Article
It is a common axiom among pastors that we rarely find enough time to study, to keep up with the pastoral and theological literature either for personal satisfaction or for the sake of those whom we serve. The harassed pastor runs from Eucharist to vestry meeting to funeral to counseling appointment, rarely having time even …
Article
Racial reconciliation has been the central theme of Chris Rice’s life and ministry. It is also the subject of his two books. More Than Equals (InterVarsity, 1993) was coauthored by his friend Spencer Perkins, a fellow member of Voice of Calvary Church in Jackson, Mississippi, and the son of the civil rights leader John Perkins, …
Continue reading “A Passion for Reconciliation: An interview with Chris Rice”
Article
(Excerpted from Gilead, a novel by Marilynne Robinson, published this month. © Copyright 2004 Marilynne Robinson. Used with permission of the author and the publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.) As he nears the end of his life, the Reverend John Ames is writing an account of his life and family for his seven-year-old son. Ames, …
Article
"What kind of relationship do you want to have with your teen in five years?" Tim Tahtinen, youth leader at the United Methodist Church of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, likes to pose that question to parents and then add, "What’s your plan? I have a plan that works." Instead of segregating youth from their parents in …
Book Chapter
This note on tongues implies two useful rules for pastoral leaders. One, parishioners who insist that speaking in tongues is necessary to spiritual maturing should be encouraged to join a Pentecostal church. They disqualify themselves for membership in the mainline denominations. A second rule emerges from Paul’s guidelines for the Corinthian congregation. No meetings should be permitted in which people speak in tongues en masse.
Book Chapter
The nature of the faith history interview. Concrete suggestions for covering formative figures, personal journey, particulars of faith, and wrap-up.
Article
With the exception of a few recent articles, most of them cited here, studies on clergy sexuality published in sociological, psychological or religious periodicals — as well as fictional treatments — have focused on male clergy adultery without mentioning the consequences suffered by women involved. Not only does the literature say almost nothing about the …
Continue reading “Blaming Women for the Sexually Abusive Male Pastor”
Article
“Can the laity expect greatness from the clergy?” An active layperson confronted me with that question one day. A successful businessman, he had both a son and a son-in-law in the ministry. He was speaking out of genuine concern for the church and its impact on the public. The man was not asking his question …
Article
An odd by-product of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. . . .To some I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. [C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (Seabury, 1961) Pp. 10, 11] We cannot go through life without the illness or death of a …
Article
Text: Be we High or Low The status is Quo. — Old Episcopal saying. 10 Church Street Small Town, U.S.A. Dear Pastor: It was only after much hesitation that I decided to write you this letter. Last Thursday’s meeting between you and the Women’s Guild does call for a few observations! In the course …
Book Chapter
A brief review of the prevailing charges made that many ministers are leaving or breaking down, and that the churches are dead or dying parts of the "Establishment" and isolated from the real world.
Book Chapter
The derivation of the names for the leaders of the First Century church which includes, among others, the terms Ministery (I), Apostles (II), Bishops and Deacons (III), Prophets & Teachers (IV), Presbyters and Elders (V), and the Episcopacy (VI).
Book Chapter
In Protestantism every minister is to be a theologian, to think and inquire actively. This image is rejected by American clergy as pretentious even as they privately theologize by thinking actively about what God has done and continues to do in specific situations in their ministering.
Book Chapter
If the ministry of disciplining is to avoid the image of punishing, it must find its roots in the word "disciple" with its emphasis on voluntary commitment and self-disciplining, and an image of the minister in prayer as he both disciplines himself personally and professionally, and encourages the laity to do the same.
Book Chapter
Beginning with the missionary movement in the early nineteenth century the church began offering ministries to people in special settings or with special problems, including military and hospital chaplains, and service to the disadvantaged in urban, rural, suburban and metropolitan settings. This has involved reconsideration of the appropriateness, education, funding and accountability of these ministries.
Book Chapter
Having sketched "cartoon" images of nine different kinds of Protestant ministry, the author finds a unity within the diversity in these images as seen in the centrality of the Bible in each, the being engaged with all kinds of people, and always on the same level with them.
