Page 5062 – Christianity Today (2025)

Pastors

Kefa Sempangi

A Ugandan pastor witnesses the collision of Idi Amin’s terror and Christ’s resurrection.

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Despite the growing shadow of Idi Amin, Easter morning, 1973, began as a most joyous occasion for the Redeemed Church. The sun had just risen and the sky was empty of clouds when the first people began arriving at the compound where we worshiped.

They came from almost every tribe, from the Baganda, the Basoga, the Banyankole, the Acholi and the Langi, the Bagweri and the Bagisu. They came from as far away as Masaka, a town eighty miles southwest of Kampala. There were old men with walking sticks and young women with babies on their backs. There were small children with flowers in their arms. There were doctors and lawyers, businessmen and farmers, cotton growers and government workers. Only a few had traveled by private car or taxi. Most came on foot or rode bicycles. Others crowded into lorries so lopsided they seemed ready to collapse at any moment. But however the people traveled, they arrived with the same joyful greeting: “Aleluya, Azukide! Hallelujah, he is risen!”

By 9 A.M. over seven thousand people were gathered. It was the largest crowd ever to attend a Sunday service at the Redeemed Church. When there were no more places in the compound, people climbed trees or sat on the roofs of parked lorries. A few large groups set up in nearby yards with their own amplifying systems. Hundreds of others stood in the street.

Before the service, the elders and I met in the “vestry,” an empty house by the compound, to pray. We felt deeply the hunger in the hearts of the people who had gathered for worship. We knew their desire to hear the Word of God, and we prayed that their lives would be transformed by its power.

As we poured our hearts out to the Father in agonizing intercession, desperate scenes from the previous weeks flashed again in my mind. I saw a face burned beyond recognition, and a woman huddled in a corner weeping. I saw a crowd of soldiers standing in the park cheering, and heard the sound of boot crunching against bone. I remembered the arrogance of the mercenaries, and the dreamlike deadness of my heart. Once again the seeming triumph of evil overwhelmed me. I felt a deep fear. I myself had fallen. How could I hope to strengthen others? Who was I to feed God’s children in this most desperate hour? What words could I speak?

My brothers and sisters needed courage to stand firm in the growing terror. They needed strength to sustain them in suffering. They did not need my sermon. They did not need my thoughts on the Resurrection. My father had been right. “In such times men do not need words,” he had said. “They need power.”

As I prayed for strength and wisdom, the words of Matthew 14:19 came to my mind. It was the same text that a brother had read to me many years before.

And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.

With this verse, I heard the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit. It was Jesus who provided bread for the crowds. The disciples’ task was only to distribute what their Master already had given them. It was God who sustained his people. He was not asking me to feed his children from the words of my own heart. He was asking me only to distribute the living bread he had put into my hand.

With that in mind, I led the service, preached the sermon, and prepared for the benediction. In the uncertainty of our lives and with the nearness of death, the words of Simeon held deep meaning:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.

We did not know when we would see each other again or when God might call us home. But we went out in peace because we had seen with our eyes the salvation of the Lord. With a loud amen from the people and a final chorus from the choir, the Easter service ended. I turned to the elders, and we embraced, praising God. It seemed as if days instead of hours had passed since we had met for prayer. I was exhausted, but there was joy in my heart. God had answered our prayers: he had broken bread and fed his people.

I greeted several more friends and then left for the vestry to change my clothes, hoping to have a few minutes alone. I had to push my way through the crowd, and when I finally arrived at the house I was exhausted. I was too tired to notice the men behind me until they had closed the door.

There were five of them. They stood between me and the door, pointing their rifles at my face. Their own faces were scarred with the distinctive tribal cuttings of the Kahwa tribe. They were dressed casually in flowered shirts and bell-bottom pants, and wore sunglasses. Although I had never seen any of them before, I recognized them immediately. They were the secret police of the State Research Bureau-Amin’s Nubian assassins.

For a long moment no one said anything. Then the tallest man, obviously the leader, spoke.

“We are going to kill you,” he said. “If you have something to say, say it before you die.” He spoke quietly, but his face was twisted with hatred.

I could only stare at him. For a sickening moment I felt the full weight of his rage. We had never met before, but his deepest desire was to tear me to pieces. Everything left my control. They will not need to kill me, I thought to myself. I am going to collapse. I am going to fall over dead, and I will never see my family again. I thought of my wife, Penina, home alone with our child, Damali. What would happen to them when I was gone?

From far away I heard a voice, and I was astonished to realize that it was my own.

“I do not need to plead my own cause,” I heard myself saying. “I am a dead man already. My life is dead and hidden in Christ. It is your lives that are in danger. You are dead in your sins. I will pray to God that after you have killed me, he will spare you from eternal destruction.”

The tallest one took a step toward me and then stopped. In an instant, his face was changed. His hatred had turned to curiosity. He lowered his gun and motioned the others to do the same. They stared at him in amazement, but they took their guns from my face.

Then the tall one spoke again. “Will you pray for us now?” he asked.

“Yes, I will pray for you,” I answered. My voice sounded bolder even to myself. “I will pray to the Father in heaven. Please bow your heads and close your eyes.”

The tall one motioned to the others again, and together the five of them lowered their heads. I bowed my own head, but I kept my eyes open. The Nubian’s request seemed to me a strange trick. Any minute, I thought to myself, my life will end. I did not want to die with my eyes closed.

“Father in heaven,” I prayed, “you who have forgiven men in the past, forgive these men also. Do not let them perish in their sins, but bring them into yourself.”

It was a simple prayer, prayed in deep fear. But God looked beyond my fears, and when I lifted my head, the men standing in front of me were not the same men who had followed me into the vestry. Something had changed in their faces.

It was the tall one who spoke first. His voice was bold, but there was not contempt in his words. “You have helped us,” he said, “and we will help you. We will speak to the rest of our company, and they will leave you alone. Do not fear for your life. It is in our hands, and you will be protected.”

I drove home that Easter evening deeply puzzled but with joy in my heart. I felt that I had passed from death to life, and that I could now speak in one mind with Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

-Kefa Sempangi

Later the assassins began attending Sempangi’s church and made a commitment to Jesus Christ. They used their positions to help church members whose lives were in danger, and even helped several families escape from Uganda.

- More fromKefa Sempangi

Prayer
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Pastors

Stephen A. Bly

I was ready to move forward, but all my people could do was look back.

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When I entered my first pastorate, within six months I noticed an exciting phenomenon. At least, it thrilled me. Every Sunday morning the first four pews on the left side of the sanctuary filled with teens. Thirty to forty eager listeners, Bibles in hand, sat ready to hear what God had to say.

I mentioned my excitement at a Christian education committee meeting.

"Well, that's nice," Harry Nickles smiled. Then his mind, and his heart, drifted back over the years. "But I remember when Dr. Anderson was here, right after the war. We packed in a hundred to a hundred fifty kids every week."

Since only eight hundred kids are in the high school district, I must have looked startled.

Then Harry added, "Oh, that was at the Sunday evening service. I suppose we had more in the morning."

It wasn't the first time I had heard about Dr. Anderson's tenure. Nor would it be the last. To the best of my ability, I've reconstructed the oral history of his ministry at First Church. It doesn't always correspond to the church records, but only pastors read such things anyway.

During Dr. Anderson's eleven years:

Average church attendance was 380; Sunday school, 295; Sunday evening service, 240; and Wednesday night prayer meeting, 162.

The Sunday morning adult choir had forty-one members, and the Sunday evening choir, thirty-four.

From September to June, each year, a twelve-piece orchestra accompanied the morning service.

The Easter Week Mission Trip involved from 90 to 120 participants.

The touring youth choir contained sixty strong voices.

Mrs. Anderson's Thursday Ladies' Bible Study attracted nearly two hundred.

Dr. Anderson took six years to preach through the Book of Romans.

There were at least ten baptisms per month.

Dr. Anderson's noon businessman's prayer hour had a regular attendance twice that of the Rotary Club.

During Anderson's ministry, the mayor, all five city council members, the chief of police, and the captain of the volunteer fire department were active members.

Dr. Anderson never once forgot anyone's name.

He memorized his morning message and never needed notes.

And, Dr. Anderson always, in every situation, wore a dark suit and tie, and a white, pressed, long-sleeved shirt with cuff links.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Many churches look back with fondness on their glory days, the "Golden Years." Like the children of Israel longing for King David, the faithful in the pew never can forget when the strength of their church reached its apex.

It is my opinion that every church that is over twenty-five years old, or has had more than two pastors, has some Glory Days to look back on. If you serve in such a church, whether as pastor or lay leader, you might have times of frustration over the comparisons.

But Glory Days can be made a strength, if we follow a few principles.

Don't Compete with the Glory Days

After six months at First Church I realized that for many, present success would always be measured in comparison with the past. Dr. Anderson had been gone for twenty-two years when I arrived, but that era still lived. Parents of teens would say things like, "When I was in the youth group, we needed eight high school Sunday school teachers."

Having recently waltzed out of seminary, my solution was to set out and break the records. If Hank Aaron could pass Babe Ruth, then Steve Bly could overtake the legendary Dr. Anderson. I actually spent a whole morning making an attendance chart for 1946 (Dr. Anderson's first year at the church). His records were precise: Sunday, May 5, 1946, morning worship 312 (including 47 in the balcony, 41 in the choir, and 23 servicemen in uniform). Then I made a transparency overlay on which I would record our present progress. Thus I knew weekly how I was stacking up to the Glory Days of First Church.

I faithfully recorded attendance for two weeks, got disgusted, and tossed the whole works into my don't-bother-looking-at-this-stuff-until-you-moveto-another-church box. The truth of the matter was, the world, the community, the church had changed drastically in the forty years after 1946. Comparisons meant little.

I relaxed and quit trying to hit home runs. But I did keep my own records of attendance. They certainly don't measure everything about church life, but they measure something. And these records will help plan future programs and expansion. What I wanted to see, in all areas of church life, was steady growth.

Praise Past Accomplishments

"With a few obvious exceptions, the last successful pastorate ended on September 14, 1959."

I was sitting across a coffee cup from a friend during a ministerial association meeting. He had just blurted out his frustrations as only a meeting of ministers allows.

Heads nodded around the table. In our town, every church seemed to have its zenith of growth and vitality between World War II and 1962.

"If I hear another comment about how great the church was in the old days, I'll scream!" I knew how he felt.

Of course, churches in the past enjoyed certain cultural advantages: the lack of television, the strength and unity of the family, the cultural importance of church membership. The social differences between those days and the present make us think we've switched cultures as well as decades. In spite of the obvious differences, however, let's admit it, those were great days!

I tried to celebrate those differences by starting a little column in the church newsletter: "The Way We Were." It was just a short monthly tidbit of trivia about how the church has grown over the years, things like how the Fall Harvest Dinner used to feed over 500 servicemen and women; a note about how the religious release hour, at one time, included every child in town; a column on the struggle to get city approval for building the sanctuary, the community's largest building in 1929.

This led to a yearly Founder's Day celebration-a picnic, grand old songs, a tip of the hat to the good work in the past, and a challenge to reach new goals in the future.

Instead of those "Glory Days" standing as an epitaph, they became a billboard of encouragement, not only to the church leaders, but to the whole congregation.

My church's Glory Days, and yours, were indeed a unique time of God's special work in our midst. They're worth celebrating. They can remind us that God has not abandoned us now, although we do have a different place and a different ministry.

Focus on Fulfilling Our Present Purpose

After they escaped from Egypt, the Hebrew people had two immediate goals: unity and survival, which Moses helped them accomplish.

Their next goals were to conquer and take possession of the Promised Land, which Joshua helped them fulfill.

Finally, they aimed to settle the land, live as daily, vibrant examples of a people in proper relation to God, and be witnesses for him to the world. Whether or not they achieved that goal under the leadership of the judges and kings is debated. But the point is: goals change!

Churches go through similar stages and, naturally, their goals change. During the formative years of pulling together a particular people of God, often the goal is mere survival. (Our records show that Rev. Augustus Stevens received $1,200 per annum, one yearling steer, and all the oranges he and his family could eat.)

At other times, the church focuses on expansion and victory over the opposing forces of this world. Those are often the "Glory Days." Back then, the Businessman's Noon Study grew from zero to seventy-five in just six weeks.

After that, the goal is to settle in the land and demonstrate how a godly people should believe and act.

Ted Clarey came to me with a dilemma. He had been asked to serve as president of the Little League Association in town. But, it meant dropping out of the Wednesday night home Bible study.

"How long have you been in the Bible study?" I asked.

"About six years," he replied.

"Then take the presidency and put some of those principles to work," I urged. "Your job, now, is to add a Christian influence to the most popular youth program in our town."

If people's goals change, so do churches' goals. As pastors, our job is to get the congregation focused and united on fulfilling our present purpose.

Give Ourselves to Our Gifts and Calling

Dr. Anderson taught a Sunday school class, preached on Sunday morning (without notes), held a leadership class before evening church, preached a full sermon on Sunday nights, often had a devotional message at the youth rally after church, led a men's noon Bible study on Tuesday, taught on Wednesday nights, and wrote a column for the newspaper every Friday. He also visited every church home at least once a year.

They tell me he started the day at 4:00 A.M.

He would have had to.

Of course, I didn't have Dr. Anderson's ministry, or his results. While we both seemed strong in pulpit ministry, Dr. Anderson excelled in community leadership and home visitation. My strengths lie in church administration, creative program ideas, and discipling small groups.

Nonetheless, I soon realized that I would need his intense commitment if I were to fulfill successfully my particular calling.

The Glory Days of First Church didn't happen by mere chance as the minister and lay leaders sat on the sidelines watching. There were many men and women who sacrificed to reach those high goals and glorious pinnacles. Dr. Anderson, in particular, became an example for me. I didn't need to follow his programs but rather his personal commitment to ministry.

I started spending the early morning hours sitting in the darkened, empty sanctuary. Prayer and study were the only ways I found to meet the challenges of each new day. Thus I aimed to match Dr. Anderson's commitment-except for that 4:00 A.M. business.

Let the Church See Present Successes

The good times are not over.

The good tree will bear good fruit. Every year may not be a bumper crop, but there will be some harvest.

We might not beat the 1954 attendance record, but we can up attendance at the Christmas program by 20 percent over last year. We might not have one hundred folks going on a mission trip at Easter, but we raised $10,000 in six weeks to drill a well in a waterless African village. In fact, it was a milestone in church stewardship.

