Pastoring my first church, things were going rather well, I thought. Perhaps that contributed to my hubris as I stood in the pulpit one Sunday morning and told the church that God wanted us to commit to a wonderful missions project that would cost $6,000 over and above our budget. The money would have to be gathered within a month, I told them, and I was grateful in advance for what they were going to do.
Somewhere I'd heard that visionaries do this sort of thing … and that people love it.
Walking into the church's board meeting the next night, I honestly expected to be affirmed for my bold leadership. So I was taken off guard when the chairman opened the meeting and immediately turned to Ernest Krost, the highly respected 75-year-old father-figure of the congregation.
"Mr. Krost has a comment," the chairman said.
"Brother Gordon," he said, "I have a rebuke for you."
As I sucked in my breath, Mr. Krost began: "You may have thought that your announcement yesterday morning was a worthy cause. But this board wants you to never again go to this congregation and ask for money without consulting us first.
"We want to stand with you in your leadership, but we cannot do it when you surprise us the way you did yesterday. We have a budget in this church, and we can always expand it if God wills. But you are not permitted to do that by yourself.
"Now we will back you on this project, but we will only do so this one time. Have you heard what I have said?"
I heard him, and told him so. And I never played the role of solo-visionary again.
When I was a 16 year old, a track coach had told me, "It looks to me as if you will always have to learn things the hard way." This on the heels of a defeat in a race I should have won if I had followed the coach's instructions. I had walked off the track that day vowing, "That's the last time I learn something the hard way."
Unfortunately, it was far from the last time. My life is paved with rebukes. From my father, from teachers, friends, critics, and from the people in my four congregations.
I like to think that each of the rebukes stuck and affected my character and my behavior. But no doubt some sailed right over my head and denied me their benefits.
What rebukes are and aren't
Generally defined, to rebuke means to confront someone with the wrongness of an action or attitude and to help them see the consequences.
This is different from what often happens in church. I know what unsigned letters look like. I have had my motives, my integrity, my theology, and my politics unkindly questioned. I have had people talk warmly to my face and coldly behind my back. These are not rebukes.
A rebuke is different. A genuine rebuke is a noble communication; its intention is to free a person for growth and effectiveness by speaking, as Paul puts it, "truth in love" (Eph. 4:15). In the Bible, such rebukes were often tough.
Samuel to Saul: "You acted foolishly . …You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time … but now your kingdom will not endure" (1 Sam. 13:13-14).
Jesus to Simon Peter: "You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men" (Matt. 16:23).
Paul to the Corinthians: "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it" (1 Cor. 3:1-2).
Not all rebukes were welcomed. King Ahab, for example, discouraged an appearance from the prophet Micaiah, saying, "I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad" (1 Kings 22:8).
I worry for the leader who doesn't want to hear hard things, who surrounds himself or herself with people who only say pleasant, positive things. Sooner or later, such leaders neutralize themselves.
A good rebuke is issue-specific. Words are not minced, and the hearer has no question about what is being said. A good rebuke does not normally come off the top of someone's head; rather it is thought through carefully. It is framed in prayer and sometimes in tears. If the rebuker finds the task easy, the rebuker may need a rebuke of another kind.
One of the most remarkable rebukes in the Bible came when God spoke in cross-examination form to a whining Job. After a tour-de-force through the universe, as it were, Job gets God's point and stands rebuked.
"Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know … my ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:3-6).
I can't think of a better response to a rebuke than Job's.
In his diary, dated November 22, 1722, Jonathan Edwards ponders the value of rebuke with these words:
"Considering that bystanders always espy some faults which we don't see ourselves … there are many secret workings of corruption which escape our sight, and others only are sensible of: resolve therefore, that I will, if I can by any convenient means, learn what faults others find in me, or what things they see in me, that appear anyway blame-worthy, unlovely, or unbecoming."
My hero, nineteenth-century Anglican pastor Charles Simeon, struggled with ego. A close friend called this tendency to his attention. A day later Simeon wrote to his mentor, Henry Venn:
"What a blessing—an inestimable blessing is it to have a faithful friend! Satan is ready enough to point out whatever good we have; but it is only a faithful friend that will screen that from your sight, and show you your deficiencies.
"Our great apostasy seems to consist primarily in making a god of self; and he is the most valuable friend who will draw us most from self-seeking—self-pleasing—and self-dependence and help us to restore to God the authority we have robbed him of."
A rebuke is designed to develop spiritual insight, character, or capability. Or it is meant to halt something that is destructive or detrimental to larger interests.
Rebuke well taken
As a seminarian, I was asked to write and deliver a paper to a special forum of students and faculty. Typically, I put off writing the paper until the deadline loomed and then cut two days of classes to complete the assignment. When I had finished reading the paper and the audience had responded with applause and left the auditorium, a professor whose classes I'd dodged in order to write the paper found me and said, "Gordon, that was a good paper, but it lacked the possibility of greatness. Do you want to know why?"
I could hardly say no, and so he continued.
"You sacrificed your routine responsibilities to write it," he said. "Your ministry will not be successful if you make this sort of a thing a habit."
