Pimp Pastors

I am reminded of the great failures and triumphs accumulated by the people of Israel and Judah after the reign of King Saul. Many were the failures, that God himself compared the people of Israel to the whore found in the book of Hosea. However the triumphs can, a majority of the time, be traced to the character and Godliness of the king in reign. Whether we like it or not, leadership not only fuels but many times establishes poor ideals, morals, and can create a ritualistic establishment that is far more challenging to change than it is to overturn.

The irony of the topic is this. We as the church have realized many of our failures. We have seen our lack of intimacy, and the authenticity that is as solid as chalk dust. However, we have chosen to neither change nor overturn. Instead our usual path of choice is to amend. We see that there is no intimacy, so we add small groups. We see deception and hypocrisy so we teach harder, pray harder, and firmly believe that if we only created the right environment for people to experience the grace of Jesus, the believers in our churches would be confessing their deepest sins in an instant. However, the intimacy, authenticity, and faith found in churches will always be proportional to how much the leadership of the given church values those concepts.

Therefore, I firmly believe that the challenge of stopping the whoring lies directly on the shoulders of those leading our churches. We know the scriptures, we know how it was supposed to be, but we have allowed ourselves to drown in the greatness of the tradition that we have only fueled.

1. Pastors should move away from Cherry St.
If we are honest with ourselves. we, as pastors, will see in our own lives, the very same trends that so filthily mark the believers in our congregations. Our small groups are as deep as our bathtubs, our messages are more creative and as theatrical as the blue man group, and the majority of us firmly believe that the rest of the world needs what we have to say.

In pastoring, there is very little time to listen to others, learn from others, because all of our time is spent trying to figure out the smoothest words to use in place of sin, judgment etc. We take very little time to experience our own intimacy because we are all laying in hospital beds from the stress that is brought from worrying about the lack of intimacy in “our” congregations. If we ever want our congregations to change, move, or get away from the prostitution corners, we can’t find ourselves there either. Our own lives must become our very first priority in this transformation. I am not questioning the integrity or spirituality of many pastors, but easy is the path from shepherding our spirituality to shepherding their spirituality.

2. Programmed Theology should stop feeling so good.
For some reason many believers have found comfort in the predictability of the program (what a terrible term for Sunday morning) that we offer (another bad term) on Sunday mornings. I personally believe it is about as comfortable as the pews that we sit in. We have completely lost our mission as the church. Exposition, topics, worship songs/style begin to matter much less when we as the church are urgent to share the message of Jesus the way the apostles were after the ascencion.

If intimacy and strengthening of faith is the purpose of the meeting of the church (agree?) then we must reevaluate why we do EVERYTHING. Why do we preach for so long, or sing so many songs, or have testimonies, allow time for prayer…because anything that is not filtered through our purposes for the church is merely part of another bad system that can continue to propel us away from biblical ecclesiology. And as long as Pastors continue to be solely responsible for what occurs at our meetings, there will be no ownership of the mission of the church. Once evaluated, we must change. It will be painful, there will be losses, and we may have to get second jobs, but there is no greater joy than purchasing back the whore from her previous owners. Hosea made it his mission, may we do the same.

What am I saying with all of this? Maybe the problem with the church isn’t the church, but those that are leading the church. Maybe what we need is less God-figures filling our pulpits and standing behind guitars masquerading as the prominent source of knowledge on God, and more spirit-led teams of believers understanding the roles in leading the church forward in it’s true purpose.

As per a request on my previous note, I have answered with my thoughts on how I believe that the church can stop whoring. My thoughts are not very clear or full today, so my apologies.