What follows this paragraph is a sentence from a Wall Street Journal article from a week or so ago detailing reasons white Evangelicals are being vaccinated for COVID at a lower rate than much of the rest of the American population. In my opinion, a substantial book could be written on the Journal's observation.
"Some evangelical leaders are afraid their churches will lose members or donations if they openly support vaccination, said Curtis Chang, a former evangelical pastor who co-founded Christians and the Vaccine, a project designed to increase vaccine acceptance."
If you are a long term reader of my blogs, you know that I reject the notion that humans can be leaders in the Kingdom of God. In a kingdom, there's only one leader: The King. In a kingdom, everyone apart from the king is a servant of the crown. In a kingdom the appropriate question is not, "How can I be a better leader," the only acceptable question is?, "How can I better serve my king?"
If you are a long term reader of my blogs, you know that I point out that our very modern era in which people have fretted about Christian leadership has been disastrous and has resulted in Christianity losing Western culture.
If you are a long term reader of my blogs, you know that I have bruised my fingers typing that Jesus said that the greatest person in the Kingdom will be the slave of all and that greatness, in general, is not a function of being a leader but of being a servant.
If you are a long term reader of my blogs, you know that the challenge of Jesus was not, "Come, let me lead you," but, "Come, follow me." I've said that it would be appropriate to invent the term followership for life in the Kingdom but not to adopt the secular term leadership.
If you are a long term reader of my blogs you know that, after the ascension, the people whose ministries, through the power and blessing of the Holy Spirit, propelled the expansion of the Gospel into the world, spoke of themselves as servants of Jesus, never leaders of the church.
And, if you are a long term reader of my blogs you know that perhaps my most fervent criticism of the clergy/laity divide in the modern church is that the clergy has become the providers of religious products and services to be consumed by the laity.
It's this last of my harangues that the Wall Street Journal article illustrates.
The people who are followed in today's church are not the ordained and licensed members of the clergy but the people whose primary role is to consume, the people who determine which "church" is successful by the standards of the world because they sit their fannies in seats and they open their purses and wallets to pay the bills.
Members of the clergy today are dependent on their congregations to pay their salaries. The bottom line in the church today is that, nearly every successful member of the clergy, that is, the "pastors" who can afford a nice home and car, know how to dance to the music their congregations want to hear...
...and, no matter what the truth about COVID vaccines may be one way or the other, as the Wall Street Journal points out, a prominent reason that evangelical pastors are not speaking forcefully and with vision about COVID vaccines is fear that the consumers in their congregations won't want to consume that message and that they'll plant their fannies and open their wallets and purses next week at the church where the pastor is clearly an anti-vaxxer.
In today's evangelical world, members of the clergy have become providers of the religious products and services that please the consumers in the laity they service.
This ain't right. In fact, it's very, very wrong.
It most certainly is not the way of Jesus.
If you can't understand how the Gospel that proclaims the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is losing the culture, understand. This is one very important reason.
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