A while ago I wrote about utilizing the Lectionary for preaching. This ancient tool provides Scriptures for every Sunday of the Church year, each passage carefully selected to guide the Church through the rhythms of Christ’s life and the great mysteries of the gospel. At its best, the lectionary is not just a schedule—it’s a theological lens. It draws us into a way of reading Scripture that aligns our hearts with the seasons of the Church, shaping how we pray, how we worship, and even how we understand the story of redemption as it unfolds across the pages of Scripture.
During Lent, for instance, we hear readings that focus on Christ’s ministry as He moves steadily toward His Passion. The texts remind us of His temptation, His preaching on repentance, and His resolute journey to the Cross. These aren’t random selections—they’re intentionally chosen to form us in penitence, humility, and renewed devotion. And now, in Advent, the readings point us toward watchfulness and hope. They remind us of God’s promises, the prophets’ longing, and the call to prepare our lives for Christ’s coming—both His first coming in Bethlehem and His return in glory. When used well, the lectionary doesn’t just tell the story of salvation history; it invites us into it.
Most churches today that follow a lectionary use a three-year cycle—Years A, B, and C. This pattern is a relatively modern innovation, developed after Vatican II and adopted by many Protestant denominations as well. The idea was simple: expand the range of Scripture heard on Sundays so that congregations would receive a broader diet of biblical passages. With concerns about growing secularism, biblical illiteracy, and the increasingly thin scriptural foundation in Western culture, this seemed like a noble and necessary move.
Historically, however, the Church used a one-year cycle that repeated annually. Each new Church year started with Advent, and the readings cycled through the same appointed lessons every year. The repetition was intentional. The Church believed that spiritual formation happens through immersion, not novelty—through hearing the same words again and again, in the same seasons, until they become part of the Christian imagination.
So why did many churches move to a three-year cycle? Part of the answer has to do with changes in everyday life. For centuries, the primary place believers heard large amounts of Scripture wasn’t Sunday morning—it was the daily prayer offices, especially Morning and Evening Prayer. Through these, the entire Bible was read in the course of a year. But as the pace of life accelerated and the daily offices fell out of regular use for many, Sunday morning became the main (and for some, the only) time people regularly encountered Scripture. The three-year lectionary was an attempt to compensate for that loss.
But good intentions do not always yield the outcomes we expect. While the breadth of Scripture increased, something subtle but significant was lost: depth.
Three years is simply too long for the average congregation to hold a unified scriptural rhythm in memory. The seasonal themes become stretched thin. The passages don’t repeat often enough to become familiar, let alone formational. A reading heard only once every three years might be interesting or enlightening in the moment, but it rarely has the opportunity to sink in, to reappear in prayer, or to become a recurring voice shaping our lives.
The older one-year lectionary, by contrast, offered a formative repetition that acted like liturgical catechesis. Every Advent, you encountered Isaiah’s promises. Every Lent, you heard the same calls to repentance and the same foreshadowing of the Passion. Every Easter, the same readings shouted the resurrection hope of the gospel. Over years of worship, these passages became companions—scriptures that lived in the heart, surfaced in difficulty, and formed the backbone of a believer’s biblical memory.
This is why many people who grew up with the one-year cycle can recall certain readings with remarkable clarity. They don’t remember them because they studied them in a classroom; they remember them because they prayed them, sang them, and heard them proclaimed every year. The repetition shaped not only what they believed, but how they believed it.
In the end, this is what the lectionary is meant to do. It is not merely a reading plan. It is a tool for communal formation. It shapes the imagination of the Church, builds a shared scriptural vocabulary, and roots our worship in the story of Christ from Advent through Pentecost and beyond. And perhaps the most important thing we can rediscover—whether using a one-year or three-year cycle—is that Scripture forms us most powerfully when it returns to us again and again.
The goal of the lectionary is not simply that we “get through” more of the Bible, but that the Bible gets deeper into us. And in a restless, distracted age, that depth may be more valuable than ever.
So starting this Sunday (November 30, 2025), the church I pastor is switching to the traditional 1-year lectionary that is found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This is for the most part the same lectionary that John Wesley himself used his entire life. The only major change is the addition of an Old Testament and Psalm reading that has been added by the Canadian Prayer Book Society, as the original 1662 Lectionary only contained an Epistle and Gospel reading.
