Interesting thoughts in this one. He makes some valid points.
Thanks for sharing this, need to read through it again...and think about
what it says.
Rhonda
-----Original Message-----
From: The Electronic Church [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of John Schwery
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2006 10:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: An Honest Pastor
This is part of why I am not in a church.
Text of forwarded message follows:
>Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:07:23 -0500
>From: "a pastor"
>To: Tom Lamb <mailto:[log in to unmask]><[log in to unmask]>
>
>Tom,
>
>Thanks for the article and your willingness to share it with me. I
>also went to your website and read some of your other articles. I
>agree with your observations about the state of the modern
>institutionalized church. If you would be so kind as to indulge me
>for a moment, I'd like to make a few observations of my own about
>the "system" as you call it.
>
>First, let me confess that I am a pastor (I pastor a Baptist church
>in the Midwestern region of the USA). Let me also say that I am not
>apposed to the idea of church. It is the body of Christ and the
>bride of Christ. He loved her and shed His blood for her. I
>especially love the people God has entrusted to my care; they are
>wonderful; I have no gripes with them personally. What I am
>frustrated with is what the church has become. It has gone from
>being a vibrant, home-based, interpersonal, life-giving body (New
>Testament church), to an exhausting, often lifeless,
>institution-based, impersonal organization (today).
>
>I am not saying that nothing worthwhile ever happens in local
>churches; that would be an inaccurate statement. I have been blessed
>in many ways over the years through local church involvement. I just
>have many questions and frustrations about the way church is done,
>especially here in America today. I detect from your articles that
>organized churches in your country suffer from similar maladies.
>Anyway, here are the gut-level honest frustrations of an
>institutional insider: (note: from here on I will refer to the
>church as the "institution')
>
> * As a pastor I often feel like the guardian of an institution
> rather than a participant in a revolution. The advancement of the
> kingdom of God, the spreading of the gospel, and the making of true
> disciples is often lost behind the seemingly endless busy work that
> must be done in order for the institution to continue to function.
> Everything gets bogged down in red tape and institutional
> bureaucracy. Rather than being on mission with Christ, the
> institution spends most of its time, energy, and resources
> promoting and preserving itself; i.e., keeping the "machine" oiled
> and running. I often wonder how many poor, oppressed, and
> spiritually lost people we could help in Jesus' name; how much
> human suffering we could alleviate; how many missionary endeavors
> we could undertake; and ultimately how many disciples of Jesus we
> could make around the world if we moved our gatherings back into
> homes, fired all the professional staff, sold all our institutional
> buildings, and pooled the proceeds together. (Shhhh..don't tell
> anyone that the pastor was actually thinking something like that)!
>
> * As a pastor I am expected to be a fund raiser, vision caster,
> motivator, organizer, and administrator. It recently occurred to
> me: "I am not a shepherd, I am the CEO of a corporation called
> 'church." And my success as a CEO is often measured by how large my
> congregation is, how fast it is growing, how much money we have,
> and how fast we are building new buildings. Unfortunately none of
> these things are within my control, so you can imagine the
> frustration. And of course within the congregation there are the
> whiners, complainers, critics, and pathological antagonizers who
> love to torment institutional leaders. Oh, and don't forget the
> church politics, unresolved interpersonal conflicts, and
> denominational garbage that goes on. By the way, I read last week
> that 20,000 pastors leave the ministry forever every month in the
> USA! I wonder why? Hmmm.....
>
> * As a pastor I am weary of continually trying to motivate
> spiritually lethargic, apathetic (and probably lost) people, to no
> avail. I'm convinced that our churches are literally filled with
> deceived people who equate being a Christian with institutional
> involvement, i.e, "I am a good Christian because I am active in the
> institution." There is no real life transformation going on; no
> submission to God; no being conformed to the image of Christ; no
> daily spiritual disciplines; no exercising on one's spiritual
> gifts; just attendance at the institution (and sometimes nominal
> attendance at that). And because of the way the institution is
> structured there is no accountability mechanism in place to address
> the issue with them. This is nothing but deception from the enemy.
> Jesus said that many faithful churchgoers are going to wind up in
> hell, much to their shock and dismay (Matthew 7:21-23). It saddens
> me more than you know. People say they love Jesus yet deny Him with
> their lifestyles. The hypocrisy is unnerving. They want to call
> themselves followers of Christ, they just don't want to do what He
> said (Luke 6:46). I'm really not trying to be self-righteous (I'm
> not perfect either). It's just that, as a pastor, it breaks my
> heart when people live under a deception that brings reproach on
> the name of Christ, destroys their lives, and jeopardizes their
> eternal destiny. How did we get here? One problem I see it that
> this modern-day monolithic institution called "church" has all but
> lost the ability to get people together regularly in small
> fellowships in intimate settings, where they gather around the
> Scriptures, encourage one another, pray for one another, and hold
> one another accountable. It seems to me it would be very difficult
> to live a double life and be a hypocrit in such an intimate setting.
