Alan Taylor felt he was growing fat at First Presbyterian Church in Auburn, California. Not that he was putting on weight; Alan’s trim, well-groomed appearance spoke quietly of accomplishment. He suspected his ministry was assuming the indolent ease.
His nine years in Auburn, a burgeoning Sierra foothill community where forty-niners once panned for gold, had been happy. Maybe too happy. After unbroken success, Alan began to wonder, Am I becoming content to relax and enjoy the journey? His people freely expressed their affection for the Taylors, giving them tickets to the Sacramento Symphony and the use of ski condos at Lake Tahoe. Alan was no freeloader-First Church had grown from four hundred to nearly a thousand under his leadership-but his tendency to reside in the ease of a comfortable position disturbed him.
Writing had provided Alan’s recent excitement. His two books produced speaking engagements and ego strokes. Writing stimulated him, while the church remained a predictable, mastered enterprise.
“I don’t want to just be coasting in my forties,” he confided to his wife, Sue. “I need to stay alive, to be challenged by my ministry, not just my next book.”
Alan’s daughter contributed to his growing restlessness. “For fifteen years Nikki was a kid you’d want to order from a catalogue,” Alan explains. “She was everything you could want.” But adolescence didn’t treat her gently. Boys twice broke her heart, she was cut from a team, and, in her failing self-esteem, she took up with the wrong crowd at school. In a year’s time, Nikki degenerated from the perfect child to the epitome of a troubled teen.
The Taylors agonized over every turn for the worse. After an all-night escapade with a boy they had forbidden Nikki to see, the fallout included her extreme rebellion and sullenness. Alan and Sue became frantic. Something had to be done for Nikki. For the family! “If we can only get her out of town,” Alan suggested to Sue, “if we can extract her from the chain of negative elements, Nikki might have a chance.”
Enter Broadmore Presbyterian Church of Seattle. Ralph Bates, the chairman of the pastor nominating committee, had appreciated Alan’s books. As they talked over the phone, he said he visualized Alan as a dynamic “name” pastor to lend prestige to Broadmore Presbyterian.
The church was a proud dowager, existing on a handsome endowment and waning reputation. Ralph could remember when it was the church in Seattle. At one time the university president, the mayor, and half the physicians at Children’s Hospital were members. However, the last seventeen years witnessed an exodus of members as Dr. Hedgepath occupied the pulpit with friendly gentility but ebbing effectiveness.
Ralph figured the church needed a shot in the arm, and Alan Taylor was the man to do it. He and two others flew in to talk with Alan. Alan met them at the airport and took them to Old Sacramento for lunch.
Ralph painted a glowing picture of Broadmore Presbyterian, its grand history, the beautiful Gothic sanctuary, and its pivotal role in meeting Seattle’s needs. Then he turned to Alan and flatly declared, “I believe you’re just the man we need to restore the position of our church.” The other two committee members looked surprised by Ralph’s license, but Alan was hooked by the challenge.
They spent the better part of two days talking about the church and Alan’s strengths in ministry. The delegation returned to Seattle convinced they had their man, and Alan rejoiced with Sue over the exciting prospects. After the Taylors’ trip to Seattle that took on the air of a royal visit, the pieces all fell into place. Alan announced his resignation in Auburn, and the Taylors were warmly feted and graciously released. By summer they were ensconced in a Seattle home with a view of Mount Rainier.
Excitement bubbled in the Taylor household-until the first Session meeting. Alan was completely unprepared for what transpired: “I expected some kind of jockeying for position over who runs the church. Usually the board takes an initial wait-and-see approach, but not at Broadmore. Ralph Bates tied into me that very first meeting!”
Dr. Jekyll came on like Mr. Hyde. “Alan,” Ralph chided, “who gave you permission to change our worship? You may have played fast and loose in laidback California, but this is Broadmore. Traditions mean something here.”
Is this the same guy who told me Broadmore needed changes? Alan wondered. What gives? All I did was move the announcements to the beginning of the service. Alan backpedaled. “Ralph, I’m confused. I didn’t mean to step on any toes, but I thought from our conversations in Sacramento that Broadmore was ripe for innovation.” And why a public forum to upbraid me?
Ralph responded with an air of innocence. “I’m sorry if you were misled, but we need some stability now, not a lot of new ideas floating around.”
Who did he think misled me? Alan wondered. He felt like a victim of false advertising.
