Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west.
D. H. Lawrence
There’s an old story about a boy who found a turtle that had withdrawn into its shell. He tried to pry the turtle’s head out with a stick. His uncle saw what was happening and said, “Not that way.” He took the turtle inside and set him on the hearth. In a few minutes, as it began to get warm, the turtle stuck out its head and feet and calmly crawled toward the boy.
People, like turtles, can’t be forced to open up. But in the right environment, they often choose to do so. Warmed by kindness and concern, they sometimes relax, and often wind up coming your way.
These are some of the ways pastors create an atmosphere conducive to personal change:
Dignify Pain and Suffering
Many people request help but resist it when it is offered. To be more precise, they want the pastor to take away their pain, but they don’t want to deal with the underlying problems producing the pain. They don’t want help if it means making changes in the way they’re living.
“People seldom know the solution. But they know they are unhappy, and they can describe eloquently, with exquisite detail, how their lives are out of sync,” observes Roger Thompson of Trinity Baptist Church in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
In some cases, the problem hinges on a superficial view of pain, particularly emotional pain. They believe the absence of pain is an inalienable right. Even some pastors fall into this trap.
“Most people who deal with suffering, pastors prominent among them, are by training and temperament doers and fixers,” says Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian pastor in Maryland. “They want to do something about what is wrong with the world. Suffering is something wrong with a person — and they are prepared to do something about it.”
Sometimes, however, the pain is not something to be avoided, cured, fixed. It may be entirely appropriate. In these situations, the absence of pain would be pathological.
One young man, Karl, came to his pastor frustrated because he wasn’t “happy.” He had just broken up with his girl friend, the company he worked for was struggling financially, his job was in jeopardy, and he was wondering what direction his life should take.
“He seemed to have the idea that life should always be blissful,” said the pastor. “Karl’s feelings of disquiet, which were quite normal, were intensified because he didn’t think anyone should ever feel that way. But there would have been something wrong with him if he weren’t feeling pain from a broken relationship and an uncertain job situation.”
The pastor pointed Karl to the book of Lamentations, which faces suffering and uncertainty, takes the situation seriously, but doesn’t do anything about it. No quick answers; no easy remedies. The pastor simply reminded Karl of God’s faithfulness.
“I needed the message of Lamentations at that point, too,” said the pastor. “It kept me from rushing in with ‘therapy’ for Karl. It kept me from the temptation to manipulate or alleviate, which is always condescending and belittles the person’s pain. When the pain is legitimate and normal, I feel it’s up to God to heal. My job is to give companionship, meaning, and dignity to the person in the midst of it.”
Eugene Peterson suggests that pastors help people “lean into the pain” — to enlarge their capacity for suffering. “The pastor who substitutes cheery bromides for this companionship ‘through the valley of deep shadows’ can fairly be accused of cowardice. Writing cheerful graffiti on the rocks in the valley of deep shadows is no substitute for companionship with the person who must walk in the darkness.”1
Help People Expect Trials
Despite most Christians agreeing, in principle, that life with Christ will not remain problem free, ample confusion remains over what kind of protection God’s people will enjoy. Are they supposed to experience peace? How about fulfillment or joy or assurance? And what do these concepts mean when hormonal or emotional upheaval strikes?
“We often tend to neglect one of the key themes of Scripture,” said one former pastor. “And that is: Walking with God does not mean you won’t face problems, even emotional problems. If you’d tell a ten-year-old boy, ‘Son, if you’ll become a Christian, you’ll never have to be a teenager,’ we’d all see that as ridiculous. But I have heard people tell forty-year-olds, ‘If you’re really walking with God, you don’t need to worry about menopause or midlife transition.'”
The “Any problem can be solved if you just get right with God” mentality simply doesn’t square with most pastors’ experience.
Being right with God, as far as confessing sins and walking in obedience, does not mean that you’re going to have enough money to live on, or that your husband won’t walk out on you. In fact, when you look at Scripture — Isaiah 43, Psalm 23, James 1 — you get the impression that the opposite is true: Those who walk with God will endure fiery trials.
One pastor experienced a real breakthrough with several people in his congregation after preaching a series of messages on “Valley People.”
“The point of the series was that the Bible teaches us to be faithful and sustain one another in the valleys as well as the mountain tops of Christian experience. I gave several examples of people who were faithful amid suffering and other examples of Christians who ministered to those who were suffering. In the two years since I preached that series, more people have referred back to that one than any other. It seems to have given people permission to be real, to recognize the ‘elevation’ of their emotions and life situation is constantly changing. They don’t have to always wear a smile. God continues to be faithful whether we’re on the peak or in the valley.”
The pastors who communicate that trials are part of the Christian life, and that they are not a sign of God’s displeasure, find the atmosphere is more conducive to people owning up to the pressures they face and being willing to accept help.
Encourage Healthy Self-Disclosure
One reason people often don’t want help is because the vulnerability demanded in such an admission scares the tar out of them.
