Pastors and Technology: We Need to Re-Imagine Our Roles

Some of the commenters from my post yesterday got me thinking about some things that I just briefly want to comment on.

I ended my post with two thoughts:

Two things I think pastors, church leaders need to start wrestling with if they haven’t already:

1) Shift from geographical based ministry to online community/networking based. This does not mean people still won’t gather, but how, where and when they gather will change.

2) Technology is allowing the people/congregants to self-organize, collaborate and participate without having to go through traditional means and hierarchies of the church. I think this will change the role of the pastor drastically from the top-down leader, to more of a facilitator. I think that means we will see less and less traditional roles of pastors, and maybe even less full-time positions, etc.

Here is what I’m thinking. And I’m thinking these things not on any official research I have done, but more on conversations I am having, trends I am seeing, what I am reading, etc.

One of the issues about #2 is that people are concerned about a “consumer” mentality in the Church…more than we already have now. Also, what will be the role of the pastor.

Couple of thoughts. And they are simply thoughts, not completely worked out, but stuff I am hypothesizing and thinking on.

I think the “modularity” of Church that Andrew Jones talked about won’t drive more church consumerism, but will actually reduce it.

Why? Because churches used to be the resource for all information (phone numbers, emails, addresses, theology, Christian education, prayer chains, etc.) and churches controlled the market on the ability to gather and organize. Think Sunday worship, Wed. night Bible studies, etc, etc. People traditionally have relied on the Church as the resource to gather people and dispense information.

Because of this, people would drive miles and miles to attend the church that could attract, gather and dispense the information for them. Often this process has pulled people out of community…driving miles and miles to attend a church that is not rooted in their community where they live, etc.

I think that now people can easily organize, collaborate and dispense information themselves, they will no longer need to rely on the Church as needing to fulfill that role. I think there will be a desire for people to organize and gather in their own communities of locality, rather than feeling the need to drive to churches who used to have to do that for them. I am not saying there will not be church or people won’t go to them. They will, but I think church will look different than it traditionally does now.

In Short: Technology=Ability to Organize and Collaborate=Congregants Taking the Responsibility Into Their Own Hands.

What about the pastor? I think there will always be the need for a pastor, but what is a pastor is my question? Have we possibly gotten away from the Biblical role of the pastor?

In the NT we see the correlation between the shepherd and pastor. I have been told before by some pastors that we are to be ranchers…not shepherds. That has a whole other connotation in my mind.

One commenter said that it’s actually not the pastors who do the shepherding anymore, but the small group leaders, etc. I agree with him. It’s hard to find a pastor who shepherds.

I believe that with the ability to gather, organize and collaborate that technology affords us, it frees up the pastor to do the work of actually shepherding, rather than being the CEO, rancher, etc. I used the word facilitator in yesterday’s post, and what I mean by that is that the Church is beginning to have the ability to organize on their own, which frees the pastor up to facilitate the movement and truly shepherd the people.

In Short: Technology=Ability to Organize and Collaborate=Congregants Taking the Responsibility Into Their Own Hands=Pastor Can Truly Be a Shepherd.

Of course my own theology and praxis is shining through there, some of which you may agree with, and some which you may not agree with.

But for any of this to take place (which I think is a great thing for the Church), churches, pastors and ministry leaders are going to have to let go of the “power” they have traditionally held, and instead be a church and people that walk humbly amongst the people they are there to serve. Even questioning their roles as pastors in the Church.

In closing, I’m aware that some traditions/denominations already seem to embody this theology and praxis. I wonder if Wess Daniels can shed some light on these thoughts in light of the Quaker tradition that he is a part of.

If you are wondering what to read on some of these issues, here are a few suggestions. There are a lot more, but here are some that I have found helpful and challenging. Please add to this list and let me know what you are reading that has been helpful in thinking about the issues of technology in redefining the role of pastors and the Church, especially as it relates to gathering, organizing, collaborating, etc.

Check Them Out

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

Facebook for Pastors: How To Build Relationships And Connect With People Using The Most Popular Social Network On The Internet by Chris Forbes

The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging and Podcasting for Christ, edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

 

Are Church Leaders Inhabiting Offices Fit for the gods?

I want to say something about collaborative space, and then leave you with a quote from Leonard Sweet.

