Dick Halverson has been pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. for twentyone years. He says ministry means being with people, and he spends a large percentage of his breakfasts and lunches meeting with parishioners singly or in small groups. He preaches love and acceptance of all God’s brothers and sisters, and he demonstrates genuine caring for his peers despite their differing methods. He teaches that church programs must be unique to each church, and he has labored hard to tailor his efforts to meet the needs of Fourth Church.
When we decided to do an issue of LEADERSHIP on the theme of pastoral care and counseling, we started looking for a man who personified the meaning of pastoral care. Dick Halverson immediately came to mind. We looked no further.
Editor Paul Robbins, publisher Harold Myra, executive editor Terry Muck, and assistant editor Dan Pawley met with Dick at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
Dr. Halverson, almost any observer would say you’re a successful pastor of a successful church. Your church is large and still growing. You have been with the same congregation for twenty-one years. How do you explain your success?
The word success troubles me. The implication pervading the Christian church equates bigness with success, and I think that’s absolutely wrong! Most criteria for success have their roots in materialism: congregation size, budget size, building size. These aren’t bad in themselves, but they are not criteria for success.
I’m very concerned about people who pastor small churches for there is an unspoken assumption in our culture that if one is really doing a good job he’ll eventually become a Bob Schuller with a Crystal Cathedral.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not speaking disparagingly about Bob Schuller. I respect his philosophy of ministry, and I’m personally convinced God has honored it. I don’t take too well to criticism of Bob Schuller from people who haven’t taken the time to see what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.
What do you mean?
For one thing, when Bob Schuller began his ministry, he concluded that he was called to meet needs nobody else was meeting. If a need was being met, he saw no point in competing with somebody else. If I understand Bob, there isn’t a trace of competition in his ministry philosophy. As a matter of fact, when a new ministry idea is brought up by his associates, the first question is, “Is anybody else doing it? Is that need already being met?”
But my original point is this: because God has honored Bob Schuller with numerical growth doesn’t mean that my ministry success is to be measured by volume. Size is not the criterion for success.
What are the right criteria?
Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship recently told me he had hired someone to travel the country and evaluate their ministry. I asked Chuck what criteria he used in the evaluation. Not one of the items on his list was statistical. Every one had to do with values: what was the spiritual climate of a group of Christian brothers in a prison? Were they studying the Bible? Did they have the spirit of reaching out to others? These are some of the criteria for successful ministry.
What kind of ministry philosophy and program structure should a local church adopt to foster these values?
Your question is hard to answer because I can only speak from the viewpoint of my own ministry and experience. What works for me and the people of Fourth Presbyterian may not work for anyone else. But to answer your question from my own viewpoint requires a bit of historical background.
When I went to Fourth Presbyterian in 1956, I had come out of eleven years of small-group ministry. I thought I was a small-group expert. I wasn’t. but that’s the way we operate in this culture; when you’ve done something a few years you become an expert. After my first pastorate from 1944 to 1947 at Coalinga, California, I never intended to be a pastor again because I didn’t think I was very good material. So I worked with small groups as an associate minister for eight years and then joined International Christian Leadership for three years. After God led me to Fourth, I realized that I didn’t have a ready-made ministry program. In fact, I was so out of touch I didn’t even know what programs other churches were using or what programs were even available for use. Now, after twenty-one years at Fourth, I look back on that “problem” as one of the greatest assets I took to the church.
Why was it an asset?
The greatest baggage a pastor carries to a new ministry assignment, whether he is going from seminary to a church or changing churches, is ready-made programs. He is programmed to think that he should try out this program as soon as he’s finished trying out that program. He’s buried in an avalanche of “how to”. He constantly compares program ideas with his colleagues. Therefore, ministries never become indigenous.
In the kind of mild frustration I experienced in those early days at Fourth Church, God taught me two things: First, treat the Sunday morning congregation just the way you’d treat a small group of people meeting in your living room. Second, fully implement the commandment Christ gave: “Love one another as I have loved you, and you will demonstrate to the world that you are my disciples.”
How did you learn this lesson?
I was captured by a simple little statement in Mark: Jesus chose twelve and ordained them to be with him. Suddenly the word with became a big word, one of the biggest in the New Testament, because implicit in it is koinonia prayer and support. That word convinced me to have a ministry of being with people. I didn’t worry about what I was going to do with them; I didn’t need an agenda. Jesus began a movement that would be universal and last forever, and yet he spent most of his time with twelve men.
