A Tour of the Terrain
Prayer by Richard Foster, HarperCollins, $17.00
Reviewed by Steve D. Mathewson, pastor, Dry Creek Bible Church, Belgrade, Montana.
As a boy, I visited the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I struggled to understand its significance until my folks splurged and hired a personal tour guide from the National Park Service. For a modest fee, this guide took the keys to our car, drove us through the battlefield, pointed out key sites, and answered our questions. I got the tour of a lifetime!
Richard Foster’s most recent book, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, offers its readers a personal tour through the terrain of prayer. I immediately warmed up to him as my tour guide when I read his humble admission: “I am speaking for all the prayerless persons I have been and all the prayerful persons I hope to become.”
Untangling the inside
Soon into the tour, I realized how my own prayer life has been stifled by a hardening of the categories. Many of the twenty-one categories through which Foster guided me, I had before neglected or misunderstood. In each chapter, Foster leads us by the hand, identifying and describing a different feature of prayer.
“By naming our experiences,” says Foster, founder of Renovarย and author of Celebration of Discipline, “I hope to increase our understanding of what God is doing among us so we can be more intentional in our practice.”
These various chapters on prayer hold one thing in common: they all pulsate from “the heart of God, which reaches out in utter accepting love and woos us into the intimacy of prayer.” Foster, also Jack and Barbara Lee Distinguished Professor of spiritual formation at Azusa Pacific University, groups these features into three sections, suggesting that prayer moves in one of three directions.
The first cluster of chapters shows some ways in which prayer draws us inward into the transformation we need. Topics include the prayer of the forsaken, the prayer of tears, the prayer of relinquishment, formation prayer, and covenant prayer.
Foster begins with a chapter titled “Simple Prayer.” His inaugural quote from Dom Chapman sums it up: “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” A few days after reading this chapter, I sat in my office with a church member who wondered how he could come to God in prayer when he struggled with persistent sin. I shared with him some of Foster’s insights.
One reason we experience the “agony of prayerlessness,” says Foster, stems from the faulty notion that everything needs to be in order before we pray. On this side of eternity, we’ll always come to God with tangled motives. But God’s grace allows us to pray, baggage and all. In fact, “it is in the very act of prayer itself that these matters are cared for in due time.”
Foster’s chapter on the “Prayer of Examen” (examination) helped me identify an area of neglect in my own prayer life. I’ve prayed my share of prayers Foster would label “the examen of conscience,” which are prayers uncovering areas that need cleansing, purifying, and healing. But I had neglected the “examen of consciousness,” which is the discovery of “how God has been present to us throughout the day and how we have responded to his loving presence.”
In a recent worship service, I used the format suggested by the “prayer of examen” as a call to worship. First, I asked our congregation to identify, in a time of silent prayer, those ways that God had been working in their lives during the past week. I suggested they identify the victories-even small ones-and offer them to God as expressions of praise. Then, I asked them to ask God to point out shortcomings and failures. Identifying the victories first seemed to prompt a spirit of loving adoration that set the tone for genuine confession.
Looking up
A second group of chapters shows us some ways prayer draws us upward into the intimacy we need. Foster touches on the prayer of adoration, the prayer of rest, sacramental prayer, unceasing prayer, the prayer of the heart, meditative prayer, and contemplative prayer.
In the chapter on sacramental prayer, he laments the unfortunate division between liturgy and spontaneity.
“It is here,” he contends, “that we need the holy conjunction ‘and’. . . .” Here’s a sample of one of the five ways in which liturgical prayer can free us: “It helps us resist the temptation of private religion. It is so very human of us to allow our petty concerns to be the whole burden of prayer.”
With this in mind, I included The Book of Common Prayer’s “General Confession” in a recent worship service (an innovative move for a “liturgically challenged” church). It corporately forced us to pray humbly and biblically, to seek God’s face as well as his hand of blessing.
