Bill's Notes

This somehow reminds me of a ministerial colleague I knew years back, who had glommed onto the great (to him) insight that a pastor can't push a motion through the congregation's governing board if more than one member out of seven is against it. He loved the bureaucratic-administrative-managerial exactitude of that ratio, and I remember hearing him repeat it on a number of occasions: one out of seven. So if a congregation has twelve members on its church council and only one of the twelve is against an idea, it has a chance of going through; but if two out of the twelve are against it, forget it.

I get in the mail all the time these little unsolicited newsletters for pastors, which are just filled with tips, tricks, and gimmicks of this sort. And frankly, they bore me to tears— emphasis on "tears." What did John Calvin say? "Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's instutition, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists." (Institutes, IV.i.9)

I'll take that any day over a ream of "hot tips" about dynamism, dialoguing with the Other, socialist justice, "one board member in seven," pews versus chairs, or whether hymns should be sung from a hymnbook or projected on the wall with an overhead projector. (I know of one congregation which was nearly torn apart by the currently trendy "hot tip" of using an overhead projector in worship— and they only used it once— but that's a story for another day.)