The reality of Broadmore Presbyterian, at least as Ralph Bates now painted it, was not at all to Alan’s liking. He had come to give strong, innovative leadership to a church wandering in a muddle. That enticed him. But this?
On the way out of the meeting, Ralph steered Alan into a corner. “Alan,” he whispered, “what you want to do, this church needs. But wait. Let me be a buffer for you; lay low for a while.”
“But that’s not me. I’ve always been a strong leader, and this place needs a leader. In two years, it could go totally dormant!”
“Alan, I know this church. Don’t upset the gentry. We’ll all look bad.”
“I’ll think about it” was all Alan could promise. So now he wants me to chaplain the status quo, does he? And why was the rest of the Session so strangely silent?
Alan had enjoyed warm relationships with the chairmen of previous calling committees. They had become his best friends who stood with him in difficult times. In Seattle, Ralph Bates proved his chief antagonist, opposing Alan at every turn. It disheartened Alan as their views of the church and Alan’s role in it clashed like two air masses over Kansas.
Other unexpected problems fell on Alan with the leaves of fall. The church ethos differed from Auburn to Seattle. In California the people represented a plethora of backgrounds, so no one way of doing things prevailed. Not so in Seattle. The people of Broadmore Presbyterian cherished long-established expectations. This caught Alan off guard.
For instance, an unwritten assumption governed staff size: There shall never be more ministers than when old Dr. Kennedy was pastor in the glory days of the late fifties. If he could handle things with two associates, so can anyone else.
For Alan, adding staff at First Church had been a management matter, not a visceral statement. He couldn’t live with such an arbitrary imposition. He told the Session, “I need another staff pastor. Three of us cannot adequately meet the needs of a two-thousand-member congregation, especially if we intend to grow!” Ralph opposed it vigorously, but the Session eventually approved it. The feeling was, “You’re the new pastor; we’ll go with you this time and see what happens.” Although he won the battle, Alan had shed some blood on the battlefield, and he had never been wounded like that before.
What have I done here? he wondered. Did I panic and bolt when I should have stayed put in Auburn? Did I make a decision in the midst of emotional turmoil and turn off my brain in the process? Was I making God’s decisions for him? And if so, is all this the result of my disobedience?
A second front drained Alan’s resources from the church battles: Nikki did not take the move well. Seattle was not her home. She missed the hot summers and the inner tube runs down the American River. Too insecure to make new friends in an established social climate, Nikki retreated into her bitterness over what had been done to her.
Throughout the summer Nikki coped by sleeping fourteen hours a day. With school in September, her passive symptoms of depression turned active. “Mom,” she ventured one day dragging in from a terrible day at school, “you and Dad would be a lot better off without me, wouldn’t you?”
Sue was startled. “What do you mean by that?”
“It’s just that I’m such a loser. If I were dead, you wouldn’t have to bother with me any more.”
“Nikki, that’s not at all true, and you know it.” Sue was stunned, but when she found a large bottle of sleeping pills squirreled away in Nikki’s dresser, she and Alan hurried her to a psychiatrist. Afraid they might lose Nikki, they wondered, Have we made a fatal error?
The combination of Nikki’s troubles and the dashing of expectations for the church shook Alan. The excitement of the move had bleached out in the first wash. With Ralph nipping at his heels like a hyperactive sheep dog, the Session meetings drained Alan. The people seemed cold and distant, as if they were waiting to pass judgment on what this bigshot from California could perform.
“By December,” Alan recalls, “I was one day away from leaving the ministry. I contacted a friend in business to see if I might do something besides preaching. If somebody had come along with an offer, I’d have been gone.” The gray Seattle days obscured his view of Mount Rainier.
Alan’s problem with Ralph, although unexpected, was probably inevitable. Fortunately Ralph exercised considerably more sway in the church Alan came to than the one Alan eventually fashioned. Ralph’s star gradually faded as Alan’s ascended. But Alan couldn’t initially foresee that.
In the midst of his distress, Alan took some missteps. “I became impatient,” he recalls. “I forced almost immediate changes. I later counted thirty-one in the first year alone-big things like raising the budget and proposing new staff. Somehow we survived, but the changes came more from my ego needs than church needs. Since I had made a mistake in coming, I felt I had to make the shoe fit me- and fast-just to survive.”
One fellow stomped into Alan’s office and said, “You’ve stolen our church!”
“Whose church?”
“Our church,” he replied.
“Yours?” asked Alan. “Who owns it?”
“Those of us who started it,” he grumped.
