From the earliest pages of Scripture, the growing person is challenged to monitor the soul, for feelings, attitudes, motives, prevailing spiritual conditions. The failure to do so regularly is an invitation to a shrinking spirituality.
—Gordon MacDonald
Some years ago I visited with a faculty member of the prep school I attended as a teenager. At the time my son, Mark, was 13 years old, and so I wasn’t surprised when asked if he would be following in my footsteps and enrolling in the school. Sending Mark there would have meant a geographical separation of three states and seeing him only on vacations.
“No, he won’t be coming,” I responded, startling even myself with the hastiness of my answer.
“Can I ask why?” the question came back.
I heard myself say, “Frankly, I love Mark and enjoy him so much that I’m not prepared to part with him. He not only needs me as his father, but I need him. He is my only son.”
When I said those words, I suddenly felt a powerful streak of rage sweep through my entire body. It began at my toes and moved to the top of my head. I actually began to shake.
It took me several days to understand what had happened. For the first time I discovered a cluster of feelings that had been seething deep in my soul for twenty-five years. They were based on an impression (of doubtful accuracy) that my parents had not felt the same way about me when they sent me away to school.
Actually, my father and mother saw a boarding school education as one of the best things they could give me. For them it was an act of love. But I could no longer deny that, along with the great blessing I’d been given, I’d repressed the feeling that I’d been cut loose from the family, that I was no longer wanted.
It was scary to realize that this anger had been inside me that long. It made me ask, “What other feelings and misperceptions are deep within, feelings I’ve never processed and properly packed away? Are they inhibiting my growth, my ability to be a liberated person?”
I’ve read psychology books, so I know about the phenomenon of repression. But I assumed that this was the habit of unhealthy people, and I didn’t see myself as unhealthy. As a pastor, I’d helped a few people deal with repressed feelings, and I had always done it with a slight air of self-confidence, assuming I never had to worry about these sorts of things.
But in the wake of this conversation about my son leaving home, I discovered a shocking fact about myself: Anger had been smoldering silently within me for twenty-plus years. Now it had exploded like a car bomb.
That experience taught me the importance of constantly monitoring the soul for those things from the past. They lie in the inner catacombs, sending up occasional strange and undecipherable signals—feelings, attitudes, desires, and motives all positioned to surprise us in temptations, resentments, and inappropriate reactions.
Some of us try rushing through life never respecting this fact of our interior lives. We weep in strange places and do not know why. We have flashes of unpredictable indignation over small things and can’t explain it. We react to certain personality styles, show inordinate frustration in particular situations, struggle with certain doubts and fears. We deny, avoid, enslave ourselves—a score of differing and often unexplainable actions and patterns. And we are oblivious that much of this is being driven by the deeper and darker parts of self, parts we have never brought to light nor permitted Jesus to heal and order.
I remember watching the Secret Service and street maintenance people of our community weld shut the sewer lids on Massachusetts Avenue as they prepared for a visit by the President of the United States. They were taking no chances that a terrorist might pop out of one of those holes with a bomb. So the whole underground system was sealed shut.
An apt metaphor, I think, for many men and women in leadership. Seal the entrances to the inner world. That way nothing gets out. I don’t have to go deep and face the fact that beneath my public personage is an ordinary, needy, and often desperately sinful human being.
That part of our past we do not like to face. But some things about our present history we do not know well either. I believe we not only need to know what’s deep within us but also our natural preferences: the instinctive ways we think, intersect with people, make decisions, and bring structure to our worlds. We all have patterns by which we operate. We grow faster and better if we have an understanding of these patterns, as well.
My father and I had a wonderful conversation not long ago. It was a great contrast to other times when we’ve struggled to understand one another, ending up feeling alone and misunderstood. This time, though, I was able to identify something significant.
My father is driven by what he believes is the truth of each situation. His passion is for logic, consistency, evidence, and correctness. That’s not a bad list. But it often makes my father come across as a tough, blunt, sometimes unfeeling person. He says what he thinks, and he does not change his mind easily. As a boy I had interpreted these characteristics negatively and assumed that he didn’t like me and was disappointed in me.
I’m different. I’m driven by a concern for human relationships and connections. I’m concerned about how people are being affected by what’s going on. Are they excited, hurt, motivated, angered? Will these words or events unify, make people feel better, help them grow?
It’s not that I’m not concerned for truth. I just want to make sure that the other person can handle the truth without being unnecessarily devastated by it. So I’m always monitoring the environment of relationships, asking questions about timing, correct wording, and potential success or disaster.
That means that conversations between my dad and me are uneven—almost like a boxing match between a slugger and a puncher. We get on a topic, and he smashes away, wanting to win, wanting to persuade, wanting to make every point relentlessly and remorselessly. And I bob and weave, trying to make my points “surgically.”
I don’t want to offend him, be too blunt, hurt his feelings. I’m prepared to walk back to my corner having taken all of his blows, but I’m reluctant to club him to the floor. His feelings are more important to me than winning.
It wasn’t until recently that I’ve been able to identify and put labels on this difference between us. Then we had that exchange, in which, in the middle of a discussion, I said to him, “Dad, the problem you and I have is this: When you go at truth, you’re an ‘engineer,’ concerned only about the precision of your facts. I’m a ‘poet.’ I love beauty and meaning. You don’t seem to consult your feelings; I may listen too much to them.”
He thought about that for a moment, made a comment like, “If you say so,” and then returned to his argument. But for me it was a moment of revelation that brought me greater peace with my father and made it easier to love him.
Some of those who study differences like these refer to them as “personality types.” When I began to discover some things about my personality type, I was astounded. All sorts of new ways emerged for me to understand myself, my wife, and my friends. But most importantly, I discovered a lot about how I relate to Jesus as Lord and what is the likely way for me to pursue a deeper spirituality.
I’m suggesting here that personal growth is greatly enhanced when we do our homework on two areas of our lives: our past personal history (the inner tour) and our present personal history (an inventory of our personality).
