Several years ago I spent a couple of hours with a newly minted seminarian our church was thinking about hiring. We talked about why he wanted to do church ministry, about the dreams he cherished about how he might serve God. Toward the end of the conversation, he turned to me and said, "I just hope I'm able to last in the ministry as long as you have."
I was, at that time, in my mid-forties.
Sadly, we could not find a place on our staff for him.
But I have often returned to that conversation in my mind. In particular I ponder, What is it that enables a person to last (and even flourish) in church ministry?
It's not their giftedness, although effective ministry always requires alignment with spiritual gifts. It's not education, although theologically reflective leaders are sorely needed nowadays. It's not resources or connections or IQ or support systems, though all those are good things.
What makes an enduring and healthy ministry possible? It's hope.
It is an unforced, consistent conviction that somehow God is at work in the midst of our efforts, and that therefore they are not in vain. "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations" (Rom. 4:18).
We all want hope, but many of us merely wish. We are the creatures who cannot stop wishing.
My cousin Danny and I used to grab two ends of a bone in a turkey called a wishbone and break it in the belief that whoever got the longer piece would get their wish. Where that wishbone concept came from, I have no idea. The bone didn't do the turkey much good. That's not exactly hope.
Why is hope so central? Neil Clark Warren, founder of eHarmony, spent much of his earlier career counseling and studying married couples. He said once that his primary goal in counseling was to help even deeply troubled couples get as little as 10 percent improvement. Because, he said, once people see improvement, they gain hope. And hope is the indispensable fuel for all human action.
When hope dies, motivation dies. There is no longer any reason to try anything. But once hope enters a marriage—or a church—anything is possible.
A frequent temptation in ministry is to drift from hope cultivation to complaint management.
As a pastor, I can delegate a lot of ministry tasks. Other people can monitor finances or help run programs far better than I can. But one item I cannot delegate is hope. People need to know if the leader possesses what Gordon MacDonald has called "vital optimism," which is not some "don't worry, be happy" attitude, but a deep sense that with God we will prevail. And that's something I cannot delegate.
You need hope detection
I've had to learn how to monitor some hope indicators to give me a kind of early detection system so I know when hope begins to run low. One indicator is how I face the morning. Clinical researchers say that mornings are generally the times when anxiety and depression are most likely to run the strongest. There is a reason why the Scriptures say God's mercies are "new every morning." When I find myself waking up feeling overwhelmed by the tasks to be done during the day, I know hope is running low.
Another indicator is what I think of as recovery time. Nancy and I went off for a great two-week vacation a few years ago, and when we returned I still felt like I hadn't even been gone. When a few weeks off don't recharge my batteries, I know hope is in short supply.
When my hope tank is full, I have energy for outside activities. (Don't tell anyone, but Nancy and I just started taking dance lessons.) When my hope stash is dwindling, taking on anything new feels like a drain.
Also, I find that my emotional sensitivity in relationships tells me something. During one hope-depleted era, an elder asked to meet with me. She wanted to commend me for something. I had suspected the encounter was going to be painful; when it ended up being positive, I was so relieved that I had to fight back tears. Even though I am a feeler, having tears that close to the surface is not a good sign.
Smoke out the hope bandits
I've also had to learn how to arrange my life so that I can keep filling up on hope.
Partly, this means I have to watch out for hope-killers. No encounter with another human being is purely neutral on an emotional level. Every conversation I have with someone either fills me with a little more hope or drains a little of it away. This is especially true in church ministry, where "need" is part of our currency, and where evaluation is often public and relentless.
Let me identify some of the hope bandits I've found in church ministry.
The Contrarian. This is the person who believes no idea is so sound that a hole can't be poked in it. When he hears a suggestion, his reflexive response is to cite times in the past when similar ideas didn't work and further reasons why it won't work in the future. He may be well intentioned, but he chokes hope.
The Alarmist. This person is deeply wired into the life of the congregation. She has become a kind of lightning rod for every concern. And wherever there is a troubled soul, she becomes a megaphone. The underlying subtext in a conversation is: "there's real trouble going on around here. I don't know what you're going to do about it, but it's a good thing I've uncovered it."
