A Long Time Ago...

...I made my last post. I knew that it had been a while, but I did not think it had been so long (not that I have any real readers, but if there were any, they would be rather annoyed by the delay).

Anyway, I wanted to post tonight because I wanted to talk a bit about an issue at our church. The pastor announced today that he will be visiting another church in the same state next week in view of them calling him to serve there. This was unexpected in the church and has created some undertandable turmoil. My wife and I are wrestling with the issue on several fronts. There is the immediate and personal question of whether this particular man should leave this particular church at this particular time, but it is largely academic since only he can make that decision for himself.

The more interesting and more important question is when any pastor should move to a different church. I guess I became a bit jaded on this issue a few years ago when talking to a friend who described for me the "ministry career path" in which a man moves from a small (usually rural) church, perhaps as a youth or music minister, to progressively larger (and wealthier) churches until finally reaching the pinnacle, the urban mega-church, complete with television and radio ministries, speaking engagements and book deals. This sounded very matereialistic to me, and I have never really recovered from the impact of this paradigm-shattering realization. Since that time, any movement of a minister has raised in my mind questions of motive. I suppose that ultimately it is not my place to question the motives of another man, but at the same time, the pastor is under the authority of God and is accountable not only to Him but to the people God has entrusted to his care. As one of those people, I feel a certain responsibility to the other members of the congeregation as well as to the pastor himself to help ensure that he is appropriately exercising the authority of his position.

More damaging, perhaps, than the move itself is the gossip that will certainly follow in the weeks to come. I believe that this is where the challenge lies, as our congregation struggles to understand the change without turning into more of a rumor mill than is typical for a church in America.