Reading a BBC article tody about the situation Barack Obama faces as he deals with continued input from Reverend Wright, I was struck by the following commentary from the author:
In a country where the average citizen changes his or her religious denomination at least twice, your choice of pastor says perhaps even more about you than your choice of mistress.
And for an aspiring presidential candidate at a time when America is at war and when some people quibble about patriotic flag-pins, Obama seems to have chosen disastrously.
First of all, I’m wondering if people here in the US really understand what happens in their theology when they change their denominations twice in their lifetime and second, how important is their pastor in their lives?
Before I get to that, I should preface the commentary by news writer Matt Frei about the pastor vs mistress comparison. He had referenced blunders by Bill Clinton and Jennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky as almost causing him to lose the nomination (for Flowers) and subsequently the presidency (for Lewinsky) and comparing that to the spiritual fidelity of Obama to Reverend Wright. The full context of the BBC article by Matt Frei can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7374555.stm.
Going back to my original two questions, I don’t know if denominations and theology really matter that much to people. I think in general that as churches go away from even having their denominational allegiances in their name (Instead of Saddleback Valley Baptist Church, it is just Saddleback Valley Church even though they are a Baptist church) that people don’t realize the theology behind their pastor’s sermons is Baptist in nature. Granted, there are some people that choose a church based on the actual theology of the denomination or church, but I thik in general people go to churches these days based on an emotional decision rather than a denominational one. In addition, some people also will choose to stay away from a church with a denominational name based on emotion. They heard about some bad experience of someone at a Presbyterian or Lutheran church, or they used to attend a Baptist church and the pastor committed adultery and was allowed to continue to be a pastor, or whatever the issue may be. It’s the issue in their more than the theology or organizational style of the denomination and therefore churches don’t announce their denomination in order to avoid being stereotyped and hence not given a chance for someone to walk in the door.
The second thing that popped into my mind when I read the commentary from Frei at bbc.com was about the pastor. Does the pastor of a church in 2008 really have that much impact on your personal life? In this day of churches being so enormous in size that they have 7-10 pastors on staff, how connected can a church member actually be to his/her pastor? Actually, a lot of my training and study has directed me towards leaving a lot of the pastoral care of individual church members to small groups and small group leaders. Being a senior pastor and being accountable to individuals takes away from casting a vision for the ministry and the future and retards the growth of the church.
Personally, I believe this takes away from the example of what Jesus called the overseer of the church to be. As the term pastor really signifies shepherd and there are many references to the shepherd and his flock in the Bible, I don’t agree with the whole mega church model and the direction a lot of senior pastors take. There is too much of a disconnect and the senior pastor becomes a figurehead for the church, yet is distant and unreachable for the average church member.
If you’re in a church that has a membership of less than 200 people, then you may in-fact have a relationship with your senior pastor and he/she may be more than the person that preaches on Sunday and presides over your family’s marriages. However, if there are over 300 members in your church, I doubt you could know your pastor on such a level. It is such disconnect that I feel has impacted the relevance of pastors and therefore the relevance of Christ in society today.
I hope there can come a time when God works everything out and we can have pastors that help encourage their church members be all that God calls them to be and in-turn be encouraged by their members as a growing family in Christ. That these church families can become interconnected as part of one big growing family until such time as the kingdom of heaven is here on earth.
Until such time, I pledge to do my part, and I am here to encourage anyone to be all that God created them to be.
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