was the first time in over a year and half that I have served at the altar to celebrate the Sacrament. It was such an honor and I thank Pr. Messer for the privilege.
That's a long time. Are you sure that taking this position in St. Louis was the best thing for you to do? Let me put it another way, is a pastor who is not executing pastoral duties, particularly the sacramental ones, is he no longer a pastor? Why does the LCMS recruit clergy for these various bureaucratic roles and essentially make them into non-pastors, compartmentalizing them into, if not exclusively, administrative roles?--Chris
I still serve as a pastor in other parts of the ministry: I hear confessions, I preach quite frequently and lead the prayer offices. I would be celebrating more often were I doing fill-in preaching/presiding on Sundays, but at present I'm serving as regular organist for Fr. Curtis' parish.
Fr. Weedon, you didn't answer my question though. Why is it that the LCMS in particular takes men out of the ministry, out of parishes and makes them bureaucrats?
And I would add that the Celebrating the Divine Liturgy and distributing the Eucharist is your PRIMARY responsibility as a pastor. Those other things are good and very much part of your ordination and needed, but the Eucharist is ahead above all of those, yes?
Chris, I haven't been taken out of the ministry. I continue to be a servant of the Word, as I was ordained to be, but my calling now is (mostly) restricted to administering a particular part of the office, and to serving the wider Church rather than a single congregation. As a Lutheran, no, I do not grant that the Eucharist is ahead of ministering the Word of God or absolving. They are all gifts from Christ to His Church and we mayn't extol any of them at the price of making the other be somehow less.
4 comments:
That's a long time. Are you sure that taking this position in St. Louis was the best thing for you to do? Let me put it another way, is a pastor who is not executing pastoral duties, particularly the sacramental ones, is he no longer a pastor? Why does the LCMS recruit clergy for these various bureaucratic roles and essentially make them into non-pastors, compartmentalizing them into, if not exclusively, administrative roles?--Chris
Chris,
I still serve as a pastor in other parts of the ministry: I hear confessions, I preach quite frequently and lead the prayer offices. I would be celebrating more often were I doing fill-in preaching/presiding on Sundays, but at present I'm serving as regular organist for Fr. Curtis' parish.
Fr. Weedon, you didn't answer my question though. Why is it that the LCMS in particular takes men out of the ministry, out of parishes and makes them bureaucrats?
And I would add that the Celebrating the Divine Liturgy and distributing the Eucharist is your PRIMARY responsibility as a pastor. Those other things are good and very much part of your ordination and needed, but the Eucharist is ahead above all of those, yes?
Chris, I haven't been taken out of the ministry. I continue to be a servant of the Word, as I was ordained to be, but my calling now is (mostly) restricted to administering a particular part of the office, and to serving the wider Church rather than a single congregation. As a Lutheran, no, I do not grant that the Eucharist is ahead of ministering the Word of God or absolving. They are all gifts from Christ to His Church and we mayn't extol any of them at the price of making the other be somehow less.
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