Pastor's Blog

Here is the long version of my “Clear Teaching on a Touchy Subject” paper. This one was tough for me. So much to say... (and I said a lot of it)! Please accept these paragraphs in the spirit in which they are given: an honest attempt to find what God’s word says come what may. There should be a “cliff notes” version that will be available soon (“soon” being a relative term). I apologize profusely about the tardiness of this, but there are many, many factors involved in an undertaking like this, and the sermon series had to take precedence. I may add more questions and answers at a later date if I get more.

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Every year the hardest part of writing a semi-annual business report is knowing just how to get it started and then determining just what kind of a tone it should take once I’ve started it. This year I contemplated beginning boldly with a shocking question: “Is our church at the beginning of a major crisis?” with thoughts of commenting afterwards on the shrinking trend in our annual budget, the difficulties we have experienced in finding a new associate pastor, and our first non-seasonal decline in over-all attendance since I began my ministry here, to this could be added the seeming flood of spiritual, physical, and personal hardships that have fallen upon so many within our church. Instead, I think I will begin this way…

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One of the results of this last year’s leadership conference was that we took a look at how the different ministries at our church work together to fulfill the full mandate of the great commission to make disciples. This is not an easy task, since the natural direction of church activities is most often from the God-empowered making of disciples towards the people-powered sustaining of programs.

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Another slice (or should we say “more slices”?) from the archive. I have a strange relationship with semi-annual business reports; they are a work of love, but also a work of panic. Much of the time the people who really need to hear them are not there at the meeting where they are presented. Once a year I am supposed to present a “pastor’s report” for the congregation (something like a short “state of the union address”). Some pastors report how many visits they have made, how many sermons they have preached, how many people they have baptized, and or how many programs they have started. I on the other hand usually talk about what is on my heart. These reports provide a perspective on both the history of the church and my philosophy of ministry. Inevitably I read all of my past reports before writing the new one. So I bundle them together for a blog entry just incase anyone loves this kind of thing as much as I do .

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