Book Chapter
There is meager evidence for the end of the New Testament epoch and the beginning of the Patristic period concerning the various leadership positions. There were at least five competing images in which a chief pastor of a Christian church might see himself mirrored (c. 125): as an elder of a Christian sanhedrin, as an apostle, as a prophet, as a high priest, or as an epiphany of God or Christ to the Christian people. The various orders are gradually refined. The Nicene Council delineated an understanding concerning some of the ecclesiastical positions.
Book Chapter
The author sees the nature of the ordained ministry in terms of functions, or what the minister actually does, by examining the biblical bases and the historical development of ministry, and concludes that the church can only function with competent professional leadership.
Book Chapter
The dominant image of the Protestant ministry is of the preacher in the pulpit with an open Bible before him, which involves a rejection of certain aspects of medieval Catholic theology and practice, and results in some cases in pathological distortion of the preacher-pulpit-Bible image.
Book Chapter
In the complete change of religious climate after Constantine most of the new patterns of priestly behavior and pastoral rule which were to prevail for a millennium in both Eastern and Western Catholicism until challenged by Protestantism were laid down in the period between the Council of Arles in 314 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
Book Chapter
While there may be salvation outside the church, there can be no maturing outside the church.. The church is that place on earth where intimacy with the risen Lord continues in a healing bond that equips us for mission in a new key. Christians are destined to be missionaries. Jesus modeled this missionary, fishing for people, from the beginning. The ultimate agenda item for clergy gathered as body of Christ will be finding how to lead the parishioners as individuals and as a congregation to fulfill their mission in the world.
Book Chapter
While stressing the priesthood of all believers and the universality of Christian vocation, the author insists that administering is as important as preaching — with the pastor in the role of guiding, counseling and interpreting in cooperation with the laity.
Book Chapter
Great changes were occasioned by a vast alteration in the social structure as a result of the barbarian inroads. Society was put in disarray. A further and even more serious setback was occasioned by the Mohammedan invasion commencing in the sixth century which made of the Mediterranean an Islamic sea. Against the heretics and the schismatics the Church invoked the Inquisition. Churchmen should inquire and pass sentence. Civil rulers should implement their decisions at the stake. The Inquisition was deemed a department of the cure of souls. Its object was not to burn heretics in the body but to save them by the fear of a brief temporal fire from the unquenchable flames.
Book Chapter
What it means role by role for the pastoral leader as prophetic guide: preacher-liturgist, pastor, educator and administrator.
Book Chapter
The Protestant image of the minister as teacher has evolved from the formal instructor of creed and catechism, through a softer mothering Sunday school teacher stage, to an "instructing about instructing" image with minister and laity informally interacting.
Book Chapter
Reformers led to an emphasis upon the proclamation of the Word — preaching. All believers are considered ministers, but for the sake of order, certain ones, the ministers, are set aside for the office of preacher. This view of the rights of the individual implied a rejection of clericalism. At the beginning of the reformation there was no overall plan of organization. It was finally agreed that there was nothing of more prime importance than the Bible. A new social and vocational class, that of the Protestant minister soon developed and the scholar’s gown became the garment of the ministry.
Book Chapter
The role, requirements, ordination, status and even death of the priest/minister/clergy/presbyter…in modern times.
Book Chapter
The shepherd or pastor image of the ministry involves the caring, disciplining and nurturing activities that have undergone changes over the last century from that of doorbell-ringing and counseling models to a deeper and more descriptive image that encompasses the skill, accessibility and speed in helping needed in the variety of circumstances encountered by the minister.
Book Chapter
Formerly the clergy had been “priests,” finding their primary responsibility at the altar; now they were “ministers,” with preaching and pastoral care as their pre-eminent duties.
Book Chapter
A constructive image of evangelizing requires a review of contemporary methods like revivalism and mission, and leads to the concept of the Christian, whether minister or layman, encountering others, whether as individuals or in a group, in a discussion of their expressed needs, and depends more on attitudes than techniques.
Book Chapter
The conception of the ministry, the practice, and why these came about in America during the two hundred and fifty years from the planting of the first permanent English colony in 1607 to the stabilization of the new nation on the verge of the Civil War. Diversity and fragmentation, adaptation, voluntarism, British influence, denominationalism and salary dependence are areas discussed.
