Imagine yourself and a group of people in a meeting with your church's pastor. The church has been changing and seeing new life as people explore what it means to be a church in the 21st century. The group has come up with an idea for a phenomenal new ministry connecting the community and congregation leading to radically transformed lives. Excitement grips the group as they explain the concept to your pastor. You're elated when she says "yes!" and you start planning the roll out.

As you are finalizing the plans, you find out about newly imposed guidelines and limitations that cut out the core of the ministry. Influential members of the congregation complain to the pastor ("We've never done it that way") and she sets limits out of fear that the church will lose major contributors. Indirectly your hear that the elder board or denominational hierarchy is afraid the ministry will reflect poorly on the church and reduce the weekly attendance.

Maybe the group decided on what they believe will be an optimum structure, but the pastor tells you to run it a different way. Yet the mandated changes aren't an alternative way to accomplish the same purpose. They cut out the essential core out of the proposed ministry. The group mourns and loses heart, realizing the ministry will end up on the garbage heap of failed programs. You're convinced the pastor follows and loves Christ, so what went wrong? Is the pastor the stumbling block or is

We've been working through the re-definition of church recognizing how much it is a product of a corporate, modernist mindset. Book after book and innumerable blog posts explore how western society's transition out of the enlightenment era are the catalyst for major transformation what it means to be a church. Yet I have only encountered a limited number of publications examining the role and training of pastors as obstacles to this transition. Most fervently seek Christ's leading but their training, denomination, parishioners, or administrative board gives them a strong bias to do the exact opposite.

Pastor's issues start in seminary with the strong academic bias toward Bible as text rather than Bible as story and narrative, thus removing the inherent humanity of the God's self-description in words and images. Parsing Greek or Hebrew often outweighs the importance of connecting with people in their own personal life situations, encouraging pastors to rapid-fire verses at people rather than encouraging them to find themselves in the narrative. I'm still glad I learned both languages but I sure took a long time before I learned to trust the story.

Micromanagement is a typical response to the myriad pressures on a Pastor. She must satisfy so many different constituencies with conflicting goals and all the groups can only be kept satisfied if she is the one managing the subtleties of decision-making. If the attendance drops then the offering drops, reducing what the church sends the denominational office. Denominations are under such severe financial pressure so they become very concerned with any changes that cause an income decline. Attendance losses or economic downturns in larger churches result in staff layoffs or deferred bill paying which jeopardizes the Pastor's employment.

I'm not even sure that we should even have full time clergy going forward. Most Pastors are drastically underpaid yet with the high cost of benefits such as health insurance drains the financial resources of a congregation. Why not embrace a model in which several people earn their living in commercial or other non-church settings and function as the leaders?

Examples counter examples? dialog?

The role of a pastor changes as a church grows or shrinks. Who has ownership?