Finally, was able to listen to this podcast. Very interesting, but very foreign to me. God has placed me in PCA churches over the past 30 years and have been a PCA RE for over the past 20 years. Haven't seen a pastor-led church, but a Session-led church.
I'm a little curious about the interplay between churches not doing enough to help men succeed and the concerns expressed in this podcast - they seem mutually exclusive? If the church not doing enough is at least partly to blame for the woes of men's formation including dating, at minimum the church leaders should be delegating trusted people to mentor younger people on things, which means they've got the job of picking the right people, likely those who agree with them in the areas they are selected for. I'm not sure how you can get away from this kind of challenge, especially in a larger church.
I'd much rather mentorship and advice be natural in the church, but that seems the opposite of the way our culture is built. I cannot get experienced fathers to share advice or even suggest improvements.
Agreed that the lay folks in the church should do more - I've heard pastors asking for that for the last few decades, as generally only up to 20% do any sort of volunteering.
But the contexts in which lay members can provide advice though the church seems to be friendship, unofficial mentorship (which requires somehow becomimg known as wise within the church, often linked to being a church leader), official mentorship through things like youth ministry, or official ministry volunteers. I've mostly been a member of Southern Baptist and adjacent churches, maybe things are different elsewhere.
Smaller churches seem better able to grow friendship and unofficial mentorships, so maybe that is one answer. But it seems that lay members are less and less engaged, because their lives are already full and they live decently far away, so they only minimally have that capacity. Pastors and church leadership need to create ministries that serve needs that connect with the lay members, but that usually implies some kind of vetting or oversight - leading to folks who agree with the pastor in that position (or if they disagree, they've already left).
Our very large church had one ministry that has been very good in this relationship forming - marriage mentorship for premarital couples. It has led to relationships where we can speak into people's lives and also have our lives spoken into. Maybe there is a model here that could be expanded beyond marriage which would provide what seems like much needed structure and give volunteers a sense of adding value.
So, to bring it back to my point, outside of a smaller church, I've not often seen folks able to influence each other, and certainly not in a larger audience setting, even in smaller bible studies. I wish I knew how to improve the advice given without putting the advice giving on pastoral shoulders.
One other thing that didn't come up in the podcast: I wonder to what extent people turn to a pastor on matters outside his expertise for the simple reason that *they don't trust anyone else to give them advice*.
Given the way that institutions are visibly corrupt and the people in them are contemptuous of large swaths of America, this is an understandable (if mistaken) position.
This was very interesting for me to listen to, having grown up in a church that was nondenominational in its ecclesiology but otherwise nearly a polar opposite to the seeker-sensitive suburban megachurch that might be evoked by the term.
The approach of my church home was overwhelmingly expository preaching: Sunday morning services had a few songs and Communion and an hour of sitting still while the pastor taught, and the 3 evening services had only the hour of teaching. There was plenty of informal fellowship following the services, but nothing else structured. I never heard any hint of concern about church growth in the 20 years I regularly attended; if potential newcomers didn’t like it that was regarded as their problem rather than the church’s.
I’m not naming the church or pastor because he’s still preaching, I haven’t attended in 10+ years, and for all I know things have changed significantly in the time I’ve been gone. I will say that he was mentored and heavily influenced by the late R.B. Thieme, Jr., of Berachah Church in Houston, and two anecdotes approvingly shared by my church’s staff about Thieme are illustrative of the “nobody’s going to tell me how to run my church” attitude that existed:
- When Thieme took over Berachah, he asked for and received the resignation of the existing deacon board, whom he promptly replaced with his own appointees.
- A major donor once arranged a meeting with Thieme and offered suggestions as to some things that might be done differently in the church. Thieme asked his assistant how much in total the man had donated to the church, wrote him a check for that amount, and told him to get out of his office and never come back.
With that background covered, it’s striking to me that we had a lot of the same problems with clericalism, weak ecclesiology, and changing theology that the exvangelical factories had. The pastor would make offhand comments from the pulpit on issues that weren’t related to the scripture being studied, and memorably 1) in the early 1990s, preached a sermon in which he stated that he couldn’t find Scriptural grounds to say that life began at conception rather than birth (which he’s since regretted from the pulpit) and 2) in the late 2000s, rejected the dispensationalist eschatology that he’d taught since ordination.
- A major donor once arranged a meeting with Thieme and offered suggestions as to some things that might be done differently in the church. Thieme asked his assistant how much in total the man had donated to the church, wrote him a check for that amount, and told him to get out of his office and never come back.
That's absolutely insane and I totally believe it. What an abuse of power.
great interview! Lots of good insights! I wonder how many of our evan. pundits and profs are also members of local churches and involved in actively using their spiritual gifts to build their local community too.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to pick up on the neo-clericalism in Protestant and Evangelical denominations. You should no more consider an M.Div to confer expertise on current events or philosophy than it does to make a pastor an expert plumber or tax accountant. This push to confine Christian thought and philosophy to seminary educated cliques is a power play, not piety.
