I've been mulling on your resource #3 this week - why becoming brands is bad - and I want to synthesize this idea with the issues you bring up in your post/recording on the massive drop in male seminarians. (I can't upgrade to paid at this point in our financial lives, so you'll have to bear with my synthesis here). Brand-building is obviously not limited to writers, and it has become a requisite for "success" in many sectors, including the pastorate. I'm unleashing my tongue a bit here, but I am doing so with complete genuineness, not a desire to just complain or point out faults, but a desire to see change.
Observations and Commentary:
1. I continue to witness extensive brokenness in the models of pastoral mentoring and leadership in the western church. Rather than being sent out in twos or in teams, we have the senior pastor or solo church planter model. Often these solo pastors are isolated, either allowing themselves to be put on a pillar or building their own brand (websites, books, etc) instead of maintaining the relational connection they need and helping to identify and mentor the next generation of pastors, encouraging them to live out of their weakness and find strength in collaboration rather than isolating and relying on their own strength. Question: what is a biblical definition of success in the pastorate and how do we reinforce those ideas?
2. Young (and middle aged!) men have experienced a mentorship vacuum - peer and otherwise - as to your point regarding the role fraternities can and should have in the lives of men. Men aspiring to the pastorate need robust cohorts - a "band of brothers," and these are simply few and far between. Question: what seminaries practice robust mentoring and peer cohort models and how might vocational ministers best cultivate and continue these cohort models?
3. In the Presbyterian denomination, sessions and presbyteries were meant to be cohorts of "fathers and brothers." Instead, these groups have borrowed all the broken ideas from fraternities (hazing, rivalry, posturing, cliques) - brokenness found in any human-centric community. Politics, in-fighting, withholding, competition, power-mongering; assistant pastors treated as second class citizens, those with longer tenure suspicious of the newly ordained; graduates of one seminary looking down on those of another; private agendas and feuds; denominational business put over and above practicing the means of grace - all these things characterized these groups of men. But what about confession and repentance? What about true Kingdom concerns (rather than kingdom/brand concerns). As the daughter one former PCA pastor (church planter) and the wife of another, my first hand experience of the discouragement the men in my life brought home reveals that these "communities" did not know what it meant to be community to one another, or perhaps they had traded in caring and trying to pursue a biblical model for cynicism and worldly success. And men who have been put "under care" of the shepherding committee with the intention of going to seminary and pursuing ordination means little to no "care" at all - mostly it's just "under" an absentee authority. Question: How can change be effected in these institutions and WHO will do it?
You and I talked once about what it would look like for women to be allies ("powerful partners") to the men in our lives. I'm going to ask you to answer that question again: How can women be better allies to the men in our lives? I'm going to follow up with another: Men, how can you be better allies to one another? (Hint: it's not by focusing on brand building).
I've been mulling on your resource #3 this week - why becoming brands is bad - and I want to synthesize this idea with the issues you bring up in your post/recording on the massive drop in male seminarians. (I can't upgrade to paid at this point in our financial lives, so you'll have to bear with my synthesis here). Brand-building is obviously not limited to writers, and it has become a requisite for "success" in many sectors, including the pastorate. I'm unleashing my tongue a bit here, but I am doing so with complete genuineness, not a desire to just complain or point out faults, but a desire to see change.
Observations and Commentary:
1. I continue to witness extensive brokenness in the models of pastoral mentoring and leadership in the western church. Rather than being sent out in twos or in teams, we have the senior pastor or solo church planter model. Often these solo pastors are isolated, either allowing themselves to be put on a pillar or building their own brand (websites, books, etc) instead of maintaining the relational connection they need and helping to identify and mentor the next generation of pastors, encouraging them to live out of their weakness and find strength in collaboration rather than isolating and relying on their own strength. Question: what is a biblical definition of success in the pastorate and how do we reinforce those ideas?
2. Young (and middle aged!) men have experienced a mentorship vacuum - peer and otherwise - as to your point regarding the role fraternities can and should have in the lives of men. Men aspiring to the pastorate need robust cohorts - a "band of brothers," and these are simply few and far between. Question: what seminaries practice robust mentoring and peer cohort models and how might vocational ministers best cultivate and continue these cohort models?
3. In the Presbyterian denomination, sessions and presbyteries were meant to be cohorts of "fathers and brothers." Instead, these groups have borrowed all the broken ideas from fraternities (hazing, rivalry, posturing, cliques) - brokenness found in any human-centric community. Politics, in-fighting, withholding, competition, power-mongering; assistant pastors treated as second class citizens, those with longer tenure suspicious of the newly ordained; graduates of one seminary looking down on those of another; private agendas and feuds; denominational business put over and above practicing the means of grace - all these things characterized these groups of men. But what about confession and repentance? What about true Kingdom concerns (rather than kingdom/brand concerns). As the daughter one former PCA pastor (church planter) and the wife of another, my first hand experience of the discouragement the men in my life brought home reveals that these "communities" did not know what it meant to be community to one another, or perhaps they had traded in caring and trying to pursue a biblical model for cynicism and worldly success. And men who have been put "under care" of the shepherding committee with the intention of going to seminary and pursuing ordination means little to no "care" at all - mostly it's just "under" an absentee authority. Question: How can change be effected in these institutions and WHO will do it?
You and I talked once about what it would look like for women to be allies ("powerful partners") to the men in our lives. I'm going to ask you to answer that question again: How can women be better allies to the men in our lives? I'm going to follow up with another: Men, how can you be better allies to one another? (Hint: it's not by focusing on brand building).