Book Chapter
The central Protestant image of celebrating is the minister at table holding the elements with lay associate leaders by his side. However, this paradigm needs constant reinterpretation and expansion into additional images of celebrating.
Book Chapter
Since there is no indigenous image of the ministry as reconciling, and since reconciliation suggests a process rather than a conclusion, contemporary models from group dynamics and marriage counseling are helpful in initiating and managing the process, particularly when reconciliation is not possible if both love and justice are to be served.
Book Chapter
The changes in the concept of the ministry has been revolutionary in the past 100 years — industrialization, urbanization, ascension in world power, tremendous growth in population. These factors accentuated the last decades of the 19th Century only to be accelerated in the 20th.
Book Chapter
The pastor’s need for a metaphor for ministry which provides a sense of meaning through all the personal crises of passing decades as well as the continual need to balance the demands of the congregation with maintaining the integrity of the “call” can be met by the New Testament based metaphor for ministry as being a “prophetic guide to maturing in the Christian life.“
Book Chapter
Discipleship, as a following of Jesus moving on ahead, no longer fit the circumstances. The Spirit, not Jesus, now points the way, not from up ahead, but by prompting from within.
Book Chapter
Discipleship is redefined. The hidden role of the female is revealed. Discipleship is characterized as the childhood phase of faith. It is contrasted to “crowd religion.” The Lord’s Prayer is analyzed anew.
Article
April may be “the cruelest month” for poets like T. S. Eliot, but I’ve found that June is rough on preachers. Consider Ralph Wade, pastor of the Friendswood Baptist Church in Indiana, who united Denise Golay and David Whitfield in marriage. Ralph went by the book, but Denise and David had other ideas. Their wedding …
Article
Ray was tired, worn down to the nub. It was the year he was turning 60, celebrating the 40th anniversary of his ordination and marking 15 years as pastor of his congregation. Ray knew that every pastor goes through dry periods. What shook his foundations was suddenly coming face-to-face with his mortality, or at least …
Article
Of all the themes in Evelyn Underhill’s work, none is more important than "continuing incarnation": offering one’s life as the channel for God’s continuing work on earth by weaving together the inner and outer life of the spirit. For Underhill the spiritual life was a life "soaked" by a sense of God’s reality and claim, …
Continue reading “Continuing Incarnation: Evelyn Underhill’s Double Thread of Spirituality”
Article
The church seems caught in an irresolvable tension today. Insofar as we are able to maintain any presence in modern society we do so by being communities of care. Any attempt to be a disciplined and disciplining community seems antithetical to being a community of care. As a result the care the church gives, while …
Continue reading “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community”
Article
In the early 1960s, Eugene Peterson was planning to finish a Ph.D. in Semitic studies while he worked as an associate pastor at a Presbyterian church in White Plains, New York. He already had degrees in the field from the Biblical Theological Seminary in New York (now New York Theological Seminary) and from Johns Hopkins. …
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) As a pioneer in the development in the specialized ministry of pastoral counseling, and a teacher of Protestant ministers in various theological school settings, the author offers his assessment of the state of the ministry in the late 1960’s, a critique of the various forms that ministry has taken, and an description of creative new forms of ministry.
Book Chapter
The author’s thesis that while the ministry (circa 1969) was suffering from much criticism and a resulting "failure of nerve," this ferment need not damage the essential soundness of the vocation and its practitione
Article
I have been on the other side of the pulpit for 16 years. I am still convinced of the gospel, intrigued with theology and ethics, and caught up in the allure of the church. But during the ten years that I have been in business, I have yet to hear a sermon or read a …
Article
Recently I celebrated 15 years as pastor of a congregation in East Texas of under 200 members with about half of them present for Sunday worship. At denominational meetings and around town I’m asked, "When are you going to a bigger church? Why do you stay?" Sometimes I give along, rambling explanation, but often I …
Continue reading “Good Work: Learning About Ministry from Wendell Berry”
Article
Book Review: A Fundamental Practical Theology. By Don S. Browning. Fortress, 324 pp., $ 29.95. Don Browning’s provocative study A Fundamental Practical Theology offers the most concerted account yet of how the churches’ practice might organize theological inquiry as a whole. Browning does not attempt to work through many of the systemic and conceptual problems …
Article
Parish clergy today are caught in a dilemma with regard to their role as pastors. Some voices are urging us to forsake entirely the use and connotation of the nouns “pastor” and “flock,” arguing that such conceptions have no place in a world come of age. Yet the understanding of the clergy as guides in …
Continue reading “Growing Together in Spirituality: Pastor and Parish Have a Check-Up”
Article
An exaggerated deference to the most influential model of personal counseling may be undermining the ministry in hundreds of congregations today. We have taken the immensely helpful, nondirective Rogerian pattern and made it gospel, not only for wide areas of secular counseling but also for pastoral care. Further, we have turned pastoral care into the …
Continue reading “Has Ministry’s Nerve Been Cut by the Pastoral Counseling Movement?”
