Busyness and pastors
Preachers, like the members of their congregations, stay busy with many important activities. There are sermons to prepare, people to visit, meetings to attend, classes to lead; on and on it goes. Being a pastor of a church is, after all, a full-time job...
As I noted earlier, however, such "busyness" is one way in which the powers divert people - including pastors - from discerning their work in the world (not to mention one of the ways in which the powers "kill" pastors by burning them out). The busyness created by the institutional church can be an effective way of diverting pastors from the work of the powers, stifling discernment, and keeping the pulpit silent about the ways of death in the world. Busyness, in short, can inhibit truthfulness, not only about the principalities and powers but about the church's own captivity to them. (Charles L. Campbell, The Word Before the Powers)
Busyness is a blight that plagues us all. Most of us are too busy, too tired, too pressured, or too preoccupied to devote much time to needful thought, needful conversation, and needful seeking of God.
That's why the poorest Christians in other lands have far richer faith than we do. Their lives are extremely simple: they can afford to talk to each other, and to wait on and worship God all day or all night if need be, in the presence of and with others.
Tozer said decades ago, that if we Christians didn't simplify lives we would stand to lose untold benefit and reward. I fear we've pretty much lost sight of what those benefits and rewards are, so used are we now to doing things in the fast, busy, efficient and productive lanes. Not to mention the largely independent and individualistic lanes.
Who is out there, who will show us how stepping off the American treadmill - no matter the cost or the way of adjustment to our lives - and stepping more purposefully into the Kingdom of God (seeking Him and His righteousness with far more than just the left-overs of our lives) will garner us more peace, more blessing, more eternally significant lives and fruitfulness, than we've dared imagined?--along with tribulation; that's part of the deal.
Who is out there?