Mapping the Territory

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
Thomas Henry Huxley

The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your actions.
A. Kindsvater

As a Scout, I took pride in the official Boy Scout compass I hung on a lanyard around my neck. On our trail hikes I would pour over the topographical map of our area, orient myself with compass and landmarks, and then proceed to provide our scoutmaster more running information about the countryside than he probably cared to hear. I learned to pick out the springs, cliffs, creeks, and landmarks that told us where it was safe to hike and camp.

There are probably few things more hazardous than a patrol leader with a map and compass, but I did develop the skill to read the territory. Like most people, I liked knowing where I was going.

Knowing what to avoid also helps. In later years when I led backpacking groups in Yosemite, knowledge of maps and compass helped us steer clear of campsites without water, trails that led nowhere, and unnecessary switchbacks. Most of us prefer not to set out like Lewis and Clark, adventuring into uncharted territory. We like to be familiar with the lay of the land.

Discovering the common potholes and pitfalls of ministry makes sense, too. Although any particular ministerial journey remains largely an unknown, few unique opportunities for mistakes crop up. Other ministers have been in the territory before, sometimes slipping in the mud or falling in the creek, but nonetheless blazing trails. Their experiences can prepare us who follow for the general hazards out there.

Mistakes in Orientation

Beginning the journey on the right trail is crucial. Had I led backpackers north from Tuolumne Meadows, we never would have found our cars in Yosemite Valley. Like guides, pastors want to start out right. But some pastors discover mistakes in orientation have hindered their journey from the beginning.

Greg Ogden, associate pastor at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, tells of his need for reorientation as a rookie assistant pastor in the early seventies:

When I ventured from Southern California to a university ministry in Pittsburgh, I was a ball of fire, ready to explode on the church. Eager to implement the latest (and of course the “right”) way to do ministry, I was a cocky twenty-six-year-old who considered the church fortunate to have a ministerial whiz kid set loose in their midst.

I quickly sized up my new boss’s approach to ministry as a relic of a bygone era. His early-fifties ministry model taught that the “respected clergy” did the ministry and the congregation played the role of grateful recipient. My thinking, which of course reflected the “biblical model,” was that the pastor is to entrust the laity with ministry and work himself out of a job. I was sure the senior pastor was doing it all wrong, which led to a rocky relationship from the start.

The first thing to go was regular pastoral meetings, and I sensed my colleague hardly missed them. My feelings of rejection turned to righteous anger. I thought, Why should I be the one to pursue him? But with my critical attitude, I wouldn’t have wanted to meet with me, either.

Being fresh out of seminary, I desperately needed affirmation from my boss. When I clashed with the volunteer staff still loyal to my predecessor, I longed to hear the pastor say, “I know it’s tough, and I want you to know I’m on your side.” But it was not his style to affirm. For him, nothing said was a positive stroke.

The unspoken tension mounted for two years before I decided I could be quiet no more. Seated three feet apart on the overstuffed leather chairs in his office, we faced off.

“For the last two years,” I said, “I have wanted to build a relationship with you, but you seemed uninterested.” He looked like he wasn’t taking it well, but I continued. “You have created an ego-satisfying ministry around yourself, keeping emotionally needy people dependent on you. Nothing can happen in this church unless you are present to give your approval.”

As soon as I finished, I wanted to grab my words and stuff them back in my mouth. He retorted, “If you have come to the point where you are questioning my motives in ministry, I do not see how we have any basis for a relationship.” Then came the devastating line: “We will no longer relate on a personal level but will stay in touch only to carry out our professional duties.” He stood up and showed me to the door.

With my ideal of a shared ministry in shambles, I justified myself by blaming my senior colleague. At my worst moments I wanted his ministry to fail. I quietly delighted in the critical remarks of church members, and sometimes even contributed to their discontent with a pointed word of confirmation.

Besides retribution, my other dominant desire was to flee. But my Jonah-like flight never materialized. It was as if God were taking me by the scruff of my neck and saying, “I’m not letting you leave until I bring the two of you together.” That forced me to face the one whom I felt I could justifiably dismiss.

