The word of the day for February 28, 2008 is "congregation noun 1 a: an assembly of persons : GATHERING; especially : an assembly of persons met for worship and religious instruction b: a religious community: as (1): an organized body of believers in a particular locality. (2): a Roman Catholic religious institute with only simple vows. (3): a group of monasteries forming an independent subdivision of an order. 2: the act or an instance of congregating or bringing together : the state of being congregated. 3: a body of cardinals and officials forming an administrative division of the papal curia.
Sybil tells us about meeting the new minister. I don't know what the rules are in Great Britain, but Methodist ministers in the United States rarely stay in one congregation for more than ten years. There are good reasons for this, but it is sometimes difficult to find a new minister to fit in with the congregation.
A good number of years ago, my sister's pastor and her husband, who was pastor of another church nearby, made the difficult decision to take a sabbatical. I believe they intended to visit Jerusalem. Sister's church decided to allow everyone, even the children to have a say in who would become their new pastor. One of the five-year-olds, when asked what he thought they should ask candidates for the job, said, "We should ask what her husband does for a living."
Our quote for the day is from Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Satires of Circumstance (l. 21–24):
re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.
;^) Jan
4 comments:
I love it !! Here in the Uk women ministers are still a bit of a novelty...at least for the Church of England. We Methodists have always had them around, but never in Box as it happens...just thought of that !!....Our Suoerintedant is a minister. However there are big changes ahead within our circuit in September when we are going to become much bigger. As with you our ministerd don't seem to stay for ever either with their congregations . John has been with us for 6 years and was supposed to be with us another 2 but has thrown everybody into a tizz by leaving the circuit in August (in Methodism here is always in September that the new year for changes starts) Have a lovely weekend Love sybil xxx
Here where I live an American minister was doing a tour in the UK and what a lovely man ,and his family ,brought fresh ideas too ...love Jan xx
One of the reasons Methodist ministers are not allowed to stay more than 10 years in one place is that Methodists want their congregations to pay more attention to God than to his servants. I know of splinter congregations (not Methodists) where the congregation/church buildings are actually named after the founding minister (i.e., Bob Smith Baptist Tabernacle). The congregation rarely survives the death or desertion of the aforesaid minister.
;^) Jan the Gryphon
I also think that Methodist congregations can petition if the new minister is not fitting in with the church.
When I was in about junir high, our beloved minister moved on. And we got Dr. Minister. Dr. Minister (not his name, obviously) was much older and we were a VERY young family church. We had some older members, but our church was in a newer part of town and most of the families had children or babies. Dr. Minister was never fond of the younger people or the families. He focused all his energy on the older members. He even refused to have a confirmation class for my group of kids that it was time for. So we didn't have the class that year.
The next year we got "fresh from the seminary" petite woman as the new minister. She was FANTASTIC! Plus she bravely did basically both the 7th and 8th graders through confirmation class as one group. (She wore a coaches whistle to keep us in line.)
Hmmm, I wonder if they did that on purpose so we would embrace her as much as we did.
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