First, I think our workspace is a very important piece. It says something about what we believe in regards to leadership, collaboration, theology, etc. For example corner offices where upper leadership reside often give the image of non-collaboration, or hierarchical decision making. That then says something about views of leadership. Top-down, not a bottoms up, or leading within style.

Second, when I look around at many different workspaces, I’m struck by the fact that many churches still promote a non-collaborative environment where hierarchies are distinguished by the sizes, privacy and luxuries of the office. Not all churches promote this environment though, as I see more and more churches creating office spaces without doors or walls, and some where every office is the same size, or everyone is in a cubicle style workspace.

Third, workspaces in what we would call secular environments seem to have caught onto this idea of collaborative space more quickly than the Church. I remember my experience in a community mental health clinic where all the interns shared office space with all the directors, and no one was allowed to address the Ph.D. with the title Dr. You see, their views of leadership flowed over into their workspace.

If there is any organization that should promote servant leadership, and that should reflect those views in their architecture and workspace, I would think it should be the Church.

Why aren’t we, the Church, leading the way?

And if we are, give me some examples?

What are some churches you know of that do a good job of fostering a collaborative, non-hierarchical workspace?

Collaborative Space: Leaders need spiritual design as much as “smart design” in their use of space. A “sick building syndrome” can afflict the soul and mind as well as the body. Healthy space is team space, shared space, not a hierarchy of space with royalty inhabiting offices fit for the gods while everyone else lives in convict cubicles. Already in the business world the walls are coming down in the office space. More and more senior managers now sit in open offices with no doors. The dimly lit cubicle with one’s own private space is become more rare. Pittsburgh’s Alcoa has banished all private offices, even for its CEO. The future is “teaming rooms,” “common areas,” “playrooms.” People need their own personal spaces, their cliff dwellings, but personal space is basically electronic space (laptops and portable phones) conjoined with team space–hangouts like water coolers, living rooms, and snack bars dominated by casual learning, casual dress, and casual connectedness.
Leonard Sweet
Aqua Church: Essential Leadership Arts for Piloting Your Church in Today’s Fluid Culture
pp. 200

 

Technology and the Future of the Church

There are a lot of amazing things happening in the world of ministry and technology. So much so that it’s hard to keep up with all of it. Some churches are on the leading edge of innovation, while others are still trying to get a website put together. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, below are four links that might interest you from this past week.

First:
Author, blogger, video guru and Church 2.0 leader Greg Atkinson has a great post which basically introduces the Digerati Team from LifeChurch.tv, SPOTLIGHT: LifeChurch.tv’s Digerati Team. Many of you don’t know that there exists such a team on a church staff. But I think that trend is changing, and as you read the article you will definitely see their fingerprints all over the world of ministry and tech.

Greg says:

You might be wondering: “What in the world does “digerati” mean?” To get to the bottom of something, I go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia reads:”The digerati are the elite of the computer industry and online communities.” From what I know of my friends Terry Storch and Tony Steward (and the rest of the Digerati Team) this fits them very well.

Maybe you don’t recognize the team, but you may recognize their work. Here is what the Digerati team has been up to and is responsible for:

* YouVersion (Web, Mobile, and iPhone)
* OPEN
* ChurchMetrics
* Internet Campus
* LifeGroups
* LifeShare
* OnePrayer

Second:
If you can make it to Pasadena, CA this Friday, then you need to so that you can attend Church Tech Camp. It’s the first in what I think will be a growing group of church leaders who are on the innovative edge of integrating technology and ministry, especially as it relates to social media, web 2.0 tools. If you can’t make it, then watch the live stream of the get together. Not only is the technology and its use in ministry innovative, but the organization of the camp itself is on the leading edge. Check it out and you will see.

Third:
Check out Andrew Jones’ Powerpoint presentation from his talk at GodblogCon, The Missional Church in the Internet Age. You can listen to Andrew’s podcast as well at Podcasts of Godblogcon 2008, as well as all the others from there.

Fourth:
Godbloggers Prepare to Invade ‘Sin City’

 

Identity–>Boundaries–>Self Care

I’ve had a lot on my mind recently, and during that time I’ve been pretty convicted about several issues that I see interrelated.

It originally arose because of my dismay at the real lack of boundaries in ministry and what affect that has on those caught up in that boundary-less zone.