Article
Not long ago I was with a group of clergy discussing a mutual acquaintance of ours who serves a large midwestern church. “I heard that his wife is suing him for divorce,” interjected one person. “Really?” I said, my countenance brightening at the prospect of a juicy piece of information about someone who serves a …
Continue reading “Heard About the Pastor Who…? Gossip as an Ethical Activity”
Article
Several years ago in the midst of one of its well-publicized battles about sex, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) proclaimed, “Theology matters.” At first glance, this was a slogan to warm the heart of a theologian. But then I started to wonder why our denomination even had to say such a thing. After all, theology means …
Continue reading “Helping Theology Matter: A Challenge for the Mainline”
Article
In working closely and personally with lawyers, I have come to see that they have been formed–by their legal education and even more by their years of professional work in the law–in a particular way of seeing and thinking that is distinctive to that profession. They have developed what we might call a "legal imagination." …
Article
When the Emory University School of Medicine opened for the fall term, I was in the survey course in human anatomy — for the seventh time. By the end of the term, I still won’t be able to answer any of the questions on the first quiz. My attention is focused on the human spirit, …
Continue reading “In Quest of Profound Courtesy: A Chaplain Enters the Anatomy Lab”
Article
Every minister is a Calvinist come Monday morning. Shuddering to think how little of one’s carefully aimed ministry has hit the mark the day before, one feels the truth come thundering home that often the most effective ministry is altogether unplanned, unintentional, even accidental. Were it not for the hope of such inadvertent ministry, many …
Article
Just prior to my arrival as pastor, the governing board of the church I serve voted to "differentiate spiritual responsibilities from administrative responsibilities." On the positive side, this decision shows a welcome awareness that congregational leadership has to do with more than deciding which brand of paper towels to use in the rest rooms; it …
Article
Nothing is more clear in the mission of the church in the United States today than that ministry must be indigenous and must take with the utmost seriousness the particularities of this culture. The reasons for this are not only that ever more diverse cultural groups are moving into the United States, as important as …
Continue reading “Indigenous Ministry in the Context of the United States”
Article
Has the advent of the Internet and computer led congregations toward the “virtual technology church,” undermining the face-to-face relationships that have long characterized congregational life? Two recent studies, one supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the other by the Indianapolis Center for Congregations, suggest not. The vast majority of congregations using and experimenting with computer …
Article
Is leadership specifically pastoral leadership, a spiritual practice? Dorothy Bass has defined practices as "those shared activities that address fundamental human needs and that, woven together, form a way of life." Does leadership address a fundamental human need? Effective leaders engage communities, congregations and institutions in addressing their most difficult and pressing problems, and mobilize …
Article
A year ago my wife took leave from teaching middle school to enter a graduate program in school administration. I soon noticed that she and her colleagues were being assigned lots of reading on the topic of leadership, especially on the role of a leader in times of institutional change. A fair amount of this …
Article
To speak of “discovering” congregational culture may sound a bit presumptuous. After all, religious leaders have been confronting distinctive congregational cultures for centuries. Think of how immigrant congregations fought over changing the liturgy to English, or of the battles that took place when Irish clergy were sent to serve Polish parishes. And we are familiar …
Continue reading “Leading Congregations, Discovering Congregational Cultures”
Article
A survey that William McKinney and I recently conducted invited 1,500 conservative and mainline Protestant denominational leaders to choose from a list of 63 contemporary religious leaders and authors the ten who have had “the greatest impact on your thinking about the church’s life and mission today.” Among the choices were Peter Berger, William Sloane …
Continue reading “Learning from Lyle Schaller: Social Aspects of Congregatioins”
Article
Open Marriage: Open adultery. The smart new term not only dispenses with the sinful connotations of the traditional one but puts monogamists on the defensive [Hugh Rawson, A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubtetalk (Crown, 1981)]. Although it has become fashionable in some quarters to suggest that open marriage is a legitimate form of …