My hope and prayer is not that this will reap an immediate reward or change, but that in 3 or 4 years, parishioners and myself alike will see how God has been working in us His likeness and character as we encounter the same Scriptures a different way. Our human nature needs repetition for something to sink in. and while the Scriptures might be the same every year, the Holy Spirit has been working each of us into the image of Christ just a bit more, and so we are by His grace that much more like Him.
One of the most unsettling episodes in Scripture comes right after the healing of Naaman in 2 Kings 5. Elisha, the prophet of God, refuses the lavish gifts that Naaman brings in gratitude for his healing. But Elisha’s servant Gehazi cannot resist. He runs after Naaman, takes some of the gifts for himself, and returns as if nothing happened. Elisha, as a prophet of the Lord, knows immediately what Gehazi has done. He confronts him, and Gehazi receives the leprosy of Naaman as a consequence for his actions. It is a sobering story of human desire gone astray and a reminder that God’s grace cannot be manipulated.
Gehazi’s sin was not just greed—though that certainly played a role. It was something more subtle and spiritually dangerous: he tried to turn God’s freely given grace into a personal mechanism, something he could manage, control, or profit from. Naaman’s healing was an act of divine mercy, an unmistakable sign that God moves according to His will and not human schemes. But Gehazi could not accept that reality. He wanted to take God’s miracle and make it serve his own ends. In that, he mirrors a very modern temptation: the idea that we can somehow manifest our desires into reality, that our focused intention, visualization, or spiritual “technique” can make God—or the universe—bend to our will.
Manifesting, in its modern sense, promises control. It suggests that if we align our thoughts, speak our desires boldly, or create the right mental or spiritual conditions, we can bring our hopes to life. It is spiritualized method: a way of trying to manage outcomes outside of God’s sovereignty. Like Gehazi, manifesting assumes that blessing can be directed, ordered, and earned, rather than received as a gift. And this is precisely what Scripture warns against. God does not respond to formulas or mental exercises; He responds to hearts that trust Him, submit to Him, and delight in His will.
One of the challenges for Christians today is that manifesting can be deceptively attractive. In a world of uncertainty, it offers an illusion of control. In a culture that prizes individual desire above all else, it presents a way to “claim” outcomes without surrendering to God. It is appealing because it promises immediate results, gives a sense of spiritual power, and allows people to feel like the architects of their own destiny. But this allure is precisely what makes it dangerous: it positions our desires as the authority, rather than God’s sovereignty.
The difference between manifesting and prayer could not be more stark. Prayer begins with God; manifesting begins with self. Prayer assumes that our desires must be shaped and purified by God; manifesting assumes they are inherently right. Prayer acknowledges God as the one who shapes reality; manifesting suggests we can. Prayer is relational and dependent; manifesting is transactional and self-reliant. Gehazi’s story exposes this danger beautifully: human desire left unchecked, whether in ancient Israel or modern culture, becomes the source of deception, greed, and ultimately judgment.
Scripture gives us a far healthier way to navigate our desires. Our hearts are deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9), and God calls us to submit them to Him. He reshapes our longings so that they align with His will, fulfilling them in ways that are far greater than we could ever imagine. Psalm 37:4 is not a promise that God will give us whatever we want; it is a promise that when we delight in Him, He will create desires in us that match His kingdom purposes. True blessing comes not from our control, but from communion with the God who holds all things in His hands.
Practically, this means that as followers of Christ we must resist the temptation to manipulate outcomes, stop treating our faith like a spiritual technique, and instead cultivate trust, patience, and obedience. Prayer, Scripture, worship, confession, and disciplined spiritual practices form the heart to recognize God’s work in our lives. Gehazi’s downfall is a cautionary tale: when we try to control God’s grace, we corrupt it. But when we trust Him, we receive His mercy and find freedom, peace, and joy that no amount of “manifesting” could ever produce.