The Critic. This is the person whose ministry is to evaluate your ministry. Usually it's a self-appointed role.
The Cynic. It is a little talked about but widely known reality that churches—and often church staffs—tend to breed cynics. Sometimes, I suspect, it's because those of us who lead live with such a wide gap between our words and our souls. But cynicism is the gift of prophecy gone sour. Cynics sap our hope because they believe the worst without calling for the best.
The Hype Machine. This one surprised me. This is the larger than life character who loves to "build people up." When I am with him, he tells me wonderful things about myself and what I can accomplish. And while our conversation lasts, I find myself all pumped up. But I deflate quickly afterward. Because his words are not really built on truth (which is often painful), but on creating a "motivational experience," which is the emotional equivalent of Jolt cola—a quick energy buzz followed by a crash and burn.
I know about all these categories, partly because I carry them around inside me. I need to listen to these voices, and learn from them, and love them. But I also need to limit my exposure to them. Especially when my hope gauge is under half full.
Embrace hope dispensers
I need to identify those who fill me with hope. I think of my friend Kent. Kent is a hope-giver to me because he does two things consistently. He always speaks truth to me. And he is always for me. I can tell him bad news on the ministry front and he is never rocked. I can tell him good news and he is never giddy. My world is a bit more stable because he's there. I did not realize this for a long time, because Kent's personality is not a salesman/motivator/Richard Simmons kind of guy. But one reason I am so grateful to him is he gives me hope.
Another part of hope management is something that comes only from being alone with God. There is a wonderful story about David, before he became king. He had lost his wife and family; he had lost his best friend, Jonathan; he had lost his position as Israel's golden boy; he had lost his home and nation and was on the run from Saul. He did find a little community to lead: "all those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered there around him, and he was their leader, and there were about four hundred . . ."
You may have served that same congregation.
Eventually that group was devastated by an enemy, and they "wept aloud until they had no strength to weep." The men concluded that David's leadership was the problem, and decided to stone him. And these were his followers! Then comes the great verse: "But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God."
One of the most important practices I've had to learn is precisely that one: how to encourage myself in the Lord my God.
Hope "in the Lord"
Sometimes all I do when alone with God is to rehearse my inadequacies and problems. So, as an act of discipline, sometimes I force myself to lay those aside.
I read passages that speak of God's love for me. I go to settings where the beauty of creation will remind me of the goodness of God. I listen to music I love. I write down twenty blessings I'm grateful to God for. I think about what will matter a million years from now. My current burdens lose their weight. I sleep. I listen.
I shift my focus from what I'm hoping for to who I'm hoping in.
A friend of mine, Lew Smedes, used to say that one day every circumstance, every situation we're hoping for, is going to wear out, give out, fall apart, melt down, or go away. When that happens, the question is about your deeper hope … about your foundational hope … it's about your fallback hope when all your other hopes are disappointed.
The whole testimony of the Scriptures points to this One Man, points to a God, not because he'll be able to give us this thing or that thing we were hoping for—because that's always going to give out eventually. Instead it points to the One that we put our hope in.
Invest in hope carriers
Leaders come in all shapes and sizes, with many assortments of gifts and experiences, with unimaginable varieties of backgrounds and stories. But they share one trait: they hope. Doris Kearns Goodwin writes of Franklin Roosevelt that many around him had brighter minds and deeper gifts, but the indispensable contribution he made was his sense of confidence that the American people could defeat the Great Depression or fascism or whatever it was that needed to be defeated. He had "a remarkable capacity to transmit this cheerful strength to others," who then would return it ten-fold.
Part of my task, then, is to make sure I invest a great deal of time in those who will be hope carriers. A frequent temptation in church ministry is to drift from hope cultivation to complaint management.
