It is so easy...
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It is so easy coming out of seminary to bring to our people a message that our professors made up. There was a pastor in Wisconsin a number of years ago who was defrocked for preaching what he learned in seminary -- that maybe Mary was not a virgin! There were some theologians who we had to read who called into question Jesus' miracles! If I hadn't received a revelation from God, that experience in seminary might have cost me my faith. I even talked with a Baptist pastor who almost lost his faith in seminary.
Be careful not to bore your people with quotes from some great theologians (not all are bad!). Most of our members are more interested in your relationship with God. Our love for God should be based on something more than some words we have read. God can use words from the Bible, but we need God's Spirit to bring them to life. That comes through prayer and meditation more than through reading words. A friend in seminary was asked by his professor what his sources were when he turned in a paper. When he said it was the Bible, his prof told him that he wanted to know if he was quoting from Bultman, Barth, or Brunner. In other words, it should be academically respectable. If it were spiritually sound that was not as important.
It took a miraculous experience to change Paul. Obviously we don't preach what some fundamentalists do that you are not saved without a miraculous experience. They often ask me, "When were you saved" -- in other words, when did God give you an experience that changed you? I tell them I was saved 2,000 years ago, but I only came to realize it recently. I personally received an experience with the Lord, but I believe that Jesus saved me from the moment of my baptism. As long as I didn't reject what he did for me, I was saved.
Sometimes it may take a traumatic experience to turn us around. I was a prison chaplain a while back, and I knew several inmates who were turned completely around when God revealed himself to them. How he did it was up to him. The WORDS read helped him mature in his faith, but it was an experience that turned him around.
Our authority to be a pastor or servant of God comes from HIM. Our installation or ordainment is only confirmation of what God had done to us.
I have met pastors of every denomination and the thing that impresses me most is when I feel the love of God expressed in their lives. I knew that God had come into their lives, and I could feel HIS authority. I didn't care about the documentation on their walls. I felt that even some non-Lutherans were saved!
Be careful not to bore your people with quotes from some great theologians (not all are bad!). Most of our members are more interested in your relationship with God. Our love for God should be based on something more than some words we have read. God can use words from the Bible, but we need God's Spirit to bring them to life. That comes through prayer and meditation more than through reading words. A friend in seminary was asked by his professor what his sources were when he turned in a paper. When he said it was the Bible, his prof told him that he wanted to know if he was quoting from Bultman, Barth, or Brunner. In other words, it should be academically respectable. If it were spiritually sound that was not as important.
It took a miraculous experience to change Paul. Obviously we don't preach what some fundamentalists do that you are not saved without a miraculous experience. They often ask me, "When were you saved" -- in other words, when did God give you an experience that changed you? I tell them I was saved 2,000 years ago, but I only came to realize it recently. I personally received an experience with the Lord, but I believe that Jesus saved me from the moment of my baptism. As long as I didn't reject what he did for me, I was saved.
Sometimes it may take a traumatic experience to turn us around. I was a prison chaplain a while back, and I knew several inmates who were turned completely around when God revealed himself to them. How he did it was up to him. The WORDS read helped him mature in his faith, but it was an experience that turned him around.
Our authority to be a pastor or servant of God comes from HIM. Our installation or ordainment is only confirmation of what God had done to us.
I have met pastors of every denomination and the thing that impresses me most is when I feel the love of God expressed in their lives. I knew that God had come into their lives, and I could feel HIS authority. I didn't care about the documentation on their walls. I felt that even some non-Lutherans were saved!
