Justin is asking whether there is a place for a paid pastor in the church. Part of his post reflects back on my own post and says the following:

“Today, Hamo got me thinking with his announcement that he’s been asked to do a blessing service for a neighbor’s son, as he did for his own son a few weeks ago. I was talking with my wife about this, as we are vocational church planters and do not really consider ourselves “pastors” in the proper sense (we’re more into the “priesthood of all believers” thing).

This is a tough one, though. Hamo got asked to do this because people see him in some regards as a pastor. I don’t think people will ever see any of our church planting team as pastors as such. Is this a problem? Maybe. Maybe we don’t need to be pastors. Maybe we need to be monks”

Read on here…

For my money, I agree totally with Justin that the priesthood of all believers is a key theological tenet we want to adhere to, but I don’t see that it has to preclude some folks from being freed up to spend more time in a leadership role.

My take on scripture is that both paid workers and ‘priesthood of all’ co-exist and maybe we need to find ways to make it happen again…

Monks?… hmmm… I like the ideas Justin articulates, but the monk notion just doesn’t fire me up! It still feels too separatist.