Acts
18:1-11
After this Paul left
Athens and went to Corinth. 2There he found a Jew named Aquila, a
native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla,
because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3and,
because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked
together—by trade they were tentmakers. 4Every sabbath he would
argue in the synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.
5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from
Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying
to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. 6When they opposed and
reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and
said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I
will go to the Gentiles.’
7Then he left
the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshipper of God; his house was next door to the
synagogue. 8Crispus, the official of the synagogue, became a
believer in the Lord, together with all his household; and many of the
Corinthians who heard Paul became believers and were baptized. 9One
night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not
be silent; 10for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to
harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.’ 11He
stayed there for a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
1
Corinthians 9:3-7, 11-18
3 This is my defense to those
who would examine me. 4Do we not have the right to our food and
drink? 5Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing
wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 6Or
is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a
living? 7Who at any time pays the expenses for doing military
service? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat any of its fruit? Or who tends
a flock and does not get any of its milk? …11If we have sown
spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? 12If
others share this rightful claim on you, do not we still more?
Nevertheless, we have not made use of
this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of
the gospel of Christ. 13Do you not know that those who are employed
in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at
the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? 14In the same
way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their
living by the gospel.
15 But I have made no use of any
of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in my case.
Indeed, I would rather die than that—no one will deprive me of my ground for
boasting! 16If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for
boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe betide me if I do not
proclaim the gospel! 17For if I do this of my own will, I have a
reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. 18What
then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel
free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.
____________________________________________
The
first church I served was Beacon Presbyterian Church. Beacon had about 30
members in inner city Philadelphia. I I was an intern there during my second
year of seminary, and became their pastor the next year. Throughout the fifteen
months I spent as Beacon’s pastor I learned a lot. I preached almost every week
and I led a weekly Bible study, but with 10 hours a week around the edges of a
full time job, I could never do as much as I wanted to.
When we moved to Rochester, I felt certain
that I wanted a full time position so I could do more. When I heard about
Laurelton, it sounded like a great fit, except that it was half time instead of
full time. So I prayed about it, met with session, and ultimately started here
on February 1, 2009.
What
I learned from that whole process, and this is really going to surprise you, is
that God knows better than I do. I was sure I wanted a full time position but
as it has turned out, not only is this church the right fit for me, being half
time has been a blessing in ways I couldn’t predict. God is teaching me a lot
about ministry for the twenty-first century, and God is using our work together
to remind the church of Paul’s model of tent-making.
When
Paul moved to Corinth he met Aquila and Pricilla and stayed with them because
they were all tent-makers. In letter after letter Paul talks about how he works
with his hands so he won’t be a burden to the church. He wants to make sure
that financially supporting him isn’t a barrier to people hearing the gospel. At
the same time, he reminds the church that the people who dedicate their life to
serving the gospel should be able to survive by preaching, even though he doesn’t
want financial support himself.
It’s
a challenging balance. The church benefits from having people who can spend
most of their time working for the church. People who can travel to spread the
gospel, people who can dedicate years to studying and teaching, people who can dedicate
their full time to building up the church. At the same time, professional
church workers are expensive, and we don’t want money to keep people from
hearing the gospel or growing in faith. That was a challenge Paul saw then, and
it’s still a challenge now.
Most
churches in our denomination are shrinking. Churches that employed two pastors
ten years ago now have one, and many churches that have had a full time pastor
are finding that harder and harder to maintain. Along the way, many churches
cut basically every other kind of spending before even considering letting go
of their full time pastor. For those of you who have been here more than 5
years, this is a very familiar story. Many of our neighboring churches are
facing the same process now.
That
sounds like a lot of bad news, but ultimately, I don’t think it is. It is going
to mean some really hard transitions for a lot of people and churches, but it
is an opportunity to reexamine how we do ministry in the church.
As
early as Paul’s time, there was a place for paid people in the church; it was a
good investment to allow some people to dedicate themselves fully to ministry
in a way they couldn’t do if they were working. There are churches now that
need full time pastors and other leaders. The question to answer is what we
want to pay for and why. I think there are two main ways we can look at paid
ministry in the church: doing ministry for us or doing ministry with us. When a
pastor does ministry for the church, that means the church is paying the pastor
to do things they know the church should be doing.
Doing
ministry with the church is different, and I think that’s most of the real
calling of a pastor. Paul’s line is, “equipping the saints for the work of
ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” What that means is things like
teaching, leading Bible study, having individual conversations, and moderating
session meetings. It means working with members of the community to help people
find and strengthen their spiritual gifts so they can grow in faith through
ministry.
So,
if we think about visiting homebound members of the congregation, doing
ministry for you means I go and visit those folks on behalf of the church.
Doing ministry with you, equipping you for ministry, means that I work with
people who feel called to a ministry of visitation to help you feel comfortable
making visits. It means helping you (through the care team) organize a system
so people are being visited regularly and talking with you about how visits go
and what questions they raise for you.
