General Musings

Working at the printing plant this week has given me some much needed reflection time. Much of the work I am engaged in is mindless and repetitive, so I then have the ability to let my mind wander. This week as I was stacking CVS magazines, the junk mail you get everyday, I began to reflect on how much of the official church stuff really matters and how much I learned in seminary really matters. The conclusion I came to is not much. When I spent time talking to the people I worked with this past week, they didn't care that annual conference was going on, and what decisions were made where, and what the latest "cutting edge" or newest trend in ministry is. They didn't care about feminist issues, womanist issues, black issues, any issues in general. These people we're worried about their paycheck, whether or not the plant will be there for another couple of years so they could retire, how I was doing, and how my dad (who worked there for 25 years before getting injured) was doing. I have become more convinced this week that much of what I learned was not worth it, and much of what every denomination pushes is just for their own agenda, regrettably it doesn't help most of the people that I see on a day to day basis. As far as I'm concerned the Methodist church needs to wake up and smell the coffee, we are far more complacent than we used to be. John Wesley valued education, but he also valued the common man (read humanity) and the ministry that that individual could perform.

I know some people already entrenched in the ministry may not like my Musings from this week, but as I look at my ink stained hands when I'm typing, and am thankful that I made it to my day off with all of my fingers my conclusion stands. We need to stop making the ministry a "profession," the more we become a profession the more we lose our soul and our heritage. So what does this make me? I don't know...

Comments

Keith H. McIlwain said…
Professionalism is the death of ministry. The CALLING, the MISSION, PEOPLE...these are what matter. I value my education, but also recognize that not everything I learned is of equal value or equally useful, and that most of my pastoral education occurred not in the classroom, but in the pulpit, behind the table, at the font, in the funeral home, at kitchen tables, and at food pantries.
7:23 PM
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