Though it was never spoken, we both were aware of the glaring discrepancy between our rupture and the call on our lives to follow the reconciling Lord. The integrity of the kingdom was at stake. Asking myself, How did we get here? I had to own up to my contribution to the rift. I started to see my judgmental spirit and even forced myself to pray for the senior pastor — not asking God to straighten him out but to use him.

Only then did I begin to realize the opportunity I was wasting. Here was a man with twenty years of ministry experience. Though his model was different from mine, he had much to teach me, especially about the compassion my ministry was lacking. As my orientation changed, I began to pick up affirmation from him. He praised me in a sermon; he asked me to accompany him to a conference.

During that six-hour car trip, we actually talked together and related person to person. From that beginning we built a professional relationship. Our ministry approach still differed, but we didn’t let it keep us from personal warmth and respect. I think of him now as a man with a compassionate heart who attracts people like a magnet, a man with an active, creative mind and a passion and intensity for Christ.

When the right time came for me to leave and I was packing boxes my last day in the office, there came a knock on the door. In came my boss with the usual Cheshire-cat grin on his face, and he threw open his arms. The hug I got that day contained the joy of reconciliation. Finally, I was ready to begin ministry with a healthy attitude.

For Greg, that attitude made the big difference. A good theory from seminary became a misinterpreted notion, and that notion set him up for the continuing problem that almost terminated his first call. Greg’s false start ended favorably, but not until he reoriented himself.

Greg’s experience is typical of those making mistakes of orientation. They don’t intend to fail, but they chart their future clumsily out of ignorance, inexperience, misconceptions. In such instances a good, long look at the map drawn by other pastors helps avoid some obstacles.

Mistakes of Method

It’s hard to build a satisfactory campfire out of the wrong materials. Start with green branches and wet logs, and you end up with a pile of spent matches, smoked coffee, and a cold dinner. In fire building, method means everything.

There are also better and worse ways to go about the business of ministry. Most pastors assume they are doing things right — until their methods fail. Bill Solomon, now pastor of Irmo, South Carolina’s Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, recalls his experience with mistaken methods.

“I assumed that because I was the pastor, I knew how to run a church,” Bill says with an experienced chuckle. “Was I ever mistaken! I once tried to be a one-man missions committee and run a missions conference solely on sheer enthusiasm. I had absolutely no strategy, and I fell flat on my face. It took a few fiascos like that to realize I had a lot to learn.”

Bill recalls another error in practice from his early ministry, this time more serious: “I grew up in a macho atmosphere where we labored under the unspoken assumption that ‘women pray, and men get things done.’ Praying was fine, but I felt I had to accomplish more tangible things with my time.” So Bill slighted his prayer time as a pastor, busying himself with the myriad tasks that consume a pastor’s energies.

But such a life becomes exhaustingly broad and dangerously shallow. When personality problems flared within the congregation, Bill tried all the suppression techniques he knew to douse the flames. Nothing worked. “Those nagging problems that wouldn’t go away — people on each other’s nerves, power plays, hurt feelings — drove me to my knees,” he says, “and I saw God perform absolute miracles. He changed minds I considered hopelessly hardened. Personalities aren’t supposed to soften like that, but they did.

“I hate to admit it, but only lately have I learned the importance — the value — of prayer. I now give it at least 100 percent more time than I did at the beginning. I count my prayer time now in hours. It was a mistake to slight it in the name of busyness.“

Bill had not intended wrong. He had simply cast his practice thoughtlessly, and when it hardened into habits, his effectiveness was diminished. It took a crisis for him to reexamine his mold and make needed corrections.

Mistakes of Judgment

Judgment calls constantly burden a backpacking leader. Is this the right fork to take? Can we drink this water? All day long the trail boss makes decisions. Sometimes he or she goofs.

