Posted on: November 18th, 2007 Encouragement for Pastors (like me)
“The pastoral ministry is too adventuresome and demanding to be sustained by trivial, psychological self-improvement advice. What pastors, as well as the laity they serve, need is a theological rationale for ministry which is so cosmic, so eschatological, and therefore countercultural, that they are enabled to keep at Christian ministry in a world determined to live as if God were dead. Anything less misreads both the scandal of the gospel and the corruption of our culture.” — Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens 145
This self-interested motivation is precisely one of the reasons I insist on preaching and teaching the theology of the likes of NT Wright, Radical Orthodoxy, and the Federal Vision. Without such a cosmic, eschatological, countercultural perspective, ministry in this world would be just too depressing.
