Gifted Congregations

I mentioned in my previous blog how congregations often have an inflated sense of the pastor's importance (as do pastors themselves).  This situation is very much on my mind as I conclude my time at one congregation and transition to another.  In this congregation I have ego driven worries about "what they'll do without me," and I imagine that some members have similar worries. 

Looking forward to a new congregation, I have worries about whether I have all the gifts needed for that particular place and community.  And no doubt there are worries about, or at least expectations about, what I will do to lead that congregation when I arrive. 

There is a reason people refer to the first year or so in a congregation as a "honeymoon period."  It takes a while for people to observe your flaws and less desirable traits, things that didn't get noticed during a whirlwind courtship.  And these "disappointments" are often the discovery that the pastor is not perfectly gifted to make the congregation great and wonderful.

When it comes to gifts and talents, you don't need to look very hard to realize that we value some gifts over others.  Look at the relative salaries of CEOs compared to workers at most any company.  For that matter, look at the salaries of senior pastors compared to other staff in most congregations.  But in his letter to the Corinthian Christians, the Apostle Paul works very hard to challenge such notions.  The Corinthians seem to have valued certain spiritual gifts over others, to the point of denigrating certain members.  They saw gifts as a way of rating and valuing (or devaluing) fellow believers, but Paul insists that these gifts are not a matter of better and worse.  They are the work of the Spirit for the good of the whole. 

This in no way denigrates the position of the pastor or minimizes her importance to a congregation, but it does undermine the hierarchies of gifts that too often exist in churches, not to mention society.  As Paul makes so clear in other parts of his letter, all the people and all their gifts are essential, and without all of them, the body is broken. 

If you go with Paul on this, there is no such thing as congregation that isn't sufficiently gifted, and if some seem that way, it is only because they resist the work of the Spirit in their midst.

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