One of the tests of leadership is to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Arnold Glasow
The pain of seeing people who need help refuse to accept it is an affliction most pastors have experienced. But this must-help/can’t-help dilemma is a struggle few others in the congregation sense — at least to the degree pastors do.
One pastor was concerned about several families in his church that always seemed to have financial problems. The problem was not unemployment; the families’ incomes were adequate. They simply could not manage the money they made. They were harassed by collection agencies. They were facing foreclosure on their homes and personal bankruptcy. What could the pastor do?
About that time, two accountants in the church stopped in to see the pastor and offer their services to anyone in the church who would benefit from financial counsel in budgeting, spending, investing — all free, no strings attached. Since the pastor knew both men well, he knew their offer was free of ulterior motives to sell insurance or mutual funds or their accounting services. They simply wanted to offer their skills “as unto the Lord.”
It seemed a perfect solution. Soon the pastor had arranged a series of meetings with the financially strapped families and the two accountants. The men helped them identify their expenses, set budgets, and work out a timetable for paying bills. They even contacted some of the creditors to forestall the foreclosures and said, “We’ve been asked to help manage the Smith family’s finances, and we understand they are delinquent in their account with you. We’ve worked out a schedule for them to pay off their debt.…” Most creditors were glad to cooperate.
Things appeared to be going well. “I’m encouraged,” one accountant told the pastor. “These people make enough money. It’s just a matter of showing them where it needs to go.” Each week, the families were to report their expenditures to the accountants.
The first week progressed according to plan. So did the second week. But by the third week, things started falling apart. One family drove up in a new Oldsmobile.
“We had to buy it,” they claimed. “Our old car needed new tires and a tune-up anyway, so we figured we might as well put the money on a nicer car.” The accountant buried his face in his hands.
Over the next few weeks, each of the families managed somehow to demolish the neatly organized budgets they had constructed. With the creditors and collection agencies no longer hounding them, they felt free to spend again.
Finally the two accountants stopped by the church office. “We’re going to have to withdraw our offer to help with financial counseling. It’s too frustrating to spend all this time with people and have them not follow through. Their spending habits are too deeply ingrained. We’re glad to have tried this, Pastor, just to see what you have to put up with all the time. But we can’t go on.”
The pastor understood their frustration. But their response was also an encouragement. He recognized one of the unique characteristics required of a pastor — perhaps a sign of the pastoral gift — is a willingness to love people even when they initially rebuff that love. The two accountants did not possess that willingness.
Why We’re Reluctant to Help
Even pastors grow impatient with resistant people. When I told one minister I was writing a book called Helping Those Who Don’t Want Help, he said, “That’s going to be the world’s shortest book. You can’t help people who don’t want help. Jesus said, ‘They that be whole need not a physician.… I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance’ (Matt. 9:12-13). Only those who recognize their need can be helped to change their lives.”
It was a brief conversation.
But he raised an important point. Isn’t it a bit presumptuous to think we can soften a hard heart or bend an unyielding attitude?
Another pastor said, “I work with the well and the willing. Most pastors spend too much time with the sick and the cynical.”
Yet another said, “The danger in helping these people is that I communicate the situation is my responsibility when it’s not. I cannot ultimately be responsible for others’ behavior. It’s their responsibility.”
There are other reasons we’re often reluctant to step in and offer help.
One is the respect — almost worship — we have in Western culture for individual rights. It seems almost a sacrilege to violate a person’s desire to live life any way he chooses.
One group that has been able to get past this cultural do-not-disturb-my-lifestyle sign has been Alcoholics Anonymous. They are often called in by family members who feel the alcoholic is destroying himself and the family. Their intervention technique involves the family members and others whose lives have been affected by the alcoholic’s behavior confronting him as a group — “ganging up” to point out how his behavior has hurt them and him, and insisting he get treatment. Though, in a sense, it violates his desire to live the way he wants, the AA technique is remarkably successful.
