When Paul Cedar was a boy growing up in the Presbyterian manse of Howard Lake, Minnesota, he never saw his father leave the yard without a coat and tie unless there was a work day at the church. The pastoral image was visible, distinct, decorous at all times.
The son entered his father’s vocation during his senior year at Northern State College in Aberdeen, South Dakota, when he took his first pastorate. It was a small-town Methodist congregation of fifteen souls founded by George McGovern’s father.
He has since ministered in many contexts: directing Youth for Christ in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; serving a small Evangelical Free church in the Chicago suburb of Naperville while finishing seminary (Northern Baptist); managing crusades for the Billy Graham Association; pioneering an Evangelical Free church in Yorba Linda, California; becoming executive pastor of the prestigious Hollywood Presbyterian Church . . . and since 1981, leading Pasadena’s Lake Avenue Congregational Church as senior pastor.
He talked recently with LEADERSHIP Senior Editor Dean Merrill about the role and lifestyle in which he’s been immersed since birth.
What is the difference between the pastoral role in Northville, South Dakota, where you started, and the high-octane atmosphere of Los Angeles?
Not as much as you might think. One of the great things about rural America is that people expect you to be authentic. If you’re not, they recognize you from afar.
My role here is the same as it was there: to be authentic and loving, to care for people, and to be concerned for spiritual growth. I remember the excitement we all felt in Northville the first Sunday a couple of children came for Sunday school. Those people hadn’t heard little voices in that building for years. The Lord gave us some wonderful growth that year, and I was as excited then as I am now about what God is doing here.
The joy for anyone who has a pastor’s heart is to see growth in people’s lives and to see people come to faith in Christ. If God called me back to a smaller church, I would not count it a demotion. The bottom line of life is whether I am faithful in doing the will of God.
Although God’s expectations may be constant . . . people’s vary, don’t they?
Yes. One of the refreshing things about southern California is that expectations are not so sharply defined here. I can be much more casual in my dress than my father ever was, for example. I am more relaxed and have more freedom in my personal life than I had in the Midwest.
What if you were to move back?
When I was young, I used to say I knew the Lord was going to call me to Chicago some day because I despised it so much. Well, as a matter of fact, some of the happiest years of our lives were spent in the Chicago area.
The key to fulfillment for me is God’s call to serve in a given place. If I have that, the dress code or whatever is secondary. Part of the joy of ministry is to be sensitive to the people God has called you to serve and to recognize their expectations-but not be enslaved by them. It’s a dual sensitivity: to the Holy Spirit and to the congregation.
Have you read Dress for Success?
Yes.
What did you think of it?
I had mixed emotions, because I personally believe God created each of us to be individuals. I’m not so interested in clothes that control people as in identifying with people and being sensitive to them.
On a flight last week, the man next to me asked, after we had talked quite a while, what I did. (I never volunteer that information unless someone asks, because I seem to get one of two reactions. Either a halo sprouts about six inches above the person’s head as he recounts how his great-grandfather was a Methodist minister-it’s amazing how many millions of Americans are descendants of Methodist ministers! Or else a shield goes up, and the person immediately backs away.)
This gentlemen was a bit different, though. He looked astonished and then said, “I would never have guessed. I would have taken you for one of those wealthy oil men!”
I laughed and thanked him for his compliment. What made it all the better was that I don’t buy expensive clothes. They usually come from a discount house or Sears. In this church we range from upper-class people to the poorest of poor, and I believe it’s appropriate for me to dress somewhere in the middle.
Certain parts of our area are extremely label-conscious. But Pasadena is a conservative pocket for some reason. The traditional Ivy League style has been the code for thirty years and probably will be for another thirty. I had to go through a little transition when I came here from even a short distance away.
What helped shape your values about style and image as a young minister?
I was twenty-three years old when I began working with the Graham organization as a crusade associate, traveling, making arrangements with church leaders in various cities-both lay and clergy. I soon came to see that many were in places of leadership simply because of politics. They had fought their way up, and the life of the Spirit-the Philippians 2 kind of characteristics-were often absent.
When you’re the pastor of a church, you can get spoiled by having your own way so often. But put together a committee of five or six pastors in the same city, and some intriguing dynamics come to light. Not everyone can have his own way. I began to notice two kinds of committee members: the dear servants of Christ who would do anything that needed to be done regardless of who got the glory, and the people you never saw until Billy arrived in town. Suddenly, there they were, on his right and his left, like James and John.
