SEAGOON
Puritan Board Freshman
Gil Garcia asked me to post the following, I would have posted it in a "pastoral theology" forum, but couldn't find one...
The following is directed to shiny new Puritan PCA pastors fresh out of seminary. It is merely a few quick and fallible words of advice from someone who has been where you are and doesn't want you to end up where I am.
1) Don't Use the Label TR to Describe Yourself! - it's about as useful to you as being labeled "fundamentalist" in the media/academy. Also, you are not "Truly" nor "Totally" Reformed, none of are or will be till we get to heaven. I've found that amongst our brethren on the left, TR is viewed as a synonym for "Theonomist" and "unloving, graceless, theological pit-bull." Additionally TR in its use is too broad. For instance, Steve Wilkins, with whom I have almost nothing in common theologically, and I have both been described as "TRs." The label really isn't helpful to anyone.
Instead call yourself something more specific, and less prejudicial. For instance, I describe myself as an "Old School Southern Presbyterian" because my theology lines up most closely with Peck, Palmer, or Thornwell.
2) You have to "make your bones" before anyone will take you seriously: Your first year in the ministry is not the time to be telling everyone else what to do. You need to have served your time in the trenches, proved your worth, and written a number of helpful things or you are just another young Turk. They need to see you can take advice before you'll be allowed to give it. I missed that lesson and am still paying the price for it today. I will probably never lose the PNG status I earned while I was still an RE and seminarian. Certainly I will never be respected even if not agreed with by the opposition. Even guys technically on my side know to stay away from me in public lest some of my bad rep. get stuck to them.
3) You catch more flies with Honey than Vinegar: Try to always emphasize what you are "fer" instead of what you are "agin". Be winsome, or at least disinterested, not angry. Not even your own side will have the patience to listen to an angry young man more than once or twice. Plus remember that as in preaching, your calling is to convict and persuade people, not "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women." At the end of the day, we want people in the courts of the church to either be persuaded or at least willing to hear us again. I'm not the best of advocates, but over time, I've managed to get some guys who were initially opposed to everything I stood for to at least give me a hearing and begin to shift from their original positions. Be firm, be patient, be gentle and respectful.
4) Recognize that Ecclesiastical, like popular politics, is the art of the possible: By my estimation, the PCA is around 55% moderates, 25% liberal/progressive /emergent leaning, and 20% conservatives of all stripes. Our Puritan/Old School wing is the smallest grouping in the denomination. You simply CANNOT beat the drum for your own side and expect to carry the day. The left realizes that and consequently their speeches are tailored to sway the critical moderate bloc. Conservatives are gradually learning that, after several years of serious defeats. If an issue has NO possibility of capturing the conservatives and the greater portion of the moderates, it will not fly. Puritan worship, sad to say, will not even fly with the majority of CONSERVATIVES. The majority in that wing are "blended" or "Episcoterian" not Puritan. The liberals WILL win whenever they capture the moderates, and if they can continue to do that, the moderates will open the door for them to drive us out of yet another denomination. What moderates fail to realize is that with conservatives gone, the agenda becomes "all liberalism all the time" because moderates by definition don't have an agenda and therefore offer no counterbalance to a liberal agenda.
5) Realize that you are not Obi-Wan Kenobi: You are not the "only hope" for the continuation of evangelical orthodoxy. You have a role to play, and it is important that you always strive to do the right rather than the pragmatic thing, but if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, the gates of hell still wouldn't prevail over the church of Jesus Christ. I stress this because sometimes we sound as though we, and not Jesus, are the ones to whom "without me you can do nothing" is referring. Leave the "if you don't do this thing I'm advocating the sky will fall" talk to the left wing. Humble yourself and patiently persevere in well doing and realize that even set-backs are part of God's plan.
Oh, and keep in mind I'm preaching the above to myself.
Your Servant in Christ,
Andy Webb
The following is directed to shiny new Puritan PCA pastors fresh out of seminary. It is merely a few quick and fallible words of advice from someone who has been where you are and doesn't want you to end up where I am.
1) Don't Use the Label TR to Describe Yourself! - it's about as useful to you as being labeled "fundamentalist" in the media/academy. Also, you are not "Truly" nor "Totally" Reformed, none of are or will be till we get to heaven. I've found that amongst our brethren on the left, TR is viewed as a synonym for "Theonomist" and "unloving, graceless, theological pit-bull." Additionally TR in its use is too broad. For instance, Steve Wilkins, with whom I have almost nothing in common theologically, and I have both been described as "TRs." The label really isn't helpful to anyone.
Instead call yourself something more specific, and less prejudicial. For instance, I describe myself as an "Old School Southern Presbyterian" because my theology lines up most closely with Peck, Palmer, or Thornwell.
2) You have to "make your bones" before anyone will take you seriously: Your first year in the ministry is not the time to be telling everyone else what to do. You need to have served your time in the trenches, proved your worth, and written a number of helpful things or you are just another young Turk. They need to see you can take advice before you'll be allowed to give it. I missed that lesson and am still paying the price for it today. I will probably never lose the PNG status I earned while I was still an RE and seminarian. Certainly I will never be respected even if not agreed with by the opposition. Even guys technically on my side know to stay away from me in public lest some of my bad rep. get stuck to them.
3) You catch more flies with Honey than Vinegar: Try to always emphasize what you are "fer" instead of what you are "agin". Be winsome, or at least disinterested, not angry. Not even your own side will have the patience to listen to an angry young man more than once or twice. Plus remember that as in preaching, your calling is to convict and persuade people, not "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women." At the end of the day, we want people in the courts of the church to either be persuaded or at least willing to hear us again. I'm not the best of advocates, but over time, I've managed to get some guys who were initially opposed to everything I stood for to at least give me a hearing and begin to shift from their original positions. Be firm, be patient, be gentle and respectful.
4) Recognize that Ecclesiastical, like popular politics, is the art of the possible: By my estimation, the PCA is around 55% moderates, 25% liberal/progressive /emergent leaning, and 20% conservatives of all stripes. Our Puritan/Old School wing is the smallest grouping in the denomination. You simply CANNOT beat the drum for your own side and expect to carry the day. The left realizes that and consequently their speeches are tailored to sway the critical moderate bloc. Conservatives are gradually learning that, after several years of serious defeats. If an issue has NO possibility of capturing the conservatives and the greater portion of the moderates, it will not fly. Puritan worship, sad to say, will not even fly with the majority of CONSERVATIVES. The majority in that wing are "blended" or "Episcoterian" not Puritan. The liberals WILL win whenever they capture the moderates, and if they can continue to do that, the moderates will open the door for them to drive us out of yet another denomination. What moderates fail to realize is that with conservatives gone, the agenda becomes "all liberalism all the time" because moderates by definition don't have an agenda and therefore offer no counterbalance to a liberal agenda.
5) Realize that you are not Obi-Wan Kenobi: You are not the "only hope" for the continuation of evangelical orthodoxy. You have a role to play, and it is important that you always strive to do the right rather than the pragmatic thing, but if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, the gates of hell still wouldn't prevail over the church of Jesus Christ. I stress this because sometimes we sound as though we, and not Jesus, are the ones to whom "without me you can do nothing" is referring. Leave the "if you don't do this thing I'm advocating the sky will fall" talk to the left wing. Humble yourself and patiently persevere in well doing and realize that even set-backs are part of God's plan.
Oh, and keep in mind I'm preaching the above to myself.
Your Servant in Christ,
Andy Webb