Boundaries can mean many things and cross many areas of our lives from the physical, the emotional, the psychological and the spiritual. In the area of psychology the lack of boundaries can often lead to a lack of differentiation between people, or the total opposite, enmeshment.

And what I have discovered in some of my teaching and training is that boundaries are connected to many things.

For example:

• I see boundaries connected to our identity. How we see ourselves, or how we believe God sees us affect what kind of boundaries we set in our lives.




• Our boundaries determine how we are then caring for ourselves.




• And when we don’t care for ourselves, well, we often lack boundaries, and something is wrong at the root of our identity.

So you see, these things are interrelated and it’s important that we think and discuss them.

Over the next couple of weeks I want to explore these themes, and would also like your input and help.

1. I want to discuss these things (identity, boundaries, self care) in the context of ministry. I am finding that those of us involved in ministry are often the worst at setting healthy boundaries, caring for ourselves, and often more confused about who we are.




2. I want to discuss these things (identity, boundaries, self care) in the context of technology. Mainly social media. I think that those of us who are online a lot often don’t set proper boundaries, not caring for ourselves and those around us, and ultimately our identity is confused as we live in a state of flux between our online lives and those we live in person with our friends and families.

What do you think? Does this make sense? Am I way off target here, or do you see these things as issues as well?

What kind of boundaries do you see violated in ministry? What kind of boundaries do you see violated in regards to technology/social media?

 

Who to Hire on Staff of a Church in a New Media World?

In light of much, much discussion about social media and ministry, and in light of many writing on online church community, I was wondering what you think of the post below, taken from Collide Magazine’s blog.

I Wouldn’t Hire You

If in some bizarro parallel universe I was an executive pastor (or whoever does the hiring at churches these days) and I was interviewing candidates for a ministry position that involved working with people between the ages of 12 and 30, I’d ask you about your vision and strategy for the ministry (youth ministry, college ministry, young adults ministry, whatever). I’d listen with great interest as you talked about discipleship, community, service, outreach, etc. I’d even ask you good questions about how you see those things fitting together and how you’d develop each of those initiatives. Then, when it was all said and done, and I’d heard your vision and strategy, I don’t think I’d hire you if you failed to mention your plan for leveraging social media. At the very least, I’d keep interviewing candidates in hopes of finding someone with similar passion and qualifications who was also social media-literate.

The ways in which 12-30 year-olds communicate and connect has radically changed in the last few years, and frankly, as someone who wants to minister vocationally to that demographic, I’d expect you to understand that. On top of that, there are too many free or inexpensive tools out there—ROOV, Twitter, Facebook Groups & Pages, MyChurch, Flickr, Vimeo, Ning, and on and on—for me to be enthusiastic about a job applicant who is unaware of them and their potential for ministry application.

If I’m choosing between several equally-qualified candidates, I wouldn’t hire you unless without a competent plan for leveraging social media in ministry to emerging generations.

What do you think? Am I overrating the importance of social media-literacy among would-be church staffers? If you are a would-be church staffer, have you thought through your social media strategy?

I was thinking about this issue and realized that there has always been criteria for employment in ministry. Those requirements vary depending upon church, denomination, ministry, etc., etc.

For example, when I was hired as a college pastor they were looking for someone with a Master of Divinity which I was just about to complete. Having that degree told the church hiring me that I was sufficient in areas such as Greek, Hebrew, Church History, Systematic Theology, etc.

But over the years I realized that things that weren’t required of me, nor my degree were necessary. Money management. Administrative skills. Counseling skills. Web 2.0 skills.

The questions for us are, “What is required for us to do ministry in certain contexts?” “What is required in the context of today’s ministry climate?”

Today, I think a certain proficiency in social media/web 2.0 tools is required for ministry, especially as we head into this new century. Now we can debate which skills are required for which ministries, and do all ministries require a certain minimal skill set.

But all things being equal (as Scott noted in his post), I would hire the person who had more social media/web 2.0 skill set, or who at least was willing to experiment and learn in that area. That may seem like a no brainer with all things being equal, but maybe it isn’t.

There are certain intangibles in ministry, and certain gifts that we all have that can’t easily be taught. Preaching, teaching, writing, management, conflict skills, etc. But,

Can social media/web 2.0 skills be taught?

And do you hire based on the possession of those skills or not?