Watching all this as a young man, I was tempted to become cynical. It eventually drove me to my knees to say, “Lord, by your grace, don’t ever let me fall into that syndrome. Spare me forever from the politics of the church.”
I am deeply committed to the principle that the Lord does the promoting. The only reason I am here today is that he has called me to be here. I haven’t earned this pulpit, and I do not want to be here one day longer or shorter than God wants me to be.
But your “career,” if I may call it that, has followed a normal rise.
Do you know what? In all the years of ministry, I have never moved on to the next position without taking a cut in income. The only raises I’ve ever gotten have been during a tenure, not at the change points.
And that has not been because I was making desperation moves. In fact, I’ve never left a place of ministry I didn’t love and regret leaving.
I don’t mention this as any kind of complaint; Lake Avenue is very generous with me, and I’m grateful. I just think this has been God’s way of keeping me honest and making sure I accepted positions because of his calling rather than because of finances.
Do you bend over backwards to prevent certain impressions as a pastor? Are you concerned, for example, not to appear financially strapped, or financially well-heeled?
Jesus warned in the Sermon on the Mount against parading our piety. Such things as prayer, fasting, meditation on the Word, and generosity in giving are specifically mentioned. I feel the same is true about lifestyle. Some members of this church who work at the U.S. Center for World Mission are simple-lifestyle people; I honor them. In fact, I consider myself a simple-lifestyle person. But I also belong to the Pasadena Rotary Club, and I want to relate to those men where they are, not where I want them to be.
In all of this, I want to be authentic-not acting one way when I’m at the Rotary Club, another way when I’m shopping, another way with the congregation, and another way when I’m talking to LEADERSHIP.
But do you really have the option here, in a metropolitan church of more than three thousand, to live a simple lifestyle?
I suppose it depends on one’s definition of the term. But my answer is yes. I’ll illustrate by telling you how we chose our house.
Lake Avenue Church has tremendous variations sociologically; it’s not a homogeneous unit. So when we began house-hunting, we prayed that the Lord would guide us to something we could use for ministry, something that would not be a barrier either to the San Marino people or the other extreme.
We ended up just a mile and a half from the church, in an integrated neighborhood. Deborah, our daughter, goes to a school three blocks away that is two-thirds nonwhite. We aren’t just enduring the location; we’re enjoying it thoroughly. It’s a big old house built in l927, and we’re fixing it up little by little.
If I went out and bought a Cadillac or a Mercedes, many people in the church would be disappointed or even angry. That’s not a temptation to me, number one because I wouldn’t care for that kind of car, but number two because I don’t want to obstruct the ministry. So I lease a midsize car, a Buick Century.
As Paul said, I’m free to do all things. But I have made myself a servant of the people.
You can always barge ahead and let the chips fly. As someone said, “It’s much easier to get forgiveness than permission!” You can always apologize later. But I’d rather be sensitive to the people and not violate their sense of values.
What if their sense of values is warped? What’s the most unreasonable expectation ever laid on you?
About the fourth or fifth day I was in the full-time ministry, Jeanie and I were trying to find a place to rent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We were both twenty-one, she was into her first pregnancy and not feeling well, the weather was hot and muggy, and we had almost no salary to work with.
We were very discouraged-when someone came up with a marvelous idea: How about the mobile home park just outside the city? We went and looked-it was the perfect solution. We’d have all the furnishings we needed, it was affordable, and the surroundings were lovely. We put our money down. The next day we would be back to unload our U-Haul trailer.
That evening, the vice-chairman of the board called the home where we were staying. He’d heard about our decision, and he absolutely went through the ceiling. Back in Chicago where he’d come from, mobile homes were for carnival people and all sorts of fly-by-night types. It was exactly the wrong image for the Youth for Christ director. He demanded we back out of the deal.
Jeanie and I prayed and finally decided if we could get our deposit money back, we would concede. The owners were very gracious, and a couple of days later we did find an apartment.
Today, I certainly wouldn’t respond that way. By this point in my ministry, I’ve learned that most places have a handful of vocal people who have learned to get their way by shouting. The most loving, God-honoring thing is not to allow them to prevail.
If there was a consensus in a church, a widespread feeling that the pastor should not live in a mobile home, then I would be sensitive to that. But not to one or two strong voices wanting their own way.
You’ve touched an area that affects not only the pastor but the pastor’s family. How do your three children feel about the expectations of pastoral life?
Dan is now twenty-three, in his first year at Fuller; Mark, twenty, is a junior at Cal State LA; and Debbie will be seventeen next week. I think they all have very positive feelings about the ministry.
