How To Do Ministry: update

I might actually give some real advice at some point, just not yet.

This is my story about how hard it is to give advice I believe in.

       THE PROBLEM:

I’m increasingly convinced of Mike’s idea to simplify the meta-categories, while complexifying the subcategories. This will keep it simple and allow me to be as egghead-y as I want.

OTHER PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

When Christianity was outlawed in Rome, many pastors took jobs as grave diggers, carving out

catacombs, then sneaking Christians into them for prayer and the Lord’s Supper. The pastors would decorate the catacombs with Christian symbols. The Romans nicknamed them fossores, after ugly sand wasps.

Fossores dig holes in the ground, which they decorate, and in which they keep their children. I’m basing my model for how to do ministry on these Fossores, whose life, art, and work intersected seamlessly.

·         ART—Holy provocation, prophetic reorientation,

sacred imagination.

·         WORK—Change the church, heal the world,

translate the Gospel.  

·         LIFE—Shadow  God, spiritual formation, holy

vocation.

I want to use the Fossorian model in 4 ways:

·         a redesign of shadowinggod.com

·         a published compendium on visual leadership

·         ministerial development classes at a local

university and at Westwinds

·         an ongoing blog series exploring the catalog of

                 art, work, and life.