Another reason we are reluctant to confront people about their need for help is inertia. Pastors seldom have to “drum up business.” There’s usually more than enough business, or at least busyness, demanding their attention every day. With so many people knocking on your door, it’s hard to get motivated to knock on someone else’s.
Yet another reason is fear of personal rejection. Said one veteran pastor, “Most of us pastors greatly fear personal rejection because we’re trained to be people pleasers. And to some extent we have to be — we have to maintain an ongoing, long-term ministry relationship with people.”
But beyond fear of personal rejection, often just plain ol’ fear of physical violence enters in. You can get into dangerous situations when you step in to mediate disputes, reconcile the rebellious, or protect people from themselves. A Presbyterian pastor from Cincinnati tells one such incident:
One night a woman called to tell me her husband was seeing a young widow from our church. She told me he was there even as we spoke! Even though it was 11:30 p.m., I drove by that widow’s house and saw his car parked five doors away. It was the middle of winter, and I wasn’t sure if I was shivering from the cold or from having to go up and knock on that door. I kept stalling and praying — it was about midnight by the time I knocked. Sure enough, there he was. He saw me, and he knew you don’t make pastoral calls at midnight. I tried to appear calm, but I want to tell you — I was so scared you could have jumped rope with my intestines. I just said, “I need to ask what’s going on.”
He exploded: “Why are you meddling here?”
I said, “I’m here because I care about the two of you. I care about what this is doing to you and your children and to a marriage and to our fellowship in the church.” This led to thirty minutes of tense and difficult discussion.
I eventually had to confront him again a few nights later in that home. I didn’t have to say a word, because I knocked on that door and they didn’t answer for a long time. When they finally answered, all kinds of guilt and hurt were uncovered.
The young widow was salvaged eventually from a bad situation and later married a wonderful man. Sadly, the man involved not only divorced his wife and left the church, but has since divorced a second wife.
It is the risk — physical and legal — of precisely such situations that causes many pastors not to take the initiative to make such “house calls.” Other pastors minimize these risks, and with them their reluctance to act, by carefully avoiding the Lone Ranger approach and making sure to involve other mature leaders in the church.
When Pastor George Bradley began hearing rumors of an affair between two members of his Portland, Maine, congregation — both married, both active in the church — his first step was to talk with two of his trusted elders. With their support and assistance, he tried to piece together the story. When he was convinced the rumors did have substance, he went with the two elders, to ask the people involved if the stories were true.
The man brusquely told the pastor, “This is none of your business.”
The woman confessed the affair and indicated she wished it had never begun but said that she was now “emotionally involved.” She wasn’t sure she would be able to simply turn her back on the man.
At that point, the pastor asked the whole board for counsel and prayer. Individual elders took the initiative to meet both with the offenders and the offended spouses to listen and to encourage them to maintain their marriages. “We’re with you, not against you,” the elders tried to communicate. “We want to save your marriage and prevent your kids from having to cope with a broken home.” When these private, lowkey encounters failed to stop the affair, the board gradually became more and more directive, working primarily with the woman, who at least admitted the affair was wrong and ultimately destructive even though she couldn’t bring herself to break it off.
When the elders and pastor suggested the only solution might be for the family to relocate, the woman’s husband agreed, and the board went to the extent of finding employment and another church for them in another state. They moved, and the thousand-mile separation finally ended the affair.
Both marriages survived. The family that moved has kept in contact with the home church and has expressed gratitude for the efforts of the pastor and board. The man involved in the affair also stayed with his wife. The two of them eventually left the church to join another one in town, but they are now active there, and their marriage is intact.
This is an unusual story, but Pastor Bradley minimized the risks. The whole board moved in concert. It was a group effort, not a solo rescue. The process was deliberate and well-planned, and thus avoided most of the risks involved in hasty intervention.
In addition to physical and legal dangers inherent in confronting people, at least three other dynamics are at work.
