Page 5266 – Christianity Today (2024)

What is the relationship between energy and effectiveness in ministry? A number of metaphors are used.

Some pastors see themselves as a mountain pool, needing both an inlet and an outlet to stay fresh. Others use the sine curve as a model, with fluctuations in energy and enthusiasm considered natural and expected. Both groups want to remain effective.

To find out how to keep a sharp cutting edge in ministry, LEADERSHIP editors Jim Berkley and Marshall Shelley met with four Minneapolis-area pastors:

-Leith Anderson, from Wooddale Church in nearby Eden Prairie

-Bruce Chapman, of First Evangelical Free Church in Minneapolis

-Phil Sackett, of Excelsior Bible Church

-George Voeks, long-time pastor of East Emmanuel Lutheran Church in St. Paul.

Leadership: You appear to be happy survivors in ministry. What’s your secret?

Bruce Chapman: I have a principle for long tenure in a church: People can put up with pastoral weaknesses if they know the pastor is growing. When pastors start to stagnate, there will be discomfort among the members.

Of course, finding a good marriage of pastor and church in the first place is important. Our courtship is so short and the tenure is supposed to be long-it’s often a high-risk engagement.

Phil Sackett: For me, a strong sense of mission is crucial. It’s hard to imagine anyone working effectively for a lifetime without having that sense of call right in front of them-almost written on the inside of their eyelids. If I lose sight of my mission, my vitality disappears fast.

Chapman: I find today that not many pastors say they have a distinct call. That troubles me; I had a very distinct sense of call, which has helped keep me from giving up at some points.

Leith Anderson: Let me turn that a little, Bruce. I think theologically we are called to be Christians; we are not primarily called to be pastors. One of the causes of burnout in pastors is they see themselves primarily as pastors and not as persons and Christians.

I want to remain integrated as a person, whether or not I’m a pastor. I serve Jesus Christ in whatever place he puts me, whatever he asks me to do.

Chapman: I once had a staff member who, when asked if he planned to remain in Christian ministry, would say he didn’t know. He was always looking over his shoulder, wondering whether he should stay in the ministry. I thought, How can you give yourself fully to what you’re doing if you don’t have a sense of call?

Anderson: People outside the will of God are usually amiss in terms of their whole life. I assume they have problems when they drive their cars and mow their lawns and everything else, because all of life is out of sync.

I don’t see much distinction between the way I live my life as a pastor and the way I live my life as a neighbor or as a husband and father. I am me. I do them all the same way. I’m not sure I’ve seen many pastors who are energetic and forceful in the pastorate but are not energetic in the rest of their lives.

Bruce, your sister-in-law told me how one time you hung wallpaper until two o’clock in the morning. She said, “That’s just Bruce. When he does something, he does it all the way.” Do you have a call to wallpaper? My guess is that’s just who you are. Under the lordship of Christ, you function the same way as paperhanger or pastor-flat out.

Sackett: Before I became a pastor, I worked as a research chemist and taught in a Christian college. If I didn’t have a strong sense now that the pastorate is where God wants me, I couldn’t continue to pastor very effectively.

In my first pastorate, I repeatedly wondered if I were doing the right thing. Partly it had to do with the fact that I could always return to teaching.

The thing I came back to over and over again was, Am I convinced God brought me to this place? Has he told me clearly to leave? I decided to stay until I was satisfied God had a different place for me.

Anderson: Did the people believe you belonged there?

Sackett: Only a few. I’m a teacher, but most of them wanted a preacher who would get up and yell. I felt I wasn’t valued for the gifts I had. By the time I left, I felt a sense of appreciation, but that didn’t come through very strongly earlier in my ministry there.

Right now I’m satisfied that I’m in the vocation I ought to be in and that I’m at the church where God wants me. Without that sense, my energy level would be low.

Leadership: What about the converse? Is your energy and endurance, perhaps, a confirmation of your call to ministry?

George Voeks: I feel it is. I remember the first chapel sermon I heard at Luther Seminary. The speaker said, “There will be times in your life when you’ll wish you were running a gas station in North Dakota. But because God has called you, you’re going to hang in there.”

I felt a strong call. Before the call came, I was selling insurance and doing well. When the call came, I couldn’t sell anything because I knew this was where God wanted me. And as we endure, it confirms the call.

Leadership: What drains your ministerial energy?

Sackett: Administration. It drains me because that’s not where I feel I’m gifted. Doing something outside your gifted area is more a drain than working in line with your gifts.

Anderson: Our level of capabilities plays a part, too. I would think it extremely draining to pastor a church larger than my capabilities and to be criticized simply because I was mismatched with the job.

Leadership: Are there cyclical factors-times during the year that consistently tax you?

Chapman: After eighteen years in the same church, Easter sermons get tough. I sure knew this was my nineteenth Easter!

I’m also down when the finances are bad. I carry that personally. It discourages me when the general fund is in the red or there’s a drop in attendance or I sense my leaders are lethargic to catch my vision.

Anderson: That is probably unique to the senior pastor I find our staff pastors don’t worry much about the general fund. Only I worry about that. And I’m probably the only person who really cares how many were in church last Sunday morning.

A lot of pastors’ spirits rise and fall on the basis of Sunday’s “returns.” Spiritually we say that isn’t an appropriate thing to do. But in reality, it happens. High attendance affirms us because we confuse who we are with how well we do.

Sackett: I think a pastor’s energy level has a lot to do with the quality of his relationship with his leaders. With good relationships, there’s support. But it’s different for the pastor who dreads every encounter with somebody in leadership.

Anderson: We’ve been through some hard times at Wooddale, but I made it because I believed better times would come. I wonder how people go on when there’s no hope, at least by normal standards.

If you want to change the organization, relocate, or do whatever you believe is important, and you realize it will never happen, it’s got to be hard to get up in the morning and go on.

Sackett: It depends on the time scale, too. If I say, “I want to see the church grow,” and after ten years it hasn’t done a thing, I have to wonder whether I’m doing the right thing.

Early in a pastorate, it may be necessary for some people to leave before the church unites in a common direction. There’s a breaking-in period. You might not see the kind of growth you’d like, but it doesn’t mean you’re doing the wrong thing. Later on, lack of growth can be much more debilitating.

Chapman: Overexposure to my congregation drains me. People listen to us so much that I think it drains them and us. Familiarity breeds contempt, and there’s such pressure to stay fresh for those three or four times a week when I’m exposed to the congregation.

Anderson: Preaching drains me, too, and not because I don’t like it. It’s because I give away a piece of my soul each Sunday, and I have to grow some more back.

Leadership: What do you mean by “giving away a piece of your soul”?

Anderson: I heard a preacher at a meeting in Estes Park, Colorado. He was thoughtful, pointed, and eloquent. After he finished, there was a standing ovation, but he went over to his seat and sat down as if the crowd weren’t there. He was exhausted. It wasn’t because he yelled or shouted or paraded across the platform; it was because he gave himself away.

A preacher who doesn’t give away part of his soul is shortchanging his people. When I stand in the pulpit, I have a responsibility both to God and those people. My message has to speak to me and be a part of me. I’ve got to give of my emotions and my spiritual life and my convictions. I’m wiped out by that. I don’t think that’s bad. People who run marathons are ready to die at the end. They need to recoup from that run before they enter another race. So, too, with pastors after a sermon.

Voeks: In a sense, a sermon is sacramental. You don’t share just words but your life. When I do that and I come to the Lord in a drained state, it’s like getting a transfusion, getting ready to go again.

Leadership: With many things sapping your strength, what do you do to compensate?

Chapman: I tried a heart attack. (Laughter)

Leadership: That’s pretty drastic. Did the ministry contribute to your heart attack?

Chapman: I think it was mostly my heritage and my Type A temperament. As Leith said, I wallpaper until 2:00 in the morning. Actually, I was fishing when I had my heart attack. I should have been working so I would have had a good reason for it.

Anderson: How many church people did you have with you on the fishing trip?

Chapman: Good question. About half a dozen.

Leadership: Prosecution rests. (Laughter)

What do the rest of you do on those days when you feel like quitting? Do you have any first aid you administer to yourself?

Sackett: I’ve made a deal with the Lord never to quit on a Monday or the day after a board meeting. Anything I do has to be thought out longer than that.

Chapman: I had a denominational leader tell me, “In Minnesota, never make a decision in February.” He wasn’t being sarcastic. And I agree. Don’t make a major decision when you’re feeling down.

Anderson: I’ll get out and run in the morning, and say to myself, Give it seventy-two hours and then evaluate the problem. Most things that discourage me are dwarfed by some new problem within seventy-two hours. Early in my pastoral experience, I thought many things were decisive issues, but I have since found that none were.

Leadership: Are there preventive measures to keep you from needing first aid?

Sackett: I like to take a break, be gone for a day and do something completely different. Recently we went with our kids to a Bible quiz out of town. It was good for all of us. My wife said, “We didn’t think about the church at all. We just had a good time.” Even if I can’t take the whole day off, we’ll take a short trip somewhere.

Voeks: Some of my most beautiful times with the Lord are when I’m mountain climbing. He loves to sneak up on us when we least expect it. He comes at us in so many ways: while we’re playing ball, seeing the smile on a child, being in nature. “All the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.”

But there’s another passage I like-Psalm 145- “Teach me to do thy will for thou art my God. Let thy good Spirit lead me on a level path.” I try to maintain that level path.

Anderson: We can contribute to the levelness of the path. If I am distraught by not having sermons done by Saturday night, I can rearrange my schedule to have them done earlier in the week. For example, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I don’t eat meals; I study all day, and then I’m done. People won’t get an appointment with me those days, except in an emergency. And there are very few emergencies.

At seminary a counseling professor told us, “Anything that absolutely must be handled now-you’re not capable of handling anyway.” That eliminates most emergencies.

However, many of us in helping professions are driven primarily by a need for affirmation, and so we accommodate ourselves to everybody. That leads to burnout. It isn’t a function of the job; it’s from our failure to take control of our own lives and schedules.

Leadership: Most of us agree in principle that time apart helps a ministry, but how do you get the congregation to swallow it?

Voeks: When they see your freshness after you’ve been away, they see the benefits. When I come back, they say, “Let’s send him away more!”

Chapman: My people want me to take more time off. I’m the one who resists; I just don’t do it.

Leadership: Besides days off, what else do you do to keep yourself fresh and enthusiastic in your task?

Voeks: One of the keys is to maintain a devotional relationship with the Lord. I don’t mean just to pray, but maintaining a devotional posture. I discovered I was more interested in what I was doing for the Lord than what I was being. I found myself coming to the Lord as a homiletical shoplifter. I came to get something to say to someone else. I loved my ministry more than him. It was one of the greatest days in my life when Jesus said, “George, would you just sit down and enjoy me! I love you for what you are, not for what you do for me.”

Leadership: You’re talking about changing the lenses through which you see ministry.

Voeks: That’s right. I’ve discovered that the breadth of my ministry is determined by the depth of my relationship with Jesus. Since I’ve grown into that understanding, there’s been unlimited energy.

Leadership: Was there a turning point in your life when this happened?

Voeks: I was a late starter, so I felt I had to get going for the Lord because the world needed to be saved. But I developed chest pains when I was forty. Then I started to realize how much of my life was not under the rule of the Spirit, how it was me working those first years of ministry.

I had limited worship to Sunday morning. I had to learn to develop a worship lifestyle. Nehemiah says, “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” I haven’t arrived yet, but I’m learning to draw my strength through worship.

Chapman: Doing new kinds of things is essential for me. I’m sure I frustrate my congregation; I give them more new ideas than they want to hear. But a new project or a new challenge or even a new sermon series invigorates me. I get refreshed by involving myself with a new set of people or doing some basics differently.

I’ve started preaching without a pulpit. Chuck Swindoll gave me the idea. He said, “Be yourself; do what you want to do.” So the next Sunday I pushed the pulpit aside and did my thing. That’s been fun and refreshing.

It’s helpful to be active in some ministry outside my own congregation. I’m active in denominational affairs and a home for the aged. I like to go antique hunting and to work with my hands. I have a lake cabin I go to regularly. I play golf. I hunt. I have too many pursuits, actually. But when I do those things, I leave behind my congregational responsibilities.

Anderson: We all need two things in life: routine and variety. Some things need to be as routine as possible, so you don’t have to waste energy on decision making. I always buy my gas at the same service station. If it goes up or down a penny, I don’t waste my time deciding where to go. I get up at the same time every morning so I don’t have to change the alarm clock.

I relegate as much as I can to routine, and then I add variety. I have the freedom within that routine to be refreshed by the variety. For example, I work hard to finish my sermon early in the week so I don’t have to worry about it the rest of the week.

Leadership: Let’s look at some of the variables that affect energy. How has the march of time, the aging process, impacted your energy for ministry?

Anderson: I don’t think the issue is necessarily age. More commonly it concerns career progression and ages of children. People often reach their stride vocationally at the same time their children reach adolescence. So the time when you can travel and speak, or when you’re involved in denominational activities, is just when your children need you.

I’ve got to decide where I’m going to expend my energy-getting professional affirmation or spending time with my children. It’s been painful, but my decision has been to say no to many opportunities.

James Dobson tells the story that his father died with his children gathered around the bed. Dobson concludes that when he dies, it’s more important that his children want to surround him than how many books he’s published or how many television programs he’s done.

Chapman: I do think aging, at least diminished physical stamina, is very real.

I work all the time. My relaxation is working hard at something else. Last Saturday we refinished some furniture. I used to be able to recoup from that without any drain on my energy, but that’s not true any more. Maybe I’ve got a sore throat today because I did something I could do ten years ago without a problem but I can’t handle any more. That’s the reality I have to face.

Voeks: I have more energy now than I did when I was forty, because I was short-circuiting a lot of the energy with anxious anger. I wonder if energy isn’t as much a factor of attitude as it is of age. My days are much longer now than they’ve ever been.

In our inner-city setting we have a lot of blue-collar people who look to me or other leaders for direction. You can say, “Go away. I need some time to recuperate.” But if God has given you a pastor’s heart and people are out there hurting, I don’t care how far you retreat, you hurt with them. But not if you know someone is taking care of them.

The beautiful thing is, the Lord has brought me lay leaders who see our church as a mission field. I’ve invested my life in them and given them the leadership. They run with it. I’ve been there twenty-two years, and when I first came, it was much different. I was being pulled many ways. It’s much less sapping now.

Chapman: There is certainly some truth in that, but I don’t think many would quarrel with the fact that as you get older, your physical energy diminishes. I do use it more wisely today, though perhaps I can’t operate as hard physically as I once did. I’m sure I’m more effective with the time I do have.

I probably spend less time preparing sermons because of the many resources I didn’t have earlier. There are other advantages, too, like increased Bible knowledge and wisdom. Preaching comes easier and is more joyful.

Leadership: Doing something the twentieth time is a lot easier than the first-except Easter sermons.

