Spokane Pastors
I've probably met close to a hundred pastors in Spokane, if not more. I've noticed a trend. The more personable, wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve pastors almost always follow a parish model. The more formal that a pastor's personality is, the more likely he will pastor a congregation that commutes for worship.
I wonder about this trend. My inclination is to say this is a difference between idea/doctrine-focused ministries and service focused ministries, and that a congregation very much reflects its pastor.
posted by RickCapezza @ 1:57 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Interesting. The larger the institution the more layers of leadership develop. The larger the group and more metropolitan in scope, the more distance develops in the leadership. That is both by necessity and by practicality of accessibility. What is realistic among a smaller group decreases with the size. I also think that the larger and more commuter accessible a church is, the more people desire that model and style of leadership.
There is a way of relating and being, that exists in different sizes and structures of doing church. Some are good and some are bad and some are just related to the size dynamics, structures and values of the church.
Some of it is just simply that the hammering of ministry makes most leaders into professionally cocooned ministers that in-order to survive take on self protecting measures to maintain it for the long haul.
It's a brutal reality...but ministry can make you less human. For many our circles of safety decrease with the increasing size of the group or type of group growing around the ministry.
Interesting thought. Although at IPC we have a small congregation, but most of them have over a half hour drive to reach the Church. It is not like dad is a formal pastor or anything, (how can you be formal when you've known the congregation for seven years, and the size, around thirty, has not increased in that time). I agree with your point, though, that the larger the congregation, the more people will want to come. I guess you'd have to say that there are those churches where the way and doctrines of worship do matter to those attending. I wish I could write without rambling, and seeming not to have a point, but it is there...somewhere.
Fred,
My thought really was only a correlation, nothing more. I think also that your dad's situation would be different because of the size of the city.
I think, for the most part, ideology plays into why people would go to your dad's church. It's a reformed church, and I am guessing there aren't a whole lot of options for Reformed people in Fallon. What binds your congregation together, I am assuming, is a common belief in reformed, covenantal theology.
That's not to say that an ideological congregation can't be mission-oriented. It's just that doctrine is the glue, rather than mission.
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Pastor Blauer,
I think that you're right that size factors into how those relationships work, but the example in my mind is two like-sized churches in the same denomination. One focuses on serving its neighborhood (West Central) while the other focuses on doctrinal distinctives. The former is poorer and mission-oriented, but the pastor makes it a point that if "we don't have money, that means we need to give more away." The latter focuses more on what it means to be of "X heritage." The former's membership is mostly made up of people within a few blocks of the church. The latter's is made up of people from all over town and mostly the suburbs (Medical Lake, Otis Orchards, etc.).
In the interest of full disclosure, I attend a church based on ideology as it's the only non-Episcopal Anglican game in town, but our hope is to plant a missional community on the other side of town.
Well thats easy Rick...one is a living church and the other is a dead one.
Nah, just kidding.
For us its about balance: mind, heart and hands...a three legged stool, miss one leg and it falls down. It may still be a chair laying on the ground but it is far from the good it could be.
Such are many churches I am afraid.
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