Monthly Archives: June 2007

Health of American Pastorate: Bad

Posted by Matthew on June 25, 2007 None comments |

I often keep tabs on the blog over at TheResurgence. A quick overview was recently posted on the health of Pastors mainly in America. I should like to pass it on as it shows just how severe the problems in the American Church are:

How Healthy are Pastors in America?
Mark Driscoll from “TheResurgence”

2. How healthy are pastors and their families?

At our 2006 Reform and Resurge Conference in Seattle, my good friend Pastor Darrin Patrick from The Journey in Saint Louis (www.journeyon.net) spoke frankly of the burden that pastoral ministry is. He presented the following statistics, which he gathered from such organizations as Barna (www.barna.org), Maranatha Life (www.maranathalife.com) and Focus on the Family (www.family.org).

Pastors

* Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
* Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce.
* Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
* Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
* Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
* Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
* Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
* Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.

Pastors’ Wives

* Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses feel their spouse is overworked.
* Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
* The majority of pastors’ wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

The leaders absolutely must face this dilemma if they will shepherd in America. It is becoming more and more widely known and preached with every passing year that the American Church is dying. That American Christianity is dying. Already there are a wave of books flying into the market that try to deal with this subject. But I am afraid it’s going to take a lot more than a new book to fix this.

On the one hand, we have to pray and seek the Holy Spirit for his guidance; on the other hand, we can remind ourselves that even the first churches planted by the Apostles in Turkey eventually died out. On a third hand, sometimes there has to be death before God can really make something live: sometimes they call it “Revival”.

As for the pastors, may the Lord be ever merciful to them. It may be well intentioned service that all these men are pursuing, but pastoring is a demanding job: it demands the Holy Spirit. Period. If you go into a line of work that demands certain skills that you don’t have, it will burn you out and you won’t last. If you go into the ministry without the call of the Holy Spirit you won’t last. One of the big problems I see is young men flying head strong into the ministry without waiting even a second on God to see if they are going the right direction. They seem to listen only to the voice of those like Credential, Diploma, Personal Skill, Men’s Approval, and Own Strength. They listen to everything but the Holy Spirit who alone can provide what is needed: power. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

If you are given the task of guarding a large flock, it will pay to be wise like Moses’ father in-law Hobab (Jethro).

The next day Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood around Moses from morning till evening. When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, “What is this that you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone, and all the people stand around you from morning till evening?” And Moses said to his father-in-law, “Because the people come to me to inquire of God; when they have a dispute, they come to me and I decide between one person and another, and I make them know the statutes of God and his laws.” Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:13-23 ESV)

“I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)

Contraception Culture and Jeremiah 29:5-7

Posted by Matthew on June 20, 2007 None comments |

Jeremiah 29:5-7

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.
Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare, you will find your welfare.”

A blessing or not a blessing? That is the question. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (August 2006, Ms. Gardner of Wheaton College) 88% of Evangelicals approve of the use of contraceptions. Some families may only want one or two children, making the contraceptions a means of securing that. But is this multiplying and “filling the whole earth” as God commanded? Of course for multiplication to happen you would need to have at least three children, which is becoming uncommon in our time. In times past, it was not uncommon to have four, five, or even more kids, as they were considered to be assets to the family.

Part of multiplication involves growth over different generations as well. This means if each generation of a family is only having one or two kids there is no longer multiplication but rather decline. So what happened?

In today’s urban world of fast-paced life with the resulting vacuum which creates more need for convenience as people get busier, time has become the enemy.
According to the Wall Street article, “The introduction of the birth control pill in the 1950s and 1960s offered ‘free love’ to society at large; married evangelicals embraced its convenience and effectiveness.” It seems children have become a liability, even to Christians. Indeed, we may still regard any child as a blessing, but now it seems they have become more like cars to maintain, rather than houses to invest in. Although with cars, we will take one anytime, and even more of them than children if we could. With kids, there are many an excuse for not wanting one. Ironically, global problems of pollution and destruction of ecosystems are blamed on there being too many people.
Growing up and being raised in the urban life, everything I observed about having and raising children told me that they were liabilities. The belief seemed to be, “If you have children, it will cost.” I remember seeing reports in newspapers about average costs for raising a single child and thinking, “Wow, how expensive!” The publication propagated children as simply an expense. No one ever talked about the inherent value of a child. But when we turn to the Scriptures we see a completely different attitude towards children and that they are the most valuable investments we have on this earth.

“US TV sex scenes on increase”

Posted by Matthew on June 11, 2007 None comments |

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4424366.stm

Here is an article dug up from BBC news a couple years ago. The sheer rise in the amount of “sexual demagoguery” in the corporate world is very telling of the direction that America is heading. It is, however, nowhere near yet to the sexuality of television and media that one can find in Europe which probably holds the heavy-weight title for “sexual demagoguery”.

For Christians living in a bubble world, this needs to be seen as reality. But it is not as bad as it could be, and is definitely nothing to get afraid of or concerned about. The brothers and sisters have done just fine over in Europe where one can actually step out of a church, turn the corner, and find themselves gazing at a full nude poster in complete public view. If European brethren can remain strong, steadfast, and self-controlled in a far greater sex trap than anything found in America, so can American Christians. It isn’t strength that comes from us anyhow.

It’s not a secret; people will continue to get more and more difficult…and America has it pretty darn easy (in comparison) at the moment…

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be…” 1 Timothy 3:1

Cultural Isolation and the Church – Galatians 3:28

Posted by Matthew on June 3, 2007 None comments |

America was never a cultural ‘melting pot’–that has been established. What is interesting is the the lack of mixing among Christians. It’s actually harder to be a congregation of diverse cultures than it is to be a congregation of just one culture.

It doesn’t mean that the different cultures are unable to get along. But then what does it mean? Is not every Christian’s identity found in one heavenly nation and royal kingdom?

But pick almost any city in America. The Koreans have their own church, the Chinese have their own church, the Africans have their own church, the Russians, the Arabs, the Messianic Jews, and so on. What does it mean? Why are they not all found intermingled?

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

From this scripture we can get a sense of the unity that not only binds every believer in the body of Christ, but which also supplants our identities and associations. In this sense it might be understood that there should be no problem to have multi-cultural congregations, and indeed there are some in existence. Yet there remains a very definite division in the body of Christ along the lines of cultural heritage. This very well may be due to a lack of conforming to the image of Christ who is all, and in all, and through all. However the scripture also mentions “slave nor free” and “male nor female”, and this clearly shows that there would remain distinctions according to the flesh, but whose identity is still supplanted by the “new creation” (2Cor 5:17). The old has passed and the new has come. Therefore this verse is understood spiritually: we are bound together by a common spiritual identity. The rest of our carnal nature, whether it is a slave or freeman, Russian or American, male or female, is still with us and so still defines us. This is probably stating the obvious.

Nevertheless, it should make sense that the body of Christ should be able to come together cross-culturally just as it comes together cross-sexually, and cross-generationally while maintaining the distinct differences. The distinct differences are also a part of the purposes and glories of God. For just as God in the beginning created us “male and female” (Gen 1:27) for his glory, so he created us American and Asian, Japanese and Arab, and so much more, all for his glory.

Therefore we need to shine these diverse glories in Christ together in the Church, the redeemer of ethnicity and the redeemer of man and woman, but in whom we are spiritually neither male nor female, American nor Asian, slave nor free but equals as brothers and sisters.