Pastoral burnout is the *natural* (as in built-in) consequence of the attractional church model. Why? Because the model depends upon the creativity, cleverness, charisma, and crowd-pleasing capacity of the pastor/pastors, none of which are naturally self-replenishing or stable.
Contrast this with an external and ordinary means of grace ministry wherein the pastor/pastors may rely upon a divine design plan for ministry that has divine promises attached to it. Within such a model, pastoral weakness is not a liability.
Weakness is rather internal to it. Depending on divine means and relying on divine power to make those means effective, the success of ministry lies in resources outside of ministers. In such a model, pastors may lean into their weaknesses rather than hiding or running from them.
A similar thing can be said about apostasy: It is the *natural* (as in built-in) consequence of the attractional church model. Why? Because it assumes that the "unchurched" already know what they need: a good therapist, a peppy Ted Talk, an ecstatic night club experience.
There is no cross--or at least, there is no cross that doesn't portray Jesus as the capstone of the quest they are *already* pursuing. When Jesus doesn't turn out to be the capstone of their quest,--as he must then he must become unnecessary, irrelevant.
The point, of course, is not that pastoral burnout and apostasy do not occur within churches that operate acccording to the external and ordinary means of grace (!). The point is that these are not the *natural* (as in built-in) byproducts of such churches and their ministries.
Rather: They run against the grain of the ministry that God in Christ has ordained, against the grain of the Holy Spirit's work. They are a kicking against the goads, a spurning of an all-sufficient Savior, the *unnatural* consequence of sin in a world not yet perfected by Jesus.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