As we become a people that live more of our lives online, I think the expectation will be there in ministry for pastors and leaders to be able to navigate themselves in that world. Just as pastors are to understand the context of the text and the culture of those sitting in the pew, they will be required to have as a language skill set that of social media/web 2.0. It will be like taking Greek and Hebrew, though I have a feeling Greek and Hebrew will be less and less taught due to the availability of online tools.


What skills set are looking for today if you were to hire for your ministry? And is social media/web 2.0 skills one of them?

 

My 9 Posts for Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry (and ministry in general)

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry

• Part 1–Simplicity, Flexibility, Cost and Speed.
• Part 2–The Purpose of Your Website
• Part 3–Why You Should Be Blogging
• Part 4–Using Facebook Effectively
• Part 5–How Twitter Can Catalyze Your Ministry
• Part 6–Using Social Network Platforms as Your Central Hub
• Part 7–Flickr, YouTube and Other Forms of Sharing and Streaming
• Part 8–Ministry Collaboration Using Wikis
• Part 9–Opening Up Your Ministry’s API



Thoughts?

Suggestions?

Corrections?

Affirmations?

Resources?

I’m listening….

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 9–Opening Up Your Ministry’s API

Opening Up Your API

An application programming interface (API) is a set of functions, procedures or classes that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs.[1]

* Language-dependent APIs are available only in a particular programming language. They utilize the syntax and elements of the programming language to make the API convenient to use in this particular context.

* Language-independent APIs are written in a way that means they can be called from several programming languages. This is a desired feature for a service-style API which is not bound to a particular process or system and is available as a remote procedure call. Source: API on Wikipedia

Yeah I know….probably too techy for most of us. I barely understand it. And if I don’t know what I’m talking about, please correct me. This is a learning process for me as well as I’m trying to stretch my mind on this topic.

But what I do understand is that many successful online applications open up their API’s for outside development. You Tube and Twitter are just two examples. If you are wondering on whether or not a company does this, you can usually find it at the bottom of the page. Another company such as Facebook has a place for developers who want to build an app on the Facebook platform.

Successful companies allow and encourage outside collaboration on their product and platform?

Yes. Why?

Because collaboration and voices from within a company or organization, or those voices outside of a company or organization can bring much innovation and ideas that those at the top of the company or organization’s hierarchy are often blind to or don’t have the skill themselves to achieve.

Hence, the reason why you have tons of Twitter applications that many people are using, and that Twitter didn’t develop themselves but that are highly successful. Twitterfeed, Tweetdeck, and on and on it goes.

Great example of how one company harnesses the creativity, energy, passion and innovation of thousands of other people.

What If Our Churches Did More of This

The parallel that I draw from this example in technology is that churches need to not “run”, “create”, or “plan” everything from the central office, but rather, need to harness the innovation and creativity from the dozens, to hundreds, to thousands of people they have attending their church.

Most churches function via committee, and most of the power is centralized at the executive staff level that only a handful of people have the “privilege” of sitting on. And I use the word privilege here lightly, because you know what I mean if you ever attend these meetings…they are sometimes more life taking than giving and innovation is usually not created here. There are exceptions I know.

Rather, I believe innovation is created, harnessed at the lower levels of a hierarchy, or where power is decentralized. There are many good books on this topic, but a few of my favorite are:

1. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
2. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
3. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Fear of Losing Our Jobs

I think that there is a great fear in ministry to decentralize power and unleash the potential and creativity of the people we minister to and serve with. I get it. Because if we truly let go of power than maybe we soon realize that our job is no longer needed when tons of people are doing it for free…and possibly better. I was fearful of moving my former ministry The Quest (at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles) over to Facebook as the main way of communicating. Fear of losing control of content, of losing power and control of being the central hub of ideas along with our student leadership team.

But ultimately I think that the most Biblical thing we can do is give our power away in our church (Jesus obviously embodies this, the Sermon on the Mount), as I believe that’s what Paul was striving for in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12 in his teaching on the body.

If there are many members and only one body, then why is power so centralized in the Church? And the power I’m talking about is not usually centralized where it’s supposed to be…in the person of Jesus Christ as its head. Rather, we have centralized power to only a handful of people…usually men, and usually ordained, and usually among people who have been in a church setting alone for too long that innovation doesn’t really happen where it is needed.

Steps to Open Up Your Ministry’s API

There are a lot of things that need to be done in this area, but let me just suggest 5 steps (but keep in mind that each one involves a lot of other things…but that’s for another post).

