There are times that I feel down, but there are times like now... that I feel, that I know that God is sooo good that if I had any control in this life that it would be in shambles... if it were up to me I would be married, but since it were up to me I would already be divorced. if it were up to me I would already be pastoring, but my control means that the church would be in shambles. Sister, my God is bigger than me, than my wants or needs... and ultimately, He is good.
may my prayer be this, that you and I would give up our own control. May you and I give up to God, control so that we might have the ultimate promise that God has for us. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I say something to you?
I preach it to you as much as I preach it to me. WAIT! it hurts to fall asleep every night by yourself, it hurts to watch your favourite movies and not have people to share your joy with you. It definitely hurts to see couples, and think "what's wrong with me?" "what am I possibly doing wrong?"... there may be nothing that you are doing wrong, and there is definitely nothing wrong with you. You aren't ready yet, I am not ready yet.
I would like to say one last thing. To whom it may concern, I'm waiting for you, my bride. May you know I'm getting to where you are as fast as I can, and I am waiting for you as you are waiting for me. Know that I long for your embrace, and that someday we can share it.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
...let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles... Heb. 12:1
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I write this with a passionate heart, and I hope that you might enjoy. Bear with me for as I write these words they are the first that I am seeing them, and not carefully thought out nor are they premeditated, but they are simply word vomitted onto this page.
May I say this that there are times in my life in which I feel as though I am swimming in a sea, a sea of modernity and a sea of technology and the like. I often try to defend technology and I deep down I don't believe technology is evil and I can go into greater detail on that at a later date. But this here, is something that I must say. Sometimes I wish to throw off all of my technology as we must cast away the sin that so easily entangles. I listen to the words of hymns and choruses that have long since surpassed my years and I am brought into focus on the one who made us, He made you and He made me, and in light of that Great powerful being I wish to throw away everything that is not God. I want to turn my eyes upon him and live in His light forever and ever.
you might be thinking "how does this relate to your quest lucas", and it is with this that I will inform you. First off let me say that in light of my quest I need to be prepared. with the charge that is set before me as a man of God I need to be fully aware and fully ready to manage a household and, as it is so eloquently put "be the head of the household". In order for me to have and be a husband, which ultimately is the goal of my quest, the end result, the end to the means of this blog, I need to be prepared. There is a quote, "the heart of a woman should be so engulfed with God that a Man's heart has to be equally engulfed in order to find it" (or something to that effect). That is true, we need to, as individuals, search out the heart of God and bury ourselves in it so much so that in order to find our mate they must also be so buried in God's heart.
Hope that helps, inspires, and gives you a point of uplifting.
Lucas
I write this with a passionate heart, and I hope that you might enjoy. Bear with me for as I write these words they are the first that I am seeing them, and not carefully thought out nor are they premeditated, but they are simply word vomitted onto this page.
May I say this that there are times in my life in which I feel as though I am swimming in a sea, a sea of modernity and a sea of technology and the like. I often try to defend technology and I deep down I don't believe technology is evil and I can go into greater detail on that at a later date. But this here, is something that I must say. Sometimes I wish to throw off all of my technology as we must cast away the sin that so easily entangles. I listen to the words of hymns and choruses that have long since surpassed my years and I am brought into focus on the one who made us, He made you and He made me, and in light of that Great powerful being I wish to throw away everything that is not God. I want to turn my eyes upon him and live in His light forever and ever.
you might be thinking "how does this relate to your quest lucas", and it is with this that I will inform you. First off let me say that in light of my quest I need to be prepared. with the charge that is set before me as a man of God I need to be fully aware and fully ready to manage a household and, as it is so eloquently put "be the head of the household". In order for me to have and be a husband, which ultimately is the goal of my quest, the end result, the end to the means of this blog, I need to be prepared. There is a quote, "the heart of a woman should be so engulfed with God that a Man's heart has to be equally engulfed in order to find it" (or something to that effect). That is true, we need to, as individuals, search out the heart of God and bury ourselves in it so much so that in order to find our mate they must also be so buried in God's heart.