>
> * In many American "institutions" Sunday worship services have
> degenerated into little more than slick, high-tech entertainment
> designed to manipulate the emotions. The "auditorium" is
> constructed so that the audience (congregation) can sit and be
> entertained by the professional performers (singers, dancers,
> actors, and speaker) up on the "stage" or platform. Preaching in
> many of these places has reduced the Almighty to a Genie in a
> bottle and a cosmic therapist. The focus is man-centered (give
> sinners whatever they want so they will like us and hopefully
> accept Jesus). If I read my Bible correctly trying to make sinners
> like us is both unrealistic and futile (See Matthew 10:22; John
> 15:18-19; 2 Timothy 3:12). When God instructed the Hebrews
> concerning how His tabernacle was to be constructed He did not say
> to them, "Go survey the Philistines and Jebusites and find out what
> they would like in a tabernacle and then build it that way." No.
> Because He is holy, He gave them strict instructions as to how HE
> wanted the tabernacle to be built and to function. When the early
> church was forming they did not survey the Greeks, Romans, pagans,
> or Gnostics to find out what they might like in a church. No. They
> were consumed with radically loving God, radically loving one
> another, and walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. They were too
> busy being the church to worry about how to do church. It was about
> substance, not style. They had no institutions, no buildings and no
> bureaucracy. They had no professional church growth consultants or
> mega church growth conferences or marketing strategies or
> seeker-sensitive services, yet somehow God added to their number
> daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:47). What a shock by
> today's standards! What can we learn from this?
>
> * It seems to me that after 2,000 years of church history we
> have shaped, organized, and structured the church and its practices
> according to the traditions of men rather than the Word of God. So
> much of who we are and what we do is not prescribed in Scripture. I
> understand that as cultures change the church has to adapt in some
> ways. But we've become something I can't imagine God intended. How
> did we get here? As Greco-Roman culture overtook the early church,
> and as Constantine later united church and state (leading to what
> would eventually become the Roman Catholic church), we lost much of
> what early believers understood about what it meant to be the
> church. Regular gatherings of believers were moved from the homes
> to the cathedral; ministry was taken away from the common man as a
> sharp distinction was made between laity and clergy; an complex
> ecclesiastical hierarchy was instituted; the Bible was taken out of
> the hands of the common man and entrusted to the priest. All this
> had devastating ramifications. And the Protestant Reformation did
> not restore what was lost. We've never recovered. Unfortunately, we
> are what we are. And there doesn't seem to be much freedom to fix
> this. If you start trying to color outside the lines of tradition
> you are labeled a nut, a heretic, a troublemaker, or a cultist. As
> you well know, the Radical Pilgrim pays dearly for departing from
> the status quo.
>
>I could go on, but I will spare you. All I'm saying is, I
>wholeheartedly agree that the modern institutionalized, westernized,
>monolithic, materialistic, consumeristic church has evolved into
>something that is incapable of being what Jesus called His body to
>be. And frankly, I don't see the situation changing. I have recently
>had a rather sinister thought, however. Intolerance for Christians
>is increasing at a rapid pace in the USA as American culture has
>succumb to postmodernism (this represents persecution from within).
>Radical Islam is trying with all its might to take over the world.
>These nut cases want to kill everyone on the planet who does not
>embrace Islam, especially Jews and Christians. They have now
>declared Jihad against the "West" on every continent on earth (this
>represents persecution from without). If the persecution against
>Christians in America got severe enough at some time in the future,
>might this force the church back into a 1st century kind of
>situation? Would we have to abandon our buildings and structures and
>go underground, meeting once again in homes? I pray fervently that
>it doesn't come to this...
>
>Please don't interpret my words as those of an angry, embittered
>pastor. As I said, I love the church (Jesus loved the church and it
>seems to me that if I love Him I will love what He loves). I don't
>mean to insult His bride. I just think we could do church a better
>way. >From reading your articles it sounds like you guys have
>discovered one way to do it better. Thank you for your time.
>
>Blessings!
>
>A Radical Pilgrim wannabe
>
>
><http://beyondcamp.net>http://beyondcamp.net
>
>
>
End of forwarded message text:
John
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