Getting in Touch with the Past
The pastor or Christian leader who wants to grow has to be in touch with himself or herself—first, on this issue of what baggage we are carrying from the past. In some places I might say to a group, “There are all sorts of ‘demons and dragons’ (I put these words in quotes because I do not mean them in a theological sense) slithering about in the depths of our souls.” Or using spy language, I might say that within us exist “moles and sleepers.” They have to be caught and identified, understood and named. I’m not advocating an introspection that becomes morbid and self-preoccupying, only that we need to deal with this interior stuff, or it—the ‘demons and dragons’—will deal with us.
Many are the persons in leadership who cannot handle criticism or disagreement. They have to win, always be right, or have the best idea. Some are given to angry outbursts, irrational defensiveness, brief periods of melancholy, unexplained feelings of bitterness against rivals. These are all evil behaviors that can cripple the person who has never asked, “Why? What’s behind these attitudes? What’s down there?”
It’s not enough to say, “I’m a sinner.” That’s not bad for a start, of course. But what has ignited these untoward behaviors? What’s the fuel for these sinful fires? This may sound crazy, but I’d speculate that the more dramatic and unusual a leader’s success as a personality, as a communicator, and as an organization builder, the more he or she has to explore the interior world. Sometimes unusual and passionate efforts are fueled by great personal disturbances of the past as much as they are fueled by noble motivations.
The Catholic monastics understand this. It’s one of the reasons every brother in the order must submit to spiritual direction. Even the abbot of the monastery must regularly remove himself from his position of authority and submit to the searching questions of a confessor. This he does lest he weld the sewer lids tight and forget that good and noble deeds do not always have good and noble motivations.
We in the Reformation tradition renounced the notion of confessing one’s sins to a priest and celebrated the right to confess our sins privately to the heavenly Father. In correcting one point, we missed another: the inner journey is probably best not taken alone. We are either too soft on ourselves or too hard on ourselves. A fellow traveler can give us perspective. The monks know this.
The psalmist prays, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” He goes on to pray that wicked ways will be exposed. Jeremiah calls the heart a wicked and incomprehensible thing. They are both alluding to the problem I’m raising: within each of us is a bottomless pit of mysteries. Growth means taking the hand of Jesus and walking deep into that pit and naming what is found.
It’s not enough to come to prayer confessing this specific and that. When a pattern emerges over many times of confession, it’s time to ask, “Why? What’s behind this persistent activity I have to bring to the cross so frequently?”
We’ve made the mistake of thinking that confession is merely a legal transaction between God and ourselves. I confess a sin, and God forgives it. Great, we conclude, the slate is wiped clean.
But if we deal only with the single act and show no curiosity concerning the possibility of roots beneath the act, our confession is nearly worthless. It will bring only temporary relief. The behavior will most likely return in the same form or in another. In this sort of confession, only a “branch” of behavior has been pruned, not the roots.
And if one wishes to go deeper, one will find that at the root of the “roots” one has an awful lot of evil. This irrational, destructive evil is just there, and it lies in wait to inhibit the nobility that God meant for us to express. Jeremiah was right: who can figure out the heart? I find the answer only in a relationship with Jesus and in community with the people who follow him.
Mastering personal growth means facing up to all of this, not just periodically when something wrong has happened but consistently. Repentance is a spiritual lifestyle, not an occasional event when we have done something really bad.
The good news is that a certain liberation comes when one is conscious of the inner journey:
• Increased personal energy. In the years when I used to drive my 36-horsepower Volkswagen across the Colorado plains, it was not unusual to hit stiff head winds coming off the mountains. More than once I had to shift down into third and even second gear to keep going against the wind.
I still made progress. But in the lower gear I moved at a slower speed, increased my use of gas, and put greater wear and tear on the engine.
This describes something of what happens when we’ve not done our interior homework. What earlier I called demons and dragons, moles and sleepers, can also be called head winds. And when they begin to blow furiously, we are slowed up. The result? Fatigue of the spirit.
In the last couple of years of my pastorate at Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts, I began to drive in second gear. In the earlier years of ministry, I had enjoyed a wonderful sense of “overdrive.” But as the institution of the church grew, I found myself giving less attention to the things I really enjoyed doing.
My pastoral role had become that of a CEO—and I was probably not a very good one. I made administrative decisions, met with staff and lay leaders, and wrestled with questions no one else in the line of responsibility felt ready to answer. It became a tremendous emotional drain.
In the earlier years I was much freer to be with the congregation in worship, and in a more spontaneous way. Now things were structured and formatted, so much so that I couldn’t use the very strengths I earlier had brought to the congregation. That I did not see this was no one’s fault but my own.
As I walked to the front of the sanctuary to greet people after the third morning worship service, I’d dream about escaping through one of the side doors. I learned to avoid eye contact with people I didn’t want to talk to.
I should have done an intensive self-exploration at that point. In fact, I should have found someone who would have walked me through the exercise and forced truth out of me, truth I wasn’t able to face alone.
More specifically, I should have asked myself. Why does this not seem fun anymore? Why do I look forward to speaking opportunities outside of New England more than my work right here? Why am I finding it harder and harder to convince the lay leadership of a right course of action ? Why do I find myself giving in to people every time they disagree with me? Why do I want to avoid tough critics? Why am I showing anger at innocuous things and showing no reaction to things worth getting angry about?
The truth was I was in second gear, working harder, achieving less. I was drifting toward my weaknesses and moving away from my God-given strengths.
Driving in second gear is the perfect environment for the Evil One to derail a leader. Today when I hear of a man or woman in leadership falling into personal failure, I’m slow to make the quick, harsh judgments that I hear so many Christians make. I’ve come to learn the hard way that behind every failure is a web of spiritual intrigue. The issue is usually not the specific failure that gains everyone’s attention; the issue is the drain of spirit that happened over months and maybe years, a drain that causes a person to become weak enough so that the final sin is simply a “straw that broke the camel’s back.” First comes fatigue, then comes deceit, and then comes defeat.
When a person ends up making a fatal choice for failure, he or she must accept responsibility for it. But maybe we have to require more the mutual, corporate responsibility for creating a system of faith and community that requires leaders to make regular journeys into the soul, to find out what lies in ambush.
• Better control in tense situations. A lot of us never learned to express accurately our feelings when we were children. Growing up, I became afraid of anger because I’d seen its destructiveness in the lives of other people. Besides, my perception was that a Christian wasn’t ever supposed to be angry. So I never developed a mature adversarial style.