Outward bound
A final set of chapters shows us how God’s loving friendship calls us outward into the ministry we need. Here, Foster deals with praying the ordinary, healing prayer, the prayer of suffering, authoritative prayer, and radical prayer. I found his chapters on petitionary prayer and intercessory prayer particularly helpful. Asking is at the heart of both. The former involves asking for ourselves, the latter for others.
Petitionary prayer is not a lower form of prayer, argues Foster. We will never get beyond asking for ourselves, nor should we want to. I sometimes struggle with what Foster calls “bothering God with the petty details of my life.” He reminded me of “the Abba heart of God,” which makes my big concerns God’s big concerns.
The other side of asking is intercession.
“Intercession is a way of loving others,” says Foster. Foster’s comments have prompted me to encourage my congregation to see that prayer need not be a cop out for turning our love into action. Rather, it must support those actions, and at times, it will be the only tangible way we can express our love.
To use a John Steinbeck analogy, pastors and leaders who crawl and grovel between the covers of this book and come up with it all over their faces and hands will experience a revival in their prayer lives. Richard Foster’s tour has enriched my personal prayer life and my ministry.
Assembling Your Team
Hiring Excellence by Pat MacMillan, NavPress, $18.00
Reviewed by Robert J. Morgan, pastor, The Donelson Fellowship, Nashville, Tennessee
Looking for a preschool director? An associate pastor? A secretary? Where do you find them? How do successful leaders assemble excellent staffs?
Pat MacMillan, head of a management consulting firm, wrote Hiring Excellence to help Christian executives make wise people decisions. Our ability to choose effective employees, he asserts, determines our success as leaders. Mistakes, on the other hand, are costly. Moses wasn’t the last to watch his staff become a serpent.
This you-can-do-it-yourself book charts six steps to successful hires. MacMillan first shows us how to create a job profile containing a standard job description, a listing of the position’s first year’s goals, the activities needed to reach those goals, and explanations about the working environment.
Second, it’s essential to compose a shopping list of qualities desired in the employee. Selection criteria should include such things as specific educational levels, professional skills, and Spiritual/emotional maturity.
Third, a selection strategy needs forging. Church leaders can tend toward intuitive hiring decisions. MacMillan suggests charting a careful, objective procedure for selecting exceptional employees.
The fourth step is to evaluate the candidates using four tools-resumes, interviews, references, and perhaps psychological tests.
Step five? We’ll be left with a handful of finalists to score on a matrix against the selection criteria. While the best candidate may not necessarily rate the highest score, we’ll have a reasonably objective, side-by-side comparison for measuring strengths and weaknesses-and for finding the finest.
The final step involves an on-going search for quality people.
“I recommend,” says MacMillan, “that you are always in the process of shopping.”
Hiring Excellence isn’t primarily written for staffing scenarios peculiar to congregational leaders. But MacMillan’s advice is easy to adapt, and by reading it, I’ve determined to become increasingly deliberate about future hiring decisions.
The Underclass Culture
Hard Living People & Mainstream Christians by Tex Sample, Abingdon, $10.95
Reviewed by Robert J. Morgan, pastor, The Donelson Fellowship, Nashville, Tennessee.
My wife and I recently invited a homeless man to sleep on our sofa. He’s eighteen, orphaned, sporting a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and working at a campground to accumulate money for lodging.
He had saved $140, which he rolled in a tight wad and tied to the drawstring of his pants. The other night he lost it, and he was disconsolate. I sympathized with him, finally saying, “Well, Ethan, these things happen. I’ve lost money, too.”
“Yeah,” he replied, “but did you ever lose everything you had?”
His question haunted me as I picked up Tex Sample’s book about hard living people-ragged souls on the margins of society.
Sample, professor at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, sprinkles this book with profanity. Much of it is from the dialogues with the disadvantaged. It nonetheless took me inside Ethan’s world, challenging me afresh with well-drawn stories of weatherworn souls.