Sackett: I’m the newest to the ministry here, and one of the things I had to learn as I was getting established was to view the church not as my church but as the Lord’s church. As long as I felt responsible for it, that how it progressed reflected on me, and that I had to make it go, I lost a lot of energy.

I had to come to the point of saying, It’s his church, and if he doesn’t want it to grow the way I would like it to, I’m willing for him to use it as it is. I had to detach myself from the church enough that its ups and downs didn’t totally sap my resources. That was a turning point for me.

Voeks: It certainly involves not measuring success by the world’s standards. When God has disciplined the pastor to the point where success isn’t necessary for happiness, then he’ll allow that pastor to succeed.

Leadership: In your experience, has the location of your church made a difference? For instance, is a rural church less draining than an urban congregation?

Chapman: Our support systems vary depending on where we are. I’ve served three rural churches in small towns, and now I’m in a suburban atmosphere. In a rural situation you have a strong support system in your people. My son began his ministry in a rural church, and he gets strokes you wouldn’t believe.

The down side in a smaller or rural church is that you have to adjust more to the people than the people adjust to you. In my present church, they pretty much adjusted to me.

Anderson: In my first church, I’d never have thought of not showing up for a work day, not even if it were my day off or my wedding anniversary. My absence would have communicated that I didn’t want to get dirty, that I wasn’t one with them. In a larger church or one that has more of a management mentality, that isn’t as important.

Some people think of the ministry in terms of a mission to be fulfilled; others think of it as hours to be put in. If you’re serving a church where most people punch a clock, they’re going to be more concerned about whether you’re putting in the time. At more white-collar churches, the issue is not if you put in the time, within reason, but if you produce. Realistically, the pastor must accommodate to the prevailing mind set.

Leadership: You’re in a blue-collar church, George. Do your people expect you to put in hours, at least to be visible, available?

Voeks: The leadership doesn’t, but the others do. That’s why I get out of town on my day off. They would probably be standing there knocking at the door.

Sackett: I’d never lived in a city smaller than one hundred thousand people when I took a church in a town of two thousand. We went through culture shock. I found how interrelated the people are. We were living in a fishbowl. In the suburban town where I live now, must of the people don’t have any idea I’m a pastor. But in the small town, when I walked down Main Street, everybody in town knew what was going on at the church. I felt constantly on display.

In addition, there I was with a Ph.D. in chemistry, and only one other person at the church had a college degree. Struggling to say things in their idiom was a continual energy drain. I was constantly wanting to make myself understood and wondering if they would ever accept me.

Leadership: What about the question of pace? Can a Christian leader rightfully hold anything in reserve?

Voeks: “It’s better to burn out than to rust out” is a heroic statement, but in any event, you’re out! I think you need to pace yourself.

Sackett: Jesus paced himself.

Anderson: I agree. In my first pastorate, I got into the rut of taking Saturday night social commitments. When we moved to Minnesota, we resolved not to do that. We’re even working on eliminating Saturday evening weddings at Wooddale. I know Sunday morning does me in, and if I’m to do a good job preaching, I can’t be shot by going out on Saturday night. That says, in effect, “Your dinner party is not as important as tomorrow’s service.”

I also take a nap on Sunday afternoons for a couple of hours because I’m beat. So if somebody invites us out to Sunday dinner, I politely refuse.

Chapman: I have trouble pacing myself. My pace is wide open all the time, and I pay the price. I’m learning to do better. One of the ways is to take counsel from my lay people and especially my wife.

For eighteen years I have wanted to change our organizational structure. Someday that’s going to happen-but not now, and that’s difficult to bear. I was ready to push it through, but one wise gentleman counseled me that probably it was not propitious to do it now. This time I listened. I just said OK and set it aside. There was a day when I would not have done that.

Sackett: The pastor has got to know how to go to bed at the end of the day with a clear conscience. If he had a thousand things to do in the morning and he’s only done five, there are still 995 left. He’s got to be able to fall asleep peacefully, rebuking the Devil and refusing to accept false guilt over the 995 things that didn’t get done. I have to understand that all God really wants of me in a given day is my best effort. I’ll tackle the rest tomorrow.

Anderson: It’s helpful to compensate with things you can complete. Millard Erickson at Bethel Seminary told a story about when as a pastor he installed a bathroom in his house. Every day when he came home from his pastoral responsibilities, he would go into the bathroom, flush the toilet, and just watch it because it gave him such a sense of satisfaction. Something was finished!

Sackett: Any project that can be completed-working on the car, remodeling the basem*nt-is helpful, because when you’re working with people, they’re never finished.

But having a set of church jobs that remain undone can be a challenge to the lay people, at least in a small church. It says, “Here are some things that are not going to get done. The pastor just doesn’t have time to do them. So if you want them done, you’ll have to do them.” If I exhaust myself doing those things, then everybody says, “Great. He doesn’t need my help. Everything’s getting done without me.”

Leadership: Youthful vitality is in. Everybody’s jogging and working out. Is it OK for a pastor not to be energetic?

Anderson: Not in most congregations. Congregations may like short-term vulnerability. But even if we are great pastors, if inactivity goes on for a year or more, people will probably start to say, “We need another pastor.” Churches ultimately need a pastor who will do the job.

Chapman: That’s true, but it’s relative. Some of my people wish I were less energetic. They say, “Slow down, Pastor.” I think they liked my heart attack because they figured it would finally slow me down a little.

Anderson: A pulpit committee chairman once asked me what I thought about several candidates. As we talked about one guy, I listed all his accomplishments. The chairman replied, “Yes, but he seems rather laid back.” Lack of energy is either perceived as ineptitude or laziness, and neither of those are acceptable. Ineptitude is particularly unacceptable in urban settings, and laziness is anathema in rural settings.

Leadership: How would you compare the energy demands of the pastorate to other occupations?

Sackett: Coming out of the academic setting, I found pastoring a hundred times harder than teaching. When you’re the resident physical chemist in a college, nobody argues with you. Nobody criticizes you. You’re the expert. I was always imparting information other people didn’t have, and they would say, “OK. I’ll accept that.”

In the church everybody has an opinion-right or wrong-about how things ought to be. Pastors have to argue their case like anyone else, and that’s where I felt the difference acutely. I was used to very little conflict. In the pastorate people feel free to take pot shots at you, even when you don’t deserve it. Living with criticism was one of the biggest energy drains for me until I learned to thank the Lord for it, forgive the person involved, look for whatever grain of truth there might have been in it, and say to the Lord: “My desire is to serve you and not men. If I’m doing what’s right, I don’t care who’s pleased about it, as long as you are.” That was tough to learn, but you sure have to learn it or suffer the loss of energy.

Chapman: What we consider one of the greatest jobs in the world does have its liabilities:

If somebody is tired or sick, I end up helping them, no matter how tired or sick I am. I’m not my own boss; everybody is my boss. I have the pressure of making people feel they have my complete time, and yet I haven’t enough time for all those people. I feel responsible to meet the needs of all our people.

But these liabilities have flip sides. I can think of a number of energy assets-privileges-that come with this task:

When I’m tired, I can take a nap since I make my own schedule. I can be my own boss. I have many friends, receive many accolades, get a lot of support. I don’t have to work at being part of the congregation; I immediately belong. I have a sense of call from the God of the universe to talk about Jesus, and there is no greater privilege than that. It’s part of my job to study about Christ. Who else has that privilege?

I get paid for the greatest job in the world. How are you going to beat that?

Voeks: I agree. To be loved by those who love him and rejected by those who reject him-what greater honor is there?

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Throughout the ages there have been people with unusual spiritual energy and endurance. Hebrews 11 is a Who’s Who of ordinary people whose faith, commitment, and perseverance catapulted them to challenge the impossible.

Two weeks ago Terry Muck and I met four such people. They were black Baptist ministers who pastor churches in the segregated townships immediately surrounding Durban, South Africa; the townships house the migrant labor force that fuels Durban commerce and industry. We met in a comfortably furnished parlor attached to a white, suburban Baptist church. They had graciously agreed to come to us since it was not advisable for us to go to them.

We asked what it is like to be a pastor in black South Africa. Hesitantly, they described the madness, the chaos, and the trauma of their daily lives. The battle lines created by the political and economic inequities between three million whites and twenty-seven million blacks converge in their townships. Heavily armed troops roam the perimeters in armored vehicles, stopping and starting violence in endless cycles. On any given weekend twenty to thirty houses are burned to the ground, leaving the families destitute. Nightly, people are “necklaced” to death: suspected informers are grabbed from their homes, bound, and incinerated by placing a gasoline-filled tire around their necks and setting it afire.

The first to speak, a man of obvious experience and wisdom, told how his congregation is severely divided by generational differences. Every day he struggles to minister to older, illiterate Christians, conditioned by apartheid and horrified by violence, while reaching out to younger Christians, politically and economically alert, who feel the church must pursue justice and liberation regardless of price.

He described the terror that strikes a pastor’s heart when he is approached about using the sanctuary for an illegal political gathering. To agree is to endorse, creating both friends and enemies. To refuse may mark the church and the pastor’s house for fire bombing.

The senior member of the group, a warm, graying man in his sixties, told how he and his wife raised seven children in the faith. He recalled how the oldest son tried to reconcile theology and daily life and became involved in community affairs. Declared a political enemy, he is serving a twenty-three-year prison sentence. The pastor told how his home and church were ransacked by security police looking for information about his son’s activities. He couldn’t talk for choking when he described visiting his imprisoned son and seeing what beating, mutilation, and torture does to someone you love.

The youngest pastor, a trim, taut man in his thirties, showed us a short piece he had written titled, Please Don’t Call Me Pastor. In it he describes the pain of being confronted by an inconsolable mother seeking answers for why her innocent twelve-year-old son was shot dead in the crossfire of a security police raid. As he retold his experiences, he admitted his literary efforts were a cathartic attempt to expunge deep feelings of inadequacy in dealing with the unanswerable questions his people keep bringing to him.

Yet nothing about these pastors’ attitude suggested they had abandoned hope. “How do you keep going?” we asked. With conviction born of deep commitment they answered, “God is at work in our hearts and in our churches. He has called us to this task, and we must be faithful.”

Terry and I prayed with them. We sensed they will survive, they will endure, they will persevere, they will ultimately triumph. Unknown and unheralded, they are the leadership of Christ’s church in South Africa, a church that even now confronts the gates of hell.

The first morning back at my desk, I read the opening chapter of Oswald Chambers’s book, The Place of Help (a chapter we have reprinted in this issue on page 33). In it he describes weary pilgrims trudging onward, though the heat of the day has made the road dusty, the miles long, the feet weak, and the endeavor exhausting. He tells how these pilgrims sing a psalm that asks, “Shall I lift up mine eyes to the hills? From whence should my help come?” And in unison voice they answer, “My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

Then Chambers graphically describes why these pilgrims, and these four pastors, press ahead with energy and endurance: “He will take you up, he will remake you, he will make your soul young and will restore to you the years that the cankerworm hath eaten and place you higher than the loftiest mountain peak, safe in the arms of the Lord himself, secure from all alarms, and with an imperturbable peace that the world cannot take away.”

The chronicles of faithfulness and endurance continue to be written.

Paul D. Robbins is executive vice-president of Christianity Today, Inc.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Polishing the Pulpit

Preaching by Fred B. Craddock, Abingdon, $16.95

Preaching: The Art of Connecting God and People by F. Dean Lueking, Word, $12.95

Reviewed by Gregory P. Elder, assistant priest, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Del Mar, California

An Anglican bishop is said to have dismissed one of his subordinates by saying, “That man deserves to be preached to death by wild curates.” More than one congregation has imagined itself so condemned.

But as any experienced pastor will affirm, it requires hard work to produce an interesting and challenging sermon. To help practiced and aspiring preachers, Fred B. Craddock and F. Dean Lueking have both written books titled Preaching, offering doctrinal wisdom and practical advice to proclaimers of the Word.

Craddock, presently professor of preaching and New Testament at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, writes, “Preaching is understood as making present and appropriate to the hearers the revelation of God.” He explained in a phone conversation, “There is a glut of words in today’s world that has made people anxious for real communication. Real communication comes out of silence.” Craddock believes effective preaching demonstrates honest speaking.

The book offers concrete suggestions on content and delivery. According to Craddock, preparation begins in a life of study-not in digging up something to say on Sunday morning. He clearly outlines the intellectual steps to analyze a biblical text.

He also advises preachers to read, at least twenty minutes a day, novels, poetry, and short stories. “The short story is the first cousin of the sermon,” he says. While it may not have an immediate impact on next Sunday’s sermon, such reading has a way of expanding the preacher’s world, benefiting both minister and congregation.

Craddock sees the preacher as an interpreter, who hears and presents the words of the King to the congregation. In the process, Craddock is concerned to honor not only the scriptural text but also the men and women in the pews. “Regardless of who these listeners are,” he insists, “they want to be taken seriously.”

He stresses the need to separate the interpretation of the passage from the preparation to preach on it. One first has to wrestle with the text itself and find what it is saying. Only when the biblical message has been discerned can the second issue be addressed: how to present it. It’s like the difference between mining a gem out of the earth and setting it in appropriate jewelry.

When I admitted I am guilty of confusing these two functions (it is often quicker to choose a simple text to preach), he replied, “A lot of people do that. But this process of interpreting before writing the actual sermon can be liberating.” The two-step process, he said, allows the preacher to decide what needs to be said without getting bogged down immediately in mechanical issues.

Craddock wrote Preaching to fill a need he saw in the seminary world. But as a former pastor, he is aware of parish concerns. The final chapters of the book demonstrate the range of his experience in a detailed discussion of preaching mechanics-selecting the sermon form, using illustrations, building anticipation in listeners, choosing the apt word.

While Craddock’s text is intended for the classroom preparation of ministers, F. Dean Lueking’s book is geared for the pastor well established in preaching. Although some ministers seem to be born with a gift of eloquence, most have to work hard to be fresh and exciting on Sunday morning. Finding good illustrations, new insights, and relevant guidance is hard, particularly for the pastor who preaches frequently.

Lueking’s book, Preaching: The Art of Connecting God and People, offers clear advice on this pastoral demand.

The theme is clear: the local congregation itself provides the basic material for the sermon. In the foreword Lueking says he desires “to help the preacher see the incomparable wealth of meaning found in the congregation itself and in the community beyond,” and “to demonstrate the art of weaving that personal richness into sermons.” He shows how pastors can find sermon ideas, unique perspectives on biblical texts, and illustrations in abundance from their people.

Lueking has been pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, Illinois, for over thirty years, and his experience shows throughout the book.

In the “Guidelines” chapter, he discusses simple rules of thumb for selecting personal examples, such as how distant an event should be before it can be mentioned in a sermon, and what constitutes correct handling of delicate subjects like sexuality or medical illness.

“The first cardinal rule is to respect the confidentiality of the person. Don’t trivialize anyone. Be attentive to the person’s own awareness of the situation.” He advises pastors to ask permission to share moments of grace with the rest of the fellowship. This permission is normally granted, and such personal glimpses have a way of showing the gospel to be stunningly alive.