Alan’s counter, “We’re Christ’s church,” rang a little empty with all his maneuvering.
Such was the resistance he encountered with the charter members. Only Alan’s pulpit effectiveness and his credentials from many years of pastoral experience covered for his overzealousness to shape up the church.
Alan began recovering from his mistake in pain’s forced self-examination. What am I in this thing for? Is it pleasure? Recognition? Maybe I was spoiled in Auburn. Titus was surrounded by liars and gluttons; maybe this is my Island of Crete. Who am I to say there’s not some reason for my going through this?
He also took refuge in his marriage. Sue shared the trauma over Nikki and much of the shock of going from a loving, affirming congregation to a more standoffish group. Together they endured what they called a major change in temperature from a warm shower to cold.
Eventually the cold shower warmed. Alan’s humor and warmth lodged in the congregation and started reflecting back on him and his family. People reached out individually. “We started getting dinner invitations,” Alan remembers. “Then we heard that nearly one hundred had gathered in a home to pray for us and communicate support when rumor had it we were unsettled.”
People broke through the cold barriers Alan originally felt. “They gave encouragement enough that I could take the next step until finally I could start walking again” is how Alan put it. That second wind kept him from gasping for oxygen elsewhere.
One of Alan’s heroes, a retired saint, buoyed him. “Alan,” he said, “there isn’t one church reaching Seattle like you can.” To Alan that was like saying “Sic ’em” to a dog. It gave him a challenge; it helped him look outside himself. Perhaps it came from pride, but it rekindled Alan’s vision.
Later, visitors from his Auburn parish told him, “Now we see why God led you here. Though we miss you, we realize this is a place where you can really minister.” They perceived what Alan, in his struggle, was missing: his “mistake” was not without redeeming factors. Their encouragement added a page of affirmation to a narrow volume.
Probably the pew-to-pulpit communication accomplished the greatest remedial work. “Every preacher receives communication from the pew while he preaches, both good and bad,” Alan observes. “The pew was my sustaining grace. I was saved by the timely comfort telegraphed by people inspired by God.” In doing the work of the ministry, Alan began to receive the rewards, even when interspersed with brickbats from other quarters.
No dramatic turns catapulted the Taylors into bliss. For many months they lived day to day with the dreary results of a decision that for all the world sure felt like a mistake. With an occasional tactical victory in Session, with a rising incidence of pleasant encounters with parishioners, with a rare period of sunshine in Nikki’s struggle, with the belief that God intends to mend mistakes, but mostly with dogged determination not to stumble recklessly into another blunder, Alan, Sue, and even Nikki weathered the move to Seattle.
Three years later, with the church once again a sound vessel on a new course, Alan breathes a sigh of relief, cautiously thankful he didn’t jump ship in the rough waters.
Tips for Survival
Did Alan make a mistake going to Broadmore? For agonizing months it had all the symptoms of a colossal mistake. But is something a mistake that begins like a mistake, develops like a mistake, and feels like a mistake, even when it doesn’t end a mistake? Perhaps God’s very ability to redeem our blunders colors the picture in hindsight.
The fact remains: Every pastor errs; the disease is endemic. So what can we do when blunders overtake us, whether they be the mild variety that tangle us or the massive sort that trigger the “I’ve really blown it now!” response? Alan’s experience offers some clues.
Proceed cautiously. The statement “Nothing can be judged the day it happens” helped Alan avoid making a final decision on momentary evidence. As he put it, “You can’t judge the whole parade from what you see through a knothole.”
Mistakes breed panic. Three months after coming to Seattle, Alan wanted to abandon the ministry. Had he acted impulsively, he might well have piled one mistake on another.
Before the denouement, however, Alan figured he had torpedoed his ministry. To this point he had done so well. Yet here he was in Seattle-miserable, worried sick about his daughter, angry at Ralph’s flimflam tactics, and remembering how grand life had been in Auburn. Alan’s mistake pained him-continually-yet it caused him to take stock before he took action.
“Pastors make their share of mistakes in choosing places to serve,” Alan believes. “We think we want to live in a certain community, be near our families, have access to varied opportunities-things that may not be the Lord’s priorities. When we use the wrong criteria for making our decisions, the basis for the decision is suspect. Then, no matter how we massage the information, our conclusions will be shaky.
“I thought getting Nikki out of Auburn would be good for her. I thought a new challenge would stimulate me. I was wrong. I had used the wrong criteria to force a move. Maybe I was trying to make God’s plan fit my expectations. Yet, I believe if I am sincere despite the emotional trauma I am under, if I am following the light as best I know how, even if I make a mistake, God will rescue me. And I’ll grow through it.
