I find this devotion challenging in a couple of ways. He notes that the church in Antioch did a lot without a paid senior pastor, associate pastor, youth minister, and minister of children's ministry. He also mentions how multicultural the church was. Of course UCC Medfield has all these paid positions plus some, and we are not what you would call a multicultural church. So what do you do with that? We're not multicultural primarily because Medfield and the surrounding towns are not multicultural. I do love worshiping at churches that have many different ethnic groups, but that is not the demographic context in which we find ourselves, so that isn't going to happen until that demographic changes. So we welcome and love those in our cultural context.
Concerning a paid staff, the time may soon come when church "staff" have regular jobs and volunteer or are paid a minimal amount for their work. That is the way the LDS (Mormon) church operates. The current model of paid clergy and staff has worked for a long time, but who knows what the future holds for the church? There is an ebb and a flow to its life.
As far as the core take away from this devotion, the last full paragraph on page 116 caught my attention:
"Notice, too, that the energy of Antioch arises from a community committed to the disciplines of faith. The Spirit inaugurates mission among the Christians at Antioch while they 'were worshiping the Lord and fasting' (Acts 13:2). This little clause lets us know that community disciplines provide the precondition for hearing a word of the Holy Spirit "(Bold, mine).
Once again we are reminded that the spiritual disciplines that we practice behind the scenes are the soil out of which grow the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Concerning a paid staff, the time may soon come when church "staff" have regular jobs and volunteer or are paid a minimal amount for their work. That is the way the LDS (Mormon) church operates. The current model of paid clergy and staff has worked for a long time, but who knows what the future holds for the church? There is an ebb and a flow to its life.
As far as the core take away from this devotion, the last full paragraph on page 116 caught my attention:
"Notice, too, that the energy of Antioch arises from a community committed to the disciplines of faith. The Spirit inaugurates mission among the Christians at Antioch while they 'were worshiping the Lord and fasting' (Acts 13:2). This little clause lets us know that community disciplines provide the precondition for hearing a word of the Holy Spirit "(Bold, mine).
Once again we are reminded that the spiritual disciplines that we practice behind the scenes are the soil out of which grow the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
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