When I moved from comprehensive pastoral responsibility in Coalinga to small group responsibilities at Hollywood Presbyterian, I intended that my ministry would be an unstructured one, being with people at their convenience, on the job, or at breakfast or lunch.
Are you saying that in your opinion the most effective church structure is one composed of small groups?
Not exactly. I’m saying that attitude about ministry and approach to ministry is more effective than a lot of canned expertise.
For example, I have a regular Wednesday morning breakfast with some of our lay leaders. I learned long ago that if I came to the breakfast burning up with a message I had prepared in my study, it would invariably fall like a lead balloon. Afterwards the guys would say to me, “Halverson, it just wasn’t the same this morning.” It took me some time to understand that there is a chemistry about each group of people that generates its own agenda. I believe it comes from the Holy Spirit in our midst. That doesn’t mean I should neglect preparation, but it does mean that I have to prepare with a high degree of awareness and execute with a high degree of sensitivity. Even when a congregation or group is silent, something is still transmitted to the speaker.
When I was a student at Princeton Seminary, Dr. Blackwood was the homiletics professor, and he used to say that 75 percent of a good sermon depends upon the people. I’m more convinced of that now than ever; everything is affected by the chemistry of the company.
Let’s apply what you’re saying to Sunday morning at 11:00. How do you approach your congregation?
We begin every worship service with a little greeting that reminds the people of the importance of their contribution to what is about to happen. The greeting is: “There is something to be captured in this moment that we can never give nor receive at any other time or in any other situation. Let’s be alive to what Christ wants us to do here and now.”
Doesn’t this greeting soon become just another part of the regular Sunday morning liturgy?
That, of course, is the danger. I relearned that lesson recently when I had a cataract removed. After surgery there was a period of two weeks when I couldn’t read. So I listened to all kinds of cassettes, mostly tapes of sermons. I distinctly remember becoming so weary of one preacher’s voice that I finally yelled out, “Shut up!” I happened to like this preacher and his preaching, but I found myself so buried with his words that listening to more words was driving me crazy.
I began to visualize myself standing in the pulpit on Sunday morning and talking to a group of people who have been literally inundated all week long with words. Now I want them to listen to my words. I suppose that’s what originally challenged me years ago to treat my congregation like a small group of people in my living room.
When you invite a few people to your home for an evening, you don’t line them up in rows and lecture them unless you’re an absolute bore. Although the task of host or small-group leader may require you to focus the thinking or the discussion of the group, the objective is to get them involved in the process, to get them to participate.
But how can this be done from a pulpit in a Sunday morning worship setting?
I try different things. One time I’ll say, “Here’s what Jesus said . . . now do you hear that? Do you hear it?” If the congregation just sits there, I’ll persist, “Do we hear it?” I’ll begin to get response. “What did he say?” I’ll wait until somebody says it out loud from the congregation. I don’t see any point in throwing words out at people if they are not listening and responding to them.
It seems that much of what you are saying is the direct result of thirty-five years of ministry experience channeled into a pastoral style that complements your personality. What hope do you offer to the inexperienced young pastor?
We had a Gordon-Conwell student who interned at Fourth this past summer. He asked me a question very similar to yours. My answer was this: “John, you have learned many things at Gordon-Conwell, and before that you gained some valuable experience working with the Navigators. As you go to your first pastorate, you’ll be tempted to bring to that new situation all of the ideas, plans, and programs that you picked up in your training, and you won’t be patient enough to discover what is already there. Take the time to become part of what is there, and then these things you have learned to find proper adaptation and application; they’ll become indigenous to that situation. You can grow a dandelion in a few hours, but it takes seven years to raise an orchid.”
How would you describe the ideal organizational structure for a church?
I see it as concentric circles. I don’t like to diagram church organization on a vertical plane. I prefer a horizontal plane as illustrated by the relationship of any individual believer with Christ.