1. Decentralize Power: Haaa. If it were that easy. It’s not. But that would be nice. So let’s start with step 2.




2. Evaluate Your Organization: (interview staff, observe, talk to “outsider”, etc.) find out where the “bottleneck” is occurring and where communication is lacking.




3. Develop an Online Strategy: that utilizes tools for doing this effectively. It’s not good enough to use Facebook, Wiki’s, Twitter, etc., but there needs to be a strategy for using these tools and how these tools will help decentralize power and allow for more voices and innovation.




4. Allow for Other Voices: Ministries need to invite other people to the table. Just not the people at the top, or those with the money and power. Let a wide spectrum of people within the church give voice, suggest and create.




5. Collaborate: When you have set up the tools, developed a strategy, allowed for other voices, then we must begin to collaborate as a team. Only when we work together will we truly be in a place to move in a new direction, or try new things, or create “effective” ministries.

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry

• Part 1–Simplicity, Flexibility, Cost and Speed.
• Part 2–The Purpose of Your Website
• Part 3–Why You Should Be Blogging
• Part 4–Using Facebook Effectively
• Part 5–How Twitter Can Catalyze Your Ministry
• Part 6–Using Social Network Platforms as Your Central Hub
• Part 7–Flickr, YouTube and Other Forms of Sharing and Streaming
• Part 8–Ministry Collaboration Using Wikis
• Part 9–Opening Up Your Ministry’s API

DISCLAIMERS: 1)There are better technical people out there concerning the web. 2) Do as I suggest, not as I do. I’m trying to keep up myself, and our college website reflects almost nothing of what I talk about. That’s how fast things change. 3) There are a lot of college ministries out there, and there are a lot of online tools to use, but it doesn’t seem like many are thinking through how to best utilize the new media and Web 2.0 (and yikes, Web 3.0) in their groups. 4) Knowing that things change overnight in technology, I hope to somehow impart to you some of the things I have been learning and wrestling with in these areas. You don’t need to be an expert in this area, just know enough to think critically about the issue. 5) If you have feedback, suggestions, criticisms, please comment. This is by no means all encompassing.

 

Thinking Out Loud: Making Disciples in an Age of Information Extraction

Caution: Thinking out loud as the title says, so a bit of a choppy post. But I’m curious of your thoughts.

It is often true that we look back at how we did something as being the only way something can be done. For example, if I took all these classes (Greek, Hebrew, exegetics, etc.) in seminary, then every student should take them to get that Master of Divinity. Or if ordination required A, B, and C, then I have to do A, B, and C as well. But often, we don’t re-evaluate how things are changing, and what things need to change along with them.

I’ve been thinking about this issue for several reasons, but primarily because I think the Church, and most often ministry gets caught in a pattern of doing things the way they have always been done, and fails to be innovative in its thinking. Don’t get me wrong though, many Churches are innovative in ways that need to be innovative, and not just for the sake of it.

So my thinking out loud concerns the amount of information now available to us online, and will continue to become available online. How will that change how we do things?

Last month Wired Magazine ran an incredible series of articles called The Petabyte Age: Because More Isn’t Just More–More Is Different. In this series one of the articles was The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete, and it begins with this:

Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition. They are the children of the Petabyte Age.

The Petabyte Age is different because more is different. Kilobytes were stored on floppy disks. Megabytes were stored on hard disks. Terabytes were stored in disk arrays. Petabytes are stored in the cloud. As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies.

At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality. It forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later. For instance, Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics. It didn’t pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising — it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right.

And thanks to Guy Kawasaki I came across this article World’s Oldest Bible Goes Online. This is just another classic example of what was not available to us before will now be online. Think how information like this will change seminary education, pastoring, Church life, etc. as it becomes more available online.

Ever been sitting there, late at night, thinking, “Gee, I’d like to find a good Bible quote, but how do I know if it’s been accurately translated?” Well, you’re in luck! Portions of the Codex Sinaiticus, dating from 350 and thought to have been written by early Egyptian Christians, will be available on the internet courtesy of the Russian National Library, British Library and St. Catherine’s monastery in its entirety by July of next year. The oldest complete version of the New Testament, the original text may baffle those unfamiliar with ancient Greek, but translations in English and German will also be made available. “A manuscript is going onto the net which is like nothing else online to date…It’s also an enrichment of the virtual world — and a bit of a change from YouTube,” commented the director of the Leipzig University Library.

