I was pleased at the response when I inquired about the basic mission of the James and Carolyn McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University. I was told that from the beginning the focus has been on equipping students to be ministers in local congregations. It is a worthy mission and greatly needed in our confused ecclesiastical world. We neglect the fact that following the family, as God's first institution, the fellowship of believers is God's primary institutional means of accomplishing his work on earth. In our day of job descriptions, mission statements, and management manuals, it is frustrating to some that a minister's task is still quite difficult to define.
Ministers have to be able to live without a sense of closure much of the time.
Some of us, however, find the very nature of the task liberating. We can set a pace, which fits us, and find the freedom to be what our gifts permit us to become. What we must not do, however, is to miss the essentials of our task. I want to define that task as being both Priest and Prophet. The scriptures today come from two embattled veterans of God's service in the final stages of their journeys.