Lueking gives many samples of personal stories he has used with obvious effect-stories gleaned from hospital rooms to wedding receptions. He advises us to listen to the experiences of people, and to share the gained wisdom with the church.

To demonstrate the power of grace in a believer’s heart, he shared the story of a man subjected to torture in a Cuban prison for twenty-two years, who survived the ordeal “with the grace of Christ in his heart toward those who tried to break his spirit by means of torture.” The power of the story was magnified since the man was present in the congregation. Lueking reminds us that every congregation has its own collection of testimonies.

Not only insights and illustrations but the whole direction of the proclamation can be derived from the people who need the Living Word. He sees his own congregation as both the setting and the resource for lively preaching.

The book is honestly positive about congregational life. This is not a textbook but a voice of encouragement for parish leaders.

Many clergy fear running dry. Like the prophet Jeremiah, none of us wants to remain in the dry cistern. But Lueking says Preaching was written to remind us that with people-oriented material, “you don’t burn out or grow stale, because people are not stale. Nor is the lively Word of the gospel.”

Both authors challenge preachers to enhance their pulpit ministry by polishing sermon delivery and including their people’s experience. Such advice can benefit all clergy, from the newest seminarians to the most senior pastors.

Overcoming Mediumitis

The Middle-Sized Church by Lyle E. Schafer, Abingdon, $6.95

Reviewed by Dave Wilkinson, pastor, Trinity Presbyterian Church, Oroville, California

Lyle Schaller defines the middle-sized church as the “middle third of American Protestant congregations, which averages between one hundred and two hundred in worship. Usually it is seen as being too large to share a minister with another congregation but too small to have two ministers. It is too large for the members to be satisfied with the limited-scale program typical of the small church but too small to offer the broad range of programming, especially for youth, that some of the new members expect.” In The Middle-Sized Church, he offers seasoned wisdom for those of us in this in-between territory.

Schafer knows the territory well. In chapter 3, for example, as he identified “six key personalities” in the church that can be the bane or blessing of the pastor’s life, I began recognizing them from my church! I had the uncanny feeling he had been looking over my shoulder as he wrote.

Schaller admits there is no typical middle-sized church. “Each congregation has its own distinctive ethos . . . or culture.” He points out several key factors that might make two churches with the same average attendance very different.

One factor is momentum. “The congregation meeting in a large building two blocks from the heart of the business district once averaged over 650 in worship but is now down to 145. The long-time leaders feel their church is caught in the throes of inevitable decline. The three-year-old mission in Minnesota doubled its worship attendance from 70 to 140, and the leaders are convinced momentum is on their side. Momentum is one reason that the numerically growing congregation tends to be more receptive to innovation, less bound by tradition, more open to maverick leaders, and more attractive to upwardly mobile persons.”

Another factor is age and money. He describes a pastor “born in 1947 who learned the reason the federal government minted coins in a circular shape is so they will roll, who comes to a congregation served by lay leaders who clearly remember the Great Depression and know the reason money is flat on both sides is to make it easier to stack.” Help for both is offered in a chapter on financing.

A central theme is that leaders need to lead if a church is going to grow. This means the pastor takes responsibility for initiating programs, and church boards shoulder tough decisions. “Back in the sixties,” Schaller explains, “it was widely believed that giving the people a voice would be an effective means of altering the status quo. Many years later one veteran of the confrontations of the sixties observed that it is ironic that the greater the emphasis on participatory democracy-with the idea that every group should have a veto-the larger the number of veto groups, and the status quo is the only course of action that cannot be vetoed. … The only people who do not have a veto on today’s decisions are tomorrow’s new members, the very people we are attempting to reach!”

A chapter on “The Awkward-Sized Church” will be of particular interest to leaders of churches averaging between 160 and 240 in worship. Such a church is often comfortable; program needs are being met without giving away the feeling of intimacy the people enjoy. At the same time, it is very uncomfortable for the pastor, who finds it “too large and complex to be served adequately by one minister.”

The Middle-Sized Church is the final volume in a trilogy Schaller wrote on the assumption that the average attendance at Sunday worship is a useful tool for analyzing churches. Besides his prolific writing, he speaks frequently at conferences and churches across the country, so much so, he says, that a daughter planned her wedding to fall on his birthday because she knew he’d be home.

I met Schaller at one of these conferences and found him pleasantly surprised at how his work has been received by leaders across the theological spectrum. Checking his calendar a while back, he discovered he’d worked with people from forty-two denominations over a five-year span.

Schaller always asks those he interviews the question: “What is the question I should ask you?” Figuring that turnabout is fair play, I asked him the same question He laughed and replied, “You should ask what I would do differently if I did the book over.” Then, without giving me the opportunity to ask, he answered: “I would have included three or four more case studies, one of which would be an independent, nondenominational church.”

Personally, I found the book satisfying; he needn’t change a thing.

Beyond Youth Bashes

Spiritual Growth in Youth Ministry by J. David Stone, Group, $12.95

Reviewed by Dick Norton, executive director, San Antonio (Texas) Youth for Christ

David Stone noticed a problem: “Burned out youth workers were coming to my youth ministries workshops asking for a new supply of gimmicks for their youth programs. They had completely lost hope that real spiritual growth was possible.” Wanting to help these weary, defeated ones find new life in their youth groups-and in themselves-he wrote Spiritual Growth in Youth Ministry.

Stone, a Methodist youth pastor who is now executive director of Alternative View Network of Shreveport, Louisiana, saw his own past mirrored in these youth leaders. He had had a productive ministry in terms of numbers, but the result was only superficial spirituality in his youth. He did all the right things-“attended their ball games, went to their schools, hosted socials, designed fabulous retreats, and ‘hung-out’ with them.” But all this was at the expense of a shallow personal spiritual life and shallow teens.

“The turning point for me,” writes Stone, “came when a good friend personalized the focus of my ministry by asking, ‘How is your walk with the Lord, David?’ I felt confronted . . . I felt guilty. I had ‘found myself’ much like the Prodigal Son acknowledged his real self. My friend’s question cu through all of my pride and ego as I honestly answered, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

From that day, Stone began a spiritual pilgrimage that resulted not only in his own growth but in that of his youth group as well. The result of this journey is a thoughtful, practical book.

The book’s core is that relationships are crucial to spiritual growth in youth groups. Stone writes: “Spiritual growth in youth ministry begins with you. . . You can’t give away something you don’t have . . . work first on your relationship with God-only then will your programs provide authentic ministry for young people.”

The recurring words in Stone’s book are relationships, ritual, routine, and discipline. In them you have the author’s message. Spirituality is not achieved in a moment of time. It is built over a lifetime by practice, routine, and personal discipline. Young people do not become spiritual by attending exciting youth meetings but by observing-and imitating-the day-by-day lifestyle of a godly leader.

Since the leader’s spiritual growth is of paramount importance, it occupies the first section of the book. “Spiritual Disciplines for Youth Workers” offers a smorgasbord of personal disciplines. Of prime importance in Stone’s life is “The Listening Post,” a technique of reflection and contemplation learned from noted missionary E. Stanley Jones. “Have you ever thought that most of the time when we try to get in touch with God, we do all the talking?” asked Jones. “I just sit at my listening post for thirty minutes each day and listen for God to direct me.”

Stone’s first attempt at establishing a listening post (a pillow in the comer of the room on which he would kneel) was not very successful. “During the entire thirty minutes, I was in sheer agony. My knees were being cut by those little razor edges (on the corduroy pillow), my back hurt, my arms felt as if they were about to drop off. I only sensed that God was present for perhaps ten seconds.”

But practice, routine, and discipline paid off, and the thirty-minute period became a satisfying experience with God.

An equally important discipline is journaling-a daily recording of spiritual insights. Five different methods of joumaling are offered.

Three programs of varying lengths integrate the listening post, journaling, letters of love, fasting, unselfish acts, witness, and physical exercise. Routine soon begets habit; habit begets lifestyle; and lifestyle, true spirituality.

Having come to terms with God, a renewed youth minister is then prepared to lead youth into spiritual renewal. Stone gives guidelines for helping teens develop their own spirituality through Bible study, worship, prayer and meditation, and retreats. All the tools come together in “A Program for Relational Spiritual Growth,” a method that allows your love for the Lord to rub off on your kids. It is a disciplined, structured approach; the author is a true Method-ist.

Although Stone wrote the book for burned-out youth ministers, he says, “My hunch is they are not burned out; they have lost God. They feel the God who first called them is not present with them now.” Who of us has never experienced that feeling?

We who have seen too many kids come and go through snazzy youth programs without any evidence of permanent, life-changing growth are ready for Stone’s book. It doesn’t just tell us our teenagers need to be led into spiritual maturity, it gives workable methods to achieve that goal.

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

Adrenalin and Stress by Archibald D. Hart, Word, $10.95

Hart deals with what he calls “the hidden link” between stress and adrenalin. We can, he suggests, become addicted to our own adrenalin as we would some other substance. And since we produce the substance ourselves, we may not even be aware of our dependence on it. Hart suggests several techniques for monitoring not only felt stress but also hidden stress. He recommends a heat-sensitive dot placed on your hand to detect the level of adrenalin arousal from skin temperature.

Christians may be under more stress than most in our society. It takes effort to live right and do good in our world. In addition, even the “good stress” we feel when faced with an exciting challenge or a special occasion can be as physiologically damaging as “bad stress.” Both result in temporary overproduction of adrenalin, which can cause harm if not controlled.

Hart describes several ways to relax, such as concentrated meditation and prayer, and discusses ways to reduce stress, such as learning to forgive and accept forgiveness. Busy people would benefit from unbusying themselves long enough to peruse this book.

The Elements of Preaching by Warren Wiersbe and David Wiersbe, Tyndale, $2.95

The Wiersbes have written a concise and basic book on preaching. I read it in less than half an hour and yet came away feeling I had benefited from it. Subtitled “The Art of Biblical Preaching-Clearly and Simply Presented,” the book is just that. The authors provide twenty-six principles and fourteen prohibitions for preaching, none of which has more than two pages of explanation.

The book, while an excellent text for beginning students of preaching if balanced by other, more exhaustive works, is also a fine refresher for those of us who have been preaching for a while.

Close the Back Door by Alan F. Harre, Concordia, $5.95

This book deals with questions nearly every church faces: How to keep members active? And how to deal with those who are inactive? Harre analyzes the results of several studies on inactive church members and notes the reasons people drop out. One chapter provides thirteen suggestions for retaining the members we already have, from improved worship to responsible social action.

At the same time, he provides excellent suggestions on how to approach those who have already slipped through the cracks. Active members may have to overcome negative attitudes about inactives. When ministering to the dropouts, we must listen to what they consider legitimate concerns and reasons for leaving.

Harre concludes with questions to ask when preparing to minister to inactives and offers a plan for training lay people to visit the inactives.

Good News for the Chemically Dependent by Jeffrey VanVonderen, Nelson, $6.95

Writing out of his own experience with alcoholism, VanVonderen sets forth a “grace-full” approach for ministering to alcoholics, addicts, and their families.

He begins with the dynamics of dependency. He suggests that ultimately chemical dependency results from a person feeling basic human needs are not being met, needs like being loved and accepted, valuable and important. Here the church and family can begin to help break the cycle of chemical dependency.

An excellent section on the value of stressing grace rather than law when ministering to the alcoholic or addict balances with his specific guidelines that are tough but loving. Perhaps most crucial of all is the “importance of families and churches being the kinds of places where people know that they do not have to pretend.”

Renewing Our Ministry by David L. McKenna, Word, $11.95

David McKenna, an ordained minister and president of Asbury Theological Seminary, has written this “good news book” for pastors who are suffering from stress-or would like to avoid it. Taking a “megatrends” approach, McKenna analyzes the pressures our society places on clergy and comments on ways to return the spark to ministry. The good news, he writes, is that “God, in Christ, has precommitted all of the resources we need for the renewal of our ministry.”

A partial list of McKenna’s chapter titles indicates the book’s direction; reliving our call, remembering our commitment, respecting our differences, regaining our balance, remembering our servanthood, recognizing our limits, and redeeming our future.

-Reviewed by Julie Adkins, pastor, St. Mark Presbyterian Church, San Angelo, Texas

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

When Dr. Steven Rosenberg stepped to the podium at Bethesda Naval Hospital and announced, “The President has cancer,” the relationship between Ronald Reagan and the American public shifted. The symbol of American strength now seemed weak, vulnerable, subject to alien invasion. People wondered, Can he continue to lead?

What happens when leaders fall weak and seem unable to lead? I have wondered about this since cancer struck me-and my ministry. What happens when those called to minister to the needs of others suddenly find their own needs overwhelming?

My first brush with cancer was in 1972, an occurrence of lymphoma. A lump was removed, and I was given radiation treatments to assure me of no further threat. I had left that in my past.

But in the autumn of 1984, my enemy returned.

Until then, the year ahead had looked bright. My ministry was going well. A long-cherished sabbatical awaited in the winter months. We had recently hired a new associate whose creativity and commitment indicated great things ahead. Our family life promised a wedding of one son, the college graduation of another, and our silver wedding anniversary.

One morning while showering, I discovered a small lump in my groin. Despite the hot shower, suddenly I felt cold. It had given me no warning. But I knew the lump had to be checked.

An examination led to minor surgery. It took a few days for the lump to be analyzed. Friday morning following the operation, I met with the surgeon to find out the test results.

“It’s malignant, Howard,” he said. “Hodgkin’s disease. You have cancer.”

His words pierced me. But a pastor is not allowed time to bleed. I had to conduct a wedding rehearsal in just a few hours and tomorrow, the wedding. Then two worship services the next day. I had to share in others’ joys and carry their sorrows.

I wondered, Is there no time to bear my own sorrows? Do I not even have the luxury of privacy for my weeping?

My agony extended through four weeks of consultation, testing, and analysis. One machine after another carefully scanned my body. Needles probed beneath my skin, examining this, drawing out that. Conversations with doctors provided tidbits of information until one thing became clear: surgery was necessary, major surgery.

Questions I’d never asked before suddenly dominated my mind: Will my congregation allow me to be weak? Should I admit my fears to them? Or is a leader always strong? Can I grieve over my own pain when others are hurting?

It soon became impossible for me to always be strong. I “knew” that before, of course. But now it was becoming obvious to the congregation that I was hurting and scared.

I found comfort in the thought that it would be dishonest to keep my struggles from those with whom I was most intimately united. Over the weeks I shared my hurt; I expressed my fears. I let them know I did not like these circ*mstances. But I also made it clear I believed God was in control, and whatever the circ*mstances, he would lead us through.

In a few weeks I set aside all pastoral duties to enter the hospital. I checked in as a patient where I had ministered to so many others before.

