Failure in Pastors

At the risk of being repetitious in regard to the subject of why pastors burnout, I want to write (yet another) post on the topic, this time based on remarks in a recent Pastors' Weekly Briefing.

H B London Jr notes three things that he's found over and over again have caused pastors to fail:


1. Limited time alone with the Lord
2. Unresolved issues at home
3. Inadequate accountability

I'm not at all surprised that he lists 'limited time alone with the Lord' first. One of the biggest problems with being a 'professional' minister is that you lose that room to have time with the Lord, whether by choice, or by circumstances, or for whatever other reason. Lay people have the same problem, but in a very general sense it may affect them somewhat less.

London adds a 'starter' list of other things that cause problems, particularly in the moral area:

• Carelessness
• Counselling too much
• Fatigue or burnout
• Spiritual defeat
• Unresolved issues from childhood
• Entitlement
• Sin

If these don't sound familiar, I'd be surprised. And if you're suffering in any of these areas, get someone to help. You can't do it on your own.

Dave Tomlinson in New Zealand

Dave Tomlinson comes to Wellington
(these details come from a joint newsletter put out by Presbyterian Youth Ministry and World Vision).

World Vision have brought Dave Tomlinson, an Anglican priest in London, over to New Zealand for a fleeting visit. Dave will give two keynote talks on "re-emerging church" on Thursday 10 September, 9 - 12:30 pm @ St John's in the City, Wellington. Door charge $10.

Who is he?
Dave wrote The Post-evangelical, founded "Holy Joes" church in a pub, and has recently published the excellent book, Re-enchanting Christianity, which follows on from The Post-evangelical in that it explores ways of being faithful to the Gospel/Bible for those who may be post-church or wondering about their faith. Bible, prayer, mission, theology, church, community, are some of the areas explored. Now he is the vicar of St Luke's in North London, an Anglican parish church that seeks to combine tradition with contemporary culture. He is married to Pat, and has three children and three grandchildren. Dave's website has more information about his work and ministry.

Re-emerging Church?

Mark Pierson, from World Vision, uses the term "re-emerging church", which he prefers to "emerging church" because it better reflects a desire to see existing churches resourced to re-discover their place in the culture, rather than feel that something new is going to come along and take them over. Dave has done this at St Luke's Anglican in London and his new book reflects this practice.

Dave's two keynote talks:

Church without borders
In a fractured and fragmented world where many starve for relationships and belonging, how can we build more open and inclusive communities? How can we create churches that people want to come to? How can we connect effectively with churchless spirituality?

Identity and change in an age of uncertainty
How do we listen and respond to what is happening in the world, whilst continuing to listen, and remain faithful, to our tradition? What do we let go of, and what do we hold on to? And how can our traditions and rituals be reconfigured and re-spirited to meet new needs?

Just when you thought the secularists had it made

Long considered an aggressively secular city, London has quietly become one of Britain's most Christian areas, going from the least observant region in Britain in 1979 to the second most observant today. Much of that resurgence in piety is the result of the city's expanding and devout immigrant population. But there is also a growing number of young, highly educated and moneyed Londoners who are turning to the church. Huge numbers (some 4,000) of these attend Holy Trinity Brompton, where Nicky Gumbel still presides over the Alpha course. The average age is 27, and judging by the offerings ($US7 million last year alone) many of these new Christians are well-heeled.

Read more about this surge of faith here.

It would be interesting to know where the stats for 'least observant' to 'second most observant' come from. Unfortunately the article doesn't give us any indication. In 2001, for the first time, the UK Census collected information about religious identity in England, Wales and Scotland. The subject had been included in previous Censuses in Northern Ireland.

Just over three-quarters of the UK population reported having a religion. More than seven out of ten people said that their religion was Christian (72 per cent). After Christianity, Islam was the most common faith with nearly 3 per cent describing their religion as Muslim (1.6 million).

Moving on

Television watching is on the decline, newspapers are folding (if you'll excuse the pun) around the world, and magazines come and go at the drop of a hat (not helped by the fact that many magazine owners think the reading public merely wants wads of glossy advertising when they buy a magazine).
The culprit (but not the only culprit) is the Internet. News is free and much more widespread; opinion is available from one extreme to the other; television programmes are watchable when you want to see them, and so are movies.
The Christian News website notes:
What does all this mean for the Christian community here in NZ and around the world? Rather than the gloom of failing newspapers, the internet has been a boon for Christian ministries. Finally we can get our content into the marketplace of ideas and compete fairly in cyberspace, something that has not been possible in newspapers or TV previously. Christians now have access to everything from written articles to MP3 seminary lecture courses to full video sermons, lectures, debates, and numerous fascinating other cutting edge materials, and all by the finest scholars in the world. We now have a playing field with the secular world that is more level than anything for a long time.
The times are certainly changing (and not just The Times of London). But is the Internet still basically the toy of wealthier nations? How many third world countries have real access to it?