Hope that helps, inspires, and gives you a point of uplifting.
Lucas
Saturday, September 25, 2010
A theology on self-stimulation
Dear All (or one, depending on who actually reads this)
I have put together a thought, I have entitled this a theology on self-stimulation, and I need to make a few disclaimers. The first disclaimer is that I have not done any biblical study on this first. That being said I would like anyone to point out any heresy that is evident from Biblical text. The second disclaimer is that you need to have some maturity when reading this. I will try and write it as professionally as possible and try to keep it appropriate, but if it does stray from that I need you as the reader to press on, or take a break from reading it. So, here goes!
suppose for a moment that a young Christian man were to go behind closed doors and to practice some self-stimulation. The general consensus of the Christian community would deem that act as sinning. I would be liable to agree with you, but after struggling with the temptation for some time I have had to really think about things and I have come to a conclusion and reformed my theology on this matter.
Suppose that same man were to go behind closed doors, and have no external stimulus with him. Let us suppose that he were also able to keep his mind from thinking of something immoral (a naked female body). Let us continue to suppose that he were doing it not for the pleasure aspect but to satisfy a bodily urge (possibly an urge that was distracting him from doing something worthwhile such as study the word of God). Now I realize that already a lot of you have thought "well that's got to be impossible", and I have to say that for most men it is. However I write this to stretch your mind a little bit and to make you aware the it is possible to achieve.
The above man under the above conditions, I have no reason, and no evidence to convict that man of sinning. I however do not know what goes through his head or his heart, but the point still stands that this young man is not sinning. However I would like to introduce the point in which I will stretch your mind. There are two significant factors to this particular situation and there are two specific things which formulate the basis of this new theology, and will hopefully bring new hope for the young man struggling in this area and trying to serve God with all of himself, and keep himself pure.
The first point to my theology is as follows. I reference the idea of abstaining. I bring to mind the book "celebration of discipline" by Richard Foster, and I also take this time to give a plug as this is an excellent book for all Christians! But if I am not mistaken in His book he talks about an idea of abstaining from something enjoyable for the purpose of disciplining ones self in worship to God. Similarly to lenting or fasting. We see this idea all throughout both the New and Old Testament as people would worship God by fasting from food, and from abstaining from sweet things for a period of time in worship to God. This is no different, if that same young man that was mentioned above would abstain, it would be an act of worship. He could go into the room and partake in something pleasurable but not sin, however his abstaining from it would bring glory to God.
This however is not the only thing that this theology has going for it. I bring to the table the second point of my theology. This same young man trying to keep himself pure for marriage also, in worshiping God elevates the purpose and the meaning of an Orgasm. Therefore the Satisfaction that is attained by both partners within their marriage covenant will be holy and pleasing in the Lord's sight. The gift that he brings to the marriage supper will be a gift of sacrifice, and a gift of honor to his bride.
This has been my theology on self-stimulation or masturbation, I hope you liked it... please let me know of any inaccuracies.
Lucas
I have put together a thought, I have entitled this a theology on self-stimulation, and I need to make a few disclaimers. The first disclaimer is that I have not done any biblical study on this first. That being said I would like anyone to point out any heresy that is evident from Biblical text. The second disclaimer is that you need to have some maturity when reading this. I will try and write it as professionally as possible and try to keep it appropriate, but if it does stray from that I need you as the reader to press on, or take a break from reading it. So, here goes!
suppose for a moment that a young Christian man were to go behind closed doors and to practice some self-stimulation. The general consensus of the Christian community would deem that act as sinning. I would be liable to agree with you, but after struggling with the temptation for some time I have had to really think about things and I have come to a conclusion and reformed my theology on this matter.
