For those of you who regard yourselves as members of this virtual parish: There will be — must be — a meat space component to this ministry sooner or later. It is the one career for which I am best and most completely trained. It’s also the one I’ve spent the least amount of time doing in meat space up to now.
However, if you consider the radical departure my teaching has taken from the mainstream, it won’t surprise you that the real-world branch of my ministry can’t take off until there are some big changes in our social and political context. In purely human terms, no one has any reason to leave what they have and seek something different. Our “something different” will hardly call out to anyone unless the situation changes and makes it the answer.
Carrying this a little further, you would have to expect the social and political changes to be rather painful. This is what I see coming, and it’s the part that draws me to write this today. I might have a tough time making it seem real to you as individuals, but I carry a burden of care for all of you. That’s what the pastor’s calling means. Not that I regard you as helpless sheep too stupid to avoid getting eaten, but the emphasis is on my seeing your welfare as my welfare. I can’t afford to lose a single one of you in that sense; such is the Ancient Hebrew ethics of shepherding.
My greatest concern right now is that you prepare your minds for what your hearts might tell you. We are in tribulation and it’s going to get painful. I have no way to predict how it will affect each of you, nor even what my own story will be later on. All I know is that it will be painful enough to make a significant portion of the people turn away from the current religious environment, so try to imagine what comes with that. If nothing else, it will be painful to watch, but unless you have some of that otherworldly religion I teach here, I suspect it will cause your human side to panic.
Only you can stop that for yourself. Only you can resolve and commit yourself to exploiting this life for the glory of God. Only you can decide that is what matters most in this life. I’ll do everything I can to help you get there. Don’t be afraid to contact me personally for anything a pastor can handle, to include specific prayer requests.