1. Discomfort with repeat offenders. In many cases, people who don’t want help have “besetting sins,” and those have always posed a problem for Christians. The term comes from Hebrews 12:1, which in the King James version, refers to “the sin which doth so easily beset us.” Whatever the writer may have intended, the term has come to refer to a continual, repeated sin.
One church leader describes it: “Mary continues to have temper tantrums, Bill continues to get drunk [and] … Suzanne is into her fifth affair, even though each seemed to have repented, claimed victory, been resanctified (if such a thing is possible) or whatever. And it is the repetitiveness that throws us. We begin to avoid such people … placing them in a class apart from the rest of us who can at least manage to keep up appearances.”1
Does God forgive a sin if we turn around and commit the same sin again … and again … and again? In the abstract, most Christians will say “Yes, because we’re all imperfect specimens, and God forgives and heals even habitual sin.” But when it comes to specific sins, from which the person does not cease and desist — such as a pornographic addiction or promiscuity or ongoing bitterness — we wonder if true repentance has taken place. Those who don’t “live in victory” are suspected of being devoid of spiritual life at all.
As a result, many of those with “besetting sins” keep their condition a secret as long as they can, wanting help, perhaps, but not the inevitable condemnation. And frequently the rest of us passively aid the cover-up because we too prefer not to know. Who wants to be bothered by the embarrassment or the general mess?
But as John White writes, “They are our wounded brothers and sisters. They are the church’s closest pariahs.”2
2. Fear that we may have to negotiate the non-negotiables. When trying to appeal to resistant people, some pastors fear they’ll wind up adjusting the gospel to please those individuals. At times there may be a temptation to give away too much in our attempt to reach the rebellious. We lower our expectations. We can be tempted to “meet their needs” with a watered-down gospel rather than help them experience the truly transformed life.
As Oswald Chambers writes in The Psychology of Redemption, “We begin all right, but we get switched off. If we do not continue to live in the right place, we will get back into ‘Adam sympathies.’ … Satan’s temptations of our Lord were based on sympathy with the first Adam — ‘Put men’s needs first.’ Jesus says — ‘Do not think first of the needs of people; think first of the commands of God'” (Mark 12:29-31).
In our desire to get people to accept the gospel and live accordingly, we dare not create simply a gospel that is acceptable to people.
3. An assumption that a person’s actions and attitudes are willfully chosen. Yes, there is an inherent conflict between a person’s fleshly desires and the commands of God, between the old nature and the new. Again, Chambers writes, “The temptation to woo and win men is the most subtle of all, and it is that ‘line’ that commends itself to us naturally. But you cannot woo and win a mutiny; it is absolutely impossible. You cannot woo and win the man who, when he recognizes the rule of God, detests it. The Gospel of Jesus Christ always marks the line of demarcation.”
Many times this kind of with-us-or-against-us thinking makes us reluctant to offer help. We assume the person has chosen to be the way he or she is. As we will see later, this assumption at times is valid, but other times it is not.
Why We’re Obligated to Help
Are we kidding ourselves? Is this book built on a false premise — that we can solve other people’s problems? Is there a compelling reason to take the initiative with people who are not overtly asking for help?
Despite the arguments against doing so, most pastors feel an obligation to help those who don’t want help. Why? Their reasons fell into five categories:
1. Because we all needed help before we wanted it. The message of the Bible is that “when we were yet without strength … Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6, kjv) and “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
At times, people may not want help because they are unable to want it — at least for the time being.
Vernon Grounds says one Bible text especially important to him is Job 6:14 — “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty.”
“One of the ministries I consider my most meaningful,” he says, “has been keeping in touch with friends who, over the years, have deviated from the faith — leaving the ministry or getting embroiled in a moral issue. I try to hang on to them without being obnoxious. I maintain some contact — sending a birthday card, dropping them an occasional note — always nonjudgmental, simply letting them know someone cares and is willing to listen. They know where I stand, but I’m not going to force myself or certain clichés on them.”