The surgical instructions called for a spleenectomy and a staging laparotomy. I sat in my room the night before looking out the window onto the street below. Not long before, I’d stood on that very street, waiting at the starting line of a twenty-five kilometer run. Would I ever run again? Would I ever be healthy again? I felt a strange mixture of faith and fear. Cancer is my enemy; God is my friend, I mused. I seem to be in the hands of both.

When the hour of surgery approached my family gathered around my bed, and I led them in prayer. I expressed firm faith in the love of our heavenly Father, who would never in an hour of such need desert us. But a few minutes later when they wheeled me toward the surgical suite, fear gripped my soul. I wanted to jump off the cart and run.

After the surgery, I found myself with tubes protruding from various parts of my body. My weakness was frightening; the least movement seemed to overextend me. I hovered between consciousness and unconsciousness, with searing pain. But greater than all such pain was the anxiety of wondering what the tests would show and the future would hold.

Good news often comes mixed with bad. The reports from surgery indicated no other malignancy was found. Yet radiation therapy would be necessary-six weeks of weakness, discomfort, and nausea.

There is something terrifyingly lonely about receiving radiation treatments. Attendants lead you into a room insulated with lead so the powerful rays will reach no one else. After positioning you under the linear accelerator, they leave, and the door clicks shut behind them. A little red light on the wall goes on and a faint whirr is heard from the machine. You don’t feel anything, but you know deadly rays are piercing your body and everyone else is on the outside because they don’t want to be subjected to them. You are absolutely alone-except for the Lord.

My faith desperately needed to be nurtured. So I began the devotional exercise of reciting “God knows me” and “I belong to God.” Forty-one times I could repeat those two phrases while the red light burned and the machine whirred. While the machine was doing its work, I was begging my spirit to put its trust in God.

After six weeks of treatment, I was told I could resume normal duties. It had been nearly three months since this whole traumatic process had begun. I wondered how my relationship with the congregation had changed. For six weeks I had not served them at all and for a couple of months I had worked only part time. Previously I had been the one to represent the Great Healer in their lives. Now I was the one who needed healing. Will they see me in the same light? I wondered. Will they receive me in the same way?

I’m not sure I fully comprehend cancer’s impact on my ministry. I can simply gather the evidence, watch how it has shaped me and my relationships. Since human behavior and relationships do not fall into neat categories, some of my reflections may even seem contradictory. In any event, here are some of the complex influences spawned by my illness.

Reclaiming My Role

Cancer had a subtle but unmistakable impact on my role in the congregation. As pastor, ministering to people in crises, I seemed to gain a fresh honesty and realism. But complicating this, it became easy for conversations to shift toward me and my welfare instead of staying on those to whom I was ministering. People would ask, “How are you, Pastor? Can you work a full schedule? Is all this too much for you?” My limitations, at least as perceived by a number of parishioners, sometimes sidetracked ministry to them.

As a leader in the church, I felt almost a lame duck. I’m sure it was unintentional and unconscious on people’s part, but for several months following my sickness, I felt my words and recommendations had less credence. Were people assuming we couldn’t aggressively plan our church program because I might not be strong enough to lead it, or even be here? I kept wondering, Have I become more timid and less willing to lead? Do they really see me differently, or is this only my perception?

I still don’t know which it was. But this dynamic made me insecure. Only through my wife’s gentle, supportive assistance was I able to accept what seemed to be happening. Looking back, I’m convinced the core of the congregation and I went through a disorganization stage similar to what often occurs in the grief process. It took six disconcerting months for us to move beyond that. I imagine others would share such an experience.

Accepting Limitations

Depression is so irrational. There may be many reasons for not being depressed, but they don’t alter the mood at all. I had been warned of the possibility of mild depression after major surgery. But I had discounted the idea, thinking it certainly would not happen to me. After all, I thought, I will be so grateful to be healthy and able to work again that “the blues” won’t get a foothold.

When the treatments ended, I was pleased how quickly my strength returned. With a kind of euphoria, I threw myself into pastoring, preaching, and teaching. If someone asked how I felt, I was quick to say, “Super!” (I wonder, as I look back, if I was trying to deny my mortality and convince myself I was beyond the bounds of further disease.) Four to six months later, the blues crept up on me.

As I wrestled with depression, I read again of Elijah, who had the thrill of victory on Mount Carmel but a chapter later stands on Mount Horeb discouraged, beaten, exhausted, and unable to recall earlier victories. It isn’t far from Carmel to Horeb.

I came to see that productive ministry requires pacing. Perhaps fatigue had lowered my resistance. Perhaps I had given too much too soon. Often we need others to help us develop our stride. I needed my wife’s support to become a better steward of my body.

Growing Closer, Drifting Away

Pastors and leaders often assume, perhaps correctly, that others expect us always to appear on top of everything. We often expect it of ourselves. But sudden and critical illness rips that mask away. It’s simply impossible to appear in control on your way to the hospital with what everybody knows is a serious disease.

I discovered my initial worry that people would not hold dear a “sick pastor” was unfounded. Quite the opposite occurred.

In normal pastoral experience, we discover relationships deepen as we walk through crises with people. Sickness or family tragedy often bonds a family and pastor. When the situation was reversed and I, the pastor, was going through the crisis, similar bonding took place. Parishioners realized their pastor was also deeply in need of support. Many became more comfortable in expressing their love. I learned, as Paul told us, koinonia will increase not only as we rejoice together but also as we weep together.

Though pleasantly surprised to find many relationships deepening, I was not prepared for the opposite. Traumatic experiences can also distance people. My initial anger caused some of that distance.

When I was still struggling to accept the reality of my cancer, a colleague stopped by to express his concern. He left me with a verse aimed to comfort and encourage me-Jeremiah 29:11-“For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” My heart was arguing, Sure, you can recite those fine words because you are healthy and active in your ministry, but if you were in my place, it wouldn’t look so sure to you! I sensed my anger driving him away.

Today, however, I have his name and the date marked in the margin of my Bible, for it was a beautiful gift he gave me that day. But that was not my initial reaction.

Sometimes the gap was widened by others. An American Cancer Society publication had warned that some people would feel awkward in my presence because they did not know how to deal with the emotions associated with cancer. “Cancer,” the booklet cautioned, “can change the pattern of many relationships.” Some people did act awkward around me.

And what was true of friends within the congregation was also true of colleagues. Some colleagues came to lovingly be my pastor under the circ*mstances, while some seemed to avoid me. Since that time I have occasionally brought up the subject of cancer in various social settings. I have consistently noticed that though some are at ease with the subject, others immediately recoil.

Walking Through Open Doors

I have often noticed the comments Paul makes in his epistles concerning doors opened to him. He was aware that influences beyond his control determined the opening of those doors. Certain circ*mstances in our lives, too, such as diseases like mine, open doors previously closed. I have had the opportunity to communicate with other cancer patients on a level not previously possible. I find it easier now to keep from falling into the trap of Job’s three friends who gave glib answers to suffering.

To some parishioners, it is OK now to shed tears in my presence. It’s also OK to be honest about embarrassing struggles. One parishioner admitted, “You know, Pastor, I couldn’t even pray while I was first recovering. I thought something must be terribly wrong with me until I heard you say you experienced the same thing.”

I have had the opportunity to preach the subjects of fear and faith, trust and distrust, peace and warfare, hope and helplessness, on a deeper level than before. For example, many passages in the Bible tell us to “fear not.” I’ve preached them many times-simplistically. But fighting cancer, I knew the constant tension between faith and fear. It simply is not true to say, “If you have faith, then you won’t have fear.” I had both in great measure. My taste of fear sensitized me to the fears many of my parishioners experience-a marriage going sour, a child rebelling, a business on the rocks. I see now the pews before me filled with parishioners bearing fear-and faith.

I found doors open to new understanding of certain Scripture passages. I’ve often been puzzled by Paul’s statement in Philippians 4 that he had learned contentment. In twenty-three years of preaching, I never dared touch that passage; I never felt I fully grasped what Paul had in mind. But while I walked through the valley of cancer, I wrestled hard with Paul.

He claims to have learned “the secret of being content in any and every situation” (Phil. 4:12). I hated my cancer. How could I be content? Would Paul be someone who liked cancer? Should I? I read that passage over and over. God’s Spirit finally opened my mind to see that contentment is not arriving at a situation in which we like our present circ*mstances, but instead it is confidence that God is able to provide all we need in those circ*mstances.

Now I understood how Paul could make such a testimony and how I could, too. I did not like cancer, but I could honestly say Christ had given me strength enough to face it (Phil. 4:13).

I found I could lead people to a contentment where realism and faith were partners.

Modeling Trust and Hope

Leaders must be conscious that many eyes are on them while they work through a life-changing experience.

I had preached many years about trust. Then shortly after my surgery I had to face the fact that my upcoming sabbatical would have to be canceled. I was tempted to be angry and to mope around in self-pity. But that would have contradicted everything I had previously said about trust. I saw God was giving me an opportunity to illustrate to my parishioners exactly what trust is. With that in mind, I accepted the cancellation and tried to keep a clear testimony that trust in God enables us to handle disappointments.

Trust and hope were not always easy to maintain. Often I found people too ready to say about my cancer, “This must be the will of God.” Instead I wanted to imagine the Lord saying, “I don’t like this cancer any more than you do, so let’s fight it together and conquer it!”

Another cancer patient shared her frustration that when her friends told her to “only take one day at a time,” they really meant for her to give up her future. She couldn’t do that. She needed solid hope for the future to unleash her energies against defeatism and the invasion of the disease.

I know there are many mysteries and debates concerning the will of God in matters of suffering, but I have come to see that moving aggressively and militantly against such diseases is probably more in line with the will of God than any other response.

I belong to a church tradition that has not emphasized direct and striking healings. We believe in healing and pray for it regularly, but we are not so quick to highlight it when it happens. Through the intervention of his power and the application of medical science, God has healed me. I have received a clean bill of health and have been able to resume full pastoral duties with the same energy level I had before. In fact, I’m putting the finishing touches on this article soon after returning from those months of sabbatical study that had been postponed. My parishioners know the time of study and refreshment was doubly meaningful to me because of the postponement.

Consequently, I have become a symbol of healing-once fearing a death sentence and now enjoying life. I am a symbol of hope-once tempted to panic because there might be no tomorrow and now eagerly planning for the future. I have become a reminder that God does act. I stand in the presence of people who are wrestling with disease, wondering whether there is any possibility of healing, and my presence holds out hope.

Dealing with cancer is always difficult. Dealing with it in the manse adds complex new dimensions. There is little privacy when it is needed so much. But there is a support group that is larger than ever.

Perhaps the pastorate is an ideal location for struggles like mine. When my body was pained and weak, there was a larger body around me that was strong. My experience gave visible evidence that God can turn even our weakness into a ministry strength.

Howard D. Vanderwell is pastor of Hillcrest Christian Reformed Church in Hudsonville, Michigan.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The most insignificant person before any wedding is the groom. As long as he shows up, that’s all that counts. The most insignificant person after a wedding is the minister, especially if the ceremony is for a couple only distantly related to the church.

“Thank you, Pastor, for a lovely service,” you’ll hear. Or, “That was such a beautiful prayer, Reverend.” Then these people hurry to the punch bowl as if eager to talk to anyone but the parson.

Early in my ministry, once the niceties were out of the way, I found myself parked off in a corner. After a few awkward minutes, I would wish the bride and groom well and retreat out the door to some activity-any activity where I wasn’t the parson on display.

Then I started thinking: I’m always looking for ways to reach unchurched people. A wedding reception bulges with people who otherwise wouldn’t come to church on a bet, yet here I am, bolting out the door at the first opportunity because I feel socially uncomfortable. The challenge of the evangelistic opportunity shamed my desire for retreat. I decided to capitalize on the possibilities.

I don’t sneak out anymore. Now I use wedding receptions to sharpen my listening skills, build bridges to the unchurched, and even gather fodder for my sermons. Rather than seeing receptions as something to endure, now I often leave them refreshed by talking with people at a happy time in their lives.

Weddings allow me to observe the extended families of church members. I benefit from meeting the “Uncle Jim” or “Aunt Martha” I’ve only heard about in counseling situations, people I’d likely never have contact with in other pastoral duties.

Those who show up at church only for a wedding or a funeral are people I need to hear. And they benefit from interacting with this “preacher” away from the pulpit and down from the platform, someone nibbling mints and nuts and talking to them about normal things.

Once I sat down beside a man who was obviously uncomfortable with me. I asked where he was from, and was he a friend of the bride or groom? Short, direct, barely polite answers followed each of my questions. I found out he had grown up with the bride’s father in a nearby town, and I mentioned fishing in the lake there. The man, an avid fisherman who knew every hole in the lake, brightened visibly.

We swapped fishing stories for nearly twenty minutes, and then the man said abruptly, “I don’t go to church and haven’t been since the war.”

He continued, saying that a pastor once had disappointed his family at a painful time. As a young boy, he had determined that every pastor was no good, and the church was a place of no visible means of support. That man later called to invite me to fish his favorite places on the lake. The hostility of forty years was broken in a conversation about fish.

Another time I sat with a woman who, again after the opening chitchat, told me a story of touching fortitude. She said she dreaded nursing homes, yet her mother was confined to one, slowly deteriorating from a degenerative disease. The rest of the family would dash in only when it was convenient, but this daughter resolutely visited her uncomprehending mother in the one place she hated most. Only once in scores of visits did her mother’s glazed expression remotely register recognition, but she said that one exchange sustained her.

A book could never have provided the richness of what that woman shared that afternoon.

So I stay at receptions, even when the room is filled with strangers. I make a point to break the social barriers by asking the one or two leading questions that seem natural to the conversation. Questions as simple as “Do you live near here?” “Where did you grow up?” or “How long have you known the bride or the groom?” have opened the floodgates.

When I get brave, I even venture a question like “What are weddings like in your church?” Sure, it’s a leading question, but it broaches the subject of faith and gives me a reading of the spiritual condition of the wedding guest.

I listen attentively. Not many take the effort to hear the stories bottled up inside us. I find many people delighted that someone is willing to listen.

It does take time. On one occasion I sat through a complete dinner next to the grandmother of the groom, and not until dessert did I hear the fascinating story of the beginnings of the church I was serving. This dear woman had never told her story before; she didn’t think anyone would be interested. It was folk history all too soon lost forever, but now it will be shared for generations.

Surviving the reception presents no problem now. I even look forward to those twice-removed weddings as a ministry opportunity, a time to grow-and minister-by listening to the people who have so much to say.

-Don Maddox

First Presbyterian Church

Long Beach, California

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Races aren't necessarily won by the first runner out of the blocks. Winners are determined at the finish line.

Ministry is also judged not on short bursts but the total impact of a life. As one minister confessed: "I fear lest I end badly." What are the keys to endurance, to breaking the tape after a lifetime of effective ministry?