If someone disagreed with me, I simply backed off and came at the issue in another way. As the years went by, that sort of process cost me dearly. I learned that I had to become more candid and confrontive.
I found that I had a habit of being concerned about everyone else’s feelings but not my own. Wasn’t that the virtuous thing? Wasn’t that servanthood? Isn’t the pastor a sacrificial person? That’s what I thought others were thinking, that I put others before myself. But what I was doing was not virtuous. It was partly temperament, a tendency to underreact in tense situations.
Gail has been extremely helpful to me in this area. She helps me identify what exactly I’m feeling, and that helps me know how to handle tense situations. She carefully pushes me with “What is the prevailing feeling in you today?” And if I can’t identify my emotions, she’ll give me a multiple-choice test.
Since I didn’t do a good job on this when I was young, I’ve been playing catch-up. At midlife, it’s becoming clearer to me that lots of feelings have to be identified and dealt with. When you don’t deal with them, they take on different shapes and forms and begin to control you.
I’ve spent some time meditating on the feelings of Jesus and his willingness to express them. Look at his range of expressed emotions: anger, sadness, humor, gloom, joy. They’re all there—not repressed but vented in proper ways at appropriate levels.
• Relief from unnecessary guilt. The interior journey has helped me sort out real guilt from manufactured guilt. My faith tradition emphasizes holy behavior and strong commitment, but that emphasis has a tendency to create expectations to reach the never reachable. To the extent that this happens, we are candidates for manufacturing guilt for ourselves and others.
“All you ever do is tell me what I’m not doing right or not doing enough of,” a plain-spoken layman once told me when I was a young, impetuous preacher. And he was right. I’d fallen for the notion that if you can make them feel guilty, you’ve blessed them. This layman didn’t realize, though, that if I created guilt for him, I was creating much larger doses of it for myself. I was my own worse critic.
The interior journey can militate against this tendency. It can sort out the true biblical rebukes from the superficial ones.
• Increased sensitivity. Not long ago Gail and I had lunch with a couple in their eighties. At one point, I asked the man, “Do you two fight any more?”
“Yeah, we fight,” he responded.
“How do you handle your conflicts?”
“Well, we had one this morning,” he said. “Alice (not her real name) was driving, and she made a very bad decision.” We all laughed.
“What did you do?”
“I learned some years ago that it’s not wise to tell Alice what I’m thinking right away. So I said to her as we drove along, ‘Darling, when you have a free moment, I have a thought for you.’ I know that when Alice was a girl, her father was often harsh with her. Whenever she hears a correction, she’s reminded of that pain with her father. So I have to be both gentle and timely.”
That conversation was my first realization that people in their seventies and eighties still live with childhood hurts. But I also saw an extremely mature man who had learned how to be sensitive to that fact. If something difficult had to be said, he would make sure it was said in a moment when she was prepared and could handle it, without increasing her anxiety unduly or calling up pain from the past.
I would like to think I’ve always been a sensitive man. But the truth is I haven’t been—not nearly enough. I’ve thought I’ve known the needs of the people in the pews. But there came a time in my life when I left the pulpit and sat in the pew. What I learned left me astonished. I realized I had hardly known the people in the pew. I had guessed their needs; I didn’t really know them. And as a result, my sermons, my prayers, my simplistic comments could not effectively reach out to the pain and struggle in which most people found themselves. When I became broken before God in a humiliating moment, I learned that there is a lot of stuff inside the soul—mine and others—that I’d never explored.
I’ve learned to make a search of the interior a part of my spiritual discipline. Here are some routine questions to ask:
- Is there any unfinished business in the soul from yesterday that has to be addressed? Words and deeds and thoughts that could be an offense to Jesus or to the people of your community?
- What are the prevailing feelings this morning? What are you hearing your heart say?
- Are you on the defense or the offense today when it comes to kingdom building?
- Are you at peace in your primary circle of relationships?
- Do you have a respect for sin? And a hatred of it?
Being in Touch with My Present Self
This matter of temperament is a second issue. The previous question had to do mainly with the past. This issue deals with what I am right now and what I am capable of becoming.
One of the great learning experiences for Gail and me has been being introduced to the Myers-Briggs Temperament Inventory. It doesn’t explain everything, but it does give me concepts that help me identify my inner makeup and understand why I react the way I do. That has helped me grow spiritually and in pastoral effectiveness.
The mbti is one of several systems built upon serious research, and it has been useful in business, education, and the military. Many Christian organizations have used it to match people to task. And some marvelous things have been written about how personality type helps us understand our own spirituality, how we each encounter God in unique ways.
A crazy example: In the middle of a worship service, I often ask people to turn around and greet each other. Some people enjoy doing that. They like to engage everyone around them. Others cringe. I used to think these people were just plain grouches, and I’d wonder why they were so resistant to common Christian fellowship.
Now I know that a serendipitous encounter grates against their type. They can be friendly when they want, but their instinct is to prefer anonymity and space. It’s not a spiritual problem for them; it’s a preference due to type.
Of the many good books that discuss the Myers-Briggs way of looking at people, I like best Please Understand Me by David Kiernsey and Marilyn Bates. In brief, the MBTI people have identified eight personality types, falling into four contrasting pairs.
Introvert/Extrovert: How Do I Restore My Energy?
By now you’ve figured out that I’m an introvert, that I gather energy by being alone. I’m never afraid to be alone. One of Gail’s most wonderful gifts to me was to send me off to Switzerland one year to walk the Alps by myself. For two weeks, I walked alone, not one significant conversation with anyone. I was renewed.
But introverts are not hermits. They enjoy a few intense friendships rather than many. They have an extremely large inner world. I’ve often felt that 90 percent of my world exists within myself.
Extroverts are just the opposite. They are energized by being with people. Give extroverts a free evening, and they’ll think of a list of people they could share it with.
Gail is an extrovert. Normally, she loves to be with people, working, learning, playing with them. She thinks best in concert with others.
