A GREAT idea for going deeper...

Ok, so I recently posted about my perspective on being a pastor.  I received a few notes and emails about my observations.  And then my dear friend, Black Pete from Canada, replied that wouldn't it be sweet if there was another post about what someone in the pews is looking for, too?  I think he is right... with two qualifications:

+ One, I'm not really interested in deepening the "consummerist" approach to contemporary church, ok?  So if you choose to response, it would help me if you kept these words from Eugene Peterson in mind. He notes that we've now created a huge list of necessary ingredients and/or activities that we want/need from our churches - and expect the pastor to perform. 

(often)... the working environment of pastors erodes patience and rewards impatience. People are uncomfortable with mystery (God) and mess (themselves). They avoid both mystery and mess by devising programs and hiring pastors to manage them. Mystery and mess are thus eliminated at a stroke. This is appealing. In the midst of the mysteries of grace and the complexities of human sin, it is nice to have something that you can evaluate every month or so and find out where you stand.  (In this) you don't have to deal with God, but can use the vocabulary of religion and the work in an environment that acknowledges God and so be assured that we are doing something significant.

That is very important to me - it may be a place of resonance or conflict with those in the pew - but very valuable as a pastor.  So is this conclusion: 

"Impatience, the refusal to endure, is to pastoral character what strip mining is to the land - a greedy rape of what can be gotten at the least cost - and then abandonment in search of another place to loot. Something like fidelity comes out of apocalyptic: fidelity to God, to be sure, but also to people and to parish and to place... American religion is conspicuous for its messianically pretensions energy, its embarrassingly banal prose and its impatiently hustling ambition... and all of them are thoroughly documented diseases of the spirit."

I'm not saying I am GOOD at such revolutionary and faithful endurance or patience -  and I know that I get it wrong more times than I get it right - and still I sense it is essential and moving ministry in the right direction.  So, first please keep these words in mind.

+ And two, please speak from your personal experience, ok?  Sometimes I hear critiques of the church - or pastors - that are vague diatribes against organized religion.  Ok... but that doesn't really apply to me or my congregation.  Other times, I hear rants about the church of some one's youth; and while this is possibly cathartic for the ranter, because it isn't based in contemporary experience it isn't helpful.  So, let me hear about what you are looking for based upon a real and living commitment to the church.  If you don't go - if you haven't been in 30 years - if your only experience came when you were a child... your insights probably won't help, ok? (For another pastor's take on this caveat, check out what Lillian Daniels wrote @ http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/daily-devotional/spiritual-but-not-religious.html#.Tl6SeAJSPd8.facebook)

Rather than a list of things you want your - or any pastor - to do, let's talk about the qualities and insights you are looking for from the pastor.  Writer, Craig Barnes, writes, "You cannot determine who you are by what you do.  Few people believe this any more... because we assume we can make our own lives by the way we construct them for ourselves."  Barnes goes on to say this, too:

Complaining is usually a veiled lament about deeper issues of the soul. Since most people are unaccustomed to exploring the mystery of their own souls, they will often work out their spiritual anxieties by attempting to rearrange something external - like a church's music program. But it doesn't matter how many changes they make to the environment around them. They will never succeed in finding peace for the angst of their soul until they attend directly to it... (That is why) to be of service to the Holy Spirit, who is at work in human lives, the pastor can never reduce ministry to servicing parishioners' complaints about the church.

So, any takers?  Any one want to share? You can post here or send me an email.  Any one want to help deepen this conversation with faith, compassion and wisdom?  I hope so...