Apostles and Earrings
I wonder if this belonged to one of the apostles? Simon the Zealot strikes me as the kind of guy who would wear an earring. I recall the time, when I was graduating from seminary, I received an invitation to start a new congregation in a college town. In the letter, they outlined the vision, the demographics of the community, and their expectations for the pastor. The letter ended with a p.s. -- "and of course, your wife will not be permitted to wear earrings." They forgot say anything about ME wearing earrings. For a while, I was tempted to go ahead, take the position, and get my ear pierced.
Not only do we have ineffective pastors, we have "churches that are more interested in self-service than service to the world. These are churches that say they want to grow but refuse to do what is necessary to evangelize. These are churches who want to simply be fed rather than feeding others in discipleship and in works of charity and service."
ReplyDeletePut these two together and we have dying churches.
Wonderful article to read!
This Methodist minister has some good ideas. It is definitely a blog worth visiting.
ReplyDeleteOne statement caught my attention.
"These are churches that see the empty pews on Sunday morning and reminisce about the people who used to sit there, instead of being motivated to do what is necessary to put new people in those empty spaces."
It does not matter how many new people they get to fill the empty pews. Unless the church changes its way, these new people will leave just like the previous people did.
In a small community, it is difficult to get new people involved because they know of the disease that drove the former attendees out.
The church needs to change it ways, make amends to the people who left totally hurt. Then these people will come back bringing new people with them.