You listen carefully to an insight like that because it comes from a man forty years your senior whom you respect. He was less interested in the content of my presentation than he was the character pattern that framed its writing. The paper would soon be forgotten (I can't remember anything about it now), but the work habits it revealed would continue the rest of my life if I didn't alter them.
He saw this; I did not. His rebuke caused me to reform my work ethic.
In the earliest days of my ministry, I cultivated the habit of meeting with our board chairman every Monday morning to gain his perspective on how things were going. That's the good news. The bad news was that I apparently bridled whenever he told me unpleasant things (is there an Ahab in me?) that he was either seeing or hearing about.
One time when I may have sulked a bit, he leaned across the table and said, "Pastor, you have a trait that you're going to have to whip. It's over-sensitivity. We're not talking about you or how we feel about you; we're talking about your ministry and how we can make it better. Stop injecting your feelings into these discussions."
Listen carefully to such a rebuke! Your whole future may be marching before your eyes. Suddenly, someone has put a finger on a character quality that stands between you and your dreams. The man gave me a treasure of an insight. I hear it to this day—thirty-five years later—every time my wife, my friend, my partner, or my enemy begins to say something I don't want to hear.
A spiritual mentor once rebuked me when he heard me say something mean-spirited about a common acquaintance. "Gordon," he said, "a man who loves God does not speak that way about a brother." It was as if he had stabbed me with a knife. The pain was harsh, but he was right. Twenty-seven years later, I hear those words afresh every time I am tempted to say something demeaning about anyone … anyone.
Rebuke by significant others
My wife, Gail, has been a first- string player on my rebuking team. "Has it ever occurred to you that most of your sermon illustrations are about people who are prosperous? Every business person you mention is always powerful or well connected. Every scholar is the best at this or that. Every athlete is a record-setter. Every organization is the biggest. Best, best, best!
"You need to ask yourself if you're not sending the wrong message: that the only folks you care about are those who are successful."
"Your wife is one of God's most precious gifts to you," a mentor had said to me a week before I married Gail. "He'll speak truth to you through her if you are willing to listen. But if you won't listen, she'll learn that you're not interested in this gift, and she'll shut up. But you will become a loser as a result."
The mentor was right.
On this occasion, Gail's rebuke about my sermon illustrations was followed up a few days later by a woman named Marilyn who rebuked me without really knowing she had done it. Because she had serious emotional problems, her medications left her constantly in a daze.
May I be blunt? She was the kind of woman you are tempted to avoid whenever she comes in your direction.
I was standing in the lobby of our church talking to someone when Marilyn came through the door. When I saw her, I called out, "Hello, Marilyn, how are you?" And I immediately turned my back and resumed my conversation with my colleague, hoping, I guess, that Marilyn would go the other direction.
But she didn't. A moment later she literally inserted herself in the middle of my conversation.
She said in a slow, medicated voice, "Pastor Mac, you say, 'Hello, Marilyn, how are you?' but you really don't want to know. You don't have time for a person like me. You only talk to important people."
I think that was the day I started losing my desire to pastor a large church. Marilyn's rebuke pointed out to me all the realities of calling myself a pastor in a large congregation where 90 percent of the people could hardly ever engage me in substantial conversation without an appointment weeks in advance.
Marilyn was right: I didn't want to know how she was because I didn't have the time or the curiosity to find out. I was too busy for the "smaller" people.
Gail and Marilyn had hit me with a one-two rebuke.
A homeless man in New York City rebuked me one day. I found him going through a trash can on the side of our Manhattan church building. Frankly, I was irritated, and I said, "Hey, when you're through with the can, put it all back and make sure the lid is on." I started to walk away.
"Just a minute," he called out. I turned to face him. He said, "I'll be glad to do what you asked if you ask me respectfully."
Respectfully! He had me. This man knew disrespect when he heard it.
I sucked in my breath and said, "You're absolutely right, and I'm so sorry. Sir, when you're finished, it would mean a lot to me if you would please make sure the area is tidy."
"I'd be glad to," he responded. We shook hands.
Such rebukes live on and on in my mind and provide a measure of discipline each time a similar occasion arises. I can attach a name to each of these rebukes, and each name represents someone who loved and cared enough about me to insist I face a piece of truth.
Cert-ain rebuke
There is a great temptation to get angry when we are rebuked. Or to become defensive. Or to cut ourselves off from the one who had the courage to speak truth. Or to withdraw into denial or self-pity. All of these reactions are guaranteed to cut off growth and maturation—the very thing a Christian leader needs most.
"I wrote to you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you," wrote Paul (2 Cor. 2:4). His was tough love for the folks in Corinth. But it apparently paid off.
Remember that I told you of my habit of meeting with the chairman of our board each week? Some years later there was another one of those men who—like all the others—kept the same routine with me.
One morning over breakfast he said, "Gordon, you're very good with people. And I'd like you to be even better."
"How's that?" I asked.
From his pocket he took a package of breath mints. "These might make you a little easier to talk to," he said with a smile.
I think it qualifies as a rebuke. But I'm not sure.
Gordon MacDonald is editor-at-large of Leadership and chair of World Relief.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