“That’s exactly what happened in Seattle. After three years, the church is still not completely what I expected, and Ralph is still not on my side. But he’s coming around. After playing left field without a mitt for three years, maybe he’s beginning to understand the rest of the team has gone with the coach.”
Shutting down the decision-making process for a brief moratorium makes good sense. This is not ceasing to function. Analysis abounds. After making a mistake, most pastors know what they feel- wretched. They must decide what they know. Information gathering, exploring the options is in order. Alan learned to take a day at a time while he sorted through the rubble. Had he thought less and emoted more, he probably wouldn’t have the effective ministry he enjoys today.
Many a resignation has been prematurely proffered, many a dream abandoned, many a blunder compounded from incautious attempts to quickly fix a mistake. A seasoned, broader perspective realizes that today’s mistake may not seem so tomorrow. Alan advises, “Give it time. I had to learn to wait on the Lord, to not make a hasty judgment.”
Regroup around the basics. After an inglorious belly-flop, the next dive is not the time to introduce a new twist. The diver needs to reconfirm her ability to enter the water safely and gracefully with a well-executed, familiar dive.
“If your team gets in trouble,” Alan advises, “you go back to fundamentals. If you lose your perspective, return to what you know.” Alan found therapeutic satisfaction in people business-trying to preach his best sermons, visiting people, counseling. It would have been ill-advised to launch a TV ministry, or even a second worship service.
A mistake shakes the confidence of both pastor and parish. The pastor has fallen off the bicycle. He must get back on and ride it sanely; no more standing on the seat, just basic, safe transportation. New, small victories have a way of bolstering the pastor’s confidence and regaining the congregation’s approval. Concentrating on the bedrock of ministry rebuilds a shaken foundation.
Pastoral care mends fences. Following many mistakes, the people especially need to know they are loved. Perhaps they have been disappointed, stung, angered. The personal touch of their pastor smoothes many ruffled feathers. Caring for others may be the last thing the pastor wants to face, yet it is necessary and carries rewards few anticipate.
Many parishioners wait for a reason to again affirm a pastor. Given that reason, they surprise their pastor with warmth, care, and genuine forgiveness. One shocked pastor said, “He’s a right-wing, knee-jerk, ultraconservative. He had every reason to condemn me after what I did. Yet he tells me, ‘I know how you helped me as my pastor, and you will be my friend until the day I die.’ Who could expect it?” Centering on pastoral basics paid great dividends.
Seek trusted counsel. The fog gets thick at times, and to pierce it sometimes requires others’ radar. Alan’s thoughts had wandered from flight to fight. He needed help sorting them out.
Alan could have used counsel even before his error. He warns: “I should have done some personal investigating outside the church committee. A probing list of questions for neighboring pastors or denominational staff could have spared me from being blindsided at that first Session meeting.
“I knew the type of leadership I had to offer. Even cursory checking could have tipped me off about mismatched expectations. I’m an open person. When I talked with the committee in California, I let them know my philosophy of ministry. I said, ‘I was called to preach. I consider my study time, prayer time, and periods for reflection a major priority. And that calls me to be limited on other things.’ I just assumed they knew who they were and what they needed. I expected them to be capable of making a good match. I assumed wrong.
“I followed a weak preacher. He was a hobnobber-five minutes here, coffee with this family, a visit there. The people criticized his preaching, but they liked drinking coffee with him. These same folks praised my preaching, but they still wanted me for coffee! I should have known enough to expect that. I got more surprises in my first three months at Broadmore than in years of prior ministry.”
But Alan’s mistake made him wiser. Ma Bell smiled at the number of calls he made from Seattle to trusted friends in ministry. He chose those outside his locale who could give him unbiased feedback. Their listening, probing, and praying with him added perspective. They affirmed his call and gifts, or called his bluff as the need arose. He especially appreciated those who didn’t totally agree with him. He needed penetrating-even blunt-counsel, not just sympathy.
By submitting his feelings to a corrective community, Alan received the wise counsel his shell-shocked psyche could not provide. His revered role model challenged him. Another friend helped Alan “buy space” by suggesting a short-term ministry at Broadmore might be God’s intention. It made the immediate miasma more bearable by giving it limited dimensions. Alan believed he could tolerate a year or two.
