the running reverend
Josh Rhone is a husband, father, pastor, seminarian, and follower of Jesus who is trying to figure out how to best walk in the way of love.
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Earlier this week, J.R. Briggs made a post entitled, “When Christians Lie – And Everyone Knows It.” When perusing my Feedly stream inadvertently skipped J.R.’s post. I’m glad, however, that I gave it a read the following day.
It the post J.R. identifies a lie that runs rampant among Christians. The lie goes something like this, “I’ll pray for you.” There are other variations and subtle nuances, but for our purposes, “I’ll pray for you,” will suffice.
I appreciate J.R.’s candor in raising the issue and feel that I need to confess my own guilt. Especially as a young pastor, fresh out of college, I found myself regularly overwhelmed with prayer requests. The office phone would ring and a request would come in. The home phone would ring resulting in another. My cell phone would ring resulting in another still. Emails would come requesting prayer. (Twitter and Facebook can now be added to that list as well, and let us not forget the text message.)
As requests would come in, I would promise to pray. But with each succeeding request the previous request became muddled or was just plain forgotten. I didn’t set out to lie. I didn’t just say that I would pray for people because I felt obligated to do so. I didn’t make these promises because that is what I was getting paid to do. (Although some people believed that this is in fact what I was being paid to do.) I offered to pray, I promised to pray because I genuinely love those who made the request and I wanted to join with them in bringing these things before God.
But, more often than not, my promises were empty promises. I rarely followed through. I was too overwhelmed. I would confuse the requests.
One day as I was meeting a close friend for coffee, my phone rang and I received a frenzied call from a friend (who was also a parishioner) asking for prayer. I promised my support, called Crystal and told her that there was a situation that we needed to pray about, hung up, and resumed my conversation. The friend that I was meeting with, who was also a pastor, asked if I was going to pray for the situation. Due to confidentiality I disclosed that I couldn’t share the details of what was going on and would pray for the request later.
At that juncture he politely offered to get up and refresh our mugs with fresh coffee. He suggested that I take the time and pray for the request. “It’s okay,” I declared. “I’ll pray for it when I get back to the office.”
He went and filled up our mugs and upon returning, he had this to say: “Josh, you and I both know that when you get back to the office you won’t pray about this. You’ll get an email, you will have to return calls that came in while you were out, or you will have someone show up unexpected. By the time you end up with some free time you will have forgotten about. You won’t pray for it.”
At first I was offended. I didn’t like being called to task. I didn’t like being told that I was forgetful. But my friend was right. I would end up busy and would eventually forget. In the end, although I hadn’t intended to, I would end up not following through on the promise that I had made to pray.
That conversations greatly changed things for me. If at all possible I try to pray at that moment, in a way that the situation permits. At times that means leaving a room in which I am surrounded by others. At other times it means saying, “I am unable to get alone to pray with you right now, would you mind if we pause and I lift up a prayer for you?”
What I’ve found is that it really isn’t all that difficult. Most people are even willing to give you a few moments of silence in which you can pray for them and then close with an audible “amen” so that they know you have prayed.
But more importantly, I’ve found that this simple practice means that most of the time I do pray for the person and/or situation that I have been asked to pray for. (Admittedly, there are times when this hasn’t worked and I’ve been left promising to pray. Most of the time I do. Sometimes I still forget. But those times are the exception rather than the norm.)
So I ask, as pastors who are often inundated to pray for a vast number of requests: What if instead of saying, “I’ll pray for you,” we actually prayed (right then, right there)? What effect might that have in our credibility? What might that simple gesture do with regard to letting someone know that you love and care about them enough to stop what you are doing and dedicate just a few moments to them and what is concerning them?
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Thanks to a conversation that J.R. Briggs and Ben Sternke were having on Twitter, I was privileged to discover PastorFashion.com.
In a post entitled, “From the Pulpit to the Runway,” the rationale behind the website is explained:
Pastors aren’t typically known for their fashion. Most people don’t think of the runway leading up to the pulpit. But why not?! Why can’t the men and women of God set the standard for the rest of the world in fashion as well as faith? That’s why we’re launching PastorFashion.com. We want to set the trends.
