Good Friday reminds me of this song and this moment for two reasons.
That is no knock on my friends in full-time vocational ministry.
It is more an affirmation for the myriad of people I know who have stepped out (or been pushed out) of their ministry job.
Leaving vocational ministry in a church for the great unknown is an identity crisis. These friends are left asking themselves, “Am I still a pastor?”
I went through the same thing 2 years ago. You are OK. You are still very much a pastor, even if your paycheck doesn’t come from a church.
I’m here to tell you this simple truth: When you are a pastor you are a pastor wherever you go. It’s a calling and not a vocation.
I opened this by saying that I do as much or more pastoral ministry now than I did while I worked at churches. So what does that look like?
Conversely, when I was a vocational pastor I was constantly thinking to myself, “This is it? I rarely spend time with people. All I do is run programs. I want to be with people and do ministry!”
Interesting how freedom from the work of running a church has lead me to doing more pastoral ministry, right?
My fellow Americans, live in an ethnocentric culture. And American church culture is even more insular than American culture. Those of us who are in that culture have a very hard time seeing outside of it. So when I say things like “It’s a calling and not a vocation” most people in the church have no frame of reference. So while we’ve tied the concept of “I’m a pastor” with “I get paid to work at a church” we really get messed up when we no longer work for a church.
Two things to chew on…
Within Christianity: Outside of major Westernized countries almost no one who is a pastor does so vocationally. (Bi-vocational is the norm) In fact, the fastest spreading Christianity is spreading is absent of vocational staff and mostly without resources like buildings, Bibles, Bible study materials, etc. I’ve been pointing out the inverse relationship between church growth and church spending for months… but no one is lining up to cut their church budget/staff to see their church grow.
Other religions: Outside of the Christian church most religions are run by either volunteers or people who have taken vows of poverty, sustained only by the meager donations of people in their care. The Latter-day Saints are an excellent example of this. Very few people get paid within the Mormon church and yet it is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.
Imagine the freedom of hearing this one phrase.
A parent affirming a youth pastor by saying, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”
What would happen if parents stepped into their role and discipled their teenage children, and at the same time affirmed the church’s youth pastor by saying, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”
Game changer.
G-A-M-E-C-H-A-N-G-E-R
The reason so many youth workers feel like babysitters or cruise directors is that they are regarded as such by many people in the pews. (And sadly, by their bosses and governing boards who see them as a way to attract or keep parents of teenagers.) The attitude is… “Well, we give money to the church which funds this persons salary and the program they run so we should allow the expert to pour into my kid and I’ll just step back, get the most for my money.”
This makes some logical sense because its visible. But it is missing the point, missiologically and ecclesiologically.
Modern church youth ministry, as a movement, sprung out of parachurch ministries like Young Life and Youth for Christ in the 1950s-1960s who stepped up to answer the call the church would not… reach lost teenagers. It was primarily a method of evangelism. And it operated well outside of the walls of a church because the methods often used to get students interested in the Gospel freaked churchgoing adults out.
In the 1960s and 1970s churches woke up a bit and started hiring youth workers of their own. (Lots were former YFC and Young Life staff) And all of a sudden the vocation of youth pastor started to shift from something that looked like a missionary to something that looked like a pastor.
As things have morphed over the years many youth ministries focus has shifted from non-church teenagers to almost entirely church kids. Youth ministry has gone from being mostly about evangelism to mostly being about discipling church kids with an evangelism strategy which boils down to, “Bring a friend.”
That’s a bad thing! And as I’ve said over and over again… we’re reaching a decreasing amount of the population with this strategy. Some try to dismiss me by claiming I’m just deconstructing. I’m not deconstructing, I’m calling the church to recognize her strategic failure and change!
I’ve always known this to be true. (That my churches job wasn’t to reach my kids, but to reach the lost.) But I suppose economic realities and race make it obvious enough for my dense mind to notice now that we go to a mission-styled church.
I don’t want my church reaching my kids. If I sit in on my churches kids ministry program and it is targeted at my kids I know something is wrong. Why? We’re a mission church in a neighborhood where 75% of the people don’t speak English in their home and even more are not from the U.S.A..
My kids aren’t the reason my staff raises support! I know this and I celebrate it. I’m pleased that my tithe doesn’t help create a ministry paradigm designed to disciple my kids. Why? That’s my job!
Their job is to reach the neighborhood!
If you are like me, a Christian parent, your role is vital. Deuteronomy 6 is abundantly clear. A life with Jesus isn’t reserved for the temple. You’re to talk about God in all that you do, everywhere you go, and in your own home. You are to impress on your children that your faith is real. If you want your kids to believe in God it is up to you. If you leave it to your church to do you have failed as a parent. (If your church is telling you it is their job tell them they are wrong, they need to hear it.)
