Often I think of an inn-keeper my wife, Gail, and I met in Vermont. Everything about him seemed unusual: his dress, his use of language, the ambience of his inn. He aroused my curiosity, and I began asking questions. I learned that Jack Coleman had been the president of Haverford, a well-known college. Later on, he had headed a prestigious educational foundation. Now, in semi-retirement, he ran an inn. Then I learned that he had acquired the life-long habit of regularly disappearing for short periods of time. He simply dropped out of sight. Presumably some assistant (or relative) knew where to find him, but the rest of the people in his world didn’t.
When he resurfaced (perhaps ten days later), he would tell how he’d worked as a shoe-shine man at a railroad station or as a worker on a garbage collection team. Once he bussed tables at a fast-food location. Why?
“Because,” he said, “in my line of executive work, it’s easy to lose touch with the larger, very real world of common people. And once a leader loses that touch, a growing ineffectiveness seeps in. You forget where the real action of life is centered.”
When I was young in ministry, I spent about six months traveling every weekend to churches where I would lead seminars on creative forms of evangelism. The economics of the time forced me to stay in the homes of church members. Men (in particular) would talk with me in great candor about their attitudes toward faith and the church. Frequently, coffee in hand, their after-dinner conversation would turn to their pastor.
“We love our pastor,” I’d hear. “But truth be told, he has almost no comprehension of what life looks like for me from Monday to Friday. It shows in his sermons and what he asks of people.”
One man told me, “Our pastor reveals his view of our world in his Sunday benediction. He says, ‘Lord, dismiss us with your blessing, and bring us back for prayer meeting on Wednesday. Be with the youth on their retreat next Friday night. Help us to get more Sunday school teachers. Amen.’ ” My host went on, “Pastor doesn’t seem to know that I have a job; his perspective is all church-centric.”
I’m grateful for those weekend chats almost forty years ago. They changed the way I pastored. They convinced me that ministry is (brace yourself!) not about the church but about equipping and encouraging people for life on the weekdays—in the home, in the marketplace, at school.
Years later, a church member said to me, “I know you eat, sleep, and drink this church every day of the week. And so you should. But you need to know that when I leave here, I may go for several days and not think about the church once. I’m too busy keeping up with my work, my family, the pressures of life.”
He reminded me that I dare not assume everyone is as pre-occupied with the church as I am.
What if pastors—at least those responsible for preaching and inseminating minds and hearts with fresh ideas about how to follow Jesus—occasionally disappeared like my college president friend? What would we learn?
Unsheltered holiness
Among my favorite stories is one—a couple of centuries old—that comes from Eastern Europe. A brilliant young Jewish scholar had approached a wizened rabbi to ask: “They say I am the holiest of all men. Do you think this is true?”
At first the rabbi refused to answer. But after being badgered by the tenacious scholar, he responded, “You are the most pious man of our age. You study night and day, retired from the world, surrounded by the rows of your books, the holy ark, the faces of devout scholars. You have reached high holiness. How have you reached it? Go down in the marketplace with the rest of the Jews. Endure their work, their strains, their distractions. Mingle in the world, hear the skepticism and irreligion they hear, take the blows they take. Let us see then if you remain the holiest of all men.” In all my years as a pastor, I struggled with this. The very nature of the organization insisted on sucking me into its center, into conversations that centered on programs and problems. Rarely about ideas or hands-on issues of weekday life. Almost no one ever said, “Go down to the marketplace! Disappear!” Even the boards to whom I was accountable saw little value in my getting away from my desk and its administrative demands.
If they had, I tell you, my sermons would have taken on far more color, more useful application, more realism. Maybe my leadership would have been a more mature kind.
What I did do to fight the system was this: I made it my goal to visit every church leader (and beyond when possible) where he or she worked. I filled my calendar with breakfasts and lunches near where people pursued their livelihood. Often, then, I was invited to visit offices, construction sites, sales locations, and laboratories, where I met bosses, colleagues, and assistants.
But most important, I engaged people at their point of competence. They saw me at my best on Sunday; why shouldn’t I see them where they enjoyed the home-field advantage?
Virtually every relationship changed for the better after such a visit. In those encounters, I gained much of my sermon illustrative material and more than a few ideas for sermons themselves. But most of all, there was a new credibility in the pastoral relationship.