The first half of Hard Living People & Mainstream Christians tells tales from the streets, focusing on the home life, drugging, church connections, and spirituality of the underclass. I was especially pricked by three pages describing how inadequate clothing stymies church involvement and moved by the abiding trust in God’s providence by many homeless.
The last half discusses workable strategies gleaned from forty church leaders who have forged successful ministries to the needy. Churches in lower-class neighborhoods, he suggests, can begin immediately to minister to-and with-the socially distressed.
Tex Sample doesn’t expect many affluent, middle-class congregations to effectively implement his burden. He is, though, looking for 20,000 churches in transitional neighborhoods that can redirect their primary focus toward hard living people.
I’m not sure my middle-class, suburban church is one of those. But as I read this book-and as I studied the dozing figure on my sofa this morning-I understood anew where the buck stops.
Bullish on the Future?
Today’s Pastors by George Barna, Regal, $15.99
Reviewed by Gary D. Preston, associate pastor, Foothills Bible Church, Littleton, Colorado.
“There is something inherently damaging about being in pastoral ministry.”
That statement hasn’t left my mind since I first heard it from the lips of a godly man, now a former pastor. When I’ve repeated his words to my ministry colleagues, no one has challenged its accuracy. But neither has anyone adequately explained its truth.
George Barna’s latest offering, Today’s Pastors, does, however. He reports that “most pastors feel lonely in ministry.” The result: “The isolation they experience erodes some of the enthusiasm and the power they bring to ministry.”
I wondered, though, what Barna, who has never been a pastor, could tell me about today’s pastors. Barna answers that skepticism by telling us what pastors around the country told him. His effort is one of the largest studies of pastors ever conducted in America, with collected insights from 1,033 senior pastors.
Why did Barna, founder and president of Barna Research Group, go to all the trouble, you might ask?
His intent is to give you, as an American pastor, this information to “challenge your current ministry, inform you of better strategies for outreach or give you reason to reconsider some of the practices in which you currently engage.”
Few, if any, stones are left unturned in this overview of pastoral life. That may be one of its weaknesses. Some readers may feel Barna offers too many observations in his brief 169 pages. There is a statistic or bit of information to satisfy every curiosity.
Take the average educational background of today’s pastor, for example: 80 percent have earned a bachelor’s degree, 55 percent a master’s degree, and 10 percent a doctoral degree. Or the average salary package: $32,049 for all senior pastors. Or the average church size: 102 in worship service.
The more significant contribution of Today’s Pastors, though, is the way Barna identifies with how many pastors feel. While he concedes that “pastors are among the most highly educated professionals in the nation,” he concludes that, sadly, pastors are “disappointed with much of what is transpiring under their leadership and are greatly frustrated in their efforts to serve God and His people.”
All of his research, statistics, and conclusions are not exhausted on pastors, however. A healthy portion is about and to those who populate the pews every Sunday all across America.
Most of this discussion is contained in an excellent chapter titled “Is There Movement Forward?” Here Barna examines the role of small groups, multiple worship services, worship styles, and community outreach. Pastors will want to note which components of church life produce a healthy flock.
Barna concludes that while most flocks are friendly to themselves, they’re not much interested in impacting the community. A major implication of this profile is that “the burden for ministry will remain squarely upon the shoulders of the pastor-the paid ministry professional-until the laity is equipped to help with the task.”
Tying into this implication, Barna compares the similar challenges facing a pastor and the president of the United States: both live with unreasonable expectations by their constituencies!
Just as it is not uncommon for the electorate to expect immediate progress on every issue facing the nation, the church will likely expect similar results from its pastor. The result: “Many pastors are doomed from the day they join a congregation because the congregation’s expectations are unachievable by any human being.”
Is it any wonder, then, why someone would contend that there is something inherently damaging about being in the pastorate?
In order to profit from this book, one must adjust to Barna’s interpretive grid. Usually his information is screened through the door of failure. Rather than selecting areas where pastors are succeeding and using those examples as a springboard to discuss a particular issue, Barna approaches most subjects from the perspective of crisis or weakness.
