Round Table Luncheon for Pastors & Ministry Leaders
Dear Northwest Pastors,
In a class I took from Eugene Peterson on Pastoral Theology, at Regent College, he encouraged pastors to have their ministries shaped by books on ministry and the church, written two to five hundred years back. Contemporary perspectives might be good, he said, but have not stood the test of time.
It is a famous axiom: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” George Santayana. If ministry decisions are primarily influenced by today’s innovations in methodology or, worse yet, innovations in theology, there is no telling where the fall of those dominos will take the Church.
Perhaps this is the reason God instructs that Levites, over 50 years of age, to no longer to carry the freight of the tabernacle, but to “minister to their brothers…by keeping guard,” Numbers 8:26. These elder Levites were charged with maintaining the separation between the holy and the profane for good reason. God withdraws from the profane…and “without God’s presence in the tabernacle there would have been no point to Israel’s existence” ESV footnote on Numbers 1:53b.
That line of separation is being challenged and significantly blurred today. In the words of Dr. Rob Wall, of Seattle Pacific University, “…we need a ministry of wisdom from our elders, a ministry of prophetic watchtowers, to stand guard over the orthodoxy and practices of our congregations.”
Church Awakening has assembled just such round table of elders from the academy to examine the theological and practical challenges, pitfalls and opportunities facing the church in our times. The round table luncheon will be hosted at Westgate Chapel, in Edmonds, WA, Wednesday, June 14th, at 12 noon.
Our round table guests are Dr. Steve Land (Pentecostal Theological Seminary), Dr. Rob Wall (Seattle Pacific University), and Dr. Blaine Charette (Northwest University),
There will be no charge to attend, but in order for us to prepare lunch for you we need you to RSVP your plans to attend. Please email your RSVP to my assistant, Jeanie Peterson at jpeterson@westgatechapel.com no later than Monday, June 12. An offering will be taken at the event to defray costs.
It is going to be good. We will accept questions for the panel ahead of time, via e mail, at to the same email address, jpeterson@westgatechapel.com
Look forward to seeing you there, fellow pastor.
Alec Rowlands
Westgate Chapel | Church Awakening
Bro Alec if there ever was an age where a prophetic voice is so desperately needed, it is today. I am thankful for Church Awakening and your leadership. The issue, as I see it, is that many ministers under 40 years of age have a postmodern mind-set that believes it already knows everything and therefore they need no instruction or mentorship from the older ministers. Yes we need elders, a ministry of prophetic watchtowers, to stand guard over the orthodoxy and practices of our congregations, but we also need the millennial generation to learn from those prophets.