Check back with us regularly, as we’ll be posting things like what not to wear, fashion tips, the latest trends and so much more!
We’re not trying to be like the world…we just want to be fashionable while we try to change […]
Is the site legit? Is it a publicity stunt? Is someone poking fun at Ed Young, Jr.?
Does anyone know the (real) story behind this site?
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Yesterday I questioned the effectiveness of the sermon. In particular, I asked that we consider whether the sermon’s effectiveness (both in terms of recall and transformation) merits the time, attention, and priority that it often receives.
Looking back, I have realized that I did not flesh out what I meant by time, attention, and priority. Let me explain:
- Studying for, drafting, and rehearsing a message are time consuming. For every minute that I speak, I put in somewhere between thirty to sixty minutes of study. Of the four to five messages/lessons that I am responsible for each week, at least two require study, manuscripting, and rehearsal prior to delivery. For the other two, I use material that I have created in the past or that others have developed. Even in these instances, however, I have to study and review the material, which means that I have been able to save time by not having to draft my talk/message/lesson. Still, on average, I spend somewhere between 30-40 hours per week preparing for the various messages/lessons/talks. Typically I work sixty hours in a given week, which means that a disproportionate amount of time is spent preparing something that (at best) will be remembered for a very short time. Is sermonizing worth the time that we as pastors dedicate to this enterprise? Or could our time and energies, as pastors, be spent better elsewhere?
- Most pastors have had the privilege of hearing the words, “Good sermon, Pastor.” Rarely do we hear the words, “Great prayer, Pastor.” Never have I been told, “Terrific job leading us as we recited the creed.” Neither have I heard, “Pastor, amazing job baptizing Sarah.” Looking back, although I cannot recall a single message my pastor preached, I can remember prayers that he pastor prayed. What is more, many of his prayers were instructive in that they taught me the language of prayer and how to pray. Similarly, growing up in a small United Methodist congregation, I remember very little about worship, but I remember reciting the Apostles’ Creed. That simple articulation of the faith, said week after week, has shaped my faith and what I believe regarding God and the Church. Likewise, the words of invitation and consecration that are part of the liturgy of the table have become words that have profoundly shaped my understanding of and interactions with others. Repeated with frequency, these aspects of Christian worship become a powerful means whereby God transforms our minds and hearts, setting them in tune with the heart of God. Yet, within the Evangelical tradition these things take a backseat to the sermon. Maybe more time and attention should be given to and allowed for these aspects of our worship gatherings.
- The sermon as pinnacle of the worship gathering is a rather recent phenomenon. If the sermon isn’t memorable and if it’s ability to elicit and/or lead to transformation is mixed, then maybe we should reevaluate whether it deserves the priority that it often enjoys.
Related articles- A New Series: Re-Imagining Pastoral Ministry (joshrhone.posterous.com)
- Re-Imagining Pastoral Ministry: Just how effective is the sermon? (joshrhone.posterous.com)
- What if our current models of pastoral leadership are actually detrimental to the health and vitality of the Church? (joshrhone.posterous.com)
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There were two stories in the news last week that fascinated me as I watched them unravel. The first was the meteoric rise of the viral 30 minute video Kony 2012 that took over Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The second story was an NPR radio episode of This American Life about working conditions in the Apple factories in China. The story centered around a play/monologue by Mr. Daisy about his trip to China to investigate the matter. Over 1 million people had downloaded that NPR podcast – by far an all time record.
Both stories turned tragic last week. Invisible Children, the group responsible for Kony 2012, came under heavy criticism. It turns out that the conflict as it was presented was not all that accurate – It had been accurate in the early 2000s but after 2004 no longer represented the true affairs of the country and Joseph Kony himself had left Uganda and migrated to a neighboring country.
People accused the film’s star Jason Russell and his Invisible Children crew of knowingly misleading people and falsifying content in order to elicit a greater emotional response.
The Apple story went down a similar road for Mr. Daisy. It turns out that he had taken some artistic license in presenting his one-man-show and that not everything he claims would qualify as ‘journalistic standard’ of truthfulness. For instance, while he was in China for that week, he saw a news story about some factory workers in another province suffering horrible effects from a chemical. He never went to that province nor talked to those workers but just imported that story and connected it to his subject. The result was that this one factory seemed to be layers and layers of horrific working conditions – but in reality what was presented was an amalgamation of many factories in several provinces.