One of the most encouraging programs involved a simple record of the year's activities. Several interested folks in the congregation were appointed as official church photographers. They recorded, on slides, various church activities throughout the year. Then at the annual meeting, a lively half-hour slide and music show was presented-the church year in review. A congregation is uplifted when they consider how God has, indeed, been working. Pictures crammed with people and activities also attract a crowd. Attendance at the annual meetings often exceeded our total membership.

When the church sees its present successes, its ministry is affirmed, and the members are prompted to diligent service.

Keep the Principle While Changing the Form

It was called B.L.T.-Bible Leadership Training. Held before the Sunday evening service, it attracted up to fifty high school students every week.

That is, during those years between 1946 and 1958. By 1965 they were thrilled to have six kids show up. In 1968 the program was scrapped. That, as it turned out, was a tragedy for the church.

True, the B.L.T. program wasn't working. But the result was a vacuum in leadership training for the high school group.

It's a problem that has not been completely solved in the twenty years since it folded. We got rid of a program and tossed out the principle with it.

In other ministries, we've tried to analyze the principle behind past successes and keep that, even when the ministry needed to change its form.

Why did the businessman's study work in the fifties? Because Christian men need constant encouragement in discipleship from someone besides their wives. That principle hasn't changed.

The men don't flock to a noontime Bible study now, but they receive in the church newsletter, a monthly word of encouragement, and four practical assignments for spiritual growth. Plus, there is a monthly "Man to Man" meeting that emphasizes fun-and spiritual accountability.

Participation in the children's choir, or the touring teen choir, taught cooperation in ministry and the need to blend spiritual gifts to achieve a greater spiritual purpose. Maybe we don't have these choirs anymore, but we should have something that teaches those same principles to our young people, no matter what their numbers might be.

So the teens now meet twice a month, on Saturdays, to visit rest homes and shut-ins. Cookies, choruses, and plenty of smiles have replaced the cross-country tours and coordinated uniforms. But they are still learning what it's like to minister and serve.

The need hasn't necessarily disappeared just because a program proves ineffective. The secret is not to abandon the good principles of previous programs when we discard their forms.

Develop a Sense of God's Wider Ministry

Okay, so that little storefront church across the tracks that struggled for years to survive has now built a sanctuary twice the size of yours-and fills it three times every Sunday.

So you are no longer the most dominant church in town. Listen, if folks are being saved, if Christ is being exalted and honored, if the Word of God is being obeyed, then the rule and reign of Jesus Christ is expanding in your community. And that is worth celebrating.

I've found it's important to develop a sense of God's total ministry in a city, not just his use of our particular church at this particular time.

As in many small towns, whenever a commercial building was erected in our town, many of the local businesses put an ad in the paper welcoming the new facility. You know, "Henry's Plumbing wishes The Burger Palace good luck on its Grand Opening. You can check out Henry's latest fixtures at the Palace."

When the church across town finished construction on their beautiful new sanctuary, our church put an ad in the paper congratulating the hard work and sacrifice. We offered our prayers for their ongoing ministry.

A few local businessmen were shocked. "What are you doing, trying to help the competition?"

"The competition?" I explained. "The competition is the porno shop over on Third Street. The competition is Lucky's Saloon out on the highway. The competition is that drug pusher down in front of the high school on Friday nights. Hey, that church is on our side!"

It's important to look back at the Glory Days in the same way. We don't have to compete with the successful church of years ago. That church was on our side and won not a few battles for which we can rejoice.

Glory Days in Every Age

In every age, every culture, and every society resides a tendency to look back on those "good old days." For the biblical people of Israel, there could never be a highlight quite as glorious as the splendor and majesty of Solomon's temple. From its description in the Bible, its architecture still would excite our senses and expand our worship.

It's gone, of course, destroyed by the Babylonians over twenty-five hundred years ago. Its razing brought a low point in Hebrew history.

But there was another temple. Around 520 B.C. Zerubbabel led the remnant back to Jerusalem, and they built a new temple. For the very old who could remember the former temple, it was a discouraging sight. They still dwelt on the Glory Days.

God knows the sadness of such hearts. Speaking through the prophet Haggai, he encouraged his people.

" 'Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Does it not seem to you like nothing in comparison? But now take courage, Zerubbabel,' declares the Lord, 'take courage also, Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and all you people of the land take courage,' declares the Lord, 'and work; for I am with you,' says the Lord of hosts. 'As for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, My Spirit is abiding in your midst; do not fear' " (Hag. 2:3-5).

Yet, are the Glory Days really past? I don't think so. Could there be anything more glorious than to know that God is with us and his Spirit alive among us?

I had twelve men sign up for the early-morning men's discipleship group. Only three actually attended on a regular basis.

Dr. Anderson, I understand, normally had an attendance of twenty-five men. It didn't matter; I was excited. I knew God was at work.

One of the three is now serving the Lord in Christian ministry. Another went back to college for a law degree and now influences the community as a judge. The third has recently become a high school principal, putting his strong faith on the line time and again.

For almost three years, it was a great little Bible study.

Come to think about it, those just might have been my Glory Days.

- More fromStephen A. Bly

Calling
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Pastors

Craig Brian Larson

How to make do when your church has less than enough.

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March 1988. Arlington Heights, Illinois. After eight and a half years in a home-missions church in Chicago, I am three months into a new ministry with a church of forty. It is night, and my wife is asleep. As my bare feet pace the bedroom floor, worries wear a path in my mind: With $600 of monthly support from another church, we’re still going in the hole. In three months that support drops to $200. At the end of the year, zip. We hit the wall in four months unless we grow!

I am not praying. This is hard-core anxiety. I dread the thought of packing and moving again. Although, we could stop renting in the school, maybe move the office to my basement; and if Nancy found a job, or if we sold equipment . . .

Survival. For half of my thirteen years in the ministry, that has been the issue. Occasionally I have felt desperate, at times doomed, up to my ears in quicksand. Talking to other pastors, I often find them concerned not with lofty goals and expansion, but with outliving a vote of confidence, paying next month’s mortgage, holding family together, overcoming crippling depression.

Ministry presents a Pilgrim’s Progress landscape of menacing crises. How do we survive? How can we sidestep the bog of despair? What attitudes and strengths will enable us to overcome, and then move on to progress and fruitfulness?

Lately, I find myself again relying on survival tactics learned at my first church. Like a recruit dropped into the desert for survival training, I had to learn new skills and attitudes there. Here are the tactics that have helped me-so far anyway.

Lean into the Pain

Survival situations arc racked with pain: emotional trauma over conflict, stress from unpaid bills, even anxiety over one’s reputation. The natural reaction is to run, yet the survivalist learns to handle pain, much as a distance runner must accommodate burning lungs. As Otis Davis, who pastors in Chicago, told me, “You pace yourself for the long haul, for agony.”

Like most in our society, I have grown up with aspirin, expecting that pain can and should be eased quickly. During our mission-church troubles, my tendency was to interpret prolonged pain as a symptom that we were missing God’s will. And that prompted a search for relief.

However, in Scripture I realized I didn’t observe such an analgesic reflex in Jesus or Paul. Instead, I found statements about glory in suffering: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10) and “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24).

Ministers are not masochists, but ordained afflictions are credentials as honorable as ordination papers. From then on I didn’t exactly invite pain, but I accepted it as part of my job description, a decision that somehow deepened my reservoirs of endurance.

My concept of the nature of ministry controls my expectations and performance. Occasionally I have backslidden into a business mindset, thinking about career, professional advancement, salary, success, bottom line. In a battle for survival, such fallen values lead to despair.

The apostle Paul, by contrast, spoke about victory and defeat, soldiers and weapons, duty and devotion, pain and suffering and sacrifice, fighting the good fight, and dying the good death. Perhaps a military mindset helps toughen us for inevitable pain. I’ve noticed it promotes in me more courage and tenacity.

I’ve concluded that ministry is a battle wherever I go. Certainly the challenges differ-a power struggle here, a financial war there, resistant people to my left, the daunting bulwarks of tradition on the right. But in the midst of these challenges, Paul’s word to Timothy helps me face the reality of ministry wars: “Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Tim. 2:3). Instead of resenting hardship as a vexing quirk, I try (repeat, try) to shoulder it as my charge in ministry-something to be expected of a good soldier.

I have abandoned the notion of a wonderful, nearly millennial, pastorate in greener pastures.

Gary Allen, who pastors in Elgin, Illinois, illustrates the spiritual battle pastors face. His church sold their building in 1979, purchased property, and began construction-before securing additional financing-because interest rates were low and building costs escalating. However, before they could get a bank’s letter of commitment for money to complete the building, interest rates skyrocketed from 8 percent to anywhere between 17 and 23 percent.

“We were out of the ball game,” says Allen. With the cement shell of the building completed, they had to suspend construction and spend the next two years looking for finances.

“I would walk daily through the empty shell of the building,” Allen remembers, “and I would cry and pray. By this time the pigeons had taken over, hundreds of them. With tears dripping off my chin, I would throw rocks to drive away the pigeons, which to me represented the enemy-they were here and I wasn’t. In my despair I thought we would never see the building finished. But eventually it was.”

Survival often exacts sacrifice. Ask the veterans; they’ve learned to make do without. No foot soldier gets rich.

If the church’s war budget bleeds red ink, the viability of the ministry depends on the wisdom to discern the essentials, the forcefulness to jettison the frills, and the self-control to live on less. One pastor whose church skirted dangerously near a financial landmine said, “During those heavy years of inflation, we didn’t take a salary increase for three or four years. We also gave everything out of our savings to keep things afloat.”

I likewise have found over and over again that I can do without things considered essential, such as air conditioning, pocket money, new clothes, lunch in restaurants, or a comfortable office. Yes, I like these perks, but I’d prefer to survive in ministry. And so I’ve conditioned myself to accept a sometimes-spartan existence in order to finish my stint as a soldier of Christ.

Be Willing to Experiment

Necessity can be a fertile, creative womb. One famous pastor says we do not lack for resources, only ideas. Forsaking the ease of conventionalism and prayerfully testing the possibilities can bring life to our ministry.

After nearly a year at my first church, attendance was dwindling (from twenty-five into the teens), and morale was plummeting, taking the offerings with it. Woodenly I persisted to preach and pray without the enterprise of any momentum-turning special meetings. Eventually a friend suggested, “Why don’t you invite that ministry from Texas for an evangelistic crusade? They did a fantastic job for us.”

Scramble when Necessary

A survivalist cannot afford to be choosy. I don’t particularly like asking for money, but to my chagrin, fund raising was forced upon me in our scramble for survival. After six months of hardscrabble existence in Chicago, we discovered winter, and with it, our need of a new boiler. Even while shivering, I considered the needed $5,000 unimaginable with our $250 weekly offerings and members on welfare. I reluctantly called the district office for permission to seek help and then began the humbling task of contacting other pastors.

They were kind and generous, even though they probably suspected the church would close eventually and their money would be wasted, and the boiler was bankrolled. An added benefit of such dependency: I felt an even deeper responsibility to see that their money paid dividends. I also learned the wisdom of calling established pastors for advice. Such help formed a bond that endured even after our church stood on its own two feet.

Such resourcefulness isn’t natural for me. I had to learn this frontier virtue. With affluence, we tend to overlook resources. Want, with its searching eyes, carves buttons out of buffalo bones.

Our IBM typewriter was thwacking words on paper with electronic ease, but not fast enough for me, the typist. When will I quit being the church secretary? I wondered. The time I spend typing this newsletter detracts from my essential ministry. Later at home, as my wife and I collated the letters into Zip Codes for bulk mailing, I reviewed the roadblocks to hiring a secretary: “We simply don’t have enough money to hire anyone, and volunteers can’t be relied on for long.”

Unable to solve the puzzle, I would resign myself to office tedium.

One day at a seminar, a friend bubbled about the clerical help he had found. With similar financial strictures, he had hired a competent secretary for two days a week. Envy mounting, I said, “If I could find someone like that, I’d hire her in a second.”

I drove home ruing my fate and again rehearsing our clerical options. Then it hit me: Ask Debbie if she would be willing to work on Saturday afternoons. We can afford that. She was a full-time, professional secretary, previously ruled out because I wanted someone for two days a week, on the cheap. Cautiously optimistic, I prayed and decided to talk to her on Wednesday.

With the hubbub of fellowship in the background, I outlined my proposal. “I’ll pray about it,” she said, “and get back to you in a week or so.”

I prayed as well-fervently. On Sunday she approached me after the service, with a smile on her face. “Sounds like a great idea,” she said. She worked on Saturdays for several years, an arrangement we could have had months, perhaps years, earlier, had I known better how to scramble for solutions.

Adjust Goals and Values

One of the most upsetting things about our desperate straits in Chicago was the gap between my dreams and my current status. I felt like an abject failure. In order to cope, I had to modify my short-term goals. Without forsaking my dreams, I realistically faced the fact that for now, survival was success.

I took satisfaction in simply not folding my tent. In my eyes that was a prodigious feat. Endurance, faithfulness, and church viability became my objectives. Later, I would hoist my sights.

Adjusting goals and values can mean the difference between confidence and quitting. One pastor who edged along the brink says, “Focus was important to me-clarifying goals, clarifying the call of God, clarifying my motivations. With my focus clear on the inside, no matter what happened on the outside, I could keep chipping away and know that Hey, this is right! No matter how difficult the process, there is an end, and one of these days I’ll see that end.”

This same pastor put his finger on another critical issue: “I saw that some of my goals were more ego centered than Christ centered. What I had considered ‘successful ministry’ may have been so by the world’s standards, but it wasn’t by God’s.”

Perhaps ego had something to do with a problem I regularly faced. The most difficult time was when I was around other pastors. My goal of mere survival seemed lilliputian alongside the burgeoning attendance figures, magnificent building programs, and broad influence of others. Comparisons devastated my confidence.

But humbling experiences can also exalt us. When I was alone in prayer, faithfulness would again become what it always should have been: my primary objective. Doing God’s will-faithfully, zealously, despite the absence of tangible rewards-is a worthy goal and a colossal success in itself.

Build Vital Dependencies

In the early years in Chicago, I would, on occasion, doubt my effectiveness as God’s instrument. Having given my all, only to discover my all was insufficient, I would yearn for outside help. With the thwop on the floor of the daily mail, I would hurry to search for a bolstering note or a miracle check, but only find bills, junk mail, and requests for money. The ring of the phone would raise anticipation: perhaps someone looking for a church? In our ethnic neighborhood, such calls came annually at best.