One pastor who has maintained a vigorous ministry for twenty-three years is Ben Haden. After earning a law degree from Washington & Lee University, owning an independent gasoline distributorship, and serving in the Central Intelligence Agency during the Korean War, Haden became the general manager of a daily newspaper in Kingsport, Tennessee-until he was converted and entered Columbia Theological Seminary at age thirty-four.

At graduation, he became pastor of Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church in Miami, Florida. In 1966, he was chosen to be speaker on "The Bible Study Hour," a weekly radio program originating in Philadelphia and founded by Donald Grey Barnhouse. Two years later, he started his own radio ministry, "Changed Lives."

Since 1967, in addition to having a weekly national television and radio ministry, Haden has been pastor of the 2,400-member First Presbyterian Church in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee.

LEADERSHIP editors Marshall Shelley and Kevin Miller asked him to discuss the secrets of longevity in a demanding ministry.

How does the ministry compare with your earlier occupations? Are the demands of a pastorate easier or tougher than, say, the newspaper business or the CIA?

To be frank, the ministry is a great place for mediocrity to hide. But if you're conscientious, then the ministry is the most difficult job in our society. I say that with due deference to the difficulties of other jobs.

If you're conscientious in ministry, you never get a day's work done. You always see more needs at the end of a day than you recognized at the beginning. So much of what you know, you cannot share with anyone else without breaching confidence-and nothing destroys ministry more quickly than running off at the mouth.

The ministry is a life-and-death, heaven-or-hell matter. It's a spiritual battle every day-if you're faithful.

What do you mean by "a spiritual battle"?

In Christian circles today, I hear a lot of melodramatic references to "being under satanic attack," which usually means the person is sinning. That's not what I mean. That's a misuse of the term. When I sin, it's sin-not satanic attack.

I find my struggle with Satan usually occurs when I've made the gospel clear but individuals can't bring themselves to respond. They understand what I'm saying and know what is required, but as they weigh their willingness to make the commitment, it becomes obvious there's spiritual opposition. That's what I mean by spiritual warfare, and it's a draining experience.

Is it possible to endure in ministry without at least occasional spiritual victories?

I don't think so. I need all the encouragement I can get. Interestingly, the encouragement often comes in unexpected ways. Sometimes because of things I had little or no hand in.

One Monday morning not long ago, a woman who had struggled with alcohol for many years accosted me. "Why didn't you tell me before how to be saved?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Yesterday you explained it. You said we have to come apart. I finally understand!"

My mind was racing. I preach extemporaneously, and I can't recall every word I say, but I know what I have not said. And I never mentioned "coming apart."

"You remember," she said. "You must remember."

Then it came back to me. As I began the morning prayer, I'd said, "Lord . . . we come apart . . . to worship you." Now this woman tells me it's the first time the plan of salvation has made sense to her. She came to Christ that day.

Later she said, "Some of the people in the choir were trying to tell me that isn't even what you meant. But it is, isn't it?"

I said, "It must have been." (Laughter)

This is part of the mystery and blessing and encouragement of ministry. I don't understand how God can take an offhand phrase, an introduction to a prayer, and have a person confuse the intent and be changed. But this woman did come apart. She became new in Christ, and she's been sober ever since. I don't understand it. It's humbling, but it's also encouraging.

Pastors often experience sorrow and joy back to back. In the morning you can be grieving at a deathbed and in the afternoon celebrating a wedding. How do you survive in that constantly changing emotional climate?

I'm not given to big mood swings. Number one, I'm crisis oriented. Maybe it comes from my newspaper background, but I work best under deadlines and pressure. Crises don't scare me, and I've become accustomed to them as a pastor.

Number two, I do experience highs and lows, but I've found I can't swing way up and down and be of much help to people. I've got to keep a balance.

Is emotional equilibrium a virtue for pastors?

I've seen the Lord use people of every emotional make-up. Some people who wring me out just being around them are highly blessed by God. I wouldn't say pastors have to be of a certain temperament to be successful.

But as a pastor, your emotions can't be determined by the emotions of the people to whom you're ministering. If some poor soul is falling to pieces, it certainly is not a time for me to do the same.

The Bible says to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, but you seem to be saying there are times, when a person is coming apart emotionally, that your job is not to join in the weeping but to bring some emotional stability to the situation.

I don't want to be misunderstood. It isn't that I don't feel for people who are hurting. But I can empathize yet still offer a clearer perspective. My job is to encourage and to remind people of God's promises-even when they're fresh out of faith and the circ*mstances are against them.

For instance, I find most funerals, far from being draining experiences, actually strengthen me. You get an audience you wouldn't get any other way. People are very silent, very open. The world has a gurgle in its throat when it comes to death, but the Christian can speak with total confidence.

I had a dear friend who was dying of emphysema, which is a horrible death, and between breaths you could hear a block away he said, "Ben, you've been kind to me. Is there anything I can do for you?"

I said, "Yeah. Look up my mother and tell her I love her."

He said, "I will."

I think the most overlooked portion of Scripture is the phrase right after "Whoever believes in me shall live even if he dies" in John 11. It continues, "Whoever believes in me shall never die." We forget that Christians are incapable of being dead for even one moment. When we pass from this life, we're alive! Since that's my conviction, I can share that. You can have a powerful ministry at times like that.

When was the time you came closest to quitting the ministry?

For twenty-six years, I've had back problems-a ruptured disk. At times it has been so bad I've literally had to crawl. At times I've been unable to get out of a car. Once I almost fell off the platform into the front pew.

In 1983, however, it became so bad I was on my back around the clock except for Sunday morning. When I would hobble to the bathroom, I was afraid I would fall and crack my skull. I felt like a one-legged rabbit.

One day I was literally flat on my back on the floor of my church office. I'd experienced pain for years, but I finally realized that in fairness to the church, I couldn't continue this way.

In walked a visitor, a man who was not a member of our church but who attended once in a while, a man who had never been in my office before. He saw me lying there and said, "Ben, I understand you're having some trouble with your back. There are a couple of exercises I want to show you."

"There's only one hitch," I said. "I hurt too much to do them."

"How bad is it?"

"Bad enough that I'm not sure I shouldn't quit the ministry."

"Don't do that," he said, and he proceeded to tell me to stay.

I took it as a word from the Lord. It was too unusual for this "outsider" to show up at that time with the right word of encouragement. So I eventually went to Mayo Clinic, underwent a fairly radical treatment, and it worked. I'm even able to play tennis now. And I'm still in the ministry.

Besides physical pain, are there spiritual or emotional pressures that discourage you?

Sure. Sometimes when people disappoint you or use spiritual language to con you, you wonder if it's all worthwhile.

I also get discouraged when otherwise mature Christians lack discernment. One example: Some individuals are zealously anti-abortion, but they don't like anyone to preach sexual morality. To me, that's a lack of integrity. They want to outlaw floods, but they won't build dams! I'm against abortion, too, but my primary focus is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I find tangents, anything that distracts us from the gospel, can be a real detriment to staying power.

Recently a friend, whom I led to the Lord several years ago, called and was all excited because a favorite Bible teacher of his had been preaching about a group of witches down in Atlanta.

"The coven is seeking his death through witchcraft!" he said. "We've got to get everybody to pray about this!"

"Come off it," I said. "That's malarkey. Christ is far stronger than the witches. Christ will protect him, and if Christ isn't protecting him, then witches are the least of his worries. Anything can get him! You've gotten everybody excited about the witches rather than Jesus Christ. That's a tangent. Don't make this a substitute for the gospel."

Whether the issue is abortion, witches, communism, or prayer in the public schools, the temptation is to avoid the gospel. We point the finger away from my need for God and point it at somebody else.

So one of the secrets of staying power is recognizing what the gospel is and avoiding the wrong crusades, or at least putting them in perspective.

That's correct. Even theology can be a tangent. Majoring on the minors can sap your strength. My prayer is to major on the majors. That's a big enough task for anyone.

Is there a sense in which personal discouragement and weakness can be used for benefit in ministry?

Absolutely. I wasn't converted until I was almost thirty. At no time have I ever wanted to be in the ministry. Even when I went to seminary, I didn't have the slightest desire to be a pastor. I was interested in evangelism. I didn't like Christians! In fact, I think Christians are an acquired taste. You learn to like them. But for me, it didn't come naturally.

This could have been a fatal weakness for a pastor. But God used my background as a plus. My first church, in Key Biscayne, was founded above a bar, and then moved into a kindergarten, and then into the cafeteria of a public school. The previous pastor, Lane Adams, was converted reading a Gideon Bible while on the nightclub singing circuit. That church was filled with people of wild pasts. Practically every person was a book waiting to be written-nobody came from a "normal" background. The church in Corinth was dull compared to Key Biscayne.

In fact, one night while I was teaching, I broke down laughing. Everyone looked at me because the Bible verse I was on wasn't especially funny.

I explained, "It just hit me that we are a most unlikely group of people. Only the Lord could have gotten us together." And they joined in the laughter.

My background, which could have been a detriment in another congregation, was actually an asset there.

Are there certain lessons pastors have to learn that can come only through pain?

Oh, yes. I was asked once, "How do you choose your staff?"

I replied, "I call only men whose hearts have been broken."

"You mean you don't listen to them preach?"

"Not usually," I said. "I listen to them talk about Christ in private conversation. If they can articulate their faith sitting across a table, I see no reason why they can't do it on their feet."

The ability to communicate can be developed, but a broken heart is essential to effective ministry because pastors constantly deal with people in their low moments, their anxious moments, their extreme moments.

How can you tell when a person's heart has been broken?

I listen to him talk about his life, talk about himself. It surfaces.

It also shows up in the way he relates to people. If you haven't been hurt, you tend to be insensitive, except to those people you like. Pastors, of course, have to love people they don't necessarily like-and love people who don't always like them. That's hard to do unless your own heart has been broken and you can identify with their hurt.

In what ways have you been shaped by your hurts?

As a child, I had delicate health, and I also had a speech impediment. I didn't go alone to the store until I was seven because nobody could understand me. I think that kind of experience automatically matures you and helps you understand loneliness and aloneness.

I've also had migraines since I was ten years old. For fifteen years, from 1963 to 1978, every time I preached I thought my head was coming off. Fortunately, since 1978, they haven't been so severe. They're only occasional now-not five days a week as they had been. But when people come up and say, "I can tell you really like to preach," I think of the times I was so nauseated by the pain I had to step off the platform to vomit before I could return to preach.

My parents married later in life, and both died in their forties. I had just turned thirteen when my dad died, and a few years later I saw my mother choke to death with cancer.

Those kinds of experiences, I think, help me identify with others who hurt.

How do you put that identification to use in ministry?

I remember when my sister, one year after becoming a Christian, was diagnosed as having Multiple Sclerosis. She phoned me, almost frantic, and asked, "Ben, do you think it's possible that I have MS?"

In most cases, I answer that kind of question, "Yes." Then the person cries and says, "Do you really think so?" And I say, "Let's assume you do. If you don't, there's no problem-but let's face the possibility and take it from there."

But when my sister asked, I said, "Now let's get it straight, Lynn. Whether you do or not, I don't know. But nothing has changed about Jesus Christ."

She said, "I knew you'd say that. That's why I called."

"You know I love you," I said. "And you know I hope you don't have MS. But if you do, nothing has changed."

She lived for twenty years, ten of them as a widow, with MS, and in that time, I never heard her complain about it. She died two years ago. She was my only family, and I loved her. I still do.

When someone who has known hurt can say, "Nothing has changed between you and Jesus Christ," that carries a lot more weight.

I think so. It's like having a miscarriage. We've had three. I understand how that can hit you, but life goes on. We all need to be reminded what is the end of the world and what isn't.

I know what has encouraged me in the difficult times. And I try to do the same for others. Frankly, the people who are my greatest encouragers in this church are those who have gone through some of the deepest water.

One example is a woman named Dolores, who has a son with Down's syndrome. She came into my office one day and said, "Do you know what 2 Corinthians chapter 1 means-the part about 'comforting others with the same comfort we have received'?"

I said, "I think I'm about to find out!" (Laughter)

She told me about visiting another young woman who had just given birth to a Down's syndrome child and was having trouble accepting the fact. Dolores had been able to say, "We have three children, and I can honestly say the greatest blessing in our lives is little Johnny." She went on to explain that children with Down's syndrome are capable of affection but don't know hate. "You don't know how you've been blessed."

She turned to me, "I was able to encourage her with the same encouragement I had received. Don't you think that's what 2 Corinthians is about?"

"Dolores," I said, "I've never understood it before, but I do now!"

When a person has been through a valley and come out the other side, when God's strength and faithfulness sustain a person when he or she would not have had the strength-that is one of the strongest testimonies I know.

What gives you more strength-being with people or being alone?

I enjoy both. If I had to choose, I'd say I draw most of my strength from being with people. When I'm discouraged, the first thing I do as personal therapy is visit people in the hospital. I've never gone to the hospital and not come away encouraged. It's gotten to the point now that if my wife detects I'm discouraged, she says, "Ben, why don't you go to the hospital?"

Do you find you must be alone sometimes to prepare yourself to be with people?

Yes.

How do you know when that time has come?

If I cut somebody short in a conversation, or if I'm inadvertently rude or too blunt, I say to myself, "You'd better take some time off if you want to be effective."

One of the dangers of being a "people person" is that the numbers of people coming to see you become overwhelming. How do you maintain a pastor's heart when more needy people seek your attention than you can possibly see?

You have to come to terms with that.

I am first of all a pastor; that's my priority. The moment I cease to be concerned about a person who comes to me for help, there's something spiritually wrong. Each person hurts and needs help just as much as the last one.

Yet every opportunity the Lord gives tends to add more stress. For instance, adding the weekly TV and radio program to the pastorate terrifically increases the work load and pressure. We receive over 100,000 letters a year. At the moment I'm fifteen hundred letters behind in dictating responses to specific problems or questions. You either worry about that and lose sleep, or you say, "Well, maybe tomorrow I'll be even more hopelessly behind."

You learn to live with it because I've never finished a day in the pastorate when I'd done everything I wanted to do.

Do you pace yourself?

Not at all. The ministry is not a career to me. Somebody in Miami asked me, "How long do you plan to stay here? What kind of church do you plan to go to next?"

I said, "The Lord called me here. The minute he calls me to another place, I assume he'll tell me."

So you don't consciously monitor your energy and endurance gauges?

No, I try just to keep my eye on the goal and press on. You see, I'm expendable. I'm only a messenger. The important thing is Jesus Christ, not me. I could easily die tomorrow. So I don't worry about the church remaining the way I've shaped it The next pastor of this church will cast it in a different mold anyway, which is as it should be.

This church dates back to 1840 and is the oldest continually existing organization in Chattanooga. In the hundred years before I arrived, the church had had only three pastors, and my immediate predecessor had been here forty years. He was a wonderful and gifted man and he retired just the week before I arrived-and continued to live in the community for the next eleven years.

He was circ*mspect in his relationship with me, but if you know anything about the ministry, which I didn't, the person following such a long-term pastor doesn't last more than eighteen months. The second pastor doesn't last over three years. The third pastor may have a chance.

