The Message Guy on Church

Im not gonna blog post preach on this one, but I just found it and thought it was worth sharing as Ive been thinking about church and how that works, what it looks like as I feel more and more called to the service of it. Quotes like these Im not going to fully back or refute but they are the type of things which connect my mind to my soul and my soul to my spirit and make me want to act, and you know what I want to read more stuff like that. Footnote: "The Pastors of America" I think could be changed around to be many western countries it was that the book is written from within the US "The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeepers concerns--how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from the competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money. Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs.... The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility...to keep the community attentive to God. It is a responsibility that is being abandoned in spades." (p.2) Eugene Peterson: Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity Comment if you like....