Creech on pastors

This post is from the defunct blog “Dying Church”

Alan Creech on what pastors do:

I'm thinking if we're going to reinvent the thing, let's just reinvent the whole damn thing and not just the structural outer shell. I mean full-time, paid staff pastors who preach every Sunday and do pretty much all the ministry and stress themselves silly over every little thing in the community – yada, yada. I think this will kill us if we keep this up. It's beginning to happen, but we've really got to reinvision what it means to be a pastor, leader, elder, whatever in our new churches. I don't think we can afford to keep the old pastoral paradigm alive any more. We can't do that and expect to happen what we want to happen in these communities. Leadership – yes. Shepherding – yes, OK, fine. Are there people who are gifted to teach, etc.? Obviously. Are these the only ones? Are these folks (US, ME) the only ones who do anything? Maybe we all think we've gotten past that – that we really do believe in "every member a minister" and all that. I think we are starting to get there – we need to put this thing into drive, though, and get the hell on down the road. I do think this idea – some are talking about it – Peterson, Hunter, etc. – about the pastor/elder as spiritual director is a good one. One who is there to help equip everyone for real ministry (have we heard THAT a million and a half times!?). Right, not the one who does the bills and stresses over everything and hires and fires people and counsels absolutely everyone, solving every problem. Not that. I quit if it's that.