The gospel invites us to live in this posture: to receive, not manufacture; to trust, not manipulate; to delight in God’s will, not in our own ability to bend reality. Gehazi’s story and the modern temptation of manifesting remind us that life with God is not about controlling His power, but about participating faithfully in His work. We do not manifest our future. We receive it. We do not create our destiny. We trust the One who holds it. And in that trust, we discover a peace and joy that is impossible to manufacture—but entirely real for those who follow Him.
Today is Reformation Day. October 31st is the day that Martin Luther posted his 95 theses, an open request to debate points of theology and abuse going on in the Medieval Roman Catholic Church. Here’s the thing…posts about today from both Protestants and Roman Catholics often talk about Martin Luther separating from the Church. Yet…that’s not the actual story.
The Early Church was seen as a part of the ongoing Jewish faith and practice. Jewish believers in Jesus still met in Synagogues, went to the Temple, and continued in their cultural and religious adherence to the faith, not also fulfilled through the Resurrected Christ. It was not the Christians who ‘split off’ from the rest. They understood they were the fulfillment of the law, now with Gentiles grafted in, and would continue to do so. But just a few years following the close of the New Testament Canon, we see in history the complete separation of the Christian and the Jewish faith. This separation was primarily instigated by the now templeless Jewish worshipers. The desire was not to be separate, but to let God’s people know that all they had been hoping and praying for was now here, and has been fulfilled.
Later on in history after the Reformation we see in the life of John Wesley, who, while remaining an Anglican priest his whole life, faced severe distrust from the State Church because of His Gospel centered and transformational preaching, and the Methodist movement was officially separated almost directly following his death. While this likely would have happened eventually, his desire was not to start a new church movement, but instead to reform and recenter the Anglican Church around the transforming nature and work of the Gospel.
And just a few generations later we see this again with B.T. Roberts in western New York in the late 1800’s. The preaching of the Gospel, and of holiness led the at the time lukewarm Methodist Episcopal church to defrock Roberts and other clergy, leading to the Free Methodist Church being formed in 1860. Again, not a desired separation, but a forced one by those not thrilled about the convictional lives and preaching of Roberts and his compatriots.
This now brings us back to Martin Luther in 1615. Luther did not desire separation, he did not desire to form a new movement, or be anything other than a part of the Church. And yet, he didn’t have any choice. He was forced out by a Papal Bull that excommunicated him. But when Luther nailed the theses to the Church door on October 31, 1615, it was not to start a new church, but to address the abuses and accretions in the Church of that day. And that is the true spirit of the Reformation. Not a desire for schism or control, but the desire, but to see the Church return to the Gospel, and to see abuses remedied.
This was the continued desire of the Magisterial Reformers, which has sadly been overshadowed in large part by the ideas of the radical reformation that almost wholly rejects the premises of reform established by Luther himself.
So the call to the Church today is to continue reforming. But not to just make changes or “get rid of tradition”, but to remain rooted in the Gospel, and the traditions that God has given and established through His Church, and continue spreading the Kingdom until He returns.
Less than a month ago the first woman was appointed to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury. This decision has thrown the Anglican world into a fury of activity and debate as to what to do next. As an outsider of the Anglican Communion it has been fascinating to watch those inside the Anglican movement discuss, debate and make plans for the future from here. The questions and debates brought up because of this appointment are challenging and important.
For many Anglicans, the appointment of Sarah Mullalley represents a foundational theological problem purely on the issue of the ordination of women. Myself, as someone in the Methodist movement overall which originated in Anglicanism, and the Free Methodist Church specifically has a long history of stalwart orthodoxy while also allowing for and advocating for the ordination of women. That being said, it is a point of deep contention within the Anglican world, with some Provinces (national or semi-national) and Dioceses (similar to a conference or district) have differing positions on the issue. With the Anglican Church in North America (ANCA) varying from within on the issue. All of that being said, the new appointment has thrust the debate to the forefront of the conversation, with even more intense vigor.
My contribution to this discussion (as much as it is worth not being formally Anglican) is not to take issue with the appointment of a woman, but with the particular individual who has been appointed. I, like those in my tradition and denomination, uphold women’s ordination to the ministry. Seeing it as the fulfillment of God calling all humanity to be proclaimers and ministers of His Gospel. This is rooted in an Edenic and Kingdom ideal and principle that the divisions and contentions between the sexes are ultimately healed and restored in the coming of Christ’s Kingdom on earth through His Church. I won’t be making the full case for women’s ordination here. It is something I have done in other places, and there are those who do it more regularly than me, such as Marg Mowczko.
