email discomfort
engraving authorship unknown to me.
email discomfort
I believe Jesus values properly-managed emails,
and He considers email to be one of many doors
between the Church and the unsaved masses.
Having said that, please read on...
often greatly dislikes email,
unless waiting for an answer from an email they sent.
This include pastors.
Pastors might be tempted to think,
"Jesus never had to deal with emails."
But Brothers, Jesus never had to use a telephone either.
Yet, Jesus knew better than any mere mortal what it meant to have a crowded life.
Look at the engraving and consider Jesus' life.
1) Jesus lived with 12 men pretty much full-time, from what I've read.
2) Once his ministry hit full speed, crowds followed him everywhere.
The only three times he could get a bit of space was:
a) when he went to pray in the middle of the night.
b) when he flogged the merchandisers in the Temple court.
c) When he hung on the cross. (and then he had a group of trolls mocking him)
So, I would say that Jesus perfectly understands:
the pressure from people who contact you,
be they complete strangers, or siblings,
wanting something from you,
with pure or impure motives,
that will likely remember no kindness once you have helped them,
and may well turn on you after they get what they want
or talk trash about you if you don't give them what they want.
And yet with everything Jesus went through,
he still made himself available
in ways that were common and customary for his time and place in history.
So, a question:
Does a truly great ministry in today's world
include a deep appreciation for the internet and for email?
or
CAN any truly complete ministry even happen in today's world
without the internet and email?
More below....
EMAIL
Jesus walked...
It seemed that pre-resurrection, Jesus walked everywhere.
His post-resurrection appearances prove that He could have translated Himself as he chose,
but he walked.
Many Christians avoid personal interactions.
But Jesus walked among people, and I believe email is one way
for the church to walk among the people.
EMAIL
Heavenly or Demonic...?
What would C.S. Lewis have said about emails,
if email had existed when he wrote The Screwtape Letters?
if email had existed when he wrote The Screwtape Letters?
Seven Questions that CS Lewis might ask:
1) Does Satan love email, so all churches should shun it?
2) Does Jesus hate email, so all churches should shun it?
3) Does Jesus love email, so all churches should embrace it?
4) How might Jesus see outreach-email as a positive?
5) How might Jesus see outreach-email as negative?
6) How might Satan see 'harassment email' as positive?
7) Does Satan see any drawbacks to email?
I challenge 'The Screwtape Letters' fans
to write a chapter on the use of emails, pro and con,
from the perspective of a Senior Tempter.
How Jesus and Satan view email is most important.
'We have been bought with a price', and it is our duty to use tools that produce results.
Does email win souls? That is the question.
I disagree with the notion that personality matters when choosing good tools.
If a man wants to be a carpenter, he needs to treasure his hammer. Simple, no?
Some pastors embrace email, many simply accommodate it, while other avidly despise email.
Why the chasm in every denomination over email?
Either some pastors are wasting good ministry time on email ministry
or the others are throwing away souls by shunning a useful ministry tool.
How can a denomination stay cohesive
if they can't agree on the difference between good tools and bad tools?
And I'm sure that in some cases, email is like a toilet plunger,
it is a last resort, because it is the only option left...
unless we pretend that one clogged toilet doesn't matter.
And listen, I was a church maintenance man for over a decade,
and I KNOW how big a fuss just one plugged toilet can cause.
especially in the women's restroom.
The toilet plunger is a valuable tool.
And anyone willing to use it - has value.
(Go into any church, and you will find that anyone who despises the humble toilet plunger
also looks down on the person willing to use it. - and that will preach, Brothers.)
eric j. rose
EMAIL
A missing tool...
See the two photos?
I am a carpenter.
These are non-power hand tools from my tool bag.
The photo on the left has 15 tools
The photo on the right has 14 tools.
Can you see which tool is missing?
Can you name that tool?
A lot of people don't own one, or even know what it is.
It's not a tool I use every day.
but still, it is a very important tool when I need to do exactly what it does.
No other tool can exactly take its place.
I do poorer work when I need it but don't have it.
My tool bag is incomplete when I don't have it.
This is my opinion of churches that don't keep a reliable website presence
or don't publish their email address.
A valuable tool is missing.
I admit it. I love using my carpentry skills as a basis for writing Christian stuff,
'cause no one can say that a carpenter is automatically unqualified to speak about ministry.
EMAIL
"Am I capable...?"
2 A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum,
the people heard that he had come home.
2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left,
not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.
3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.
4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd,
they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it
and then lowered the mat the man was lying on.
...
For those of you feeling compressed by the unanswered emails in your inbox,
ask yourself,
"Am I capable of leading a truly great ministry, since a great ministry requires so much time?"
It's a fair question.
If we analyzed the lives of the apostles,
how much of the apostles' time did Jesus demand?
Sometimes we get frustrated because our inbox and our planning calendars don't syncopate.
Perhaps we are the problem.
American professionals operate under the mindset that that a successful person
always has a full planning calendar.
I oppose this mindset, claiming that pastors and parents both need a different mindset,
leaving open time for God and kids to fill, with their drop-in appointments
without creating conflict and having to reschedule other appointments,
which lowers our respectability in the eyes of others,
(because an appointment is a promise, so a broken appointment is a broken promise,
and a broken promise is a degradation of the person the appointment belongs to.)
And what if that time slot stays open?
Work on a sermon, pray, call stay-at homes - have a fill-in list for empty times
Take a child or grandchild out for ice cream and walk in a park amongst God's trees.
eric j. rose
EMAIL
While a lot of churches try to help by using the email icon,
I don't know how to use them. My computer isn't set up for it.
(I have 3 email accounts, for work, for ministry, and for personal stuff
and am afraid that the email icon might key-up the wrong email account.)
While you may ask, "How is that our problem?" ,
pastors need to recognize that inabilities come in different forms
And for me, though I create websites, I struggle with using the internet
and cannot use every function available to younger people.
Like handicap ramps, churches need to accommodate those of us
who stumble over certain internet functions that others can leap through.
I need your email address printed out so I can cut-and-paste.
EMAIL
which email address?
When a church advertises an email address on their national website
sometimes they use the pastor's email address.
But when pastors move, and if they don't tidy up when they leave
the old church still has that email address,
on the local or national listing site, with the expected consequences.
I regularly got kick-outs from pastors saying they were no longer at that church.
Each church should have their own email address, apart from the pastor, it seems.
I tried to send out over 10,000 emails to churches to advertise
idontwantgod.com.
Happily, I get a few return emails (25-50) emails, affirming their support.
Sadly, I probably get 10-25 times as many 'mailer daemons'
telling me the mail is undeliverable to the email address that I copied and pasted.
And...personal email addresses on Church Facebook account look unprofessional
when an email address line is something like,
pipsqueaksunclejoey@ladeedaa.com