So what does all this available information mean to us as pastors and leaders in the 21st Century?

A few months ago I wrote a post called The Changing Seminary–The Changing Pastor where Scott McClellan of Collide Magazine
interviews Craig Detweiler in the article Culture and Seminary. Here is a brief exchange:

Detweiler: No, that’s the right question. Seminaries were created in an era where ministers were prepared to have the most information. The ministers were supposed to be the most educated and the most informed about the Scriptures.

COLLIDE: The most literate maybe?

Detweiler: The most literate. And none of that has necessarily changed, but we’re now dealing with an age of too much information. And so, the job is to help people sort through all of the inputs to find out what matters amongst the avalanche of information. It’s about pointing people to reliable sources, pointing people to credible interpretations, inviting people into ongoing dialogue with their friends, neighbors, and coworkers around the pop cultural expressions. So, it’s moving the seminary education from pastor as most informed to pastor as most insightful because people no longer have an information problem. It’s not about lack of information. It’s about lack of discernment. Information is available to all. Wisdom and discernment remain rarer than ever.

Observation: As more and more information becomes available online we will need more and more discerning Christian leaders who can sift through all the information and apply/teach/preach it appropriately. But it seems to me that the Bible is not just information, or should not be reduced to that. I remember my Greek professor telling me that it’s not enough to simply know the meaning of a Greek word (caution to everyone who looks up the meaning online and assumes that’s how it is used in the NT), but one must understand the context of the word in that letter, how the author uses, it, etc, etc.

Question: So how do we cultivate discerning Christian leaders to not simply extract information, but grow disciples in such an age?

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 4–Using Facebook Effectively

When it comes to Facebook I’m definitely an evangelist, but it wasn’t always that way. I was one of those pastors who was somewhat fearful of online social technology. I was an early adopter in some ways, but when it came to working with college students I was definitely a late adopter to MySpace (my students had been on for more than a year), and I was also a late adopter to Facebook (my students had been on it for over a year as well).

By the time I got the nerve up to put us on MySpace, my students had already left it and were living online on Facebook. I still remember the Wednesday night in the Spring of 2006 when one of my student leaders got up to make an announcement at the end of the night. He announced how he had created our Quest Bel Air Global Facebook page, and I was thinking to myself, “What does that all mean?”, while I could hear the cheers from the audience as if saying, “Finally!”

Ever since then I have been a big fan and it has revolutionized communication in our ministry. And yet, there is more we could be doing with it, I just haven’t had the time and figured out the best ways yet.

So I have some thoughts, but I would also like to hear from you, and see if we can find out some even more effective ways.

 

We Are All Pastors

I am starting to think out loud, and want your interaction and feedback.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

Acts 2:42-47

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

1 Peter 2:9

Without getting into detail, there have been some issues at our church. I know all churches have issues, so that is nothing new. But the issues occurring at our church have got me thinking about what we value in being ministered to by others, in particular those with the title of “pastor”. It seems that there has been a disconnect in the pastors and the rest of the staff when it comes to being ministered to. Now, please know that I am not letting the pastors off the hook, or saying anything about their leadership style; I am going for something deeper…

I guess what the entire situation has got me thinking about is this: Why do we put so much onus and credence in what the person with the title of “pastor” does or doesn’t do? And how do we get people to see that we are all “pastors”?

It seems that all of us in church ministry want to be ministered to and be acknowledged by our pastors. In looking at these passages, I can not help but ask the question: Why? Why does it matter what those with the title of pastor think? What does it matter if they do not minister to us? What does it matter if they barely even know who we are? (Speaking from a mega-church perspective) More importantly, is it fair to them to have the these expectations placed on them?

As I read the passage from Acts and 1 Peter, I see a “mega-church” community ministering to each other regardless of a pastor’s or an apostle’s presence. In the Acts passage, people are following the teachings of the apostles, but no where does it say or assume that the apostles are personally tending to the needs of ALL the people. It is the community of people that is speaking in to the lives of one another. They are all pastors!!

My question is: How do we get back to this? How do we get people to be okay with being ministered to by people that do not carry the title of pastor? How do we get to the place in our ministries where people “pastoring” one another is enough? Maybe the bigger question is: How do we get to the place where God is enough?