Running on fumes
Just saw the documentary of Jimmy Doolittle's bombing run over Tokyo. It reminded me of my thoughts these last few years of the Wesleyan church "running on fumes ". The reports we get are glowing, however with even the most basic survey of the fuel supply ... it is evident that we are running on fumes.
Several of the districts that I am personally familiar with simply close churches that they can't find competent pastors for. What is the "end-game"? We close churches with (at times) good or even great locations, in good communities because the d.s. cannot come up with a pastor. if this ain't runnin on fumes .......... what is?
Several of the districts that I am personally familiar with simply close churches that they can't find competent pastors for. What is the "end-game"? We close churches with (at times) good or even great locations, in good communities because the d.s. cannot come up with a pastor. if this ain't runnin on fumes .......... what is?
posted by Richard Lauby at
6:09:00 PM
2 Comments:
Being a youth guy and a SWU grad, I have a certain perspective on this.
Going to SWU, God did some amazing things in my life spiritually. However, I always felt that the administration made so many decisions to "stick it to" the students. (I could write pages on this).
After graduation, I was put in charge of our youth camps. The colleges sent us teams of student counselors that were uncooperative, untrained, and just a poor representation of Christ and our schools. So what happens? They get banned from our camps.
So here's what we're left with: Our denomination schools tick off the people who will be making decisions about whether or not the schools will be represented at camp. When they do send teams, they're a poor representation at best.
Therefore, we lose students going to our schools. Those students either go to secular schools or schools from other denominations. They then get ordained in those other denominations (like I did) and we wonder why we are lacking Pastors.
By
Anonymous, at 7:22 AM
I also think we could take a page from the charismatic movement when it comes to educating our pastors.
Going to accredited schooling adds thousands of dollars to the cost of eductating our pastors so they can enter a field with extremely low pay. Does this make sense?
Why do we need the governments accredidation to educate our pastors? Why are we having them pay to take classes such as aesthetics and physics?
We need to setup INEXPENSIVE non-accredited ministry training programs and be up front about their purpose. This is NOT to earn a bachelors degree, this is to get the training that you need to be a pastor.
It is also crazy to suggest that our pastors should have to choose between flying to Indiana or South Carolina or taking this incredibly boring coorespondence courses.
If we could only get it through our heads that pastoral training should be inexpensive and allow the minister to remain debt free through training, maybe it would be more fruitful.
By
Anonymous, at 7:26 AM
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