Suppose that same man were to go behind closed doors, and have no external stimulus with him. Let us suppose that he were also able to keep his mind from thinking of something immoral (a naked female body). Let us continue to suppose that he were doing it not for the pleasure aspect but to satisfy a bodily urge (possibly an urge that was distracting him from doing something worthwhile such as study the word of God). Now I realize that already a lot of you have thought "well that's got to be impossible", and I have to say that for most men it is. However I write this to stretch your mind a little bit and to make you aware the it is possible to achieve.
The above man under the above conditions, I have no reason, and no evidence to convict that man of sinning. I however do not know what goes through his head or his heart, but the point still stands that this young man is not sinning. However I would like to introduce the point in which I will stretch your mind. There are two significant factors to this particular situation and there are two specific things which formulate the basis of this new theology, and will hopefully bring new hope for the young man struggling in this area and trying to serve God with all of himself, and keep himself pure.
The first point to my theology is as follows. I reference the idea of abstaining. I bring to mind the book "celebration of discipline" by Richard Foster, and I also take this time to give a plug as this is an excellent book for all Christians! But if I am not mistaken in His book he talks about an idea of abstaining from something enjoyable for the purpose of disciplining ones self in worship to God. Similarly to lenting or fasting. We see this idea all throughout both the New and Old Testament as people would worship God by fasting from food, and from abstaining from sweet things for a period of time in worship to God. This is no different, if that same young man that was mentioned above would abstain, it would be an act of worship. He could go into the room and partake in something pleasurable but not sin, however his abstaining from it would bring glory to God.
This however is not the only thing that this theology has going for it. I bring to the table the second point of my theology. This same young man trying to keep himself pure for marriage also, in worshiping God elevates the purpose and the meaning of an Orgasm. Therefore the Satisfaction that is attained by both partners within their marriage covenant will be holy and pleasing in the Lord's sight. The gift that he brings to the marriage supper will be a gift of sacrifice, and a gift of honor to his bride.
This has been my theology on self-stimulation or masturbation, I hope you liked it... please let me know of any inaccuracies.
Lucas
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Heart, a muscle?
Well let me posit something before I begin this blog. I shall posit this idea and then suppose possible outcomes. We know that the heart is a muscle but we don’t treat the metaphorical heart as a muscle at all, we treat the metaphorical heart as if it’s a stone, which is ironic because the idea of the heart is contrasted completely with the way we see the heart. For it is only when we think about the heart, that we understand the fluidity, and the softness people understand to be love. Suppose for a second however that the heart is a muscle, like your calf muscle.
If we were to take a look at the untrained calf muscle, it would not be able to lift 500 lbs. This is simply a fact. Let us imagine the heart in the same way, for just as the untrained calf muscle doesn’t have the capacity to lift 500 lbs, the untrained heart doesn’t have the capacity to love unconditionally. It is an unfortunate side effect to the fallen state that we are in (don’t quote my theology on that, it is kind of shady I know, but it would stand to reason that if we were not in a fallen state we could love unconditionally as the father does, for we would take His example, but for now we have to train our hearts to do so). Just as you train your calf muscle by gradually lifting more and more weight, you can train your heart muscle to love more and more.
So, I myself am a Christian, and I’m not ashamed of it. So I have a love for God in my heart that I cannot compare to a love I have for anything else, and this love is above everything else. However, when I was in high school I got into a relationship with a girl. Now, my heart at this point is very untrained, to try and relate it to the calf muscle I probably could lift about 10 lbs. This isn’t very strong at all, and as a matter of fact I could barely love God and my parents simultaneously because of how untrained my heart is. But all adolescents know this feeling, the first love that they ever have. How even though you get to see them all day you feel an aching in your heart to be away from them for even a moment, every breath feels meaningless and every action feels pointless without them there. Although the individual who is on the inside of this feels the euphoric bliss of this love they don’t realize that it is slowly consuming them, and if they have good friends and family they will be helped to understand what is going on really (thankfully I’m one of the lucky few with a wonderful family and excellent support base of friends, some of which I have to this day).
