Parishioners respond to people who come to them, visit the sick, take meals to the bereaved, tutor struggling youth and touch the lives of all they meet. Although they are a caring network, they are generally unaware of the systemic failures that may cause and perpetuate conditions that hurt the people they care for. As servants, they respond to individuals rather than to societal issues. These congregations perceive God acting through them, but in different ways. They renew their stories of their pasts in evolving ministries.
Sensitive pastors can even enter the stories and change the congregational self-image over time.
But pastors who are deaf to congregational theology often inhibit the most natural sources of spiritual energy and in the process reduce their own leadership potential.