You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Community’ tag.
Perhaps I am a naive starry-eyed idealist. But it seems possible to me that, in our psychologically oriented age, we may be uniquely situated in all of history, to address the division between unity and diversity in a healthy life-giving way that finds a creative balance which both honours difference and embodies some degree of consistent identity.
Last weekend, along with many other Anglicans from the Diocese of BC, I was away at Synod, practicing being part of the wider Christian community embodied in the concept of Diocese.
NB: lest the issues addressed in this post, the next one, and the four preceding ones seem outdated or irrelevant to the current life of the church, please preface your reading of what follows by visiting: http://www.anglicanjournal.com/articles/retired-bishop-caledonia-leaves-anglican-church-canada-breakaway-group/
The strategies for staying together that I believe have helped the people in the church I serve to continue together in ministry with the same person in leadership for so long, are not so much “strategies” as they are attitudes.
Estimates vary, but generally the average length that one person stays as the primary pastor in a single congregation is said to be between 3.6 and 7 years. Three decades is a bit unusual…. ok a lot unusual.
Thirty years is a long time to do anything. But to stay in the same church community in ministry for three decades is a miracle.
Many are called
but few are chosen.
(Matthew 22:14)
There are times when leaving is the right thing to do.
15But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases.
25 [While he was in the Synagogue in Nazareth Jesus said]: But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land;
