Never Underestimate Radical Vision

I have serious question that I need discussion on.

What is the proper way to bring about church discipline when you are not part of the church leadership?

A little context would be that the pastor is unable to perform the discipline because a pastor no longer exists. Also assume that discipline is absolutely needed. I need help on this one.

read the blog post and all the comments:

http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/6368.aspx

It saddens me.

currently my church is in the process of looking for a new pastor. this process has been long and most of the time i think nothing is really happening, yet i guess the ball is really starting to roll. our interim pastor used last night’s service to have a q&a session to determine what we are looking for in a pastor. it was pretty good and one of the questions he asked was, “What will my new pastor receive from me?” i though that was an awesome way to look at things. our church is so starved for a new pastor as soon as he steps in the doors he is going to have a ton of requests and wants placed on his shoulders that it was nice to flip it around a bit. i really thought about it and to my mind came one word, chance. i am going to give the new pastor a chance. although that might sound weird, when you have had one pastor for 20+ years, he is naturally going to be different. he may be younger, have less experience, be an old fuddy duddy, have a different bent on baptist theology, etc. i am going to give my new pastor a chance and i hope our whole church does the same. we have been through too many youth pastors recently by just not giving them a chance and putting unrealistic expectations on their shoulders (especially for a part-time position).

another interesting thing that came out of the questions the interim pastor asked revealed that we want a stupid pastor. giving different scenarios, the majority of the church wanted a pastor that would do a lot of the things i believe deacons should do (like visit the sick, counsel, etc.) while i believe a pastor should do those things, i believe his first priority is to shepherd the flock and to do that is by educating his flock so that the other issues take care of themselves because everyone knows what they should do for the body. any thoughts? i think too many times in this area (geographically speaking) we want pastors that will do the leg-work and settle for average at best teaching. i hope that changes. to answer the interim pastor’s question, “what qualities do you want in a new pastor?”, i want intelligence.

what are your thoughts on this. different parts of the country may view it differently, but this is how i view it. we need more brains in this part of the country and not just in the church but all over, because i am tired of stupid, redneck pastors!

been there, done that!

peace