They especially appreciated the close attention and stroking they received when we were in smaller churches. The last two places, however, have been large congregations, and our kids have not been ministered to in the same way as when they were in the mainstream. The Sunday morning crowds here don’t often get to know my family. That means less attention, but it also means more freedom for them to be themselves. The expectations are not as clearly defined.
We’ve tried to raise our children the way I was raised as a PK, which was in freedom to be whatever God wanted me to be. I never remember my father saying, “Because I’m the pastor, you must do such-and-such.” It was always, “Because Jesus is your Lord and you’re following him, here is the Christian lifestyle.” My deepest desire for my family is that each one know and do the will of God; we behave differently because we’re committed to Christ, not because of what Dad does.
Even in the little things? Have there been times, for example, when their attendance at something was gently urged because their last name was Cedar?
I honestly am not aware of any. There may have been some, but if so, they were few and far between.
Maybe it’s just been that my style of ministry emphasizes love and openness, and the more legalistic, demanding people seem to drift away from my congregations!
There have been several times over the years when I have said to someone, “I love you, and I respect your expectations, but I want you to know neither I nor my family can live up to them. We’re committed to be faithful to the Lord, and when all of life is over, I want to be able to say we have been faithful to God’s will, but that’s as much as I can promise.”
Can you recall a specific issue?
About the third Sunday we were in Illinois, I shared from the pulpit a need I was facing in my own life. I don’t even remember now what it was, but I asked for their prayers.
On the way out, a dear lady stopped to shake her finger at me and say, “Pastor, don’t you ever mention again from the pulpit that you have problems. Pastors aren’t supposed to have problems! You’re going to destroy my faith.”
I smiled at her and said, “Dear sister, if your faith is dependent upon my not having problems or needs, you’re in serious trouble. We’d better have a little chat.”
Which we did. We became very good friends, despite her traditional background where pastors were considered perfect. She turned out to be a gentle, gracious Christian woman when confronted with love and a little humor.
There’s no way I can live up to the expectations of all the people who call Lake Avenue their church home. I’ve said that publicly: my goal is not to live up to people’s expectations but the Lord’s, and I want everyone in the church family to have that same freedom. Now a part of that is accountability, and if someone thinks I’m straying to the left or the right of what God wants me to be, I welcome their counsel. I believe very deeply in accountability, but I can’t fulfill everyone’s expectations.
How often can you do what you did that Sunday morning in Illinois without losing the respect and confidence of the congregation?
The basic problem is not frequency; it’s style. I agree, the pulpit is not a place to ventilate. If you unload on people, whether you do it once or twenty times, you are squandering confidence. What I’m talking about is setting an atmosphere of bearing one another’s burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ. We need to encourage one another in our spiritual growth.
Naturally I’m not going to stand up and verbalize inappropriate things-a problem one of my children is having, for example. But if I sense, let’s say, a dryness in my personal prayer life, it doesn’t tear down the congregation for me to talk about it. In fact, it brings people out of the woodwork saying, “Thanks for sharing that. I needed to know I’m not the only one.”
I have apologized to a congregation at various times when I felt I had fallen short or sinned against them. Apologies need to be directed to the people against whom you’ve sinned, so that means you don’t go public with everything. But there are times when it is wonderfully healing and moving to do so. It has been a catalyst the Spirit has used to accomplish similar breakthroughs in other people’s lives.
In days gone by, pastors were known for their sobriety. These days a pastor is often expected to be witty and engaging, even the life of the party. Is this kind of thing on your mind very much?
Yes, there’s the temptation to try to impress, to be witty; I face it myself. Because we pastors are up front all the time, we get accustomed to people listening to us, and that tempts us toward egotism. It’s sadly fascinating, in fact, to watch a pastors’ meeting; the vying for attention is intense.
My view of the biblical model for pastors is the servant; thus, effective pastoring is not high-profile but low-profile.
What drives pastors in this direction, almost to the point of presiding over groups and gatherings?
That’s the right word-presiding. It’s because our models are the wrong models. We subconsciously copy the entertainer model or the politician model. We get into a meeting, and we just have to dominate.
If I were counseling such a person, I’d look for roots of insecurity, wouldn’t I? That’s often the root in leaders as well; many churches assume the pastor must be in control and if he’s not, trouble is imminent. The Bible, on the other hand, seems to indicate that the Spirit of God is to be the one in control. That may sound pious, I suppose, but it is the teaching of Scripture.
