As well as you, Preacher!

[hoipoloi]

Recently, I came across this quote from Gerrard Winstanley, the C17 English radical leader of the Diggers and the Levellers (who fought against the rich and the powerful oppressing the poor, and the preachers who supported the rich and the powerful). It is quoted in a book by Christopher Hill: "The World Turned Upside Down".

I thought I'd like to share this with you all.

"(Preachers) lay claim to heaven after they are dead, and yet they require their heaven in this world too, and grumble mightily against the people who would not give them a large temporal maintenance. And yet they tell the poor people that they must be content with their poverty, and they shall have their heaven hereafter. But why may we (the poor) not have our heaven here (ie comfortable living on earth) and heaven hereafter too, AS WELL AS YOU, PREACHER?"

:confused:

[mary]

My old "pastor" was all about golf vacations in Sarasota and Naples, in his home across the pond and playing the nicer courses here, $40,000 SUVs, designer clothes (for himself; his wife wore hand-me-downs from friends and acquaintances), gourmet seafood (going around critiquing sotto voce what people had brought to fellowship luncheons: really low...) - and blaming the sparse church membership and attendance on those sitting in the pews.

Incredible. We haven't come all that far, have we, Hoipoloi?

mary

[ex-shep]

My old "pastor" was all about golf vacations in Sarasota and Naples, in his home across the pond and playing the nicer courses here, $40,000 SUVs, designer clothes (for himself; his wife wore hand-me-downs from friends and acquaintances), gourmet seafood (going around critiquing sotto voce what people had brought to fellowship luncheons: really low...) - and blaming the sparse church membership and attendance on those sitting in the pews.

Incredible. We haven't come all that far, have we, Hoipoloi?

mary

The senior pastor does quite a bit of traveling, but it seems to be only to church functions. Back in Texas, the pastor's trips were usually to family functions or church functions. That was the rest they needed. I do not think anyone went to Disney World. Interesting contrasts.

[jane]

Yeah our pastor did a lot of traveling in the name of ministry also :mad:

Every year he would take his family to South Carolina with an invitation from a church to preach one sunday (an old friend from the same seminary college as him).........and spend 2-3 weeks at Myrtle Beach :mad:

So, yeah, he went with the church's vision as well as their financing for it.

He went to Russia, Ireland and a few other places to church plant.....of course, by himself and well, we've been gone for 3 years now and there are still no church plants:rolleyes:

whatever.

jane