I didn't know any better, so I came to First Presbyterian, and I've been here almost nineteen years. My goal has remained the same: to reach as many people as possible with the gospel in whatever time remains before Jesus returns.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

At a meeting recently I heard another pastor say with a big sigh, “Boy, what I wouldn’t give for a regular forty-hour-a-week job!” He was fishing for sympathy-as we all have done at times. I find such comments common among my colleagues. Stress and burnout are catchwords.

Although the demands made on us and our time are a concern, I wonder if we may not at times be fooling ourselves.

Since coming to my present church, which includes many executives, my thinking has undergone some alteration on this subject. I found myself much more prone to grouse about my hours until I started trying to schedule time with some of these execs. Lunches were booked far ahead, and they regularly hit the office at 7:00 A.M. and didn’t get home until supper was cold. I began to realize that every successful person I knew put in long, disciplined hours (and usually without complaint).

Then I remembered that I was asking these very same successful people to volunteer additional time, outside their already-heavy schedules, to help in the work of our church. And they were doing it! Their dedication put me to shame. If they could devote themselves to their work with such vigor and still be willing to volunteer extra time for our church shouldn’t I be able to face fifty to sixty hours of work a week without feeling overworked?

The more I thought about it, the more I had to conclude I was not really overworked. What ends up causing stress and burnout for many of us begins with faulty assumptions and mistakes in our organization. I decided to be honest enough to recognize this and try to correct the mistakes rather than plead for pity.

In my own experience, I find most “overwork” turns out to be mistakes of expectation, concentration, or delegation.

Mistakes of Expectation

Our expectations of ministerial life strongly influence how we feel about our experiences.

I know several people, for instance, who entered ministry with the notion that it would resemble a nine-to-five job. Warned about the danger of too much work getting in the way of family life and personal growth, they went to the opposite extreme. They answered the phone at home with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, bordering on hostility. Even the rare week with all the evenings booked prompted visions of failed family life.

The fact is, of course, that virtually no job working with people can be confined to an eight-hour day or a five-day week. People’s needs don’t run on a clock. Ministry keeps happening whether or not there has been a holiday earlier in the week.

Anyone entering ministry thinking it will resemble a clock-punching job is sure to be dismayed. Yes, concern for priorities is wise, but as a pastor, I need to remember that being faithful in my work for God is no different than in any other area of life; it takes hard work and long hours.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the “poor me” expectation. These people enter ministry with a mental image of a pastor being on call all the time, buried in a myriad of details, never able to get caught up, always having one more phone call to make, and chronically late for appointments.

My observations have been that when we harbor that sort of expectation, we usually live up (or down) to it. We program ourselves to be harried because it gets the sympathy strokes we want.

This was, in my first fifteen years of ministry, my tendency. I let myself become a slave to the annual records I had to send the denomination. I couldn’t let my number of baptisms or sermons slip. The more patients in the hospital, the better; I’d get more calls logged and help my statistics. I was running myself ragged for the sake of the record, not for ministry.

The sad thing was I thought that’s how ministry was supposed to be. My expectations, not the ministry needs, were creating the overwork.

In both of these cases, we are not really overworked. Either we have not understood what hours ministry realistically demands, or else we artificially keep ourselves busier than we need to be in order to maintain an image. We may feel pressured, but it is pressure of our own making.

The answer is not simply doing less work. Rather, it’s aligning our expectations with reality through wise planning. What must I do to fulfill the responsibility God has given me? How can I best invest my energies happily? With good planning and the willingness to serve aggressively, we may be surprised at what we can accomplish for God-without feeling overworked in the process.

Fresh out of Bible college, I was ruled by my mental image of a pastor as a busy person. If I were to have status, if I were to attain the stature of my heroes and not lag behind my classmates, then I would have to be busy-I thought. With a little more time and a lot more wisdom, I realigned my thinking toward ministry. Instead of calling on people just to pad my statistics, I slowly learned to love people, to minister to them, and let the year-end numbers reflect rather than determine my ministry. I was freed from the compulsion to be busy for the sake of appearances. Now, though I still don’t make the calls I might, I’ve learned to live with lesser goals in some areas and focus on the strategically important areas. I try to run with my strengths in ministry, not my mistaken expectations.

Mistakes of Concentration

I hate to bring up this point because it pegs me: Many of us do not know how to concentrate on our work. Consequently much of our “overwork” is simply the result of wasted time.

Here’s how it shows up for me: the lunch meeting lasting thirty minutes longer than business warrants, the extra hour of the “Today Show” getting me to work late, the phone call stretching to forty minutes of chitchat, the decision to leave work an hour early to get some shopping done, the attempt to call that golf game “ministry” even though it was simply relaxation, the newspaper that takes forty-five minutes to read, the acceptance of too many outside projects that distract me from my primary duties. I’m sure you could complete the list.

Yes, I’ve heard (and used) all the rejoinders:

“Sometimes you just need to be with people longer.”

“Some of my best contacts have been in social situations.”

“I need to keep up on current affairs.”

But I look at my schedule and find literally hours of nonproductive time-time that could have been used to accomplish the tasks that make me feel overworked. Ironically, the resultant sense of overwork keeps us from planned leisure that could refresh us and our families.

I will never forget hearing about one of the men in our congregation who was visited by a well-known public figure. After thirty minutes of conversation, the man called in an associate to meet the honored guest-and to take him off of his hands so he could get back to work. He’d broken his concentration long enough. Had it been me, I probably would have visited all day with the celebrity-and then complained of overwork the rest of the week.

Another friend involved in research told me his day is a success if he can spend two to three hours of solid, concentrated time on research. He knew there would be plenty of odds and ends to fill up the rest of the day.

At first I thought he sounded lazy. The more I thought about it, looking at my own schedule, the more I understood. I had to ask myself, How many times do I seriously devote even two uninterrupted hours a day to my important projects? If I constantly shuffle my attention between different people, daydreams, projects, leisure, and permitted interruptions, I will accomplish my work in the time available only with difficulty.

Again, that’s my fault, not the ministry’s. I don’t want to plead burnout for my mistakes of concentration.

Here’s where a thirty-day time study helps. After honestly keeping track of our time in fifteen- or thirty-minute intervals for a month, it starts to become apparent how we waste time or how we could group projects more advantageously. We might be surprised at what we could accomplish by eliminating those time wasters from our schedules.

I discovered that I was too loose with my time. When I began to block out solid chunks of uninterrupted time, I found I could finish the sermon some time prior to Saturday evening and still get in a game of golf. By refusing to label nonministry items “ministry,” I realized that many of the hours shopping and chatting and lunching were really my own rather harried leisure. If I were busy, I couldn’t blame only the church.

I hold the keys to my schedule, and only I am to blame when disorganization rules out accomplishment.

Mistakes of Delegation

One day in a circle of pastors, I heard a self-diagnosed overworked church planter tell of his busy schedule. In the list of duties he ticked off, he included “setting up the chairs each Sunday.” My immediate thought was, Why in the world are you doing that? There has to be someone in your church who could take on that duty.

But often we fall victim to the need to be needed, and so we become the omnicompetent leaders who are omnibusy. If we print the bulletins, do all the calling, prepare the church dinners, accept all the recruiting responsibility, serve as janitor (I actually saw a pastor do this in a church of four hundred), buy all the supplies, and attempt most everything else, we obviously will be overworked. But who said we had to do all this work? Not the Lord!

For all our talk about gifts and the ministry of the laity, many of us have a lot to learn.

“It’s easier to do it ourselves, and it gets done better when we do it,” we plead, not without some truth. Yet even if that’s true (which it is-rarely), it isn’t right. I’m learning that my job is to allow others to participate in ministry. To do otherwise is to rob them of their right. And it can turn me unnecessarily into a crusty old martyr.

Recently when our church participated in a community fair, I experienced the lesson of delegation in a most uncomfortable way. Through neglect I failed to get people assigned to all the necessary tasks. In those tasks where I had delegated, I had no worries. But I left myself too much to do alone. I paid the price of late nights and nervous hours.

Was I overworked? If I was, it was my fault. I couldn’t blame the ministry.

Mending the Mistakes

I don’t want to spend my life with either the feeling or the reality of too much work. By the same token, I don’t want to be lazy. I want my work load to challenge and stretch me, to pull the best out of me. It should make me tired but give me satisfaction at the same time.

I want to come off not as a martyr but as a person excited about my challenge from God. Frankly, I think I can accomplish that in just about any situation if I form my expectations correctly, learn the art of concentrating on my tasks, and engage in the biblical ministry of delegation.

I never fail to discover this possibility during the week before my vacation. During that week, I work harder but feel less overworked. Why? Probably because my expectations are accurate; I’m neither surprised at the amount of work nor do I feel sorry for myself for it. I simply know it has to be done before I leave. Furthermore, my concentration is at its best. I’m able to give my attention to the priority issues. And finally, I delegate liberally, assigning all sorts of work to others-because I have to.

It’s always a great week. Maybe it is supposed to be something like that all the time.

Donald Gerig is pastor of Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

GETTING ADULTS EXCITED ABOUT MISSIONS

After the commissioning service for our summer mission youth teams, an elder was asking about the group bound for Kenya. “Is that the capital of Africa?” He was completely serious, so I gently tried to explain that Nairobi was the capital of Kenya, but that Africa, being a continent and not a country, had no capital. He retreated, a little embarrassed.

The incident got me thinking about our church’s vision for, and understanding of, world missions. We were doing a satisfactory job educating our young people; our adults needed some schooling as well.

Formulating our rationale

That summer we began planning mission trips for adults. I knew the first question people would ask: “Why should we do this?” Based on my experience, both personal and with our youth teams, I generated three reasons:

1. The church benefits. Giving, prayer, and a sense of partnership with missionaries had already increased in our youth groups. I knew the same harvest of benefits would be reaped by the church at large if adults got involved in missions firsthand.

2. Our missionaries benefit. Missionaries in a rather remote outpost once welcomed our youth team with these words: “In our thirty years of missionary service, you are the first people from a supporting church that have visited us on the field.” Personal visits from a supporting church greatly encourage foreign missionaries who sometimes wonder, Does anyone know I’m here?

3. The pastor or other team leader benefits. When our minister of Christian education visited Haiti, he brought back mental pictures and personal experiences that affected not only his own life but the entire missions vision of the Christian education department.

Getting there

First, we needed a place to go. We wrote various missionaries we were supporting to inquire about the possibilities. Some were too busy to host a group. Others would have loved the visit but had nothing for the group to do other than tour, and we wanted our group to contribute something to the ministry. Finally, a positive response came from missionaries in Spain. They offered a good work assignment—painting a mission hospitality house. Better still, we would be working with missionaries who were from our own church and committed to educating others about missions.

Next came the question of finances. Between some lodging the missionaries helped arrange, a cooperative travel agency, and a little flexibility (like flying midweek rather than at peak times), we were able to establish a cost within the reach of most of our people. In addition, our missions committee earmarked funds for those needing aid.

Six months before the trip, we began recruiting team leaders. We looked for people who had overseas travel experience, administrative ability, and the willingness to go through a leader-training program. They, in turn, recruited team members, and after weeks of preparation, the team of ten adults left for Spain. The trip’s nine days (to accommodate those who could not take off two full weeks) broadly exposed the team to the missionaries and their work. Time was allocated for visits to local churches, a trip across the Straits of Gibraltar for exposure to Islamic culture in Tangier, Morocco, and lots of fellowship with the missionaries. The team found out what it is really like to work cross-culturally.

The team, motivated by the vast array of new experiences, worked hard to paint the hospitality buildings. And the missionaries were encouraged beyond our expectations.

Overcoming obstacles

This glowing report does not imply, however, that there were no problems. Team members worried about terrorist hijackings. They put up some resistance to receiving the same rigorous training as the youth teams (see LEADERSHIP, Fall 1984, “Ideas That Work”), and some pushed for more freedom to travel on their own.

(We did allow our adults to travel on their own following the team project, though we don’t allow youth to do this. On many trips, however, travel arrangements require a complete group on the return flight and thus rule out additional personal travel.)

Others at home objected, “Wouldn’t it be better to just send the money, rather than spend so much to visit?”

“Perhaps,” we countered, “but the individuals’ increased involvement in missions is hard to price.” Of the Spain team of ten, two are now involved on our missions committee, three are actively pursuing missions service, and one is helping to coordinate a program for international students.

“Are we hurting or helping the missionary’s effectiveness?” another person asked. A good question. The answer depends on the missionary’s job on the field, his or her willingness to impart a vision for missions, and the commitment of the visitors not to be a burden. We did burden our missionaries with administrative details (coordinating food and lodging), but we paid for all our food, helped offset the price of materials we used, and funded our own travel and touring.

Our commitment (for youth or adult teams) is to work so hard and encourage so much that our missionaries feel genuinely glad we came. This occurred in Spain and in the other places we have sent adult teams:

France, Jamaica, and Honduras.

Maximizing the trip

Nine days pass quickly. How could we make sure these days contributed to the team members’ growth as Christians committed to the Great Commission?

Upon its return, the team went through debriefings to help members better understand their experience. Team members completed a follow-up evaluation and held a reunion. And the church visibly affirmed them by featuring them in a service and viewing their display booth in our fellowship hall. The team understood that as a church, we were proud of their work and interested in what they had learned. This affirmation enhanced their personal commitments to missions.

David wrote that following the Lord would enlarge our hearts (Ps. 119:32). Taking our adults overseas has resulted in “enlarged hearts” for both participants and observers. According to Mark Twain, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, all foes of real understanding.” How true for our adults. And because of our good experiences, we’ll continue planning mission trips for them.

Paul Borthwick is minister of youth and missions at Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts.

MORE IDEAS

An Eye for Evangelism

Newcomers to a community are often especially receptive to the gospel. Uprooted from friends and still out of place in their new surroundings, they usually welcome friendly gestures from a church.

The problem for many churches is how to identify newcomers and get their names and addresses. Village Green Baptist Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, has found a creative solution.

“The idea came to me while I was jogging past a house with a real estate ‘SOLD’ sign planted in the front yard,” says associate pastor Gordon Bauslaugh. “We encouraged everyone in the church to start looking for (1) “SOLD” signs, (2) unloading moving vans, or (3) new homes being built.”

The church dubbed people who reported sightings the “Spotters Association,” or SPA for short. A printed form was distributed for spotters to record the addresses of their spottings, the dates when found, and their names.

The forms, collected in a box at church, are given to a visitation team that calls on the new residents. During the brief welcoming visit, the team expresses the church’s desire to minister to the newcomers and encourages them to call the church office with any questions or needs as they settle in. Often newcomers visit the church on the basis of this visit alone.

“The biggest reward of the program, though, is when the team writes its report of the visit,” Bauslaugh says, “and one copy is given to the person who made the original spotting. If a ten-year-old spotted a moving van, he gets affirmation that he or she is helping the church.”

