Some Muse-ables

There's been some interesting discussion over at Radical Congruency regarding some new metaphors for "leadership" (Len Hjalmarsson should be heading over there about .75 seconds after that first sentence travels from his retinas to his cerebellum). One of the good questions that has come up has been how this could (I would suggest should) affect the existing paradigm regarding paid, professional clergy.

I found this tidbit today, from "Creation, Covenant & Work" by William Bumrell in Australia. I think it could easily apply to the discussion:

"There is nothing to support the Greek or Stoic view, then, according to which the higher class person has to have the leisure to fashion himself physically, intellectually, and aesthetically into a harmonious being, with the real working classes existing to provide for the gentleman who is occupied with his own concerns...

"It was the Rabbis' rule that no Rabbi should accept payment for his teaching... Each must acquire a trade and support himself with honest toil... Paul thus was called to be an apostle and supported himself by tentmaking."

I'm not going to go off on a rant about paid clergy being wrong, because I'm not willing to go that far. But I would like to mention the attitude that I've seen all too often among "professional" clergy. Here's a real-life example:

I was going through a season in the mid-1990's where God was calling me to learn what Matthew 20:25-28 meant: "Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave -- just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

For me, it meant that, as a worship pastor, that I would give away my opportunity to play bass at a Island-wide conference, and volunteer (be a servant) to do all the grunt jobs that no-one else wanted to do. Which translated into hauling sound gear, stacking chairs, doing all the tape duplicating for the conference sessions, and basically running non-stop from 8AM till 2AM for five days straight. I noticed some really interesting things from this vantage point:

• all the other people running the "undesirable" grunt jobs were almost exclusively youth and new Christians (except me), while all the "mature" Christians sat comfortably in their seats, hoping for a "word" from one of the prophets up front
  
• the pastors all had "Reserved" seating up front, and seemed mostly concerned with getting a lunch/supper/coffee date with one of the four celebrity speakers that had come to the conference; which, being translated, means that most of the pastors weren't involved in ministry time (prayer for conference attenders) at all; quite a number left the building quite early, in fact, if it meant getting some personal time with one of the celebrities
  
• some (not all) of the conference speakers were quite rude to the youth and new believers who weren't doing a "good enough job" hawking the speakers' books and merchandise
  
• I was really impressed with the attitudes of the youth and the new believers, especially when the conference ended and -- despite several announcements asking for help tearing down -- people left for local restaurants and the grunts had to work for hours cleaning up the mess they left. It was quite an eye-opening contrast.

I'm not against pastors being paid. I would like to see a huge "attitude adjustment" when it comes to recognizing that Jesus was quite serious when He said "whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant."

And somewhere in that process, your definition of "great" changes for the better.