Sublime

He retired the belief that it was the pastor’s duty, particularly in the sermon, to prod the people into obedience. “Henry realized [that] the point was not to outline ‘correct’ doctrine but to motivate the audience psychologically.”18

As a household of ministry, the shape of a church’s gathered life revolves around three core dispositions that continue to renew the household as ministry. These three dispositions are directed not toward the household itself but toward Jesus, the one who is ministry.

The pastor’s public importance rests not in the fact that she is a pastor and plays a part in a divine order but rather in the fact that her church is big (in numbers, budget, or cultural relevance).10

The pastor somehow needs to take a fifty-person church with few resources, in a denomination of depleted assets, and speed things up to create a five-thousand-member church. Her first step is to make it relevant to fast people living in a compressed present, seeking the good of multiple lifetimes. Retention with these fast-paced people is won by gi

there is another layer to this decline that affects pastors more directly. Perhaps these numbers are low because in the end many people aren’t sure what pastors are good for, other than guilting people to come to church and drop a twenty in the offering plate.3

American Protestantism, whether in megachurch or mainline form, has done the same. This is not an insignificant choice. Choosing speed and growth over personhood10 allows our relationships to be instrumentalized. Relationships are used as instruments to attain something other than relationship.

An emaciated gospel leads to emaciated worship. It lowers our eyes from God to self and cheapens what God has accomplished for us in Christ. The biblical gospel, by contrast, is like fuel in the furnace of worship. The more you understand about it, believe it, and rely on it, the more you adore God both for who he is and for what he has done for us

Throughout volumes 1 and 2 I’ve claimed that Jesus Christ becomes present when we give and receive ministry person to person. Bonhoeffer can claim that Jesus Christ exists as church-community because the church-community is in the form of personhood, and Jesus Christ is present in and through personhood (this is deeply incarnational).