From the outside this euphoria is an all consuming fire, and because the heart is so untrained you seem to block out everyone else and everything else out of your life. Yet, like all muscles this new found love settles in, and your heart begins to grow, so that you can begin to incorporate all facets of your life once again (your inward, upward, and outward relationships). I think at this point I have labored the analogy enough for you to understand what exactly it is saying, but I want to expand some of the application outward into other facets of life.
The other facets of life is to say that there is life after relationships (dating relationships), and you need to have a spot in your heart for those things too. Now, let me fast forward a couple of years, to the end of the relationship. At this point the muscle known as my heart had grown (quite considerably), not only did I have enough love in my heart for God, friends, family, and a girlfriend, but I was also developing a love for the world that we are in (I’m not talking about a ‘be in the world but not of it’ idea, but the world with the broken heart that God has for the world we are in). There was a lot of heart ache in the mean time, but what it meant was that like any other muscle you have to tear your muscle in order for it to grow and develop strength. But as I was saying, we fast forward to the end of the relationship. The relationship is now over and there is a huge gaping hole in my heart where this relationship which once took up so much space in my heart was now empty. The question is what do we do with that hole? And the simple answer is that whatever we do, we must fill it somehow.
This is where it gets really interesting, because as we grow, and we stretch our heart our heart has to mend. When someone is body building they have two ways that they can work their muscles, and this is the two ways in which the heart can mend and grow. The first one is for bulk. The way this is done is for the body builder to rip and tear the muscle but not properly care for the muscle afterward, the results in a huge muscle but in very little function of that muscle because it is so big, the individual loses all flexibility. This is one of the ways the heart muscle can heal as well. Let us say that this method of healing is to fill that hole with things that don’t matter. I’m not going to say that what we put in that hole is harmful, because there are lots of things that can go in that hole and many of which are good. But the problem with this type of healing is that we fill that void with only one thing, which consumes our life and grows beyond the hole that was originally there, not to mention it doesn’t fill us near as well as we had wanted it to. The second form of muscle growth, is when a body builder properly takes care of the muscle, by stretching it out before and after. This results in a strong muscle without the loss of flexibility and function, this kind of muscle is often deceiving because the person may look strong, but in fact are stronger than they appear to be.
To bring this in terms of the heart we would say that this would be to first seek God’s face about the void in our lives. We would ask him how to fill it and what to fill it with. I’m not going to go so far as many Christians would and tell you that you MUST fill it with Jesus. That runs just as many risks as filling it with anything else. Heresy though it may sound, I mean to say that if you use Jesus to fill the hole then you are trying to force Jesus into the hole that he was never meant to be forced into. When you seek God’s face about what to put in that hole, you are essentially asking God to surround your heart so that everything you do would reflect Jesus, and in doing so you will become a light unto the world you are in, because whatever you do would turn those around you until the creator of heaven and earth.
The thing that I found when I was faced with that hole is two things. I began to look inward, and I filled part of that hole with myself. Narcissistic though it may sound, I did not focus entirely on myself but I took time to figure out who I am, and I realized that is a journey that will never end (but in order to know where I’m going I have to know where I am, and doing that is a matter of learning who I am). The other thing I tried to fill that section up with, is the love that I felt when I began the last relationship. This is my personal blog and so I will tell you personally that I “fell in love” with too many girls. I did it in a way that I would consider noble, but the problem I found was that, none of them panned out. Part of it was that I picked the wrong girls (you need to take time to find out who they are before you jump to the altar, and wedding bells), the second mistake I made was that I didn’t give things enough time (girls are like slow cookers, guys are like microwaves… and even though I don’t like the context under which I first heard that, it is true… give girls time to warm up to you, before you nuke them!), and the third and most importantly, I was using my attraction to girls to fill a void that only God could fill.