I find God convicting me at times in social situations when I’m dominating without even realizing it. The Holy Spirit draws me back and says, Do you realize what you’re doing? If I am guided by the Spirit, my mouth will be open at the right times and closed at the right times, and I won’t need to dominate anyone.
You certainly believe, though, that God has called you to lead, to give direction.
I do. Servant leadership is not being a milquetoast. The servant leader is first of all the servant of Christ and thus has a strong conviction about what Christ wants done. He blows the trumpet like a prophet of old, but in a spirit of humility.
I know of no passage of Scripture that makes pastors more uncomfortable than 1 Corinthians 11:1, where Paul says, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” That’s frightening. But the focus of a servant leader is precisely that. He is always pointing past himself to the Master. It’s an exciting, yet challenging model.
The mark of an effective pastor is how well the church would continue if the Lord took the pastor home today. If the church has been built on biblical concepts and keyed not to any human being but to the Lord himself, it will do very well.
A seminary department chairman once said to me, “You know, we are equipping most of our young pastors to be certain failures in the ministry.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“We use superpastors as the primary models-leaders with unusual gifts, people who instinctively know how to do the very thing Jesus warned against in Matthew 20. He said the Gentiles were good at lording authority over people, while he called us to find greatness in serving.”
I pray I will never be a superpastor and that Lake Avenue Congregational Church will never be a superchurch. People say, “Well, then you’d better stop drawing crowds, because you’re large enough now for that status.” A superchurch is not a matter of size but of mentality. Some churches of two and three hundred have the superchurch mentality, and I am determined to go the other way.
One of my major assignments in becoming pastor here has been to meet all the power blocs and lovingly but firmly dissolve them to the glory of God. The power needed to be restored to the Lord himself. It has happened here in a most wonderful way.
Many pastors would rather avoid that part of the role. How have you managed it?
The truth is that many people who wield power in the local church don’t even know they have it. They’ve just usurped it over the years, and if they are spiritually minded at all, they are shocked when you lovingly call it to their attention. They are more than willing to allow Jesus to be Lord.
This church tried several times over a twenty-year period to reorganize. There was tremendous resistance each time. One of the great gifts Ray Ortlund gave me when he left was to say to the membership, “For the sake of your new pastor, you must go through some reorganization.” So they appointed a committee …
… And when I arrived, the committee was deadlocked. It had divided into three camps.
“What do you think we ought to do?” they asked.
“Well,” I said, “how about giving me six months to experience the present structure? Rather than just reading about it and looking at the chart, let me feel the reality of it. Then let’s come together again, and I think I’ll be ready with some recommendations. I’ll also have time to seek the Lord’s guidance.”
Six months later, we had unanimity on a process to pursue toward reorganization. Now remember, this is a large congregational church; Lyle Schaller says the larger the church, the more difficult it is for the congregational form of government to operate. That’s absolutely true. It can work effectively, but you have to plan open and honest processes by which people can discern the will of God.
So we had a public meeting. We laid out the process to be followed. Then I made a bold statement. I said, “Brothers and sisters, I’ve been told that some in this church are in the habit of not participating in the process and then coming to final business meetings and blowing things out of the water. I don’t know any names, and I don’t care to know. My guess is that most of you have not done so in malice; you’re not even particularly aware that this has been your strategy.
“But I want to go on public record now that if you attempt such action this time, you will have to fight me every inch of the way. I will stand before the congregation and call you to accountability. You can no longer by-pass the opportunities to share your heart, to pray together, to be used of the Lord to give guidance and counsel through the process-and then show up at the end for a power play. I love you all, and I intend for us to go through this reorganization together.”
We went through the months of opening our hearts to the Lord, and when the final night came, there was not one negative vote. And it was not railroaded through. It affirmed my belief that the way for the church to be led is on our knees. I don’t want anyone to get his or her own way. I want us to get God’s way.
You must have done some mediation en route.
Certainly. We had disagreement, for example, on the role of women in the church. People had very strong feelings on both sides. At one point I said, “Instead of arguing about this any more, let’s do some honest, open Bible study on the question. I’ll do a series of messages, and then let’s have some question-and-answer time following. In the end, we may have to agree to disagree, but we will have made an attempt to understand what God is saying to us. And we may also have to admit that some truths in Scripture are not as clear as we thought they were.”
God took us through that in a wonderful way. There are still two camps on that issue. A strong group of people disagree with me as their pastor, but they love and respect me still, and I love and respect them. We don’t keep hanging the matter over each other’s heads.
How do you deal with people’s expectations regarding access to you? This is a large congregation, and people expect to be able to get to you.
