Weekly Reflection 2

After a Regional meeting recently (A meeting with a bunch of churches) I feel like discipleship is sometimes lost in the mix of church ministry. I really hope that if I become a pastor that I would put discipleship above the tasks in ministry. Deadlines seem to become priorities over people which I find sad really. As a pastor I would hope to have a core group of people that I would be discipling into and have them disciple others as well. The problem is a congregation wants to see results for the job you are doing, so they wanna see services, studies and events. Its too bad Jesus isn't humanly here now to teach us what we should be doing as pastors.




Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we chose people out of the ordinary to lead the church. People who barely come, people who still go out drinking and clubbing, people that the church gossip about. I wonder if that type of leadership is something that God would be calling us to do. I feel like Jesus and God did that type of thing throughout history and chose the marginalized to lead the church. We often choose the wise and the strong to lead the church. I feel like it would be more faithful to get the weak to lead the church at times.

In discipleship, I feel strongly that it should be wholistic and be practical for people to work their faith out in their daily lives. Though my focuses have never been things like ‘ what does it mean to be a student for God’ or ‘how to talk about spiritual things within your home.’ Its been stuff like holiness, purity, love, and more general Christian topics which I think are also good but can just become head knowledge that doesn't become lived out. I hope that in the future that I would find some focuses on practical spirituality in the ministry or age group that I am involved in. So for now, I feel like I should be getting into the mode of a jr high and sr high kid and what they go through; as a student in their schools, as growing kids in their homes with siblings and parents and such. I think its more common to find a topic to learn about... and sometimes it does not work itself out in our day to day lives. Learning my church’s context is so important and understanding what their life is like, then finding how they can be bringing their spirituality into the places where they have contact with other people. These places like their workplace, school, home.. or just anywhere there are people really.

Though as a pastor I feel like we should visit schools or visit workplaces to really know whats going on in the present day. That's why I kind of have a problem with these pastors who are so busy... Do you even have a sense of reality when you are running left and right? And most times its just acknowledged among Christians that "its so hard to talk about spiritual things outside of church". What are we doing about it as the church? Separating ourselves from the outside world? There has to be more conversations in these things.


In wild at heart it talks about being a man, a man of God. I feel like to this point in my life, I never felt, or had the desire to be a man. I felt like the responsibilities and expectations of a man were never appealing to me at all. It seems like men don’t have fun and just concentrate on making money and doing boring things, and I feel like a ‘leader’ sometimes has the same connotations. I think back on high school days and jr high school days when I had soo much fun, and to a certain extent I can’t let go of those things and still want those things even though I am 25. I think now though I have come to place where; yes, it is time to strive for being a man of God and where I should have that as a part of my identity. I always have been striving for the attributes of a good man but I have just always wanted to enjoy a free nature and having the little accountability that is characteristic of being a youth and a child. Then again...

I don't want to be a 40 year old boy