Now! The question is “where am I at now?” the answer is simple. I am in love, just like I have been so many times before. And this time I’m pretty sure I’ve learned my lesson (even though I have many, many more to learn), because there is nobody on this earth that I am in love with. The subject of my love and affection is life its self. It isn’t easy to get here, and it has taken a long time. I don’t have a formula for you guys, but I do want to say this. I am in a location physically, spiritually, emotionally, and familially that I am content with. I am growing, and improving, my heart is growing like the muscle it is, but I am giving it time to stretch like I should. I am definitely in love, and I’m in love with lady life. Fellas, it’s a great thing to be here. Ladies, if you can find a man who is in this place, he will be better for you (not to mention the fact that you should attempt to be here too). Last but not least, I’m not saying that my life is perfect, nor am I saying everyone should be like me. What I am saying is this, you should aim to be at peace with God, and have joy, beyond happiness for happiness comes and goes, but joy will remain through it all. Peace and Joy in Jesus name, that is what I’m talking about… get into it!
If we were to take a look at the untrained calf muscle, it would not be able to lift 500 lbs. This is simply a fact. Let us imagine the heart in the same way, for just as the untrained calf muscle doesn’t have the capacity to lift 500 lbs, the untrained heart doesn’t have the capacity to love unconditionally. It is an unfortunate side effect to the fallen state that we are in (don’t quote my theology on that, it is kind of shady I know, but it would stand to reason that if we were not in a fallen state we could love unconditionally as the father does, for we would take His example, but for now we have to train our hearts to do so). Just as you train your calf muscle by gradually lifting more and more weight, you can train your heart muscle to love more and more.
So, I myself am a Christian, and I’m not ashamed of it. So I have a love for God in my heart that I cannot compare to a love I have for anything else, and this love is above everything else. However, when I was in high school I got into a relationship with a girl. Now, my heart at this point is very untrained, to try and relate it to the calf muscle I probably could lift about 10 lbs. This isn’t very strong at all, and as a matter of fact I could barely love God and my parents simultaneously because of how untrained my heart is. But all adolescents know this feeling, the first love that they ever have. How even though you get to see them all day you feel an aching in your heart to be away from them for even a moment, every breath feels meaningless and every action feels pointless without them there. Although the individual who is on the inside of this feels the euphoric bliss of this love they don’t realize that it is slowly consuming them, and if they have good friends and family they will be helped to understand what is going on really (thankfully I’m one of the lucky few with a wonderful family and excellent support base of friends, some of which I have to this day).
From the outside this euphoria is an all consuming fire, and because the heart is so untrained you seem to block out everyone else and everything else out of your life. Yet, like all muscles this new found love settles in, and your heart begins to grow, so that you can begin to incorporate all facets of your life once again (your inward, upward, and outward relationships). I think at this point I have labored the analogy enough for you to understand what exactly it is saying, but I want to expand some of the application outward into other facets of life.
The other facets of life is to say that there is life after relationships (dating relationships), and you need to have a spot in your heart for those things too. Now, let me fast forward a couple of years, to the end of the relationship. At this point the muscle known as my heart had grown (quite considerably), not only did I have enough love in my heart for God, friends, family, and a girlfriend, but I was also developing a love for the world that we are in (I’m not talking about a ‘be in the world but not of it’ idea, but the world with the broken heart that God has for the world we are in). There was a lot of heart ache in the mean time, but what it meant was that like any other muscle you have to tear your muscle in order for it to grow and develop strength. But as I was saying, we fast forward to the end of the relationship. The relationship is now over and there is a huge gaping hole in my heart where this relationship which once took up so much space in my heart was now empty. The question is what do we do with that hole? And the simple answer is that whatever we do, we must fill it somehow.