The scriptural model might start with John, who was called the beloved. At the Last Supper he laid his head on Jesus’ breast. Somehow that very intimate relationship John had with Jesus, the first circle, so to speak, was not a problem to the others. In the second circle were Peter, James, and John; Jesus took them to the Mount of Transfiguration, to the raising of the daughter of Lazarus, and to the Garden of Gethsemane. Somehow Peter, James, and John had a relationship with Jesus that was not enjoyed by the nine but was accepted by them, even though the disciples were a normal group of human beings and prone to peer-group jealousy.
The core group around Jesus was the 12; then there were the 70 around the 12, and the 120 around the 70, and out beyond that the 500. The church should be the same.
Is this the way you approach pastoral care at Fourth Church?
Exactly. Paul says in I Corinthians 12:25, “That they may have the same care for one another.” A true Christian community is not something you organize. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have some kind of specific program, but the more spontaneous the caring is, the better it is. My mind keeps coming back to the Sunday morning service, which I believe is the pastor’s greatest opportunity for real caring.
For years the back page of our bulletin has been called “The Family Altar” and is devoted to congregational needs: the sick, the shut-ins, the students, four or five “Families of the Week.” During our service we have a period of time called the “Praise and Prayers of the People.” This is followed by a period of silence in which we urge our people to pray for each other. Then we ask them to touch someone near them. I personally step down from the pulpit and walk into the congregation and touch various people. Other pastors do the same. Then we pray for the people on the back page. These simple gestures and expressions of concern create and encourage an environment of caring.
After your Sunday morning responsibilities, what do you see as your next pastoral priority?
My associates. Our weekly staff meeting is oriented toward their personal needs. Although we conduct a great deal of business in these meetings, the atmosphere is one of a family visiting together.
Next on my list of priorities is my relationship to the officers of the church. I really work at those relationships and try to spend as much time as I possibly can with each individual.
Howard Hendricks told us a story about going with you to visit one of your lay leaders who is a junior high principal. He said that after lunch in his office, you walked with him all the way around the building, prayed with him, and encouraged him to claim that school as God’s area of service for him. Do you do this with all the officers of your church?
Usually, though not always in the same manner. I have real problems with the humanistic assumption that we can find the “right way” or the “best way” to do everything, and that if we find it we’ll get the desired results.
But aren’t there some very good reasons for an increasing emphasis on ministry specialization and the development of a vast array of ministry methodologies?
Perhaps. I’d rather not make a lot of judgments on that. I’ve arrived at the place where I give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who believes God has led him to a particular ministry. I respect and honor his convictions regardless of how much I might disagree with his methodology.
For example, one of my dearest friends is Bill Bright. Well, I strongly disagree with Bill and Campus Crusade regarding some of their ministry methods. We can’t even talk about it anymore. Yet I really believe he loves me, and I certainly love him; and I’m not blind to what God has done through Campus Crusade.
But in talking to young colleagues I always say, “Well, this is the way God has led me, and this is the way I’ve done it. But it’s the dynamics that are important, not the mechanics.”
Your point is well made, but would you be willing to share with our readers more of the specifics of your pastoral care program, both the good parts and the bad parts?
Obviously we encourage small groups, but we don’t try to organize them. It’s common for people to come to me and say, ‘We’d like to start a small group. Will you meet with us?” I usually do, and in the first session I show them how to study the Bible inductively and encourage them to make the group experience more than just a straight Bible study. Every small group has the potential to become a support church.
Within our church, this dynamic is modeled for our small groups by the steering committee of the small groups. I meet as often as I can with all of our steering committees. The other pastors do the same. We try to model supportive relationships. Sometimes we fail, but that’s good for us.
Would you give us an example of a pastoral care methodology that didn’t work?
Twenty-one years ago we started with the “flock system,” whereby each lay leader was responsible for a certain number of members. That responsibility was clearly defined. For example, they were to meet with each member at least once a year, maintain contact at least twice a year, and so forth. It never worked. One reason was the nature of community life in metropolitan Washington. Some of the members said, ‘We don’t like to be thought of as sheep.” That was the final blow that killed the flock idea. More seriously, the sense of regimentation didn’t seem to set very well.
So we tried other programs. We have tried fellowship committees and other forms of congregational care. Right now we have a Ministry of Concern office.
Would you describe that?
We were fortunate to secure the services of Pat Brown, a lovely woman from South Carolina with a beautiful southern accent. She obviously likes people and cares for them, and they in turn immediately respond to her. She creatively handles all kinds of situations.
