Sneakers, Churches, and Preachers

Dennis Hall and his guest Justin Bohner, Assistant Pastor, First Baptist Church, Highlands, North Carolina discuss the biblical qualifications for serving as a pastor, pointing out that ministry is a calling as opposed to a professional career path. The perils of doing ministry as a professional career path are explored. Both agree that one can be well-dressed, well spoken, armed with degrees from prestigious universities and seminaries, possess leadership savvy, understand management theory, and marketing strategies and build large, exciting, growing churches and do it all without believing anything. Their view is that most pastors are dedicated, hard-working, modestly compensated men of faith. However, the public is seeing more and more pastors growing their wealth and thus concluding that the church is a moneymaking avenue. Preachers wearing expensive sneakers in the pulpit sends the wrong message. This phenomena has contributed to only 25% of the public having a very positive opinion about pastors. This podcast concludes with the admonition that attending church is not just important, it is essential and provide strategies for finding a Bible based church.