If an apparently strong-willed pastor admits struggles from the pulpit, it becomes a powerful preaching moment.
—Steve Brown
Our church had just signed a contract for a $3 million building project. I panicked when those I banked on to help pay for it refused.
So I called up every elder and deacon and cajoled them to pledge toward the project. I recruited someone to paste a large picture of our church on a cardboard box and cut it up into bricks of $10,000 each. I also convinced the elders and deacons to stand in front of the church one Sunday and announce their 100 percent support for the project.
Then, as a climax to all my work, I preached a hard-sell message, a the-time-for-fun-and-games-is-over sermon.
We raised the money, all right, but I was criticized severely. I so deeply offended one person, he left the church.
As I look back, I realize how manipulative the sermon was. I practically said that if people didn’t give, they would get the fever! At that moment, the church didn’t need a blistering prophet who threatened but a gentle pastor who encouraged. In retrospect, I should have identified with people: “This is a huge goal, and even I’m afraid to make the sacrifices required to fulfill it. But if we depend on God, he can give us courage to do it together.”
I’ve been wrong in the other direction as well, being sensitive in the pulpit when I should have kicked the congregation in the seat of the pants!
This is one of the toughest problems modern pastors face. People need and want to hear how a pastor shares their struggles and pain. Nonetheless, a part of them longs to hear an authoritative word to guide their lives.
Different preachers bring different gifts to the pulpit. Some are proclaimers, with an authoritative word. Others are more intimate: “Let me tell you what God has been doing in my life.” Naturally, we should major in our strengths.
Still, for most preachers in most settings, we need to be both authoritative and vulnerable if we hope to offer God’s Word in a way that affects people deeply. It has taken me years to learn to do both well, and I’m still learning. Here are some principles I keep in mind.
A strong foundation
When a weak pastor admits to struggling in the faith, the congregation hardly takes notice. That’s pretty much what members expect, given how feebly he or she has been leading the church. But if an apparently strong-willed pastor admits struggles from the pulpit, it becomes a powerful preaching moment.
That’s one reason I believe the preacher should, first and foremost, be a proclaimer of God’s Word. That gives us authority when we preach with authority and also when we preach as a fellow struggler.
But another reason to proclaim God’s Word authoritatively is more critical: preachers are under obligation. We are handlers of holy Scripture, which bestows upon us the authority to herald its teachings. There’s no getting around the fact that we’re in a situation different from that of the listener.
Consequently, no matter what style we emphasize, we need first to establish ourselves as strong, authoritative pastors. Years ago, a pastor friend of mine gave me an insight into pastoring:
“Steve, people look at us as representatives of God. I don’t like this, and it’s not biblical. But the way they treat us is the way they feel they can treat God. So if you allow people to walk over you, they think they can do that to God.”
Maybe I understood what he said because I instinctively have operated that way.
When I arrived at one church, I was young and ambitious, and the church asked me to target the youth; the church was slowly graying. So I began developing relationships with the teenagers in the church neighborhood. The basketball hoop in the church parking lot turned out to be an effective means of getting next to them.
I had served the church for only six months when the chairman of the trustee board nonchalantly mentioned, as we were standing under the basketball hoop, that the board had decided to remove the hoop.
I exploded. “No, you’re not! By taking down that basketball hoop, you’re sending a strong message to those kids. You asked me to attract young people here, but you’ll be running them off.”
The chairman waved me off, pivoted, and walked away.
I was livid. “Jack, don’t walk away from me!”
He kept walking, but I persisted. I followed him up two flights of stairs smack into the middle of a trustee meeting. I sat down.
“Don’t worry,” Jack said to the other trustees. “Pastor and I are just having a little disagreement.”
Then he added, “By the way, I’ve invited the pastor to come to our meeting.” (Pastors were normally excluded from the trustee meeting.)
“Could I say something, Jack?” I asked. I paused and then turned to face the entire board. “First, Jack didn’t invite me to this meeting. I’m the pastor of this church and don’t need an invitation to a trustee meeting. Second, I will be at these trustee meetings from now on.”
The air was heavy with silence, and I went on to complain about the backboard decision. But I had gained their respect. I can’t lay claim to knowing consciously what I was doing, but in effect I was building a base of strength, from which I could operate in the proclamation mode on Sunday morning.
Gaining authority
It is critical to establish authority, especially for young pastors or those in new church settings. If they are going to have any success in the pulpit, their authority must be established early and maintained regularly.
One way, though it must be handled as carefully as removing asbestos, is by tackling conflict head-on. Once I switched job responsibilities of several of the church staff. I relayed my plans to the session, expecting them to approve my actions, as they usually did.
I was wrong. First they said they wanted to think about it; then they became increasingly negative. The issue ballooned into an all-out power struggle.
I decided this was a “resignable issue,” so I called a special meeting. I opened the meeting boldly: “I’m not going to take responsibility for what happens in this church without authority to make staff decisions. If the staff begins to think I don’t have the authority to hire, fire, and organize the staff as I see fit, I can’t do what you want me to do. We’re going to decide right now what we’re going to do about this!”