Repeated disappointment taught me to rely primarily on what God would do through me and the people. Outside circumstances might graciously assist us at times, but I had to quit waiting for the cavalry to gallop over the hill.

Depending on God usually does not mean passivity. God wants to use me. I learned to understand human agency.

Shouldering responsibility is one thing; quite another is rugged individualism-impressively macho but mistaken. One pastor who went through a building crunch said, “I had to face the fact that I couldn’t do all I wanted-or needed-to do. So I did the basics, putting my heart into Sunday morning preaching and teaching. Other things I compensated for with help from others. The people rallied around, and it made for a strong church.”

Another pastor said, “I attached myself to my peers, those around me and those over me in the Lord. I felt more respect and affection for them than before. That helped me understand I’m part of something bigger.”

God has designed the body-and the vocational ministry-in such a way that we are required to depend on each other. Even Paul the apostle spent time in his epistles requesting housing and raising funds. We need one another and can depend on our fellow Christians.

But the greatest joy and opportunity in a survival situation is this: we ultimately have no resource but God. As much as I dislike being needy, I relish the childlike purity of desperately needing the Lord.

Being on the cutting edge of faith has invigorated my spiritual fundamentals. Frequently I have bowed on my knees and cried out, “Lord, you alone can save us. You alone can establish this church. You are my Deliverer. Help us, O Lord.”

Meanwhile certain Scriptures have come alive: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time” (1 Pet. 5:6). And “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Ps. 27:14).

One pastor who suffered a heart attack followed by a pastoral transition says, “I saw things differently. I saw the grace of God at a deeper level, and the blessed hope in a new hue. I probably was more spiritually stable at that point than ever before in my life, even though physically I was rocking.”

Yes, it’s okay to be dependent. We who want to take the world by storm learn that slowly. God, who made us, knew it all along.

Is it worth holding out in a desperate situation? During my final year in Chicago, the church held an outreach-more accurately, an extravaganza. In the narrow yard of the church, we gave away food, clothes, and literature, punctuating the afternoon with songs, drama, and preaching. While strolling through the crowd, I was prompted by the black grit underfoot (remaining from our recent sandblasting) to take stock of our progress over eight years. I watched our workers haul boxes and remembered with great satisfaction how far they had come with the Lord.

At one table, a woman, who years earlier had committed her life to Christ in a Sunday morning service and whose husband and family later followed, was helping people find clothes. Her smiling face put a seal on the testimony of my heart: It’s been worth it.

October 1989. Back at Arlington Heights. Next month will mark two years here. After a barren 1988, we turned the corner last December, and 1989 has been fruitful. Our forty have turned to seventy, and although our weekly financial shortfall remains, God has supplied our needs through extraordinary gifts two or three times a year.

Yes, a tough summer burned all the fat in the checkbook, and attendance dipped disappointingly. I cut my salary and hung on. But eventually the people rallied. Fall attendance has returned, and our offerings approach that elusive break-even point. And more, I have an unpaid assistant pastor now, and even a volunteer secretary a few hours a week.

- More fromCraig Brian Larson

Church Finances
Dependence on God
Discouragement
Failure
Faithfulness
Goals
Pain
Resources
Success
Suffering and Problem of Pain
Values

Pastors

Leith Anderson

Ministry momentum springs from great expectations.

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When Leith Anderson arrived at Wooddale Church in suburban Minneapolis more than a dozen years ago, he came to a congregation that had plateaued-in fact, declined. “People tended to talk about how much better the church was ‘back then,’ ” Leith says.

Eventually, the congregation began to look forward, and as a result it relocated, changed its name, and overhauled its constitution in order to better reach people. But “probably the most significant change of all,” Anderson reflects, “was taking people’s eyes off the past and putting them on the future, off how great the church had been and onto how great the church could be.”

What does it take to make that happen? In this article, excerpted from Mastering Church Management, a forthcoming book in the Mastering Ministry series copublished by LEADERSHIP and Multnomah Press, Leith discusses the factors in looking ahead rather than behind.

As soon as people walk into a church, they can tell if it is oriented toward the past or the future. They don’t discover that by what they see as much as by what they hear. When I visit a church or catch conversations in my congregation, I listen to how people talk about one subject: the greatest days of the church.

At one well-known mid western church, for example, visitors may hear people say: “I remember when folks lined up to get into evening services. Conventions of major national associations were held here. When people came to town, they attended here.” Their glory days are past, not future. The result, for both the listeners and people speaking, is an overwhelming feeling of sadness.

When I came to Wooddale Church, people spoke similarly: “I remember when we used to. … I remember when attendance was growing instead of declining.” I found it emotionally difficult to be involved in conversations in which people quoted somebody else’s sermon, said the music or the ushering was better before I came, or pointed out that this week’s attendance was lower than the previous week’s.

I knew, as every pastor does, that it is enormously important which direction the people are looking. But how could we move from looking backward to looking forward? How could I shift people’s wistful gaze at the past to an expectant peering into the future?

The God Who Transcends Time

It takes a great deal of faith and courage for a pastor to switch the direction people look. It demands waiting it out and working it out. There is not one simple answer.

But the starting point for any answer lies in God. Vision is rooted in God. God transcends time: He is the God of the past, but repeatedly in Scripture he is the God of the future. We need to fix our attention on who he is and what he wants to do.

Theology, in the Scriptures, is not a doctrinal discourse but the record of God’s revealing himself through history. We must assume God will continue to reveal himself in the future. We can’t, therefore, live only in the past, because God is calling us to something. There’s always something out in front of us.

Harry Truman visited Oliver Wendell Holmes when Holmes was in his nineties. When Truman walked into the room, the retired justice was reading Plato’s Republic. Truman asked him, “Mr. Justice, why at this point in life would you be reading something like that?”

Oliver Wendell Holmes replied, “I may be old, but I haven’t stopped growing.”

If somebody can have that perspective about law and philosophy, ought we not all the more have that perspective about the church of Jesus Christ?

Eventually, this general vision of God’s purposes for the local church needs to become specific: What mission has God given our particular congregation?

Too often that is immediately taken to be numerical growth. But for a church in the Iron Range of Minnesota, which has had in recent years as high as 80 percent unemployment, decline can be success. On the other hand, Wooddale is located in a city that has grown from 24,000 to 34,000 in the last five years. If we weren’t growing, it’s hard to believe we would be fulfilling all of our mission given by God.

In either case, though, the appropriate specific mission grows out of the knowledge that God is leading his people into the future.

Present Needs, Not Past Success

Past success can become a burden. What causes a church to settle into past-directed thinking is not so much present difficulty as past success. Churches don’t longingly remember defeats and conflicts; they grow nostalgic over past victories and expansions. Past success can become a staggering weight. What, people wonder, can they possibly do to surpass those days?

A similar dynamic occurs for any person successful early in life. Consider Jonas Salk, whose pioneering medical research led to the development of a vaccine for polio. His achievement immortalized him. What possibly could he do next?

Recently, however, Jonas Salk is in the news again-not because of polio, but because of AIDS. He’s working on a vaccine. Here is a person who said, Yes, I’ve had past success. But there are needs in the present. He’s using the skills he has developed to help his present generation.

In a similar way, a church lifts the burden of past success when it focuses instead on present needs: What do the people in this community and world need? How can we provide that?

At Wooddale, probably 99 percent of the people would now say the greatest days of the church are ahead, because they see present needs they can help meet.

One man who led our junior high program became a missionary to the Sundanese. Of the thirty million Sundanese in West Java, only one hundred are believers. Yet in this man’s two and a half years of ministry there, fourteen more have come to Christ. It’s phenomenal and almost unprecedented.

In a morning service he told the congregation, “This is not because I’m a great linguist; it’s because you prayed.” He read from letters he’d received from people in the church: “I pray every day.” “I run five miles every morning, and as I run I pray for the Sundanese people.” An 11-year-old had written, “I get down on my knees every night and pray for the Sundanese.”

The people at Wooddale think that in the next ten years thirty million Sundanese are going to be won to Christ. They’re not talking about yesterday; they’re talking about tomorrow. Why? They have been gripped by the needs of these Sundanese. Past success fades in the light of present needs and opportunities.

A Few People of Vision

Most people are not persons of vision. In a church of hundreds or even thousands of members, a leader would find only a few.

Part of the reason is generational. The baby-boomer generation has, until now, been present-oriented. The generation, as a whole, has given little concern to traditions or to the future. But foresight won’t necessarily come from the older generation, either; the elderly may be more prone to look to the successes of the past.

Some leaders lament the paucity of people of vision. But to move forward, an institution requires only a few. Robert Kennedy put it this way in his great quote: “Some people look at the way things are and ask why; others look at the way things could be and ask why not.” A church needs only a few such people-ideally, a pastor and one or two lay people. If they are leaders, others will follow.

Many pastors, serving a congregation, wonder how it can ever move forward. There aren’t enough people with vision. No one sees how things could be. But usually there is one other person, or two, who can envision greatness, and gradually that influence can spread.

People with vision don’t even have to be on the cutting edge of ecclesiastical innovation. The field of medicine provides an analogy. Most U.S. physicians are not researchers (and most hospitals are not teaching hospitals). Rather, most doctors treat patients on the basis of what they learn at seminars or read in journals.

Similarly, a few pastors and churches in the United States pioneer new structures, approaches to evangelism, and methods of outreach. But the vast majority minister on the basis of what they learn at seminars or read in journals. A church’s few persons with vision may not be on the cutting edge, but if they are willing to learn, evaluate ideas, and adopt some of them, they can move the church forward.

The Pastor’s Role

What is the pastor’s role in all this?

A few years ago a magazine ad pictured a man standing in his office, looking out the window. The caption read: “Why would a company pay this man $100,000 a year to look out the window?” The point: Every organization needs someone who looks out the window, outside the organization, to the world and to the future. A pastor helps the congregation by looking out the window.

But how much time ought a pastor devote to dreaming of the future, especially with a multitude of immediate concerns?

The answer varies with each situation, obviously, but much of the answer is determined by how long a pastor has been with the current congregation. Strangely, natural tendencies work against effective vision.

Typically, when pastors come to a church, they are not vested in the programs. Therefore, they can be objective: “We shouldn’t be having this many services,” or “We shouldn’t be doing Vacation Bible School this way.” Most pastors start with a burst of energy in envisioning how things could be. (In addition, when pastors come to a church, few members call or trust them with information. This frees time to look ahead.) But new ministers’ ideas often are not readily accepted by the people. Even a good vision can die because people haven’t yet learned to trust the pastor.

But after pastors have been in a church five or ten years, most programs reflect their ideas or bear their imprimatur. Their schedules are jammed, so they have little time to dream about the future. Momentum shifts to maintaining the programs they have built.

We need to reverse the process.

When we start in a congregation, most of our time should be devoted to current program, not looking ahead. Then, gradually, we need to slide the scale until we spend more time on future projects. Why? Because a congregation won’t follow a pastor in looking forward unless it trusts that pastor, and building trust takes time.

I know one pastor who went to a church that was ready to build, change its constitution, and reach out. He accomplished more in his first year than I accomplished in my first seven or eight. But that doesn’t happen often.

Most pastors enter situations in which people remember the past and problems exist. These pastors have to build credibility. The best way is to concentrate on existing program. As a pastor works hard inside the given structures, the congregation develops the trust that later allows the pastor to lead people forward.

It’s taken a quarter of my life to reach this point, but now I am able, in many weeks, to spend more time on future possibilities than on current program. This week, for example, I have concentrated on a variety of dreams: starting a daughter church, providing a Saturday night service, expanding staff, and helping new missions projects. Now, these are fitting tasks, but they probably would not have been when I began at Wooddale.

Pastors need to look out the window, but in the early years particularly, it pays to spend more time at the desk.

Obstacles to the Pastor’s Role

Every pastor would like more time to look out the window. But that requires overcoming significant obstacles.

First, we hands-on types may find looking forward painful, because there is so much present work demanding attention. A more hidden, formidable obstacle is our need for affirmation. Planning doesn’t receive much recognition, at least not nearly as much as direct ministry does.

When I devoted most of my time to hands-on ministry, I could see my impact. When a baby was born, the parents called me, often before they called the grandparents. When someone was dying, I would spend a whole night at the hospital. When the family made decisions about shutting off respirators, I watched the switch being thrown.

Because of the congregation’s growth, however, we may have three or four babies born in one week. I can’t be there for them all. In order to fulfill our mission, I have to make sure somebody will be there, but it can’t always be me. My role increasingly is to look ahead for the entire body-to look out the window-and that means I have to give up many wonderful strokes from hands-on ministry.

Having said that, however, every pastor must give direct, hands-on attention to some areas. Which ones? The few most essential for the congregation right now.

Recently, for example, our staff discussed the prayer life of Wooddale Church. Although there is much prayer in various cells and subcongregations, I’m convinced, by my own observation, that the vast majority of that prayer is for personal needs. People are praying earnestly for kids struggling with drugs and adults fighting cancer. But I sense we are not doing as well in praying for the fulfillment of our mission, for the services of the church, and for missions.

So the question came up: Who will lead the midweek prayer meeting that draws only a handful of people? I volunteered. I thought, If I stop people in the hallway and ask “Will you pray with me on Wednesday night?” they are likely to come. Our congregation won’t move forward without corporate prayer, so right now I’m giving it hands-on attention.

Specific Strategies

It is not enough, of course, to look ahead in a general sense. Vision must translate into specific strategies:

Have people think next year, not this year. At the start of school, Greg Weisman, our minister to junior high students, has planned his program for the entire school year. He has in print every time the group will play miniature golf. He knows when and where they will hold retreats, who the retreat speakers are, and which bus is scheduled. With the program completely planned, what’s left for Greg to do?

Minister to kids.

He doesn’t have to worry about a topic for next Sunday’s lesson. He doesn’t have to reserve the bus. He doesn’t have to schedule a camp for the junior high Breakaway. Living week to week consumes energies for ministry. It is painful not to know what you’re going to do next week. But planning ahead releases ministry, and that moves a congregation forward.

Further, as members see the pastor planning, they do the same. That spirit permeates the organization. Wooddale’s treasurer, for example, doesn’t sign checks. He looks at how we’re going to fulfill the purpose of the church financially through 1992. He concentrates on modeling projected income, expenses, and debt service. That way, when an opportunity appears on the horizon, we know in what ways we’re able to respond.

