An Environmentalist

I'm up early today, and I'm a little bit excited. See, today is the day that my friend Roger's new church meets for the first time. In honor of him and of Wayfare, I thought I'd share some ideas about the Environmentalist of my "job description."

Disclaimer: These ideas are not original (what ideas are). This particular facet of ministry is one I learned from Tim Keel, pastor of Jacob's Well Church in Kansas City, MO.

Often times, we think of the pastor in business terms. The pastor is the CEO of the church. Therefore, the pastor's responsibilities can only be judged in dollars and attendance records. Unfortunately, such a view of the pastor neglects the primary role of the church: to serve the world and create disciples that are actively following Christ. While it's true that the big churches with their big numbers are probably reaching more people in terms of making disciples, such a system utterly neglects those churches in communities where only the few are drawn to Christ. More than that, it necessarily elevates the potential of an urban church to a rural church. The little church in the country has no chance of being deemed "effective" on this model, because the population per capita of their reach is significantly smaller. And truth be told, I'm not sure that if we focused our energies on advancing the gospel with any shred of pure honesty in suburban areas (where most megachurches seem to flourish) that people would come. It seems to me that we have simplified the gospel to make it more marketable. We've gotten exactly what we wanted, but what did it cost us?

So instead of being a CEO, the pastor's job is first and foremost to create an environment of authentic growth and development. The pastor works the soil to nurture those in her care towards a more authentic and holistic life of faith. This means that the pastor's first task is to know the shape of the congregation, to know what needs to be communicated and to find any and every way possible to challenge the people. This means that a pastor's primary responsibility ought to be to any corporate times where the pastor can lead all people at once. Having spent time working in churches, it seems that this often becomes the pastor's last responsibility, squeezed in wherever there are a few spare minutes.

The reason I feel so passionately about a pastor's duty to a weekly gathering is partially because it is the first thing a church does. For example, my friend's church which is beginning today is only a once a week gathering right now. That's all that there is. For many church's you could take away everything, and they would still consider themselves a church. But if we were to forfeit our communal gatherings for worship of Jesus Christ, we have lost the essence of what it means to be a church.

So why are we putting this things on the backburners? Why are we allowing all the other tasks of the church (most of which ultimately don't matter) to dictate our time in such a way that our sermons are crap, our services are jumbled and we feel the need for small groups to supplement our pathetic corporate experiences with God (another rant for another time)?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, it must be remembered that the pastor's job is to work the soil, to allow life to grow. This is not an obligation to put on a flashy show. In fact, a performance would seem to only entertain rather than promote genuine growth.

Instead, the pastor ought to thoughtfully prepare a service that is coherent, that includes challenging questions and that utilizes a variety of elements to continually till the ground and sow the precious seed of the gospel. The produce of a pastor's work as an environmentalist will be evident, but immeasurable.