Redneck Pastor Vacancy in Queensland? April 22, 2008
Posted by Gordon in Baptist issues.Tags: Auatralian Baptists, Baptist blog, Baptist blogger, Chinchilla Baptist Church, Queensland Baptist Church, Queensland Baptists
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My colleague and I have developed a tradition we observe each month as the new edition of Queensland Baptist magazine arrives. We check the ‘positions vacant’ section to see if there could be anywhere else we could escape to, or alternatively we check to see if there is anywhere else which could make us feel better about where we are. This month we were not dissapointed.
Under the new editor the magazine has grown and is an impressive read. The layout is still fairly typical of Baptists: the full spectrum of fonts and colours and desktop tricks are exhausted throughout the publication giving it a confusing visual appeal with no consistency. However, the substance makes up for the mangled style.
This month’s ‘positions vacant’ had a corker in it. Chinchilla Baptist are looking for a new pastor. Chinchilla is a regional Queensland town. When I say regional, it’s in the middle of nowhere in that big wide country there out north west of the big smoke in Brisbane called the Outback. Getting a pastor to hear God’s call to move into a small little outback town is hard enough. Putting an advert in Queensland Baptist like they did makes the task well nigh impossible.
This is what awaits the unsuspecting coot who applies for the job: [my additions in red]
CHINCHILLA BAPTIST CHURCH
We desire to appoint a pastor with preaching and teaching gifts [good start]. He needs to have a love for the lost [going well], be non-charismatic and conservative. [heading into trouble]
He also needs to hold to a Pre millennial view of Scripture [now you've lost just about everyone!], and be able to relate to both young and old. If you believe this to be God’s calling for you contact our church Secretary ……”
When I say they’ve lost everyone after “Pre millennial”, I don’t mean that most pastors take a different point of view on the Millennium. Rather, most pastors don’t care all that much about whether it is Pre, Post or A. Most are Pan Millennialists – it will all pan out in the end.
Sadly, whoever wrote this ad up pigeon-holed themselves and played up to the classic stereotype of the redneck outback Baptist church [which they are not as I understand]. The immediate perception created by this ad is that anyone other than a conservative, pre-millennialist country boy is going to get carved up, chewed over and spat out at a place like that.
A person in the know reliably informs me that this advert is not representative of the church body, but rather of the people or person who had control over the advert. I’m hoping that is the case. If you are from Chinchilla Baptist, and especially if you are the person who has the right to put these adverts in the magazine, let me help you rewrite your advert:
We desire to appoint a pastor with preaching and teaching gifts. He needs to have a love for the lost and demonstrate this in a ministry that reaches beyond the walls of the church and the churched.
We aren’t all that interested in his position on secondary and relatively trivial doctrinal positions which we cannot be sure about ourselves. We are more interested in a pastor who will lead us into unity so that we can focus on the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. Any pastor who takes an interest in divisive doctrinal arguments need not apply.
I thought such an ad went out with the use of the word “sanctuary” and Jesus being referred to as “Jesu”.
How sad.
Here’s mine.
We need a Christian leader who’s a bloke’s bloke. Out her in rural queensland we play tough, love tough and Church tough. we don’t need a wimp who majors on minor things. He needs to have a theology like he has his rump at the club, well-rounded, well marinated and not too thick (I know the not too thick part leaves alot of you city-slicker hombres out – hee haw).
Are you charismatic? We don’t care because we haven’t got any idea what those blow-ins are about anyway. As for a bloke whose worked in the City .. well, we’re more nervous about you than an Iraqi bomb disposal expert is about a well-stocked backpack.
If you love God, love the bush, chew backy and don’t cuss too much, give me a buzz … just send your carrier pigeon to my cage in Main Street, Chinchilla (on the corner of Redneck Way).
Perhaps more realistic…
we want a pastor who believes what we believe, or at least what our main power brokers believe.
We want a pastor who does not mind moving his family to our town for a maximum of two years, because that is as long as he will last before we find a gnat to strain over which we disagree about.
greetings i jesus name.
i would like to apply for this vacancy i fit has not already been filled.
