By tradition, I was taught there are two types of appropriate ministers in the world: parish pastors and institutional chaplains. These two were the two groups, which were available when I first really started considering my own call to ministry 10 years ago. These two categories allow for my home denomination to make some decisions about the clarity of call for individuals seeking to don the robe and stole.
I have come to learn that there really are two types of ministry: basic survival and adaptive renewal. I have seen both of these sorts are at work in our denomination today.
Each of the skills, marks, and abilities I have sought to gain, polish, or am reaching towards are all focused on adapting to the world of today, things like, communication skills, ecumenical awareness, creative conflict, leadership, dealing with difference and on and on. I consider each of these skills to be tools to meet the challenges of today and to adapt a faithful response to a world in need of God’s grace and care.
Charles Darwin once famously said, sort of, it is not the biggest or the strongest that survive, but the one that is the most adaptable to change. Too often I have known churches that are seeking to barely survive, with no vision for the abundance that God offers. I’m called to lead part of the work of the changing adaptive renewal the world desperately needs people of faith to undertake.
God is doing something different with our time and place in history. God’s grace is washing away the mere human hope of survival and instilling people of faith with a measure of divinely inspired adaptation.
In these posts and pages, I write about what that might mean for your faith, your community, and the Christian tradition because you have waited long enough to hear some Good News.
-Pastor Jeremiah
I have come to learn that there really are two types of ministry: basic survival and adaptive renewal. I have seen both of these sorts are at work in our denomination today.
Each of the skills, marks, and abilities I have sought to gain, polish, or am reaching towards are all focused on adapting to the world of today, things like, communication skills, ecumenical awareness, creative conflict, leadership, dealing with difference and on and on. I consider each of these skills to be tools to meet the challenges of today and to adapt a faithful response to a world in need of God’s grace and care.
Charles Darwin once famously said, sort of, it is not the biggest or the strongest that survive, but the one that is the most adaptable to change. Too often I have known churches that are seeking to barely survive, with no vision for the abundance that God offers. I’m called to lead part of the work of the changing adaptive renewal the world desperately needs people of faith to undertake.
God is doing something different with our time and place in history. God’s grace is washing away the mere human hope of survival and instilling people of faith with a measure of divinely inspired adaptation.
In these posts and pages, I write about what that might mean for your faith, your community, and the Christian tradition because you have waited long enough to hear some Good News.
-Pastor Jeremiah
