 Do
churches need  The Presbyterian Layman Volume 34, Number 2, Posted March 26, 2001
The answers to such questions depend in part on how you define your terms. In The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000, $14) Marva Dawn and Eugene Peterson combine their considerable talents to ponder how the Pastoral Epistles and Ephesians “shape your understanding of what you have been called to be as pastors and lay ministers.” For Peterson, pastors are unnecessary “in a defined sense. I don’t mean worthless or irrelevant or shiftless.” He does mean unnecessary to what the culture presumes is important, to what ministers themselves often feel is essential, and to what congregations “insist [ministers] must do and be: the experts who help them stay ahead of the competition.” Peterson looks at three “unnecessary” pastors – Paul, Timothy and Titus. In alternate chapters, Dawn explores Ephesians with the goal of helping us “thoroughly recognize that everything we do well as a pastoral servant of the church is entirely empowered through grace.” Together they remind Christian leaders that their vocation is to subvert secular culture and its insidious expectations. And they rightly insist that this will happen only as Christian leaders allow themselves to be shaped and formed by Scripture. A similar note is sounded by Michael W. Foss, a Lutheran pastor, who proposes rethinking the very concept of church membership in Power Surge: Six Marks of Discipleship for a Changing Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000, $13). Specifically, he urges moving from a membership model to a discipleship model of the church. “The changing cultural context … has caused a mutation in the membership model of the church,” Foss writes. “In the Protestant explosion of the 1950s, membership implied obligation. [Today] membership has come to imply prerogatives.” The marks of discipleship, Foss says, “are not institutionally driven” but are characterized by daily prayer, weekly worship, Bible reading, service, spiritual friendships and giving. In sum, “Membership is about getting; discipleship is about giving. Membership is about dues; discipleship is about stewardship. Membership is about belonging to a select group with its privileges and prerogatives; discipleship is about changing and shaping lives by the grace of God.” Here Foss echoes Peterson and Dawn: members and ministers alike must be disciples, faithful followers of Jesus Christ. Regardless of our role in the body of Christ, either we are being formed by God’s Word or we are being deformed by culture and custom. Do churches need pastors or members? Both books help us explore these provocative questions. Neither lets us forget that all Christians must be, and make, disciples. Robert P. Mills |
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