In other news I have been offered a contract on my Murfreesboro house. It is a rental place that has been split into a tri-plex. It has a pretty good return on investment but I am considering the offer. The bad thing is that I will then need to find a decent investment for the money. The benefit is that I won't have any property that is not in the same town I actually reside in. Rental property has been great to me over the years but it might be time to dump it all and just find some less time intensive investments.
Tonight at bible study we discussed a pastor's "call". How do we determine God's calling in/on our lives as lay but also how does a pastor know if he is being called to the ministry? And, is a pastor called to the ministry and then called to a specific church or is he called to the ministry and then simply makes a decision on where he serves? One of my questions is why does God always "call" preachers to larger churches that pay more than their previous church?
I am sure there are exceptions but I have never heard of God "calling" a pastor to a smaller church that pays less. It seems that pastors have learned too many marketing and business administration tricks and have lost touch with their calling (if they ever had one). It seems that many pastors simply view their vocation as a job and not a calling from God. Many are observed putting in the minimum time required and working to the extent required to grow the church, not to bring people to God so much as to grow the numbers, so they can move on to the bigger church down the road. This issue of complacency (or the other issue of ulterior motives) is not a new problem, but is still a serious problem. It is also not unique to pastors because as a teacher, I also fight the complacency tendency in my life. God tells us in I Corinthians to do everything to His glory. We are also told to strive for excellence or perfection in all that we do.
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