James MacDonald: "for me it’s over. No more fixing people—I resign"
Perhaps McDonald is saying something similar to what Steve Brown has written and said a number of times: He used to think it was part of his job description as a pastor to keep people from sinning, and he was continually frustrated; he’d stand at the edge of the cliff and warn people away; they’d thank him for his concern; they’d look over the edge with him and agree with him that others who’d jumped were down at the bottom broken and bloody; and then they’d jump anyway; and he’d too often find himself jumping too. Because sin was pleasurable, etc., at least in the short term. Eventually he realized it was much less frustrating and more effective to concentrate on pointing people to Jesus. (I’m paraphrasing from memory, so apologies to Steve Brown if I’ve mangled this.)
[Ed Vasicek]Weird article. Sounds like an over-reaction. If he is saying he is a control freak and is going to stop, good luck. Control freaks pre-plan every detail of their funeral.
You mean not everybody does that?
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
sympathize with the guy.
Vitaliy has had to become interim pastor of our church here, and he was just telling me yesterday, after counseling a couple with fairly large issues, that he had wrong assumptions about church people. He assumed they all had the goal to grow and mature in Christ.
Now, after being pastor for a yr or two, he has seen that quite a lot of people in the church really don’t have this goal at all.
I don’t think he’s ever taken it on himself to fix everyone though, He’s a low-key personality ;)
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