In a marathon, runners battle not just physical fatigue, but also a type of mental madness and loneliness. In that regard, they know what it’s like to be a pastor.
In the midst of a marathon, some runners who have trained for months to finish the 26.2 miles will wonder why they started the race, or what prompted them to take up running in the first place. Stabbing pains in the legs threaten completion of the race. Taking water is a decision of immense proportions: too little means dehydration, too much means cramps. Too weary or isolated to talk with fellow runners, they fluctuate between despair and the euphoria of the runner’s high. They keep going because there are few things in life that compare to the satisfaction of finishing a marathon.
That sounds familiar to pastors. They know the loneliness of long-distance ministry: the discouragement, the doubts, the moral and spiritual battles that rage in the mind. Of course, they know the minister’s high, as well, when they hear, from time to time, the inner voice of the Spirit: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
For ten years now, LEADERSHIP has been a companion to clergy in the long race of ministry. Articles have addressed the wanderings and wonderings of parish pastors. Our intent: to keep ministers energized and effective in their callings.
Since the beginning, each issue of the magazine has included a survey (see page 139), and through it, readers have indicated which articles have been most helpful. Along the way we’ve noticed that certain topics elicit the greatest positive response.
LEADERSHIP readers’ concerns include both the personal and the professional. And in each of those categories, four issues rise to prominence. Here are excerpts from some of the articles rated highest-all averaging scores of 8.1 or more on the 10-point scale.
We begin with a look at the professional side of ministry.
The Ministry: Preaching
Not surprisingly, LEADERSHIP readers found articles on preaching to be especially helpful. Two articles tied for the highest rated preaching article. One, “Speaking to the Secular Mind” (Summer 1988) by Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church of South Barrington, Illinois, addresses a difficulty every pastor faces in communicating the gospel today.
Driving home from church the other day, I pulled behind a guy on his Harley-Davidson. I noticed a bumper sticker on the rear fender of his motorcycle, so I pulled closer. It read: SCREW GUILT.
After the shock wore off, I was struck by how different his world was from the one I’d just left-and even from the world a generation ago. In my day, we felt guilty, I thought. Now, it’s not only “I don’t feel guilty,” but “Screw guilt.” I find the unchurched people today, whom we’re called to reach, are increasingly secular.
There was a time when your word was a guarantee, when marriage was permanent, when ethics were assumed. Not so very long ago, heaven and hell were unquestioned, and caring for the poor was an obvious part of what it meant to be a decent person. Conspicuous consumption was frowned upon because it was conspicuous. The label “self-centered” was to be avoided at all costs, because it said something horrendous about your character.
Today, all of that has changed. Not only is it different, but people can hardly remember what the former days were like. …
If we’re going to speak with integrity to secularized men and women, we need to … understand the way they think. For most of us pastors, though, that’s a challenge. The majority of my colleagues went to a Bible school or Christian college and on to seminary, and have worked in the church ever since. As a result, most have never been close friends with a non-Christian. They want to make their preaching connect with unchurched people, but they’ve never been close enough to them to gain an intimate understanding of how their minds work.
I have suggested for many years that our pastors at Willow Creek find authentic interest areas in their lives-tennis, golf, jogging, sailing, mechanical work, whatever-and pursue these in a totally secular realm. Instead of joining a church league softball team, why not join a park district team? Instead of working out in the church gym, shoot baskets at the YMCA. On vacation, don’t go to a Bible conference but to some state park where the guy in the next campsite is going to bring over his six-pack and sit at your picnic table.
The other preaching article that received equally high marks was by Fred Smith. In “Overlooked Fundamentals of Good Speaking” (Summer 1987), we see his characteristic no-nonsense approach.
I hear a lot of preachers … who are pretty sloppy in their opening comments. Perhaps it’s because they haven’t thought about them, but the mood they create right from the start makes it tough to benefit from the rest of the sermon.
Most of us know you don’t want to start on a negative note. “I hope you all will excuse my voice this morning. I’ve had a cold all week.”
Or “I really appreciate you all coming on a miserable, rainy day like today.”
