Tonight, my Staff-Parish Relations Committee meets to compile all their comments on me for the latest and greatest evaluative instrument rolled out by the Conference.  They’ve also got to do another form called the Charge Profile where they are asked, among other things, to respond to this statement:  “The qualities and functions of pastoral ministry needed to fulfill the mission and goals of the congregation.”
Wanting to help them out a bit with these onerous tasks, and knowing my very good SPRC chair can’t type worth a darn, I thought I’d give him a head start by writing out the answer to that statement. So, here’s my best guess as to what the consensus response will be:
Would be nice to have Jesus as pastor here but he probably wouldn’t fill out the reports very well and might end up calling the church hierarchy a bunch of hypocrites and white washed sepulchers and trashing the elegant offices of those of high rank and pay.
So, putting aside that idea, we’d like a young male pastor, no more than 35, with a wife who will work full-time for the church for free as musician, children’s pastor and office help and with a lot of smart, beautiful children who will serve as church magnets in the local school district.
This young male pastor should be extremely experienced as preacher, writer, teacher, conflict manager, vision-caster, fund-raiser and administrator.
He should spend lots and lots of quality time with his wife and children.
At least 40 hours of his workweek will be spent just making contacts in the community as Apostle and Evangelist.Â
He will attend every football game, basketball game, volleyball game and track meet. He will be at all performances of local orchestras and bands and will travel with the UIL teams to their various competitions.
He will serve actively in all local service organizations, holding leadership offices as much as possible.
His sermons will be so carefully crafted that publishers will be hounding him to make books off of them, and the podcasts are downloaded around the world.Â
He also will be delighted to spend hours counseling those in trouble and leading them to greater health even as they insist on staying in unholy life patterns.
He will call on all the shut-ins and nursing home residents daily. Â
He and his family will be content to live in simple poverty, doing without many of the basics, for the sake of the Gospel and for the sake of the church budget.Â
He will also pull every weed daring to poke its ugly head on the church grounds, will plant and maintain the church vegetable garden to feed the hungry, will make sure the toilet paper is on the dispensers before every church function and will clean up the kitchen as needed.Â
He does not have to scrub the toilets—his wife can take care of that.
Since we probably can’t get that, the current pastor will be just fine for the time being.
What does your church want?
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