One of the driving points in the recent correspondence to Evangelicals Now was that we needed pastors willing to go into small churches and commit to preaching twice on a Sunday and once midweek. The suggestion was that there was a reluctance on the part of younger potential pastors and that this was primarily because they were unwilling to sacrifice themselves for the gospel and preferred to attend to their own comfort.
Now, I’m sure that there are those who end up, whether it was their starting conviction or something they slipped into becoming lazy and seeking their own comfort. I suspect this has always been the case. My grandma used to tell the story of going into an Anglican church for a midweek service to find the vicar not expecting anyone and having helped himself to the communion wine being rather picked. But for every one like that, there has always been those willing to work hard for the Gospel.
When it comes to contemporary Gospel workers, I believe this remains the case. If a pastor is reticent to become the one who preaches 3 or 4 times in the week for the same people then that is usually not out of laziness. In fact, I would argue that preaching a few times on a Sunday is not in itself a burden. The danger for most of us, of all ages, is that we would happily spend several hours in the pulpit and the requisite hours in the study to facilitate that.
The issue is that pastors are well aware of many other challenges and pressures on their time. Some have always been there and some are new. Moreover, I think that many would consider it doable but not helpful to allow the church to become dependent on that form of one man ministry. The two issues are first that you end up with one man doing everything and secondly, that it builds a culture where members become busy at church and consumers but have no time to live out the Gospel with their family and in their community.
This might help us to think about why some men will have been advised against going to serve in a particular context. It’s not that preaching three times a week is in itself a burden, far from it. However, we might be concerned about what those expectations signal for the overall health and culture of a church. This may become burdensome and drain a pastor. Or you may have a situation where in effect you have mutual co-dependence. The man who goes in there is willing to do his 3 or 4 sermons a week and the church are happy to let him.
I would go so far as to say that if you go into a church as the one man team and for a few years you provide that kind of preaching ministry then you have not revitalised the church, you’ve merely met the demands of the congregation. That’s not to say that God hasn’t been at work but it is despite not because of your efforts. Mind you, we might ask whether any of us really revitalise. We may plant or water but God gives the increase.
At the same time, we don’t want to accept a situation where there are churches dying, leaving towns and villages with no meaningful Gospel witness. That’s why I take revitalisation seriously. What we don’t want to be doing though is sending one man in as the saviiour.
I believe that a better way is to be thinking from the outset about how churches rather than individuals support other churches. What this can mean is that instead of a man turning up on his own, another church turns up willing to support and help. It might be that they are only able to send and help encourage one or two people. Ot it may be that they are able to send a large new core group to join the church. Either way, I believe that you are more likely to see long term, sustainable change and fruitfulness.
Faithroots 