The importance of a pastor’s spiritual gifts, for example, is cast negatively: “Nearly a fourth of all pastors failed to identify their spiritual gifts.” And pastoral leadership is discussed out of his findings that “only 6 percent of senior pastors claim they have the gift of leadership.”
Barna’s hope is that by possessing a clearer understanding of today’s pastors and churches, Christians will be motivated to respond appropriately. He offers only a few, partial prescriptions for that response, however; Barna is not a practitioner.
As I read this book, I was anxious to reach the last chapter. Not because I was bored or tired, but because I could hardly wait to find out whether George Barna, in the final analysis, was bullish on the church or an unrepentant bear. What would his research and diagnosis do to his feelings about the church and its leaders? Would the failures and fatigue of pastors be reason to write them off?
Perhaps the title of the final chapter says it all, “Where There Is Christ, There Is Hope.”
* * *
Close Up
Musical Pulpits by Rodney J. Crowell, Baker, $8.95
Author: Rodney J. Crowell is pastor of Emmaus Church in Whitewater, Kansas, and a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary.
Main Help: Crowell clearly spells out the danger signals leading up to a forced exit or termination. He also offers practical wisdom to circumvent the divorce between pastor and congregation or to handle it in a biblical manner.
Practical Takeaway: To gain a clear picture of the church climate, candidating pastors should ask the search committee about the last time the church exercised biblical discipline. Search committees, on the other hand, should demand from the prospective candidates additional references other than the typically glowing accounts accompanying their resume.
Key Quote: “To keep a forced exit from ruining the life of a pastor or a church, … pastors need to focus on emotional, spiritual, and financial survival while churches must tiptoe through forced terminations using fair procedures.”
-Ted Heatherington, Cedar Valley Mennonite Church, Mission, British Columbia
* * *
New and Noteworthy
Leading Your Students in Worship by Jim Marian, Victor, $7.99
The MTV generation is passionate about their music. Jim Marian, author of Growing Up Christian and youth leader for over ten years, writes to help youth leaders channel that passion into worship.
With simplicity and clarity, Marian lays out the basic role of youth group music. A helpful distinction is drawn, for example, between song leading and worship leading. Song leading treats singing as an “opener” for the speaker whereas worship leading sees music as an integral part of the youth meeting.
Developing the Leader within You by John C. Maxwell, Thomas Nelson, $14.99
Change the leader, and the church will follow, believes John Maxwell, pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in Lemon Grove, California, and founder of Injoy, a leadership development institute. Leaders, while wanting to change an organization, can themselves be resistant to change.
Maxwell insists that leaders of integrity are open to needed change-both within the organization and within his or her person. He advocates making two lists when struggling with an organizational change: one of logical advantages and disadvantages of the change, the other listing the psychological impact. Comparing the two lists will reveal whether hesitancy about the change is valid or the result of the leader’s own stress or insecurity.
Strategies for Change by Lyle E. Schaller, Abingdon, $11.95
What do IBM and your church have in common? The need to implement change from the inside out. This is the number one issue facing Christian organizations, says Lyle Schaller.
Schaller, church consultant and prolific author, examines the institutional climate for change. In this fourth of a five-book series, Schaller redefines the role definitions of pastors, boards, and committees. The best candidate to initiate change, he says, is a pastor committed to a lengthy stay in the community, one who can patiently wait for change.
The Lord’s Harvest and the Rural Church by Kent R. Hunter, Beacon Hill, $7.95
When is a rural church not a rural church? Kent R. Hunter, president of the Church Growth Center and former pastor, defines a rural church as a congregation filled with those living an agriculturally oriented lifestyle.
He tackles the unique issues of rural churches: the church calendar, financial planning, and community membership. The church calendar of a rural church, for example, may not revolve around fall and spring. Weather, planting, and harvesting-these require program flexibility in the rural church.
-Ted Heatherington, Cedar Valley Mennonite Church, Mission, British Columbia
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
