Needs-met congregations and professional clergy

A quote from Stanley Hauerwas: "What we call “church” is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another “helping institution” to gratify further their individual desires. One of the reasons some church members are so mean-spirited with their pastor, particularly when the pastor urges them to look at God, is that they feel deceived by such pastoral invitations to look beyond themselves. They have come to church for “strokes,” to have their personal needs met. What we call church is often a conspiracy of cordiality."

Just linking this to my earlier thoughts about professionalism and ministry. Perhaps the reason why there is this tension between professionalism and warm human friendliness is precisely because we dealing with two-faced institutions: on the one hand we preach community: commitment to one another in Christ; on the other we are simply conspiring to be cordial and not to build community at all. So the priest/pastor/minister is caught between the two worlds and liable to be criticised from whichever point of view happens to suit at the time. Community builiding is obviously the much misunderstood dimension to pastoral ministry.