I like to think Jesus ran his mission similarly. The Gospels do not record much of his work being done on religious campuses. He engaged people almost exclusively where they worked and traded, where they suffered and survived. His metaphors and stories appear to be drawn right from the context where he spoke. “A sower went out to sow … a woman was sweeping her floor … a man was settling his accounts.” Those are the stories of a person who’s been there.
I sometimes fear recent pastoral ministry has taken a turn that could have long-range downsides. Pastors now have classy offices to which people come having made appointments. And the common people rarely make it through the door. E-mail communication grows more prevalent.
Plus, pastors are often hired as preachers and evaluated as managers of programs. This means numberless meetings, planning sessions, and budget appropriations. Which means becoming separated from the common pastoral exposures that maximize people contact and spiritual (not administrative) effectiveness.
I know. I’ve often fallen into those traps. Too often I let the system control my priorities. I lapse into believing that “org-talk” is more important than personal engagement out there.
Get outta here
Nehemiah was once advised by “friends” to close himself inside the rebuilt temple so that his enemies could not get to him. The man was smart enough to recognize that his place was among the workers at the walls where the arrows were flying, not in the artificial world of the institution.
How can you fight this institutionalizing system? When I was in fighting form, I followed these general principles:
1. Real-world appointments. I tried to book at least four or five meetings a week with people in the congregation that were not about problems or programs but rather about “life in the real-world” and how it could be more powerfully shaped by the influence of Jesus. I tried to schedule these meetings near or at the places where these people worked.
2. Stretching questions. I did my best to focus conversation on the things most pressing in the lives of others rather than myself. I tried to ask creative questions about their dreams, their fears, their greatest challenges. I asked about their families (if married), their friends (if single). If time permitted, I asked what they needed as participants in our church community—not what I had to “sell” them. The best compliment I could receive was, “Gee, you ask great questions. No one has ever asked me that before.”
3. Events remembered. Whenever possible I noted in my calendar events and deadlines that were facing people in their work. I tried to send a card at the appropriate time assuring them of my prayers at that moment. And I tried to follow up to learn what had happened.
4. New reading. Even now I try to expand the bandwidth of my reading to subject matter that acquaints me with the challenges facing the people to whom I preach each week. When possible, I send copies of book-chapters or articles to people when I think it would encourage them.
5. Workplace prayer. I always tried to pray for these people in the context of their work. “Lord, I ask you to fill this office with a powerful sense of your presence as my friend works …” “Father, when anyone crosses the path of my friend today, I ask that the love of Christ will be …” “Spirit of God, give my friend wisdom as he faces these work issues this afternoon.”
6. Marketplace language. I still try to incorporate the language of the real-world into my preaching. “You use too many business terms in your preaching,” I hear occasionally. And it’s possible that I overdo it. But I note that Paul’s writings are jammed with business terms, athletic analogies, and military references. He was in the middle of it all!
Ministry as pit crew
My grandson, Lucas, and I recently sat down to watch a NASCAR race on television. He loves speed; I love team work. I was fascinated with the work of the pit crews. Did you know that a good pit crew can change four tires, fill the gas tank, wipe off the windshield, and give the driver a drink (and maybe even replace a fender) in 15.8 seconds. A good pit-crew, I said!
Their goal? To get the driver and the car—fully operational—back into the race. Because the race is what it’s all about. Races are lost if one spends too much time in the pit.
Do our churches know this? Do I? Imagine a crew standing around when the driver needs a push back into the racing lanes. What happens if the pit crew forgets that the action is out there and not (apart from 15.8 seconds) in the pit? When I watch a pit crew working together to get the driver’s car prepared, I see a vision of pastors and associates: fueling, fixing, and pushing the people back into the race.
A final thought? As a pastor, I became convinced of the importance of the benediction prayer as a way of reminding people that they were headed back to the “race” of real life. Thus my benediction to them as I lifted my hands and made the sign of the cross over them:
“Go forth into the streets of this world. Go with the memory of this hour when you have refreshed your souls in the presence of God and his people. Go with the intention to be faithful to Jesus. With the promise that you will carry his love and extend it to your family and your friends, to those whom you meet along the way who are in need. Go with courage, with a resolve not to sin, and go with the exciting reminder that at any moment, Jesus may come again. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I bid you farewell.”
Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and chair of World Relief.
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.
