PECULIER PUB

My friend Bill Clark and I meet every Thursday at the Peculier (yes, it's spelled wrong on purpose) Pub on Bleecker St. to talk about life, culture and ministry. Bill is a professor at NYU and is a pretty big authority in the field of political science. He is brilliant when talking about the church.

One thought he brought up that stuck with me was how our job as pastors is not to do the ministry but to empower other people to do ministry. The people in the church should be doing far more "ministry" than the pastors. I feel like many churches that I have experienced do not create the chemistry to produce this mindset. The mindset is, "well, you should talk to the pastor" or "let's get some interns to cover these job roles." The jobs that interns are taking here in NYC should be being done by members of the church rather than people we hire from different parts of the country. The two leadership journey interns we got for college ministry are really taking roles that shoudl have been filled by people in the church. But now these people are getting ripped off because they are having their opportunities to participate in ministry minimized.

When people decide to do ministry they think of becoming pastors when really pastors do less ministry than people that work regular jobs. We spend less time with people outside the church (mostly due to other people having jobs outside of the church). The question pastors should be asking is not "how can I do ministry in this church and community?" but rather, "how can I help these 200, 400, 2000 people to do ministry in this church and this community. 2000 ministers go a lot further in the community than 4 or 5 pastors can. It makes sense that some smaller churches don't grow because the pastor won't let it. He's made the church think that he is the one who does the ministry and a church can never grow past how many people this man can know. Any thoughts? Man, the things you can think of over a cold Belhaven Scottish Ale. MMMMMM.