Spend time as a cultural anthropologist. Pastors benefit from keeping their ears to the ground of culture. For example, one shift I failed to foresee is that people increasingly choose not to be classified by marital status. Whether they are single, divorced, separated-it’s irrelevant to them, or at least they don’t see that as a primary point of identification. Traditional categories-single and married-have become fuzzy because there are so many new classifications: living together, once divorced, separated but acting like a single, and others.

By listening for these rumblings, pastors can be ready for the eruption. We are asking serious questions: Is it time to reorganize singles ministry? Should we group according to preferred learning style? Or solely by age? Or more likely, should we group people by the age of their children? Already, we have placed no restrictions on which Sunday school class someone attends, and many singles attend classes composed primarily of couples.

In an increasingly pluralistic society, it’s wise to offer options. (If I had my way, I’d lead one service in a sweatshirt, a second service in a suit, and a third service in a robe.) Baby boomers are highly tolerant of pluralism and comfortable with diversity. By studying culture-through seminars, books, and conversations-we can provide options when they’re needed.

Plan for opportunities rather than problems. This principle, advocated by Peter Drucker, helped the congregation about ten years ago, when we were ready to add a staff member. The choice narrowed to either a minister for counseling or a pastor of singles. The church couldn’t afford both. Which position would most directly fulfill Wooddale’s mission?

When we looked at projections for the area’s singles population, we were stunned. The number of singles was going to increase rapidly. We said, “That’s where the opportunity is. Many Christian counselors exist in the region, but who is going to seize this opportunity for singles?” We hired a pastor of singles.

Related to this is the well-recognized principle that a church staffs to grow, not because of growth. If the church-growth experts are right that a typical congregation should have one pastor for every 150 parishioners, then the time to add the second pastor is when the congregation reaches 151, not 300.

Emphasize ministry rather than structure. Right now we are building a new sanctuary. We have planned for it for years, and we can’t wait until it’s completed. But when I want to upset people, I talk about “when it’s time to sell this building and move.” The idea stuns them, but it makes the point wonderfully: I am not beholden to this building. If in five or ten years this building doesn’t fit the ministry God has called Wooddale to, we should tear it down. It is ministry we’re concerned about. As we emphasize that, people are better able to let go of structure and move ahead.

Becoming Purpose Driven

I don’t think of myself as a futurist. I prefer to think of myself as “purpose driven.” Looking to the future is part of that. But being future oriented is not the end; it is only one means to the end of fulfilling Wooddale’s congregational mission: “to honor God by bringing lives into harmony with him and one another.”

Consider, for example, if the United States were to have a depression or nuclear disaster. There may not be any future, or at least only a painfully difficult one. To fulfill the purpose God has given us, we might be setting up bread lines or providing help for people with radiation burns. But that would be looking forward, with purpose.

Mother Teresa is future oriented, even though many of the street people she touches are going to die. But she is driven by a purpose. She is doing what’s necessary to live as Jesus Christ would in the streets of Calcutta.

Karl Barth says that Christians are to be the “provisional representatives of a new race.” Would that all our churches were driven by that wonderful concept. We are provisional in the sense that we haven’t arrived, but we are called to live as a new race of believers.

We are a future-oriented, purpose-driven people.

- More fromLeith Anderson

Courage
Culture
Expectations
Faith
Faith and Practice
Future
Leith Anderson
Planning
Pop Culture
Purpose
Success
Vision

Pastors

An interview with Warren and David Wiersbe

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Thirty-five years ago, the church steeple rose above the rooftops, calling the community to worship. Today the church, often dwarfed by neighboring structures, is one building among many and overlooked by many passersby on their way to Sunday fun.

A generation ago, phrases like equipping the laity and small groups hadn't entered the church vernacular. Homogeneous sounded like a word to describe milk not churches. And pastors weren't as likely to talk about "staffing the programs," "setting the vision," or "planning strategically."

About thirty-five years ago, Warren Wiersbe was pasturing Central Baptist Church in East Chicago, Indiana, and his wife was giving birth to their first son, David.

Today, David pastors Hope Evangelical Free Church in Roscoe, Illinois, his second pastorate. And Warren, after pasturing Calvary Baptist Church in Covington, Kentucky, and the historic Moody Church in Chicago, is currently general director of Back to the Bible, a radio ministry based in Lincoln, Nebraska. Warren and David have written three books together, the most recent being Making Sense of the Ministry (Baker, 1989).

LEADERSHIP asked these two pastors, from two generations, to talk about the ways ministry is changing.

Warren, tell us about your first church. What were the priorities of that congregation?

Warren: Central Baptist Church in East Chicago, Indiana, was a neighborhood church of 150 blue-collar folks who were always waiting for the next steel strike. The area was changing. A lot of folks were moving up from the South, getting jobs, seeking more income. In addition, the church had been through a split.

I was a member of the church before I became pastor. I was going to Northern Seminary. When the pastor of the church left, they turned to me and said, "You're going to seminary; why don't you preach until we get a new pastor?" I was ordained there in 1951.

So even before I was called as pastor, I preached, visited, and endured various meetings. In fact, my biggest chore was the deacons meeting. I am not made for that kind of a thing. I would rather shovel snow than sit in a board meeting.

The congregation desired to be a successful church. I didn't know what a successful church was. I'm not sure now what a successful church is! But they wanted one that was growing.

Those were difficult years because I didn't know what I was doing. I was running scared. I worked hard at ministry-primarily preaching and visitation-but I never even thought about training lay people to minister. Looking back, discipleship was missing.

But being thrown into the water and having to swim was good for me. All in all, the people patiently taught me a lot. We paid our bills, sent off missionaries, and saw some people convert to Christ and others called into Christian service.

Let's move forward twenty-five years. David, talk about your first church.

David: Grace Evangelical Free Church is located in the Chicago suburb of Schiller Park, an area about 99 percent Roman Catholic. When I arrived only about forty-five people attended worship at Grace. They had gone two and a half years without a pastor. I was still in college at the time but looking for some preaching experience. After filling the pulpit a few times, I was called as pastor in January 1977.

My first day on the job, I had to make two hospital visits, and within three months I led my first funeral. It snowballed from there. In the first two years, I had funerals for three men my age or younger. About ten months in, one lady said to me, "You know, we've had nothing but trouble here since you've come-broken legs, car accidents, funerals, serious illnesses."

I'm not usually this quick, but I found myself replying, "Have you ever thought that maybe God didn't let these things happen until you had a pastor to take care of you?"

What were the church's expectations of you?

David: The congregation's priorities, as I saw them, were: (1) to accept them the way we were ("Don't make this your church; let this be our church"), and (2) to give them a sense of identity ("Assure us that we're going to survive, that we're going to be okay").

After two and a half years without a pastor, they wanted somebody who would be competent consistently in the pulpit and teach the Scriptures. They knew I had to learn how to do this, and they graciously endured and faithfully attended.

They also wanted me to provide some leadership to the programs. A few people had carried things for a long time, and they wanted a break. They were spiritually and emotionally exhausted. So I helped oversee the youth clubs and Sunday school.

You've given us a glimpse of two ministries a generation apart. How would you summarize the changes in the pastor's role from 1951 to 1990?

Warren: When I began, the congregation wanted me to be preacher and pastor. I wasn't to get involved in the school board or worry about civic problems. I was to be a holy man.

Now people are asking, "How does our faith help us understand and work in the community and on the school board?" They still may not want us on the school board, but they do want us to address the issues of the school board. Part of the minister's role today is to interpret the world from a Christian perspective.

They also want us to be managers of the corporation. That's especially true in larger churches. But the notion is entering smaller churches, too.

What do the people at Hope Free Church expect of a minister today?

David: First and foremost, availability. If there has been a crisis in their lives-an illness, a heart attack, a tragedy, a loss of job, a fight between husband and wife, any kind of circumstance that disrupts their sense of security-they want me to be there.

They want a pastor, and, of course, a preacher who can communicate well.

That doesn't sound much different from the expectations of a generation ago.

David: Well, yes and no. What people interpret as communicating well is subjected to an entirely different set of standards than it was thirty years ago. The sophistication of mass communication today prods people to expect more from their preacher.

And more important, the circumstances in which people expect pastoral care have changed. Parishioners increasingly look to their pastors to walk them through everything from fear of sharp objects to fear of the dark. We're supposed to be able to put marriages back together, unwind the psyche of bent teenagers, get people off drugs, and help with eating disorders.

Warren: I was never prepared to do that.

David: No one person can do it, but the modern minister is supposed to be facile in many areas, including medical disorders. I didn't expect it when I entered ministry, but I now know about diabetes, bulimia, oncology, and a host of medical terms, all because I've been confronted with them as part of ministry.

Warren: One of the major problems in America today is addiction-not drug addition, just addiction-to work, to anger, to spending, plus the usual chemical and alcohol dependencies. Sixty million people are touched by addiction in this country. That's one fourth of the population. That means that last Sunday, chances are 250 people in the congregation I preached to were touched by anorexia, gambling, alcohol, medications, anger, or some other addiction. Forty years ago, the only addicts we knew were the people at AA. Today the minister needs to know so much more.

What exactly does the modern pastor have to know? How much?

David: Enough to understand the person's situation. We can no longer talk casually about people's sin or suffering without appreciating the specific problems they wrestle with. At times, people have tuned me out because I have been ignorant and not as understanding as I should have been.

For me to be competent, I have to read widely. I need to attend seminars if I can. I have to know when and where to refer.

But there is so much to know-so many fields, so many disorders. Wouldn't some pastors say, "Why try? I'll just focus on the Bible and spiritual direction"?

Warren: I'm reminded of the story about the lady who said to John Wesley, "God does not need your education." And he said, "God can also do without your ignorance." (Laughter) Maybe it's apocryphal, but it makes the point. We all need to know as much as we can.

David: The contemporary minister is overwhelmingly burdened. The pastoral model is moving, and that requires the pastor to read widely and stay in touch with current trends.

Warren: But let's face it. No professional can keep up with his or her own field, let alone all the others. It's impossible. Doctors can't. Lawyers can't. Ministers have to be generalists who surround themselves with specialists. For example, I have a friend who specializes in Satanism. When I get questions about this, I'll call Mark, or else I'll say, "Here's the man you want to talk to."

No one expects omniscience. But today people do expect you to know enough to realize what not to say. You may not have the answers, but you can keep from spreading misinformation. You also need to know where you can go for help. Today a pastor cannot survive without a network.

Let's talk about personal changes. David, as you've observed your father, what changes have you noticed in his approach to ministry?

David: I was about 10 when dad was hit by a drunk driver and had to recuperate for three months. He couldn't preach, so he started writing. After that, I remember the dust in the back corner of the basement, which was piled high with books. When Dad wasn't resting, or laughing at Dick Van Dyke on TV, he would be reading. Things took a turn for the serious, not in a bad way-he was always there for the family and fun to be with-but the intensity went up a few notches.

Frankly, what has impressed me most about Dad is not change but that the foundation of his ministry-a commitment to Scripture, a focus on Christ-has never changed. There has been a solid core around which other changes have occurred.

What changes have you seen in the midst of that stability?

David: His reading helped him adapt to changing times by knowing what people were thinking. When somebody had something different to say, Dad didn't put on spiritual blinders and say, "Well, that doesn't fit in my grid, so nuts to you." He'd look for the wheat and discard the chaff. He models what he once said: "The foundation of the faith doesn't change, but sometimes the furniture of the faith has to be rearranged."

Warren, what changes do you see in yourself during your ministry?

Warren: I've always been a workaholic. David has helped me loosen up. He'll call and ask what I'm doing. If I'm working, he might say, "Why don't you knock it off for a while. Go for a walk or do something relaxing." Over the years he has taught me that the world's going to keep going even if I take a break.

I've also changed in my appreciation of other Christian traditions. At one time I considered "This Is My Father's World" a liberal song. But somewhere along the way I recognized our Christian responsibility for the created world.

When I began to read widely, especially biography, I realized, Hey, God uses people in all kinds of churches, in all kinds of contexts. He uses Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Plymouth Brethren, but they all have a different approach. It freed me to appreciate other communions.

So, when I was at Moody Church I often would follow the church year without telling anybody and preach a series based on the season. I just didn't use the words Advent or Epiphany.

What about your preaching? Has it changed, or is it part of the stable center that doesn't?

Warren: The way I approach a sermon has changed. I used to concentrate on what the text says, what it means, and how I could make it mean something to somebody else. Now I ask, What does God want these people to hear?

My preaching was academic; now it's more personal. In my first church, if you asked me what I was preaching on, I'd say "Ephesians." Now I would say, "I'm trying to help these people see the need for unity among God's people."

I was raised in a family-Swedish mother, German father-where you did not easily show your feelings. And this characterized my preaching-emotions were not for public display. But after my auto accident, the whole church rallied around our family. The night I was taken to the hospital, a hundred people met with my wife to pray and offer help. I realized then that preaching is more than filling the head with an outline.

I was an enthusiastic outliner, and still am, but there was no heart to my preaching. After that, I couldn't remain academic, standing in the pulpit before people who had showered me with love.

Let's move from changes in the minister to changes in the ministry. Why did people come to church in the fifties, and why do they come in 1990?

Warren: In the fifties, they came because they were loyal. This was their church, so they were present on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night. We would bring in an evangelist for two weeks, and we could guarantee a good crowd every night. Today, you can hardly get people out twice a weekend.

In the sixties, many people came to church because they were scared. The world was changing rapidly. Every value they held dear was threatened. They were puzzled about what was happening to young people.

In the relational seventies and eighties, people came to church because they needed a caring network. They hurt. Everybody I talk to carries some pain. Woe to that church that doesn't recognize people's needs.

A few preachers can get away with expounding the Word without specifically addressing people's personal problems-A.W. Tozer sometimes did that-but most pastors today find it essential to touch people where they are and then say, "God is real, the Word of God can be trusted, and God will help you." That's what people are looking for.

Why do people come to Hope Free Church today?

David: Dad has covered some of the ground, but people also come because of tradition. They grew up going to church, they're committed to a settled belief, and they hear those beliefs articulated here.

We also see young families beginning to attend who realize, "You know, I went to Sunday school when I was a kid, and I think my little Johnny and Jamie should go, too. I better get them there."

I would say the majority come because of felt needs. They may be enduring the pressure of tense relationships at home and the agony of divorce, or perhaps grieving a suicide or a death.

On the other hand, many who used to go to church as a social outlet no longer have to. Today, people have plenty of social outlets besides the church. In fact, to live in Roscoe, Illinois, you have to be overcommitted. It seems every family is involved in Little League, soccer, gymnastics, dance, ice skating, and computer club.

