Ministry Notes

Depicts the life of the early church through its leaders (Paul, Peter, Barnabas, Silas, Priscilla, Aquila, Damaris, Mary).
Leadership linked to images of saints who provide accountability for pastors.

Often borrows leadership images from culture (CEO, psychotherapeutic guru, media-savvy hipster) rather than scripture.
Challenge: find metaphors that embody the Christian vocation of leadership.
Uncritical borrowing can be detrimental to Christian leadership.
Modern pastors work with received images of Christian leadership (Henry Ward Beecher, Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, Charles G. Finney, Billy Graham, Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Emerson Fosdick, Georgia Harkness, Carter Heyward, Fulton Sheen).
Clerical biographies and autobiographies can be inspiring; examples include:
- Fosdick’s The Living of These Days.
- Aimee Semple McPherson’s life.
- Barbara Brown Taylor’s The Preaching Life.
- Reinhold Niebuhr’s Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic.
- Will Campbell’s Brother to a Dragonfly.
- Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor: A Memoir.

Brief survey of images influencing ministerial imaginations in the late 20th century.

Image of Christian leadership exemplified by Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, and Joel Osteen.
Media-saturated culture provides opportunities for preachers to use media for the gospel.
Critics may demean media stars with images of Elmer Gantry, but the Protestant Reformation was aided by the printing press.
Justification: "If Jesus had television, he would have used it."
Cost of TV time leads to financial appeals and charges of impropriety.
Robert Schuller turned the church into a TV studio (Crystal Cathedral).
No medium is neutral; it shapes the message.
Entertainment culture can consume Christian worship.
Sincerity of media preachers can be only apparent.
Virtual church is a disembodied church, changing the form of the church and the pastor's role.
Television entertains; the gospel transforms.
Connection between media use and the "Prosperity Gospel".
Parish pastors unconsciously adopt mannerisms of TV preachers.
Pastor as performer supersedes roles of teacher, priest, and leader.
Every church can broadcast services online; every pastor can be a media star.
Accessibility of the web magnifies problems and potential of TV ministries.
Pastors must be astute practitioners of electronic media.
The web is a medium for evangelistic outreach, but it can distort the message.

Martin Luther King Jr. remembered as a political leader.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer depicted as a political opponent of the Nazis.
Legacy: pastor as embodiment of "public theology," negotiating between the gospel and political/economic power structures.
Billy Graham was a trusted counselor to American presidents.
Danger: pastors can be manipulated by the politically powerful.
Even kings require confessors.
Public, political pastors may imply that real ministry is elsewhere other than the church.
Risk of selling out to worldly solutions.
Girolamo Savonarola challenged Lorenzo the Magnificent and was burned at the stake.
Hugh Latimer pressed Edward VI to be faithful.
Court preachers have a dubious history.
Thomas à Becket's ministry to King Henry II cost him his life.
Public figures argue there is a price for pastors who focus solely on their congregations.
Who defines which world matters?
Satan offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, but Jesus refused (Luke 4:6).
The cross is the normative Christian means of "politics".

Culture reduces all problems to sickness.
Desire to feel better, not to be saved or changed.
Harry Emerson Fosdick: preaching is “counseling on a group scale.”
Pastor as therapist evokes spiritually inclined sentiments.
Pastor cares "in the name of Christ," setting different goals than secular therapists.
Christian faith may define "a well-functioning personality" differently from contemporary mental health definitions.
Historian noted Martin Luther King Jr.’s attempts to win his father’s praise.
Old preacher: "Thank God, Martin never got well adjusted."
Dissonance with the world, holy discontent, is fertile ground for prophets.
Truth is superior to mental health.
Without theological control, care lapses into secular goals.
Care becomes similar to secular therapy.
Pastor becomes a soother of anxieties, rather than a caller to salvation.
Stanley Hauerwas: contemporary pastor is “a quivering mass of availability.”
Practicing "promiscuous ministry" leads to insatiable needs.
Church becomes a place to feed egos.
Capitalist culture encourages "meeting our needs" without judgment.
Pastors must do more than simply "meet people’s needs.”
Does the gospel concern itself with “meeting people’s needs?