Slow Visitation

Thinking on the way that culture and environment affect the tasks that people carry out in society (see the previous post), both culture and environment may greatly affect the shape of ministry, too. Many years ago, I visited Maiana atoll in the Pacific -- still a largely pre-modern society. In a question and answer session, the ministers asked me how often I visited the whole congregation. I said I aspired to visit everyone within a year, if I could. There was shock on their faces. I looked around me, and realised that I could see virtually the whole village from the meeting house where we were gathered. A minister said, "I visit my whole congregation in a week." OBSERVATION: There are therefore no hard and fast rules for ministers -- not in traditional Congregationalism anyway.