MattGlover.com

This is the continuation of a paper that was written for my Supervised Theological Field Education paper in 2006, called “My Operational Theology and Model for Theological Reflection”.

I’m happy to answer any questions if you’re happy to ask them…

Church

The world of pastoral ministry in the church setting then opened up before me and I fell in. It wasn’t as if I had never thought about the possibility before – it had always been on my mind, even back in high school days – but the reality of what it entailed hit me like a ton of concrete. While ‘my’ youth ministry grew remarkably, and consisted mainly of young people and families that had no connection to the Sunday worship services, the church family (read Sunday morning congregation) was tearing itself to shreds via personal conflicts and political games.

Ministering with any integrity became impossible and I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the amount of time wasted on church fighting and the lack of concern or compassion for people like those I worked with at Dulux, at K-Mart or studied with at University. Again I wondered which God these people worshipped, and contemplated leaving it all entirely to go back to God, me and my shadow.

Strangely, my faith grew. Others recognized that there was a call to ministry and encourage me to move on. This I did, and landed at a church which also had it’s fair share of punch ups. But the atmospshere was very different. It was positive for a start! Plus, there was a heart for mission that meant forms and structure of church didn’t seem as important. I was encouraged to spend a year with FORGE to build upon my mission studies at College and was given the freedom to explore ministry in the local pub, ministry with gay and lesbian young people, the drug addicted – basically I was allowed to do (almost) whatever I wanted. In return for this freedom was an unspoken expectation to work on things like my spirituality, theological reflection and stillness in busy times. My senior pastor at this new church modeled all of these things, sparking an interest in the spiritual disciplines and ultimately challenging me to think about new ways that we could be the body of Christ in the community of Mitcham. The church community challenged me to think about ordination and the wider body started to break into my solitary journey and reveal to me the need to share some of the conversation that only my shadow had been privy to in the past.

Continued tomorrow…