Pastors face similar leadership calls: Should we add a second worship service this fall? Which Sunday school curriculum should we order? What should we do with the inactive members on our roll? Issues, and consequently decisions, arise in a parish as regularly as hunger. And with so many decisions, some will be dillies.

The pastor of a tall-steeple Baptist congregation in a genteel southern community came up with what he considered a fine idea during the Vietnam era. The continuing horror of the war ate at him, and he sought some way to express his concern and that of the church. His idea: to toll the bell in the church tower, calling the community to the peace service he planned. He liked the idea so much he rang the bell himself, standing in the entryway of the grand church and tugging the mournful toll.

It wasn’t long before a red-faced deacon stormed up. “You have no right to ring that bell! That’s not your bell. It belongs to the church. Now take your hands off it!”

As the deacon stood there with his chest puffed out, the pastor, who had been at the church less than a year, decided discretion was the better part of valor. “I’m sorry,” he replied, “I should have cleared my intentions with the deacons. I guess it’s not my bell, or anyone else’s, and I shouldn’t have treated it like my own. Maybe we should talk this over at the next deacons’ meeting.”

The deacon was barely mollified — he still protested the idea of the service — but the pastor at least kept his pastorate, and his bodily integrity. He came out of that unfortunate decision reminding himself to not overstep his authority.

Another pastor mishandled a runaway phenomenon in the church by doing nothing. He was senior pastor of a staid old church full of money, manners, and momentum. Not much swayed the congregation from its historic course — until the faithful evangelistic callers, tired of ineffectiveness, prayed for greater spiritual power. They got it — in abundance.

This handful of leaders became excited about their newfound spiritual gifts. Speaking in tongues and beginning to reach out to others, they soon had some of the more tradition-bound members on edge. When the enthusiastic group began inviting charismatic speakers, and others from outside the church began flocking to special meetings, it was too much for the traditional element. “They’re trying to take the church away from us!” became the most common complaint.

While church members were choosing sides in escalating skirmishes, the pastor took the attitude that the whole thing would blow over, and continued on as if he were still pastoring a sleeping giant. Frequently out of town speaking or leading tours, he was absent at exactly the time he needed to exercise a strong hand.

He allowed the problem to boil to such intensity that the denomination was twice called in: once to “fix the charismatic problem,” and when that didn’t do what some wanted, a second time to remove the pastor. He was not removed, but the commission declared his actions “not prudent” and invited the disgruntled members to leave.

Many did leave, severely affecting the viability of the congregation. Shortly thereafter the pastor left, retiring early. The situation might have resolved itself under other circumstances, but not this time. The pastor made a bad call, and by misjudging the severity of the discord, he brought his ministry to a premature and discouraging finish.

He was more fortunate in misjudgment than Union Major General John Sedgwick. At the Civil War Battle of Spotsylvania, Sedgwick insisted on standing up and looking over the parapet. When his officers cautioned him to keep down, he replied, “Nonsense! They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—”

Mistakes of judgment can be deadly, even if figuratively. Sometimes pastors make great calls and everybody cheers. Other times their best judgment is deficient, and the fans are ready to “throw the bum out.” It’s enough to make most church leaders cautious.

Mistakes with People

Mistakes of orientation, method, and judgment provide their share of danger, but the territory becomes particularly perilous on the interpersonal frontier. There emotions set tricky hazards, and these hazards clustered around interpersonal mistakes often rip the biggest holes in the pastor’s seamless garment.

Forget to take the offering some Sunday — an institutional gaffe — and people kid you for weeks. But neglect calling on Ernest Selfworthy’s aged mother — an interpersonal faux pas — and they begin to warm the tar. Many pastors will tell you their most painful mistakes were interpersonal — with parishioners, staff members, or their own families.

Mistakes with parishioners. I once heard a pastor quip about his difficult charge: “This would be a great church if it weren’t for the people.” Church members are hard to map. They don’t stand still like mountains. You can’t depend on them like a well-marked trail. Sometimes they seem to delight in devilry and persist in perniciousness. Yet they are also completely capable of coming through when you least expect them, blessing the church in spite of themselves. Their unpredictability offers ample opportunity for church leaders to err — leaders who are themselves members of the rascally race.