Or “Folks, we just are not getting enough people. When I stand up here and look out at this congregation …
What kind of impression do these introductions make on the listeners? Probably not a good one. You’re not starting from their need. You’re starting from your need. And that’s not the way to fill people with anticipation for the Word you have to give.
The Ministry: Administration
If public proclamation challenges pastors, so does nitty-gritty administration. One concern among many-recruiting volunteers-was addressed by Howard Hendricks, professor of Christian education at Dallas Theological Seminary. In “At the Planning Retreat” (Summer 1980), the highest rated article on administration, he made this aside, with characteristic wit and insight:
How you enlist a person usually determines how he or she will serve. A moratorium should be declared on at least three ways of enlisting people. One is the public announcement read on Sunday morning: “Beloved, next Tuesday we are going visiting. Please show up. Last week nobody showed up. Won’t you please come this week?” Usually, no one will come the following week except the two people you should never send visiting!
Another one is last-minute conscription; it’s the situation where the Sunday school superintendent slips in during the adult class opening exercises, taps the person on the end row, and sentences him to the junior department for life. The moral of which is: “Don’t sit on the end of the row.”
The third is the tactic of desperate C.E. directors who approach a sincere, goodhearted person and say, “We’ve been all through the church looking for someone to take the high school class and we can’t find anybody who wants to take it. We’ve lost six people in the last seven months, and now we’re coming to you. Will you take it?” If this goodhearted Christian says, “Well, I don’t have much time,” the C.E. director usually responds, “That’s all right. It won’t take very much time.”
It has always fascinated me that when we take people into a local church-the time of their greatest motivation, namely, their willingness to unite with the church-we tell them to sit down, keep quiet, and listen. After we have made spectators of them, we try to reverse their orientation to one of participation. The time to give members some responsibility is when they join the church. People need to know we’re not operating the Church of the Sacred Rest.
The Ministry: Crisis Counseling
Ministers are one group of professionals trained and called to help people in crisis. But one can never get enough training for that sort of thing. Maybe that’s why our articles on this theme produced such high ratings.
Naturally, a key in all crisis counseling is to demonstrate empathy. But without having experienced a similar crisis-often the case-how can ministers be genuinely empathetic? Can they offer any help to someone whose situation is utterly new to them?
Betsy Burnham was dying of cancer when she wrote a book called When Your Friend Is Dying, a portion of which we adapted (Summer 1983). It became our fourth-highest rated article. In it she spoke to this common concern.
But suppose you and your family have never experienced the drawn-out battle of life-threatening illness. That doesn’t mean you have no common ground on which to relate to your sick friend. But it is best to find the level on which you can relate.
Remember that many feelings get wrapped into an illness: loneliness, fear, sadness, uselessness, guilt, anger, frustration. All of us have had these feelings at times, and with varying intensity. These are the areas of common ground to listen for.
Maybe your friend will let you know that he is fearful about an upcoming surgery or treatment. And perhaps you have felt an overpowering fear for a child, spouse, or parent, or even for your own life. You might look for an opportunity to tell about that experience briefly. Be prepared to answer questions honestly, and remember not to keep the rest of the conversation focused on yourself.
I realize this level of communication is not easy for some people. I often have encountered real stiffness in this area of heart-to-heart sharing. Some folks are not used to showing their emotions. Others are afraid to be vulnerable, to appear weak, less than perfect, not in control.
The truth is, all of us are a combination of strengths and weaknesses. I am not suggesting that you have to have an all-out, towel-wringing cry to show your friend you truly care. But you can enter that deeper level of friendship some folks miss when they deny or suppress emotions.
LEADERSHIP contributing editor Philip Yancey, in “Helping Those in Pain” (Spring 1984), also shared some well-received insights in his on-going exploration of human pain.
I begin with some discouraging news: I cannot give you a magic formula to deliver suffering people. There is nothing much you can say to help. Some of the brightest minds in history have explored every angle of the problem of pain, asking why people hurt, and still we find ourselves stammering out the same questions. Not even God attempted an explanation of cause or rationale in his reply to Job. The great king David, the nearly perfect man Job, and finally even God in flesh, Jesus, reacted to pain much the same as we do. They recoiled from it, thought it horrible, did their best to alleviate it, and finally cried out to God in despair because of it. Personally, I find it discouraging to have no final, satisfying answer for people in pain.
