The Frightening Circularity of Christian Ministry
Each and every week a Christian pastor reads his Bible and studies commentaries to prepare for his weekly sermon. During the week he will typically meet with and spend some time with other pastors and some congregants. Now as he does this week in and week out he will be reading his Bible and asking questions that he and the others that he has been spending time with this week would ask. Come Sunday morning he then preaches a message that only he and others like him care about. Whether or not the message was good or bad is not really the point, but instead lets focus on the fact that it is an 'overtly Christian' message. It is a message born out of reading the Bible while only asking questions that Christians would ask, and only answering questions that Christians care about. Now his congregation comes week in and week out and they listen diligently to each message, and they are ministered to because it answers the same questions that they are asking as Christians. They then in ...