wfn.org | UMNS# 05025-Pastors learn of divine love,

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Pastors learn of divine love, 'monsters' affecting ministry

Jan. 12, 2005	 News media contact:   Linda  Green * (615) 7425470*
Nashville {05025}

NOTE: Photographs, audio and related features, UMNS story #020 and #021,
are available at http://umns.umc.org.

By Linda Green*

ATLANTA (UMNS) - God's love is neither won, bought nor negotiated, and
divine love is not blind to evil, according to a seminary professor.

The Rev. Joy Moore urged pastors of African-American congregations to
remember that "God's love is an expression of his expectation that we
might be a reflection of his holiness in a world that is in need of
hope."

"There is nothing that you can do to cause God to love you any less,"
said Moore, assistant professor of preaching at Asbury Theological
School in Wilmore, Ky. "And by the same token, there is nothing that you
can do to cause God to love you even more."

Moore spoke to about 650 clergy attending the Fourth Convocation for
Pastors of African American Churches, Jan. 4-7 in Atlanta. While Moore
described the power of divine love, another speaker, the Rev. James
McCray, emphasized the need for pastors to have an awakening to their
call, and he identified "monsters" that could threaten their ministry.

Citing the biblical story of Cain and Abel, Moore said Cain allowed
doubt to overshadow trust because he felt that God had withdrawn from
him. She implored the pastors to be open continuously to a spiritual
encounter with Christ, so that they can lead others to him. "Our purpose
is to point to the God who made us a peculiar people so that others
would know that God is God," she said.

The convocation, sponsored by the United Methodist Board of
Discipleship, is a biennal empowerment gathering for pastors of
African-American congregations. The theme, "Tarrying for Power, Living
in Power," pointed the pastors to the Holy Spirit, the source of their
ministerial strength.

"When one has not in a long while happened upon the ecstasy of a
spiritual encounter, rituals become habits," Moore said. "When too much
time has passed since we've acknowledged our relationship with God, our
relationship to God becomes duty. Cain was not without the presence of
God; they were still on speaking terms."

Moore told the pastors to constantly tell the stories of Jesus so that
the people may learn and have an encounter with God - just as they have
had as clergy.

Today's culture is somewhat lost in its search for God, she said. "We
don't listen to an evangelist as much as we listen to a therapist. The
key spokesperson for evangelical Christianity today is not Billy Graham,
but James Dobson, a psychologist. It is not that we don't need to know
how to live. It is that we have lost the story that tells who is living
in the story."

She told the pastors that it is not possible to reflect God's image if
they have never encountered God. Pastors, she said, choose rules,
applications, history, cultural information and religious trivia over
telling and hearing "God's own self-disclosure" through the Genesis to
Revelation narrative.

The story is interesting not because of its offerings of political,
ethnic, economic and gender issues but for its ability to reshape
imagination, she said.

Moore told the clergy they are more offended by racism than the fact
that most people don't use a Bible in church on Sunday.  "There is a
reason for injustice if you never go to the place where you learn what
true justice is." She said that although the Bible is referenced,
pastors do not listen to the story itself.

People in church and in the community are asleep to God's presence and
charge upon their lives, said McCray, pastor of Jones Memorial United
Methodist Church in San Francisco

"This requires an awakening," he said. After they awaken, God places
pastors where they need to serve.

Often when a pastor responds to the ministerial call, he or she wants to
be in a safe and comfortable place. But, McCray said, if the call is to
be renewed, strengthened and deepened by the presence of the Holy
Spirit, pastors must allow the Spirit to nudge them to the boundaries,
move them to the places where God wants them to be in ministry.

"A pastor/minister in the 21st century must be a spiritually mature
Christian, desiring a position of leadership in the church or community,
and able, willing and desirous of suffering to lead God's people and
teach God's word," he said.

McCray focused on five "monsters" that affect a pastor's renewal of the
call and effectiveness.

The first, he said is insecurity about identity and self-worth. Pastors
insecure about their identities "create settings that deprive others of
their identity and worth in the reign of God," he said. Those pastors
develop a cycle in the local church called, "bishop, move me or lose
me."

Another monster is thinking that the universe is a battleground. The
battle syndrome leads a pastor to see the world as a "vast combat zone,"
allowing life to become a "self-fulfilling prophecy."

Functional atheism is the third monster. This occurs when a pastor
thinks "responsibility for everything rests on me."  This thought,
McCray said, is based on an unconscious conviction that if good is to
happen, the pastor must be the one to make it happen.  This leads to the
"pathology of imposing my will on others, stressing my relationships and
breaking others," he said.

The fourth impact on a pastor's effectiveness is fear of the natural
chaos of life.	Pastors forget that the Book of Genesis should remind
them "in God's economy, chaos is the precondition to creativity" and "in
the creation mythos, life emerges from the void."

The final monster is denial of death. Pastors must remember, he said,
that all things die.  There is often a demand for the resuscitation of
things that are no longer alive, such as programs or projects, he said.
"When we are prepared to let things die, we are prepared to get in touch
with a new source of life and force."

McCray urged the pastors to renew their call continuously and experience
it "as alive."

*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in
Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service