And yet, viewed in another way, that nonanswer is surprisingly good news. When I have asked suffering people, “Who helped you?” not one has ever mentioned a Ph.D. from divinity school or a famous philosopher. The kingdom of suffering is a democracy, and we all stand in it or alongside it with nothing but our naked humanity. All of us have the same capacity to help, and that is good news.
The answer to the question “How do I help those in pain?” is exactly the same as the answer to “How do I love?” A person in pain needs love, not knowledge and wisdom. In this area of suffering, as in so many others, God uses very ordinary people to bring healing. And today, if you asked me for a Bible passage on how to help suffering people, I would point to 1 Corinthians 13.
The Ministry: Evangelism
In one sense, preaching, counseling, and administration are directed toward one goal: helping others find life in Jesus Christ. It’s not surprising that this has been a major concern of our readers. In an article that tied for second most popular, Win and Charles Arn, of the Institute for American Church Growth, wrote about “Closing the Evangelistic Back Door” (Spring 1984). It displays their characteristic use of the science of church growth.
A person may hear the gospel in a Bible study class. He may hear it through music. He may see the Christian life demonstrated in the lives of friends. He may hear a testimony at a church social event. He may read it in Scripture, a tract, or a book. He may hear it on radio or television. Then, after many exposures, a season of receptivity comes into that person’s life-a time of need- when the seed that has been sown breaks into new life, takes root, sprouts, and grows.
Research underscores this fact. In comparing active and inactive members, Flavel Yeakley found (in Why Churches Grow) that those who continued as active church members had been exposed to an average of 5.79 different Christian influences prior to their commitment. The dropouts, by comparison, had seen or heard the Christian message only 2.16 times before their decision.
As an evangelistic strategy, the more times a person is exposed to the gospel message prior to a Christian commitment, the more likely he or she is to understand the implications of that commitment. The fewer the exposures prior to commitment, the greater likelihood of dropping out.
The corollary: Effective evangelistic strategy seeks to expose potential disciples to many and varied presentations of the gospel. …
Group Ratio. At least seven relational groups-places where friendships are built-should be available in a church for every hundred members.
In studying churches involved in our institute’s Two-Year Growth Process, we have found that plateaued and declining churches fall far short of this group-to-member ratio. The consequence of too few groups for members to build meaningful relationships is a high rate of inactives using the back door. Good questions to ask are: “How many groups does our church have per hundred members?” “What percentage of the congregation is a regular part of one or more groups?” “How many new converts/new members have become a regular part of such groups in the last two years?” “How many have not?”
Creating an effective group life is a fundamental building block for growth and incorporation. This important ratio is affirmed by other authorities. Lyle Schaller writes in Assimilating New Members, “It usually is necessary to have six or seven of these groups . . . for each one hundred members who are 13 or 14 years of age or older.”
This ratio in a church will provide important answers to the question “How open is this church to newcomers?”
The Minister: Integrity
While LEADERSHIP readers are interested in the professional issues of ministry, they also value articles on the personal side. Twenty of the top thirty articles from our first ten years dealt with the demands ministry places on a pastor’s personal life. Here are our readers’ four major concerns.
Integrity is a burning issue with readers. Five of the decade’s top ten LEADERSHIP articles concern issues of integrity. And the topic that burns brightest is sex. Our Winter 1988 edition on that topic was rated, overall, by readers as the most helpful issue of LEADERSHIP’S ten-year history. And the article rated highest of all, “The War Within Continues” (Winter 1988), was a sequel to “The War Within: An Anatomy of Lust” (Fall 1982), which, when it came out, was the second-highest ever. The author’s name has been withheld, although the articles could have been written by many a pastor. For example, in the first article he describes the temptation to lust, especially when away from home.