While I usually think before I say anything, especially in conflict, she is inclined to speak as she thinks. She calls it (I would never say this myself) “noisy thinking.” If we are debating something, she says whatever she is thinking, and I have to guess at her ultimate conclusion. That can be exasperating. But even more exasperating to her is my behavior: I back off into introverted silence until I’ve decided upon my fixed and final position.
Gail loves to pray with people, and that’s one reason why it’s important to her that we pray regularly together. As an introvert, I could easily do all my praying by myself. But we’ve learned to compromise on this one. And I’m blessed by entering her extroverted world, and I think she’s caught a little of my introversion for herself.
It’s helpful to know I’m an introvert because I can now choose to act like an extrovert when I need to—for instance at the mandatory wedding reception, or church picnic, or Sunday morning social hour. When I didn’t understand my recoiling at the thought of such events, I felt guilty and resented those who sought my attendance.
Now, knowing my temperament, when I feel like slipping out a side door, I can suck in my breath and say to myself, “Well, Mr. Introvert, charge into that group and get to know everyone you can. There will be plenty of time to be alone after it’s over.”
And it works; I know why I don’t want to do it and why I should.
One gets the feeling that Jesus was able to feel comfortable as both extrovert and introvert. He was at ease when alone; he was quite at home in the midst of a group. Growth for me means being an introvert who can encounter the crowd and feel perfectly at ease.
Intuitive/Sensate: How Do I Take In Information?
Gail is a sensate. She sees her world through form, color, structure, and proportion. She’s intensely aware of everything that comes to her through the five senses. When she walks into a room, she immediately responds to the way it’s decorated, thinking, Do the colors match? Are the picture frames at the right height? Is the desk orderly? She says her stomach reacts to a mismatch of colors.
Sensates, thank the Lord, are also practical. They love details and manage them well. Orderliness is important. So are things like promptness and dependability. I married a woman who loves an organized closet, a reconciled checkbook, an up-to-date address and phone list, and a myriad of birthday cards all sent out on time. I am a fortunate man.
Now Gail—sad for her—married an intuitive who is slightly color blind and, by nature, disorganized, a man who has to write books like Ordering Your Private World to get his act together. We intuitives are drawn toward issues like meaning and vision. If Gail walks into a room asking what the decorator did, I walk in trying to figure out what the decorator was trying to say.
I’m into dreams, symbols, hidden meanings, possibilities, ideas. It often means that I’m a daydreamer, staring off into space, thinking about things that might never be. The downside is that I worry too much, can easily paint pessimistic pictures, or get myself so convinced of an idea that I cannot fathom whether or not it is practical. Gail helps me here.
You can tell Gail and I differ in temperament from the way we listen to a story. Someone begins to relate a tale to us, and Gail halts the narrative every once in a while to ask a clarifying question. My reaction is one of consternation: “Honey, let the man tell the whole story, and then we’ll get to the questions.” But Gail doesn’t want to move ahead without clarifying details. I want to hear the whole story first. Then maybe we’ll have time to brush over the details.
Some people might think that we intuitives are the deeper people. But what good is all our “depth” if we get nothing done? As an intuitive, I’m a starter of projects because everything interests me—to a point. I struggle to finish things. In contrast Gail’s a finisher. So she never starts anything she doesn’t intend to complete. Gail never has to worry about deadlines; I live in the shadow of their tyranny all the time.
All intuitives need sensates in order to keep their feet on the ground. All sensates need intuitives lest they become earthbound. Jesus was both. His intuitive side is working when he sees strong possibilities in people, when he talks about the gospel being preached to the nations. His sensate side is showing when he enjoys lilies, eating, and planning for upper room gatherings.
I’m finding a growth experience in breaking free of my intuitive habits and becoming more sensate. Thank God for computers. Their software for personal organization—reminders about cards, appointments, commitments—has become an extension of my forgetful brain. I have a way to go yet, but I’m growing.
Feeling/Thinking: How Do I Process Information?
The Myers-Briggs folks say that feelers are more sensitive to people and thinkers more concerned with issues, facts, and evidence—remember me and my father?
Gail and I are both feelers. We tend to evaluate all truth on the basis of how it’s going to affect people. We instinctively ask, “What’s this going to do to John? Mary? Who is hurting here? What possibilities are there for growth and development? Is someone neglected? Who needs affirmation?”
Feelers instantly sense conflict between people. Both of us walk into a room and within seconds we begin assessing the moods and attitudes of people. We read faces, body language, tones of voice, and choices of words. And we are usually drawn to those we sense are in trouble.
We have a close friend who is a thinker “off the charts,” as we say. He is a person for whom the truth of the idea is all important. He says exactly what he thinks. And he sometimes seems oblivious to how it affects people around him. Sometimes when we’re together, we laugh at our differences, lest we cry.
Sometimes his opinions seem harsh and non-negotiable. But it’s this commitment to the truth that has made him an effective leader. Fortunately for him, his wife is a feeler, and she is able to mitigate any potential insensitivity he might display. All together, he handles himself well.
This type makes a difference in one’s pastoral style. We feelers are extremely conscious of how a congregation is reacting to a program or a sermon. We worry a lot about unity, love, and people getting appreciation. Thinkers believe that people need to hear the truth—even if it hurts. They’re convinced that speaking the truth is the best way to motivate people to change.
They tell us feelers that we’re too subjective, too wishy-washy: “Why can’t you be more like Luther and Calvin?” And we feelers say, “Why can’t you be more like St. Francis and Corrie ten Boom?”
We feelers are tempted to soften the truth if we can maximize the well-being of people for the short term; thinkers assume we’re compromising, and they go on and on speaking the truth, running the risk of splitting a group with their non-negotiables.
Again, Jesus was both thinker and feeler. When he was with Pharisees who kept trying to cover up the truth, Jesus was at his best as a thinker. “Face facts,” he’d say to them. And then he’d speak the facts. It really didn’t bother him a bit that he made men angry. Truth was truth; someone had to say it.
But Jesus was also a feeler. It was thinkers who brought the adulterous woman to Jesus. It was Jesus the feeler who saw her pitiable condition and sent her on her way with a relatively soft “Go and sin no more.” Jesus the thinker delayed going to Lazarus’s bedside; Jesus the feeler wept at his grave.