This is where it gets really interesting, because as we grow, and we stretch our heart our heart has to mend. When someone is body building they have two ways that they can work their muscles, and this is the two ways in which the heart can mend and grow. The first one is for bulk. The way this is done is for the body builder to rip and tear the muscle but not properly care for the muscle afterward, the results in a huge muscle but in very little function of that muscle because it is so big, the individual loses all flexibility. This is one of the ways the heart muscle can heal as well. Let us say that this method of healing is to fill that hole with things that don’t matter. I’m not going to say that what we put in that hole is harmful, because there are lots of things that can go in that hole and many of which are good. But the problem with this type of healing is that we fill that void with only one thing, which consumes our life and grows beyond the hole that was originally there, not to mention it doesn’t fill us near as well as we had wanted it to. The second form of muscle growth, is when a body builder properly takes care of the muscle, by stretching it out before and after. This results in a strong muscle without the loss of flexibility and function, this kind of muscle is often deceiving because the person may look strong, but in fact are stronger than they appear to be.
To bring this in terms of the heart we would say that this would be to first seek God’s face about the void in our lives. We would ask him how to fill it and what to fill it with. I’m not going to go so far as many Christians would and tell you that you MUST fill it with Jesus. That runs just as many risks as filling it with anything else. Heresy though it may sound, I mean to say that if you use Jesus to fill the hole then you are trying to force Jesus into the hole that he was never meant to be forced into. When you seek God’s face about what to put in that hole, you are essentially asking God to surround your heart so that everything you do would reflect Jesus, and in doing so you will become a light unto the world you are in, because whatever you do would turn those around you until the creator of heaven and earth.
The thing that I found when I was faced with that hole is two things. I began to look inward, and I filled part of that hole with myself. Narcissistic though it may sound, I did not focus entirely on myself but I took time to figure out who I am, and I realized that is a journey that will never end (but in order to know where I’m going I have to know where I am, and doing that is a matter of learning who I am). The other thing I tried to fill that section up with, is the love that I felt when I began the last relationship. This is my personal blog and so I will tell you personally that I “fell in love” with too many girls. I did it in a way that I would consider noble, but the problem I found was that, none of them panned out. Part of it was that I picked the wrong girls (you need to take time to find out who they are before you jump to the altar, and wedding bells), the second mistake I made was that I didn’t give things enough time (girls are like slow cookers, guys are like microwaves… and even though I don’t like the context under which I first heard that, it is true… give girls time to warm up to you, before you nuke them!), and the third and most importantly, I was using my attraction to girls to fill a void that only God could fill.
Now! The question is “where am I at now?” the answer is simple. I am in love, just like I have been so many times before. And this time I’m pretty sure I’ve learned my lesson (even though I have many, many more to learn), because there is nobody on this earth that I am in love with. The subject of my love and affection is life its self. It isn’t easy to get here, and it has taken a long time. I don’t have a formula for you guys, but I do want to say this. I am in a location physically, spiritually, emotionally, and familially that I am content with. I am growing, and improving, my heart is growing like the muscle it is, but I am giving it time to stretch like I should. I am definitely in love, and I’m in love with lady life. Fellas, it’s a great thing to be here. Ladies, if you can find a man who is in this place, he will be better for you (not to mention the fact that you should attempt to be here too). Last but not least, I’m not saying that my life is perfect, nor am I saying everyone should be like me. What I am saying is this, you should aim to be at peace with God, and have joy, beyond happiness for happiness comes and goes, but joy will remain through it all. Peace and Joy in Jesus name, that is what I’m talking about… get into it!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Ministry Lonely?
Let me first say that this is with complete ignorance for I have not truly experienced what it is like to be in ministry, but I want to suggest something and see if it makes any sense to anyone. The first thing is to say that we have a lot of pastors experiencing burn out, and infact we have less pastors entering the ministry than we do pastors leaving for burn out. Well why might this be? I have a proposition, first of all it may seem slightly contradictory to what we would expect to see and hear in and from the church but here goes nothing.
Marriage, I think is to blame. This is not to say that marriage is bad, but to simply say that it makes life MORE difficult and it fools young ministers into thinking that it will be easier (when in fact this is false). Lets start at the end and work our way backwards. We have a pastor who is experiencing burn out, but why? Because he has to maintain his job at the church/ministry, and he has to maintain his home. The pastor must love his wife, love his kids, he must provide for them financially and he must rule his castle, as it were. To examine the amount of energy it takes to actually be a father, is quite strenuous (especially when both parents in the home work). While all this is happening, the pastor essentially has to be a father for the church as well.