Sin’s effects can be described in two ways: indirect damage and direct damage. Indirect damage is the effect the sin has on people affected by the sinner. Direct damage is the person’s increasing insensitivity to God, a growing blindness to the effects of his own sin. Conscience can become seared and eventually die.
Why help people who don’t want help? Because we may be able to prevent indirect damage to innocent people (like Penny Farney in chapter 1). And because we may be able to prevent further direct damage to the spiritual sensitivity of the person himself.
2. Because love takes the initiative. Time after time, pastors referred to the biblical metaphor of the shepherd.
“Good shepherds see the wolf before the flock does. Just because people may not be conscious of a problem is no reason to avoid dealing with it,” said one minister.
“As a pastor, I’m a shepherd,” said another. “A shepherd doesn’t say, ‘I’ll protect you from this ground hog, but not from that bear.’ We have a job to do — to lead, guide, and protect — whether we like to or not.”
One of the demands of leadership is to recognize problems before they become emergencies, and likewise, one of the challenges of ministry is to help people even before they recognize they’re heading for the rocks.
Ray Stedman recalls a quotation from Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry: “The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don’t want to do, in order to achieve what they’ve always wanted to be.” Stedman then says, “I think that’s also God’s business with us — to make us sometimes do what we don’t want to do in order to be what we’ve always wanted to be.”
Throughout the Bible, love is shown taking the initiative even with people in rebellion. God repeatedly takes the first step, and second, and third.… He is not aloof, uncaring. He suffers the indignation of appealing to an uncaring world. Pastors often pointed to this image.
“I take Jesus as a model,” says Roland Reimer of First Mennonite Brethren Church in Wichita, Kansas. “He reaches out and tries to help individuals either become aware of their need or, when they’ve given up, realize there is a way out of their problem. For example, when Jesus talked at the well with the woman of Samaria, he took the initiative, fought through her barriers, and opened the doors for her to heal her relationships. He definitely took the initiative with someone who wasn’t seeking him out.”
“With youth leaders,” adds Malcolm Cronk of Camelback Bible Church in Arizona, “we frequently say ‘Look for the strays — the youngsters who withdraw from the group, who stand on the periphery.’ And it’s up to the leaders to see that they are noticed and enfolded. That’s what it means to be a shepherd.”
While the principle of the shepherd’s initiative is implicit, the apostle Paul states directly: “If a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1). He doesn’t limit the responsibility only to those cases where the individuals want to be restored. The effort, the initiative, comes from “the spiritual.”
3. Because of the nature of the church. Some issues, especially marriage, are personal but not private. Because of the nature of the church, pastors can point out that their professional obligation is to deal with any situation that affects the church body. And marital problems certainly do. Not only is the other spouse affected, but so are children, and eventually the whole church will suffer if this marriage is allowed to deteriorate.
Being a pastor is both an advantage and disadvantage in dealing with people who don’t want help.
The disadvantages? In many cases, because of the size of the congregation, the pastor’s contacts are wide but not too deep.
“It’s very hard to confront or ‘carefront’ when you don’t have a close relationship established,” said an Arizona pastor. “In other words, I may observe a few things or I may have been told something, but when I only have lunch with a person once a year, it’s pretty hard to be corrective. It often can appear that the only time you see people is to deal with some problem or discuss negative types of things.”
On the other hand, the nature of the church offers a distinct advantage for pastors stepping into their people’s lives. Most church members still have some respect for the office of pastor. It carries a measure of authority — provided it’s used discreetly. It also gives a ready entrée into situations that would be extremely awkward for a mere friend to address.
“A wife told me her husband was having an affair. When I met with the husband, I was glad I was a pastor. The husband knew that as a professional, our conversation had certain confidences built in. He also knew I wasn’t just a nosy intruder, but I had an obligation as a pastor to mind the spiritual and moral well-being of each member.”