Warren: Still, many of these people want to be a part of the church. They love their church. They love the pastor. But church is one planet in a universe of activity, the center of which is their home-not God, not the Bible, but their family life.

David: Exactly. Here's an example of the changing attitude. The officers in my first church were always present for board meetings, unless they were sick or there had been an emergency. Now-and this is not a criticism, it's just a difference-if people on the board have a golf game, or if their 5-year-old daughter has a piano recital, they'll skip the board meeting.

So personal time and leisure activities have moved ahead of church on the priority scale?

David: People seem to have less time for church because of their leisure. If they buy a boat, for example, they feel obligated to use it. Their weekends are committed to the lake. They've become enslaved, or to use today's terminology, codependent. (Laughter)

How has the impact of media upon our culture made a difference in the local church?

Warren: First, people today think they are experts in preaching and music because of Christian radio and TV. A special problem for the local church is TV and radio preachers who cultivate a following. (I hope I'm not one of them!) Their followers come to church and evaluate the preacher with a checklist created by the media minister.

Second, people increasingly expect to be entertained by church. I agree with Neil Postman, who wrote in Amusing Ourselves to Death that TV is fundamentally an entertainment medium. Whether the subject matter is religion or the funeral of an assassinated president, the programming becomes entertainment. Now when people come to church, they're looking for stirring music, an eloquent speaker, a professional show.

This is a monstrous problem for many pastors today. I know of one church in Illinois that voted to move their evening service up an hour so they could get home in time to watch their favorite TV preacher. People are not forsaking the local church for the TV ministry, but they are demanding different things of the local church because of it.

How has the change in the traditional family impacted your ministry?

David: That's another thing that is radically altered. I have to find a way to relate not just to traditional families, but to single moms and dads, kids who are bounced between divorced parents, blended families, and others in nontraditional family structures.

Warren: It affects your preaching. How do you deal with Ephesians 5 now? Blowing the trumpet for the traditional family isn't going to help people whose families are splintered. We have to relate the truth to the people where they are.

What subjects are you able to preach today that you couldn't thirty years ago?

David: More than able to, I would say we have to talk about certain things: sexuality, abuse of various forms, alcoholism, suicide.

For a long time, we thought that if you talked about these things, people were more likely to become involved in them. Today because they're so prevalent, we're obligated to address these issues.

Also, there is the issue of self-esteem. Who had heard of self-esteem thirty years ago? Maybe it was there implicitly, but now it's right up front.

Pastors talk a lot more about what goes on between husband and wife, family dynamics, things that used to be considered too intimate. When we talk about them now, couples in the pew will nudge each other and grin.

What can you not preach about today that was effective earlier?

Warren: Thirty years ago prophecy was big. I still have people who suggest, "Why don't you do a series on prophecy?"

I respond, "Because I don't know as much about it as I used to!"

A certain kind of biographical preaching also used to be popular. You didn't expound the Scripture as much as talked about an individual in Scripture, and the lesson from that life. You could preach on Judas and "Wasted Opportunity," or Samson and "The Price of a Haircut." Clarence McCartney was a master at this type of preaching.

These are good sermons, but today they aren't as well received. People are not as interested in the life of a Bible character as they are in a life situation they're facing. Preaching today has to concentrate on one area of interest.

What are the particular temptations of ministry today?

Warren: One of the greatest temptations for the younger preacher today is the yearning for instant success. There are dozens of books on how to dress for success, how to preach, pray, manage, and motivate for success. Because of the media and megaministries, people are success conscious. Young ministers are tempted to be more concerned about reputation than character. As a consequence, they may take shortcuts and may spend a lot of time trying to imitate somebody else instead of being themselves, developing their own character, their own unique ministry.

It's been interesting to see the models of "success" change over the years. In the fifties, many of us looked at what Lee Roberson did. Then the model was Jack Hyles, and then John MacArthur. Somewhere in there Ray Stedman and the "body life" emphasis became the model. Today, Bill Hybels is the model of success for many.

Don't get me wrong. We've learned from all of these individuals. Praise God for them. But all across this country you will find churches that started, let's say, trying to duplicate the body-life methods, and they withered.

We have a tendency to want the quick fix. I'm disturbed when somebody says, "It worked at Willow Creek; it will work for us in Lincoln, Nebraska."

Why aren't more ministers interested in developing their own unique ministries?

Warren: It's dangerous. It's frightening. It can be humbling.

I was in Youth for Christ for several years. Although my main ministry there was to write and teach the Bible, I often was called upon to do evangelism. Most of my friends, and the men I admired, were going out and preaching a simple sermon, and people were getting saved.

I'd go out and preach my best message, and nothing happened. Finally I realized God was telling me, "You're not an evangelist."

"What am I?"

"You're a teacher." From that day, I turned down invitations to do evangelistic services. That's not my calling, even though I wish it were. I am not a motivator. My ministry is simply teaching the Word of God.

That's a relief. But it's also painful, because I have to admit I'm unable to do some things I wish I could.

David: I see a related temptation today: to make ministry happen all by yourself. And the other side is the temptation not to do anything, to be lazy. Today you can point people to radio, videos, and a plethora of books. Pastors can get a video or a movie for every Sunday night of the year and never have to prepare another Sunday evening service or lesson.

Warren: Those resources didn't exist when I started!

David: You can subscribe to services that give you printed sermons or a worship bulletin filled out, so you don't have to milk any cows or churn any butter. You can get lazy.

How about the changing role of the minister's family?

Warren: When we started ministry, the wife was almost the assistant pastor. She was to play the piano, take care of the kids, cook, and be able to entertain people at the last minute, and she wasn't supposed to have a job. Today, in some churches, if she doesn't work outside the home, some think she's not pulling her fair share of the load. She doesn't have to do as much in the church anymore.

David: It depends on the age of the members of the church. Older members want a pastor's wife who will be there. Younger members don't care if the wife works.

How about the so-called glass-house syndrome? Is the pastor's family still under the church's constant scrutiny?

David: I'm not aware of anybody saying to my son, "Your father is the preacher, so you'd better behave." When I was a kid, however, I did feel a certain pressure. That's the way the church was then.

Why are congregations better about this today?

Warren: They understand the minister's personal life better. Preachers can be more human today. When I begin a series on 2 Corinthians, for example, I'm free to say, "I'm preaching this because I need to hear it." And nobody argues with me. If I said that thirty years ago, they'd call me selfish. We can cry today if we need to cry. Back when I started ministry, they expected me to be more of a gilded saint.

However, the glass-house syndrome remains, to some degree, because the minister is a leader, a public person. It affects mayors, school superintendents, and coaches, as well. But today, people accept that pastors have problems, pastors' wives have problems, pastors' children have problems.

David: The man across the street is a high-school football coach. He never comes to me and says, "You're a minister; your kid shouldn't lose his temper." But if he did, I'd say, "Well, you're a coach; your son shouldn't have missed that tackle!" (Laughter)

Warren: People accept that we make mistakes. I've had to apologize to congregations, and they forgive.

Warren, from your perspective, what things do younger pastors, of David's generation, have difficulty understanding about ministry?

Warren: Some of them have not taken time to discover the past. Because of that, they don't last too long. Serious aspiring artists, for example, will spend a lot of time studying other artists. How did Picasso do it? How did Reubens do it? Those who want to be musicians will study the classic music geniuses. But many young pastors don't study the great preachers.

My generation was taught to study preaching. We know how F. W. Robertson would deal with a text, how Spurgeon would deal with it, how Jowett would deal with it. My generation may need to get abreast of the people doing fresh things, but this generation needs to sit down for six months with the Yale lectures.

What did you gain from studying the great preachers?

Warren: First of all, that each preacher is himself. If you handed me five sermons of great preachers, I could come close to identifying who preached them without reading the byline. Maclaren doesn't do it the way Robertson does it. Spurgeon doesn't do it the way Truett does it. Preachers must learn to be themselves.

Second, reading great preaching arouses the imagination. You realize that one text can be approached in hundreds of ways. There is no such thing as the outline of John 3:16 or the outline of Philippians. There's Campbell Morgan's way of doing it, Spurgeon's, Jowett's. To me it's reassuring and exciting to find out that preaching is not just mechanics but art.

David, what about the flip side? What do older ministers and church members need to be reminded of?

David: The older generation needs to remember that we need them. I'm 34 years old. I haven't seen it all, by any stretch. As I'm leading a church, I need those people who have lived through the wars. I need them to give me the benefit of their experiences. But sometimes the older generation says, "The newer ones need to take over; let's sit over here on the bleachers."

When has the older generation helped you?

David: Some time ago we were experiencing growing pains at the church, and people had made some unkind remarks. I took them personally. One of the older gentlemen in church took me out to lunch and said, "Dave, these people are responding to the office of pastor. That's who they are throwing their darts at. They're not mad at you. They just need someone to whom they can express their frustrations about the church." That was a keen insight for me, and it came from somebody who had fought the wars. It made me feel a lot better.

Our church is looking to build. Along the way our building committee became very discouraged about a number of complications, especially the exorbitant cost. At one point we wondered whether we should give up our plans. But at that point, a dear woman, one of the twenty-year veterans, rose and said, "I remember when this church met and there was nothing. Then we took the next step, and God provided what we needed." And she rehearsed the history. She concluded: "Now we're here. God got us here, and he will see us through these complications."

That ended the complaining and discouraging talk. We approached the building project differently from that day forth, thanks to the insight and wisdom of the older generation.

- More fromAn interview with Warren and David Wiersbe

Change
Culture
Expectations
Generations
Media
Pop Culture
Preaching

Pastors

Lyle Schaller, Steven L. McKinley, Knute Larson, and Wayne Jacobsen.

How to minister to the cocooned, overextended, and fractured people of the nineties.

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In 1960, the proportion of children living with a single parent was a mere 10 percent. Now their ranks have risen to 25 percent.

Seventy-seven percent of all middle-level executives spend 50 or more hours per week on their jobs. And 26 percent of executives spend more than 60 hours per week.

Nearly half (46 percent) of all marriages today are remarriages for one or both partners.

Each day pastors read in their newspapers statistics such as these. And in their offices, they see some of the people represented by them. In the midst of such turbulent social change, how can a minister provide pastoral care? What does it mean to shepherd a congregation in the nineties?

To find out, LEADERSHIP went to a well-known church consultant and three pastors from differing regions. Here they offer their thoughts, first, on how the very role of the care-giving pastor has changed, and then on how they have adapted their pastoral care to these changing times.

The Changing Caregiver

by Lyle Schaller

Many changes have made pastoral ministry more difficult than it was a generation ago (despite the widespread increases in pastoral salaries and fringe benefits). Three changes that particularly produce stress come from changes in the minister’s role.

From shepherd to leader. The old image of the pastor as a shepherd who knew every sheep by name, who instantly missed any who strayed, who was omnipresent, and who also was an evangelist (John 10:1-17) was widely taught and loyally followed for generations.

Today, however, a growing number of congregations have expanded that list of expectations. Many pastors are asked to be not only a shepherd, but also daily manager of a complex organization, a creative leader who can initiate attractive new ministries, the chief fiscal officer, a persuasive pulpiteer, a magnetic teacher, an expert on youth ministries, and a personable community leader who reinforces a positive image of that congregation.

In the 1950s, what people wanted was a minister who was competent in the pulpit and effective in one-to-one relationships. Today, that faithful shepherd is in much less demand than is the dynamic and skilled leader.

From shepherd to competitor. During the 1950s, it was widely assumed that numerical growth or decline in a congregation was largely a product of external factors, particularly demographic changes. The small church in a stable, rural community was expected to remain on a plateau in size, and it usually did. The new mission in a growing suburban neighborhood was expected to grow, and it usually did. The power of external factors in church growth was still being affirmed in the late 1970s and even into the early 1980s.

Today, however, widespread agreement exists that population increases do not automatically result in numerical growth for churches. Some churches grow rapidly as a result of population increases, while others remain on a plateau, and a few shrink. Since population growth does not automatically trigger church growth for all congregations, it usually means the level of competition among the churches rises. That popular term “high potential” usually should be translated by pastors to mean “higher competition.”

Consider, for example, a congregation that is evaluated on a 0-l00 scale in terms of the pastor, the physical facilities, the missionary and evangelistic outreach, the financial base, and the scope of the program. In 1970 a score of 80 not only was a passing grade, but it also probably was sufficiently high to produce a modest net growth in membership.

But the community that was experiencing 1 percent annual increase in population in the late 1960s and early 1970s is now reporting a 3 percent annual increase. As a result, several new churches are being organized. Two or three have relocated to new, larger, and more attractive meeting places. Several other congregations have expanded facilities, increased program staff, and added programs. The same characteristics that produced that score of 80, in 1970, now yield a grade of 65-and a grade of 85 is required to grow numerically in that community today. The level of competition has gone up substantially!

Who is the scapegoat when the numerically growing congregation of 1970 finds itself to be shrinking as the population climbs more rapidly? For many, the obvious answer is the pastor. The care-giving shepherd is in many cases being asked to assume the role of a skillful competitor.

From shepherd to teacher. A final shift in the pastor’s role can be seen in how congregations respond to pressure to improve their teaching ministry.

For several decades, a congregation usually responded to calls for educational improvement by expanding the Sunday school, creating new Bible studies, employing a professional in Christian education, training volunteers in pedagogical skills, or perhaps constructing a new educational wing.

That’s because once upon a time the Sunday school superintendent was the chief educator. Today it is far more likely to be the pastor.

When new members are questioned about why they chose this particular congregation, many of the people born after the Second World War don’t lift up geographical convenience or the denominational label or the attractive building. They affirm the teaching ministry in general and the teaching ability of the minister in particular. As a result, commonly the pastor’s class offered during the Sunday school hour not only has the largest attendance of any class but also is the biggest entry point for new members.

A number of reasons could be advanced for the shift from shepherd to leader, competitor, and teacher. Two of these new roles stem from societal changes, including people’s preferences for larger congregations, increased competition for discretionary time, inflation, the gradual disappearance of the most loyal and church-going generation in American history (those born in the 1910-30 era), the expansion of weekday programming, the erosion of the concept of a geographical parish, the decline in the power of institutional loyalties, and an increase in paid staff.

Regardless of the causes, however, for many pastors these three roles-leader, competitor, and teacher-consume far more time and energy than did the popular equivalents of the 1960s: enabler, cooperator, shepherd.