Your tithe is an offering to God not a ticket to entitlement to church programs. While it is our role to oversee and make sure that the church is not misappropriating funds– It is hardly an offering to God if it has strings attached to it which stipulate that the church will create programs to entertain and disciple your children.
Imagine the freedom it would create to your church staff if you uttered this simple phrase, “My kids aren’t your target audience. Reach the lost.”
Go ahead, try it.
Lately there has been a lot of angst about internet privacy. This came to a head when Facebook changed some privacy settings which angered some users who believed that they had a right to privacy with stuff they shared on the site. Some folks ever started a movement called QuitFacebookDay.com over it.
As a person who does internet development, a long time blogger, and someone who “gets the internet,” I just wanted to give you a reality check.
You don’t have privacy, anywhere. If you think you do– you have never read those little contracts you sign, user agreements that you click “yes” to in order to use sites or software, nor read a single privacy policy on nearly every commercial website on the planet.
I don’t want to scare you, but here is a snapshot of the data “we the internet people” collect from you every single day. We don’t do much with this… but we collect this information:
If you don’t see https: (the “s” means that the area of the site is certified as secure by someone like VeriSign. Of course, certified and verified as such are two different things.) in the address bar, you shouldn’t have any perception of privacy.
What is interesting to me about the privacy concerns is that the stuff that people are worried about– is typically happening in real life! Don’t want future employers to see you dancing on a table while intoxicated? Sheesh, don’t blame Facebook for that, blame your drunk self! Don’t want one group of people to know something about you? Don’t talk about it on Twitter!
The irony of the privacy concerns is that people have willingly agreed to the terms of service and have willingly posted content to websites that they now don’t want put in the public.
It makes me gigle. No one ever told you this was private, you just thought it was.
There is no such thing as “internet privacy.”
As a web developer, you need to know how much value that 99% of website owners put on this data. If a sites privacy policy says they won’t share that information– 99% of organizations won’t. Their reputation is on the line. And there are plenty of watchdogs and lawyers all to happy to create legal grief for those who violate their privacy policies.
Companies may (and most do) use it for their own purposes as outlined in the privacy policy. The funny part is that collecting and learning from this information makes you love most sites instead of loathe them. Most people like it that iTunes or Amazon.com “gets to know their preferences” and make recommendations to you. Statistics show you are much more likely to click on, and buy from, advertisers who target their ads to your preferences. If you are called to appear in court, you’d be happy to know that your cell phone can provide an alibi.
When I was a high school student, youth pastors preached about the ills of compartmentalism all the time. The irony is that todays privacy-free society has those same people crying for just a little compartmentalization!
My recommendation is not to flee. It’s to live an honest and transparent life. If you live in a way where you have nothing to hide than your level of privacy is rather innocuous.
But the opposite is also true, as well. If you are going places you ought not go or doing things you know are naughty… you are just building up the evidence against yourself. Somewhere someone already knows. And everything you are doing leaves a breadcrumb to your future embarrassment.
Have you ever noticed that people who have reached the pinnacle, the elusive American Dream, are actually miserable?
“That’s just a Hollywood cliche.” Really? Think about your own interaction with highly successful people… I don’t think it’s a cliche. There are just as many miserable successful people as there are unsuccessful people.
Here are some elements of what we define as people who’ve achieved the American Dream:
While on the surface all of those things sound great, I think there’s a real reason why they are miserable.
They are big, powerful, and wealthy… but none of that has brought them the freedom that sent them looking for the American Dream in the first place. It’s all come with entrapments.
Sometimes when I look at the lives “rich and successful” people lead, I am repulsed. Seems more like a nightmare than a dream. That isn’t success! It’s a life of working 24 hours per day and being stressed about every relationship and decision. Yuck.
I say these things because I’m beginning to dream of a different American Dream.
If I’m honest, my American Dream has freedom at its core. (not acquiring stuff) I don’t want my stuff to own me so I want to make life simpler, not more complex. Buying stuff I can afford with cash is simple. The more I do that the more I like it. Notoriety isn’t nearly as intriguing as having truly deep relationships with a handful of friends. It is nice to be recognized for the right reasons, I can’t lie about that. But big influence? I’m working hard to have influence over my own actions! I suppose if that trickles out beyond me to my neighbors and community… cool, but I don’t dream of me speaking and an army of people doing. (Or watching a reality show about me) Really, I dream of having influence with a small number of people who also have influence in my life. Power? Only if that power leads to doing good for other people and having fun along the way. With that said, the power worth pursuing is to have enough power to truly have freedom.
The old-style American Dream just feels tired and complex. I watch TV shows about them and just feel sorry for their life. This new-style American Dream makes me smile. Simplicity leads to freedom.
Help me work this out a bit. Where does this new American Dream fall flat?