God bless
I don’t know which is sadder. The fact that this ad went into the Queensland Baptist, or that the author of this article sought to mock and ridicule them. I’m sure that there is something in the Bible about “the beam in your own eye” that Gordon should really pay attention to.
My guess, it wouldn’t take to much reading of Gordon’s correspondence to discover what his faults, frailties, bias and bigotries are.
Mind you, Aaron 2007 and Mark E aren’t really that far behind.
At least the people in Chinchilla are honest about where they stand, rather than smugly self-righteous.
And with those sentiments Jim you can join me, Mark and Aaron in the smug & self-righteous quartet. What delicious irony.
Jim…..I am just following Jesus’ example, I may have even used some of His words…..He used sarcasm mocking, humour and belittling of the Pharisees…and those who strained at gnats….
you use that a lot when you talk about West Coast don’t you?
add a
to the end of that last comment
well yes I do….and I just plain think they suck…..
(nice use of smile btw…not that hard? ha ha ha ha!)
Greetings in the Wonderfull name of our Lord Jesus Christ, I am mailing to you Church and Leaders in Queensland about the interest that is in me to evangelise , teach and outreach to the lost , backsliders, unbelievers and others out there.
As time is consumed by many things and bussiness, the harvest is at hand but the workers are little. I am making myself avilable to come and work with you guys and do the Lords Will .
My e-mail address is pastorjohn@live.co.uk,or jonnnny77@yahoo.com if you wish to contact me for further discussions and procedures of how we could bring people to the fold of God.My phone number is 00679-3363712,00679-8682859.
May God Bless you all,may all our prayers build the body of Christ.
Kind and Warm Regards,
Phil J Williams,
Reverend.
Fiji Islands.
Perhaps Ivan and Phil John Williams would be better off writing a proper job application to Chinchilla Baptist… it may well be that noone from Chinchilla Baptist reads this blog. In fact, I suspect they don’t.
It’s a very old ad, but I’m sure they could ring and see if they still have a vacancy… or have tired of their new pastor… (Australia 7 4669 1124) if they really are conservative, non-charismatic and premillenial.
Why anyone would be so dogmatic about an idea that emerges from apocalyptic literature is beyond me… I’m not sure they’d be equally emphatic that Jesus has a double edged sword coming out of his mouth (Rev 1), that God has 7 spirits (Rev 4), that the walls of the new Jerusalem will be literally 12 000 stadia in length and 144 cubits thick (Rev 21)… etc. etc. Surely if we treat Revelation as literal rather than symbolic we get into exegetical trouble. Anyway… each to their own…
I’m guessing “conservative” is also code for “chicks need not apply”!
Janet, just for fun, I think you should apply. Tell them its advertised on the internet and in the list of what’s in and what’s out chicks weren’t mentioned. Go for it!
Gordon, you’re a naughty boy… very funny blog though.
My sources tell me that ministers who train in Victoria are perceived as namby-pamby liberal-lefties by Northern conservatives… and my gender would only confirm this dreadful reputation. And I think my application for a position advertised in April last year would be a teeny bit late eh?
No, peace to them… I’ll leave well enough alone.
This is widely known right around Australia. There is an amazing similarity between the “liberal” views of those in Victoria, and extremly weak Christian presence in many parts [but fortunately not all] of that state. Work it out.
Oh my goodness… “extremely weak Christian presence”… what evidence do you have of that claim?
Does your e-name means “humble servant” in Latin? Is that irony? Although it’s difficult to pick “tone” in print, I’m not detecting a gentle and humble spirit in your comments.
My world is the largely evangelical Churches of Christ movement (Vic/Tas), and many of our churches are in good health. As is the case in other denominations, some of our smaller churches are struggling… but “liberal views” are not the major factor here IMO.
I’m happy to dialogue about this, but I’d appreciate dialogue that goes deeper than sweeping generalisations.
You beat me to it Janet – still can’t work out why you chose your new name to be what it is Servus – your MO is quite the opposite.
