There’s more to ministry than what the pastor can do

‘New Way’ podcast guest envisions a new, simpler expression of church

by Beth Waltemath | Presbyterian News Service

“There’s a real hard letting go that has to happen. The backpacks that we brought into the industry with us, those need a refreshing like never before,” the Rev. Brady Radford said in conversation with the Rev. Sara Hayden on the “New Way” podcast.

Radford is a pastoral counselor, therapist and consultant in Atlanta who works across the United States with individuals, couples and organizations promoting self-awareness and healing. He has served as the lead teacher in the Transitional Ministry Education Consortium and on a conflict resolution resource team in the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta.

“The next expression of church will get back to a simpler gathering of community, and it invites us to consider not just how God is moving inside the four walls of the church, but how God is already active outside the four walls of the church,” Radford told Hayden, an associate for the 1001 New Worshiping Communities Movement. In his work as a counselor/consultant at the Lovewell Collective, Radford sees God at work “in the lives of people who are asking for a deeper level of engagement than just what Sunday morning offers.”

Radford also sees God at work in those “who are asking for a deeper level of community than just what’s offered in a food program or a clothes closet.” People continue to look for “those things that help them answer some of the deeper questions in life,” but Radford believes that exploring these will require new kinds of communities where “leadership not be resigned to one person” but spread among an entire community where it is recognized the deep relationship many are having with ultimate reality.

The Rev. Sara Hayden

Radford questions the need for the complexities that have grown up around institutional growth and sustainability. “A lot of the systems we are creating, if we are honest about it, we’re creating to secure our insecurities.” In his counseling and coaching of pastors, he sees the effects of these systems and the effort to sustain them. Radford differentiates with creating systems out of love versus fear and suggests that the polity of the PC(USA) has been influenced by both. “If we are creating out of fear, then we are creating out of what we don’t want to happen,” said Radford, who says creating out of love offers a “different set of possibilities and parameters.”

According to Radford, simpler forms of church and a simpler approach to rules may be what is required for the church of the future. In the first episode of the series, Radford told the story of Samson, who, after he won the battle, threw away the bone that secured his success. “The tolls we brought into ministry are in a place of needing to be refreshed or changed,” said Radford, who encourages leaders to have Samson’s faith “that the one who supplied my gifts continues to have gifts available to me.”

In the second episode of the podcast series, Hayden and Radford discuss the toll that the modern model of congregational ministry has taken on ministers who have “as many job descriptions as they have members.” In his work with pastors and congregations, Radford sees that church leaders are stuck on an “email treadmill,” sacrificing family and friendships for Saturday-night sermon writing or cutting corners on prepping for multiple meetings.

“From where I sit, I am concerned about the private negotiations we make as pastors in order to keep up the public rhythms of ministry,” said Radford, who believes the pastor’s role is to help themselves and others “find a rhythm that is not ridden with anxiety, but it is grounded in working one faithful step after the other.” This requires trust in God, trust in who God made them to be and a commitment to getting better at doing less.

“I just want to say to the pastor listening to this podcast, ‘There is so much more than what you do,’” said Radford. “The story that God is writing in our lives and through our lives is as much about being present in the moment as it is about preaching powerful sermons, running great stewardship campaigns, and having vision programs into the next decade or more.”