It would have been helpful for me had I known this language years ago. Now I understand why I was never drawn to heavy theology. By temperament I was put off by those who seemed to waste hours straining over the meaning of a word or an obscure idea. I had troubling visceral feelings when I heard people arguing to the point of schism.
Our seminaries would be helped here if they understood that a high percentage of pastoral candidates are feelers—who have high people values—who are shoved through an educational process that is managed and staffed mainly by thinkers. It’s surprising that the feelers and thinkers connect as well as they do in most seminaries. But it is not surprising (although it is significant) that feelers often end up complaining that their seminary education was largely irrelevant to them.
Personal growth for me has meant understanding myself as a feeler, enjoying its strengths, and being wary of its downsides. It has meant pushing myself to become more of a thinker. I’ve learned not to react to the tough words of the thinker, who usually has no intention of hurting me. And I’ve had to learn that my feeling perspective will not always reach the thinker if I don’t understand his or her temperament and language.
Perception/Judgment: How Do I Make Decisions?
What gray hairs Gail now owns come from having to cope with me in this category. For I am what the mbti people call “a perceiver.” Gail is a judger. And perceivers and judgers go about making decisions in entirely different ways.
Perceivers enjoy the process of working through decisions. We talk and think and talk and think. We conjure up all the options, consult all the sources of expertise, worry about unexpected possibilities. We like to keep all of our options open until the very last minute. In fact, we don’t like “last moments.” Our only problem in decision making is making the decision. We worry about making a decision because we’re afraid that when we do, a new piece of data will show up that would have caused us to go in another direction. So we prefer serendipity, “going with the flow.”
Gail, on the other hand, is a judger. I tell her that she never saw a decision she didn’t like to make. If I struggle to come to closure on decisions, she likes to come to closure too swiftly. I love to kid her about jumping to conclusions; she loves to kid me about treating conclusions as if they were diseased.
Because Gail is a judger, she loves to structure her world and get as many decisions in hand as possible. That’s why I can frustrate her when she asks what I’d like to do Friday evening. I say, “I don’t know; we’ll have to see what the weather is like.” And then when I ask her why she needs to know on Tuesday what we’re going to do on Friday, she’ll answer, “I’m trying to decide what I’m going to wear.”
Some studies suggest that a large percentage of pastors are perceivers. And if they are, they have to realize why they might have trouble with church board members who are judgers. Perceivers want to string out the process. They may even keep delaying decisions by saying they need more time to pray. The judgers are demanding that we get on with things: “Let’s decide what we want to do and do it!”
Again, growth for me has been to face up to the strengths and weaknesses of being a perceiver. I am aware of my tendency to put off decisions, and by knowing this, I can deliberately assume a judger’s stance and get decisions made that I once used to delay.
Since decision making is a difficult process for me, I’ve learned to welcome team decisions. I find that by becoming part of a staff team at church, more decisions are made, and more quickly, than if I mull them over myself. So I’m quick to ask for the aid of others.
It’s clear that Jesus knew exactly how to manage these temperaments as they were fully expressed in his own personality. “He set his face toward Jerusalem” is the act of a judger, one who can make a decision. But the perceiver is in motion when he says to Simon Peter, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” He sees and accepts that Peter is in process.
Putting It Together
In Genesis, there is a brief, interesting dialogue between God and Cain. God takes note of something about which Cain seems oblivious: his anger toward Abel, his brother.
This ancient story is prepsychology, of course. But any psychologist would have to be comfortable with what’s going on here. God is inviting Cain to an interior journey. He reads the signal of a sullen face and says, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?”
He’s asking Cain to look inside, to inventory his feelings and attitudes. God sees what Cain is trying to avoid: the “demons and dragons” swimming in Cain’s soul. If they are not named and dragged to the surface, they will soon influence Cain’s will, and he will do something terribly destructive.
But Cain cannot or will not submit to the inventory. He is in denial. And the result is tragedy, for Abel and Cain.
From the earliest pages of Scripture the growing person is challenged to monitor the soul, for feelings, attitudes, motives, prevailing spiritual conditions. The failure to do so with regularity is an invitation to a shrinking spirituality.
Sometimes in my own spiritual disciplines I think I hear God’s voice saying, “Gordon, why are you down today?” or “Why that gesture of impatience when the phone rang?” or “Why are you resistant to quiet?” or “Why are you avoiding praying with Gail?” These are the Cain questions. They are asked when the issues within are simple and manageable. But avoided, the issues within grow complex and unmanageable. The “demons and the dragons” are in motion again.
Then there’s the story of Paul and Barnabas debating about John Mark. Paul, the thinker, can look at John Mark and only say that the young man is a failure and unworthy of a second chance.
But Barnabas is a feeler. Facts may be important. But he’s looked into the heart of John Mark. He sees growth and new possibilities. As a people person, Barnabas believes John should have a chance for a new start. Barnabas believes in the process.
The thinker and the feeler disagreed so strongly on this matter that they parted company. I could be wrong, but I think Paul did the parting. A feeler would have stayed around and kept trying to find a compromise on the issue. But that’s speculation, and thinkers will disagree with me (but I’m not giving in!).
John Mark went on to be a champion. And even Paul came to admit to the profitability of the man. Too bad the thinker didn’t see it soon enough.
Knowing what’s in my past helps me bring things to the cross. Knowing what’s presently in my temperament helps me serve Christ more effectively. Knowing both contributes a lot to my potential personal growth.
But none of this makes sense unless it’s done in the company of Jesus, and as I’ve already hinted, also done in the fellowship of the brothers and sisters.
Enlarging the Mind to Expand the Ministry
Study waits quietly, almost helplessly, like a doctor who can’t get near a victim because of the frantic activity surrounding the scene of the accident. So when I’m wise, I clear a way for study, protecting it in every way possible.
—Donald McCullough
There was a time when pastors worked in studies; now we work in offices. This reflects, at least in part, a change in perceptions about the pastoral role. Jonathan Edwards and his eighteen hours of daily study may still be mentioned in reverent tones by seminary professors seeking to inspire scholarly excellence, but today’s pastor will likely find a more congenial model in Lee Iacocca.
The modern church, with its plethora of programs, seems to want administrators more than theologians. Successful pastors’ conferences don’t offer theological lectures; they provide training in management techniques.