-Lyle Schaller is a parish consultant on the staff of the Yokefellow Institute, Richmond, Indiana.

Caring for the Cocooned

by Steven L. McKinley

It was one of those rare evenings when everyone in the family was free. No meetings. No classes. No lessons. No social engagements. A free evening. I looked forward to a leisurely dinner, a stroll with my wife, an “Uno” game for the whole family, maybe even a viewing of all of “L.A. Law.”

Then our insurance agent called and said it was time to review our family’s coverage. I like our insurance agent, and I recognize the importance of reviewing the coverage. So we scheduled him to come on that free evening. But I resented it. I wanted my free time and my privacy. I resented the loss of that quiet evening at home with the family. I really didn’t want the insurance agent to come.

I sense that many people today feel the same way about pastoral visits in the home.

The cocooning culture. I serve a youthful, suburban congregation; approximately 80 percent of the families have school-aged children. In most homes, both parents are employed. Children and parents keep up a dizzying schedule of community activities, athletic events, aerobics classes, church groups, music lessons, night-school classes, and on and on.

All the time, they are trying to keep up a high-quality family life. Free evenings with everyone at home are as rare for them as for me. According to the Harris Poll, the average American in 1973 had 26.2 hours of leisure time each week. In 1988, however, that average American had only 16.6 hours of leisure time.

There is a long and venerable tradition of pastoral visits in the home. That tradition has served the church well for many years. But in a culture like the one I live in, pastoral calling has become problematic. It takes diplomat-level negotiation skills to schedule a visit around the basketball games, business trips, tuba lessons. Scout meetings, aerobics classes, bowling leagues, and trips to the lake. That scheduling often requires a number of telephone messages left on answering machines, both mine and theirs.

Even if I can schedule a visit, will it be welcomed, or will it be resented? Many of the busy people we serve prefer to use that precious free time to “cocoon” in their homes and shut out the outside world. While people may like and respect their pastor, they will not necessarily eagerly give up an evening in the solitary comfort of the cocoon for conversation with the pastor.

How I respond. Recognizing this dilemma, I don’t do as much calling in the home as did earlier generations of pastors. When there is a situation of identified need, I am diligent in making the call. But I don’t do much old-fashioned calling. I have to be alert to other opportunities for communicating pastoral concern. Here are some of the methods I’ve come up with:

1. The telephone. There are days when I would like to rip the phone out of the wall. Nevertheless, I’ve found the telephone a great help in keeping in touch with people. Chet, for example, is typically busy as the president of his company. He is also the treasurer of the congregation. That makes it necessary for us to talk regularly on the telephone. Of course, we spend some time talking church business, but we also talk about families, about the pressures Chet is under at work, about the difficulty of applying faith to daily life. I haven’t been inside Chet’s home in several years. But he knows I care about him.

2. The supermarket. One management concept these days is called “management by walking around.” Across the street from our church is a major supermarket where I do “ministry by walking around.”

At any given time, I can meet a few parishioners there. Stopping for milk can take an hour. When I meet someone I know, I’m ready to stop by the pet-food display and lean on my cart and chat for a while. I make it a point to go past the counter where Diane is handing out pizza samples, not only to wolf down a mini-slice or two, but also to talk with her about her chaotic home situation. Being the unofficial chaplain of the supermarket is one way I communicate pastoral concern.

3. The early-morning breakfast. Leonard is a high-powered business owner who is an astute counselor when it comes to the financial management of the congregation. He also has major family problems. We are both “morning people,” so we’ll meet for breakfast at 6:30 in a local restaurant. Before we’re finished, his secretary will probably be in with letters for him to sign or documents for him to take to an 8:00 meeting. But over breakfast, he shares his struggles, personal and professional.

4. The parking lot. The committee meeting ends. Slowly we make our way to our cars. Hank seems to be hanging back a bit. I fall in step with him and gently ask how things are going. Hank is concerned about the circle of friends his teen-aged daughter is taking up with. I know his daughter from confirmation class. We spend thirty minutes leaning on our cars while we wrestle with his concerns. I probably do as much counseling in the church parking lot as I do in my office.

5. Work parties. Last Saturday was Clean-Up Day at church-another opportunity for “ministry by walking around.” I kept a dust cloth in my hand to look respectable, but I spent most of the time circulating among the workers. Joan was dusting the pews. We talked about her son’s continuing battle with cancer. Down the hall, Jack was painting a classroom. As we shared a cup of coffee, he commented that it was good to be working, but he found his mind jumping to Monday, when he would have to fire two people in his department because of budget cuts. We talked about the pain of holding responsibility in a corporation. Betty, busily washing windows, was concerned about her son’s special-education program at school. Our daughter is in the same program. We shared thoughts. And so it went. By the time the morning was over, I’d done little clean-up work, but I’d done a lot of pastoring.

6. Community occasions. I coach baseball with Dick. Dick isn’t a member of our church, but I get the feeling he considers me his pastor. Dick is a Vietnam veteran on permanent psychological disability. The demons of Vietnam still rattle around inside of him. He goes back to the VA hospital with depressing regularity.

When our team is in the field, we sit on the bench and talk. Of course, a good part of the time we talk baseball, but some of the time we simply talk life. Dick wants to be a good husband and a positive model for his sons, but it is hard for him. I try to encourage him, because it appears to me that he is doing a better job than he will give himself credit for. Dick knows his head isn’t completely right, but the hospital trips have become less frequent. Slowly Dick is beginning to believe there just might be a God of grace with enough forgiveness even for him. I’ve never been inside Dick’s home. The baseball field is the arena of my ministry with him.

I don’t want to suggest that I’m some super-pastor. I’m not. I’m an ordinary parish pastor trying to care for people. The people I meet are busy often and sometimes harassed. When they get a night or day “off,” they hunger for peace and quiet, time with their family, time to sit back and do nothing. They aren’t eager for anyone to visit, even the pastor. But they are still people with hurts and heartaches, people in need of pastoral concern, in need of discussing the adventure of Christian living.

So I settle for the telephone, the supermarket, the restaurant, the parking lot, the scaffolding, the baseball field-those places where we do come together. Because I do take advantage of those opportunities, the people of this congregation know-at least, I hope they know-that they have a church that cares about them, a pastor who cares about them, and, above all, a God who loves them.

-Steven L. McKinley is pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Anoka, Minnesota.

Caring for the Specialized Needy

by Knute Larson

On a given evening of the week you can walk into our church building and go past a support group for people with eating disorders, a meeting for alcohol or drug abusers, and a study for professional women. Sunday evenings after church there is an ACOA group-for adult children of alcoholics.

Last Sunday I met a man, and soon after he told me his name, he said, “I’m a bulimic.”

I’d never heard the word in 1966, nor its cousin term, anorexic. And here is a man who identifies himself that way, right after his name.

It’s another world.

In 1968 the little plaque on the pastor’s desk said VISITATION IS CHURCH BUILDER No. 1, and that is what we did: visited. The pastor was much more a shepherd than a counselor. Going to a Bill Gothard seminar in the mid-seventies and reading Wayne Oates’s book on counseling seemed like enough training for the amount of intense, specialized problems that came our way.

Now, several of us on our staff could go into counseling full-time if we wished. If they ask in Hollywood, “Who’s your therapist?” in our church some may ask, “Which staff member do you go to for counseling?”

The increasing demand for specialized counseling, rather than general wise shepherding, has led us to take three major steps:

Establishing professional standards. With the specialized needs have come high expectations for professional care-and occasionally, lawsuits if those expectations aren’t met. Now, everyone on staff who does any amount of counseling must have training, be insured, and follow a code of ethics for who he meets with, for how long, and why.

Setting limits. Counseling takes a lot of time. Our challenge is to know how much to limit it. Recently six staff people, most of whom counsel for five to fifteen hours per week, met to discuss just how deeply we can and should get into counseling. The discussion quickly turned to training lay counselors to do much of the encouragement work at least. But in our new world, a pastor almost has to establish guidelines for the amount of time given to counseling.

Increasing support, training, and prevention. To help people before it’s too late, and to reduce the counseling load, we increasingly have to provide support and training programs. This is especially true in the area of family life.

In 1966, there was little material to guide families, and the specialists weren’t nationally known. James Dobson’s books were yet to be written. Divorces were surprises then. (When my own parents divorced in the early fifties, it was an oddity whispered about at church. They dropped out.) You assumed someone’s marriage was fine and proceeded with other subjects. Now I ask often, sometimes with a smile and sometimes to get to what seems obvious: “How’s your marriage?”

So we provide many more supports now. Our parenting-of-teens courses are among our most popular, and the support group for blended families helps a growing number of people. Single parents, once an oddity, now have their own large and growing fellowship in our Sunday school. We sponsor divorce-recovery workshops, provide counseling for children of the broken home, and talk about marriage and divorce constantly.

We’re always grappling with questions like these: How can we help this family? Who will contact the person involved in marriage failure but unwilling to talk? How much should our young-adult classes emphasize teaching on marriage and family? Recently I asked (with only half a smile) a teacher of younger adults, “When will they ever learn Ezekiel?”

Better back then? People often talk about the good old days. Personally, I would rather be here now. The challenge of pastoral care is so huge today that the need for our Lord’s message and lifestyle is so much more obvious.

-Knute Larson is pastor of The Chapel in Akron, Ohio.

Caring for the Overextended

by Wayne Jacobsen

I could tell he was losing his heart for church responsibilities. His name’s not important; the names of probably a dozen people I’ve known in the last few years would fit the same story.

He came to our church hungry for God to use him. His zeal for God and his spiritual maturity opened opportunities for leadership, and he responded enthusiastically. Ever so subtly, however, his passion began to fade. Meetings he had attended with eagerness before, he now had to be pushed to attend. His participation was weak and lethargic.

I knew why: He wasn’t as hungry for God as he used to be. He was putting the attractions of the world ahead of his relationship to God and the church.

The more I encouraged him to persevere, the more he faded. I applied some pressure to help him meet his commitments, and finally, I was able to increase his attendance at the meetings where I needed him.

Then he asked for a leave of absence from his leadership responsibilities. Pressures from work, home, and church had combined with health problems to wear him down. He was meeting everyone’s expectations but losing the joy of his relationship with God. He hadn’t lost his heart for God at all, I discovered. It only had been buried beneath an avalanche of pressures and expectations.

Instead of helping him find a way out of that pressure, I almost had destroyed him. My encouragements to keep pressing on only had added to his problem.

Running ourselves ragged. Being overextended is endemic to our culture. The pressures of this age push people to the edge of their time, finances, and energy. Not long ago, Time emblazoned on its cover, “The Rat Race-How America Is Running Itself Ragged.” People in churches are no exception. We’ve heard their cries: “I know this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but on top of everything else I’m facing, I don’t feel I can handle it.”

Perhaps no greater challenge awaits us in church ministry than to free the overextended from the pressures of this age (including our zealousness to see the church succeed). By doing so, we release them to productive involvement in the kingdom of God.

The real issue. When I see how people sacrifice for a career or new home, I yearn for them to give the same energy to deepening their spiritual life. I’ve often thought how effective our congregation would be if people showed the same commitment to God they do to their softball team.

Last year I found out what that’s like. Our softball team had to forfeit two games because not enough players showed up. Seriously, in the nine years I’ve been at The Savior’s Community, we’ve had some forfeits, too-meetings without enough people or the right people.

Without thinking it through, my counterstrategy emerged. If the world could pressure people into forfeiting their life in Christ, shouldn’t the Word of God with even greater pressure lead them to what’s right? Where the world lured them with money, I dazzled them with the promise of spiritual gifts and ministry. Where they were pressured by others, I challenged them with accountability before God. I made the church a competitor with the world.

But even when I got the response I was looking for, it was without heart, and hence, ineffective.

That’s when I realized that overextended people are not healthy people. Most are driven by insecurity. The quest for success may be only an attempt to prove worth, pleasing people an attempt to avoid rejection, busyness an attempt to bury hurt.

But if I, too, use those insecurities-even to lead people to church service-I lose by winning. I make the church one more source of pressure. How does that help them become more like Christ?

In contrast, Jesus addressed people’s insecurities and disarmed the pressures that drove them. I didn’t need to compete for people’s time and affection. Instead I could help the church provide what the world cannot-rest, peace, joy, and fruitfulness.

Nothing distracts people more from the fullness of life in Christ than busyness and weariness. So what is making them overextended is not the issue; the fact that they are overextended is.

This realization gave me a different basis for dealing with overextended people. Since pressure is the problem, it therefore cannot be the solution. I had to find another way to call people to the depths of the Christian life. Here is where I am beginning.

Lower expectations for church activity. In our age, how much time and energy can the church and its leaders reasonably expect from people?

None.

Whereas Jesus as Lord and Master has the right to every second of their day, I, as a pastor, have no personal right to even one. That difficult conclusion began to give me freedom to help. I didn’t need to be offended personally when people failed my expectations. Leadership is not ownership.

When the focus is on freeing people to love God, service attendance is a nonissue. Recently a new member of our congregation, who had come from a more legalistic one, had missed a couple of Sunday services. One day she started to explain to my co-pastor why she hadn’t been there.

Mark interrupted her. “Were you sick or hurting?”

“No.”

“Is there some crisis going on that could use our help?”

“No, our family was away on a trip.”

“Belinda, if you didn’t miss because of some crisis or hurt, then it really isn’t my business, is it?”

That’s not to say we’re not interested in people’s trips and don’t miss them when they’re not here, but it was obvious Belinda felt pressure to have a good reason to miss. When she told me this story, Belinda was still elated at the freedom that brief conversation had conveyed to her.

We’ve worked to develop a simplified church program. Our hope is that our essential objectives-intimacy with Christ, community with other believers, and mission to the world-can be met by each believer giving three hours a week of regular participation.

We have many activities, but we make it absolutely clear that most are extras for those who want to take advantage of them. We need to leave time in people’s lives for prayer and also for reaching out to the world. I want parents to feel they have time to be at the PTA, office picnic, and family reunion.

Teach and model the need for rest. David spoke of the Shepherd’s leading his flock to quiet waters. Isaiah said that “in repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your salvation.” Jesus regularly withdrew to isolated places and beckoned weary refugees of the world with the promise, “I will give you rest.”

If we’re going to motivate and help people, we have to lead them to the quiet. How scary that sounds! Won’t people misuse that freedom, we wonder, to indulge their own desires? I realize that certainly some will, but pressuring those people has never accomplished anything anyway.

If we’re going to help the overextended, we must stop rewarding its practice. Burned-out people always look their best the day before they crash. They are so willing and helpful; I used to see them as the epitome of zealous believers. I ignored the warning signs of complaints, loss of heart, and a family crying out for them.

Now I’m not so swift to reward those who seem a blur in the night. I question people to see if their busyness is really springing from freedom, or if it’s a cover for a deeper need. At times we’ve encouraged volunteers not to come because we knew they were overextended.

My own example. Modeling is our most important tool. If busyness is the merit badge of leadership and burnout the proof of a job well done, people will strive for them. I’m watching my schedule with greater diligence.

I admit I’m learning the value of pruning. Having grown up on a grape ranch, I should understand that. Each year we pruned our vines back to five good canes, out of which next year’s crop would grow. If we didn’t cut off the other forty-five perfectly good canes, we would have had the lushest-looking vines in the Valley-but no fruit.

Teach people to live beneath their resources. Finally, my goal of ministering to the overextended is not reached when I get them to live within their limits. Biblically, we are not allowed to live on the edge of our energy, time, or resources, for if we do, what have we left to share with others?

Not all the ministry needs around my life fit nicely into my calendar. How many times I’ve passed opportunities I wish I could have responded to, but given the limits of my time and energy, I had to refuse! I hope to teach the overextended to live away from the edge of their limitations. God doesn’t want every nickel we make and every minute we have to be invested in getting by. Usually, the most significant ministry opportunities call for action at a critical moment. To be available for others, we must provide a cushion in our time and money.

Helping people move away from the overextended spirit of this age is a reward all its own. Slowly, haggard looks are replaced by calm ones. With people’s new-found freedom comes a genuine joy that always makes me shake my head in wonder.

-Wayne Jacobsen is pastor of The Savior’s Community in Visalia, California.

Caring for the Coming Generation

by Lyle E. Schaller

Many of today’s ministers developed a high level of skill in relating to the young people of the 1960s, or to the teenagers of the 1970s and early 1980s. Today’s churches are being challenged to serve a new generation of teenagers who come with a different agenda.

This new generation, replacing the counterculture population of the 1960s, includes those born in 1968 and later. Today they range in age from 12 to 22. Few have any firsthand memories of the Vietnam War. John F. Kennedy is an ancient historical figure, not a contemporary hero.

Once upon a time, for those who rebelled against parental admonitions, school was the socializing institution. For others, that need was filled by a youth group at church.

Today, however, the school has been replaced as the primary post-family socializing environment. By what?

The part-time job or the car. In 1978, 13 percent of teenagers owned a car; in 1989, 36 percent did.

The criminal justice system.

Television.

What James Coleman has labeled “the adolescent society.”

In 1975, the high school administrators and teachers could be viewed as allies by the adult leaders of that church youth group. They shared many of the same values, goals, and hopes. Today, the leaders of the church youth group often have two choices. They can concentrate their energies on that one-third of the teenage population who share their cultural and religious values. Or they can try to compete with the contemporary youth culture that shares few of those traditional values.

In other words, ministry with that generation born after 1967 is far more difficult, complex, and frustrating than was ministry with any previous generation youth leaders encountered.

- More fromLyle Schaller, Steven L. McKinley, Knute Larson, and Wayne Jacobsen.

Burnout
Church Growth
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Culture
Generations
Pastoral Care
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Spiritual Formation
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Youth Ministry

Pastors

Sherman Roddy

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Many years have passed since the congregation of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church of Ambler, Pennsylvania, gave a reception for me and my family. I was their new minister, fresh out of seminary, eagerly pursuing graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania, ready to set the church and world aright.

While welcoming me during that event, the spokesman for the board of deacons, a Christian along in years, concluded with these words: “You have become our minister; so our Sunday bulletins and stationery state. While you are here, I hope you will also become our pastor.”

As a young man, I regarded the metaphor of “pastor” lightly. The minister as counselor? Excellent. Teacher? Superb. Administrator? Prestigious. But pastor? Quaint. We no longer lived in a rural world, but in a technological society. Shepherding imagery, I reasoned, was archaic.

How mistaken I was! Life increasingly has become dominated by things and those who make, fix, adjust, or destroy them. Many have a growing sense that people, too, are things to be used, played with, manipulated, changed, or cast aside.

Today I recognize the wisdom in the valedictory words of my grandfather Roddy, who, in the late summer of 1916, took my father to Grand Central Station to board a train for Boston, where he would begin his training for the Christian ministry. Embracing his son, he said, “Clarence, I hope you never become a great preacher. Rather, learn to bind up the wounds of the hurt, bring comfort to the bereaved, hope to the despairing, and strength to the weak.”

My grandfather went to his grave knowing his son had heeded his words, even though Clarence Roddy was also known as an extraordinary preacher and teacher of preachers at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Shortly after World War II, my dad supplied the pulpit at First Baptist Church of Portland, Maine, where he had pastored years before. Our whole family was there, and the church was full. After the benediction, Dad went to the vestibule and greeted the people. They formed a line down the left aisle and across the back, to the foot of the balcony stairs.

After the last person was greeted, we went to the Turners’ home for lunch. While Emma Turner prepared the meal, Dad and I sat in rocking chairs, looking out onto the beginnings of Portland harbor. At least, I was looking out. Dad was pensive, rocking back and forth.

Finally, he looked up and spoke softly, “Not one of those people mentioned a single sermon I preached.” After a long pause, he continued. “They reminded me of ‘the night you got up at 2 A.M. and drove me 200 miles up to the lumber camp where my son was dying of double pneumonia’; ‘the three days you stayed with us and helped during Father’s last illness’; ‘the day my boy tried to hop a train, slipped, and lost his legs’; ‘the day after my son died of polio and you comforted me by inviting me to give my allegiance to Christ.’ And they remembered the joys, even the little ones: ‘the time you made me bake an apple pie as big as your car wheel, and my husband had to peel apples all day.’ “

He said no more. But as he continued rocking, I realized that the foundations of life in First Baptist Church during the past half century were laid in that pastoral service.

So I’ve changed my mind about “pastor,” and I’ve told my congregation, “Even though I may disappoint you at times, you may expect of me service. I am Christ’s servant. Therefore, I am also your servant.

“When, you may ask, is the right time to call upon your servant? In the morning when I am well rested? At a more convenient time in my busy schedule? After more important matters of church policy and administration are considered? No. The right time is when you have a need. When you need to cry or to laugh, to mourn, or to exalt, to be instructed or to communicate, to be praised or to be admonished, to confess or to forgive, to be encouraged or to find peace-in the hard passages, in the joyful events.

“I, therefore, want to serve you even unto many deaths-some little, some great. Deaths of my own time, desires, expectations; deaths of my rights, ambitions, opinions, and ways. As our Lord said, ‘The shepherd is to lay down his life for the sheep.’ “

To give life-this is what it means to be a pastor.

-Sherman Roddy

Granite Presbyterian Church

Woodstock, Maryland

- More fromSherman Roddy

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Dave Wilkinson

How much do you change to fit a peculiar people?

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The Reverend Doctor R. Thomas Martin knew he was out of place as soon as he arrived as pastor of California’s Corona Del Sol Community Church.

The large cross crafted from the shattered surfboards of hapless former pastors gave him his first clue. The liturgical break-dance group practicing in the sanctuary confirmed his dark suspicion. The pastor nominating committee had not told him the whole truth.

Corona Del Sol and R. Thomas Martin are mythical, but pastors out of their element are very real. The life of a square peg in a round hole can be painful-for the peg as well as the hole. I’ve been in that situation to a degree, and over the years I’ve talked with other pastors who find their distinctive corners jammed against the church’s contours.

The Square-peg Experience

“Square pegness” can take a variety of forms. One of the most common is a difference in life experience.

Susan Baker, a Presbyterian pastor, grew up in a large church in suburban California. She attended college in California and then seminary. Then she accepted a call to serve a circuit of three small churches in the rural Midwest.

For Susan, square pegness is almost total. She is a woman, pastoring in churches and a region accustomed to male pastors. She entered this conservative habitat fresh out of a seminary noted for theological diversity and controversial positions on social issues. She is single in a world of married couples. Her background and education effectively set her apart from the people she serves.

Square pegness also can mean a difference in orientation. Growth-oriented pastors may introduce their sharp angles into contentedly static round holes. They come to lead a charge only to find the congregation wants a chaplain for the wounded. Plans for growth and change aren’t always welcome.

“In a farming community,” explains one pastor, “relatives are those buried in the graveyard. You can’t waltz into town thinking you’ll be part of the family.” Some churches aren’t particularly open to newcomers. Yet if the church is to grow, it will have to open up. Pastors committed to that outward-directed orientation may find it harder to fit in.

Square pegness often results when the pastor comes from a church of a different size than the congregation he or she joins. Lyle Schaller writes in Looking in the Mirror, “One of the most subtle changes in the dynamics of small-membership churches can be traced back to the changing source of pastors. During the first half of this century, thousands of young men who went into the pastoral ministry were drawn from among the children who had grown up in rural America and were nurtured in small-membership churches. The new minister carried many years of first-hand recollection of the dynamics and congregational lifestyle of that size church.

“During the past three or four decades, however, an increasing proportion of those going into the ministry have come from much larger congregations. Many have no firsthand contact with a congregation of fewer than six or seven hundred members. Frequently, their first ministerial responsibility, following graduation from seminary, is to serve as the pastor of a small congregation. This can be a difficult experience for both the new pastor and the parishioners. Occasionally the minister feels rejected. The pattern is the same as when the body of a heart transplant recipient tends to reject that new organ. There is a natural tendency for a body to reject that which it perceives as a foreign or alien object.”

The pastor’s educational and economic background can be a square peg. As one pastor sees it, “They don’t think my work is work. Reading a book is not work to one who gets up at 5 A.M. to feed the cows.” It’s hard for a laborer to imagine how one can be tired from a day of exegesis.

Calvin Thomsen served as pastor of a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Claremont, California, a community dotted by private colleges. He describes that church as “wanting to be the Adventist Church of the future.” A young, progressive, and highly educated congregation with a positive self-image, it boasted an attractive physical plant, showed an appreciation of music and art, and easily appealed to people disillusioned with “traditional churchiness.”

After seven good years there, he left Claremont for a church in Simi Valley, California, which, in many ways, is at the other end of the cultural spectrum. “I was ready for a challenge,” Thomsen says, “and I certainly found one.”

Before Thomsen went to Simi Valley, he did his research. He knew the church had been trouble for previous pastors. Deep divisions within the church, and between the church and the local Adventist hospital, troubled him. This hole, he knew, might be lined with spikes. But he didn’t expect it to be so round.

Thomsen discovered the congregation didn’t value what he values in church life. “I love a great pipe organ, and they are perfectly content with a badly tuned Hammond. Even the doctors from our congregation do their rounds in cowboy boots. I forever will be unable to make the church what I prefer. These people don’t want to be upscale.”

Since the church won’t switch to ecclesiastical Perrier, what is his goal for them? “A highly participatory, evangelical, contemporary congregation that fits this community,” Thomsen says. “That vision is equally revolutionary for the congregation but has a better chance of success.”

The growth of the church offers yet another way to become a misfitting peg. And even growing a church doesn’t guarantee a fit. John Blackburn comes across like a good old boy. He is a relaxed, folksy man with an amazing ability to grow churches.

When John began as pastor of the Almond Grove Church, Almond Grove was an agricultural town. John fit right in. Then the freeway was completed, and Almond Grove began to grow rapidly. Under John’s leadership, the church welcomed newcomers and expanded its ministry. The little Almond Grove Church exploded faster than the community. John just grinned, kicked the dirt, and kept making things happen.

One day the people of Almond Grove looked around and discovered they were an influential, 2,500-member congregation filled with sophisticated people-and their good-old-boy, dirt-kicking pastor was an embarrassment. Eventually John resigned. “They got so fancy, I wasn’t allowed to spit anymore” is how he put it. He left Almond Grove and took a small church up in the hills, right in the path of the next freeway. The BMWs in his parking lot are beginning to worry him again.

I’ve served three churches since leaving seminary, and the present fit is by far the most comfortable. I attribute this to the fact that I’m the organizing pastor. A square hole has grown up around my square peg, so the fit is nearly perfect. However, it will be hard for the pastor who follows me if he or she happens to be round, or even-horrors!- oblong. The ways not to fit abound.

When Holes Won’t Accommodate Corners

I asked several successful square pegs how important a good fit is. The answers ranged from “moderately important” to “not that important.”

So I tried a different tack. I asked Calvin Thomsen, “When is the fit so bad that the pastor really does need to make a change?” He offered four signs of an irredeemable situation:

-First, when the pastor has major gifts and abilities being frustrated. “Of course,” he cautioned, “we may decide this is the case prematurely. Many pastors feel the church doesn’t fit because it isn’t meeting certain needs for status, companionship, intellectual stimulation, or a host of other desires. All are legitimate needs, and some pastors may have to find ways to meet these needs outside their congregations to relieve the stress of a poor fit.”

Then again, a person gifted in visitation and pastoral care spending years trying to be a pulpiteer, or a true scholar devising banana games as a junior high minister, may find they truly are misplaced. A pastor may grow out of a job description.

-Second, when the larger context of the community or region doesn’t provide needed resources.

Several pastors expressed the need for a release valve. One reason Susan Baker accepted a call to the rural Midwest was other women in ministry nearby with whom she could share. Proximity to a metropolitan area where she could attend the symphony, go to a play, or take advantage of educational opportunities also attracted her.

A person may adapt temporarily by downplaying the importance of certain interests and aspirations. But a bleak situation, in which the subdued self cannot find an outlet from time to time, will increasingly oppress and frustrate a pastor. Periodically, we need to allow our sharp angles an opportunity to protrude.

-Third, when the accommodations the pastor makes to build bridges begin to erode the pastor’s core identity. Cal Thomsen increasingly sees himself in Simi Valley as a cross-cultural missionary. He adapts to the culture around him in order to build bridges for the gospel.

“But wise missionaries,” he says, “also have an identity firmly planted back in their own world. Skillful missionaries may appear to go native and adopt the dress and language of the host culture, but they retain a clear identity. They know who they are. It is when you compromise your core identity that you start resenting the accommodations you are making.

“I’m willing to expand myself, but I’m not prepared to deny myself completely. For example, if people started pressuring me to water down my basic Christian convictions, I’m afraid that would be farther than I could bend. I wouldn’t then be drawing from the real me.”