4. Because people are not always rebels. Motivations are not always consciously closed. People are as they are for a reason: perhaps they are imitating the behavior of a parent.
One woman, to manipulate her husband, would goad him into screaming at her, and then storm out of the house, drive away, and disappear for two or three days. When she came back, the husband would be so frantic and guilt-ridden that he would do whatever she wanted.
The pastor discovered the woman’s mother had done the same thing. The woman was merely following the pattern she had grown up with. The pastor was able to step in, point out the destructive effects in the mother’s life (a bitter divorce), and help the couple begin handling disputes in better ways.
Sometimes people are consciously closed, but perhaps it is only a temporary condition. Sometimes weariness brings hopelessness and resistance to help. When the weariness is dealt with, the person may open up. One pastor quoted Isaiah 50:4 — “The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.” Sustaining the weary can allow them to accept help.
Often other factors enter in: physical problems or metabolic disorders. Because we are both body and spirit, biochemical imbalances can affect the soul. Medical care, rest, and good nutrition may be the first steps to help restore a person’s mental and emotional balance. Then, when a better sense of well-being and a higher energy level are achieved, the person may be willing to consider changes.
One pastor memorized Job 29:15-17 and frequently repeats it to himself — “I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy; I took up the case of the stranger. I broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched the victims from their teeth.”
“At times my job seems to be stepping in with the coping skills necessary to deal with the present,” he says. “When we’ve dealt with the pressing emergencies, then I can begin presenting alternate ways of looking at the situation. Change is more likely when people are able to see they have options.”
People may not seem to want help initially, but when they finally realize there are people committed to them, they sometimes change their minds.
5. Because pragmatically, people’s lives have been turned around by someone stepping in. Although the percentages may not be great, many individuals can be reached by loving initiative.
Dan Koch was pastoring in a small town in North Dakota when a member of the congregation took him aside after a Sunday morning service.
“Did you hear that Ed is suing Barth?”
“No, I haven’t heard anything about it.”
“Well, it’s true. Maybe you should talk with Ed.”
Both Ed and Barth were neighbors, long-time members of the church, and friends — or so Dan had always assumed. He couldn’t imagine what would suddenly prompt a lawsuit. That week he stopped by Ed’s farm, and as they toured the fields in Ed’s pickup, Dan said, “I heard a rumor you’re suing Barth. Is that true?”
“It sure is. And I’m going to get him good, too,” Ed said with an anger uncharacteristic of the taciturn farmer.
“What happened?”
Ed explained that he was in his car, inspecting the fields, just as they were doing now. “I was looking at my winter wheat, and the next thing I knew, I looked up to see Barth’s car coming at me. He apparently wasn’t paying attention, and he wandered across the middle of the road. I swerved, but I couldn’t avoid him, and we crashed. Fortunately, we weren’t going too fast, and neither of us was hurt, but both of our cars were bent up pretty good.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Dan. “You’re both insured, aren’t you?”
“Barth has full coverage, but I have a $250 deductible. So his carelessness cost me $250 and a lot of aggravation. But he wouldn’t pay me anything, so I’m suing.”
Dan shook his head. “I don’t understand, Ed. You don’t need $250. The last time we talked money, your biggest concern was where to invest your IRAs. How can you do this? You’re stirring up more than $250 worth of trouble.”
“It’s not just this,” Ed said. “For twenty years in my dealings with Barth, I’ve been getting the short end of the stick.” His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel. “Let me tell you about the last time. A piece of property was going up for sale — the old Unruh place. They were going to sell that land at $400 an acre. You know I don’t have cash lying around; most of my money is tied up in equipment, and I have to take out loans if I’m going to buy land. I only had one section. Barth has four sections, and he pays cash for his seed and equipment. He’s got money in the bank.
