From time to time someone will ask me where I got the central ideas on which I’ve based my ministry. Usually I suspect the questioner wants to uncover some secret elixir of wisdom, some hidden seed of supposed genius. Somehow they don’t expect me to say that my father was my greatest teacher.
My father was a physician who redirected his life into doctoring souls by becoming a minister. By the time I was a young man, he was an area superintendent, with responsibility for sixty or seventy churches in central Ohio. He would often take me along to church meetings where parish business would be discussed, meetings that taught me important lessons about ministry.
Knowing Ruts and Wrinkles
I remember driving to one church on the outskirts of a small city. The church property was beyond the boundaries of the municipal paving district, and the driveway was steep and deeply rutted. In fact, recent rains had turned the ruts into miniature gullies. Fearing for the health of his old car, my father stopped part way up the drive. We went on by foot, picking our way through the sticky mud and stumbling over football-size rocks. I could see my father was not impressed with having to navigate this obstacle course.
During the meeting, he said, “Folks, something must be done about the condition of your driveway. When people have to park at the bottom and walk up, it discourages attendance. Beyond that, the condition of that road is a disgrace to the church.”
A long and unproductive discussion erupted as people pointed out that the hill was steep, grading difficult, and on and on. Finally my father spoke up again: “Seems to me the only solution is to pave that drive. You need to grade it smooth, haul in gravel, and then pave over the gravel.”
“Now hold on, Rev’rend,” exclaimed one grizzled farmer. “That would cost a pile of money, mor’n we have in the treasury.”
“Does anyone have a good idea of the cost?” asked my father.
After a while they decided it might come to about $200, a goodly sum in the early 1920s. When my father began suggesting they could raise that amount, he didn’t get very far, and I began to feel things were hopeless.
Then one of the more vocal opponents delivered a crafty homespun homily that I considered the death blow to my father’s plan.
“Reverend,” he said, “I’ve got to tell you I sort of love those old ruts. They remind me of my childhood and sort of take me back. Why, I love those grooves in the road just as I love the grooves and wrinkles in the face of my saintly old mother.”
There it was. It made no sense, but how could you argue with that appeal?
My father thought for a moment and then replied: “I know your mother, and I agree she is a saint. Her face shines with the memory of the smooth skin of a young woman. It has been sculpted by the wrinkles of laughter, tears, kindness, and compassion.”
Then my father paused. His face darkened with anger. He stared right into the man’s eyes, stabbed a powerful finger into the air between them, and continued in a forceful rush: “And don’t you ever, ever, compare the face of that dear saint of God with the horrible, disgraceful excuse for a driveway that leads up to this church. Her lines of love have nothing in common with ruts resulting from neglect and tightfistedness.”
Everyone, including me, was stunned. Then a sheepish smile spread over the face of my father’s opponent.
“Okay, okay, Reverend,” he chuckled, “we’ll pave the driveway.”
As we drove home, I asked my father how he figured out how to handle the situation.
“Well, Norman,” he told me, “I knew that man loved his mother, and I know her to be a saintly woman. I just had to call his bluff when he compared her to a washed-out road.”
My father knew that the key to working with people was studying them and knowing them. Only then would he know when to be tender and when to be tough.
The Job of Reminding and Reminding
Another time we attended a meeting of a small-town church. Even today I can see the trim yards and white picket fences that lined the one main street running through town and ending at the steps of the church. Framed by two ancient maple trees ablaze with fall color, the church stood as the focus of the community; its spire reached higher than anything for miles around.
Father had come to this meeting intent on raising the salary of the minister. I don’t recall the exact figures from 1920, but let’s say he was paid $3,000 and my father wanted his salary raised to $3,500. After the routine business had been handled, he suggested the new salary.
“Good grief, Reverend,” exclaimed one of the elders. “Why, there is hardly a person in this entire congregation who is paid that much.”
“That’s right,” exclaimed another. “Probably only three to four people in the whole town make that much, maybe only the president of the bank.”
My father took it all in and then pondered for a while. Finally he said, “Folks, who do you suppose does the most important work around these parts?”
One member replied, “I suppose it is Cliff Smith, who has the largest farm in the county. He has helped all the other farmers by learning new growing and fertilizing techniques. Why, the produce from Cliff’s spread probably feeds half the state, with grain left over to ship to hungry people in other parts of the world.”
Another man spoke up and said, “Don’t forget Bill Jones. He’s a lawyer and acts as town judge when the need arises. His level head has cooled many an argument.”
A few other names were postulated, and then everyone looked again at my father.
“Well, now,” he said, “what value do you place on the job of christening your babies and teaching them of Jesus’ love? Or how about the job of being on 24-hour call to rush to your hospital bedside? What of the task of proclaiming your wedding vows, and reminding you year after year of their permanence?
“When you stand at your parent’s grave, how much would you pay for someone to explain God’s love to you and then hold your hand and assure you of the eternal power of that love?”
He then rested his hand on the lectern, and faced the people in silence.
The minister’s new salary passed unanimously.
