What Is Required Of A Pastor?

 

‘A man must himself be cleansed, before cleansing others:
himself become wise, that he may make others wise;
become light, and then give light:
draw near to God, and so bring other near;
be hallowed, then hallow them;
be possessed of hands to lead others by the hand,
of wisdom to give advice.’

Gregory of Naziansus, Oration, 2.71

The PA Game

I’ve found it amusing, and also annoying, to have encountered a number of church leaders and teachers over the past year who have no idea how to use a diary. In fact, it seems to be a part of ‘making it’ as an evangelical church leader, to be able to demonstrate the importance and busyness of one’s ministry, by constantly referring me to their ‘PA’ to make meeting arrangements.

It’s not that I contest the question of whether such leaders are busy, and / or involved in important ministries – in fact I’m quite sure that both are true. However, my certainty is owed to the fact that both have or do apply to me as well, and yet I seem able (and certainly have no choice but to) use my personal diary for appointments. Most church leaders up and down the country have to manage their own diaries, and the question of employing a PA to manage their schedule on their behalf would seem quite ridiculous and unlikely.

I find it even more strange that today one such occurrence involved an exchange of emails, in which the church leader in question could simply have responded to my suggested dates, but rather directed me to his PA to make an appointment. Emailing his PA resulted in an ‘Out of office auto-reply’ informing me that his PA was out of the office for another two days – did the church leader in question know his PA was off work?? If our church leaders are this bad at ‘people business’, maybe we should be challenging the notion that a more busy pastor with a PA is necessarily a better pastor. Let’s schedule a meeting to discuss further... Contact my PA!

Test

This is a test to see whether I can publish to my blog from email...

Here's a joke that I stumbled across yesterday, and have been quietly giggling about ever since. It is a joke about German theologians... (It may, in fact, be the only extant non-oxymoronic use of the terms 'joke' and 'German theologians'!)

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Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich are taking a break together, fishing on Lake Geneva. They are having a lovely time, smoking their pipes, chatting idly.

It's hot and they are getting thirsty. So Karl Barth gets up, steps out of the boat, and walks across the water to the shore, gets some beers and returns.

It's quite hot so the beer doesn't last long. Barth tells Tillich: "your turn, Paul". Tillich gets up, steps outside the boat, walks across the water, and fetches some beer.

It is getting really hot now, and the beer is finished once again. Bultmann is beginning to sweat particularly profusely... and finally Barth asks him too: "Come on, Rudolf, your turn now." With a slight tremor in his knees, Bultmann gets up, steps out of the boat, and sinks like a stone. Fortunately he is a good swimmer; he drags himself back into the boat and sulks at the far end.

Tillich turns to Barth and says: "Do you think we should have told him where the stepping stones are?"

Barth looks at him in astonishment and replies: "What stones?"

This is me! I haven't been able to add a photo of myself to my profile - so I thought I would experiment with posting a photo as an entry... Hope it works fine... (The photo was taken during dinner on New Year's Eve 2005. I was staying in a cottage in the middle of the North York moors with my wife, Sara, and 9 of our friends. We had a wonderful time!)

Blog virgin! New to the game...

Well, here we are... This is a bit of an experiment to learn how to use a web-log, or blog...

I have heard of blogs for a while, but have not begun to explore them myself, but I like the idea of an online diary to empty myself into...

Here's to experimenting...