Pastoral Ministry: Milking Stool or Tripod?

          Gary first addressed these questions with his own personal story, how as a young pastor his first church loved and cared for him “even though they couldn’t understand my sermons,” and how that changed his life. Others shared positive stories of congregations nurturing pastors, and then Gary move on to address these questions with his “Pastoral Milking Stool” framework with its three “legs”: office, function/competence, and identity.

          At different times, one or the other of these “legs” has grown longer and longer, or has been cut shorter and shorter—e.g., in the “premodern” era of the church, office tended to be emphasized the most; more recently in the “modern” era of the church, function and competence tend to be emphasized the most; while identity is becoming more important in this “postmodern” time. These changes have made the milking stool very hard to sit on! Gary suggests we need to change this image from the milking stool to the tripod where the legs can be adjusted.

          Comments from the group: As pastors, it is helpful to understand that we are no longer sitting on a milking stool! Are these three emphases linked to generational differences within the church? Is it up to the pastor to adjust the length of the legs? This was a very stimulating and helpful discussion that I can’t duplicate here, but it gave me a lot to think about, and I was glad to see that at least one member of our MCBC executive was there to bring some of that back to our context in BC.

Jul 26, 2008 at 7:52 PM

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Hello from Winnipeg

Our Emmanuel delegates have each been invited to write a report for our mid-summer newsletter, and I’ll write something for it too, so you’ll definitely be hearing more! In the meantime, with Summit worship starting at 9am (8:30am during the Assembly time!) and late night activities until 10pm or later, there’s not much time for more just now . . . .

Jul 10, 2008 at 6:07 AM

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