Apropos of the above, I've just come across the Alltop site again. It was something that popped up sometime ago (I've written about it on one of my blogs at some time in history) but I'd forgotten about it. There are innumerable versions of it, but for those on this blog the interesting ones might be the All the Top Christianity News, or the News for pastors, ministers and church staff (which goes under the basic heading of 'Church').
Alltop provides a work-in-progress type list of blogs, sites and other sundry Internet paraphenalia that are 'hot' at the moment. The aforesaid blogs etc may well drop off in time, depending on their level of interest. While they're on Alltop, they show up as separate sections within the page, and, by running your mouse over the top of a line, you can see what the post is about.
It's totally time-consuming, but informative. Don't do it when you're supposed to be doing something more important.

Innovative Church

Two ways of doing mission that have an air of innovation about them. We were alerted to both of these by Christian World Mission newsletter, dated 4.9.08

1.Church-goers in London's financial district walk up a gangplank for their weekly services in a floating church. A converted freight barge nestled amidst the skyscrapers of London's Docklands, St Peter's Church in Canary Wharf is the only boat-style church in Britain.
The barge was the idea of a handful of Christians working in Canary Wharf, who met at different venues to take part in Bible readings. Following this year's global credit crunch, church ministers have reported a significant rise in attendance amongst bankers, analysts and other financial workers at the lunchtime services.

2. Stressed-out London commuters were offered a moment of quiet reflection when the Church of England published a special prayer in their morning newspapers. The prayer for a "Moody Monday" was included in the free Metro newspaper after a survey by the church revealed September was a particularly stressful time for UK workers.
Of the 1,000 adults questioned, one in three want to make an improvement to their lifestyle and are expected to be "very busy" over the coming months. One in eight said they were "dreading" going back to work.
The prayer, which targeted 1.4 million commuters, asked for God’s help in dealing with everyday life and encouraged people to make the best of every new day. It also encouraged people to take part in Back to Church Sunday on 28 September.
The prayer printed in Monday’s edition of the Metro reads:

Dear God,
You know me. Don't you? I’m not just a person on a bus or a train. I’m not just another face on CCTV; or just another login name. I’m me, and I have stuff going on.
Love life issues; bills to pay. Egos at work to deal with; an overflowing inbox.
So please, give me strength. Guide me to focus on what's really important. And help me make the most of every moment of this new day in this new month.
Thank you.
Amen

Churchquake

In the most recent Pastors' Weekly Briefing, H B London writes:

I have just completed reading a book by David T. Olson entitled, The American Church in Crisis. In the final portion of his work, he says, "The American church needs to be 'forever building.' Building is the church's response to God's missional promptings. But the greatest need of the church is 'being restored,' which is a spiritual and supernatural act of God." (Zondervan, 2008, p. 221)

The American Church in Crisis is filled with graphs and charts to support his conclusion that the church does need to keep building and find restoration. For instance, Mr. Olson refutes the church attendance research of both Barna and Gallup. He does not believe between 37% and 43% of Americans go to church each week. His research of nearly 300,000 churches gives evidence that the total attending services is closer to 52 million each week (versus over 100 million), and that instead of 40% attending each week, it is more like 19.5%. Just check out your neighborhood some Sunday.

These are the opening two paragraphs of his review of the book. The rest can be read here.

There is relevance for NZ readers in terms of some comments made regarding those who attend church as children, and don't as adults.

The Olympic Creed

Rowland Croucher wrote: A Uniting Church magazine asked me to write something about the Olympic Creed (below). Feel free, my preaching-friends, to steal it if you want!

Who was the American football coach who said: 'Winning or losing is not just a matter of life and death: it's more important than that'? Addiction to winning is not only a capitalist phenomenon, either. Remember past East German and Chinese drug scandals?

The Olympic Creed says: 'The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.' Google tells me Pierre de Coubertin got the idea from a speech given by the Bishop of Pennsylvania, Ethelbert Talbot, at a service for Olympic champions during the 1908 London Games.

You can find the rest of this sermon here. If you have problems accessing this site, drop me an email (address on my profile).