Some of you know what it is like to walk with your eyes at breast level, to flip eagerly through every new issue of Time searching for a rare sexy picture, to yearn for chains on the outside of your motel room to keep you in-unless it comes with that most perverse of all modern inventions, the in-room porno movie. And you also know what it is like to wallow in the guilt of that obsession, and to cry and pray with whatever faith you can muster, to plead with God to release you, to mutate you, to castrate you like Origen-whatever it takes to deliver you. And even as you pray, luscious, bewitching images crowd into your mind.
You also know what it is like to preach on Sunday, to preach even on a topic like grace or obedience or the will of God or the decline of our civilization, with the awful and wonderful memories of last night’s lust still more real to you at that moment than the sea of expectant faces spread out before you. You know the self-hatred that comes with that intolerable dissonance. And you muddle through the sermon swearing never to let it get to you like that again, until after the service a shapely woman comes beaming and squeezes your hand and whispers praise to you, and all resolve melts, and as she explains how blessed she was by your message, you are mentally undressing her.
His compelling and realistic description of the problem is followed by a hopeful and realistic account of his recovery:
I cannot tell you why a prayer that has been prayed for ten years is answered on the 1,000th request when God has met the first 999 with silence. I cannot tell you why I had to endure ten years of near-possession before being ready for deliverance. And, most sadly of all, I cannot tell you why my pastor friend has gone into an unbelievable skid toward destruction. His marriage is now destroyed. He may go insane or commit suicide before this article is published. Why? I do not know.
But what I can tell you, especially those of you who have hung on every turn of my pilgrimage because it so closely corresponds to yours, is that God did come through for me. The phrase may sound heretical, but to me, after so many years of failure, it felt as if he had suddenly decided to be there after a long absence. I prayed, hiding nothing (hide from God?), and he heard me.
The Minister: Discouragement
Pastors minister to those in pain. But how do they minister when they are in pain? That has been one of our readers’ chief concerns. Ministers are troubled about their families. They grieve. They worry. In short, they get discouraged. Donald Bubna, then pastor of Salem (Oregon) Alliance Church, wrote a well-received article that speaks about the frustration of ministry. It was titled “Ten Reasons Not to Resign” (Fall 1983) and began like this:
“Today I feel as though I’d like to quit, take a leave of absence, resign from the world, or something.” So begins a line in my journal, penned about a year ago. I had never felt so much under attack.
We had just received another turndown from a potential youth pastor. The church seemed to be on a plateau, the elders stuck on dead center. In a matter of a few days, a young man from our congregation who had recently gone to Africa was killed in an automobile accident. A missionary pilot from our fellowship had been attacked by South Pacific islanders with machetes and almost died. A retired missionary, our esteemed pastor of visitation, passed into the presence of the Lord after a very brief illness.
During this same period, I received four letters in one day marked “Personal.” This kind of envelope seldom bears good news. One was a complaint from a longtime attender who felt I had gotten soft on the gospel. The person was leaving the congregation in order “to be fed” elsewhere. Another was the resignation of a staff member with whom I had served for more than two decades.
Under such an avalanche, I could not help reviewing the many reasons why the North American pastorate is becoming impossible. People now watch tele-Christendom’s finest as they munch their sweet roll on Sunday morning, and then drive to see how the local reverend compares, sans makeup and retakes. And the generation raised on “Sesame Street” wants something more appealing than thirty minutes of straight talking.
The pastor must also be an extraordinary counselor these days to battle the disintegration of the home and the lack of moral standards in the community.
He must be a strong leader, so that people will follow; yet his authority is frequently suspect, like anyone else’s in public service. Still he is expected to produce a diversified ministry for all tastes and age groups so folks won’t leave to go to the superchurch across town. He must be a change agent-but the changes must never be thought to edge away from biblical standards.
Then Bubna listed ten reasons he didn’t, in fact, quit, two of which are:
My family needs love and stability. Many moves tend to hurt children rather than help them. My wife was the daughter of a man who pastored numerous small churches throughout the Southwest. The moves were so painful to her that she has actually blocked many of them out of her mind.
Since part of my calling to ministry is my family, they have become a balance to the tendencies to move. The one move we did make while our children were growing up was decided in conjunction with them. I asked to bring my whole family along on the candidating visit. Our family prayed about the decision together, and all had a voice in it, even though the children were elementary and preschool at the time.