My primary issue with the new Archbishop is her overall theological and moral framework and outlook. Sadly, over the decades in the Church of England (CoE), as it has been in Canada and the USA (which led to the creation of the ACNA) has been a quick march away from Biblically foundational truths, particularly surrounding gender, marriage and abortion. These issues in particular are where the new Archbishop to be sadly is deficient in all. Sarah Mullally regardless of her being a man or a woman is not fit to lead the CoE, or act as head of the Anglican Communion purely on the basis of her theological positions that are contrary to the Biblical foundations of not just the Anglican expression as laid out in the 39 Articles of Religion, but that are also found in Scripture.
She has expressly made her position on marriage and abortion clear in the past, demonstrating that it continues to line up with the progressive voices in the Church of England that continue to chip away at the solid truths that it was established on during the Reformation into nothing more than a secularized state church that rather than proclaiming the Gospel, seeks to equivocate on the issues of the day by collapsing at the feet of pandering words and wholly un-Biblical expressions of love that affirm rather than speak truth.
For myself, I am thankful that as a Free Methodist I have Bishops that I can trust. Are they perfect, no. But they have continued to demonstrate their submission to the Word of God, and holding fast to the faith once delivered to the saints.
In response to all of this, GAFCON, which was established itself in 2008 as a clear and Biblical voice to the insanity of liberalizing Anglicanism in the West has now just put themselves forward not as a conservative alternative to the Anglican Communion headed up by Canterbury, but as THE Worldwide Anglican Communion that represents the voice and interest of that tradition worldwide. With it, a majority of Anglicans worldwide, most represented in the global south in Africa, South America and South-east Asia will effectively reduce the historic Anglican Communion to a shell of its former self.
This move, while certainly sad to see in one sense, also seems to be the only option. The pretences and precepts that before allowed differences among the variety of perspectives in the Communion are being totally shorn away, making it clear that there is only one path forward. “Progress at all costs.”
May this be a warning to all followers of Christ in any tradition. Yes, we are to contextualize the sharing of the Gospel to our age and culture. What we are not to do is pervert and fold to the voice of the age, exchanging the truth of God for the shallow pool that is the temporal approval from culture. The Gospel calls for transformation of us into His image, not the other way around.
When one studies Church history as a Protestant there are one of two avenues to approach it. The first is that of the magisterial reformers such as Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and others who saw the ongoing move of the Church as good, with the need to reform and adapt to the issues being presented to maintain the fidelity and effectiveness of Christ’s Kingdom on earth. The second approach likewise stems from the reformation from characters like Zwingli, and others of the radical reformation that saw the medieval church as wholly apostate and unfaithful, having been that way some few generations after the close of the book of Acts, and it is their job to bring the Church back to the true apostolic practice of the Christian faith.
I used to be a part of that latter group. I was unequivocally taught that while there is always a faithful remnant, the Church really got back on track with Martin Luther in the 16th Century, and while things have not always been done correctly, we have the true and best version of the faith. These tendencies are particularly found in low-church Reformed circles, anabaptist, baptist and non-denomination evangelicalism. Anything traditional is viewed with suspicion as being “too Catholic” (Roman Catholic), and generally there is a HUGE knowledge gap between the book of Acts and Martin Luther, because frankly there’s not much worth knowing until the church was saved by Luther. The problem with this mentality is that in its desire to be faithful, it ends up throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and ultimately rejects what the reformers sought to do.
To actually be Protestant—and not restorationist—means recovering what the Reformers themselves knew in their bones: that the faith of the apostles was never lost, but preserved, guarded, and handed down through the centuries by the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Protestant Reformation was never meant to erase history, but to redeem it—to scrape off the corrosion of error and neglect so that the gold of the Gospel could shine once again.
Modern Protestants often forget this. We imagine that the Reformation was about starting over, about “getting back to the Bible” as though no one in fifteen hundred years had ever read it rightly. But that’s not how Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, or any of the magisterial Reformers saw their work. They saw themselves as continuing the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church—reforming her where she had strayed, but never abandoning her. They were heirs of the Fathers, not orphans. Their vision of reformation was renewal within the story of God’s people, not rebellion against it.
