On the Cost and Grace of Parish ministry - Jason Goroncy

As of today, Jason Goroncy from Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership has just posted the 14th episode in an ongoing series called, On the Cost and Grace of Parish Ministry.

I've been keeping up with these since they began, but wasn't sure how many were to come, so haven't notified the readers of this blog until now. This is a superb series of articles on all manner of things related to the series title: today's focuses on suffering, and in spite of its length (it ran out to 14 pages as a word document, including the pictures) is worth sitting down and reading carefully.

At the bottom of the latest post are links to all the other posts. Take an hour or so out of your time and read these.

The Postmodern Parish

Discerning the shape of the emerging church will be an inexact process, especially for those of us who still have one foot firmly planted back in the old modernist and Christendom paradigm and are only beginning to understand the impact of the new postmodern and post-Christian context for ministry. Because that process will often be confusing, we need the Holy Spirit to lead us through it. If we could rely only on our own bumbling efforts at discerning the shape of the emerging church, we would be in trouble. As a friend once described the way a new pastor is called to lead a congregation, "It's so crazy, you have to believe the Holy Spirit is in charge; or you'd go nuts!" In a similar way, we would be tempted to despair in our attmepts to discover the emerging church, were we not confident that the Spirit is at work in and through us.

The Postmodern Parish - Jim Kitchens - pg 41. Alban Institute, 2003