Continue reading “Male Clergy Adultery as Vocational Confusion”
Article
Although ministers like to think of themselves as members of the professional middle class, they are hanging on to that status by their fingernails. Male clergy especially are pursuing their vocations despite a strong "fear of falling," to use Barbara Ehrenreich’s phrase. They worry that they won’t be able to sustain a middle-class lifestyle or …
Article
The most dominant form of pastoral contact in my congregation is e-mail. I love it. And I hate it. I love it more than hate it, but the contest is not over. In fact, it has just begun. The Internet allows me to contact more people more often than can be done by way of …
Book
ENTIRE BOOK An excellent guide for the pastor in helping others achieve the goal of Christian maturity.
Article
These days the domestic issue gaining the most attention in the United States is our high rate of unemployment. Regardless of one’s socioeconomic class, ethnic background or religious tradition, unemployment can be devastating. It can create social unrest and economic despair leading to many forms of destructive behavior. Many of us have tended to ignore …
Article
"I did not come to you," Paul writes to the people at Corinth, "proclaiming the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. . . . that your faith might not rest in human wisdom but in the power of God" …
Article
Parish clergy and seminarians today seem content to have ministry numbered among the “helping professions. ” After all, most professing Christians, from the liberals to the fundamentalists, remain practical atheists. They think the church is sustained by the services it provides or the amount of fellowship and good feeling in the congregation. This form of …
Continue reading “Ministry as More Than a Helping Profession”
Article
We find ourselves in a situation in which there is increasing talk about the theology of the cross but little specific knowledge of what exactly it is. In the absence of clear understanding, the theology of the cross tends to become sentimentalized, especially in an age that is so concerned about victimization. Jesus is spoken …
Article
Now concerning the love of brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another . . . 1 Thessalonians 4:9 I remember the quiet summer night when things changed between my neighbor John and me. We were sitting …
Article
There is no end in sight to the mainline denominations’ debates over whether gays and lesbians will be fully integrated into the life and leadership of their churches. While that debate is important, so too is the need for congregations to meet the immediate pastoral needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, as well …
Article
Book Review: Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. By Ronald A. Heiftze and Marty Linsky. Harvard Business School, 252 pp. Recently I went through the experience of interviewing for a pastoral position. In my round of encounters with search committees, I was questioned about my vision of leadership and how …
Article
BOOK REVIEW: The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy, by James L. Guth, John C. Green, Corwin E. Smidt, Lyman A. Kellstedt and Margaret M. Poloma. University Press of Kansas, 221 pp., $35.00; paperback, $19.95. From the colonial era, through the debates over slavery, immigration and temperance, to current social movements such as those …
Article
Book Review The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust. By Mark Pinsky. Westminster John Knox, 280 pp., paperback. What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide. By Jana Riess. Jossey-Bass, 208 pp., paperback. I know what it’s like to be a preacher desperate for some point of contact with …
Article
What happens when power is seen as inherently suspect and even evil? What happens when power in the church is viewed as bad? What are the implications for the church when its leaders eschew power and influence and consider them qualities or capacities to be avoided? This past summer I taught a course at a …
Article
When denominational officials look at the number of empty pulpits in their churches, they worry about a shortage of pastors. Some have strategized about new ways to recruit candidates for ministry. "The clergy shortage is impacting me at every turn," says Bishop Ted Gulick of the Episcopal Diocese in Kentucky. "The bishops and seminaries woke …
Article
Just when it seemed that we had finally buried the image of the overbearing, overprotective, zealous “Jewish mother,” a psychologist has come along seeking to resurrect the deposed matriarch. In a recent book which he wrote with Herbert Yahraes, A Child’s Journey: Forces That Shape the Lives of Our Young (McGraw-Hill, 1978), Julius Segal, a …
Continue reading “Remember Mama: Thoughts on Motherhood and Ministry”
Article
