Category Archives: Church

Factotum #6: Do-it-yourself-church

Everyday Ministry

|

Are you amongst the 5 per cent that watch SBS television? Usually I’m not, but I read the TV guide and there it was: the movie The Factotum. I watched the first part of it. It’s a clever comedy about an unlikely speech writer for an aspiring Italian politician. The factotum is summoned from his teaching job to write for the politician. He is given no choice; his whole life is disrupted as he does his master’s bidding. Not a bad model for us as factotums, except we are given the script, rather than producing our own.

(more…)

Factotum #5: Church Improvement

Everyday Ministry

|

It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. It’s a bit of an ugly word, unpopular and out of fashion, much like the person it describes. A factotum is a servant—someone who goes about a master’s work, a ‘doer of everything’, no matter how menial. ‘Factotum’ is servant training.

(more…)

How to divorce your minister

Everyday Ministry

|

Towards a theology of pastoral breakdown

20 years ago in the class room, Broughton Knox predicted that it would be our generation of ministers that would have to deal with the problem of total pastoral breakdown. That is, we would have to work out what is to be done when the congregation no longer has confidence in its minister and his ministry and, from the congregation’s point of view, the situation is irremediable.

(more…)

The Church and the denominations

Thought

|

Used by permission. First published in Reformed Theological Review, 23 (1964).

The important word ‘church’ is used in current language with at least six different meanings. For example, it is used for a building, a denomination, or a profession. But interestingly enough it is seldom used in its basic New Testament meaning. (more…)