Welcome to Greatheart’s Table, a place meant to encourage the ordinary pastor in the long grind of pastoral ministry.

And encouragement is what we often need.

Most of us here will never have a broad platform or a particularly large church. And most of us quite often question our calling and wonder about our relevance. And being serious sorts, we often let these things drag us down. With this unusually long episode (a couple minutes longer than normal), I’d like us to find a counter-weight to this heaviness with a spirit of playfulness. Let’s talk about something that sounds odd to say and which for some may sound even wrong.

I’d like to encourage you to be a “Playful Pastor.”

EPISODE NOTES

Notes and resources relevant to this episode:

Though it may sound like it, “Pastor Mike” is not a pseudonym. The Reverend Willard E. Michael was, while Barb and I were students at Michigan State University, the pastor of East Lansing Trinity Church in East Lansing, Michigan. He is one of the reasons I am today a pastor.

Calvin Seerveld, Rainbows for the Fallen World (Canada: Toronto Tuppence Press, 1980), pp. 52, 53.

Some daydreaming is good, as recently reported by the Washington Post journalist Jill Suttie.https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/08/02/daydream-mind-wander-happiness/Accessed 8/2/2021

The quote from the song “Born” is from the 2005 album Drunkard’s Prayer.http://overtherhine.com/music/drunkards-prayer/

Marilyn McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Second Edition (United States: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021), p.191.

Genesis 1:31

Podcast music provided by Over the Rhine, and used with permission.Intro: “All My Favorite People” / LyricsOutro: “Called Home” / Lyrics

Thanks for joining us at The Table.

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