The church newsletter reports how many addresses have been spotted, who has submitted sightings, and how many visits have taken place. Bauslaugh reports: “The program has sparked an ongoing interest in outreach among the entire congregation.”

Bulletins for Kids

Keeping children quiet during a worship service is one thing. Actually involving them in the worship and helping them understand the service’s theme is quite another.

Overisel (Michigan) Christian Reformed Church has taken a sizable leap in both directions by creating bulletins specifically for the children. The children’s version contains word searches, dot-to-dots, stories, mazes, crossword puzzles—all centered around the theme of the service and sermon.

“We’ve been doing this for three or four years now,” reports Pastor Leslie Kuiper, “and it’s amazing how much the children gain from the bulletins. At a coffee get-together after one of our services, some parents asked their kids what the service was about. An eleven-year-old who hadn’t used the children’s bulletin had a difficult time identifying the main theme. But two children ages six and seven hit it right on the nose.”

Each Tuesday morning, Kuiper’s wife, Marlene, and other mothers from the congregation meet to plan the bulletins. They begin with the Scripture passage and theme statement for the coming Sunday (Pastor Kuiper provides these about two months in advance) and discuss how the concepts can be made accessible to children. Each person is assigned responsibility for a portion of the bulletin, which usually breaks down this way:

page 1—activities appropriate for four-year-olds and other nonreaders;

pages 2-3—activities appropriate for five- and six-year-olds and other beginning readers;

page 4—activities appropriate for seven- through ten-year-olds and other more advanced readers.

“In each bulletin, we also mention any children who are having birthdays that week or are sick,” Marlene reports.

“We lighten our load by gleaning ideas from Bible activity books and illustrations from ad-picture books donated by the local newspaper. We keep our printed bulletins on file and even swap them with other churches who’ve begun doing the same thing.”

Pastor Kuiper adds, “At first, some adult members didn’t like the children writing in their bulletins during the service. But now people are used to them. We even find some of our adults taking them home.”

Bulletins for Seniors

While experimenting with the church’s new photocopier, Pastor R. Keith Corum of Willows (California) Christian Church came up with a simple, yet clever way to help some of his senior citizens.

The copier had the capability to enlarge (or reduce) print, and Corum knew some of the older members of the congregation were struggling to read the regular bulletins. So for the coming Sunday he made several large-print bulletins by copying the regular church bulletin onto 11″ x 17″ sheets of paper using the photocopier’s enlargement mode. The regular bulletin’s full-color cover could be reproduced only in black and white in the large-print size, but in every other way the larger bulletins were the same, simply easier to read.

“I thought, Let’s at least see how they go over,” Corum says. “And at first, some of the seniors were hesitant to admit they needed larger print. But now, if I forget to put the large-print bulletins out, some seniors ask, ‘Hey, where are our bulletins?’ “

Visualizing World Communion Day

First United Methodist Church of Reedley, California, has found a meaningful way to celebrate World Communion Sunday, the day each October when churches worldwide celebrate Communion.

In September, the church’s Sunday school teachers center their lessons on Christian missionary work around the world. As part of the lessons, the children make construction-paper flags representing various nations.

Then, on World Communion Sunday, the children distribute the flags to the congregation. Each flag (approximately 5″ x 9″) has the name of the country it represents printed on the back. As part of the prayers of intercession, each person prays silently for the country whose flag he or she is holding—for Christian ministries there and the general welfare of the people. Not everyone knows specific information about his or her country, of course, but many do, based on the recent Sunday school and sermon instruction. Following the prayer, Communion is celebrated.

“Many of our adults found this meaningful,” says Pastor Mark Moon. “Some admitted they had never even heard of the country whose flag they got. And few were aware we were supporting missionaries in so many countries.”

What’s Worked for You?

Each account of a local church doing something in a fresh, effective way earns up to $30. Send your description of a helpful ministry, method, or approach to:

Ideas That Work

LEADERSHIP

465 Gundersen Drive

Carol Stream, IL 60188

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Casual curiosity suddenly became a preoccupation. Nearing graduation from seminary, I had come upon statistics on the duration of the first pastorate for recent graduates. The average had been just over two years. And that included a few who had stayed much longer.

Why were these pastors, so full of excitement and so well trained, hitting a wall after only a couple of years in their first parish? Was their inexperience the culprit? Or was it the fault of all those churches ripping unsuspecting graduates to shreds?

My “just about to graduate with only one church casually looking at me” anxiety was increased by my finding. What if my first church is a scarring experience? When that one-and-only call came, I accepted. After all, that church was rather lonely in its interest in me, so how hard did I have to search for God’s will? I did resolve, however, that I would not make my contribution to the brief-tenure statistics.

After all, I reasoned, I’m a man of good training, high energy, excellent background, supportive family, strong will, pretty fair ability, solid conviction, and straight teeth. I will do all right. Besides, I have a lot of courage and am not afraid to stand alone.

Had I also had a touch of humility with even a modicum of self-analysis, I would have seen I was on my way to a short career in that church. Maybe in every church I would serve. What I saw as ego strength coupled with courage was interpreted by others as ego fragility and bullheadedness.

The breaking of a pastor: it has happened before and it was bound to happen again. This time it happened to me.

Headstrong pastors, like frisky colts, often need breaking. My breaking happened in a way that moved me through the succeeding years with more grace. At times, I still need reminding of those long-ago lessons, but I am deeply indebted to the grace of God, who disciplines through his people.

God used three major experiences to set me on a better path for ministry. They were neither easy nor pleasant, and even now, putting the specifics on paper is difficult. But let me try, for I have discovered I am not alone in the lessons I needed to add to my formal training.

A Lesson in Forgiveness

My first shaping episode involved a counseling situation. The newly married couple was special to me since I had married them and saw in them great leadership potential.

One evening my wife and I were enjoying a long-overdue, romantic dinner date. We had just been served the salad when the young husband walked in. As soon as he spotted us in the dim light, he made a mad rush in our direction. The urgency in his voice and the frightened look in his eyes compelled me to follow him outside, leaving my wife to eat alone-again.

There I found his wife in a near panic. She had befriended an older man at work, who obviously had a variety of problems. The man had responded to her sweet, Christian concern with gratitude bordering on hunger. She meant only to help a fellow employee, but the more care she lavished, the more interested he became in her. Young and a bit naive, she never noticed. She didn’t seem to realize his calls at her home always coincided with her husband’s absence. She simply responded in what she felt to be Christian love.

Earlier that evening he had called again, and they had gone for a drive and conversation. In an inopportune and desolate area, he suddenly pulled the car to the side of the road and slumped against the steering wheel-dead of a massive heart attack.

Now the terrified couple asked me, “What is going to happen?” I had no idea, but I was soon going to learn.

Sheriff, coroner, media people, and later, hearings and inquests all made the next hours and days a maelstrom. When at last it was legally and formally wrapped up, I was both spent and relieved.

Then my telephone began to ring. The messages assumed a wide variety of approaches but a sickening consistency:

“What is wrong with your church to allow that woman to keep singing in the choir?”

“Don’t you know what’s going on in our church?”

“Don’t we have any standards anymore?”

By the third or fourth call, I began to realize the sort of ugly rumors that had been created by the circ*mstances surrounding the death.

I reacted with hot anger. Their eager judgment certainly doesn’t communicate any Christian love or compassion, I fumed. And since the calls were anonymous, there was nothing productive I could do. So I stewed.

About ten days later, with the rumor mills still in full operation, we celebrated Communion in the morning worship service. My sermon focused on forgiveness and restoration. Following the sermon and the invitation to Communion, I said, “One of our sisters has something that needs to be said.” My young friend stood at my side, still wearing her choir robe. In her hand she nervously clutched an index card with a prayerfully and laboriously written statement we had worked out together with her husband.

Three times she tried to read the card, only to be blocked by her emotion. I finally took the card and read it on her behalf. In essence, it stated the simple facts without responding to the rumors. She then asked the church family to forgive her for the shadows her lack of wisdom had cast over the fellowship and its witness.

Turning to her, I voiced the unconditional forgiveness and love of the church, which could also be read in the faces of the hushed congregation. I then asked her forgiveness for any part of her pain we had caused. When she returned to her seat, the congregation was given the opportunity to speak. Several people spoke, and we experienced a time of repentance and restoration.

Perhaps beginning to melt the pastor’s heart is one of the works of the Holy Spirit. I had seen the pain and separation that harsh, ready judgment could inflict, even on the innocent. I had also witnessed the power of forgiveness and love that replaces judgment and anger. I determined right then which direction to lean when the opportunity next arose.

Perhaps I was being prepared for my next, much more difficult, lesson.

A Lesson in Style

A few months later it arrived. I had been gone a week, preaching at another church, and upon my return, I was greeted warmly by the chairman of the deacon board. After the exchange of pleasantries, he asked me about the special diaconate meeting held the previous week. I knew nothing about such a meeting! An alarm bell went off in my mind. They held a special meeting when both the chairman and I were out of town; it must have been about me!

My conclusion was not unreasonable. For several weeks all the indicators had been discouraging. Attendance, offerings, morale were all noticeably down. The honeymoon, such as it had been, was decidedly over. Maybe I’m about to make my contribution to the statistics on brief first pastorates, I thought. My emotions ran the gamut from Poor me to I’ll show them real strength!

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the diaconate was set for the following week. I waited all through the meeting for someone to mention the unscheduled meeting. None did. Just as the chairman was about to adjourn the meeting, I gathered my gumption and asked for the minutes of the last meeting to be read. When he told me they had already been read, I replied, “I was referring to the one held during my absence.” Embarrassed silence. The deacons evidenced a noticeable interest in cuticles and shoe shines.

I took the offensive, speaking with sarcasm and demanding “full disclosure.” I noticed with pleasure that “they” were squirming uncomfortably. Obviously, “they” were “under conviction.”

Then one of the older deacons spoke quietly. Because Gilbert had frequently demonstrated his concern for me, I listened carefully, thinking he would be my ally. I wasn’t prepared for what he said.

“Pastor,” he said gently, “you please me that you want to be called pastor rather than reverend; pastor suggests the word shepherd to me. I think you really want to be our shepherd. Maybe it’s your western upbringing, but you feel more like a western-type shepherd than the biblical figure. In the Bible, the shepherd knows his sheep by name. He leads them into pastures and by quiet waters. He seeks until he finds the straying and then rejoices with his neighbors.

“Yet, sometimes I feel you send the dogs after us like a western shepherd would. The missis and I often find it difficult to eat our Sunday lunch because we feel we have been barked at and harassed.

“Pastor, we know we are sinners. The Holy Spirit is faithful in probing our darkness with light. But I come to Sunday worship with a hope and hunger for healing. Forgiveness-that’s what I need, the gospel, the Good News.

“Forgive me, Pastor, but you insist on knowing my heart, and I’m trying to be honest, though it frightens me to touch the Lord’s anointed. Please tell us the Good News of his love and reconciliation. Heal. Don’t hurt … “

He said more in that soft, gentle voice. But I didn’t hear it. I only heard the sound of my brittle ego shattering. I only felt my tears.

I heard my Shepherd’s good news in those words. My deacon friend hadn’t spoken harshly. He didn’t want to hurt me. His tenderly piercing words were for my benefit, my breaking. Gentle was the fracturing of this pastor’s false role expectations. Never again would I see myself as a harrying sheep dog.

I experienced the love and healing of Jesus-from the hands of those I had accused of scheming in my absence.

Much more took place that late night and early morning, events too sacred to share. I hardly slept afterwards. Somehow in the painful breaking, I was being set free from hardness and performance. I was accepted and loved anyway. I still am. Amazing grace!

The next day I went through my sermon file with new insight. How could I have thought I was preaching the gospel while delivering such bad news to God’s people? Where did I get the idea that the conviction of sin was my job? How had I come to equate preaching the Good News with making hearers miserable? Had I not been called to carry out the work of my Lord? Then his burden is mine: “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed . . .” (Luke 4:18).

That good news began to burn inside of me. I had good news to share that we all needed to hear. I was recovering my sight. I was being released.

In anticipation, the Lord’s Day took on a happy cast. Freed to be accepting as I had been accepted, I looked forward to standing with my people instead of over and against them.

Perhaps, I thought, this second lesson completes my initiation. I could barely wait for the next Sunday. Had I known it would bring my third breaking, I would not have been as eager.

A Lesson in Weakness

I decided to preach on the love of God. The decision was as much for myself as for the church. I was having such a great time with the Good News, and the best part is his love for us. I chose 1 John 3:1 for my text: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” Now that was good news worth preaching. My people would revel in a new preacher this week.

That Lord’s Day the sermon I had prepared was a wonder. Today I am ready to preach with power, I thought on my way into church. The rehearsing choir sounded great. All was prepared. I was pumped.

The hymn before the sermon seemed to take so long that morning. I wanted to get on with the message. At last it ended, and the organ modulated to the soft music that signaled time to preach. I stepped confidently into the pulpit and announced my text. I would read it twice, I had decided; it must be clearly heard. So I heralded that fabulous announcement from John: “How great is the love the Father has lavished . . . children of God . . . what we are!”

As I read those words, they burrowed straight to my heart. Warmth. Balm. Wonder. For some reason, as never before, the reality of God’s sumptuous love overwhelmed me.

I remember few details of what happened next. I think I tried to say, “This morning I have some wonderful news about who we are,” or something like that. But that was all I could force out before words simply refused to bypass the medicine ball in my throat. I must have tried more than once-I am not one to give up easily-but I physically could make no sound. How could I talk when I was finally seeing myself immersed in God’s lavish love?

The silent, swallowing seconds felt like hours. I must have looked like a fool, fumbling in the pulpit and choking on my words. Finally, when it became obvious there would be no sermon, somebody mercifully announced the closing hymn, and this would-be preacher fled in confused and embarrassed retreat.

How can I face them after such an unseemly loss of control? Where will I go now? Will they still want me as their pastor? These thoughts flooded my mind as I slipped out the back door and quickly drove away from the church. The thoughts wouldn’t sit still in my mind long enough to be processed before rushing on. That was just as well; I had no answers. So I drove aimlessly in quiet tears and flushed embarrassment. This pastor sure made a mess of it today.

But I also sensed a growing warmth in my spirit as my heart pulsed with the continuing echo of the Good News: “Loved . . . children of God . . . that is what we are.” After a few miles I turned toward home.

Meanwhile, the church family surprisingly had not focused on me, the departed buffoon of a pastor. Afterwards I learned they were centered on the wonder of the Father’s love. It was a love that drew them-some to the front of the church for prayer, some to the quiet of their homes for thoughtful meditation, some to subdued conversation. But most of all, it drew them to him.

I can’t explain the outcome. I had done nothing-but perhaps that itself is the explanation.

When I returned to the church for the evening service, I felt awkward, to say the least. I discovered, however, that God’s encircling hand had drawn people and pastor together. We who were so loved could love in return.