In the follow-up interviews this weekend Mr. Daisy said that he took license with the facts because he wanted people to care about this. He knew that the conditions were bad and so orchestrated the story to draw a response.
These two stories, taken together, point to a series of issues that are relevant to the church and her theology.
The first issue is complacency. Both of these ‘presenters’ knew that some tweaks and modifications needed to made in order to overcome our collective complacency. We see so much bad, that unless something is really bad – it just doesn’t register. We are so overwhelmed with images, adverts, messages and pleas that unless something is sensational or horrific, we have evolved mechanisms and filters to catch it and screen it out. The result is that we become complicit in maintaining the status-quo and passive participants in the system, structures and institutions that comprise the ‘Powers the Be’ that Paul reference in Ephesians 6.
The second issue is Paternalism. At some point white people from the West are going to have to stop thinking that the solution to what ails Africa or Asia is us coming over and fixing it. Now, I applaud the generous heart behind both Invisible Children and Mr. Daisy but until we repent of our Colonial impulse and step away from that model of missions, we are going to continue to run into problems and run over the very folks we purport to be helping.
- We want to help – that is great.
- We do it in our way – and that is hurtful.
There is no doubt that in global system of international trade and foreign policy that the church must come to terms with our inter-connectivity and inter-relatedness in a way that transcends outdated clichés and antiquated platitudes of centuries past. We live in an evolving world that is experiencing exponential and radical change.
I love that good folks want to care about that and not just go shopping to bury their head in the sand. BUT until we repent of our ongoing paternalism and acknowledge the devastating effects of our colonial missions we will continue to replicate the harm and multiply the devastation.
As Christians, do we need to think through and address our participation in the global market and international structures that dominate our contemporary economy? Yes.
If, however, we do not first repent of our Colonial missions mentality, we will continue the pattern of paternalism and Imperial impulse that has created these very situations we want to address.
p.s. I know about Jason Russell’s
—>arrestepisode this weekend but did not want to distract from the bigger issue.I wanted to share this post by Bo Sanders (of Homebrewed Christianity) because: a) he doesn’t add fuel to the fire regarding #KONY2012 or Mr. Daisy and, b) he does a fantastic job of outlining two ways in which this impacts the Church and her theology. Well worth the few minutes it will take to read the story.
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Yesterday I asked: What if our current models of pastoral ministry are detrimental to the health and vitality of the Church (and her leaders)?
That post sat unpublished for a little over a week. I was afraid to push the button labeled “publish” that would take a rather private thought that I have been chewing on for a few months now and make it rather public. The idea of private-gone-public was terrifying enough, but even more frightening was the thought of what might happen if I begin to call into question the offices, structures, and presuppositions that undergird these things. How would people respond? What kind of heat would I take? Would I be perceived as disenfranchised? Ungrateful?
Judging from the response (on Facebook, in emails, and through direct messages on Twitter), there are many others (both pastors and laity) who are asking similar questions regarding vocational ministry and the Church.
Knowing that I am not alone in my wonderings is both freeing and empowering. It is comforting to know that others care deeply about ministry and the Church — that like me, they do not want to leave the Church or deprive the Church of those who have been trained to expound the Scriptures, provide care for the sick and afflicted, and equip the Church for service. And, it is nice to know that they (like me) have just as many questions as answers.
With that in mind, you (the reader) will find in the weeks to come that there will be a great many posts filed under the title: “Re-Imagining Pastoral Ministry.” Some of the posts will be written by me. Others, I hope, will be written by those who are living out of a re-imagined paradigm for pastoral ministry.
It is quite likely that you will find some of the posts enlightening and encouraging. It is equally likely that you will be aggravated and frustrated by some of the suggestions. Either reaction, or any of the other responses in between, is okay. In fact, my hope is that these posts will not be a monologue in which I (or a guest blogger) will do all of the talking. Rather, I hope that this becomes a conversation in which we can bounce ideas off of one another — sharing what is working; raising theological questions when it seems as if theology has taken a backseat to pragmatic concerns; etc.
