Annual Report

On Tuesday I attended our annual district meeting where we share with our fellow pastors and turn in our annual reports. I have held various views of this meeting in the past but I won't go into that here. The meeting did trigger a couple of thoughts though.

In our report we are asked to list 4 ministry related books that we have read in the past year. Every year I wonder what to put down. Sometimes I write down the last four books I've read. At other times I have tried to pick the books that had the biggest impact on me. This year I wondered about what "ministry related" meant. If I had listed Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" or "The Brothers Karamazov" would they have counted? After all both books have gone a long way toward influencing my thoughts on incarnational ministry. Or what if I had listed "Touching My Father's Soul" by Jamling Tenzing Norgay who writes about his return to practicing buddism as he follows his father's foot steps up Everest? Does the insight I gained regarding sincere practitioners of other religions matter in my ministry?

I was also struck by the thought of ministry personality. I have long argued that different pastors have different philosophies of ministry and the danger this causes when the majority view is regarded as superior to the minority. But maybe it is not so much a difference in philosophy as it is a difference of personality. Maybe we have come to believe that a pastor must be an extrovert with tons of charisma and we have decided that an introvert who is more contemplative just isn't qualified. It seems like the ex pastors (heh-heh) are always railing that the in pastors are lazy and not really doing proper ministry. Perhaps whole congregations have personalities that clash with other congregations too.

No where is this more evident than in the report I was supposed to fill out for the Youth Leadership Team (not its real title but I can't think of it right now.) As I started to fill it out I began to realize that it was directed at only one type of youth ministry philosophy or personality. I read through to the bottom of the report and found that it came from a group of people who all practiced (or have in the past) the same type of youth ministry. My guess is that they believe their way is the only correct way of doing youth ministry. I stopped filling out the report. I expect my super. will give me a call and ask where it is. The again he may not. I hope he doesn't mind if I throw it in the trash.