Friday, July 29, 2011

The Pastor Has No Clothes:


The Pastor Has No Clothes:
Moving from Clergy-Centered Church to Christ Centered Ekklesia*

By Jon H. Zens

Protestantism carries on with the practice of making the "pastor" the focal point in church. In The Pastor Has No Clothes, Jon Zens demonstrates that putting all the ecclesiastical eggs in the pastor's basket has no precedent in the New Testament. Using 1 Corinthians 12:14, Zens shows the usual way of doing church contradicts Paul's self-evident remark that "the body indeed is not one part" and then goes on to unfold from that Epistle how the living church functions "with many parts." Jon dismembers the traditional pastor doctrine from various angles by combining two new essays and a response to Eugene Peterson's The Pastor: A Memoir, with three past articles and excerpts from his response to Dr. Ben Witherington's review of Pagan Christianity.

*Ekklesia: means, “gathering of the called out ones” from which we get our word, “church”.

No comments: