The Three Temptations of an American Pastor

I'm going to write a lot more about this some day, but I kind of envision it as a parable kind of story I might want to create... (like a Patrick Lencioni book)

I would call it The Three Temptations of an American Pastor (I know, Lencioni wrote one very similar to this...)

Here they are:

• Buildings
• Bodies
• Bucks

I sometimes wonder how much our kingdom mindset is skewed by our devotion to these three measurements. In my experience, most people (especially pastors!) judge a church's success based on one or more of these three criteria:

• How big is your building
• How many people come on Sunday
• How are your offerings

Of course, this doesn't exactly match Jesus model...

• Not only did He not have a building, He sort of didn't have a home
• More people left his ministry than stuck with him (a bunch of them even killed him)
• The biggest offering his followers ever took up was the bribe Judas received for betraying him

Maybe instead of these temptations we should be teaching our people to be hospitable, missional, and generous?

Last week and this, I've been exposed to some cool ideas along this line. I have a lot more to say about this, and hopefully I'll have some opportunities down the road.