When you actually read the Reformers, you see how deeply they drew from the well of patristic theology. Luther was steeped in Augustine; Calvin filled his Institutes with quotations from Chrysostom, Basil, and the early councils. Cranmer built the Book of Common Prayer on the bones of ancient liturgies, purified and translated for the English people. These men saw no contradiction between Scripture and the Church’s historical witness; they believed that the same Spirit who inspired the Word also preserved its faithful interpretation through the ages.
That conviction stands in sharp contrast to the restorationist impulse that dominates much of modern evangelicalism. Restorationism assumes that the Church fell off the rails almost immediately after the apostles died—that by the second or third century, Christianity was already hopelessly compromised. It views history not as a story of God’s faithfulness, but as a long night of corruption and error until “we” finally rediscovered the truth. Its posture toward the past is suspicion, not gratitude.
But such thinking is historically false and spiritually dangerous. It cuts the believer off from the communion of saints, leaving each generation to reconstruct Christianity on its own terms. It treats the Holy Spirit as though He took a sabbatical for 1,400 years, only to return in the 16th century or, worse, in a 19th-century revival meeting. That’s not faithfulness to Scripture—it’s arrogance cloaked in piety.
Thomas Oden, one of the most important theologians of the 20th century, saw this clearly. After decades as a progressive theologian chasing modern trends, he underwent what he called a “paleo-orthodox” conversion—a return to the consensual tradition of the early Church. Oden realized that genuine renewal comes not from innovation but from remembrance. He argued that the Church’s future depends on recovering her ancient consensus, what he called “the great cloud of witnesses” of the first five centuries.
Oden’s rediscovery of the Fathers was not mere academic nostalgia; it was a spiritual awakening. He came to see that the early Church’s theology was not speculative philosophy but lived wisdom—the fruit of prayer, persecution, and pastoral care. These were men and women who wrestled with heresy, hammered out the creeds, and preserved the integrity of the Gospel under immense pressure. They gave us the vocabulary of Christian faith: Trinity, Incarnation, grace, and salvation. To ignore them is to amputate ourselves from our own theological bloodstream.
The Reformers understood this instinctively. Calvin wrote, “If we wish to provide in the best way for the consciences of men, we must go back to the ancient Church.” Luther affirmed that he taught nothing new but “the same faith that Augustine and the Fathers held.” Cranmer’s Anglican liturgy drew directly from patristic sources such as the Didache, Chrysostom, and the Gelasian Sacramentary. They didn’t imagine a sharp divide between the apostolic and the catholic; they saw themselves as faithful heirs of both.
By contrast, restorationism tries to make every believer an apostle and every church a new Jerusalem. It erases history, treating the Church as a failed experiment that must be rebooted from scratch. The result is a dizzying array of “New Testament” churches, each claiming to have recaptured the primitive faith, yet all differing on baptism, the Lord’s Supper, authority, and even the Gospel itself. What was once meant to restore unity ends up multiplying division.
True Protestantism offers a different way. It stands with Scripture as the final authority, but never apart from the Church’s living memory. It reforms what has been corrupted but keeps what is good, refusing both blind traditionalism and reckless innovation. It honors the Fathers as witnesses to how the early Church lived, prayed, and understood the Word of God. It confesses that the Spirit who inspired Scripture is the same Spirit who preserved its meaning through the generations.
Thomas Oden put it simply: “The next reformation will be a recovery of memory.” That is the call of genuine Protestantism—to remember who we are, to recover the faith that formed us, to recognize that the Church is not a modern invention but an ancient household. If the Reformers could say with confidence that they stood in continuity with the Fathers, can we?
To be Protestant, rightly understood, is to be reformed and rooted—to be biblical and historical—to be evangelical and catholic. It means confessing the faith of the Nicene Creed without embarrassment, praying words shaped by centuries of saints, and reading Scripture through the same lenses worn by those who first received it. It means recognizing that tradition, when purified by the Word, is not our enemy but our inheritance.
