When I was a kid, Saturday morning was chore day. My dad would say, "C'mon, kid," and I'd hop in the station wagon, and we would drive down the street to Hooper Wolfe's hardware store.
Hooper Wolfe's had an old wooden door, painted white—except where the paint was worn off near the handle. Walk in, and you could hardly move. Two narrow aisles, counters filled with merchandise, shelves overflowing, stuff hanging from the ceiling: You'd think, No way am I going to find anything in here.
But you didn't need to. As soon as you walked in, Clarence from behind the counter would say, "Help you today?"
My dad would say something like, "I want to hang a light out back."
Clarence would emerge from behind the counter.
"Where ya gonna to hang it? Over the patio? Well then …" And he would start rummaging through shelves until he found just the right light—"you want a light like this. And don't use these bolts here; they're good for indoor stuff, but for outdoor, you want galvanized."
"Your wall is brick, isn't it?" Clarence asked. (Though our town was small, I was impressed he knew what our house was made of). "Well, to run the conduit through there, you want a masonry drill bit at least ¾ of an inch. If we don't have that in stock, you can get one over at Miller's Lumberyard."
Then Clarence would pull a flat carpenter's pencil off his ear and get out a little piece of paper and sketch it all out. "The conduit goes here … and make sure you don't mount the light too close to the soffit."
Goodbye, Clarence
Today, when I do chores on Saturday, I head to Home Depot. Unlike Hooper Wolfe's, where you had to parallel park on the street, I pull into an ocean of parking. Inside, the Home Depot holds 80 times the inventory of Hooper Wolfe's. It sparkles under bright, halide lights.
There's a guy in an orange apron—half a block away. If you can get to him, he's likely to say, "Sorry, I usually work in paints. I'm just covering in electrical because someone called in sick." So you're pretty much on your own.
A similar thing has happened in the American church. We can offer programs with Disney-level quality and technological sophistication. But something's missing: Clarence. We all need a Clarence, someone who knows more than we do and who will guide us toward our next growth step in Christ.
At least this is what people in my church keep telling me. A steady stream of 20-somethings and 30-somethings come to my office; sometimes even they aren't sure why. What they really want, it turns out, is a mentor, a spiritual director—well, a pastor. They are hungry for a wiser, mature adult to help guide them in faith and in life.
Sure, they have scores of digital "friends," but what's missing is analog—a slow, listening, face-to-face presence. Our church boasts small groups and classes, but many were asking for one-on-one. Something primal inside me rose to this: This is why I became a pastor. But my mind immediately protested: You don't possibly have time for regular meetings with more than a few people.
Suddenly, I knew why most churches no longer offer Clarence.
There are only two ways to solve this problem of scale: "larger and larger venues" and/or "more and more shepherds." The New Testament seems to support both solutions but emphasizes more shepherds—what the New Testament calls "elders" or "undershepherds" (1 Peter 5), "fathers" (1 John 2), or "older women" (Titus 2). Yes, my pastoral ministry is limited by my sorely limited time—but I can multiply the number of shepherds (whether lay or ordained and whatever they're called) who can do this kind of work.
How do we multiply the kind of attentive, mature shepherds our congregants need? How do we find, train, and commission more Clarences?
I've learned to look for the people who are spiritually mature—usually in the second half of life—good listeners, confidential, loving, and able to restore someone gently (Gal. 6:1). Then I teach them four pastoral practices that are hidden, quiet, undervalued—and surprisingly powerful.
Listen Without Filtering
As pastors, we know all about the power of listening. We teach it. We also know how to fake it.
I used to visit a busy medical clinic with top-flight doctors. I noticed when I had an appointment and the doctor stepped into the exam room, he would keep one foot angled toward the door. He was listening to me, seemingly intently, but his body was saying, "My HMO has asked me to keep appointments brief. I'm leaving as soon as I can."
Similarly, I can nod and give someone eye contact and say, "Um-hmm," but my head may be filled with noise. I may be hurting from a conversation the hour before: How could he say that! I may be wondering, Will this person be good to recruit for that ministry? Or deeper still, my soul may be clamoring, I would really love it if you would think I'm spiritual.
"To truly listen is to become smaller," my senior pastor, Stewart, says. "It requires death to self."
Oh, only death? That should be easy.
For me, what most resists dying is the idea from leadership seminars to scrutinize the time we spend with people and do a sort of cost/benefit analysis: Will this person become a key leader, giver, or server? In leading, time is an investment. But in pastoring, time spent with a person is a gift, a grace, a broken bottle of perfume. To listen without filtering is to give our best time and energy to this person, right now, knowing full well nothing may come of it for my organizational agenda, and that's okay.