So why study? It’s an important question considering the contemporary expectations heaped on pastors. Why study when you could be developing strategies to attract newcomers? Why study when you could be creating flow charts for more effective congregational communication? Why study when you could be defining goals and honing objectives?
How can you justify sitting alone at your desk to work through a section of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics when Mrs. Brown lies in a hospital bed, terrified of her upcoming surgery? How can you possibly luxuriate on an island of solitude when all around rages a stormy sea of human misery?
Why Study?
Simply put, we have no choice: if we’ve been ordained to the ministry of the Word, we must work to understand both God’s Word and the world to which we proclaim it.
John Stott has developed the metaphor of bridge building: “If we are to build bridges into the real world, and seek to relate the Word of God to the major themes of life and the major issues of the day, then we have to take seriously both the biblical text and the contemporary scene. We cannot afford to remain on either side of the cultural divide … it is our responsibility to explore the territories on both sides of the ravine until we become thoroughly familiar with them.” Only then shall we discern the connections between them and be able to speak the divine Word to the human situation with any degree of sensitivity and accuracy.
Our study of these diverse worlds doesn’t simply provide a file of facts for spicing up a dull sermon. Study changes us; it provides a broad context, delivering us from the narrow dimensions of personal experience.
A popular myth holds that personal experience is the only adequate teacher. Fred Craddock points out the fallacy of this notion: “A soldier in the trenches of the Civil War came to understand war in ways unavailable to noncombatants. However, that experience was also limiting; so limiting, in fact, that the soldier could hardly interpret that war to the nation and to subsequent generations. That task calls for another perspective, that is, another experience. Getting distance from an event and reflecting on it is experience as surely as being plunged into its swirling currents. Study is not an alternative to experience but is itself a form of experience that grants understanding, even expertise, on a range of subjects.”
As valuable as my own experiences are, they are too small, too cramped for my ministry. But through Augustine’s Confessions, I enter into the spaciousness of one of the greatest minds of the ancient world; through Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, I have my understanding of God stretched and ordered beyond my own natural abilities; through Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, I discover the ecstasy and terrible pain of adultery; through The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I become a black man, and have kindled within me the fires of anger over racism. Study lifts me to a higher and wider plane.
Billy Graham addressed a gathering of clergy in London in 1979. He said that if he had his ministry to do over again, he would study three times as much as he had and would take on fewer engagements.
“I’ve preached too much,” said Graham, “and studied too little.”
This is a regret we don’t want to discover near the end of our own ministries. We want to sink deeply the pylons of the bridge in both the soil of God and the soil of humanity.
Finding Time
I’ve pastored both a small church and a large church, and I’ve discovered little difference: there never seems enough time for study. Opportunities for reading are as scarce as pine trees on Southern California beaches. But if you know where to look, the occasional Torrey Pine can be seen; time for study can be found.
When we pastors get together, complaints about our busy schedules surface immediately. Clergy magazines are filled with themes of weariness, burnout, stress. Yes, pastors are busy. But we sometimes forget we have been given a wonderful gift—the gift of time. When we were installed as pastors, most of us were released from the burden of having to earn an income and given great freedom (in general) to invest ourselves in the tasks we deem important.
During the French Revolution, political prisoners were incarcerated in dingy dungeons. There is a story about a state’s prisoner who possessed a Bible. His cell mates were eager to hear him read, but the darkness prohibited him from seeing the words. The only shaft of light fell through a tiny window near the ceiling, and this for only a few minutes each day. The prisoners, then, would lift the owner of the Bible onto their shoulders and into the sunlight. There, in that position, he would study. Then they would bring him down and say, “Tell us now, what did you read while you were in the light?”
The church, through ordination, has lifted pastors on its shoulders and commissioned them to study on its behalf. If we fail in this task, it’s not because we don’t have the time; it’s because we’ve not made good use of the time we’ve been given. For me, the real problem has been lack of discipline.
When I started my Ph.D. work at the University of Edinburgh, I was forced to face some uncomfortable tendencies in myself. The first few months were heaven. I had just completed four years as pastor of a church in a challenging setting, and now to do nothing but read and write felt like a wonderful vacation.
But then the Scottish winter rolled in, and it paralleled the gloom in my soul. Study was all I had to do—no preaching, no committee meetings, no lunches with elders, no hospital calls. Suddenly I realized the pastorate had not prepared me for disciplined study.
If the slightest feeling of boredom came over me, I had always had an escape: If reading a chapter of theology began to feel like slogging through knee-deep mud, well, there was always Mr. Smith to visit or a phone call to make or a luncheon to schedule. I discovered that as a pastor I could be busy in an undisciplined, even irresponsible way.
Yet discipline is required for all great endeavors. Louis Nizer, still a practicing attorney in his eighties, was asked if luck existed in trial law. He said yes, but added, “It only comes in the library at three o’clock in the morning. That holds true for me to this day. You’ll find me in the library looking for luck at three o’clock in the morning.” And that’s probably where a lot of inspiration for ministry is found, too.
The movie Field of Dreams is a whimsical story about a young Iowa farmer who hears a voice in the cornfield say, “If you build it, he will come.”
“Build what?” the farmer wants to know. A ball park, he learns. Who will come? Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Chicago White Sox legend. More importantly, another player will also come: the farmer’s deceased father. So the farmer plows his corn under and marks out a diamond in the field. Sure enough. Shoeless Joe Jackson appears, along with seven other White Sox players and a few old New York Giants—and his father.
“If you build it, he will come.” That’s also true for the pastor. If we create the right conditions in our lives, our Father will more likely visit with the truth and inspiration needed to speak in his name.
It’s not easy to plow an open space in the busyness of parish life. But here are two ways that have helped me.
• Establish a routine of time and place. Unless study is made a regular, habitual part of my schedule, it will constantly be postponed for lack of time. Study makes no imperious claims on me; it never importunes with pleas of desperation. Hospital calls, committee meetings, counseling sessions, staff problems, correspondence, telephone calls—these things elbow their way to the front of the line, extorting time by threatening to make me appear uncaring or irresponsible if I don’t give way to their demands.