Our age does not need another “new” version of Christianity. It needs a remembering Church—a Protestantism that knows its Fathers, honors its Reformers, and lives its faith as part of the one Body that stretches across time and space. That kind of Protestantism is not a protest of rebellion, but a protest of witness: a bearing forth of the ancient Gospel in every generation, until the Lord returns.
Over my lifetime I have seen many different types of Church leadership styles come and go, in and out of vogue. Most of them have been focused on the leadership qualities and abilities that one possesses, and how do we develop them further for use in the church setting. This from the get go makes sense. We need competent people who can lead teams and congregations for the growth of the Kingdom. This has been especially true since the explosion of Church programs in churches since the 70’s and 80’s. At the same time, we have also started to see cracks along the edges. The turnover rate in the pastoral ministry is higher than ever, with only 1 in 10 pastors who actually retire while still in the job, and 42% of pastors in the US considering leaving the ministry annually. That is staggering!. What has happened? I don’t think it’s an issue with the overall calling that people have to the ministry. That’s never been the issue.
What I have been increasingly convinced of is that we have unduly repackaged the role of a pastor. The pattern of Scripture shows that the pastor fulfills a role that is more akin to a priest, where in our Westernized context have transformed this priestly calling into that of a CEO type leader of an organization. Think of the difference between cattle driving and sheep herding. Recovering this priestly identity is not nostalgia or an attempt to be “traditional.” It’s essential for the health, witness, and formation of the Church.
I understand the general trepidation in talking about the pastor being a priest. It is usually grounded in a skepticism of, and desire to not have appearances of things that could be considered “Roman Catholic”. Yet, in that desire, those of us in the Evangelical world have unduly separated ourselves from the riches of what the historic Church has understood to be true and in line with Scripture. With that in mind,
Shepherding – Jesus said to Peter: “Feed my sheep… Tend my sheep… Feed my sheep.” – John 21:15–17
Shepherding is relational, incarnational, and sacrificial. It’s not about delegating tasks, but entering deeply into the life of the flock. Often in our contemporary era the idea of successfully leading a church is by gauging the number of programs that are offered, and how many people are attending those programs. This, as a measure of success, is able to chart the growth or decline of a ministry solely on the number of people participating in it. Often, “discipleship” is focused on making a pathway where someone comes to church, believes, starts getting more involved, starts giving financially, and then volunteers their time. While these are all good things, the focus is on the programmatic nature of their involvement, and the success of their discipleship is gauged off involvement in said programs.
Rather, pastors as priests are called to shepherding. Instead of driving people to programs, the role is all about being with the flock as they go about their lives. Just as a shepherd would live with the sheep in the field, the pastor is called to be in and about the flock in the normal rhythms of life, not shut-up in an office planning the next worship extravaganza or coordinating the next program.
Teaching – Pastors guard truth and call people to holiness: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” – 2 Timothy 4:2
Of all the tasks and roles that a pastor is to fulfill, teaching and preaching are the ones that go without question. We can never remove the teaching importance of the pastor from a priestly understanding. In the Old and New Testaments, it was incumbent upon those in leadership in the Temple or Early Church to teach God’s Words and ways to His people. The role of preaching and teaching must of course never be removed, but it should be put in its proper place alongside the other roles that the pastor as priest fulfills. What has generally happened in the last half century, particularly in Western Christianity is the simplification of preaching into something that is no more than inspiration and platitudes. That must be rectified to return the permanence of solid preaching that correctly conveys the purpose and will of God to His people through His Word.
Intercession – The pastor stands between God and the people—not as a barrier, but as a bridge. Paul urges Timothy, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people” (1 Timothy 2:1). This is not mere sentiment; it is a priestly calling. The pastor’s intercession is an act of love, lifting the names and needs of the flock before the throne of grace. Prayer is one of the last vestiges of the priestly ministry that has remained intact in much of the Evangelical world. Yet even here, something has been lost. The modern trend toward purely extemporaneous prayer has, at times, replaced the deep rhythm and form of a life steeped in prayer. Historically, the priestly pattern of prayer was not spontaneous alone but structured—rooted in the “Daily Office,” where morning and evening prayers wove together Scripture, intercession, and thanksgiving for all people. This rhythm trained the heart to carry the congregation into the presence of God continually, not just reactively. The pastor’s intercession is not a task to check off but a vocation to inhabit—an ongoing participation in Christ’s own ministry of prayer for His Church.
