Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Pastors, Take to Your Pulpit "Hot with Christ"

Some unique (but understandable) focus on John Updike this week brings us this great passage from Rabbit, Run, the accosting of a "newfangled" pastor:
Do you think this is your job, to meddle in these people’s lives? I know what they teach you at seminary now: this psychology and that. But I don’t agree with it. You think now your job is to be an unpaid doctor, to run around and plug up holes and make everything smooth. I don’t think that. I don’t think that’s your job…. I say you don’t know what your role is or you’d be home locked in prayer…. In running back and forth you run away from the duty given you by God, to make your faith powerful.... When on Sunday morning, then, when you go out before their faces, we must walk up not worn out with misery but full of Christ, hot with Christ, on fire: burn them with the force of our belief. This is why they come; why else would they pay us? Anything else we can do and say anyone can do and say. They have doctors and lawyers for that…. Make no mistake. Now I’m serious. Make no mistake. There is nothing but Christ for us. All the rest, all this decency and busyness, is nothing. It is Devil’s work.

Timely words in 1960 and prescient for today.

(HT: Reid Monaghan)

Related:
Pastors, Don't Waste Your Pulpit
Cross-Centered Pastoring: The Burden and the Passion
Read the Bible Like You Mean It

No comments: