“I’m sorry I can’t take you into our new church parlor,” said a pastor to a longtime college classmate, “but there’s only one key. The women raised the money for this room and bought the furnishings-and the president of our church women’s organization has the only key. If you stand over here, however, you can see part of the inside of the room through this window. They did a tremendous job of decorating and furnishing it, and it’s the most attractive room in the whole building.”
This image of the pastor standing on tiptoes to see the church parlor could be someone’s idea for a cartoon, except that it is a true story told in Lyie Schaller’s book, The Pastor and the People in the chapter, ‘”Who’s in Charge Here?” An apt question. Who does run the church? Who should have the authority and power? LEADERSHIP research confirms that “fuzzy” conceptions of authority and power are the seedbed for major conflicts within the church.
Editor Paul Robbins and Publisher Harold Myra met at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport with William Enright, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois; Ezra Earl Jones, Associate General Secretary for The United Methodist Church General Council on Ministries, Dayton, Ohio; Haddon Robinson, President of Denver Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado; and Ted Engstrom, Executive Vice President of World Vision, Monrovia, California, to discuss this complex subject.
Gordon MacDonald, Pastor of Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts, was also invited to participate. The evening before this forum was scheduled, a tragedy struck one of his church families and he elected to stay with the family members-certainly the right priority under the circumstances, forums are an adventure. They make it possible to travel the main thoroughfares as well as some of the more interesting back roads. We have not edited much out of the original material; instead, we have chosen to let the nature of the subject and the perspectives of the participants determine the direction and pace of the discussion.
Paul Robbins: What do you see as the difference between power and authority?
Haddon Robinson: You have to make some distinction between the formal structure—say someone who has the office of a pastor—and the power that person may have in a church. There is a power of the office and a power of the person, but often the office is what gives a person the chance to be a leader and to exert power.
A pastor or a staff member doesn’t recognize it, he has problems right away.
Bill Enright: I agree. Authority is a matter of structure, but power is a matter of sociological elements—relationship, history, traditions, influences. . . . For instance, in our church polity, which is Presbyterian, it is the session that has the authority. A lawyer friend of mine sits on a church session. There is a conflict in his church because, as he told me, “What I’ve discovered is that in our church it’s the trustees who have the influence. The session tends to be composed of younger and newer Earl Jones: The way I like to think of how power and authority relate to each other is to imagine an iceberg—the formal power structures are the tip of the iceberg that we see, and the informal are those beneath the surface, made up of many intertwined and diverse patterns of relationships and needs. People think the diagram of a church organization is the structure, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. I think you’re right that some people have power only because they hold office, while others holding office have no power at all because they can’t bring the relationships together.
Ted Engstrom: You know, the notes that I prepared for this meeting parallel exactly what you have just said! We wrote a Christian Leadership letter a couple months back using the illustration of an iceberg and the fact that the real power is the informal part of the structure. The formal—the one eighth above the water—reveals little danger. The peril lies below the surface. The leader must recognize who has the power. Very often it isn’t the chairman of the board of trustees!
If you want an illustration, I know of a church where nothing really happens until it goes past the eyes of one particular woman and she gives her nod of approval. I’m glad she loves the Lord with all of her heart, otherwise there would be a problem. She’s been there a long time, and she’s a very wonderful woman, but boy, she’s got power—and if a people; they have the authority to make the decisions, but it’s the trustees who have the wealth, the influence, the longevity, and the status, so they control the purse strings.”
Robinson: It’s interesting you say that. In Baptist polity you have a pastor and a board of deacons, and then you have a board of trustees. Deacons are often chosen according to biblical principles. Trustees may be chosen because they are good businessmen—so you get the board of deacons with noble ambitions, and then you have the sharp-pencil boys who tell them they can’t do it. The power resides with those chosen on the basis of money and business connections.
Engstrom: That’s true in Congregational churches, too.
Robbins: Most of us know Lyie Schaller as a highly respected parish consultant and the author of many books about the local church. Last week he mentioned that in his opinion, people with wealth have a diminishing influence upon the church as compared to fifty years ago.
Engstrom: I disagree. I guess I’m speaking out of pragmatic experience from the churches I visit. It’s unfortunate. Undoubtedly people feel those who have made it in the marketplace have more of every- thing to contribute. In a Congregationalist meeting, if there are three people who want the floor—an older woman, some young university student, or the town banker and philanthropist—you know who the chairman generally will ask first to speak. “You know, we don’t want to offend our brother— because we really need his help.” This kind of influence is often unconscious instead of deliberate.
Robinson: I agree it’s often unconscious. In a culture that didn’t spell success with dollar signs, I doubt if you’d get as many people buying themselves into power. Money is the proof that you have made it in our culture, and therefore you ought to be listened to and therefore you have power.
Enright: I wonder if Lyie isn’t referring to a generational difference. One board I serve on, not a religious one, is based on what one philanthropist will do. The older group on the board builds everything around this one person. They will even name streets after him. Among the younger members there’s a decided shift taking place. Maybe the influence of big-money clout is diminishing somewhat.
However, the money of the masses exercises clout, too. In another church I know, people are saying, “Well, you know the only way we can get rid of our pastor is not to give.” Thus stewardship is way down. They hope they will have to cut his salary and he will get the message and leave.
Jones: I guess what I see is very complex. People admire success—especially those people they consider to be successful and indispensable to the fabric of the community—doctors, lawyers, judges, the school superintendent, the president of a university. Those people “have an edge” in any meeting they’re in. Many tend to have money, but not necessarily so. The school superintendent may have a lot of respect and some power in a group, but it’s not necessarily because of money.
It’s hard to think of “the successful people” in evangelicalism without associating them with big projects. Millions of dollars for television, millions of dollars for a building. . . . On a Sunday morning we may think of that faithful brother or sister who’s in a small town, working at a small church, but the really “successful ones” are those “God is blessing with great abundance.” But if the budget isn’t made one year, there are questions raised about how God is using him or not using him. Money has its influence.
Harold Myra: How do you relate that to the statement in James about the rich man coming into church? Are we all in a sense bankrupt spiritually on that point? Do we ignore that?
Robinson: I think we admire James. We think, “That’s a very good point James is making.” But when the wealthy individual comes in with the gold ring, we respond to it. It has more to do with the standard of success in a materialistic culture. You figure, to make it in business, you must be shrewd, you must be energetic, you must be working, and money is the proof. If you happen to be poor, that’s often equated with being lazy and indolent. We want a successful church and that means we have to have smart people who’ll make it and not go bankrupt.
Enright: I assume it was a problem in James’ day or he wouldn’t have mentioned it. (Laughter)
Robbins: Help me get a handle on the problems of power and polity. There’s a mixture of church organizational systems. Each has certain advantages, certain disadvantages. . . .
Robinson: I think Robinson’s law is: the guy in the other system has a better system than I have. He has freedom to do what I can’t do.
Enright: It’s interesting that we have all three systems represented here.
Robbing: Could we let each person speak about his own system?
Engstrom: I’m part of a very large, influential, evangelical church of 3,500 members. For 80 years we’ve had a congregational form of government, and for the past ten years we have seen, for us, that the congregational form of government is almost impossible to live with. So for ten years we have been trying to change the structure at the request of the pastor and some leading lay persons. It has been a very, very intense struggle because of the fear that the senior pastor would ultimately have too much power. He can be the shepherd, but he “dare not really be. the leader because this is a lay-led church.” I was chairman of the committee called “Action ’70” which was designed to restructure this whole thing. And I’ve got bruises that are still with me today from leading that taskforce. Yet now in 1980, what we wanted in 1970 is quietly coming to pass.
There is no one structure that’s ideal. Today the church needs to be particularly mobile, ready to adjust itself to the times and personality. The personality of leadership and a congregation changes. You don’t have the same behavioral pattern today as you did ten years ago or in the ’60s.
Robinson: I think the Baptist polity favors the pastor of a church. If he’s a good preacher or a good platform man, at a time of conflict with the board he can take the matter directly to the congregation and will usually carry the congregation with him. The pastor who is effective as a communicator has great power in a congregational government. Those who are in positions of leadership with him—say a board of deacons—know that, and they will back down, as compared to polities where that group alone will make the decisions and implement them. Maybe that’s why Baptist churches have a reputation for having more fights, because the pastor can openly take matters to the larger group and win.
Robbins: What are the disadvantages of the congregational structure?
Robinson: One is that everyone has one vote per member, and therefore you’re assuming that all of them have spiritual maturity and insight, as compared to a board of elders who should be chosen for their spiritual maturity and therefore are generally better qualified to make many of the decisions.
Enright: In the Presbyterian church we have the best and the worst of both worlds. If I were the pastor reading this I’d wonder, “How can I take all of these comments about power and authority and utilize them effectively in my own church?” I don’t see power as bad, but power is frightening. What matters to me is how that power is harnessed. How it is utilized. We can utilize it for the effective mission of the church or we can manipulate it and let it revolve around ourselves. As Presbyterians, we talk about having a representative form of government, but built into our system historically and by practice is a lot of Congregationalism. And that can be both good and bad. I know of one Presbyterian pastor who makes certain that no one sits on the session who disagrees with him. Now, I suppose the positive effect is that the church has a singular focus with the pastor at the helm giving leadership. You can be certain there will be commitment to whatever the thrust is going to be. But if that session were to be representative of the congregation, then in my judgment, it ought to reflect the diversity of opinion, the various power structures. All structures ought to be represented, which makes the session a forum for very intense dialogue- which can lead to disagreements, to inertia, to inaction, or it can lead to great creativity!
Jones: The Methodist polity is generally referred to as a connectionalism, which goes back to the time of John Wesley and his successors in America, Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke. They clearly maintained that the authority for the ministry of the church rested in Wesley, originally, and then in those whom he designated. To be in connection with the Methodist church meant you were in connection with Wesley. He sent you out-with goals and criteria by which you would be judged. Every year you came back to what was called the Annual Conference to give an accounting: How many new churches did you start? How many people did you bring to Christ? On and on and on.
Today the Annual Conference continues to exist. It sends pastors out. The bishop, successor to Wesley, has the authority and the power to say to any minister, “You will go there.” But today the bishop cannot do that without first consulting the local congregation and saying, “Will you take this person?” If they say, “No,” he can still appoint that person there; but at least the congregation has a voice. If you go back a hundred years or more, the United Methodist pastor clearly understood that his authority came from the Annual Conference and he was appointed pastor in charge of a congregation. Today, the Methodist pastor is caught in the middle; not sure whether he is responsible primarily to the Conference or the local congregation. It seems to me, that with the emphasis upon collaborative styles of leadership, the Methodist pastor will come to see the congregation as the primary unit to whom he or she is responsible. But most Methodist pastors have not yet come to that point. We have moved from the connectional polity more toward the congregational polity; we’re a hybrid now.
Engstrom: I have a question. A week ago Sunday I preached in a large United Methodist church. The pastor had been there for 21 years. I said to him, “How in the world can you, a Methodist minister, serve one congregation for 21 years? What does the bishop say?” He kind of smiled and said, “They ignore me now. The congregation wants me and I want this, and it is now a routine appointment at Annual Conference.” Is this increasingly true in the Methodist church?
Jones: Yes. If everything is okay, you leave it alone.
Engstrom: Is that good?
Jones: It’s good in that it’s extending the tenure of pastors, and that needed to take place. But now we are not sure who has the power in the organization-it’s so diffused we don’t know how to handle it.
Engstrom: Is that a struggle in your quadrennial meeting?
Jones: Yes, very definitely.
Enright: An interesting thing about Presbyterians: traditionally pastors have been called teaching elders, and the members of the session have been called ruling elders. If you technically go by the book of order, the ruling elders have the responsibility for absolutely everything in the local congregation except to tell the pastor what he is to preach when he enters the pulpit. Now technically that doesn’t always work out. . . .
Robinson: That leads to a question. Earl touched on it. We live in a day of collaborative styles. One result of this is that you lead from the middle rather than from the front. What you do is reflect the opinions of the congregation and then move in the way that the congregation wants to go. However, if I sense a biblical pattern, you would find that the leadership is given to spiritual people who are to decide, to have the oversight of the church, and they lead from the front. A first-year student who is paying tuition at our seminary may have an opinion about whether we ought to have Hebrew or not. We may say to the student, “We respect your opinion, but no first-year student can make that decision.” He is not qualified to make it. Many people today who are called church leaders are merely sounders of opinion and follow the lead of the congregation. I’d question whether that’s leadership or merely an executive style.
Engstrom: I love your phrase, “leading from the middle.” It’s so descriptive of the passive type of leadership we have today. I firmly agree with Had-don that leadership must be of the Lord. Spiritual leadership must find its way up front. I see an untenable position when you lead from the middle. The pressures come from all sides. Many pastors may find themselves trapped between congregation and board or the denominational hierarchy. Unless they get out of that trap, they’re in for some serious problems. A man may think he is leading, but actually he is trapped in the middle.
Robinson: That’s the problem. He has the office of a leader, but he is not functioning as a leader.
Jones: Basically I see three leadership roles in the congregation. One relates to efficient operation- someone has to see that the organization functions. The second role is to bring people together in proper relationships where they have the opportunity to relate to one another and be a fellowship. The third is authentic spiritual development. Now it seems to me the pastor has authority in any of our polities to provide authentic spiritual development. But the church seldom gets to the point of making conscious decisions in this realm because we begin with how we’ll structure the church, whether we’ll do it in small groups, how many Sunday school classes we’ll have, or who will be the teachers. It seems to me it’s in the first two areas of leadership that laity should make the decisions-and sometimes do in all three of our polities.
Engstrom: Except that in the seminars I conduct, the question invariably comes up regarding the “superchurches” and the “superpastors” who have a rather dictatorial stance.This is a big problem pastors face. They ask, “Should I model my ministry after Pastor X? Is that a valid ministry for my situation?” People come to me and say, “Have you heard what’s happening over at Church Y?” There’s that overshadowing superchurch syndrome that is so threatening to many effective pastors who wonder if they should change their leadership style. They think, “Maybe I could have a superchurch if I became more of a dictator type and let those who want to get off the wagon fall off. Maybe I should say, ‘We’re going to go this way, boys! You follow me, as I follow Christ.’ ” How can a pastor not be threatened when people by inference say, “How come we don’t have a church like that one over there? Isn’t God blessing us?”
Myra: What do you say, Ted, to those who bring you these questions?
Engstrom: Well, I don’t believe God calls everyone to be a superpastor of a superchurch by any means! I don’t think that’s God’s evaluation of success. God rewards faithfulness. When God picks us as individuals it’s terribly important that we perform at the peak of our ability in that particular situation. The bottom line is, it’s up to God to give the increase. Thank God for those he blesses with multitudes, but thank God for that pastor who ministers faithfully to what may be a smaller group or in a very difficult situation. The temptation for all of us is to look at the other person. We have a horizontal look most of the time, and we’ve got to look vertically and ask, “What is God saying to me and how does he view what I’m doing?”
Enright: Sometimes the Peter principle is very much at work in the church. We continue to push people “upstairs” until they become ineffective, even though some of the best ministry is being done by people in small churches. Some small church pastors are the most effective because they are secure . . . they don’t have to play the “numbers game.”
Robinson: I would agree that large churches aren’t necessarily good and small churches aren’t necessarily bad. However, in some of our circles there’s the flipside of that-the idea that small churches are de facto spiritual and big churches are unspiritual. One is as much a falsehood as the other. In fact, sometimes we can develop a theology for failure! We have all kinds of reasons why our churches are small-you know, “where two or three are gathered together in my name . . .” Regarding polity, effective leaders can be successful in any polity and ineffective leaders can fail in any polity. The quality and characteristics of the person are the key. Some polities may make it easier for certain personalities to operate more effectively than in others, but you can have good people operating well in any polity.
Jones: I agree. If you don’t have the right leadership, polity doesn’t really matter. Yet the greatest asset of the Methodist connectional system-that churches always have pastors-may also be its greatest weakness. We take one pastor out, we put another one in, and there’s no waiting or searching. However, we subsidize incompetency and ineffectiveness because once you’re in the union, unless you do something morally wrong and get caught, you stay in the union. We have a minimum salary that will subsidize you. If you can’t make it in one church, we keep dropping you down the line, but you still have a minimum salary.
Robbins: Let’s move back to the subject of power. All kinds of groups and individuals can have power in the church. John Wanamaker of Philadelphia wanted to be remembered as the superintendent of America’s largest Sunday school more than as a successful merchant. Few remember the names of the pastors of Euclid Baptist Church, but many know J. D. Rockefeller was the Sunday school superintendent. Does this say that power is centered in personality?
Enright: I wonder if a great deal of the inertia in the church is not caused by the fact that many of us do lead from the middle, whereas the more powerful personality gets the job done.
Robinson: After you look at some of the studies about communications theory and leadership, you understand that it’s hard to define the essence of leadership. The one thing that comes through is that being at the center of communication gives a person leadership. If you seat five people in a row and the third person in gets to pass messages up and down the row, he may be a Casper Milquetoast, but if the messages have to go through him, he is recognized as a leader.
In most churches, if a pastor is an effective communicator and articulates to the congregation what that church is to be about, one of two things will happen. One, they will get rid of him-they will find that his preaching doesn’t match what they want. Or, two, he will surround himself with people who share his vision and they will move forward with him.
There are pastors who cannot preach, but I think a “preacher” who can’t preach is like a clock that doesn’t run. It’s called a clock, but it isn’t functioning. A preacher who can’t preach has tremendous disadvantages in most of our Protestant churches. The man who can preach has the tremendous advantage of being able to stand before his congregation and articulate to them what they ought to be about and where they ought to be going. Before long he’ll be surrounded with people who share his vision. The better a communicator he is, the stronger his position will be.
Engstrom: If we were to say among ourselves, “Let’s name the ten best-known preachers in America,” it wouldn’t be hard. We’d at least come to agreement on five out of the ten. They’d be the public personalities who can preach and who have large followings. Now what is that saying to the pastor, in Ashtabula, Ohio, who keeps slugging away?
Robinson: It says you’d better learn to preach! I think if you put a man in the leadership of a Protestant church and he cannot preach, he has a tremendous disadvantage.
Engstrom: What do you say to the person who’s been through seminary, who has already spent ten years in a local church, but can hardly struggle through a Sunday sermon? How do you help that person?
Robinson: Anyone with a good mind can at least be clear and relevant. As I would say to a person in an executive position, you need to go back and get the kind of training you need-and that training is available. If you don’t do it, you’re going to struggle for the rest of your life. Preaching gets downgraded. I have known men who, if you followed the way they ran a church and wrote it up, then did exactly the opposite, you’d be doing the right thing! They run the church horribly, but they can preach. People come on Sunday for that hour from 11 to 12 because it is exciting, interesting, and contributive. He may foul it up for the rest of the week, but they don’t want to lose him. They don’t want to be bored.
Engstrom: Could the person who needs help read and absorb excellent sermons and model a style after some of the great preachers? Would Spurgeon, for instance, be a help?
Enright: I doubt it.
Robinson: Spurgeon spoke to another age. The pastor better get a model from someone who’s speaking to this day, to this culture.
Myra: Who’s the model? Thielicke?
Robinson: Yes, Thielicke brings great thought to his sermons. He’s not an easy man to outline; he has a different process of thought. For a man starting from the bottom that would be tough. I think it would be better to go back to a basic speech text and learn the fundamentals of good speaking and good outlining.
Enright: In preaching I see two things. One is what I hear Haddon saying, that too many ministers do not make it a priority. Two, I would like to free preachers to be themselves. I like the classic definition, “Preaching is truth through personality.” There are many different styles. Too often when pastors enter the pulpit they become someone other than the persons we know during the week. They need to take their personality-that is unique to them-and let it be their strength, and then speak with clarity and simplicity.
Robinson: I agree. There’s a danger, though- the feeling that “I’m me and therefore you must accept me as me.” That can become perverted to allow for me at my worst.
Myra: Speaking as a writer, there are many similarities between learning how to write a good article and learning how to preach a good sermon. I agree with Haddon. You have to get the basics- very specific things like not using inactive verbs or tangled sentences. Yet models are also helpful. You learn a rhythm and style which eventually become your own Enright: To me, a good speaker is first a good writer.
Engstrom: I’ll buy that.
Myra: Do you like the idea that a lot of pastors these days are writing out their sermons?
Enright: I think they have to. They need the discipline-organizing their thoughts and developing good sentence structure. However, when they stand in a pulpit, I would like to see them put the manuscript down and communicate!
Engstrom: My guess is that more than 50 percent of the preachers today never once write out a sermon.
Myra: Let’s tell them to get Elements of Style by Strunk and White, which is excellent as a primer for writing. It’s an inexpensive paperback widely available. Even the experienced could be greatly helped by it.
Robbins: Along this line of preparation, one of the best communicators I know, although he’s been preaching for 25 years, goes into the empty sanctuary on Saturday night and preaches his sermon through twice to the empty pews so he can stand up Sunday morning without a note. He has built a strong pulpit ministry because of this kind of rigorous discipline in preaching.
Engstrom: A pastor I know goes into his sanctuary on Saturday night and walks up and down the aisles and puts his hands on each pew and says, “Lord, I know that the Jones family will be here tomorrow and here’s where they usually sit. Make the message meaningful for them.” He moves to another pew. “I don’t know who will be seated in this corner, but whoever it is. Lord, speak to that heart.” And he prays for an hour and a half as he walks through the empty auditorium. Then he asks the Lord to give him a word to touch those people.
Robinson: Even though there are a lot of jokes about it, many ministers use Saturday night to prepare their sermons. One of the large denominations noted for its educated clergy surveyed its ministers and found that they spent about four hours a week preparing their sermons, and most of them waited until Saturday to do it! That was their regular habit. Nothing significant can come out of your mouth unless something significant starts in your head. That goes back to the whole priority of what the minister is about. A person who preaches poorly fits into a cycle-he will spend less and less time in preparation and more and more time on other things, and so he tends to decrease his emphasis on preaching.
Robbins: Sunday comes every seven days. Robinson: Sunday comes every three days!
Enright: I figure you have to spend one hour of study for every minute you plan to preach.
Robinson: A couple years ago I wrote to a number of people who were noted as good preachers. The figure I came up with was twenty minutes in the study for every minute in the pulpit. I think that’s a minimum. If you can do it in less time than that, you’re something of a genius.
Robbins: Bill, you’re saying sixty minutes to one.
Enright: I’m saying sixty to one.
Myra: How can you do that in your situation? You have a large church and staff, and I’ve heard you’re a good administrator. How can you do both?
Enright: I don’t always spend an hour for every minute; but I am less of a preacher-and a diminished person-when that does not happen. To me it’s a priority. I must block off a large chunk of time for sermon preparation. For example, I will leave the office tomorrow afternoon and I won’t be back until Saturday morning.
Myra: How do you feel then about giving three sermons a week? Many pastors preach Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday. You’re saying Sunday morning takes a little more. . . .
Enright: Yes, to me, Sunday morning is the focus. I don’t usually preach three times a week, but when I do, I use another style, not completely extemporaneous, but not as highly polished. By the way, to me, a big gap in preaching is that final effort. We have to take the message and internalize it. It has to pass through us so that it touches our lives before the Word flows out of us. I find that most preachers, and particularly young preachers, do not make the final polishing effort to really let the Word filter through their own lives.
Robinson: It’s vital. I’ve seen congregations and boards thwart pastors on issues like Sunday school or visitation when the real problem was they were bored with his preaching! Yet they didn’t know how to come to grips with it. If a member says, “You’re a dull, boring, insipid preacher,” there’s an insult factor, and they feel like they’re touching God’s anointed or something. So they attack him with fringe issues, and he thinks, “If I solve the problem they’re attacking I will have solved my problem.” But he’ll find there are new problems.
Jones: It’s impossible to preach well if you don’t know your people. You can’t even pray for them because you don’t know what to pray for. But another reason we’re getting weak preaching is that a lot of preachers don’t read. Don’t read anything’. In terms of reading books of sermons, they only read them to get one to rehash and repreach.
Another thing I sense among the clergy in the last decade is a need to be more passive, to move away from an authoritarian leadership. They’re moving all the way over to whatever’s at the other extreme-laissez faire leadership. That carries over into the pulpit; they don’t want to come through with force and power.
Robbins: Isn’t this a cultural carryover? In the last two decades there’s been a swing away from anything authoritarian; authority figures are people who lie, tape conversations in oval offices, love the ruffles and flourishes, promise anything to get into office-but they never deliver. Pastors want to disassociate themselves from that imagery because the laity may be suspicious of anyone who comes on as the king, the dictator, the leader who is forcefully decisive. Is there anything to this?
Jones: I think so.
Robinson: I also think it comes out of the fact that when a man preaches he reveals himself, and if he does not reveal himself, he has in fact revealed himself.
Myra: Well put!
Robinson: You get a knowledge of how he thinks by his preaching. You get a knowledge of his personal life. You get a sense of his empathy. If a pastor’s not thinking clearly or not relating to the people, he diminishes his power with them every time he preaches. I think a lot of men coming out of seminary end up preaching to their professors rather than to their people. They talk about the great issues that no one gives a rap about.
Enright: A theological lecture instead of a sermon.
Jones: I want to give you an example. There’s a little book put out by the Alban Institute called Learning to Share This Ministry. It’s about an Episcopal church in Washington, D.C., where the pastor wanted to take a six-month sabbatical. He said to his vestry, “I want to go away for six months and I’d like you to give me permission. I’d also like you to help me decide how we should cover the duties of the church while I am gone.” “Well,” they said, “you deserve a sabbatical. But we don’t want you to bring in another rector. We lay people will take care of all your responsibilities. We’ll divide them up in such a way that no one will have too much.”
Well, he took his sabbatical. About four or five months into the experiment, as I remember, the lay people began to do an evaluation. Everyone had been doing their job, but there were two things that weren’t right. One, no one had the overview of the church because no one person had responsibility for the overview. Two, they said, “Without the pastor, there’s no one there to represent God for us.”
Now my comment on this is, woe to the pastor who doesn’t recognize how often the people in the pew see God in his person-because he is in the role of relating them to God. Woe also to that pastor who starts thinking he is God, and encourages people to think that he is. The pastor in the pulpit has the greatest opportunity and responsibility to relate people to God. That personality-that total person-is automatically a part of it.
Enright: You’re saying you cannot separate preaching from pastoral care and vice versa. Sometimes we equate great preaching with being a great evangelist, and we fail to see how interrelated preaching is with pastoral care. Incidentally, Helmut Thielicke’s book The Trouble With the Church is very incisive on these topics. Engstrom: Building on that, in our congregation we’ve been recognizing that God is the audience, and the pastor, choir, and the congregation are all participants. Everything is vertical, and the pastor dare not get in the way or between the congregation and the “Audience,” but lead the congregation to the “Audience.”
Jones: I like that.
Robinson: That’s the tough part of preaching- to get people past you to God, and God past you to the people.
Engstrom: This is all good, but I’m concerned that we’re talking only about preaching. If that’s all, we’ve missed it. What else makes for pressures upon the pastor? Where does he put his priorities? We’ve said if he can’t preach, he ought not to be a preacher. But there are other things that enter in also.
Robbins: Good caution. Who’d like to respond?
Jones: The greatest attribute a minister can have is to be a good listener. We clergy have difficulty listening because we have the stories to tell. But lay persons have stories that they would also love to tell. I guess where I worry most about the church of Jesus Christ is, do we give people the opportunity to tell their stories?
Engstrom: The answer is no, isn’t it?
Jones: I’m afraid so. I’m beginning to be conscious, with fewer nuclear families and more singles, of the number of people who have no one who really cares enough about them to listen to anything they might want to say.
Engstrom: One of the most gifted preachers I know told me some years ago, that he didn’t like people. He said, “Oh, if I could only preach and not be with people.” I said to him, “Buddy, how is that possible? How in the world can you preach effectively if you don’t like people?” He said, “I don’t know, but I have the gift of preaching. When I’m through on Sundays, man, I want to get out on the golf course or I love to go to my study and read, but just don’t lock me in with people.” I couldn’t understand that. It seems to me that a successful pastor has to have a deep love for people. He has to enjoy them.
Enright: It would be interesting to know the age of that preacher and whether he would be as effective a communicator today as he may have been fifteen or twenty years ago.
Engstrom: Well, I can tell you. Then he was 45, now he’s 60. He’s no longer a pastor. He’s a radio preacher! (laughter)
Robinson: There are some preachers who, when they speak over the radio project to people like themselves. It would be a mistake to say that these people are not effective or successful, even in spiritual terms. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, some of these people are like barbed-wire, but they have an effective ministry to people’s lives. For instance, some of these preachers wrestle with intellectual problems and preach on a solid, intellectual level. A listener who has been struggling in this area is helped. There are various kinds of preachers who have a kind of dialogue with themselves that others overhear and they say, “Yeah, that’s where I am.” How they can do it without relating to people, I don’t know.
Engstrom: I think of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a magnificent preacher. People loved to sit under his preaching at Westminster Chapel, but to have a personal relationship with him was difficult. How do you put that together?
Robinson: Barnhouse used to tell this story on himself. A man came up to him after a service. Barnhouse said to him, “Are you new here?” The man said, “I’ve been on your board for ten years!” Barnhouse could publicly talk about how difficult it was for him to relate one on one.
Enright: The pulpit can change people when they climb into it. James Stewart by nature is a very shy, retiring person, yet what a dynamo when he steps into the pulpit!
Robinson: Many of these men you are talking about know the Scriptures well. What they possess is an authority that comes from the Scriptures, and when they preach, they preach with that authority. When they get into personal relationships-and at that point they’re into a bantering about life-they are ill at ease, because they do not have that authority …
Jones: You’re probably talking only about people on the television or radio . . . No? You’re talking about pastors?
Robinson: I’m talking about pastors! Men whc have an influence in a city through their loca churches.
Jones: Are those kind of people making it today What I was hearing earlier-what I was really iden tifying with was that 15 or 20 years ago the pu] piteer could make it that way. You can’t do that an more.
Enright: I think we look for an authenticity i style that shows a congruity between the person v find in the pulpit, the person we meet in the hosp tal, and the person we see in the study.
Robbins: Coming back to Ted’s question abo listening . . . isn’t it true that in a university settii you can find a brilliant teacher who has worked i a masterful set of lectures and can razzle-dazzle t student without ever listening to the student? ^ Students tend to flock around and learn more fron professor who has a sharp ear, who listens to what they say, who picks up the nuances of the questions, who dialogues with them, who fits the material to where the student is. Wouldn’t that same dynamic be true of the pastor?
Robinson: I’d like to file a minority report here. I’m not sure that’s true. When you get into a larger congregation, the major interaction people have with the pastor comes when he is preaching. For instance, I do not see my pastor from one end of the week to the other. That’s my problem-I’m busy. But on a Sunday morning, if he speaks to a felt need and ministers to me, I am benefited by it. At the university today there is a greater emphasis on the large lecture than there was five, six, seven years ago. People today wrestle with all kinds of problems. They’re looking for a helpful word from God The kind of person you’re talking about. Earl, the person alone, needing an ear, may need to be helped by other ministries of the church.
There are preachers who are intuitive about people. They don’t spend a lot of time with people, but they know people. It’s a mystery-I don’t know where it comes from. But their preaching is effective.
One reason we fail with our preaching is that if someone asks, “Why are you preaching that sermon?” the answer too often is, “It’s 11:25 and I’m expected to fill the time until 12.” Or, “I was in Galatians 3 last week, I’m in Galatians 4 this week.” We seldom ask, “How do I expect people to change as a result of this sermon?” It catches me often in the middle of a message that I don’t know why I’m preaching this. I started out with a scriptural pas-sage, but I don’t have a clear expectation of the good work God wants it to do in the listeners. This tends to flatten my preaching when I don’t preach for that sense of response.
Enright: There’s a human element to sermons which reach out. There’s something universal about that humanness which the pastor has to be able to touch. In my judgment, that human element comes from pastoral care. Granted, in some of the large superchurches that doesn’t happen, but even there, the pastor is in touch with the human element at some point in his pastoral ministry.
Myra: I find all this fascinating in light of the iceberg illustration. I’m hearing that the power of preaching is a major force throughout. I haven’t thought in these terms before, and you’ve helped me a lot. A pastor, then, has not only the authority base but a major power position through his preaching.
Yet, how does he relate to all these other vectors of power? I look at it from a corporate standpoint and ask myself, “If no one worked for me, yet everyone sort of worked for me and I were responsible, how would I function? Where is the line between being a dictator-where you just grab hold of it all-and leading weakly from the middle?”
Enright: I have a note here to myself about the power and personality of the charismatic leader, the dynamic preacher. What bothers me-and I have seen it-is that once that person leaves a congregation, the congregation often disintegrates. Should there not be a sense in which power and authority should find its roots in the whole spectrum of the congregation?
Robinson: The average pastor suffers from vocational amnesia. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be about, so he tries to do everything. He must develop other leaders or he will not have the time to listen and preach. It’s essential for his own personal life; yet there’s always a risk in letting other people share that position. But no one can serve all of the different ministries in the church.
I have been wondering whether the earlier statement about John Wanamaker as the superintendent of America’s largest Sunday school was positive or negative. I gathered it was negative.
Myra: I think it was just a description of power vectors.
Robinson: On the one ,hand, I think it’s great that John Wanamaker wanted to be remembered for that instead of the fact he sold dry goods.
Engstrom: I agree. One of the things I sense in talking to ministers-from Catholic priests to Pentecostal preachers-is that they say to me, “Look, my time is not my own. I don’t belong to myself. I’ve given myself to my flock, my congregation, and they feel they own me. They own the hours of my day. They feel that they can break in on me where they wouldn’t break in on the dentist or the doctor without an appointment. They break in on my family. They break in on my dinner hour. By action and attitude they say that they own me.”
The struggle they go through is, “How do I become the man of God I know I should be? My personal life suffers, my family life suffers, my devotional life suffers. I struggle to get the time to prepare.” And I guarantee you, gentlemen, lay persons do not understand the pressures of time on the pastor. They think, “Boy! He spends three hours preparing a sermon. He takes a night and does his calling, spends Wednesday afternoons playing some golf, and then he goes to Rotary.”
Robinson: People say, “Preachers don’t get paid much, but you can’t beat the hours!”
Engstrom: This is a very real issue with preachers of both small and large congregations.
Myra: Is this brought up in session meetings, in board meetings? Is this defined and dealt with?
Enright: Yes, in the sense that in the Presbyterian church the pastor usually has a job description. Frequently the session has a personnel committee that provides pastoral care for the pastor. You know, “Where do you hurt? What are you wrestling with? What do you need that’s not being provided?”
Myra: That’s beautiful!
Enright: This is a great arrangement for me. I appreciate their care and counsel, and I welcome criticism from them. However, I find it is difficult for many lay people to critique their pastor.
Robbins: Doesn’t the pastor need a personal support group within the church to maintain his own personal equilibrium? How can he create this group without causing jealousy, strife, and competition?
Engstrom: Yes, he has to have a group who will understand him, pray with him, counsel him and be-as Bill has indicated-a kind of critic when necessary. If he tells the church that for a period of time he’s asked these men and women to be his accountability group, most congregations would understand and accept that. I don’t think they should be a group locked in for life. I’ve personally been this to our pastor as a part of a group, and I’ve found it tremendously rewarding. We meet for breakfast the second and fourth Friday mornings of each month and just talk candidly about the things that affect the style and life of the pastor.
Myra: This is a different group from the board or any other official group?
Engstrom: This is part of the unofficial, informal power structure.
Robbins: Is that preferred over trying to build a support group from the authority structure?
Engstrom: I don’t know.
Enright: I like that model. I think it’s a model with real potential. I would hope that in the group would be not only people who have the same perspective as the pastor, but people with a diversity of viewpoint.
Robinson: That’s his danger . . . listening to the near voices. All the people close to him “Amen” what he is doing. But how do you get to that person in the last row, who slips in and slips out, to discover his perspective?
I’d like to discuss, as we move along, the topic of power through intimidation. I’ve discovered that it’s a tough old game they play out there-especially when you talk about threats of resignation and spiritualizing the situation. Some pastors play the game very well-and certain laypersons have great power because they know just when to lay on the cliche. They know when to say, “If we’re not going to be people of faith, what are we going to be?” Or when they blow it they say, “You know, God must be testing me or disciplining us,” rather than, “I made a mistake.” There’s nothing quite as devastating as when someone says, “As I listen to you preach. God does not speak through you.”
Jones: Or, “I don’t hear the Gospel.”
Robinson: “I don’t hear the Gospel.” That’s right. And you know, it sounds like it’s very concrete; but you try to come to grips with it and it’s like packaging fog. But the intimidation factor is there. Or they ask, “If you’re not visiting, what are you doing?”
Robbins: Intimidation can be quite subtle. I recently heard someone say, “You know, a group of us have decided to get together every Monday morning at 6 to pray for our pastor.” You have no idea what they really mean … it sounds so supportive, and yet there’s that edge. . . .
Engstrom: They say, “Pastor, five of us are going to have lunch again Thursday.”
Robbins: It’s been said that the stronger the program element, the more difficult it is to handle. For instance, the stronger the Sunday school, the more difficult it is for the leadership to deal with. It tends to “strike out on its own.” A strong music program tries to take over the public services. How much do pastors struggle with this?
Robinson: If the Sunday school program is extremely successful, it has power. If people are coming to church because of the music program, it gives a power base to whomever is involved.
Myra: Is it wrong for the pastor to say, “Okay, the choir director (or Sunday school superintendent) has all this power. As the pastor, I’d better get to know the choir director very well. I need to be close to the people with power”? When it comes to leadership strategy, is that a temptation, a bad thing, a good thing? How do you view playing the power game in terms of knowing where the power is and relating yourself to it?
Enright: When I was a seminarian in California I spent a year and a half in a large church that had literally split down the middle. I went as part of an interim team. I’ll never forget the man who came as the pastor. He was a tall, bald-headed Dutchman, and he was one of the first ministers I had respect for because he could let his fist fall on the table and say what he thought. He told me, “Bill, I always find out who the person is that’s likely to cause me a problem and I keep him close to me.”
Robinson: You can look at this negatively or positively. The fact that someone has power does not necessarily make him a threat. It may make him or her more effective. If you have a music director who’s good and has power, then by all means, cultivate this person.
Jones: But what often happens is, you get a music director who is interested in only one kind of music and determines that he will not let other kinds of music be played in the church.
Enright: What you’re saying is that there is power in some of these subgroups. If someone does the job, they’re going to accumulate power or build a power base, and that doesn’t frighten me. Give me a person who has the gifts and skills . . . the creative flair; that makes for dynamic ministry.
Sometimes we don’t confront the real problem and get things out in the open. Case in point. I was called in not long ago to a situation that dealt with music-a fulltime minister of music, a very dynamic musical team. The pastor had left the church. One of the reasons he gave for leaving was that on Sunday mornings the minister of music would leave the worship service with the high school choir to conduct a special rehearsal. When we discussed this with the minister of music he admitted that was true. But he said, “You know, I never realized that the pastor didn’t want us to do that. If he had said, ‘Don’t do it,’ I would have respected his decision!” Here was a case where the preacher, rather than confront the source of conflict, seethed about it, let it eat away his insides, and let it become one of the factors that caused him to leave.
Robinson: There’s another element we haven’t touched on. In the New Testament the elder is designated not by what he does, but what he is. There’s a power with God that’s easy to overlook because it doesn’t sound very pragmatic. But there is a great power in a good man who lives according to the Scriptures while moving among the people. He may have many faults, but in the New Testament, the way he manages his family, the way he moves among people, the fact that he is a godly man-this gives him great power. I think one of the dangers of this conversation is that it’s easy to sound as though we’re talking about power-brokers. The person who is godly has a power within the church that goes beyond any power system.
Jones: Let me be sure I understand what you’re saying, and maybe say it in a little different way. Of all the characteristics of pastoral leadership, spiritual authenticity is much more important than all the rest. If it is clear that a man or a woman of God is leading us, when power conflicts with power, the pastor can effectively deal with the situation. But if this authenticity is not there, the pastor shuffles back and forth trying to play power-broker in the congregation, but seldom has the management know-how as a chief executive officer to skillfully bring resolution. In the church you don’t necessarily have to have that ability. What you must have is spiritual authenticity. Is that what you’re saying?
Robinson: Yes. If I come to know a pastor personally, and discover that he is not what he preaches in the pulpit, then he has destroyed his ministry to me. If in a board meeting he resorts to power plays and I perceive that what he is doing is operating like a chief executive in a powerful corporation planning a takeover, then he may win. But he has lost, because he has forfeited the power that comes from being a godly person.
Engstrom: This concept of power-broker is certainly foreign to the New Testament. Yet we have to be candid to recognize it as part of today’s church scene. There are pockets of power, whether it be the pastor, the pastoral staff, the board, or the below-the-waterline informal structure.
It’s interesting to note that the church is undoubtedly the most complex of all organizations. It must take the “walking wounded” whether it likes it or not. The man “let down on a stretcher” must be admitted to our fellowship. At the same time, the church is called to send out those who will proclaim the message, to be salt and light. These are wide parameters, whereas in business the parameters are narrower-make a profit and perform a service. The church must nurture, develop, provide fellowship, provide a home base, love and care. On the other hand, it must get out into the community and into the world as a living witness for Christ. The pastor is coach, quarterback, manager, inspirator, developer of goals, and is in such a strategic spot that it’s no wonder he’s torn apart when he tries to play all these roles.
Jones: That’s very helpfully said. Perhaps there is no other institution in our society that has as many varied expectations of it as the church.
Robinson: But if the pastor takes to himself all of the expectations that people have of the church, he will go under. He must develop other leaders in the church to meet these needs. If he has to take it on himself, he will be destroyed, because it’s like dipping the Atlantic dry. You dip and dip and dip. . . .