For example, if a family is being evicted, they call her. If somebody can’t pay a hospital bill, she acts as a liaison with the deacon board. She’s developed what she calls a “Going Forth” ministry. This is a group of people who voluntarily make themselves available to help others by going wherever she sends them. She has also organized what she calls “Family Connection,” an event-centered ministry of fellowship which encourages entire families to do things together. For example, Family Connection will be going to this month’s home game of the Redskins. During the summer they attended an outdoor concert at Wolftrap, and soon they will be chartering a train to spend a day together at Harper’s Ferry.
This kind of fellowship brings together young and old, married and single. Pat’s office tries to be especially sensitive to the need of singles who want contact with married couples, and to young people who want contact with older persons.
None of these programs are once-for-all solutions, but we keep trying new ideas. Our present Ministry of Concern office is working as well as anything.
But the real point is that in all of these things we are less than perfect; we are going to come back tomorrow and try harder.
Hospital visitation is universally recognized as a form of pastoral care, yet pastoral house calls seem to be suffering the same fate as the physician’s visit. How do you feel about reaching out to people in their own homes?
When I first came to Fourth, I did a lot of conventional visitation nearly every afternoon in the week. Little by little I discovered that suburban culture doesn’t allow for effective pastoral calls.
In the first place, it’s almost impossible to find the family together. Second, the suburban housewife tends to be very busy, and she usually doesn’t see any particular value in sitting down with the pastor and visiting for thirty minutes. Third, when children are present, a pastoral call can be looked upon as a family intrusion. I’ve had the experience of calling on families where they tried to accommodate me with one eye while watching television with the other.
In place of home visitation, we have assigned each of our pastors the responsibility of a certain number of members to contact by phone four times a year. That kind of contact has been very satisfying to me. I’ll take a couple of hours on a regular basis, sit at the phone, call a family and say, “Hi, this is Dick Halverson. I’m just calling to find out if you have any special needs I ought to be praying about today.”
We recently revived a term that was used a great deal when I was in seminary: care of souls. I hadn’t heard that term for years. Dr. Bonnell, who was in the vanguard of pastoral counseling, taught a course by that name which was required for seniors. His objective was to make us as sensitive as possible to the needs of the believer, and to the many different means we could use to meet those needs. However, the emphasis was always on the person’s needs, not on the method to meet those needs.
Let’s dwell on the subject of sensitivity for a moment. After all these years in one church, do you ever experience that searing kind of criticism or gut-wrenching confrontation so common to many pastors and religious leaders?
Absolutely! I was recently the focus of some very critical comments from a family whose fifteenyear-old boy was in trouble with the law. His father called me by telephone and really leveled me about my personal failures and the failure of our church. It wasn’t all true, but there was enough truth in it to make it hurt.
Even more devastating was a letter I received from one of our former elders who is now separated from his wife-two pages of very nasty notes about the church’s failure.
How did you deal with these situation?
First of all I had to face it head on. In the case of the former elder, I called him as quickly as I could after receiving the letter. He didn’t want to talk, but I persevered. I let him say everything on the telephone he had already said in the letter. Then I apologized: “I’m sorry. I’ll accept this criticism for myself personally, and I’ll apologize for the church.” I tried to give him some explanations while bracing myself against defensiveness. Since then, I’ve been talking to him by phone on a regular basis, and we are going to get together in two weeks.
In the case of the father and son, I went first to our director of youth ministry. The night after I talked to the father, the director went to their home and spent a couple of hours talking with them.
For me, the best way to handle criticism is to respond quickly, directly, and sensitively.
But how do you deal with the emotional trauma down deep in your own soul?
That’s hard to answer. I suppose the most honest response would be to tell you the story about a frog who fell into a pothole. Regardless of what his frog friends tried to do, they couldn’t help him out of his dilemma. Finally in desperation they left him to his destiny. The next day they found him bouncing around town as lively as ever. So one frog went up to him and said, “What happened? We thought you couldn’t get out of that hole.” He replied, “I couldn’t, but a truck came along and I had to.”
I don’t know any other answer than “you just have to.” Many times I would love to run away, ignore the situation, or try to justify it, but Christ has given us very specific instructions in Matthew 5:24. If you know you have offended a brother, you must go to him; if he has offended you, you must go to him. We have to do it!