In
terms of welcoming visitors, doing ministry for you means it is my job to be a
friendly, welcoming face and to follow up with visitors to help them connect
with the church. Doing ministry with you means helping you develop skills and
confidence to welcome people and helping you develop ways to follow up with
those visitors.
There’s
a role for both ministry with and for you, but the ministry with you is more
important. In a church this size, I should know everyone at least a little and
it’s important for me to stay connected with our homebound members, so I need
to visit. I also need to welcome visitors. Whether right or wrong, there is
something special for many people about meeting the pastor that makes them feel
more comfortable and connected.
At the same time, the more important work is
equipping you to visit and to welcome. After all, the real point is connecting
people to the community of faith, not to me. If I am the only person a
homebound member knows, they won’t feel very connected to the church. And if I’m
the only person a visitor knows they might like me or not, but they won’t be
connected with the congregation as a whole. Pastors come and go, but the
community lasts. And feeling connected to a faith community is a blessing that
far outweighs anything I can do through personal welcome and charm.
The last century the church absorbed a lot
from the culture, some good, some not so good. Like in other professions we
have absorbed the idea of paying a specialist to do something for us. We pay a
mechanic to work on our car, a doctor to treat physical problems and a school
to education our children. Sometimes we see church the same way: we pay a
pastor to take care of our spiritual needs.
This creates a cycle where church members
feel that many things that are a basic part of being Christian are the
responsibility of the pastor because the pastor is an expert. That attitude
affects things like prayer and scripture reading as well as visiting,
welcoming, teaching and sharing faith. Even though the pastor’s real job is
equipping the church for ministry, a lot of the way we have done ministry ended
up having the opposite effect, making people feel less empowered to do ministry
themselves and more dependant on paid clergy.
All Christians have a calling to live our
faith in every part of our lives. My job is not to do that for you, but to help
you do it better. In a church our size I think the first limit we reach is the
time and energy the members have for ministry. It wouldn’t even make sense to
have a full time pastor, because that would mostly increase my ability to doing
more ministry for you, and the congregation would actually do less ministry. I
think for Laurelton now, half time is about perfect.
There
are other benefits to our part time arrangement too. Of course, the financial
piece is an important one. A part time pastor is challenging financially; full
time wouldn’t be sustainable.
One of the hardest things for churches and
pastors is to get out of the building and connect to people who aren’t in
church. I spend half of my working time as well as my social time outside the
church, so I automatically make those connections. That not only gives me more
opportunities to share my faith, it also keeps me from getting tunnel vision
and it keeps me connected to the wider community. Paul doesn’t talk about how
the tent-making part of his time provided ministry opportunities, but I’m sure
it did. My ambulance work is the same way, as is your teaching or cleaning or childcare.
It
also reminds you and me that we are the same. I am not some ivory tower
professor or a spiritual champion. I am a person with faith and questions and other
work obligations like you. I think knowing that I have another job makes it
easier to remember that.
It also means that we can be more open about
money. When we talk about the budget, my salary and benefits are a big piece of
the puzzle, which means we need to be able to talk about it. When a pastor is
the biggest financial obligation and you know they depend on the church, it is
hard to discuss the budget honestly because the pastor’s livelihood is tied up
in that. Since half of my income comes from somewhere else, I am less dependant
on the church financially, which means we can talk about the whole budget more
openly, at least, I hope we can.
The church of the future needs to be more
flexible and more nimble than the church of last century. That’s because
changing membership patterns make the big budgets and funding structure of the
past unsustainable, and also undesirable. For some congregations, that will
mean sharing or getting rid of their building to be more flexible. For many
having a tent-making pastor or sharing pastoral leadership with another church
will be part of the equation. In UPT we’re thinking a lot now about how our
churches can share resources so we can all be more efficient and effective in
this new century.
Whenever I think or talk about what it’s like
to be a tent-making pastor I have to give you credit as a congregation for
making this work well. A big part of changing from full time to part time is
changing expectations. When Laurelton had a full time pastor, the pastor did
more things: both more ministry with and more ministry for the congregation. You
have done a great job realizing that I will not be able to do the same things.
You will have to do more or let some things go, and you’ve done both. I very
rarely hear complaints about what I’m not doing. Your flexibility and openness
make Laurelton a really great place to work.
The flip side of that is that I count on you
to let me know what I am missing, what you need more of. I make the best
decisions I can about how to use my time, but if there are areas you feel need
more attention, I’d like to hear that so I can reevaluate. One of the strengths
of the Presbyterian tradition is that we lead together. I need you to help me
be a good pastor.
The church thrives when we are all living our
faith and sharing our gifts at church and in the wider world. We all have a
role to play, and my role is helping your grow in faith and ministry. For
Laurelton, tent making ministry is a part of our flexibility and life together.
As we work together to make our church stronger, more engaged in the community
and more faithful to God, we can all use our gifts as we grow in faith.
Thanks be to God.
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