{"id":696,"date":"2009-09-23T00:23:50","date_gmt":"2009-09-23T05:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/?p=696"},"modified":"2009-09-23T00:23:50","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T05:23:50","slug":"the-title-of-pastor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2009\/09\/23\/the-title-of-pastor\/","title":{"rendered":"The title of “Pastor”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Technically I can put the letters “Rev.” in front of my name.\u00a0 That is because the United Methodist Church<\/a> recognizes me as a pastor.\u00a0 Although I am not employed by a church, I am appointed as a local pastor to a church.\u00a0 Practically this means I can marry and bury, consecrate communion and baptize.\u00a0 Sometimes it also means people look at (to) me differently.\u00a0 I am not sure how I feel about that.<\/p>\n

\"priest-collar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today I was in a meeting at church when one of the people there received the awful news that her mother had passed away.\u00a0 She took a phone call in the hallway and instantly began sobbing.\u00a0 Someone commented that it was unfortunate that all the other pastors were away meeting with the Bishop.<\/p>\n

That bothered me.\u00a0 Not because they were gone, or because I was viewed differently than the “employed” pastors.\u00a0 It bothered me because I realize there is nothing special a pastor could do in that situation.\u00a0 What this person needed was a shoulder to cry on, and someone to pray with her, and people to support her.\u00a0 It doesn’t take someone with a fancy white collar or special letters in front of their name to do that.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine passed on a thought to me the other day.\u00a0 He was talking about the formation of the Quaker church and the way it was received.\u00a0 At one point the Quakers, who function largely under the guidance of the congregation members, are asked why they are trying to get rid of the clergy.\u00a0 Their response was this: “We are not trying to get rid of the clergy, we are trying to get rid of the laity<\/strong><\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Wow… that is big stuff.\u00a0 It is not that pastors are unimportant, it is that everyone is important… and called… and empowered.<\/p>\n

I left the full-time ministry nearly 2 years ago.\u00a0 One of the main reasons I left was because I was not comfortable with being paid to “pastor.”\u00a0 I felt weird taking people’s tithe money in exchange for services that all Christians were called to do (i.e. visit the sick, help the poor, study and proclaim the word, etc.)\u00a0 It wasn’t just that I felt I should be doing these things without pay, it was that I realized I was in a very real way preventing others from doing what they needed to be doing.\u00a0 It is easy to pass things off to a pastor when you don’t feel comfortable with doing them (after all, it can be awkward to talk about Jesus, or counsel a person who is dying, or pray with a grieving spouse).\u00a0 Plus… isn’t that what we pay pastors to do… might as well get your money’s worth.<\/p>\n

Now I realize that some pastors have extensive training that the average parishioner does not have.\u00a0 I think we need people who are well trained to teach the scriptures, and I think we need people with special talents and skills to provide loving counseling.\u00a0 But at the same time, when people look to pastors instead of to themselves to be the hands and feet of God then we are in trouble.\u00a0 Anytime a person pulls back from ministry because they feel they can’t do it because they are not a pastor, we are all the lesser.<\/p>\n

Pastors have no special line to God, their prayers are no more effective and their crap still stinks.\u00a0 You should avoid at all costs a pastor who tells you otherwise.\u00a0 If you knew the problems I deal with and the doubts I still have, you would not look up to me with special eyes just because of a title (and I would guess this is true of most pastors).<\/p>\n

What was great to see today was that in the end, no one disqualified themselves from ministering to this woman because they lacked the title.\u00a0 No one called for a pastor in the same way you call for a doctor when someone is having a seizure.\u00a0 No one hesitated in offering their care because there was not a staff pastor on site.<\/p>\n

That my friends is how the Body of Christ is supposed to work.\u00a0 That is what things look like when we all realized we are called to be a redemptive force in the world.\u00a0\u00a0 And that is what happens when people realize that just because pastors can sign a wedding certificate and bless the bread, we are all called and empowered to be agents of restoration and redemption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Technically I can put the letters “Rev.” in front of my name.\u00a0 That is because the United Methodist Church recognizes me as a pastor.\u00a0 Although I am not employed by a church, I am appointed as a local pastor to a church.\u00a0 Practically this means I can marry and bury, consecrate communion and baptize.\u00a0 Sometimes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[397,396,395,398],"class_list":["post-696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-calling","tag-pastor","tag-prayer","tag-titles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":698,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}