The ancient image of the pastor being the shepherd with the long crook on one arm and a cuddly little lamb in the other is only one perspective. The other is the shepherd who must look disease right in the eye and come up with a cure or a recommendation for a cure no matter how painful it might be. Cancer can’t be treated with a skin salve.
In our culture, where everybody does his own thing and no one wants to crowd somebody else’s space, knowing how to deal with confrontation is a tricky, sensitive thing.
In light of what you’ve said so far, it would appear you’ve developed an unusual ability to love and work alongside of people with whom you disagree. How have you cultivated this ability?
Ephesians 1:9,10 is God’s agenda for uniting all things in Christ. I also think of the passage in Ephesians 4, where Paul says that when Christ ascended he left gifts: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip the saints for works of ministry until we all reach unity and become mature in the fullness of the stature of Christ. Then we will not be tossed about by every wind of teaching, but will speak the truth in love, growing up into Christ.
If I am taking my call seriously as a servant of Jesus Christ, that’s my agenda, and I must be about unity, not conformity. Diversity is essential to unity. I can’t imagine a painting that is all one color.
The issue is Jesus Christ, and if a person honors Christ, then that person is a brother or a sister, and we can have fellowship regardless of other differences.
Abraham Vereide, founder of what was then called International Christian Leadership, used to recite a little poem that went something like this: “He drew a circle that shut me out-heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: we drew a circle that took him in.”
Has there ever been a time in your ministry when you had to draw a line and take a stand against a Christian brother because something was involved you thought might be harmful to the church?
I’m deeply concerned about the emergence of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. I’m opposed to his political stance, but I do not repudiate him as a Christian.
For some time, Jim Wallis of Sojourners has been very critical of the whole prayer breakfast movement, a movement in which a great piece of my life has been involved. The best he can say about it is that it is a civil religion. But he is still a good friend and I need him; I need his influence in my life. I’m the pastor of a suburban church with an upper middle-class congregation; he s in the inner city breaking his heart for Christ’s sake with the poorest of the poor. I need that kind of influence.
Unless a person denies Jesus Christ, I feel we have a responsibility to one another and to one another s ministry.
May we focus a bit tighter? How about the differences in a marriage relationship?
The first element is commitment, despite the differences. My wife and I are married for life. I have an arrangement with Doris that God witnessed as an unconditional covenant for life. No matter how difficult it is to live together, we’re going to stay married. Every struggle we have that could be used as an excuse to separate or divorce is the very material God wants us to use to create intimacy in our marriage. We can’t get it any other way; it comes by hammer and heat. Good marriages are always forged. Likewise, the relationships which are created between staff members are not negotiated agreements; they are forged in much the same manner.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve made some mistakes in my marriage and my family. During the early days of my ministry, I’d say the first eight or ten years, I equated the work of the church with God himself. I justified neglecting my wife and my children on the grounds that I was serving the Lord through the work of the church. I had to correct that. Now I believe that my family is more important than the work of the church. God expects me to give priority to my wife and my children. Doris and I realize that we made some serious mistakes with our children when they were growing up. But they love us, and they are all in Christ.
I’m always amazed by the grace of God. Paul Tournier, the Swiss physician, has a chapter in one of his books where he points out that some parents are extremely authoritarian and others are extremely permissive, but most parents are somewhere in the middle. Then he goes on to say that regardless of the parental style, if one’s children turn out all right, it’s by the grace of God. I like that-a grace that allows me to fail.
I think one of the greatest freedoms any pastor has is the freedom to fail. Again and again, in my private life and in my public ministry, I’ve had the pressures build until I think I can’t stand it any more. When I stop long enough to take a spiritual inventory, I discover that I’ve failed many times in the past, and it’s likely that I will fail again. How liberating!
This past Tuesday morning I awakened about 4 o’clock after some kind of dream about which I couldn’t remember a thing except that I had failed. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t relax. I felt like my skin was crawling right off my body. I finally slipped out of bed onto my knees and began to pray. As I talked to my Father, I again eventually realized that my failure does not constitute God’s failure. It was so liberating to say, “Lord, when I fail, I know your grace will be there to cover the bases.”
