I Got Nothin'

Caroline Ferdinandsen — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:09:55 -0800

What do pastors do when Sunday morning is barreling down on them and they realize they have absolutely nothing to say from the pulpit? Women-in-the-pulpit theology aside, I’m awfully glad I will never be a pastor. The burden to create life-changing sermons week upon week must weigh on a man, especially if he is naturally a shepherd, a hand-on-the-shoulder guy, or just rhetorically average.

Inspiration is a tricky cat. If you believe in the Holy Spirit—and I do—you want to believe that God can zap our intellect, give us supernatural insight, and use his Holy Scriptures to shape our teaching. Yet I’m pretty sure God didn’t deem sacred the seven-day cycle of insights, where the Holy Spirit punches his time clock at certain intervals just in time for the church secretary to print the sermon title every Wednesday for the church bulletin. Our church system seems to have nudged out the natural growth cycles of Inspiration and his sister crop Revelation. But here we are in a system where the vast majority of churches operate on the expectation of a sturdy Sabbath harvest, delivered by the local pastor / farmer right on cue.

What if by Friday afternoon that farmer’s got nothin’ but rocks and weeds?

Zadie Smith in her intellectually demanding collection of essays Changing My Mind, believes inspiration happens in two ways. The first comes from absorbing everything you can find—great novels, comic books, the daily news, essays, conversations—in an attempt to allow great thinkers to wash over you in some kind of intellectual marinade. This, many believe, is a legitimate way of boosting inspiration, and some go so far as to suggest that no insight ever happens in isolation. Even that burrito you ate last night shifted your midnight thoughts and led to a new conclusion in your grand idea.

The other, fiercely independent, strategy is to shut yourself off from the world of ideas, fasting, as it were, from the rich foods of books and essays. In this way, you are assured that your inspiration comes from within (or in the case of pastors, from God himself), safe from the plagiaristic temptations of men.

So what would God ask of our pastors and teachers? What would he ask of me, a writer? Should I be looking for objects on the ground from which to create a Found Poem, a musical cover, a refurbished engine? Or should I search only within myself to find the heart of God himself, the mystical union of mind and spirit?

I have no great answer. But the man or woman who spends his life in both realms is better equipped, I think, to discover God’s spirit. God works within and without, using the supernatural and the mundane to push us toward elevated thoughts, both methods working like sun and water to bring a harvest of inspiration.

If I were a pastor (and since I never will be, I find it easy to throw out such an audacious proposal), I would tell my congregation to go home some Sunday mornings. I got nothin’ I would tell them. Go home and write your own sermon today. And if salaries weren’t such a pesky detail, I might also gather ten teachers together, young and old, internet trollers and pensive thinkers, deep philosophers and rhetorical comedians—all wedded to sturdy doctrine—and I would say Let’s all teach this year. Whenever you get a crop, let the rest of know and we’ll let you show up on Sunday. The rest of us will enjoy your food and wait until our sprouts are green.

Now I think I got something.

Liabilities of the Senior Pastor Model

Brett Kunkle — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:21:43 -0700

This is sad. Another pastor taken down by sin. Now, I think these cases are the exception. Our churches are largely filled with good men and women who lead. But the fall of pastors is still too prevalent and it has me thinking about the "Senior Pastor" model. The liabilities are many:

#1 - The senior pastor is looked to primarily for leadership that reflects charisma rather than character. When there’s a single primary pastor, whether consciously or unconsciously, he alone is relied upon to be the “face” of the ministry. And in our culture, it’s charisma not character that makes a lasting first impression on people. Therefore, many churches depend upon his celebrity status to represent their ministry. New attenders, enamored by a personality, choose to join a church primarily on that basis. Indeed, in many cases a senior pastor’s character is an afterthought.

#2 - The body of believers is much more susceptible to the development of an unhealthy co-dependence on the senior pastor. The “Senior Pastor” model, when combined with the widespread dysfunction found in American culture, encourages a co-dependent relationship between pastor and parishoner that is detrimental to the spiritual health of the body. Thus, the typical believer experiences an unhealthy need to connect with the senior pastor on some level before he or she can connect to that particular church.

# 3 - The personality of the senior pastor begins to dominate church life. When there is so much dependence placed upon a single leader, his strengths and weaknesses tend to shape the body life of the church. His strengths become the emphasis of the church, no matter how unbalanced. In addition, his weaknesses, unable to be counter-balanced by other leaders, are likely to become the weaknesses of the church.

#4 - The senior pastor model encourages the body of believers to become spectators. Since the senior pastor is the “professional” minister who is paid to do the work of the ministry, the body is enabled to sit back and watch him and his staff do their job. Thus, the large majority of significant ministry is carried out by the paid staff of a particular church.

#5 - When a senior pastor falls, the damage is immense. When there is so much dependence upon a single leader, the effects of his sin and shortcomings are multiplied exponentially. In contrast to the elevated status of the senior pastor, the lesser roles of associate pastor or support staff do little to mitigate against the damage to the body.

Could it be these liabilities are the result of an unbiblical model of church leadership? A biblical model should provide us with a structure that mitigates against these weaknesses. I'm sure that church in Compton is going to be reeling for some time.