Sacramental Ministry – In a sacramental vision of ministry, the pastor becomes a steward of the mysteries of God. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and absolution are not symbolic niceties but tangible means through which Christ gives Himself to His people. As Paul writes, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). The sacraments are where heaven touches earth, where the grace of God is not only declared but embodied. The pastor’s role in administering them is not about power or prestige but service—serving as Christ’s hands extended, offering grace that is not their own to give but His alone. In Free Methodist and broader evangelical contexts, we must recover this sacramental imagination: to see baptism not as a public statement of faith alone but as a moment of new creation; to see communion not merely as a memorial but as a mysterious participation in Christ’s body and blood; to see confession and absolution as the embrace of the Father to the prodigal. The sacramental ministry is where the Word becomes flesh again and again in the life of the Church.
Living Sacrifice – If the pastor’s ministry is priestly, then their life must also be sacrificial. Paul writes, “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). The pastor’s calling is not simply to lead worship but to become worship—to live a life that mirrors Christ’s own self-giving love. Ministry, at its heart, is poured-out living. Paul describes his own life this way: “I am poured out as a drink offering” (Philippians 2:17). This is not a romantic image; it is the gritty reality of discipleship. The priestly pastor embodies a life of surrender, of holiness offered to God for the sake of others. Every sermon prepared, every bedside prayer whispered, every unseen act of service becomes part of that offering. In a world that prizes comfort, efficiency, and personal fulfillment, the pastor is called to a different pattern—the pattern of the cross. To be a living sacrifice is to allow one’s own life to become the altar where the love of Christ is made visible.
True pastoral authority is not rooted in charisma, charm, or organizational success—it is grounded in ordination under Christ and expressed through faithfulness in ministry. Peter exhorts pastors to “shepherd the flock of God… not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2–3). The authority of the pastor is not managerial but sacramental; it is not seized but received. It comes through the laying on of hands, through a calling that is both divine and communal, confirmed by the Church and commissioned by Christ Himself. In a culture that often measures leadership by visibility, influence, or metrics, the pastor’s authority is quiet, cruciform, and deeply relational. It is the authority of the towel and basin, not the throne and scepter. The pastor’s task is not to control but to care, not to command but to cultivate holiness in the people of God. When the Church recovers this vision of authority as humble participation in Christ’s own shepherding, pastoral leadership ceases to be a performance and becomes once again a vocation of love—faithful, steady, and shaped by the cross.
Authority is cruciform, sacrificial, and relational—not transactional.
Dimension
Pastor as CEO / Org‑Leader
Pastor as Priest under Christ
Identity
Manager, strategist
Mediator, shepherd, steward of grace
Primary Task
Growth, outreach
Spiritual nourishment, holiness, sacramental life
Metrics of Success
Attendance, budget
Faithfulness, spiritual fruit
Preaching
Relevant, motivational
Proclaiming Word, truth, repentance
Worship & Sacrament
Optional
Central, formative
Care
Programmatic
Personal, incarnational
Authority
Skill-based
Call & ordination under Christ
Goal
Performance
Holiness & participation in Christ
Recovering the pastoral priesthood reshapes churches, leaders, and congregations:
Formation over Platform: Investment in pastoral holiness, not only skill.
Intercession & Spiritual Care: Deeply entering into the spiritual life of the congregation.
Authority as Servanthood: Leadership is given, not grasped.
Holiness over Popularity: Sometimes speaking truth is unpopular—but faithful.
Church as Temple, Not Corporation: Visible sanctity and grace, not just programs.
When the Church recovers the language and practice of the priesthood… we begin to see people not as consumers of religion but as participants in the mystery of Christ. Pastors, the call is urgent. Will we embrace a role as priests of God’s household, stewards of the mysteries of Christ, bearers of the flock to God? Or will we settle for being managers of institutions, administrators of programs, or performers for applause?
Christ said to Peter:
“Feed my sheep.” – John 21:17
It’s not about building organizations. It’s about bearing God to His people, and His people to God. That is priestly ministry. That is true pastoral leadership.