Dale Street, the new pastor of a church that had been served for over twenty years by its organizing pastor, found himself in a Catch-22. The beloved founding pastor had resigned suddenly and rather mysteriously. However, he left his mark on the congregation. Some of his final sermons railed against “wolves out to pervert the doctrinal purity of the church,” and mentioned a certain seminary.

That seminary just happened to be Dale’s alma mater. And the pastor didn’t want Dale to be his successor. So although he was unsuccessful in discouraging the search committee from calling Dale, he left Dale in a precarious position. People were set to scrutinize Dale’s every word from the pulpit.

Dale enjoyed eight months of honeymoon before trouble surfaced. A small handful of members began applying heat to this pastor who was “soft on inerrancy.” They circulated an inflammatory flier. They took elders to lunch. They spoke out in meetings. And Dale began to reel from the impact of this opposition.

Finally a meeting was called for two of the chief antagonists to air their concerns with the elders. Their major complaint: “Dale does not believe in biblical inerrancy.”

Dale’s flabbergasted response: “But I do believe in inerrancy. I’ve said it publically and signed without reservation the church doctrinal statement. What’s more, I demonstrate it in the way I preach and teach the Word of God.”

The detractors were undeterred. “You see, what we have here is a man who says he believes in inerrancy, who will even sign a statement saying he believes it, but who in his heart of hearts really doesn’t believe it. How can a man like that be our pastor?”

So Dale was stuck. Signing the statement “proved” he was a liar. Not signing it would substantiate his unbelief. He couldn’t win with that suspicious knot of parishioners.

Dale had made no mistakes to bring him to this point, however, and he avoided them as he worked his way out of the dilemma. Fortunately, the great majority of the congregation and its leadership did not buy the paradoxical reasoning of the disgruntled group. A small band did eventually leave the church, but Dale was spared to continue ministering effectively in a situation that eventually stabilized.

Dale’s greatest task was to restrain himself from assuming the attack mode. A sermon he had written to devastate the opposition remained crumpled in his wastebasket while he preached on brotherhood. He thumbtacked a card he’d hand-lettered — truth will triumph — to the pulpit to restrain his desire to lash out. Dale reacted with warmth and care — at considerable personal expense — and most of the people followed his lead.

Although Dale avoided interpersonal mistakes for the most part, there is a limit to how much we can control interpersonal relationships. Somebody will always be edgy about something. Mark Erickson, pastor of Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee, is also a physician specializing in emergency medicine. He enjoys telling this story:

“One day when I was in the emergency room, we received word that an elderly lady was being rushed to us after collapsing in a Catholic church. When she arrived, the medics bringing her in were thumping on her chest, working feverishly. We immediately defibrillated her and started all sorts of IVs — doing all we could to help this poor woman.

“Finally she woke up and looked around rather startled. Then she got mad. ‘Oh no!’ she lamented. ‘This is the third time this has happened. I keep expecting to wake up in heaven!’ She was terribly disappointed, and she was angry at us for doing what we did to save her. Sometimes you just can’t win with people, so it helps if we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

Mistakes with staff. For some reason, the church office is particularly hazardous territory. Perhaps it’s the clash of worldly ambition and heavenly zeal, or the echo of competing egos. At any rate, mistakes with staff have riven many a church.

Pastors who manage a volunteer or professional staff shoulder a number of interpersonal responsibilities: delegating work fairly, providing spiritual counsel, maintaining lines of communication and accountability, giving opportunity for growth, sharing the spoils of success and the blame for failure. All provide convenient opportunities for error. But mistakes in calling and dismissing staff often seem the most harmful.

An Assemblies of God pastor put his finger on one mistake in hiring: “I’ve made my commitments too early. As a pastor, I’m accustomed to looking for the best in people, so I tend to ‘fall in love’ with candidates. I focus on their good points and gloss over their shortcomings. It’s those bad habits, their poor track records, that return to haunt me.