After some discussion, one of them (who had initially balked at my changes) said, “Steve, we don’t care how you arrange the staff. But if you don’t want our input, don’t ask us what we think.”
Out of that we worked out a new set of agreements on our roles in the church.
I hated that meeting. The thought of confronting the board ate away at me, and I thought I was going to lose control at the meeting. I tried to talk myself out of it: I’m not going to make any waves over this. But then I realized how much of my leadership would be sacrificed if I didn’t make waves. Establishing your authority takes a lot out of you, but sometimes you have to do it. That incident buttressed my overall credibility and increased my authority in the pulpit.
A second key is to become sensitive to the symbols of authority. When I entered ministry, I looked young. I knew I would have trouble preaching authoritatively if people thought of me as baby-faced. So I grew a beard.
Some pastors don robes (if their tradition permits it); others install larger pulpits. In any case, we are wise to make use of such symbols.
Key qualification
Of course, power can be dangerously abused, and spouting off foolishly can wind up losing you all credibility. To earn the right to confront, or even to use the symbols of authority, sacrificial pastoral care is required.
One pastor I know is the very image of strength and authority. At staff meetings he bluntly holds staff members accountable for their duties:
“I asked you to contact six visitors this week. Did you do it?”
“And I asked you to get cards out to all seniors. Did you do it?”
“Now this week, this is what I expect from each of you …”
He’s a no-nonsense leader. But I once found out why he gets away with it.
He asked me to speak at his church one Sunday. One of his members picked me up from the airport, and on the drive to the church, I asked the driver what he thought of his pastor.
“I don’t like him.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied. “But don’t get me wrong. I’ll follow him to the pit of hell.”
I became curious and asked why.
“When my mother was dying,” the man said, “he didn’t leave her side for forty-eight hours.”
This pastor had earned his authority. When we preach, the sacrificial pastoral care we’ve given grants us a unique authority.
When it’s time to get intimate
I’m not a naturally warm person, and in some pastoral situations that has been a problem.
When I first arrived at Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church, I developed a friendship with a man who launched Dolphin magazine. Three months before he died, he made a decision to follow Christ. The night before he died, he said, “Steve, a lot of people don’t know that I’ve found faith in Jesus Christ. So when you’re standing over my casket, I want you to tell those attending my funeral what happened to me and how it can happen to them.”
The church was packed the day of his funeral, and I preached an evangelistic message, keeping my promise to him. Afterward, everybody was hugging and consoling his widow. She walked over to me at one point and gave me a hug. I hugged her, but I must have winced because she said, “Are you angry?”
“Ginny, not at all,” I said. “I love you a lot, but I’m just not comfortable with hugging yet.”
Now, years later, no one would believe this of me. I come across to many as someone who could be anyone’s best friend. But this is something I’ve learned.
I’m a teacher. I’m driven to help people understand what I’m saying. I long to make Jesus Christ real to people. And if I’m going to communicate with the modern world, I’m going to have to be as much fellow struggler as herald of God’s Word.
I began learning this by default. Several years ago, I developed a terrible pain in my hip; for almost a year I was forced to walk with a cane. I couldn’t even stand up to preach. Every time I’d lean in a certain direction, a searing pain would shoot through my body.
But I still had to preach—that was my livelihood. So I found a stool, and with microphone and Bible in hand, I preached sitting in front of the church. Right before the sermon, someone would move the pulpit aside and replace it with this stool.
The move from the pulpit to the chair, I discovered, increased my effectiveness. The symbol of the big pulpit served only to accentuate my natural tendencies as a proclaimer. When that was removed, many in my church remarked that I had become less preachy. Instead of communicating, “This is the way it is,” my sermons subtly shifted to “Can we talk together this morning?” Just as symbols can communicate authority, they can also communicate intimacy.
Also, if you want to communicate intimacy, few things are more effective than simply telling the congregation you care about them.
A pastor friend told me, “I’m in trouble in my church, and I don’t know what to do.” After some conversation, I concluded that although Bill loved his congregation, he had yet to communicate it to them. He gives you the impression he wants to be left alone; he has a natural scowl on his face. But it belies his real feelings.
So I told him, “Bill, you need to say from the pulpit, ‘Guys, I know I look like I’m mad at you all the time, and I know you don’t think I like you. But I think you’re the best thing since sliced bread. I feel so privileged to be your pastor. I love you.’ If you’d say that one time, you wouldn’t be in trouble any longer.”
Another help is the counsel of friends. One of my pastor friends has always been a strong proclaimer, partly because he looks like a movie star, partly because he’s naturally arrogant. He knows arrogance is a problem. So some time ago, he said to his elders, “I know I’m arrogant, and I struggle with it all the time. I don’t like that about myself. I want you guys to help me with this.”