But study waits quietly, almost helplessly, like a doctor who can’t get near a victim because of the frantic activity surrounding the scene of the accident. So when I’m wise, I clear a way for study, protecting it in every way possible.
The rhythm of my week has a predictable pattern: the first half is heavily administrative, with time given to staff and committees, and the latter half is reflective, with time for reading, writing, and sermon preparation. I find it helps to be specific on my calendar by writing phrases such as “Read von Balthasar on prayer” or “Get caught up on journals.”
Then, when faced with requests for my time, I can say, “I’m sorry, I already have a commitment scheduled. May I see you next Monday afternoon?” It also helps me to think of study not as time alone—for that seems so selfish when purchased at the expense of saying no to individuals—but as time in company with my whole congregation. I imagine their faces, expectant with anticipation, waiting to hear what I’ve learned. And I remind myself that I won’t be able to offer them anything of substance if I don’t study.
Many pastors enjoy the benefit of annual study leaves. My own denomination requires congregations to grant at least two weeks a year (cumulative up to six weeks) for this purpose. In addition, some pastors are given extended sabbaticals after several years of service. I seize these opportunities for expanding mind and spirit whenever offered so that I can participate in conferences, continuing education courses at seminaries, travel, and more in-depth research.
But study leaves and sabbaticals are extraordinary events, only frosting on the cake of regular, disciplined study. My ministry must depend upon more frequent feedings of the mind.
• Teach the congregation. Once a routine is established, it should be made known. We’ve all heard the jibe about pastors working only one day a week. Before dismissing such nonsense, we ought to listen to it: it may indicate a genuine lack of understanding about what we do. If we were more intentional about telling our congregations how we organize our time—especially our study time—we might find them more supportive of our efforts.
I periodically mention from the pulpit my need to study; I make certain the staff understands I’m more available earlier in the week than later; I tell those who want to see me that Thursday and Friday are not good days because of sermon preparation. By now most of the congregation know they dare not call me on Friday unless it’s a serious emergency.
God’s Side of the Ravine
John Stott’s metaphor of bridge building offers me a helpful way to organize my study time: on the one side, God, and on the other, humanity. I learn from both. Here’s how I deepen my understanding of God.
• Both forest and trees. To communicate the Word of God to the world of humanity, I begin with the biblical text. To organize my time for this task, I remember the so-called hermeneutical circle: the whole Scripture interprets its various parts, and the various parts reveal its whole. I want my study, therefore, to be both general and particular; I plan for reflection on the forest and for detailed study of individual trees.
To keep myself thinking about the broad sweep of God’s revelation, I try to read four chapters in the Bible each day.
Now, parts of it, I admit, bore me. So to keep from getting lost in the genealogies of Genesis or drowning in the blood sacrifices of Leviticus, I read in four different places. A pattern I have used with profit is Robert Murray McCheyne’s Bible Reading Calendar, introduced to his Scottish congregation in 1842. The calendar begins the year at Genesis, Ezra, Matthew, and Acts (the four great beginnings), so at the end of the year, I’ve read the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice.
Staying with it every day can sometimes be difficult (especially if I skip a day because of an early morning breakfast and have to read eight chapters the next day). I feel it’s necessary, though, for a clear view of the forest. I’m surprised continually how the various passages interact with each other and with my upcoming sermons; connections I would have never made jump out at me through this daily discipline.
In addition, I set aside a few hours each week (two to four) for theological reading not connected in any obvious way with sermon preparation. To study only for next Sunday leaves me wading in shallow waters, so to stay fit I swim in the depths by working through a volume of systematic theology.
Early in my ministry, I made a choice I haven’t regretted, though it would probably cause despair for my seminary language professors: with study time so limited, I decided to spend it with Karl Barth rather than Hebrew vocabulary lists. Consequently, my reading knowledge of Hebrew rapidly died, and my Greek isn’t too healthy (actually, it’s in the intensive care unit). But I believe a growing ability to think theologically (with breadth and depth) has more than compensated for the deficiency.
Earl Palmer remembers a senior class dinner at Princeton Seminary in which George Buttrick challenged the future pastors by saying, “When you are at Coney Island, don’t tell the people of the concession on the boardwalk about which they know; tell them of the mystery of the sea, about which they don’t know.” Palmer went on: “Don’t read only what your people are reading. … Read what your people are not reading.”
The books that deserve our attention, I believe, are primary sources; leave secondary sources to others. The best books are often not carried by the average Christian bookstore, but most merchants happily order them.
Having a panoramic view of the forest isn’t enough; I don’t really see its wonder until I’ve closely examined individual trees. For me, study of the particulars of Scripture happens as I prepare for sermons. I dissect the text, sentence by sentence, word by word, asking a thousand questions and trying to answer them myself before reading the commentaries.
I often find myself impatient, not wanting to stay with the text long enough. But I’ve learned that the best expositors, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, won’t let it go until they get the blessing (and often a pain in the thigh, too).
Freeman Patterson, a professional photographer, has described the way he approaches his art: “On those frosty mornings when I grab my camera and tripod and head out into the meadow behind the house, I quickly forget about me. I stop thinking about what I’d do with the photographs, or about self-fulfillment, and lose myself in the sheer magic of rainbows in the grass.”
The way Patterson surrenders himself to his subject is the way I like to become wholly captivated by a text. I find this difficult, however. Many things distract me before I’m finished seeing the text itself: possible sermon outlines, an idea to comfort the disturbed or to disturb the comfortable, a great story I’ve been saving for a dramatic illustration. These things—and a hundred more—can seize my attention as rabbits distract a hunting dog. But when I manage to keep my eyes focused on the pheasant, as it were, I end up with more to feed my people.
Only after I’ve spent time with the text itself do I let myself wander through the commentaries. And I mean wander. I don’t feel compelled to read every word of every commentary in my library; I meander through them, checking my own exegesis to make sure I’m not being dishonest with the text and watching for ideas I might have missed. I try to read at least one historical/critical commentary and a couple of expositional/homiletical commentaries.
• Dailies to quarterlies. For the task of getting grounded on God’s side of the ravine, there are many periodicals available to update us on recent theological trends, practical advice, book reviews, and news of the Christian world. These can be important resources stimulating our thinking and pointing to what God is doing in our world.