“When I interviewed one applicant we later hired, I mistook ego for confidence. That staff member’s inflated self-importance became a continual problem. Every time he was in front of people, the attention had to be on him. It got to the point where people were pulling me aside and saying, ‘I don’t want to sound mean, but we’ve got to get rid of him. He’s ruining every program he’s involved in.’

“I had to admit I had made a mistake. I had imagined flowers in what we now could see was a weed patch. We finally eased him off the staff, and I have since developed a healthy skepticism. I’m looking for a servant’s heart, so an overactive ego is a red light.”

Another pastor said, “I want to believe people, especially those who want to serve the Lord in Christian ministries. So I feel awkward checking their references. But I’m never again going to hire an associate without talking with previous supervisors. We’ve been burned too many times.”

Mistakes in hiring inevitably lead to that second great opportunity for error: the process of terminating an employee. Although there is no easy way to fire a staff member, there are many inept ways to do it.

One pastor ruefully recalls, “I had a youth director who had a hard time keeping his hands off the gals in his group. It was nothing grossly obvious, yet I kept hearing complaints. Three or four times I called him into my office and confronted him. Each time, with a mixture of shock and chagrin, he assured me that everything would be okay; he’d curtail any activities that would give even ‘the appearance of evil.’

“Then, a few weeks or months later, I’d get another complaint. The guy had a moral problem. Out of misguided charity or simple naiveté — whatever — I waited too long to fire him. Finally I called him in and told him he’d have to resign. We gave him a thousand dollars and moving expenses. He left without a word.

“I was lucky things worked out as well as they did. It’s a grave error to fire too late.”

Acting without board approval, retaining the guilty party too long after giving notice, giving a rosy but inaccurate recommendation for a fired employee, and mishandling the announcement of a staff member’s “resignation” are other ways pastors have dropped the ball in firing staff. It’s a rocky path to termination, full of well-intentioned yet costly mistakes.

Mistakes with loved ones. Of all the mistakes that tear at a pastor’s psyche, failures at home are the worst. Other pastors can debrief the disastrous board meeting or commiserate over a blunder before the bedtable light is switched off. But the pastor whose tragic mistake is his home life has only a dark bedroom or a domestic battlefield to return to at night. A rattled family shakes every other aspect of life.

Rookie cops are warned of the three worst hazards of the profession, and they are not bullets, bludgeons, and Bowie knives. Problems with alcohol, money, and women have cashiered more peace officers than any violent means. From at least the time of Paul, rookie preachers have been warned, too, to keep their personal and familial lives in order.

Yet sometimes the ministry seems almost to work against that. One pastor, who now is again enjoying fulfilling ministry, relates his story:

“My problem came from the need to achieve. I had to accomplish everything by thirty-five so I could be ahead of the others who wanted it all by forty. I published umpteen books, served on the board of a major university, got my name in Who’s Who in America, and accumulated all kinds of honors. But it exacted a toll on my marriage.

“When my marriage got really bad, I felt I couldn’t remain in my parish, so I took on the directorship of a public agency. It was better to be out of the ministry while we were going through all the pain and mess of trying to straighten out our lives. After a lot of counseling, we eventually decided to go our separate ways, and that was so painful. It felt like I had lost everything I once held dear.

“As I can see it now, my divorce resulted from my inability to integrate the emotional and the professional. Being a super-achiever in one area depleted me in the other. I was a young hard charger, out of touch with my emotions because I’d been on an intellectual, activist trip.”

In the midst of stellar accomplishments as a pastor, this man’s failure as a husband destroyed his marriage and nearly undid his ministry. That was a steep bill to foot for a ministry mistake. The price is always high when it comes to family.

Both impersonal and interpersonal hazards dot the ministry map, and at times they make the going difficult, even perilous. Yet often these gross mistakes appear almost easy to avoid compared to the tricky “little” mistakes lurking in the underbrush.