He never said this from the pulpit—that would have been to throw his authority out the window—but it was a winsome thing to do. It not only convinced his board that he was a fellow struggler, it gave my friend some periodic feedback about what he was communicating from the pulpit.
Finally, I need to make sure I know who I am. I’m a sinner and I’m a sufferer. And when I suffer, I want to make sure I drink the full cup of it, so that I can learn what God is teaching me. Most of all, I want to make sure I experience grace.
Then, whatever I say from the pulpit comes out okay. I don’t come across as insensitive to people’s situations. Nor do I seem like a pitiful wimp who knows nothing of God’s victory. I can communicate “I understand” while proclaiming God’s truth.
Mistakes to avoid
In becoming more vulnerable from the pulpit, we become vulnerable to some homiletic mistakes. Here are three I try to avoid.
First, I don’t want to lose all control. Though I want to show people I have emotions, I don’t want to lose my ability to speak to the situation.
One church I stepped into was a war zone—father against son, husband against wife—before and after I arrived. Actual fistfights had broken out in the narthex, which were reported in several of the Boston newspapers. The most divisive issue was the placement of the Communion table in the new sanctuary. When I candidated there, the search committee asked me, “Where would you put a Communion table?”
I, not knowing the significance of the issue, naively replied, “You can hang it from the ceiling for all I care.” My smart-aleck answer got me the job. I was hired and then baptized into an ugly church fight.
Thankfully, I had Walter, a father figure whose gentle wisdom and love guided me through a morass of hatred and division. Walter and I prayed together almost every day before he contracted cancer. The night he died, I visited him in the hospital. He begged me to stay with him a little longer, but I had another obligation. The doctors told me he would be fine, so I left, promising Walter I would see him in the morning.
I would never again see him alive, however; Walter slipped away in the night. I was devastated. I had just lost my one pillar in what seemed to be a house of cards.
Three days later, I presided over Walter’s funeral. And during the service, I fell apart. I would start to cry, and the organ would begin playing softly. Then I’d sit down until I regained composure. I’d stand up again, only to lose it again. Walter’s death opened up within me a floodgate of emotion.
When the service finally ended, several people commented, “It was obvious you loved Walter,” and “Your tears showed the depth of your feelings.” They identified with my loss; I had mourned alongside them.
But as pastor, I owed the family a service that would glorify God and comfort them in their mourning. Certainly it’s appropriate to tell people how you feel, and shedding a tear or two is okay. But I have to remember I’m the pastor called on to do more than simply share my feelings.
Second, I don’t want to overtell. Once we’ve found a crisis in our lives, it’s tempting to retell it whenever we can to help listeners see that we know about crises.
A recent crisis for my wife and me came our way from the ocean: Hurricane Andrew. We found ourselves huddled in a small closet as the winds blasted South Miami. We believed our deaths were imminent. In the end, we lost our home and many of our possessions but not each other.
This was too good a story not to tell. So I did, again and again as the opportunity presented itself. Three months later, I was speaking at a gathering of leaders in Colorado Springs when it suddenly struck me that for the last three months I had relayed our story at every place I had spoken. Enough is enough, I concluded.
Third, I don’t want to get too specific about some sins. Though we want to communicate that we’re sinners, it’s not always appropriate to go into details. Otherwise we undermine people’s confidence.
Some sins, like my anger, I’m free to describe in detail—just as I’ve told stories in this chapter. Other sins, though, I talk about only in a general way. When preaching about greed, for instance, I might say, “With this sin I’ve prayed, ‘Forgive me my sins,'” or “I’ve got a problem with this sin, but if you think I’m going to be detailed about it, you’re crazy!” So, in one statement I can let people know I’m human, without being inappropriate.
The intimate herald
Many years ago, I spoke at a Youth for Christ retreat. I did everything I could, short of standing on my head, to communicate to those teenagers, but the entire front row of boys slept through the entire weekend of services. So later, when asked to speak at a large convention of teenagers, I initially refused: once bitten, twice shy. Eventually, though, I reluctantly accepted the invitation.
That evening, after the band finished their set, I got up to speak to an auditorium full of teenagers. Someone had left a stool on stage, so I sat down, adjusted my half-glasses, and opened my big black Bible to the evening’s text.
Suddenly the room fell silent. The students listened almost breathlessly, hanging on my every word. I was not a little surprised, to say the least, considering the reaction of my last teenage audience.
As I reflect upon the dynamics of that evening, part of the effect, I believe, was my gray hair, my deep voice, and my sitting down in front of them. All of that combined to have some sort of guru effect on the audience. I became the intimate herald, one who identified with them yet who spoke a word from the Lord.
I urge preachers not to violate their personalities. We are most effective at what makes each of us unique: our gifts and abilities. Some of us will naturally lean more toward proclamation, others at being a warm, charismatic witness of God’s truth. Yet I’m convinced that each of us, when we’re preaching at our best, can employ both to great effect.
Copyright © 1995 by Leadership/Christianity Today
