Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "WELS Member Comments":
Gone are the days Pastors made house calls. All I ever get is a voice mail message and I'm lucky if my call is returned by the Pastor. It seems some are turning their jobs into becoming managers. I'm sad about that as it shows a lack of caring. But I also think it is a sign of the times. The more they can push off onto the elders or cell group leaders, the less they'll have to do.
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Pastoral calls are a thing of the past. My family are all WELS at different churches and the discussion has come up about how the pastors never ever come to visit. Except for the address on the mailing list, they wouldn't even know where you live. They are just too 'busy' to do their jobs. I've seen how busy my pastor is just running from one kids baseball game to another soccer match. I'm sure it's his mentality that he only has to work just one day a week and then for only a few hours. It's no wonder they copy and paste a sermon. Many are neglecting their flocks.
GJ - Church and Chicaneries have definitely changed their synod. Think about that the next time they start crowing about how great Mequon is.
2 comments:
It saddens and frustrates me to hear people accuse WELS pastors of being unloving and uncaring for not making home visits.
I would ask the people making such accusations to consider things from the other perspective. I can't speak for all WELS pastors, but I can tell you about my situation. I serve a congregation of almost 2000 souls. I literally have a meeting or a group or a class every Monday through Thursday evening. Often times I also have a wedding rehearsal on Friday evening and a wedding on Saturday evening. Most weeks I'm lucky to spend one evening with my wife and kids per week.
I would LOVE to spend my evenings visiting my members rather than listening to the Ladies Aid talk about what kind of coffee to buy or listen to the elders squabble over pennies. But whenever I get the courage to suggest that the pastor might not need to attend every single meeting of every single organization, I'm told that I'm lazy and need to be a better leader and manager of the congregation. Whenever I try to get laymen to assume some leadership to free me up for home visits they tell me they're way too busy to help.
And even if I were to give up everything else in my ministry and visit members at home every single night of the week, every single day of the year, not ever spending a single night with my own family, it would still take almost six years to visit everyone.
Home visits are a wonderful thing in small congregations. But in large congregations like mine, they simply are not logistically possible, especially when congregations are too stingy to have an adequate pastoral staff of 4 or 5 pastors. It's not that I'm lazy, it's not I don't care about my people. It hurts me to hear people accuse me of that when it simply isn't true.
You're right, whoever wrote: "I've seen how busy my pastor is just running from one kids baseball game to another soccer match."
Since the WELS and other churches preach about how men should be family men, WELS pastors think they have to model this behavior, so during the week are often the "stay-at-home wives" and "soccer moms" while their wives work at some job. It's role reversal made possible by the church!
My WELS pastor was often at his son's and daughters' hockey games and at the YMCA where the entire family had memberships. They even installed a hot tub and sauna in the parsonage! Gone are the days where the parsonage was the place PKs studied, and practiced organ, piano and other instruments.
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