You’ve just touched the most painful reality of my life.
Here’s how I deal with it: I have a policy that I will never refuse to see anyone who’s part of the church family. The problem is when they’ll get to see me. My regularly scheduled appointments are now filled six weeks ahead.
We do have a “pastor of the day” system, so that one of the staff is always available for emergencies. My secretary is very gifted in helping people who call, guiding them to the pastor on duty. No one is turned away.
Meanwhile, I’ve noticed a couple of interesting things. Some of the fringe people can be the most demanding. They not only want to see me but they want to see me at 6:30, right after they get off work. Well, I try to be as available as I can but not to infringe upon my family or my other work. Part of the strategy of Satan is to weigh pastors down with all kinds of guilt from these kinds of people.
The freedom I have in the Spirit is that I commit every day of my life to the Lord. Part of my morning prayer is this: “Lord, make me open and available to every person you want me to see today, and protect me from every person I need to be protected from. Oversee the day; cause cancellations and schedule changes; arrange chance meetings in the hall, whatever it takes in order that I minister to those you want me to see today.” I could tell some amazing stories of how God has answered that prayer.
The people who are willing to wait six weeks are almost without exception those with a legitimate reason to see me. As you know, there are few authentic emergencies in life. The people who wait for a scheduled appointment almost always have substantive things to discuss.
Do you ever find yourself avoiding contact with people you might naturally like to be with-the kindred spirits-for fear it will look like favoritism?
Not really. My father and mother were always sensitive about that, so much that they had few close friends. I resolved to handle that differently in my ministry, because I need close friends.
The only constraint is time. For the first two and a half years here, we did almost no choosing on our own; we simply accepted invitations! Only recently have we been able to shape our own social schedule.
The two nights for getting together with friends are Thursdays and Fridays. We’ve decided we will make engagements for only one of the two; the other is a family night. We’ve had a family night ever since the children were small.
Does a pastor need to project a certain level of enthusiasm in order to lead a congregation?
Very definitely-but it must be the authentic enthusiasm of the Spirit. People know when we’ve been with Jesus and when we haven’t. People can tell when we’re trying to drum up enthusiasm and when we’re motivated by the Holy Spirit.
That’s why I go ahead and say to the congregation at times, “I want you to recognize the difference between the Paul Cedar who’s living in the flesh and the Paul Cedar who’s motivated by the Holy Spirit. Whenever you see me living in the flesh, I want you lovingly but firmly to call me to accountability. I do not want to be that kind of leader.”
To me, that’s the difference between the enthusiastic Peter who whisked off the servant’s ear and the Peter who stood on the Day of Pentecost.
What does this mean practically? You’re in a missions emphasis this week in the church, and I’m sure you want certain things to happen, certain funds to be raised. It takes some drive to bring that to pass. At what point does it turn into cheerleading?
I do not want anything for this church except as God wants it. And one of the ways God keeps us honest is by how much he moves the hearts of his people to give. I will share the financial needs very clearly this week, neither minimizing nor exaggerating. But from that point, it’s up to the Spirit.
I take very seriously the passage in 1 Corinthians 13 that says I can do right things for the wrong motive, and it profits nothing in the kingdom of God. If Lake Avenue Church gives all its money to feed the poor but not because of love-if rather because the pastor has manipulated, or because of guilt, or pride-it’s worthless.
When I guide people to listen to the Spirit, I find I need to do very little motivating. In fact, most of them seem to pass me on the curve somewhere; they start calling on me to extend our vision and take on greater challenges.
But if I’ve come up with a plan that is not the will of God, the Spirit seems to shut down the supply of funds.
We had a situation here regarding remodeling the sanctuary. There were three opinions: those who wanted major renovation so we could stay here forever, those who felt we should build a new sanctuary and therefore didn’t want to spend on this one, and those (including me) in the middle who wanted to do a minimal amount while we studied where the Lord was taking us as a church.
In the end, we allowed the first group to make a presentation and then asked the people to give. We got an interesting result. The first group didn’t seem to pull out all the financial stops after all. We ended up raising enough money for the middle approach, and I didn’t have to do any “cheerleading,” as you say.
Now if I feel people are resisting the Holy Spirit and closing their hearts, I won’t hesitate to move in and call them to repentance. That’s a spiritual problem. But I find the Holy Spirit can motivate people to give a lot more than I can, and that’s what I keep seeking.
How candid can a pastor afford to be when a guest speaker doesn’t do real well? Must you protect the ministerial image at all costs?
