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One Heart

I have the privilege of being a part of a wonderful team of pastors and leaders from the MVNU Region who are doing the hard work of preparing for the '24-'27 PALCON cycle. PALCON is the Preachers and Leaders Conference, hosted regionally at different educational institutions around the United States on a three-year cycle. As we begin this next cycle in June of 2024, MVNU will be the first host site for PALCON. 

Wednesday evening and Thursday of this past week, I spent time with pastors and leaders who are, for the most part, in the trenches and around the tables, leading in local and district ministry for the Church of the Nazarene. Here are my takeaways from this time together.

  • Pastors are tired. They were tired before 2020, but COVID and the sundry of challenges that it brought have certainly made an impact in many ministries (not all). This sense of tired has been heightened by a significant number of church members and attendees either falling away completely or shifting to a significantly lower level of participation in all aspects of local church ministry. All the while, the expectations of ministry on the part of the laity has not changed. Hence, pastors are tired.

  • There is a desire within the Church for the same things (pre-COVID) and with the same results. It's important to consider the popular "definition of insanity" (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results), because this is not insane, it is naive. The expectations of and needs of our culture have radically changed - in 3 years - and so the desire to keep doing the same things or just get back to what was happening before 2020 is not insane, it's naive.

  • Social Media is a potential pit of snakes. "I was scrolling Twitter and saw..." or "I read in that Facebook group" have become for many the primary source of information and sometimes inspiration. But social media is an algorithmic, artificial, and asinine picture of what is happening. There are few voices who scream the loudest. And, to be honest, those voices are usually pretty smart. Their appearance of intelligence and their smooth fingertip fighting have stoked a fear of engagement in the hearts and minds of many who find themselves in the completely overpopulated middle ground. This brings me to my next observation:

  • The world is primarily full of middle children. I think that most pastors, and probably most Christians, are really just middle children at the core. We find ourselves in between our two siblings who are bickering and fighting and we just want to make peace. But at the same time, we see them and we are embarrassed by their behavior.

  • There is a generation of young Christians that struggle with the idea of institution, yet the Church is just that. We have a new challenge in front of us to shift from a mindset of institution to one of a movement. The desire to be part of something that is making a difference is not a generational thing, it is deep in the heart of every woman and man. We have allowed what Jesus ushered in to become a machine.

  • True love is when we are willing to stay at the table and continue the discussion, even if we don't agree or see eye to eye. True love sticks with it even with it gets hard. 

In our opening time of devotion, we were reminded of the incredible grace of God. It's a grace that acknowledges and accepts that we, in our flesh, are weak. And that is not something that God looks down upon, but rather sees it as our reality. We have weak flesh! And sometimes our hearts get out ahead of our flesh and we are unable to keep up physically with where we are emotionally or spiritually. I think that many pastors and leaders in the Church are in this place right now. Their hearts are there, but their bodies cannot keep up. Their desires are there, but their flesh is weakened by many of the things I have listed above. 

In the end, I left encouraged because I see in each of those who sat at the tables with me a sincere desire to move forward, to bring healing, to create unity, and to truly have one heart as a denomination, but ultimately as followers of Christ. 

May it be so. 

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