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Eps's avatar

Wonderful post!

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Dave Down Under's avatar

Good thoughts. As a 'former pastor' myself, I know there are many reasons we leave the pastorate.

I had an affair. So, they let me go. Fair enough! So they should have.

But, I had been looking for a way out for years. Not because I don't love Jesus and love serving his people. But, because I had theological questions and had no-one I felt safe to talk to. I feared for my job. And So, after a few years of fear, I started acting out to get out. Dumb but true.

My guess is the same is true for many other Adventist pastors. I grew up in California and moved to Australia as an adult. I studied Theology here. I was studying Communication at PUC before meeting and marrying my Aussie princess - the most forgiving person I know - who kept me.

I understand the theology in the Adventist church is more conservative in most places than where I've lived. But, Aussies and Californians are still Adventists!

Since becoming a layperson again, I have talked to numerous Adventist pastors who hold differing theological views to the church and do so quietly. I'm not just talking about new ministers. I have sat across from Conference, Union and Division leaders here in Australia as they express their disagreement with aspects old school Adventist fundamentalism. And, oh the joy it gives them to be able to talk about it!

They have sat across tables, phone lines, internet chats and next to me on long drives as they unpacked their maturing views and their approaches to dealing with their cognitive dissonance. And not just in the buzz-topics, like women's ordination and end time perfectionism. Aussie Adventists rebel in the pews and pulpits on those topics. I'm talking about differences in standpoints on 1844, Biblical inerrancy, Creation, Sabbath keeping, and more.

Adventism says it has no creed. It says it is a movement. A church for present truth. Growing. Maturing. Reaching toward knowing Jesus. I think it is the friction many theologically astute Adventist ministers feel between the stayed church and the moving Spirit that leads them away from the pastorate. Not because they do not love and follow Jesus. But because they want to live and fish with Jesus in the Sea of Galilee rather than with the disconnected and desperate in the Dead Sea.

I believe that if Adventism rediscovered its first love for movement and reformation, fishers of men would be called out of our pews in vast numbers. I still sit each Sabbath in an Adventist church because I believe we will rediscover discipleship as a people. We will learn to say "Follow me as I follow Christ" and for that to be enough. More than enough. For that to be everything!

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