French writer Jacques Philippe says, "In every encounter with someone else, however long or short, we should make him feel we're 100 percent there for him at that moment, with nothing else to do except be with him and do whatever needs doing for him. Good manners, yes, but also heartfelt availability. This is very difficult, since we have a strong sense of proprietary rights to our time and easily tend to get upset if we can't organize it as we choose. But this is the price of genuine love."
One day, reading Mark 8, I noticed that when Jesus talks with people, he mostly asks questions. I added them up and found 16 questions in that one chapter. Following that model, I am trying to ask more questions of the people I pastor. Sometimes I send questions to people ahead of time, before we meet. Two of my favorites are (1) "What do you like about the kind of person you're becoming? And not like?" And (2) "When was a time you felt most alive and in the zone?"
If I ask questions like these and then listen, spiritual gifts emerge, surprising even the person who has them. Hope pushes up through parched soil. People start sentences with, "I've never told this to anyone before, but …" and then continue on; their back muscles literally loosen as a weight, carried for years, rolls off in confession.
I was startled by this, and one day, I mentioned to a therapist in our congregation, "I've been having these wonderful conversations, and I can't believe how candid people are with their pastor."
She looked at me. "Kevin, you don't get it, do you?"
"Um, I guess not. What don't I get?"
"People want to have these kinds of conversations," she told me. "They just don't know where they could, where the conversation would be safe and meaningful."
Safe and meaningful begins when we listen without filtering.
Discern Without Labeling
Most people, even today, assume, If I am totally honest with my pastor, I will tell him about such-and-such sin in my life. In other words, "What is most true and determinative about me is my sin and brokenness."
Meanwhile, taking my cues from the prevailing medical model in our culture, I may enter that conversation with a matching assumption, My job is to discover what's wrong here and fix it, to find where your belief or practice is not biblical or godly, and to correct that.
Those assumptions lead to conversations like this. A person says, "I went to the porn site again," and I dispense a remedy, "You need to get into our men's support group, and memorize Psalm 119:9."
Not bad, but that's not the essence of what helps the person change his life. That's because both assumptions are wrong—or at least not wholly right. Let me explain.
When someone talks with me, it's hard enough for him to talk about his sins. But there's an intimacy level that's deeper still, which I call "heart"—the person's true nature, gifts, and call in God. Long before Sam went to the porn site, he was created and loved by God. That is what is most true and determinative about him.
"You are an artist with a longing for beauty. Your true calling is being obscured by your use of porn and illicit images."
So instead of asking, "How do I fix the holes and hurts?" I ask, "How do I name, affirm, and encourage this person to embrace the heart?" That's the nuclear energy of the soul. As I bless that, it's unstoppable.
To have someone look beneath your pain, sin, brokenness, and see your heroic virtue—that is transformative. To be truly and rightly named—that is one of the most profound and beautiful experiences of life. In fact, the Lord promises to "everyone who is victorious" this gift: "And I will give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one understands except the one who receives it" (Rev. 2:17).
Thirteen years ago, before a church service, a friend was praying for me, and he said, seemingly offhanded—"Lord, bless Kevin, a leader who speaks the truth in practical ways." Those nine words ("a leader who speaks the truth in practical ways") lodged with me, named me, revealed part of who I am in God. They've given me courage when I did not want to lead and words when I did not want to speak.
"Labeling," the demonic corruption of naming, focuses on what's wrong with a person. It locks the person in a category. It's too lazy to discover that person's true uniqueness and to stand in awe of it. For example, our church is in a college town, so we're blessed with many students. The moment I think, Here's yet another bright college student, post graduation, trying to figure out his life, I have labeled, not named. I have stopped listening. I have poked my eyes out so I cannot see the person's heart.
When I worked in publishing, I hired a woman in her 20s, fresh out of college, to work as an editorial assistant. She was competent at that but not satisfied. As I listened to her, I noticed her eyes brightened and hands moved when she talked about working with children overseas. I said to her one day, "I think you have a calling to bring God's love to people in need, especially in other nations."
She left our company shortly after that, and I didn't have much contact for five years. Then she sent me a Facebook link to her blog, where she'd written this: "Throughout my undergrad schooling, working with orphans in Africa remained my main passion. I graduated, I went on to an office job. I loved my coworkers. I didn't love the office job. Eventually, I decided to go back to school to be better equipped in what I really wanted to do. When my final review came, my manager wrote me a card that simply said: 'I've been praying for God to release your heart's dream.'
"Fast forward 5 years. I have my M.A. now, finally, after a winding road of tribulations I never saw coming. Through everything, I kept my manager's card tucked into my 'important' folder that I carry everywhere."
How do cards get tucked into someone's "important" folder? When we discern without labeling.
Invite Without Fixing
At this point, you may be wondering, "Yes, but don't you need to address sin?"