“Well, when he found out I was ready to buy the Unruh place, he went to them and said, ‘I’ll pay you $450 an acre,’ as if he needed more land. I really did need the land, and it was adjacent to my farm; it made sense to get it. I had to offer $500. Then he offered them $525. I countered with $550, and he boosted the price again to $575. I eventually wound up paying $600 an acre for that land — just because Barth kept raising the price. And that’s the fourth time in twenty years he’s done something like that to me.”
Dan began to see there was more involved than finances.
As he left, he said, “If I were in your shoes, Ed, I’d probably feel just as angry. But the Bible still says Christians are not to drag one another into court. It won’t help anything, and it will only make the whole town think our church is a bunch of hypocrites. I want you and Barth to meet with me and see if we can settle this like Christians.”
Ed reluctantly agreed.
After talking with Barth, who also agreed to talk it over, Dan set up a meeting for the next night in the church office.
He had no idea how he was going to arrive at a fair settlement on the issue of the $250, and even less how he could heal the deeper rivalry between the two farmers. But he knew he had to try. If he didn’t, the cause of Christ in that town would only sport another black eye.
When both men sat down in front of Dan’s desk the next night, he said, “Now I understand there’s a dispute here over $250. I also understand that the issue is much deeper than the $250 deductible on the insurance. Barth, you don’t want to pay Ed $250 because you don’t feel that it’s your responsibility. Ed, you feel that Barth has been making life harder for you financially for many years, and now you see a way to get back at him. I understand the situation, and I can see you both have a case. But I also know that 1 Corinthians 6 is still in the Bible. It’s a poor statement about our faith when Christians haul one another before magistrates.”
Dan paused to take a breath. Both men were expressionless. He couldn’t tell what they were thinking. Breathing a quick, silent prayer for a miracle, and not thinking of any other way to proceed, he said, “I’m going to leave this room, but I’m going to leave my Bible here. Two passages are marked — Matthew 5:21-26 and 1 Corinthians 6:1-11. I want you two men to stay here, read them, and not come out until you’ve worked this thing through. When you come out, I want you to agree you’ll drop the resentment and the bitterness you feel toward one another.”
With that Dan walked out, feeling like a teacher dealing with two schoolhouse kids. What in the world are they going to do? he wondered. He desperately prayed they wouldn’t start a shoving match inside the office.
He waited outside for twenty minutes. Finally Ed and Barth walked out. Ed spoke first.
“Pastor, you’re right. We have been pretty immature about this, and we want to work it out. We’re brothers in the Lord, and this bitterness that has developed between us isn’t right. We recognize that. We’re going to start over.”
Dan was simultaneously relieved and skeptical. One side of him said, O ye of little faith, and the other said, I’ll believe it when I see it.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s do something to confirm this decision.” So there on the front lawn of the church the three men held hands and prayed, asking for strength and perseverance to sustain this new promise to one another.
How did they do?
Now, six years later, Dan reports that things were not completely healed immediately, but the confrontation was a beginning.
“I hadn’t noticed it before, but whenever Ed was a greeter at the front door on Sunday morning, Barth would walk around to enter at the back of the church to avoid having to shake Ed’s hand. And Ed would avoid Barth whenever Barth was a greeter. After our confrontation, the next Sunday the two men stood side by side at the front door greeting worshipers. I realized I’d never seen that before. It was a real breakthrough. They were willing to work together.”
It all came about as a result of Dan’s risky decision to enter a situation where he had not been invited. In this case, the two men never really wanted to hate, but their fierce independence did not allow them to ask for help.
While there may be limits to how much we can help those who don’t want help, the experience of many pastors shows it is possible to effect change. And the Bible itself seems to offer models of a love that takes the initiative even when it has not been invited.
We all know the tension: Dangers lurk if pride assumes we can do the Holy Spirit’s work for him. We must admit early in the book: If a person consistently and absolutely refuses help, there’s ultimately nothing we can do. But there are a number of significant steps that can be ventured before that point of final rejection. Those steps are what we turn to next.
John White and Ken Blue. Healing the Wounded. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1985) p. 166.
Copyright ©1986 by Christianity Today
