We trust that the Lord of the Church, who awakens the dead, can also awaken churches that are dead or dying, just as He awakened our hearts to faith that were dead in sin. However, we declare it superstition to suppose that He will produce a miracle to do what he has entrusted to us, the servants of the church, and what we in our laziness and cowardice, in our love of ease, and in our fear of men again and again fail to do. -- Hermann Sasse, *We Confess: Jesus Christ* p. 69.
Sasse had nailed it. The local
ReplyDeleteparish can ill afford to have a
complacent and ill-prepared pastor.
The calling of the clergy is to
serve the Lord and share the means of
grace. There must be a passion
within the pastor's heart that his
ministry is to be Christ-centered
and not a self-centered life of ease.
May the Lord give us humble servants
in the pastorate.