Ministry went on in that congregation. I regained my voice. I preached and taught and married and buried, yet with a new sense of the love of God burning in my heart-my pastor’s heart. In time we could even laugh together about “the best sermon Bud never preached.”

This colt was broken. But it’s not as if I’ve become a swaybacked nag without any kick. I’m still learning some lessons-maybe less monumental-but that’s what still qualifies me as a disciple. Yet since my breaking I am not the same. We do not remain untamed; we become conformed to his image.

True, I still tend to compensate for my weaknesses and failures by grumbling to myself about the same foibles in others. I still lean toward cynicism and ego maintenance. But the Good News attenuates my foibles and accentuates the Lord’s strengths.

My wife and I are beginning our twentieth year in our present parish. God’s love clearly must make a difference. The “wild” Bud would never have made it this far. The “being broken” Bud experiences God’s love daily.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, let me quote another source on breaking. “So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him” (Jer. 18:3-4). Whether as a broken pot or a broken colt, this pastor is better for the breaking.

Bud Palmberg is pastor of Mercer Island (Washington) Covenant Church.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Caught up in the beauty of spring, I drove by Grover Cleveland Park on my way back to the church. That’s when I saw the juggler. There’s something about an impromptu exhibition of such dexterity, almost magically keeping those pins in the air, that causes you to pause. A small crowd of young people gathered, and even answering their questions, he never broke his concentration. He was fully absorbed in keeping those pins moving skillfully about him.

I’ve watched and talked with Don the juggler several times since. I’ve seen him pick up the strangest objects and immediately get them going in those same pure arcs-first one . . . then two . . . three . . .even four. Don, a self-taught juggler, insists modestly that it’s easy. He began with balls, went to rings, and finally took on pins, the most difficult. Don claims you can learn quickly to juggle just three objects, but it becomes increasingly difficult when you have four or five. After years of juggling, he still fears breaking his focus, losing the rhythm, and dropping one. But Don has learned one thing: No matter how good you are, you’ll drop one sooner or later.

Every minister encounters that maddening moment when ministry seems one great juggling act-so many things going on, and somehow we are responsible to keep them all in motion. We struggle to fix our focus and perfect our timing lest one of them drop. For many of us it is unthinkable to admit what Don readily acknowledges: You’ll drop one sooner or later. You just can’t keep them going forever.

The Pastoral Pins

Since meeting Don, I’ve tried to identify the pins we pastors must keep aloft. I’ve categorized the staggering number of day-to-day duties into four clusters: pastoral, prophetic, priestly, and professional.

The pastoral demands include visitation (people expect the pastor to call on the elderly, the infirm, the actives, the inactives, as well as those who have visited the church for the first time). Somewhat related is the delicate and at times daring task of maintaining relationships that help give each member a sense of affirmation, affection, and appreciation.

Our prophetic task consists primarily of speaking the Word of God. This means not only our actual preaching but also the hours of preparation that must precede proclamation.

The priestly function is concerned with our sacramental ministrations. The Latin word for priest, pontifex, aptly pictures this role: a bridge builder. As pastor-priests, we are commissioned to build bridges from man to God and from man to man. This entails baptism of new believers, confirmation of young Christians, the ministry of reconciliation through either a rite of confession or personal counseling, thoughtful planning of worship services, celebration of the Lord’s Supper, officiating at weddings, anointing of the sick, and burial of the dead.

And finally, the professional facet, the overall administration of our particular ministry. For many of us this includes working with various boards and committees, preparing a church calendar and, in some cases, the church bulletin, planning for weeks of special emphases, upgrading our ministry skills and knowledge, and attending to mounds of correspondence.

Don said juggling three is easy, four a bit tougher, and five downright demanding. We pastors are already at four, when we’re handed yet another: the dictates of personal spirituality. It is not enough for us to communicate God’s commandments to others. We must first love the Lord God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might. Attention to personal spirituality must precede absorption in professional ministry. I cannot take lightly my need for personal prayer, Bible study, and acts of self-denial-the spiritual disciplines of solitude and fasting (too long relegated to another age) that can train me to say no to self in order to say yes more readily and freely to God.

Flowing from this (and yet an integral part of my personal spirituality as the Shema of Deuteronomy 6 teaches) must be my commitment to communicate these precepts and practices to my own family. This means accessibility, a disciplined determination to be available to my wife and children to grow together in wisdom and maturity.

These, then, are five pins we must keep aloft in those whirling arcs, and hopefully, prayerfully, prevent from crashing to the ground.

In addition, many of our people believe the pastor is capable of, and called to do, even more! Sadly, many of us add to the demanding act everything they throw at us. No wonder countless pastors give up juggling entirely.

Going for the Juggler

If we are to maintain balance in our lives, we must admit pastoral ministry is unrelenting in its expectations and often unforgiving of our limitations. Yet the fact remains that we have been called, and he who called us will also enable us. What most of us must learn to accept is the incompleteness of our tasks-projects ever in process, our work rarely, if ever, fully finished, the pins constantly in the air.

Ministry requires the ability to keep many things going simultaneously. How do we do that? There’s no secret. As Samuel Johnson said, “Men more often require to be reminded than informed.” It comes down to practicing certain truths we already preach. These, then, are not new insights, just reminders I’ve tried to apply during the past fourteen years of ministry.

Admit Your Limited Abilities

I am learning that not only can’t I do everything well, I can’t do everything. Period.

Harry Evans, former college and seminary president, purposefully misquoted to his students the folk proverb: “If a task is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.” He meant that some things absolutely must be done, and yet, because of other commitments, we simply will not be able to accomplish them with the diligence and excellence we might like. Once we realize this, we might also recognize others in the church who are not only capable of doing those tasks but doing them better than we can.

In one of my pastorates, the congregation regarded highly a former pastor whose energies enabled him to be here-there-and-everywhere. I assumed I, too, had to be Johnny-on-the-spot. I prided myself in the number of visits I made-no hour was too late, no distance too great. At one point, a church member was recovering from surgery in a hospital thirty miles away. Each Sunday for several months, I raced across the George Washington Bridge, parked illegally, dashed up six flights of stairs, shared Scripture and a short prayer, and returned to church barely in time to preach the first of three morning services. Far from being dutiful, it was dumb!

I was on the road to burnout, but worse, I was depriving members of the chance to perform a vital ministry.

My friend John Vawter at Wayzata Evangelical Free Church in Minnesota is delegation in action. He has trained his people, freely giving them ministries traditionally reserved for pastors. Lay people comprise a competent team of premarital counselors. Some administer and evaluate Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis Tests, others follow through with counseling sessions and share Scripture and insights relevant to Christian marriage, and there’s even a wedding hostess who regularly conducts the wedding rehearsals so that John can devote Friday night to his family. His commitment is to arrive one hour before each wedding and then conduct the ceremony. He’s shown me that the body can assume many ministries while he tends to uniquely pastoral functions.

Build a Base of Support

My greatest support system in our church is our board of elders. Because they are godly men, prayerfully considered and appointed by our people, I do not hesitate to lean on them. Our bonds are strong because of that collegial leadership and decision making. They are encouraged and eager to assume responsibility for our shared ministry.

Outside the body, I enjoy a unique relationship with four other pastors. We have made a commitment to be available to one another for insight, encouragement, and correction. We share with one another the best of our illustrations, outlines, jokes, newsworthy items-in short, anything that might assist the other in day-to-day ministry. There’s special comfort in knowing they are there not only when things get hectic, but even when the creative juices refuse to flow.

Last Christmas, my brother invited my family to spend a few days with him in Vermont. I wanted to go, but I had no idea what I was going to preach the following Sunday. But thanks to a conference call with my pastor friends, before long we had agreed on a passage, shared insights, and even discussed a few illustrations. As a result, I was able not only to visit family but come back refreshed and ready to preach.

Create a Realistic Schedule

Because I remember too well going to bed pained at the thought of work left undone, I have begun building a schedule I strictly keep unless providentially hindered.

Each Friday afternoon, before leaving my office, I prepare a weekly work sheet that highlights ministry and family commitments for the following week. My first task Monday morning, and each subsequent morning, is to detail that schedule and order the tasks in terms of relative importance.

I keep the schedule realistic. I refuse to allow the sheet to point its accusing finger at me at day’s end.

I also furnish my staff and elders with a preaching schedule for the next eight months. Planning my preaching in advance spares me the agony of trying to determine week to week what to preach. It also helps me coordinate my preaching with the church year and plan for breaks I’ll need before or after the seasons that make the greatest demands on my spiritual and emotional energies.

Discipline Yourself Spiritually

Of all I do, this is the toughest to sustain because it’s the easiest to put off. It is strictly between God and me, and too often the first area I allow to slide.

On more Sundays than I care to admit, my dryness was due primarily to neglecting my spiritual disciplines. On one such Sunday morning, I was so overwhelmed with a sense of living in the land of dry wells that I penned this psalm:

In my mind’s eye, Lord,

I see the faces of your children assembling this Lord’s Day

to worship You,

to experience your presence

as they encounter You in your Word.

Some will come excited

expecting to meet You.

Many will join us straight from battle

contra mundum

bruised and battered from that conflict.

Others will be here out of sheer routine

anticipation at a real low,

Still others driven here by an inner longing

only You can fill.

Lord God, I do not, and will not, exaggerate my role.

No good can be accomplished,

no ministry effected

apart from You.

Nonetheless, that small part You’ve entrusted to me

deserves my best.

And now, as Sunday draws near,

I hear the awful accusations of

a text not fully grasped

an outline still incomplete

a title not selected

words as yet unpenned.

The wells are dry.

Reasons surface-quickly

a swift-paced summer

that didn’t deliver the relaxed schedule

it seemed to promise at first,

a pile of paperwork

that kept me from your Word,

the beauty of these glorious days

that seduce the mind

and somehow drain its creative energies

the desire, and need, to put my mind in neutral

after the mental, emotional,

and spiritual activity of a long day.

But Lord, You are making it quite clear

these reasons are mine.

It is my voice I’ve heard,

not that of my Advocate.

I have succumbed

to a loyalty to lesser loves.

I agree with You, Father.

I have chosen the good over the Best.

These dry wells are of my own doing.

I am without excuse.

Most of us have experienced that pain of coming before God’s people and trying to speak a word from him when we haven’t first spoken to him. We simply cannot lead people where we have not been. Periodically, I have to renew my resolve to spend the first half hour of each day in prayer.

I’m encouraged in this by another pastor friend, David Fisher, who has a highly structured hour and a half he gives to spiritual exercises. He begins with readings from the Psalter and then selections from the Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie. Then he turns to his personal prayer notebook where he reads not only from his own reflections and meditations but also from a collection of the great prayers of the church-the Te Deum, the Veni Creator, and the Gloria In Excelsis. These serve as his introit into the presence of God. After personal communion with God comes a period of intercession. He concludes with a study in two areas-the first systematic theology and the second either biblical studies or a biography of one of the saints.

Discipline of this kind will not only invigorate us but overflow into our ministry.

Exercise the Most of Your Mind

Recently, I was in a small group of ministers who spent several hours with James Wetherbe, professor and director of The Management Information System at the research center of the University of Minnesota.

Wetherbe explained that while we might use in excess of seven million brain cells a day, we are still drawing upon only 5 percent of our brain’s capacity. While the intellectual processes of which we are aware occur mostly in our consciousness, evidence suggests mental processing can also take place in arenas outside our consciousness.

This includes the ability to wake one’s self in the morning simply by concentrating, the sudden recall of information we’d forgotten but that returns after we’ve directed our thought elsewhere, and the “aha phenomenon” (which describes the experience of inventors, writers, or others in creative tasks who struggle over a bad project, seemingly getting nowhere, and give up only to find that while doing totally unrelated activities, suddenly-aha!-the solution surfaces).

It’s almost as if we have “a second processor,” which Wetherbe tried to explain was the creative and powerful resource available in our own minds. He said it is conceivable that, because of this second processor, we could develop a concept of what we hope to achieve, give some initial thought and direction to it, establish a deadline for accomplishing it, then turn our minds to other pursuits without fretting over this project. Later we can draw on a wealth of related information we would never have imagined.

I admit, some people regard all this quite skeptically. But my experience has been, since putting this approach to work, that my weekly sermon preparation as well as my writing commitments have been helped by letting this second processor collate information.

Favor Your Family

I have resolved to no longer preach principles about family life without trying to practice them before my congregation. It took quite some time for me to realize that my home is the greatest pulpit for my life’s message-living it before my wife and children that they in turn, might live it before others.

Recently, a pastor friend was asked by a man in his church to spend some time with that member’s son who was struggling with drug abuse. In fact, the young man was to be readmitted to a drug treatment center, and the father hoped the pastor might visit him that very night.

The pastor said he would do his best. But when he got home that afternoon, his own son asked for a few hours of his time. For years the pastor had been trying to strengthen the relationship with his son. The pastor didn’t hesitate a moment. He knew his responsibility was to his own child.

One of the thoughts that motivates me to build relationships with my daughters is the simple truth that when my life comes to an end-possibly long after the churches I’ve pastored have forgotten how to spell my name-my three girls will pen my obituary. Their feelings and memories then will determine my real life’s work as much as any program or building I’ve left behind. My success in life might well be measured in God’s sight by their honest assessment of my impact in their lives.

I am learning to play to that audience-and to do so without guilt and without apology.

Glorify God as Lord of His Church

It’s not right for me to think I am the only one who can meet the needs of this church family.

Theodore Hesburgh once remarked that “Cemeteries are filled with indispensable people-men and women without whom the world could not get along.” And yet it has.

Because the church is God’s, as we assume the tasks he’s given but not the burdens others would lay on us, he will be glorified.

Every juggler-no matter how good-will occasionally drop a ball. And every pastor-no matter how committed-will never be able to do it all. There comes a time when we have to take our hands off and let Christ be Lord. But that’s difficult because of people’s needs.

During a time of great pressure in my life, the wife of a close friend wrote what seemed to be a prophetic word for me:

Merry-go-round of ministry,

Will you ever stop?

It seems there is an eternal line

Of those who need a ride.

The crowds and throngs of people

Are ever pressing near.

Will there ever be a stop

To this twirling human motion?

Yes, my child, if you will only

Come apart awhile with Me,

You will hear My voice above all others,

I will care for all these needs.

I want you to step off this

Merry-go-round of ministry.

It is not My will for you

To spin and twirl through life.

My child, walk as I did upon earth

Take time to come apart,

To listen, to be with those you love.

I have other servants to do the work.

Come away with Me, My child.

Walk in the stillness of My Presence.

For I have instructed you: In quietness

And confidence shall be your strength.

Over the years these seven reminders have been building into me an endurance, a skill in pastoral juggling I had not previously experienced. They are helping me fix my focus and refine my timing. They don’t necessarily guarantee I will keep all the balls in the air.

In fact, I just dropped one-I missed the deadline for this article by ten days!

John B. Aker is senior pastor of Montvale (New Jersey) Evangelical Free Church.

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