My Ramblings

In the early 1500's the Catholic Church was wrought with problems, fighting and arguments within, and attacks from the Protestants and the Turks without. Reginald Pole was a brave cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church during these tumultuous times. In the midst of this turmoil, he stood up and gave an amazing address to the Council of Trent Jan. 7, 1546. Instead of blaming society, the heretics or anyone else, Pole insisted, 'The shepherds should make ourselves responsible for all the evils, not in generosity but in justice; because the truth is that of these evils we are in great part the cause…Herein no good is served by a long inquiry as to who are the causes of these evils, seeing that we cannot even name any other causes but ourselves! …It will be found that our ambition, our greed, our cupidity have wrought all these evils on the people of God.' The Christian church in America is in trouble. Instead of pointing fingers and placing blame, I choose to take responsibili...

    In preparing this paper, I have ridden a roller coaster of conviction and excitement. I sense God drawing me closer to him as I cry out for more of him in my life. The statistics concerning the church and especially pastors are heartbreaking. I want to do something about the colleagues that the statistics represent. What I realize, however, is before I can lead others, I first have to lead myself.     Another frustration I encountered when doing research was the shortage of materials. There is much written about the Holy Spirit, and there is much written about organizational principles and models; I was unable to find books that combined the two. I wanted a modern picture of what a pastor and church full of the Holy Spirit looks like. My biggest disappointment came from a couple of books printed by the Assemblies of God, books specifically written for ministry students regarding pastoral ministry. I assumed that since the Assemblies of God is a Pentecostal denomination, I c...