“Where’s my blind spot?” is the question he asked. “What am I failing to comprehend?” Some pastors find they shouldn’t own the problem; they’re not the cause. Others discover a particular weakness sets them up for repeated trouble. They need to attend to the cause prior to fixing the symptoms. For others, perhaps a solution exists, one they hadn’t considered. Trusted advisors pull a pastor through pea-soup fog.
Alan is happy now-challenged, successful, satisfied-without having abandoned Broadmore Presbyterian. He wouldn’t choose to go through the wringer again, nor would he recommend subjecting a troubled teen to Nikki’s ordeal. Yet the God who reconciled Paul and Barnabas, who redeemed the libertine Augustine, who recommissioned the failed missionary John Wesley, who recovered conspirator Charles Colson-that God habitually uses even our mistakes for his purposes.
Mistakes are as inevitable as the wrinkles of age and fill most ministries with hilarious anecdotes and serious consequences. The ability to live through them gracefully and grow from them profitably separates the productive survivors from the maimed victims.
Jim Berkley is associate editor of LEADERSHIP.
DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID
I served on a church staff with my father for three years before relinquishing the security. My father, who still thinks like the accountant for TWA he once was, had thoroughly instructed me in organization, but his leadership had shielded me from church politics.
Leaving my father’s well-oiled system to pastor a small church was threatening, to say the least. So, in my last month as Dad’s associate, I made a lunch appointment to milk his wisdom on church politics. As we unwrapped our hamburgers, I said, “Tell me how to be a successful pastor.”
He took a bite, chewed a moment, and just before again sinking his teeth into the hamburger replied, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
That seemed to settle it in his mind, but I wondered if he was insinuating something about me. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, “you know Jack Penbrook? He’s not that great at preaching, but he’ll always be a successful pastor. He doesn’t do stupid things. He never reacts immediately.
“Whenever a problem comes up that you think requires immediate action, ask yourself this question: ‘If a friend of mine were getting ready to do what I’m thinking of doing, would I advise him against it?’ If the answer is yes, sit down and do nothing. If you can’t do anything to help a situation, for goodness sake, don’t do anything to hurt it!”
Later I found biblical confirmation of Dad’s advice in Proverbs 19:11-“The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression.”
Dad turned his attention to his hamburger, and that was about all I got out of him. But it was well worth the cost of lunch.
My church was two and a half years old when I became its first full-time pastor. It was a family church-it met in a deacon’s basement the first ten months-so everyone knew everyone else. My wife and I were the first new members to be received in a year. I knew enough to watch for unspoken traditions and procedures in such a congregation.
Six months after I came, a cold snap arrived on a December Sunday morning and froze everything in sight. From the church door I watched cars limp into the parking lot. The deacons and I met for prayer before worship, and one of them said, “We think it’s going to be too cold to get out tonight; we’d better cancel the evening service.”
Well, I had always lived next door to the church, and my dad never canceled services! A lot of smart replies jumped to my mind. All would have been gratifying to express-and equally stupid. I must have looked like Stan Laurel as I smiled and nodded. The deacons decided to circulate after the service to informally pass the word about the cancellation, and we headed into the service.
I didn’t stand during the first song nor pay any attention to the announcements. I looked out over the congregation and thought, Well, this is it. I can’t go along with their decision. I wonder if I can find a job in a grocery store that doesn’t sell liquor. Then my eyes settled on my little son, seated in the pew beside his mother, and God employed my father’s voice.
What would you do if your son acted like this? You’d tell him to grow up, right? Don’t do anything stupid, son; you have a tantrum over something little like this, and you’ll deserve to lose their respect. Besides, the deacons know these people better than you do. They might be trying to spare you from preaching to an empty church.
Even in my imagination, Dad is something of a pain.
I stood up and sang as loud as I could on the second song. And I preached on “The Assurance of Christmas.” Lo and behold, a man gave his life to Christ that morning! My stupidity could have cost a soul, but discretion deferred anger, and the morning was salvaged.
By the end of the service, a thaw changed the deacons’ minds. We held our service that evening, and one young preacher learned his father’s lesson.
Oh, by the way, a few months ago Dad dropped by my house. When he was about to leave, I asked, “Hey, what do you hear from Jack Penbrook?”
“He just resigned his church.”
“Really? I thought things were going well for him. What happened?”
“Aw,” Dad said, shaking his head in disgust, “he did something stupid.”
-Greg McAllister
New Life Free Will Baptist Church
O’Fallon, Missouri
Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