But I’m cautious with periodicals. They can consume a great deal of time, piling up and burying me in a truckload of guilt. So I scan periodicals, occasionally using the last half-hour at the office to get through the accumulated stack. When an article interests me, I slow down, perhaps copying it for my files.
Humanity’s Side of the Ravine
My first task in study is to sink one side of the bridge deeply into the soil of God, the Word of God. But the bridge building isn’t complete until the other pylon has been sunk deeply into the soil of humanity, the world. Here’s how I do that.
• Pay attention to people. Exegeting Scripture isn’t enough; I must also exegete human life. Often the people who drain my emotions and distract my thinking are important resources for study. I want to know those with whom I minister, not in the way a salesman knows a client well enough to make a sale but rather in the way a husband knows his wife, with a participatory knowledge that transforms him as much as it transforms her. I don’t want my knowledge to be simply utilitarian, for that leads to manipulation; it must be incarnational, for that leads to transformation. I’ve found the best way to know people is to listen to them.
When Frank and John told me they both had aids, I found it difficult to silence my inner voices—judgmental voices, I’m sorry to admit—long enough to hear them. But I tried. I began to hear two stories of anguish. Frank had an identical twin brother who was also homosexual. Both Frank and John said they couldn’t remember deliberately choosing this themselves. They lamented their impending deaths. And they spoke of their love for each other. Though I disagree with their lifestyle, that conversation moved me to compassion as I recognized the human dimension to the issue of homosexuality.
• Reading to know our world. Thankfully, my knowledge of humanity need not be limited by my circle of friends and parishioners. Through books I can enter into the lives of others.
Because reading time is precious, I’m careful about what I read. (I sometimes think I take as much time choosing what to read as I spend reading.) Every year publishers dump 50,000 new books on the market, and even if 49,000 aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, that still leaves a good many crying for my attention.
In selecting books, I pay careful attention to reviews (my favorite weekly source is the New York Times Book Review) and recommendations from people I trust. Also, if I find an especially challenging and inspiring author, I read her other works, and then I read the thinkers who have influenced her. Good books, then, lead me to other good books.
My goal is to finish at least one book a week. This seems necessary to me, since I’m faced with the weekly task of preaching. I usually juggle four different books at once. In addition to the volume of theology I’ve already mentioned, I’m always in a novel and a biography. The fourth book shifts between different categories—most often social and political commentaries, religious works (not strictly theology), and psychology.
The daily newspaper consumes large amounts of time, and for me it’s rarely worth it, even though I receive one of the nation’s finest. I limit my newspaper reading to the front page, occasional editorials, and a quick scan of the sports and arts sections. Most news develops over several days, so a weekly news magazine like Time or Newsweek offers a good summary. (For many years I’ve read Time cover to cover.)
• The electronic media. The people in our congregations, however, do not spend most of their time reading. Electronic media influence them far more than the printed page. The average American spends four-and-a-half hours each day watching television—an increase of 80 percent in the past fifteen years. If we’re not watching some television, we’re out of touch with an important part of today’s world.
As for radio, I don’t follow my natural inclinations and turn to the classical music station when I jump into the car. Many of my parishioners—perhaps most—prefer light rock to the music of Bach. So I have my dial set on a popular “top-forty” station and keep it there as long as my aesthetic sensibilities can take it. As with television, popular music reveals much about our contemporary culture. And besides, I’ve grown to like the beat.
• Cultural events. Most communities offer opportunities to experience movies, drama, concerts, and visual arts. Nowadays, even those in rural areas enjoy traveling performances; few pastors are completely cut off from these things. Time and money, of course, may limit taking full advantage of what’s available. But when I do see a movie or watch a play or listen to a concert or visit a gallery, I often find my mind stretched and my emotions touched.
Recording What I Study
Unless a pastor has a perfect memory, storing and retrieving the fruit of our study will be necessary. Filing systems, I suppose, merit the comment C. S. Lewis made about the devil: the two great errors we make are to think too much or too little about them.
An elaborate system, complete with codes and cross-references and computer programs, can create a methodological legalism, causing me to join with the apostle Paul in crying, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
But the stories, quotations, and images need to be recorded to be remembered. I keep with me at all times (except in the shower) a small hand-held recorder. It uses a microcassette, which can store 120 minutes of dictation. Many reasonably priced models are on the market, and I would consider myself horribly deprived without one. If the proverbial push came to shove, I would probably trade my entire set of Kittel or maybe even the Church Dogmatics for one.
When I come across something in my reading or have a thought I don’t want to forget or think of an interesting image, I simply reach for my recorder and speak to my secretary, “Susie, a quotation card …” She will then type whatever I tell her on a four-by-six-inch card and add the appropriate bibliographic references I may want to keep.
Before using this method, I might have found something worth remembering, but an argument would immediately ensue: I really should get up, get a piece of paper, and write this down; on the other hand, my shoes are off, my feet are up, and a tired man deserves to relax. The treasure would never get recorded. Now I simply reach for my recorder, push a button, and in seconds it’s accomplished.
What do I do with the cards? I do not file them, at least not immediately. I keep a pile growing for about a year, because a good quotation or illustration can almost always be used in a variety of contexts. Just after I’ve written a bare-bones sermon outline, during the brainstorming part of the preaching process, I shuffle through the stack. This doesn’t take much time; after a few weeks, a card is so familiar that one glance reminds me of its content.
About once a year I force myself to categorize each card and file it according to a specific subject. Through the years the file boxes have accumulated. In the event of a fire, I would probably risk my life to carry them to safety before anything else.
Building the bridge between God and humanity requires disciplined study. The work isn’t always easy, but we have no choice. The Lord deserves our minds as well as our hearts in his great enterprise.
Leonardo da Vinci was once hard at work on a great painting. It was nearly complete when suddenly he called a student to him, gave him the brush, and said, “You finish it.”
The student protested, feeling unworthy.
But da Vinci said, “Will not what I have done inspire you to do your best?”
God’s masterful work of creation and redemption through Jesus Christ inspires me to excel in the difficult task of enlarging the mind to expand the ministry.
Copyright © 1992 by Christianity Today