To overcome this, one nondenominational pastor shares “stories that show me in a negative light, and there are lots of them! People need to see my weaknesses, but more importantly, how I’m working on them. Men who are insensitive to their wives, for instance, need to see that I’m insensitive to my wife at times but, just as important, that I’m trying not to be. In one sermon I told about listening to my wife as she was telling a lengthy story. I finally said, ‘Can you get to the bottom line?’ It was rude. Tears trickled down her cheeks, and she said, ‘I listen to you when you talk about sermon ideas and your plans for the upcoming week. I share my story, and all you do is ask me to get to the bottom line.’
“Or, not long ago I talked about family tensions. I told about going into my daughter’s bedroom and telling her I was sorry about breaking a promise. She said, ‘Dad, you say that more than anybody else in the family. But I guess you need to.’ We both laughed. Then she said, ‘I appreciate that about you, Dad.'”
Revealing weaknesses and failures isn’t easy, but people identify with and benefit most from lessons learned through mistakes. Even Jesus offered his scars to doubtful Thomas, with powerful effect. Thomas believed and was reconciled after seeing for himself the effects of Christ’s suffering. As Fulton Sheen once said, “Scarred men come for healing only to scarred hands. Only a Risen Jesus with scars can understand our hearts.”
On the other hand, sharing personal victories in daily life can also be helpful.
Pastor David Korb one Sunday told the story of backing his car out of the garage and hearing a snap. He stopped and discovered his favorite fishing pole had been left behind the car. It now was in two pieces.
He walked into the house and asked, “Who was using my fishing pole?”
“I was, Dad,” his five-year-old son said.
“Look at it now,” Dave said, holding up the two pieces. “What happened?”
“I was playing with it and set it against the garage door. I forgot to put it away.”
Dave realized it must have fallen down behind the car. He wasn’t pleased, but neither was he going to cry over spilled milk — or broken poles.
“Well, thank you for telling me,” he said quietly and went back to the car.
As Dave told his congregation: “I didn’t think much more of it, but two days later, my wife told me that when she and our son were at Sears, he said, ‘Mom, I’ve got to buy Dad a new fishing pole. I broke his other one. Here’s my money.’ And he handed her his savings of two dollars.
“‘That’s nice of you to offer,’ she said. ‘But you don’t have to do that.’
“‘I want to, Mom,’ he said. ‘I found out something. I found out that Dad loves me more than he loves his fishing pole.’
“When I heard that,” Dave said, “I felt great. For once in my life, I had done something right.”
After that sermon, several men told Dave, “I appreciate you saying ‘For once I’d done something right.’ That’s refreshing coming from a pastor. I thought you always did things right at home.”
Sharing that careful blend of humanness without false humility, victories sans pride, presents an authentic picture of God’s work in a life. And that’s one of the most important roles a sermon can play. Such illustrations demonstrate a pastor’s willingness to own up to failures and work to improve them. They also set a tone that allows people to admit they need help, too.
Allow Others to Help You
Healthy relationships are two-way streets. One of the most affirming things we can do for people is to allow them to help us in some significant way — even to change us. When people see we have been affected by others, they’re more likely to admit they need us as well.
One pastor found his preaching criticized with some regularity. A number of people told him he wasn’t connecting. He set up a weekly Tuesday morning group of five men and women who would critique his sermon and — lest they become mere gripers — would help think through the passage for the next Sunday.
“I am open with the congregation about this group being there to help me preach better,” says the pastor. “I had been criticized for fuzzy thinking. This group helps sharpen my ideas and gives me help with applications. Since I’ve submitted myself to them for help, I’ve noticed other people are more open to my taking the initiative to help them with problem areas in their lives.”
Practice Preventive Counseling
“We counsel by the way we live,” says veteran pastor Malcolm Cronk. “My lifestyle, my own marriage, my family, is part of my counseling. It says something. It isn’t always articulated in formal statements, but it’s there. People sense it.”
One pastor described his whole ministry as “preventive counseling.”
“I’ve had people tell me I’d saved their marriage. I didn’t even know their marriage was in trouble. But what they meant was that by teaching the biblical view of marriage and by illustrating it with Christ’s relationship to the church, they picked up principles to apply to their own marriage, and they worked it out.”
Ministers plant seeds in soil plowed by life’s circumstances. Many of the seeds take root. Some we’re aware of; others we aren’t. But by teaching biblical standards with biblical illustrations or illustrations from life, people beginning to go through those kinds of experiences often appropriate those principles. They experience the remedial effect of preventive counseling.
Preach to Affect the Climate
Effective preaching creates a healthy atmosphere where lives can be changed. It won’t be done, usually, by one sermon. It’s more the result of a steady, nutritious diet, the cumulative effect of consistent attitudes and applied theology expressed from the pulpit. Preaching can also be effective in dealing with specific situations.
Somebody once asked Gregory of Nazianzus a question. He replied, “I would rather answer that one in the pulpit!” At times there’s a temptation to deal with people’s needs from the safety and insulation of the pulpit rather than face them alone in the intimacy of a pastoral visit. Certainly personal contact is important, but the pulpit can be used to say things that simply cannot be said in one-to-one conversation.