Of course—but that usually isn't effective until after I have listened without filtering and discerned without labeling. Then, when I call people to repent, I can bring possibility and hope.
For example, I told one young man struggling with using porn, "You are an artist. You have a longing for beauty, to be captivated by that. Your true calling is being obscured by your use of pornography and illicit images. Those are false images that blind your ability to see. I'm calling you to fierce vigilance now because I believe in and want to see you protect your gift."
Yes, we talked about porn filters, but what was central was inviting him into something better than porn. Why?
Scottish preacher Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), in his famous sermon "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection," explains: "The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one; and by the love of what is good, to expel the love of what is evil."
My word to this artist was what I call a "Pastoral Invitation." It's pastoral because it comes with an element of spiritual authority. But it's also an invitation. I don't want to control, to fix, and I can't anyway. This person's life is his life. God was working in it long before I got here, and God will still be working in it long after I leave. All I offer is an invitation to one or two things that will help this person grow in Christ, to love God and others more, to live out of his heart.
In Invitations from God, Adele Ahlberg Calhoun explains: "Invitations from the Holy One serve God's dream for the world. They don't call me to become what I produce, what others think of me or what I know …. They let us know that we are wanted, loved, named, and known."
What does a Pastoral Invitation sound like?
For one businessman, I invited him to "Move toward the weak, vulnerable, poor, street people. That's when you come most alive and are at your best."
For a young guy starting out in ministry, I invited him to "Watch the RPMs. You are able to give much because of your willingness to live sacrificially. But doing too much for too long, with too little rest and too little money, can overheat the engine. Rest." He and his wife have added Sabbath to their lives over the past year.
For another person my invitation was a question, "Have you ever considered that you may have apostolic gifts, to start new works for God's kingdom?"
Offering such an invitation is scary and awesome. I often feel I don't know what to say (and I usually don't offer an invitation until I've listened for at least two hours). I pray earnestly to God that I would say what he wants me to say and not say what he doesn't want to say.
Since the Pastoral Invitation is intensely powerful and so subject to malpractice, how does it work when I trust this work to others in the church? So far, and we're coming up on two years of doing this, I can say, "Amazingly well." (But remember, we release only people who have shepherding hearts, who have suffered, who can speak the truth in love.)
Follow Up Without Nagging
The first three pastoral essentials build a relationship; I must walk with the person and not just drop him. So I follow up periodically. But "following up" doesn't mean I ask, "Are you doing what I invited you to do?" It's not accountability the way most people understand it. I'm not here to check up on; I'm here only to catch up on how he's doing, and then we pray together.
This is not laissez-faire; instead it trusts that God is better at growing this person spiritually than I am. And when I don't see progress, I must be patient. In Interior Freedom, Jacques Philippe challenges me here: "If the Lord has still not transformed this person, has not relieved him of such and such an imperfection, it is because He puts up with him as he is! He waits, with patience, the opportune moment. Then I must do likewise. I must pray and be patient. Why be more demanding and impatient than God? I think sometimes that my haste is motivated by love. But, God loves infinitely more than I do."
Spiritual development always seems to come in a slow, quiet, mysterious way. You can't see soil getting richer.
Yet throughout the Bible this is the primary way faith has been passed on. Moses works with Joshua; Eli trains Samuel; Jesus calls the apostles; Timothy's grandmother Lois trains up her daughter Eunice, who trains up her son Timothy; Paul calls Titus his son in the faith. When it comes to helping people grow into spiritual maturity, the Bible gives us the Clarence Principle: the older teach the younger, and those more mature in the faith guide those who are newer in the faith. We can trust the process God has ordained.
Kevin Miller is associate pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois.
Listen to the Heart
To discern a person's heart (and I know I will never see it fully or completely) I listen carefully and consider:
- Where did he repeat something in two or three different ways?
- What are his life-giving moments? Where did he speak with extra energy, joy, eyes lit up, eyebrows raised?
- What does he already sense God is doing in his life?
- What is similar in Scripture to this person or situation?
- How can this person steward himself and his true calling? -K.A.M.
Shepherding Resources
Spiritual Director, by Eugene Peterson, et al. This orientation guide equips you to shepherd with care and effectiveness. www.buildingchurchleaders.com
Shaping the Journey of Emerging Adults: Life-giving rhythms for spiritual transformation (IVP) by Richard R. Dunn and Jana L. SundeneVeteran disciple makers Dunn and Sundene offer concrete guidance for those who mentor and care for emerging adults.
From PreachingToday.com: Sermon: "Letters from Dad," by Dan Meyer. Fathers and mentors encourage those they lead by celebrating, challenging, and clearing a way for them. www.preachingtoday.com
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