Finally, was able to listen to this podcast. Very interesting, but very foreign to me. God has placed me in PCA churches over the past 30 years and have been a PCA RE for over the past 20 years. Haven't seen a pastor-led church, but a Session-led church.
I'm a little curious about the interplay between churches not doing enough to help men succeed and the concerns expressed in this podcast - they seem mutually exclusive? If the church not doing enough is at least partly to blame for the woes of men's formation including dating, at minimum the church leaders should be delegating trusted people to mentor younger people on things, which means they've got the job of picking the right people, likely those who agree with them in the areas they are selected for. I'm not sure how you can get away from this kind of challenge, especially in a larger church.
I'd much rather mentorship and advice be natural in the church, but that seems the opposite of the way our culture is built. I cannot get experienced fathers to share advice or even suggest improvements.
The church != the pastor. I think we need lay Christians stepping up and leading, often separate from the church context per se.
Agreed that the lay folks in the church should do more - I've heard pastors asking for that for the last few decades, as generally only up to 20% do any sort of volunteering.
But the contexts in which lay members can provide advice though the church seems to be friendship, unofficial mentorship (which requires somehow becomimg known as wise within the church, often linked to being a church leader), official mentorship through things like youth ministry, or official ministry volunteers. I've mostly been a member of Southern Baptist and adjacent churches, maybe things are different elsewhere.
Smaller churches seem better able to grow friendship and unofficial mentorships, so maybe that is one answer. But it seems that lay members are less and less engaged, because their lives are already full and they live decently far away, so they only minimally have that capacity. Pastors and church leadership need to create ministries that serve needs that connect with the lay members, but that usually implies some kind of vetting or oversight - leading to folks who agree with the pastor in that position (or if they disagree, they've already left).
Our very large church had one ministry that has been very good in this relationship forming - marriage mentorship for premarital couples. It has led to relationships where we can speak into people's lives and also have our lives spoken into. Maybe there is a model here that could be expanded beyond marriage which would provide what seems like much needed structure and give volunteers a sense of adding value.
So, to bring it back to my point, outside of a smaller church, I've not often seen folks able to influence each other, and certainly not in a larger audience setting, even in smaller bible studies. I wish I knew how to improve the advice given without putting the advice giving on pastoral shoulders.
One other thing that didn't come up in the podcast: I wonder to what extent people turn to a pastor on matters outside his expertise for the simple reason that *they don't trust anyone else to give them advice*.
Given the way that institutions are visibly corrupt and the people in them are contemptuous of large swaths of America, this is an understandable (if mistaken) position.
This was very interesting for me to listen to, having grown up in a church that was nondenominational in its ecclesiology but otherwise nearly a polar opposite to the seeker-sensitive suburban megachurch that might be evoked by the term.
The approach of my church home was overwhelmingly expository preaching: Sunday morning services had a few songs and Communion and an hour of sitting still while the pastor taught, and the 3 evening services had only the hour of teaching. There was plenty of informal fellowship following the services, but nothing else structured. I never heard any hint of concern about church growth in the 20 years I regularly attended; if potential newcomers didn’t like it that was regarded as their problem rather than the church’s.
I’m not naming the church or pastor because he’s still preaching, I haven’t attended in 10+ years, and for all I know things have changed significantly in the time I’ve been gone. I will say that he was mentored and heavily influenced by the late R.B. Thieme, Jr., of Berachah Church in Houston, and two anecdotes approvingly shared by my church’s staff about Thieme are illustrative of the “nobody’s going to tell me how to run my church” attitude that existed:
- When Thieme took over Berachah, he asked for and received the resignation of the existing deacon board, whom he promptly replaced with his own appointees.
- A major donor once arranged a meeting with Thieme and offered suggestions as to some things that might be done differently in the church. Thieme asked his assistant how much in total the man had donated to the church, wrote him a check for that amount, and told him to get out of his office and never come back.
With that background covered, it’s striking to me that we had a lot of the same problems with clericalism, weak ecclesiology, and changing theology that the exvangelical factories had. The pastor would make offhand comments from the pulpit on issues that weren’t related to the scripture being studied, and memorably 1) in the early 1990s, preached a sermon in which he stated that he couldn’t find Scriptural grounds to say that life began at conception rather than birth (which he’s since regretted from the pulpit) and 2) in the late 2000s, rejected the dispensationalist eschatology that he’d taught since ordination.
- A major donor once arranged a meeting with Thieme and offered suggestions as to some things that might be done differently in the church. Thieme asked his assistant how much in total the man had donated to the church, wrote him a check for that amount, and told him to get out of his office and never come back.
That's absolutely insane and I totally believe it. What an abuse of power.
great interview! Lots of good insights! I wonder how many of our evan. pundits and profs are also members of local churches and involved in actively using their spiritual gifts to build their local community too.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to pick up on the neo-clericalism in Protestant and Evangelical denominations. You should no more consider an M.Div to confer expertise on current events or philosophy than it does to make a pastor an expert plumber or tax accountant. This push to confine Christian thought and philosophy to seminary educated cliques is a power play, not piety.
Yes - the MDiv is not a PhD, but it still is rigorous and useful degree, closer to the PhD than an online certificate...