At a recent training day, a pastor mentioned that you would know that you are suitable for full time ministry when someone is willing to pay you for it. Several issues flow out of this:
1. Would you be comfortable in taking money for doing God's work? And if you are, then you would want to do it well. But whether a pastor is doing his job well or not is very subjective. What is the measure? If the deacons think you are doing a bad job (but the congregation thinks to the contrary) and you are 'fired' as a result, does that mean you are not suitable for full time ministry? Or should you just change to a different church, although you are attached to the people you are pastoring in your old church? Or should you fight to stay in your old church for the sake of those people you are pastoring as you don't want to abandon them without a leader.
2. Demanding a certain level of remuneration is contrary to the idea of taking up your cross for doing ministry. And on one level you need to have faith in God's providence, but on another level, if a church wants someone that is good, should they pay them a reasonable amount to attract quality candidates to the role as a pastor. I am not talking about smaller churches, but those large churches who have more than enough funding but are not willing to put out the money to attract quality people to be pastors. Maybe this is a process from God for the individual to see whether they are willing to bear the costs of taking such a role. Or maybe we can learn from Hillsong churches.
3. Although in alot of respects, the culture of Anglo churches would suit us more than Chinese churches, the reality is that it is more effective for Chinese to reach to Chinese, even if we speak in English. Does that mean that we need to persevere and endure the inefficiencies of the Chinese church structure and have patience for slow changes to be made over time?
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1 comment:
argh but if u do God's work, wont u have faith in God that he will provide u will all ur needs?
if ur faith cant reach that point should u really be a pastor?
being forced to leave-- true pastors arew humans, but whose to say that they are in this position due to a testing of their faith, their loyalty to God to look after the sheep or their own personal welfare?
chinese culture has always been constant infighting. hell even when the japs came and smashed us we were still killing ourselves. (commis vs the facists) on the contary, other countries or historically, the gauls and germans were able to unit fairly quickly and effortlessly against the romans.
dont forget most chinese people come from poorer backrounds, and if these people become deacons maybe they wish to save up for a rainy day? i am not givin an excuse but merely saying the truth~~~
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