Gottesdienst Online: Specialization is for Bureaucrats
I don't know how many of you listened to the CTSFW and CSL call/vicarage services. Fr. Curtis's critique is spot-on. Anne and I were disgusted and shut the video off for the very reasons he states below: Gottesdienst Online: Specialization is for Bureaucrats
A couple of thoughts from listening to call day services at Concordia Seminary - St. Louis last week. 1. It's no wonder that many of our pastors simply do not understand church as a place for reverence. There was the usual mini-stand up routine from the sermon delivered by a DP. I'm almost numbed to that, so didn't really notice. But then during the actual calling forward of the candidates, it was one constant joke after another. ... 2. Specialization is for insects and other invertebrates. A great many of these calls were to associate positions "for assimilation," "for youth," "for left-handed ministry" etc. Big parishes need more than one pastor - check. But I think we should hope that they will be allowed to, well, be pastors. One church I looked up was calling their fourth pastor. They already have a senior pastor, a pastor for outreach, and a visitation pastor. How truncated will this fourth pastor's experience be? He won't have to go on many, if any, shut in and sick calls: there's a visitation pastor for that. He won't have to take many, if any, non-Lutherans through catechesis, there is an outreach pastor for that. With four pastors - how often will this new pastor get to preach? Celebrate the Lord's Supper? Baptize? I've served as an associate at a large parish. I understand the pressure to specialize, to focus on one area. There is so much to be done that it appears that specialization is a necessity. But that's all the more reason that a special effort needs to be made at large parishes to ensure that each pastor is actually pastoring... Why? Because a pastor needs the whole gamut to be good at any one aspect. How will you know how to teach your confirmands until you have seen their grandmothers alone with their thoughts in the nursing home? How will you know how to "assimilate" someone into the parish's life until you've gotten your hands dirty in a church council meeting and felt out the fissures of who is angry with whom? How will you know how to preach at a baptism until you have watched someone die alongside his family? A pastor should be able to write a sermon, stop a meeting and reconcile warring parties, preach off the cuff, comfort a child whose dog has died, commune 12 people with the last thimble's worth of Blood in the chalice, drink a beer with the trustees, call a sinner to repentance, chant High Mass, say he is sorry, speak Low Mass, teach a youth group, plan a strategic vision, genuflect on the correct knee, hold the hand of a dying man, manage the parish alms, speak comfort to a woman who has miscarried, and build a wall.