Dear Jonathan: I appreciate your letter about experiences in your first parish, and I want to respond to your remarks about the tension between feeling “at home” and “not at home.” Feeling at home helps us penetrate the thoughts and feelings of our parishioners, so as to help them make sense of life. But identifying …
Article
According to new findings in the Pulpit & Pew National Clergy Survey, a solid majority of clergy is deeply satisfied with the pastoral ministry. Seven out of ten of those surveyed report they have never considered abandoning their vocation. In other words, most pastors claim to have found happiness in the ministry. Why is this …
Article
Economists and clergy have often been at loggerheads. In the early 19th century, economists were accused of practicing the “dismal science,” a reputation which flowed from Thomas Malthus’s deeply pessimistic predictions. He warned that world population pressures would inevitably perpetuate grinding poverty. Today, in contrast, morally sensitive people accuse economists of being too optimistic about …
Article
Most pastors and other students of the Bible are aware that the revolution created by the personal computer has spawned a new set of tools for exploring the Bible. But if you’re wary of computers, or are uncertain whether—or which—computer programs are worth the investment, the world of Bible software may be a dark and …
Continue reading “Something New Under the Sun: Computer Concordances and Biblical Study”
Article
Every day, Christians are sorting through their five options and claiming an identity as followers of Jesus Christ. On Sunday the preacher helps them in this task by means of a poetic activity. The preacher makes (poiein) words, approximately 1,500 of them on a Sunday morning, 3 million in a career, and over the long …
Article
The city is changing. For decades white people with money fled the city for the suburbs, leaving behind a mostly brown and black population that was often bereft of resources. But recently, in many cities, patterns of gentrification have reversed this trend. People with money have moved back to the city and rehabbed old housing …
Article
More than two decades ago in The Minister’s Wife: Person or Position? (Abingdon, 1966) 1 wrote about a group of nine clergy spouses who met weekly to share their hopes and hurts, difficulties and dreams. At the time none of them worked outside the home, and each one’s self-image was linked strongly to the role …
Article
The most common reason Protestant pastors leave parish ministry is an experience of stressful conflict, usually arising from differences with laity or staff but sometimes with denominational officials. Compounding these stresses, ex-pastors say, is a lack of support from church officials and fellow clergy. Former pastors said they are in a Catch-22 situation when thinking …
Article
“Of course there is nothing I can do about war,” the pastor of a small church declared. “Clergy do not have enough political clout to tackle the major unsolvable problems of the world; hunger, disease, pollution, overpopulation, crime, injustice, war” He may be wrong. It may well be that, where enabling leadership is concerned. American …
Article
The ancient Hebrews thought of emotions as being generated in the liver. Western tradition has generally represented love as coming from the heart. United Methodism, perhaps unwittingly, has recently added to our corporeal mythology by rendering its judgment that fidelity is located in the genitals. Ever since the 1980 General Conference declined to take a …
Continue reading “The “Highest Standards” of Clergy Morality”
Article
World hunger has served to mobilize the resources of the American churches as few other issues have done. And everyone who, like me, has spent half a lifetime in the Third World can only say “Amen.” This campaign has, however, brought out one result that previous efforts have often missed; it has stressed what has …
Continue reading “The ‘Multiple Factor’ and Economic Development”
Article
In his memoir Open Secrets, Richard Lischer tells of his search for a pastoral vocation in “New Cana,” a small town in southern Illinois. When he reconnoitered the site of his first call, the bleached November landscape reminded him of an Ingmar Bergman movie — “Swedish winterlight exposing rot and depression in rural Lutherans.” He …
Article
When I was a newly ordained pastor in 1966, I heard a speech by a federal judge that significantly shaped my life and ministry. The judge said that he kept in contact with every person he sentenced to prison. His rationale for writing or visiting inmates was simple: he didn’t want his only impact on …
Article
Much of the debate about the Church and power conflicts now going on in many American cities seems very familiar because it is a replay of discussions in which I was involved in the 1930’s when the chief issue was the relation of the churches to the labor movement in its early struggles to achieve …
Article