Obviously, we can’t presume on God’s grace or use his goodness as an excuse for negligence, but likewise, we don’t need to fear failure. Failure is a part of the forging process. Failure is God’s way of consuming the dross so the gold may remain.
How much personal counseling do you do?
Not as much as I once did. At one time I allowed my counseling load to become so heavy I began to lose my effectiveness. The elders took the initiative and released me from crisis counseling.
We are now in the process of developing a comprehensive counseling program for the church. At this point I don’t feel we should establish our own clinic. However, one of our members is a psychiatric nurse. She visits with people who request counseling and decides on the best way to meet their needs. She can refer a person to one of the pastors, to an elder, to somebody in the church who has faced a similar problem, or to a professional counselor.
When you first started pastoring you probably didn’t have these kinds of resources. How did you deal with the problems people brought to you? How did you avoid making major mistakes?
I tried to listen. It’s been said many times before- which doesn’t make it less true-listening is hard work.
When I began my ministry, I had taken a required course in counseling at Princeton and had read the one or two books that were available on this subject. I really wasn’t very well prepared to face the problems that came my way. So-I had to learn counseling by listening to people. Let’s face it, there is no substitute for being with people and trying to understand them and empathize with their needs.
For example, I was counseling a church member who was a closet homosexual. In our sessions I could sense he was getting close to admitting his problem. Instinctively I knew that if there was anything in my facial expression, anything at all that would indicate shock or change in attitude when he admitted his problem, I’d lose him. I so well remember how I prepared myself for the moment he shared who he was.
Have you made major mistakes in counseling?
Yes, but only when I failed to spiritually prepare for my task or allowed outside pressure and personal frustrations to desensitize me to the situation.
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but early in my ministry at Fourth, a couple-she was Japanese, he was Jewish-came to me for help. Their marriage was in terrible shape; I spent hours with them. It seemed at some point in every session the young man would rise and start pacing back and forth across my office. Then he would start talking, getting louder and louder until he worked up into a frenzy.
One Sunday morning right after church they asked to see me, and he began his little act, thoroughly embarrassing and intimidating his wife. He ended his performance by saying, “You know, if it weren’t for my wife’s sake, I’d take my life.” By then I was fed up with him, and in anger I said, ‘Well, you sure aren’t much use to her now.”
Monday morning I found he had attempted to take his life. I went to the hospital and the first thing he said was, “Mr. Halverson, you told me to do it.”
I had failed him-both of them, because I stopped listening and allowed myself to become insensitive to the real problem. Even to this day I rarely give what might be considered direct advice. Although I like Jay Adams’ book, Competent to Counsel, I’m usually uncomfortable with anything but indirect counseling. If I get an insight I’ll share it; if I think of something they ought to do, I’ll suggest it to them. Occasionally I’ve said, “Until you do this, there’s no point in us seeing each other again.” But such a statement from me is highly unusual.
A frustrated young seminary graduate recently approached us and said he had taken a secular job because he wasn’t sure he should go into the ministry. At the heart of his reticence was the feeling that he didn’t have the personality for it. He said, “All the personality tests I’ve taken say ’emotionally strong, but tends to be a cold person and has trouble relating to people.’ ” What hope can you offer a reader who may find it difficult to identify with your warm, vulnerable personality and yet sincerely wants to be a pastor?
The first response that comes to my mind, and I don’t think he will mind my saying so, is that Louis Evans, Jr., pastor of National Presbyterian Church, is just that kind of person. All of the vocational and aptitude tests he took disqualified him for the pastorate. Louis thinks mechanically, he’s orderly. The tests say he should be an engineer. He’d rather take an engine apart and put it together again than almost anything else in the world. But God called him to be a pastor, and he persevered in spite of the tests and has developed a tremendous ministry.
Isn’t it true that almost every pastor has some problem in his personality that may also be a potential strength?
Some of the most successful pastors I know have been poor preachers but tremendous with people. Others have been poor with people and tremendous in the pulpit. If God is calling you to be a pastor, he’s going to put you in a ministry situation that needs your
skills. A person cannot foreclose on God’s plans because of self-perceived weaknesses. It usually doesn’t occur to us that we might not have liked the apostle Paul. Several scriptural passages indicate that he might have been a very abrasive person, and everyone agrees that Peter was a hard person to get along with.
