New Country, Same Issues

Today, I would like to proudly announce, I cut my remaining course load down from three down to two. I am now one full course further towards getting my BA, which I’m hoping to attain by April. There is a lot of work to be done between then and now, but what else am I going to do in Fiji? (don’t answer that question!)

Today was my first ‘official’ day off. The reality is that I’ve just been observing over the past 6 days, so I haven’t been doing a whole lot, but it was an interesting change of pace nonetheless. Ken and myself went into town this morning to check on another missionaries SUV. He’s currently in Australia travelling around, and his battery was shot, so we took the old one out and picked up a new one. Not quite enough to make Paul proud, but I got grease on my hands!

I spent the rest of my day reading. I had 50 pages to finish in the book The Spirit of the Disciplines so that I could finish my course (yay!) and it was time I hunkered down and got it done. Let’s just say I’ve done more interesting things in my life, but now it’s done. I mixed that in with a little bit of video gaming, meaning freecell and a 2D space game, and reading Time/Popular Mechanics.

Supper was where all the fireworks were at. Mary had asked a question about why North American churches were having such a problem getting people out for prayer meetings, which sparked a lengthy conversation about methods in church ministry, generational differences, and lead to how many pastors are really needed in a church. I shared a very different philosophy of ministry from both Ken and Mary, but I can’t say that it surprised me a lot. That is also part of the generational difference.

The reality is that we cannot blame lay people for not coming to church when we as pastors have allowed the foundations that create a passion for prayer to erode to a negligible level. What surprises me is how many pastors are asking the questions relating to why this is happening... the church is behind the times! Frankly, there has been many times when I’ve sat through a service and been bored... so how can I expect anyone else to be interested? If we are paid to carry out full-time ministry, it should be our goal to be relevant and... INTERESTING! God’s word isn’t boring... why are so many preachers?