The title assumes a particular meaning of “theology,” but not one that requires a narrow and precise definition. What has disappeared is the serious activity of faith seeking understanding or self-consciously Christian reflection on important issues. “Disappearance” also requires explanation. It cannot mean that no members of these churches engage in theology. I, for one, …
Continue reading “The Disappearance of Theology from the Oldline Churches”
Article
“We are an ethnic church.” This is a commonplace used to describe the Anglican Church of Canada as a national Anglo-Saxon parish. It is an old church dominated by English speakers and English culture. It is part of a new land still struggling to find national, political and religious expression. The situation is complicated by …
Continue reading “The Ethnic Pastor in a Multicultural Society”
Article
After completing graduate work in religion and psychology, I found myself teaching pastoral care at a seminary. In making that transition I experienced two surprises. The first was the jolt of moving from the academic study of religion and social science to the peculiar discipline of pastoral theology. Although I had had clinical training and …
Continue reading “The Human Web: Reflections on the State of Pastoral Theology”
Article
Graduates of theological seminaries usually become ordained and are called to pastorates. The terms of the call typically include words like the following: And that you may be free from worldly care and avocations. we . . . promise and oblige ourselves to pay you the sum of . . . yearly . . . …
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) The subject of this book concerns the various concepts of what a "minister" is. From the time of St. Paul and the primitive church to the present, ministry developed in many directions. The various authors of these chapters demonstrate what the ministry has been, what it is today (1956) and the portent of what it is to become.
Article
My first impression of Robert Schuller was negative. That was before I had met him. A pastor friend of mine had attended Schuller’s Institute for Successful Church Leadership in Garden Grove, California, and while he was generally positive about his experience there, he reported two emphases that bothered me: (1) Schuller avoids preaching on anything …
Article
The bride wore a white dress with pearls, a veil and a big red nose. The groom had a rainbow wig, and instead of patent leather shoes, floppy brogues as big as boats which were coming apart at the toes. All around them a raucous band of clowns held forth on tubas and big bass …
Article
As I travel around the country visiting and consulting with congregations and clergy, I find that many are caught in vicious cycles. The vicious cycles seem more common than the virtuous ones. They are easily recognized by a chilly climate of anxiety, which these days seems to be more common than the common cold. Such …
Article
My friend had a dazed look when I asked how his work as an associate pastor was going. Then he ripped into his senior minister: "He won’t communicate! He thinks ministry is only for ordained people — preferably him alone! He doesn’t even seem interested in what I do at his church!" Then he grew …
Article
It wasn’t very many years ago that I wrote a book titled, without so much as a blush, The Care and Feeding of Ministers! How quaint. The tables are turning to such an extent that one might be tempted to write The Care and Feeding of Ministers’ Spouses — but not quite. Almost everything we …
Article
For all practical purposes, my transition to becoming a theologian of pastoral care began with an invitation to attend the International Congress on Pastoral Care and Counseling, held in Scotland in mid-August 1979. The Congress was an extraordinarily representative gathering, bringing together more than 400 practitioners and theoreticians in the pastoral care and counseling field …
Article
Book Review: Pastors in Transition: Why Clergy Leave Local Church Ministry. By Dean B. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger Eerdmans, 271 pp. Why do pastors leave the ministry? Several common issues emerge from the research of Dean Hoge and Jacqueline Wenger: preference for another form of ministry, the need to care for children or family, …
Article
In Ephesus, Timothy walked into a congregational mess with the mandate to straighten it out. He inherited both the legacy (left by Paul) and the problems for which others (among whom were Hymanaeus and Alexander) were responsible. Like the tohu wabohu of Genesis 1:2, pastoral vocation doesn’t begin with a clean slate. A congregational mess …
Article
Churches seeking a new pastor tend to want a man under 40, preferably married to a nonworking woman who volunteers on church committees. It’s a caricature, but only slightly so, says sociologist Adair Lummis, who is describing not congregations from the 1950s, but those today. This preference exists "even in those denominations which have ordained …
