What was it like? Jacob set up conditions (“If God does this, then I will do this”), but also set up the altar that he called Bethel (“House or Dwelling Place of God”).
I don’t know if I remember my first encounter with God. In fact, I’m sure that I do not. I remember when a tropical storm (or minimal hurricane, not sure which) went over the house we were living in on the Gulf Coast, and Mom gathered us in her bedroom and prayed to God to protect us. I was young then, maybe four or five. We were fine, as was our house. Is that an encounter with God? I remember flickers of what I call my salvation experience…being in my parents’ bedroom, talking with our church’s pastor, being baptized. Is that my first encounter? I can look back and clearly see places and times where God guided me, protected me, steered me, put me in the precisely right place at the precisely right time. Are any of these my first encounter? I remember as a senior in high school, ten years after that time in my parents’ bedroom, pacing up and down the street in front of our house, trying to figure out what to do with my life (so that I could finish my college application – singular – by writing down a major), and having the assurance that I would be in full time ministry. Without a doubt. Though I had no clue what that looked like (pastor? missionary? professor?). Just that ministry was it. Because I was 18, it’s probably the most vivid encounter with God that I can remember. But I wouldn’t call it my first encounter.
I guess my first encounter came before memories started sticking in my brain. Probably my mother singing to me or praying over me (or for me, in another room). I do know that my life is different from the lives of others in the world who have not encountered God in a significant way. While I often take detours down the paths of consumerism and commercialism and materialism, I’m always drawn back. Jacob was a conniving liar who stole from his twin brother and spent the remainder of his life cowering from him, but God still chose him and always drew him back into His plan.
Sometimes I wish I had a dramatic instant-change testimony like I sometimes hear at meetings or conferences or read about in books. But then I count myself lucky that my encounter with God is lifelong, ever present. I have, at times, flirted with doubts about God’s existence or providence, but never for long. He is always with me. Just like God promised to always be with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, with their descendants. He is always with me.
That’s my Bethel.
Tags: God, Life, salvation
Filed under Life, Ponderings, Reflections | No Comments »
Jonah
Posted on April 22nd, 2008
Today’s Powered by 4 reading was Jonah 4. Jonah and Whale is a familiar to story to most anyone who grew up with any kind of a connection to the church. It’s a classic kids story. I haven’t been so faithful this week with the daily readings, mostly because I believed the four chapters of Jonah to be very familiar – tired and well worn. Not something that I need to read again, at least not this week.
I know. I should know better.
I am struck by the last two verses of the book. Jonah has been nudged not-so-gently into Nineveh. He walked three days into the city, proclaiming his message. The word gets to the king, and he declares that the whole city should repent, both man and beast. What evangelist today would not rejoice at such a turn in a city of 120,000 people – especially one with the reputation of Nineveh! Yet chapter 4 finds Jonah sulking over God’s grace towards Nineveh. He declares that this was the very reason he did not want to go to Nineveh and fled west in the first place – so God would NOT spare the city.
Jonah, sulking, goes out into the desert and sits down, waiting for the destruction of the city. God raises a vine overnight to shade him, and Jonah rejoices at the provision of shade. The next night, however, the vine is eaten away by worms, and it withers and no longer provides shade to Jonah. So he becomes even more bitter and angry. And God asks him if he has reason to be so bitter about the plant. Jonah responds that he does. And God asks, “Why the vine and not the 120,000 people of Nineveh? What makes the vine so much more worthwhile than they?”
How often have we fallen into the same trap, caring more for the fleeting things of life – the iPod or iPhone or dinner out or seeing the movie that’s getting all of the buzz or not missing an episode of our favorite show or cleaning out the dirt under our nails rather than the world that is dying around us? Are the people around us not of more worth than those other things?
It is a trap into which I easily fall. I pray that I will become more attuned to the world around me. To see more with God’s eyes. To place my time, effort, and energy into things that are lasting and worthwhile rather than fleeting.
Filed under Life, Ponderings, Reflections | No Comments »