One of the men in our congregation is a wonderful thinker and writer about leadership named Gary Hamel. He met with our leadership team recently to talk about the challenges that face any organization. He said that change is accelerating so rapidly that any organization which hopes to thrive needs to generate thousands (literally) of ideas, out of which will come maybe a hundred worth thinking about, out of which will come maybe ten or so worth piloting, out of which will come one or two that pay off. And what's needed to generate and sustain that kind of creativity is hope.
So your key task, he said to us, is to engage and enlarge and equip that army of people in your church who will become the pro-future, pro-change contingent. Identify them, talk with them, recruit them, develop them, celebrate with them, and thank them. And I asked myself after that meeting: How much time do I spend with complainer/critics, and how much with hopers/doers?
Hope short-term and long-term
One of the ways you can divide up Bible stories is by their time frame. One kind of story is the forty-day story. These are usually wait-around-and-learn-patience stories.
The Israelites hung around Mount Sinai forty days waiting for the Ten Commandments; Noah's family experienced forty days and nights of rain; Elijah spent forty days in the wilderness hiding from Jezebel. Jesus began his ministry by spending forty days in the wilderness; after the resurrection, he and the disciples spent another forty days waiting for his ascension and then the coming of the Holy Spirit. The focus in these stories is on the need for people to be faithful, to persevere. Forty-day stories are crockpot stories.
But there is another kind of story: the three-day story. These are stories about crisis and urgency—microwave stories. The focus here is not on the need for a human response at all. Here the pressure is so crushing that God must show up to rescue, or it's curtains. Three-day stories are stories of desperate need and anticipation and hope hanging by a thread.
When a hero named Joseph was in prison, he said to Pharaoh's cupbearer, "In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your job."
When Israel was trapped in slavery, Moses asked Pharaoh, "Let us go three days into the wilderness."
When the Israelites arrived at Sinai, God said, "Consecrate the people and make them ready by the third day, because on that day, the Lord will come down. And on the morning of the third day, it came to pass."
When Israel was threatened with genocide, a harem girl, Esther, said that she would fast for three days. Then she would go to the King to seek deliverance for her people.
When Jonah was swallowed and in the belly of the big fish, want to guess how many days he's there? Three days. I imagine his prayer the whole time inside that big fish is, "God, just let me go out the way I came in."
When Israel was afraid to go into the Promised Land, God said, "Don't be afraid. Don't be discouraged. Three days from now, you will cross the Jordan to possess the land the Lord has given you."
The third day was used so frequently in this way that it became kind of a technical expression meaning a time to wait for deliverance.
Right now, things are messed up.
Right now, hope is being crushed.
Right now, hearts are disappointed.
But a better day is coming.
Hosea, the prophet, says it like this: "Come, let us return to the Lord. . . . After two days, he will revive us. On the third day, he will restore us that we may live in his presence" (Hosea 6:1-2).
Ultimate Hope
Perhaps what helps me most is to remember my Ultimate Hope, which is about something far deeper than the future of the congregation I serve. I can have confidence, but it's not based on convincing myself that the church I serve will "do well." I don't hope for some outcome or circumstance—not even for church growth or ministry expansion.
It may sound strange to say, but I need to give my congregation the gift of knowing that my deepest hopes simply do not rest on them. They need to know that no congregational disappointment can crush me; that no congregational success can validate me.
Who I am becoming as a person matters far more than my outward success as a pastor. My ultimate hope, which is light as a feather in the hand of God, will be a terrible weight on a congregation. It can only be built, as the old song says, on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
Ultimately, I don't hope for some thing at all, but for some One. I hope for the One who rose on the Third Day.
The Third Day is God's day. The Third Day is the day when prisoners of Pharaoh get set free. The Third Day is the day the mountains shake and rivers are parted and people go into the Promised Land. The Third Day is the day a harem girl like Esther faces down a powerful king. The Third Day is the day prophets like Jonah are dropped off at seaside ports by giant fish.
The Third Day is the day stones are rolled away. The Third Day is the day a crucified carpenter came back to life.
You never know what God is going to do, because God is "God of the Third Day."
You never know what might happen on the Third Day. I cling to that. I put all my hope in a Third Day God.
John Ortberg is pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church and editor at large of Leadership.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