We had a situation like that not long ago, where a speaker wasn’t nearly as strong as I had expected. I said nothing to embarrass him, of course, but later on I did comment to the congregation, “You remember when so-and-so was here, and he said such-and-such. I’m aware as you are that that wasn’t his best day-we all have days like that-but I hope you’ll hear the significance of what God said through him, namely. … “
That lets the people know I’m a realist but also serves to build up rather than tear down.
What about when you have a bad day?
My most painful experiences have been when I’ve had a problem and no one loved me enough to tell me about it. I could feel something was wrong, the walls were up, but I didn’t know what.
We seldom do people a favor by trying to spare their feelings from the truth. I never want my staff to kowtow or to talk behind my back about something I need to know. I never want them to feel that if they share something with me, their job is on the line.
That’s as true with staff members as with your children: when you provide the opportunity for people to be honest and open with you about negative things, they seldom need to use it. Things seldom build up to that point.
What if you know what you did wrong or poorly? When do you speak up, and when do you let sleeping dogs lie?
I did something last week that’s never happened in twenty-five years of ministry: I disciplined a staff member in front of the rest of the team and also the major officers of the church. In fact, I got angry. The person had done something out of line in a context that was awkward for me to correct. And in the heat of emotion, I unleashed a public rebuke.
That was on a Wednesday night. I left the meeting feeling totally down. Within a couple of days, I knew I could not wait until our next scheduled meeting a month later. We would have to have another meeting on Sunday.
We got everyone together again, and I said, “In twenty-five years of ministry I have never done what I did the other night, and I ask your forgiveness. I am very, very sorry. I hope it will never happen again.
“Secondly, I want to explain the dynamics of why it happened so you can help me.
“Third, I’d like to share what I think are some positive benefits that have come about, even though I am sorry for the negative effects. This doesn’t justify what I did; it simply illustrates God’s grace.”
We ended up on our knees together, broken before God. I also spent five hours alone with that staff member, working through some needful things for his sake and the sake of the whole ministry team.
We often hear, “Don’t talk where you haven’t walked.” But when you have to preach every Sunday, do you find yourself preaching biblical truths that haven’t always been fully internalized in your own life?
Yes, unfortunately. For example, I carry a great desire that we will be a praying church, and I speak about it often. Yet my own prayer life is still in process. It’s not all I want it to be.
It’s helpful for people to know that when my alarm goes off at 5:33 or whenever, I have the same struggle getting out of bed that they do. This is a means of encouraging them.
I’ve shared that my efforts to memorize Scripture over the years have usually not succeeded when I’ve done it alone; it works best when I commit to doing it with someone else. We help each other.
This is Paul’s whole philosophy in Philippians 3 of pressing on, never having attained, always reaching upward. I can’t imagine anyone wanting a pastor who thinks he’s arrived in every area of his Christian life.
At the same time, I must warn against the syndrome of glorying in failure. I’ve been some places where the hero was the person who failed most that week. That’s what Bonhoeffer would call cheap grace, I think. We don’t need to wallow in self-depreciation.
What mental image do you hope people carry of Paul Cedar?
I am certainly no model for authenticity, but it is my deepest desire to follow Christ with all my heart and not to play games, not to have a secret life.
Someone told me as a boy that when you tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said. The same is true of living.
If I carry any kind of “presence” into a room, I want it to be the presence of the Holy Spirit. The world doesn’t need any more false leaders. I don’t want to guide young men and women into the ministry to become Paul Cedars. I want to guide them to become more and more like Christ.
The life of authenticity is contingent upon being transparent before God. And that’s the key to humility. Humility is not having an inferiority complex-something I suffered for years. I went through the pain of thinking that in order to be spiritual, I had to be a worm. Authentic biblical humility is seeing myself as God sees me and knowing I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
I know I’m not qualified to be the pastor of this church. I do not have all it needs. But if I walk in the Spirit, I can be effective here.
Back when I was being interviewed as a twenty-one-year-old in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a godly pastor said something I will always be thankful for. “What frightens me about your coming here, Paul,” he said, “is that I think you have all the talents you need to do this job and do it well. And I’m scared to death that’s what you’re going to do.”
I didn’t quite know how to take that.
Then he continued, “What I wish for you is a job where you know you don’t have all the talents, so you have to depend on the Holy Spirit and stretch beyond yourself.”
That insight has stayed with me. Stretching is another part of the way God keeps us honest. He puts us, like Moses, into situations where we are hopelessly inadequate without him.
Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