On the drive home, we rode in silence for a long time. Finally, my father said, “Norman, sometimes being a minister is just reminding people over and over, and then reminding them again, of what is most important in life.”
I didn’t always know I was going to be a minister. In fact, I tried to be a newspaperman after college and before seminary. But I suspect that meeting left me with an early impression of the importance of ministry I’ve carried with me since.
Forgiveness All Around
A few years later, when I was studying for the ministry, I came home for the summer and again went along to some meetings. One in particular I will never forget.
It began when a minister named Jim Taylor came to visit my father privately in his office.
Jim looked tired and distraught. “Reverend Peale,” he said, “the session meeting at my church is next week, and I can’t go on any longer. I’m here to resign from the church and from the ministry.”
“What’s gone wrong, Jim?” my father asked.
Twisting his handkerchief in his hands, Jim stared at the floor and finally whispered, “I just can’t hide it anymore; I’m a hopeless drunk. Oh, you’d never know it on Sunday, but during the week, I sneak off when I’m supposed to be studying or visiting, and I drink heavily. It has got a hold on me I can’t break.”
My father never registered the slightest shock or outrage. He merely sat quietly while Jim got control of his emotions. Then he said, “Well, Jim, you’ve made the right start. Admitting you can’t control this drinking is the first step. The question now is, do you really want to change and be rid of this habit?”
“Oh yes,” said Jim, “but I’ve tried and tried and can’t get on top of it.”
“I understand, Jim, but I know the One who can handle it for you. You need to get close to Jesus again, to get converted all over again, just like when you started in the ministry. Look here, there are some revival meetings going on at our conference grounds in Lakeside, Ohio. I want you to get yourself down there and find Jesus again. Tell him you’ve tried, but you can’t handle this drinking. Ask him to take over.”
“What will I do about my church?” Jim asked. “They don’t know a thing.”
Reaching into his drawer for a pouch where he kept a small emergency fund, my father handed Jim the money for the trip and said, “Don’t worry about the church-I’ll handle them.”
I could tell how concerned my father was about the situation because, after explaining it to me, he asked me to do the driving to the church. He hardly spoke during the long drive, alternating between closing his eyes in prayer and staring silently at the passing countryside.
Personally, I didn’t hold much hope for the meeting. I knew the church was far out in the country, surrounded only by acres and acres of grain fields. I knew the kind of people, too-rawboned and hardened by the work of farming. I pictured them an austere and unforgiving lot.
It was still and hot as they gathered to hear what my father had to say. He gave it to them straight, telling about Jim’s drinking and his decision to start over with Jesus.
“Folks,” he said, “I know it’s tough to hear that a man you liked and trusted has fallen into sin, especially a man of God. We preachers are no different than anyone else and ‘all have sinned.’ I dare say some of you here might need to start over with Jesus. The good news is he came as a physician to heal the sick.
“I can’t tell you what to do. You have a decision to make: do I remove Jim from your church, or do I send him back to you?”
In the silence that followed, I just knew Jim was out of the ministry for good. Then one woman with a slender face and delicate hands spoke: “The Bible names a lot of sins, and drunkenness is one of the bad ones. But so is gossip, and if Pastor Taylor can own up to his drinking, I can say I’ve been telling tales better left untold.”
Then a man of medium height but with the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen stood up.
“You know, the Good Book also speaks against adultery.” Glancing at his wife, he continued, “Now, I’ve never touched another woman, but the Book also says that if you look on a woman to lust after her, you have committed adultery. If that’s true,” he choked, “I don’t deserve to sit on the of official board of this church.”
And so it went around the room. One by one people confessed their faults to each other, wept, prayed, and reconciled. When it was over my father stood and said, “I still need to know what I should do with Jim.”
Rising to his feet, a big farmer in blue bib overalls replied, “I think you can take it, Reverend, that we vote to love him back.”
Jim did find his faith again and returned to that church. He became a gifted preacher and had many offers to move to more prestigious posts. But he would not leave those gentle people with whom he learned the meaning of forgiveness. Some thirty years later, he retired from that same church.
My father didn’t have to say anything on the ride home that day. For I’d seen that even though ministers are sinners-just like the people they serve-God is able to forgive them. And by God’s grace and the grace of God’s people, their ministries can continue to be fruitful.
Preach Your Own Sermons
When I felt God’s call to the ministry, I enrolled in divinity school at Boston University. While there, my father taught me the greatest lesson I ever learned about preaching.
Early one week, a fellow student fell ill and asked me to take his place as student preacher in Walpole, Massachusetts. Without thinking, I agreed, only to realize later that I had never yet preached even a practice sermon in class. In panic, I wired my father: PREACHING NEXT SUNDAY STOP PLEASE SEND SERMON STOP.
His reply came by return mail, scrawled in his familiar handwriting: “Prepare your own sermons. Just tell the people that Jesus Christ can change their lives. Love, Dad.”
And so I went into that pulpit and did what I have continued trying to do for almost seventy years, simply telling people what Jesus Christ means to me: that he’s the one who can transform defeat to victory and save us to eternal life.
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