Robbins: But don’t you think that the pastor often takes most of these expectations upon himself? How can we help him?
Jones: This problem is illustrated in the amount of time pastors are now spending in pastoral counseling. It is extremely wasteful for pastors to-spend 20 to 25 hours of their work week in one-to-one counseling. They need to get many of those people into small groups, or send them for professional help. They’re taking it all on themselves instead of developing other leaders to minister to one another.
Robinson: Whatever the New Testament is talk- ing about with its image of the Body of Christ, it is that-a body. Sometimes it’s tough to do, but a pastor needs to back off and say, “My responsibility is to have this body of people minister in a myriad of ways. How can I best facilitate that?” I find as the president of a seminary that when I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the needs of Denver, I conclude that the greatest need is spiritual. How do you keep that spiritual dynamic at a school so you are not just trafficking in religious truth, but developing a spiritual life?
Robbins: What can a pastor do to get his priorities straight? How about some practical steps?
Engstrom: One, he has to know how to schedule himself. I know that’s a simple statement, but the pastor needs to know how to build a schedule-a schedule for a day, a week, a month, and a year.
Robbins: He has to learn that it’s necessary and spiritual to say, “No.”
Engstrom: Absolutely. He has to learn that it’s spiritual to say, “I cannot afford the time to do this particular project,” and he has to find a way to keep on his schedule. He must provide time for his family and for himself-he’s the most important person for whom he is responsible as the servant of God. Many pastors have the concept that they’re there to give themselves away, and that’s true. But by the same token, they’re also there to conserve themselves for tomorrow. Planning and keeping a schedule are terribly important.
Enright: Two, the church is the people, not just the pastor. Sometimes I compare the pastor to the director of a symphony. His task is to blend the talents of the various members and produce music to the glory of God in terms of witness and mission.
Robbins: He doesn’t play an instrument himself.
Enright: He doesn’t play the instruments. He inspires and motivates and blends.
Myra: You’re talking about administration in a very creative way. Maybe pastors have to begin saying, “Hey, I am going to do administration about 40 percent of my life. I might as well accept that, believe it, grab hold of it, and maybe even like it.” Read Drucker and read Engstrom. He might find himself saying, “This can be fun and also very liberating.” As an editor I felt writing and editing was the real ministry, not messing around with management. But I found that administration can be very fulfilling, and many of the principles are straight from Scripture.
Robinson: I think that goes along with what we’ve been saying. The pastor must sit down and determine what his priorities are. We talked a lot about preaching earlier, and if that’s what he’s called to do-to be a student of the Scriptures and a student of people and to proclaim truth to them- that’s going to take a good share of his time. He needs to say that to his board. They need to be aware of his priorities. If a church says, “Well, look, we don’t want you to prioritize preaching, we don’t want you to stay in your study. We want you to do something else,” then he might question whether he can stay in that situation. But I think very few churches would say that. Most would be delighted to have someone who knew what he was about, who had his priorities worked out.
Robbins: The truth is, he cannot effectively work with his staff unless he is modeling this sort of thing. If he doesn’t have his own act together, he will drive them crazy.
Engstrom: Even ahead of priorities, which are terribly important, he has to have his goals or objectives pretty well defined. He must give a rating to those goals. He has to think through, “What do I really believe God wants me to be and then to do?” After analyzing that-“What are my gifts, what is my calling”-then he has to develop priorities. Where this process often falls apart is that so many individuals don’t know how to develop a plan to achieve these goals. It’s cyclical-you determine those goals for short range and for a longer range. You give them a rating of priority. You develop a plan that is workable. God will help us in our planning. The Scriptures have a great deal to say about this whole matter of goals, priorities, and planning.
Myra: Where does a staff member find handles for all this? A Christian education director is caught in the power bind, too, and may have unique problems setting goals and priorities. We’ve heard some of them say, “Well, I was given this teamwork speech, but I see the senior pastor only once a week, and I don’t really know who I’m responsible to. So I’m kind of building this base of my own. No one bothers me until it starts feeling like I have power.”
Enright: As far as a shared ministry is concerned, the senior pastor should see the staff as colleagues, not subordinates. The wise pastor develops a more effective ministry in this way.
Engstrom: Last night I was at an banquet with a former associate who’s now an associate pastor of a sizable church in southern California. I said to him, “How are things going?” He responded, “Oh, just beautiful.” “Are you enjoying your new assignment?” “Yeah, pretty well.” I said, “You’re not giving me a complete answer. How’s the senior pastor?” He said, “You know, in the three months here, I’ve not had more than five minutes with him at any one time. I catch him going to his car or into the office on the run. It frustrates me to death.”
Enright: A number of years ago we did research on multiple staff ministers. We ended up putting them on a continuum ranging from very authoritarian to collegial. We did not make value judgments. However, we did discover that different personalities operate best in different kinds of situations. There are some people who operate best if they are taking orders. Conversely, other people, when given their freedom produce their best. The three things we found consistent all along the continuum were, 1) whatever the model, there had to be a sense of loyalty among the staff, 2) there had to be a good job description written before the staff person was hired spelling out the process of accountability, and 3) there must be an ongoing system of communication.
Myra: It sounds to me like Ted’s illustration is a breakdown in a benevolent, authoritarian model. If a senior pastor’s going to be authoritarian, anyone reporting directly to him needs lots of interaction.
Engstrom: The associate’s problem was he didn’t know what he was to be doing. He wasn’t getting feedback. There wasn’t the necessary interaction. Thus he was frustrated.
Myra: If someone finds himself in this man’s situation, it’s probably either conflict and confrontation, or resigning. He’s in a box.
Robinson: Or he’ll end up being “the best” at what he does. If he’s in the youth work, he’ll just do it, and the pastor probably won’t care very much as long as he continues to contribute.
Engstrom: The one thing that has to be obvious to everyone who reads this article is, there is tension in ministry. Yet tension can be very redemptive. Don’t resist the tensions that are inherent in power. They are there; they can be used positively. Don’t look at them negatively. Face them with creativity and courage. Ask the Lord to redemp-tively use power to his glory.
-Robert Half There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.
-Omar Bradley The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
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