“In a sermon I can talk about the urgency of committing ourselves today. It’s time to put our lives on the line for Christ,” said a Baptist minister. “There are some people in this congregation who’ve never really given their lives to Christ, and they need to hear this occasionally. It would be difficult to say in a one-to-one conversation. One woman told me after a recent service ‘I’ve known for some time that I needed to give my life fully to God, but it wasn’t until today’s sermon that I felt God telling me that this was the time.'”
Sometimes people who “don’t want help” simply don’t know how to ask for it. They may have some vague sense that things are not right, but they don’t know there’s a better way. They don’t know what steps to take. How can you reach people like this? It’s hard even to identify them at times.
The key, according to one minister, is often through describing the problems realistically from the pulpit. He recently preached a sermon on the temptation to lust. His approach was not “lust is disgusting — how could anyone who calls himself a Christian fall for a temptation like that?” Instead, he said, “I can understand why lust is such a difficult battle today. Our days are saturated with sex-oriented advertising and media. We’ve been conditioned to judge people by appearances, by the image they project. I’m tempted, too, especially when I’m feeling lonely or isolated.” He went on to point out the self-consuming side of lust and how God offers freedom from this potential addiction.
The pastor reports: “After the service one man approached me and said, ‘Your sermon made me realize I need to talk with you about this. I thought I was weird and crazy, that I was the only person in this church with this problem. You seem to understand the feelings. How do I learn to control them?'”
The pastor was able to offer some steps for help. Without the public presentation of the problem as a real but understandable temptation, the man would have continued to feel he had a unique, unsolvable penchant.
Perhaps the worst mistake a pastor can make is to belittle the struggles people face, or to suggest that “truly spiritual people” live above failure.
“Earlier in my ministry,” said one pastor, “I kept talking about ‘victory’ and how people could straighten out their lives if they would just resist temptation. Now, I still believe God can change lives, but in those days I’m afraid I was pretty cavalier about the process. I would say things like ‘If there’s a sin problem, deal with it. God can’t protect you if you aren’t walking with him.’ The implication, of course, was that if you felt under attack, you weren’t close enough to God.
“Recently, a woman who had been in the congregation back then told me about their child, who in those days was causing severe family stress. ‘I wanted to come for counseling,’ she said. ‘But my husband said no, that we could work it out in the family. He thought you would only get mad at us for letting this problem develop.’
“I felt like I’d been stabbed,” said the pastor. “But I also knew the husband’s statement was pretty accurate. I’d preached so strongly that parents are to ‘raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord’ that parents who felt they didn’t measure up couldn’t even ask for help.”
Counselor and former pastor Jim Conway observes, “Most people only know their pastor through the pulpit. I don’t think some pastors perceive how seriously people take them, and how powerful their images are.”
To compensate for this image, many pastors are careful in their use of illustrations. Authoritarian pastors, when talking about problems, generally use illustrations outside of themselves — illustrating other people’s problems, never their own.
Haddon Robinson, president of Denver Seminary and a teacher of preachers, says, “Sometimes preachers stand on the side of God and speak his words to the people, but it’s just as important to stand with the people and articulate their situation to God.”
Many preachers try to balance their presentations, speaking to the people as well as speaking for the people. They find a place for “Thus saith the Lord” as well as place for “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.”
For instance, the subject of adultery can be preached simply, “Thou shalt not!” Or the point can be introduced: “It’s not hard to see why people find themselves struggling with the temptation of adultery. When a chill sets in at home, when fatigue or stress or whatever causes you to sense a growing distance from your spouse, that’s the moment we find ourselves wondering what it would be like to be married to someone else. Then, it seems, it’s not long before you meet someone who listens, who laughs at the old jokes your spouse endures in silence, who makes you feel alive again. And you begin to think, What could be so wrong in spending some time with someone who makes me feel so good? Anyone who’s been married more than a year has probably had at least fleeting thoughts like this. But what do these thoughts, if pursued, bring as a result? Why is it that God says, ‘Thou shalt not?’ …”
Another pastor said, “I try to be empathetic from the pulpit, to let people know ‘I am for you. There’s a reason you are experiencing what you are experiencing, and I’d like to help reduce that pain. I am not in the job of inducing guilt; that’s the Holy Spirit’s task. I’m not God. My task is to help you understand where you are and help you to move toward where you truly want to be.’ As I put myself in that role and talk about my own struggles, people see me as a possible source of help for them.”
At the same time, pastors do point out that help is available, that things can be different, thanks to the resources God provides for his people.
R. Lofton Hudson tells the story of a textile factory where this sign hangs over each machine: “If your thread gets tangled, send for the foreman.” A new employee went to work, and soon her threads were tangled, but she tried to untangle them herself. The more she tried, the worse they became. Finally, in desperation, she called for help.
“Why didn’t you call for me sooner?” the foreman asked.
“I did my best,” she replied in self-defense.
“Doing your best,” he answered with a smile, “is sending for me.”
Preaching is one of the important elements of climate control. And when used wisely, along with the other tools, it can produce an atmosphere where people are more apt to ask for help and accept it when it is offered.
Eugene H. Peterson. Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work. (Atlanta: John Knox, 1980) p. 110.
Copyright ©1986 by Christianity Today