Children need a support system. They need a church body that loves and cares for them as individuals. …
I can trust God and not panic. God has this congregation’s welfare in mind as well as mine and my family’s. I don’t have to find an immediate solution to every problem or pressure. God wants me to develop a sense of trust or perseverance, of waiting before him. Staying here facilitates this. Leaving too soon only would prevent me from learning some of the most precious lessons God wants to teach.
My feelings over the past year have risen and fallen with my circumstances, or what I perceived my circumstances to be. Many a time I’ve had to exercise my will, choosing to take my eyes off things and people and place them on the God who does not change.
The Minister: Prayer
A major frustration for our readers has been the paltriness of their own spiritual life. They have time for preaching, counseling, and administration, but prayer gets squeezed out. Eugene Peterson, pastor of Christ the King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, forcefully describes the problem and his solution in “The Unbusy Pastors (Summer 1981).
The word busy is the symptom not of commitment but of betrayal. It is not devotion but defection. The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife, or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront. …
I want to be a pastor who prays. I want to cultivate and deepen my relationship with God. I want all life to be intimate-sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously-with the God who made, directs, and loves me. And I want to waken others to the nature and centrality of prayer. I want to be a person in this community to whom others can come without hesitation, without wondering if it is appropriate, to get direction in prayer and praying. I want to do the original work of being in deepening conversation with the God who reveals himself to me and addresses me by name. I don’t want to dispense mimeographed handouts that describe God’s business; I want to report and witness out of my own experience. I don’t want to live as a parasite on the first-hand spiritual life of others, but to be personally involved with all my senses, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.
I know it takes time to develop a life of prayer: set-aside, disciplined, deliberate time. It isn’t accomplished on the run, nor by offering prayers from a pulpit or at a hospital bedside. I know I can’t be busy and pray at the same time. I can be active and pray; I can work and pray; but I cannot be busy and pray. I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted, or dispersed. In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me, more attention to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self. …
“Yes, but how?” The appointment calendar is the tool with which to get unbusy. The appointment calendar is a gift of the Holy Ghost (unlisted by Saint Paul, but a gift nonetheless) that provides the pastor with the means to get time and acquire leisure for praying, preaching, and listening instead of just doing. It is more effective than a protective secretary; it is less expensive than a retreat house. It is the one thing everyone in our society accepts without cavil as authoritative. The authority once given to Scripture is now ascribed to the appointment calendar. The dogma of verbal inerrancy has not been discarded, only re-assigned.
When I appeal to my appointment calendar, I am beyond criticism. If someone approaches me and asks me to pronounce the invocation at an event and I say, “I don’t think I should do that; I was planning to use that time to pray,” the response will be, “Well, I’m sure you can find another time of the day to do that.” But if I say, “My appointment calendar will not permit it,” no further questions are asked.
The Minister: Respect
Pastors are generalists in an age of specialists. They get little media attention, and when they do, they are depicted as the charlatan Elmer Gantry or a kind but irrelevant simpleton. It’s natural that pastors would wonder, at times, if anyone respects what they do.
Occasionally LEADERSHIP addresses this topic directly, and some of those articles have received high ratings. One was a photo essay by photographer Jonathan Fletcher, son of George Fletcher (then interim pastor of First Baptist Church of Chico, California). “In Praise of the Common Pastor,” co-written by then-LEADERSHIP senior editor Dean Merrill, sums up the journal’s stance toward the people we write and edit for quarter by quarter. It seems an appropriate way to conclude a review of our best articles, because it speaks about pastors at their normal best.
He is known; he is unknown. He is revered one day, taken for granted the next. He is trusted, smiled at, questioned, courted, and second-guessed all at once. His is a work of high responsibility, low pay, clamor and quiet, power and helplessness, drama and doldrums, inspiration and exasperation, the seen and the unseen. He is a pastor. …
Every 168 hours it is time to stand again and speak for God. The rhythm of the weeks echoes in the rhythm of the words, the presenting of the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Yet the listeners are different this week from last, and so is the speaker. He stretches two ways to unite mortal with immortal, the uncertain mariners with the Anchor that will hold them against the modern rip tide.
Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