-Fourth, when the situation is harming the pastor’s family. “I’m not willing to offer my family as a sacrifice on the altar of any congregation,” Thomsen explains.

“My wife works outside the home. If a sizable number of church members were putting pressure on her not to work, and if the tension started getting to her, I’d take that as a signal to leave.”

Improving the Fit

How good must the fit be? How much do you have to be like your congregation?

The answer seems to be that pastor and people need to inhabit the same universe and speak, at least roughly, the same language Susan Baker commented, “There is a small-town feel to me. I’m not slick. I’m not a coastal person. But even if I were, I could minister here. It isn’t that important that the pastor be like the people. What is important is that the pastor like the people and that they know it.”

Calvin Thomsen agrees, and adds, “It’s also important to be yourself and to model that you’re comfortable with and affirm diversity. If you try to pretend, the people smell the pretense. If you can embrace who they are, you can bridge some wide gulfs.”

One gulf Thomsen faces is disagreement over the place of psychology in the church. “I teach psychology at the university,” he explains, “and there are people in the church who think psychology is anti-Christian. I tried to soft-pedal my involvement at first, but it didn’t work. It just made everyone more insecure. Now I freely affirm the value of psychology. But also I’m willing to use language that communicates to them my orthodoxy. It’s not pretense. It is very deliberate. I don’t say anything I don’t believe, but I am careful to say things in the way people need to hear.”

The key issue: building bridges between pastor and people. These successful square pegs indicated a willingness to adapt as long as they don’t compromise their Christian walk. “I can be all things to all men,” one commented, “but I cannot turn my back on the gospel. It is not so important that I be true to myself as it is to be true to my Lord. For example, I could join Rotary, even though I might find the meetings boring. But I could not join the Klan.”

Even when differences between pastor and people are evident, they don’t have to divide. They might even be a source of humor and growing camaraderie. They help humanize the pastor by giving the congregation a “flaw” on which to focus.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area with the conviction that nothing good comes from Los Angeles, especially in the world of sports. During football season I am a vocal 49ers fan. Until last season I was a subdued Giants fan in the land of Dodgers. Last fall, however, I was insufferable, but the men’s breakfast troops would have been disappointed with anything else. In basketball season I shut up.

My refusal to see anything good in a Southern California team hasn’t alienated me from my decidedly Southern Californian congregation; they enjoy ribbing me about it and taking my flak. After the last Super Bowl, they even presented me with a 49ers T-shirt. And I, in a spirit of compromise, have allowed my son to keep a picture of Orel Hershiser on his bulletin board.

After graduating from seminary, my thoroughly Colorado friend Dave Freehling told the Lord he was willing to serve him anywhere-as long as it was a university town in Colorado. The Lord obligingly sent him to Fort Collins. But life evens out, for the Lord spoke to Dave and said, “Leave Colorado, that land flowing with Rocky Mountain spring water and downhill skiers, and go to Texas.”

Dave journeyed from Colorado to flatland, downstream Texas, feeling like Jonah on the road to Nineveh. But, to his surprise, he found the Ninevites to be enjoyable people. He still misses Colorado, but the Ninevites think that’s fine. They allow him, within reason, to brag on Colorado. He just has to provide equal time for some Longhorns. Being able to laugh at the differences-even to play off of them-can help pegs and holes gain perspective on their incompatibility.

Pastors cannot expect congregations to adapt themselves to their background and style. But as the people come to value the pastor, they will tend to adapt themselves to the pastor’s quirks-like my objection to painting the church Dodger Blue.

The successful square pegs I spoke to all stress the importance of pastoral flexibility. Susan Baker commented, “One night l spent an evening with friends in the city listening to the symphony. When I drove back to the country the next morning, I saw livestock in rustic barnyards. I can find beauty in both.” In fact, Susan recently was invited to blend her considerable classical music skills with the local country band.

Both during and after seminary, John Stanford served in large and prestigious churches. His Phi Beta Kappa IQ and broad world-view helped him fit right in. Then he went to serve a church in a rural community. When I asked him how he was able to shift gears and fit in so well in each of his diverse ministries, he said, “I have a broad set of interests. So I just bring out different parts of my personality. When I’m talking to a farmer about the type of cultivator he’s using, I don’t only act interested; I am interested.”

The overall key appears to be that the people need to value the pastor for who he or she is, and they need to know that the pastor values them for who they are. This is why the square pegness that is brushed aside or even enjoyed in one pastor can become a crisis for another.

In Step to Whose Beat?

A guy I knew in high school was the lead drummer in a bagpipe band. After one parade his father commented that he had been out of step. “No I wasn’t,” he insisted. “Everyone else was out of step.” Technically, he was right. Since he was the lead drummer, it was his responsibility to set the beat and everyone else’s duty to conform to that beat.

Every now and then, pastors likewise find themselves doing what’s right in a congregation that isn’t, and their well-honed edges rub against an ill-formed hole. When that’s the case, being a square peg is commendable. The hole needs to get squared, because the peg conforms to God’s specifications. In those rare instances, fitting in is the last thing the pastor ought to do. Adapting becomes the church’s responsibility.

But, excepting such circumstances, most square pegs need to make the greater effort to fit. The friendly and flexible square-peg pastor can find even the roundest of holes a good place for ministry. As Susan Baker states, “We are different. But a shared commitment and willingness to submit ourselves to God’s Word brings us together.”

- More fromDave Wilkinson

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Paul Robbins

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Longfellow once wrote, “The holiest of all holidays are those, / kept by ourselves in silence and apart; / the secret anniversaries of the heart.” This issue of LEADERSHIP marks ten years of publication. As you can see, we haven’t prepared a spectacular issue, complete with a slick, four-color spread featuring “Clergy Celebrities We Have Known.” Nor will there be an opportunity to enter a “NEW! TEN MILLION DOLLAR ANNIVERSARY SWEEPSTAKES.”

No, we prefer to mark this anniversary by remembering that ten years ago the launch of LEADERSHIP seemed like an enormous gamble. Even though the promotional test mailings were strong, authorizing a print run of fifty thousand felt like diving into the deep end of a very cold pool. We knew that the universe of potential subscribers contained about 300,000 pastor-readers. We also recognized the rule of thumb that if a magazine regularly can enlist 10 percent of its potential readers, success is likely.

Well, ten years later, our fears have been allayed by one of the most satisfying publisher-editor-reader relationships in religious-magazine history. With this issue, three million copies of LEADERSHIP have been printed, and most of those still stand prominently positioned on bookshelves of pastors’ studies across the country. LEADERSHIP has won many editorial awards through the years, but no honor has been more satisfying than to know it might be the most photocopied journal in America!

May we continue to reminisce? The idea for the journal developed eighteen months before publication began. The impetus was a practical one. Publishing experts were predicting that one-magazine companies wouldn’t survive the escalating costs of the 1980s. It was imperative to spread the economic dynamics of publishing over a number of publications. History has proven these predictions true.

At that time our parent corporation, CTi, was publishing one magazine, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, a bi-weekly devoted to thoughtful editorials, essays, and religious news. A high percentage of parish pastors, church staff members, and local-church lay leaders made up its readership. We took the experts’ counsel to heart and began looking for ways to mate the needs of our existing constituency with the necessity to start more magazines.

Demographic studies of CHRISTIANITY TODAY readers had shown us that the top five responsibilities of most parish pastors were preaching, administration, counseling, evangelism, and Christian education. Since CT magazine was already addressing four of the five on a regular basis, it seemed logical to create a magazine that talked about the “nuts and bolts” of church administration. I was commissioned to develop a magazine prospectus, take to the road, and find out how well this concept would be received.

My first dozen stops were like a tour of duty in local church ministry. I heard, saw, and rubbed shoulders with pain, frustration, joy, accomplishment, depression, ambition, burnout, failure-everything that occurs in daily parish life. Reaction to my “nuts and bolts” prospectus ranged from mild interest to total rejection.

While most pastors acknowledged that administration ate up a good bit of the time they coveted for other things, what they really wanted was personal encouragement and help in all areas of ministry: preaching, counseling, parenting, marriage, sexuality, personal growth, spirituality, and a host of other subjects. I vividly remember one pastor asking, “Couldn’t somebody take our daily agenda and explore it in depth?”

Well, I came home, discussed with my colleagues everything I had learned, and rewrote the prospectus. We decided to see if we could develop a magazine from what I had heard. Out of that second prospectus came four premises upon which the first issue, and every successive issue, has been built: (1) LEADERSHIP must be pro pastor. Material must be positive, inspirational, and motivational in its approach. Let LEADERSHIP become the pastor’s pastor. (2) LEADERSHIP must be practical. All material published in LEADERSHIP must be immediately applicable to today’s parish ministry. (3) LEADERSHIP must be people centered. Pastors, like everyone else, learn the most from other people, especially other pastors. LEADERSHIP must feature people, not theories and formulas. (4) LEADERSHIP must be fun. While the shepherding of souls is a serious responsibility, parish life is a three-ring circus. LEADERSHIP must help pastors laugh at themselves and their problems. The cartoons are forever!

Another couple of trips on the road with the new prospectus overwhelmingly demonstrated that we were on the right track and had the makings of a magazine that would work. I can still hear Orville Butcher, former pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church, in his booming voice, say, “Call it Leadership! That’s what we need: LEADERSHIP!”

Ten years and three million copies later, LEADERSHIP Journal is still working on these four premises. And we must be doing something right, for you have become the most loyal, responsive, and interactive readership an editorial staff ever could desire. Few magazines, religious or secular, enjoy a higher renewal rate. And I can’t think of any magazine whose readers faithfully rank the strengths and weaknesses of each major article, issue by issue.

We want to celebrate this tenth anniversary by thanking you, the parish pastor, for your support. You remain the beneficiaries of the greatest calling on earth, and if we have been able to help you with your task in any small way, then these ten years have been worth it. Keep telling us how we can help you for another ten years.

Paul Robbins, chief operating officer of Christianity Today, Inc., is the founding editor of LEADERSHIP.

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Charles Colson

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I‘ve opposed abortion ever since I knew what it was. During my years in government I saw the wanton taking of an unborn life as an assault against the individual dignity that our nation’s system of law was designed to protect.

When I committed my life to Christ, I met the Author of human dignity. My moral convictions deepened as I discovered the beauty and purpose of the Creator’s design for his creatures.

That’s why I have fervently supported the efforts of the thousands of Christians who protest at abortion clinics. I admire the commitment of those who are willing to be arrested and go to jail as prisoners for the sake of those who cannot speak for themselves.

We should all be fighting this battle for unborn lives, seeking both to rescue the perishing and to pierce the callous conscience of a nation that has chosen to allow the killing.

But I have grown increasingly uneasy about the conduct of some involved in this movement and how Christians have accordingly been portrayed in the mass media. Rather than piercing anyone’s conscience, I wonder if we are not stabbing both our neighbors and our cause instead.

In much of the coverage, we have witnessed strident, often ugly confrontations. I, of all people, well understand that editors can select the most offensive photos that caricature Christians. But even so, our stridency has played into their hands.

This is counterproductive. Prolifers, according to most polls, are in the minority; if we are to win the battles in state legislatures coming in the wake of the Webster decision, we must convince wavering voters and legislators. News footage of Christians screaming and waving their Bibles, faces twisted with hate and anger, hardly helps our cause.

And even if we were to win in the battleground states, that will not be the end of the prolife struggle. True, we will have brought human law into conformity to God’s law—a good end, but not enough. While the law is a moral teacher, law alone cannot change people’s moral choices. Women will still seek out illegal abortions. A recent report from Missouri indicates no decline in abortions since Webster.

So we must work on a more fundamental level than legislation alone, painting a fresh moral vision on our dingy national canvas, a vision of hope and human dignity. We must woo people’s hearts toward righteousness.

But we cannot woo unless we love. It is more than the battle against abortion that suffers when Christians conduct themselves with anger and hate. We wound our witness of the truth of the gospel and the love of Jesus Christ.

Two Choices

One cannot win debates by anecdote, but I am not writing here to convince opponents; I am writing for the family. So allow me to offer two images of the choice before us.

A friend recently told me the tragic story of a young woman who was brutally beaten and raped. Though she lived, she is now beset by nightmares, severe emotional trauma, and stress. And some weeks after her assault, she discovered that as a result of the rape, she was pregnant.

This young woman is a Christian, opposed to abortion. Yet the violence of her attack was destroying her. She sought pastoral counseling, and then, sincerely believing she could not emotionally survive the pregnancy, made the anguished decision to abort.

On the appointed morning, she miserably made her way to an abortion clinic. There she encountered a group of protesting Christians, who, as she walked slowly toward the clinic doors, pointed and shouted angrily at her across the barricade: “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”

Those shouts of hate did nothing to change the girl’s decision. They did, however, rub salt into her raw wounds.

Let me paint another picture, this from a friend in Michigan. Ann serves on the board of a pregnancy-counseling center offering alternatives to abortion. One Saturday their center was picketed by University of Michigan students representing an abortion-rights group. Among them were a number of lesbians asserting a woman’s right to control her own body. The Christians and the militant homosexuals had little common ground. Television camera crews stood by to record whatever transpired.

But the confrontation did not degenerate into a shouting match. Nor did Ann and her friends huddle inside their fortress, afraid to engage the world. Instead, one of Ann’s colleagues suggested that they meet the demonstrators outside with trays of food. Says Ann, “This was either the worst idea I had ever heard or an inspiration straight from the Holy Spirit.”

As they emerged from the doors of their center, trays of donuts and Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee in hand, the newspeople and students stared in disbelief. “We wanted to show the demonstrators that we cared about them, that we weren’t afraid to talk to them, and that we were willing to answer any question they might have,” says Ann. “We wanted to respond in love rather than in fear or anger.”

It would be lovely to end the story by reporting that as a result of the dialogue the camera crews came to Christ and the pickets renounced their proabortion views, but that didn’t happen. This time. “I doubt we changed anyone’s mind, but I think we succeeded, by the grace of God, to love the opposition,” Ann concludes.

But, I believe, in that act those homosexual pickets could not help seeing in that group of Ann Arbor Christians, perhaps for the first time in their lives, the love of Jesus Christ.

Two attitudes, two strategies. We can shout, “Murderer!” or we can serve coffee. These are symbols of the choice before us, and our choice determines our witness. A broken world will see either our faces twisted in hate and anger or the face of Christ, listening, serving, speaking the truth in love.

The consequences of that choice go beyond even the saving of innocent lives.

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Charles Colson