As for your views about Vic, is that a product of being so isolated over in WA? I hope it is, if not, that is an extraordinary generalisation.
Female does not always = liberal, male does not always = kosher.
There are some great churches in Victoria…
evangelical…focused…purposeful.
But hey, why not throw some unfounded generalisations out there? they are always helpful….. not.
Janet & Mark E,
You are right on the money! Unfortunately generalisations can be very misleading and downright dangerous. I did time in CofChrist.theol.coll.[Sydney] in the early 90s before it transmogrified into acom – and among the students the perception was that C/C in Qld were fundamentalists, in Victoria were liberals, and in NSW were ‘just right’ [a-la-the-3-bears children's story]. This was told to a couple of us who’d come from “outside” churches, yet had been attracted to the college by its ministry training curriculum then, and by its non-ordained, non-reverendised ministry.
IMO it is a deficit of virtue to spread such tales among the family of believers, for our only “pedigree” should be our relationship with the triune Godhead.
Thank you both of you for speaking up and clarifying it as an ill-founded rumour of many years
It also depends of course on what one’s definition of an “evangelical” liberal or fundamentalist is. All in the eye of the various beholders. Many “liberals” have no idea that they are.
Josiah, God’s Leader
TGIF Today God Is First Volume 2 by Os Hillman
Sunday, June 28 2009
“Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the LORD as he did – with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses” (2 Kings 23:25).
What type of person does God raise up when a nation becomes synonymous with idol worship and sin? God raised up a leader that had the courage to destroy the evil and bring the nation back to God.
His name was Josiah. “The nation of Israel had been led away from God by Manasseh who reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, following the detestable practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites” (2 Kings 21:1,2).
Manasseh’s son Amon reigned for twenty-two years after him and was also wicked. However, Amon’s son was named Josiah and became king at eight years old after his father was assassinated.
“Josiah did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left” (2 Kings 23:8). He was a courageous leader. “Nevertheless, the LORD did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke him to anger. So the LORD said, ‘I will remove Judah also from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, ‘There shall my Name be’” (2 Kings 22:13).
God responded to the Godly reforms that Josiah brought to his nation. “Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the LORD . . . Therefore I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be buried in peace. Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place’” (2 Kings 22:19-20).
Judgment always follows the sin of a nation.
If there were ever a time we needed God to raise up Josiahs in our cities and nations, it is now. Pray that God brings forth Godly leaders into your city and nation.
Thanks for chipping in Gordon, Mark E and Small Potato… the theological differences between the states (and even between different colleges) are greatly exaggerated IMO. There are some minor cultural differences between the states of Australia… I heard the other day that Melbourne is the most multicultural city in the world (using the definition of most language groups present) and I do think this context probably does give some distinctive perspectives on cross-cultural mission and the missional challenge in general confronting the Australian church… but I don’t think it’s helpful to exaggerate any of these differences.
“Female does not always = liberal, male does not always = kosher.”
Indeed… there are some strong evangelical voices that suggest the context of some of the epistles has been ignored or minimized in relation to women and the church… I’ve been writing a little on this if anyone is interested…
http://secret-womens-space.blogspot.com/2009/06/to-ordain-or-not-to-ordain-cbe-to.html
http://secret-womens-space.blogspot.com/2009/06/more-on-women-in-ministry.html
Servus Humillimus, I’d be interested in your definitions of evangelical, liberal and fundamentalist… where do you “draw the lines” as a matter of interest?
As for the comment on godly leaders… of course godly leaders are so important to us, but I think we need to be careful to distinguish between the nation of Israel and the new era of the invisible Kingdom of God ushered in by Jesus Christ… there are many American voices that blur this distinction and write as if the US of A is the new nation of Israel. It is the church that is the new Israel IMO.
Not interested. Time to focus on Jesus for a change.
I’m pleased to hear it.
Now this would be within my definition of a moderately balanced evangelical church….lol & rolling on the floor….
US pastor opens church to guns:
A pastor in the US state of Kentucky told his flock to bring handguns to church in what he said was an effort to promote safe gun ownership. [check out the pics!]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8122767.stm