How would you describe Dick Halverson?
In some ways I’m a very private person. I’ve always struggled with low self-image. Because of that image I’m easily intimidated. To this day, if I have to walk into a room full of strangers, I must brace myself for the experience. Although I think I have accepted my low self-image, I compensate for it with a gregarious air. But if I’m not careful, I find myself resenting the intrusions of people into my life. Thus, I must keep working with myself; for in my own eyes, a pastor must be a people person, a servant of the servants of the Servant.
What do you see as your innate strength?
I’m an idea person. The man who led me to Christ was my first pastor, and he taught me how to handle ideas. He taught me to treat ideas like good seeds and showed me how to plant them in the soil of a heart or mind and let them grow.
That’s why I have a bias against “canned” or readymade, mass-distributed church programming. My style is to plant a seed, water it, and watch it grow of its own accord.
I also think ahead. Almost from the beginning of my ministry, I’ve planned my sermons a year in advance. I love to preach; I’m at home on the platform. Interestingly, that is one of the characteristics of many up-in-front people. They’re comfortable addressing large crowds, but scared to death of intimate contact.
When Billy Graham was having his first Madison Square Garden Crusade, he asked me to come and work with laymen’s breakfasts and luncheons. Just before Billy was to address a luncheon of thirty-five businessmen, he turned to me with visible nervousness and said, “Dick, I’m scared to death to talk to those guys. I can stand in front of the Garden, but I don’t know what to do in front of thirty-five men.” But he did, and he has become a master of almost any ministry situation.
What process did you go through to move your self image from the liability to the asset column?
Since I met Christ forty years ago, I have never sought things for myself. I am not ambitious for myself as a servant of Christ.
Is this strictly a matter of spiritual conviction?
Yes and no. Part of it goes back to the origins of my low self-image. Mother married my father against the will of her parents. My father was an itinerant worker. He’d ride railroad freight cars to the midwest where he worked as a harvest laborer. Then he would return to his home in St. Paul and live on his wages. He was a kind person, soft-spoken, gentle, a good dancer, and very handsome; but my mother soon discovered that he was completely irresponsible. He never did support the family. My mother’s father set him up in business twice, but he never made it go.
When I was ten years old my parents divorced-in a little North Dakota town where nobody got divorced -and we moved into a flat where we shared a bathroom with twenty families. I can still hear the cockroaches crush in the doorjamb when I closed the door.
I’ve been afraid of my father’s traits all of my life. To this day, I feel there is something in me that wants to run as far away from responsibility as I can get.
As a youth I compensated for my circumstances with arrogance. Apparently I was born with a gift for singing, for people seemed to enjoy my efforts at entertainment and encouraged me to seek a career in the theater. That became my burning ambition until I met the Lord at twenty years of age, and he made it clear that he had another plan for my life.
How did the Lord make that plan clear to you?
A man of God, a pastor, began to deal with me. He helped me see my arrogance; that there was no substance to it, and I was covering up all those awful fears I had about myself and my inadequacy.
He showed me how to study the Scriptures. The verse that helped me turn the corner was Paul’s marvelous testimony that in weakness he became strong. In II Corinthians 12 he says, “Lest I be exalted above measure, a thorn in the flesh was given to me.” And in another incredible passage, I Corinthians 15, he says, “Last of all, Christ appeared to me also as one born out of due time and not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. Nevertheless, by the grace of God, I am what I am.”
I grabbed that truth with both hands as my valid place of self-acceptance; by the grace of God, I am what I am.
Would you say that this spiritual truth is still at the heart of your ministry at Fourth Presbyterian, even though it’s one of the better known churches in the country?
During the eight years I ministered in Hollywood, California, I observed that the one thing which destroyed more prominent people than anything else was the temptation to believe in their own publicity.
Do you recall the Old Testament story in which three of David’s soldiers overheard him say, “Oh, if I could only have some water from the well in Jerusalem”? At the risk of their lives, they sneaked through the enemy lines to bring him a drink of water.
But he refused to drink it; he knew they had risked their lives. for it. So he poured it out as a libation to God.
That has become a symbol for me when I receive any praise or credit. I’m thankful for it. I know I have an ego that loves to hear it, but I refuse to accept it. I pour it out to Christ.
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