The Priesthood?

Visited another new church this week: a congregational church that left the UCC a few years ago and affiliated last year with the Evangelical Free Church, an old familiar favorite denomination. They had to ask for the liberty to NOT agree to point 11 of the EFCA doctrinal statement (regarding the pretribulational return of Christ), but hey - who doesn't disagree with that? ;)

Anyway, one of the ushers took pains to spend time talking with us before and after, and I instantly liked him. He reminded me of a dear friend where we used to live (Mark M) but 15 years older. Same outgoing, warm, engaging and caring personality - just ... old! Old but full of vitality. My kind of "old" guy... ;) Old on the outside only!

But HOT? Oh my. No A/C in this building either. It's an old building from the 1850's and there's just no way...

Ha! I asked about church planting, do they do that kind of thing, plant new churches? And he said "well sure! We ourselves were a church plant - about 150 years ago." Apparently their "mother" church was formed across the river in 1630. Guess the gestation period here is pretty long for birthing new churches, but - at least they did it once. So now this 150 year old church is birthing a new one down on the coast in a poor community with lots of opportunity for service work. Maybe their biological clock was ticking...

The sermon on this brutally hot day was from 2 Peter, on the subject of the priesthood of all believers. For once, when I read the passage, it struck me that the priestly role the church has is essentially and subtantively ministry to God, service to Him, not primarily to the rest of the world, either in evangelism or social action. Those things are commanded of us, yes, but still ancillary to our primary purpose of offering ourselves in service to God in whatever role He guides us to. It's not unlike the Old Testament priesthood, where many priests were given duties in worship/music, or temple care, or people care, or scripture care (scribes), but all were separated out for service, and some were appointed to serve constantly in the temple making offerings before God, which was the highest call to service there was. Service to people's needs or witness to the nations never superceded that - it attended it, accompanied it, but never came before it. The same in the New Testament in Acts when the deacons were called to serve the people so the Apostles could attend to prayer and the Word. Service to the world was ancillary and an extention of the primary call of service to God.

Hm. I got it, I think. Even though the pastor was on vacation and it was an elder who preached. He fell victim to the same temptation every elder does who gets to substitute for the pastor. He stuffed 10 pounds of sausage into a 5 pound casing. 40 minutes of sermon instead of 20. I was getting faint toward the end and had to go out to the car and sit in the air conditioning for 10 minutes. When I got back he was still preaching...

Guess I've done the same thing myself especially years ago when I first preached. I've learned since then to write it, time it, cut it, time it, cut it, and then read it verbatim (with great feeling, of course) to keep within people's absorbatory limits. Is that a word? Absorbatory? Hm. It is now.