How do pastors become pastors? How does God make pastors, and how do they know that’s what God wants them to be? And how do they know what church they should be at. In this episode Chuck and Aaron answer these questions and also talk about Aaron’s call to be a pastor.

Pastors are called by God to preach and teach the Gospel to the Christian church. In this sense the call is unique to this particular ministry. But in another sense the call to be a pastor is no different than the call to be a mother, or lawyer, or church musician. God gives each of his people gifts to use in loving him and loving each other, and these specific gifts will make clear what call each person has received from God. And for pastors, the question of which church they should serve at is also connected with the gifts God has given them. Which church can best use his gifts and cover his weaknesses?

Aaron is making the transition to pastoring a new church, so Chuck and Aaron discuss how Aaron and his family made the decision to leave St James and move to his new church.

And in related news, Chuck and Aaron also discuss the ongoing mission of Craving Answers Craving God, and how the podcast will continue producing episodes in spite of Aaron’s move.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org.

To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep108.

It’s not at all controversial to note that Christmas, as a cultural phenomenon in the United States, does not always resemble the Christian festival celebrating Jesus’ birth. Commercial interests have exploited the season for profit, and it seems like all of us have agreed to make the month of December the most hectic and least peaceful season of all.

On the one hand, this misplaced emphasis on capitalist greed and frantic busy-ness at least holds Christmas up as important, and as long as Christmas is at the forefront of the cultural consciousness there is a chance its main message - that God has become human to recur his human creatures and creation - might break through the barriers.

But its worthwhile for Christians to push back against the noise and pace of “American” Christmas and spend more time quietly meditating on what it means to wait on the Lord, to find our happiness in the arrival of Jesus to save us.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org.

To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep107.

Luther expands the “father and mother” of the fourth commandment to also mean “other authorities.” His reasoning for this is that all human leadership flows out of the leadership and responsibility God gives to parents over their children: parents cannot teach their children everything so they hire schools and teachers to represent them in training their kids; parents cannot defend their homes and children from the threat of foreign invaders so they pay taxes to the government who cares for national defense. So for Luther, the government the citizen lives under is just as much a function of God’s authority as the parents a child lives under.

For that reason, governments must never be rebelled against or overthrown. This does not mean, though, that governments must always be obeyed. While the Christian’s vocation is citizen, his or her identity is baptized into Christ, so the Christian must always obey Jesus before any other human authority, but this must be done with the respect and honor that God’s chosen agent for each country, state, or city is due.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org.

To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep106.