In church literature there is an emphasis on the idea of boundaries and priorities and making sure that the pastor is able to balance his life so that he may sustain not only himself but the ministry as well. The question I have is what if he weren't married? And what if he weren't a father (childless)? If this were the case then he would need to be the parent only to the church, and he could focus more attention on the church (as they need it) and he wouldn't need to focus very much attention on his family at home. He could be there at all the events, because he "has nothing better to do" anyway, as well as he could focus his personal life so that he can do what he wants rather than spend his time caring for his family.
This does sound very self-centered and like I am "anti-family" which is not the case, for you see I love family and I think that family is a great thing, but when we as church goers put so much emphasis on the pastor, why is it that he must have a family? He can essentially give more to the church and give more to sustaining himself because he as an individual has less on his plate and can do more. When he lays his head down at night he can let out that sigh of relief knowing that today was a good day and that he had his time professionally (at the church, visiting, sermon prep, etc.) and he had his time personally (dinner, out with friends for coffee, and maybe even a church activity for fellowship) then the next day he can do it all over again fulfilled and refreshed because he knows that personally he is fulfilled.
This also to say that of course God would be providing the fulfillment, as a result of his call to the ministry, but all of that to say. Family might be the very thing that is causing our pastor's to burn out, rather than their over exuberance to the church.
We have discussed the idea of two extremes basically, single vs. family. But there is a middle of the road that I think would be the optimal in considering this topic, which is, married without kids. This I feel would be the best solution to this problem. So for starters we have the pastor running the church, and we have the pastor's wife performing some job (in or out of the church). Then they would have their personal time (marriage retreats, dinner, movies, personal time, etc.) they would have their church time (appropriate age groups with church members, Sunday church services, and other outings with church people) as well as he would be able to invest time into the church. The beauty to this model is that not only does the church benefit from an exuberant pastor, but they also receive the love and support and accountability of a wonderful wife. This I feel would be the perfect model, this would allow for the wife to be self "sufficient" and the pastor to be self "sufficient" they would be together to be support to each other without all the extra work of having kids to run everywhere, education to pay for, braces, soccer, and anything else they might need (not to mention the fact that they would need personal time with their dad too). Why has this theory been very unpopular in the church? Considering this is a blog I don't have to provide you with an answer, for those who read this and have the answer can comment, but those who read this and don't have the answer can find it and contemplate the question. Can anyone else think of anything that could possibly be better? A different solution that would be not only better but easier? Without kids the pastor's plate would be light, and the pastor and his wife could give to the church much more than they would otherwise.
There are two things that I do want to say before concluding this. The first thing to say is as follows: some people have that natural drive and desire to be parents and to have children, that would cause the breakdown of the aforementioned childless model, but consider this, if a church is successful there would be a even distribution of ages, ranging from babies, to retirees. This would allow for the pastor and wife to have their nurturing, for they could start up mentoring programs, and child care programs which would not only meet their personal need to contribute to the next generation but also help the ministry of the church, and the bonus of it all… you get to send the kids home at the end of the day! You don't have to pay for their education, braces, soccer games, etc. not to mention you give their parents a break and allow them to have some time to go and restore their marriages and have fun with themselves without the kids. This is a win win win situation.
The other thing I would like to mention is this seems to be a predominantly male viewpoint. Don't worry ladies, I'm sensitive too. Just because I have spoken of a male pastor and a female pastor's wife, doesn't mean that a woman can't be a pastor and she have a pastor's husband, I think that is totally acceptable and I would like to see more ladies behind the pulpit.
So read this, consider its arguments, see what you think about it and hit me back! I'm open to discussion I just have my perspective and want to hear what all of you have to say
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)