History

Jan Amos Comenius: A Gallery of Figures in the Life and World of Comenius

Jan Amos Comenius was acquainted with scholars, kings, churchmen, businessmen, ordinary and extraordinary men who profoundly influenced his life as he also influenced theirs.

Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna

Comenius placed great confidence in this Swedish leader, confidence that would be disappointed. As chancellor of Sweden (1612–1644), Oxenstierna wielded considerable power. King Gustavus Adolphus II was more of a warrior than an administrator, and generally left domestic affairs in Oxenstierna’s able hands. The chancellor was a good organizer and a skilled diplomat. The peace he arranged with Poland in 1629 allowed Gustavus to enter the Thirty Years War in 1630. After Gustavus’s death (1632), Oxenstierna was the dominant member of the committee that ruled Sweden until Queen Christina came of age in 1644. In that capacity he accomplished a number of social and economic reforms— among them the invitation to Comenius to develop Swedish schools. But Oxenstierna did not get along with the young queen and his power declined after Christina’s accession. He was not directly involved in the negotiations of the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which may explain why his promise to Comenius, to look after the interests of the Brethren, was never fulfilled.

Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden (1594–1632)

The “Lion of the North,” Gustavus Adolphus was acknowledged as one of the great military men of his day. When King Gustavus intervened in the Thirty Years War, he embodied the hope of Comenius and his fellow exiles for the re-establishment of their lands and a defeat of the Hapsburg Catholics. In A Trumpet for the Year of Grace, Comenius reflected this mood; Gustavus was shown to be a great conqueror in this pamphlet. Ironically, Gustavus’s primary purpose was to strengthen Sweden, not to enter a religious conflict. However sympathetic he may have been to the Moravians. he intended to settle the exiles near the Baltic, not in their former homeland. But Gustavus never got the chance to implement his plan. He died in 1632 of battle wounds. The Peace of Westphalia materialized in 1648 while Queen Christina, daughter of Gustavus, reigned, and the Westphalian agreement brought to an end the “Bohemian question.” If any exiles were to return to Czechoslovakia it would be as Catholics, or not at all. Few Europeans decried these peace conditions after an utterly meaningless and lengthy war. True to his pietistic inclination, Comenius wrote in a 1649 letter, “…it is the beginning of wisdom to look within ourselves and search our own omissions and want of humanity….we must admit that we [Bohemian exiles] have not taken enough thought for ourselves, but always besought others to carry the fight on our behalf.” So, even though Swedish negotiators for the Peace of Westphalia may have entertained special treatment for the Bohemians, the German Protestants desired an end to the war, without regard to the memory of Gustavus Adolphus.

Nicholas Drabik (1588–1671)

A life-long acquaintance of Comenius from the town of Straznice, Nicholas Drabik was a mystic who had prophetic visions after his suspension from the ministry by the Brethren. While Comenius awaited peace negotiations at Osnabruck, Drabik’s prophecies included the overthrow of the Hapsburg power and the return of the Brethren to their land. Comenius so accepted the truth of these visions that his faith went unshaken by their failure to materialize, even as the visions became more elaborate, transformed and eventually retracted.

Comenius collected Drabik’s prophecies, as well as those of other mystics, into a book, Lux in Tenebas, which was never published but circulated among his friends. Until Comenius’s death, he corresponded with this unusual man. His trust in Drabik has generally been considered a tragic mistake by Comenius historians.

Drabik converted to Catholicism after Comenius’s death and disavowed his own prophecies. His conversion did not save him; Emperor Leopold I had Drabik’s tongue cut out, then had him executed.

Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

Comenius produced a science of education with a distinctive Christian theology through the influence of Francis Bacon’s inductive method. Both men were Aristotelian realists, contradicting the classic idealism of Plato. Apparently, Comenius was quite familiar with Bacon’s philosophical work, embodied in such writings as The Advancement of Learning (1605), a systematic classification of all branches of knowledge. Whereas Comenius’s interest was in both knowledge of the natural world and knowledge of the supernatural, Bacon’s was exclusively in the natural.

George Ritschel (1616–1683)

Like Comenius, George Ritschel was a Bohemian. He is considered one of the Oxford philosophers of the 17th century along with such thinkers as Hobbes and Locke.

His association with Comenius was as the latter’s literary assistant (1644–1647) on The Great Didactic and his pansophic work. However, in the course of the years, Ritschel’s elaborate treatment of the philosophy on metaphysics transformed so profoundly from Comenius’s simpler and more compressed ideas that his contribution was not considered suitable for popular use. Both men were annoyed with each other over the delay in publishing the great work. Nonetheless, Comenius supported Ritschel during their long association financially and emotionally, even when it was a burden to do so.

Ferdinand II (1578–1637)

Son of a Styrian duke and a Bavarian princess, Ferdinand was chosen to succeed his childless uncle Matthias as Holy Roman Emperor. Trained by the Jesuits, the young duke was a diehard Catholic. He planned to use the imperial throne to reunite Germany as a Catholic nation, to undo the Protestant Reformation. In preparation, Matthias made him king of Bohemia in 1617—a move amazingly ratified by the Protestant nobles of Bohemia. They soon regretted it. Ferdinand’s sharp curtailing of Protestant freedom incited a rebellion in Bohemia which eventually became the Thirty Years War. For Ferdinand it was a holy war. After his uncle’s death in 1619, he flung all the resources of the Holy Roman Empire into the conflict, even when Denmark, Sweden, and eventually France joined the opposition. (He did enlist the aid of his cousin Philip, who ruled Spain.) The war went well for Ferdinand early, but it seemed that whenever he was in a position to negotiate peace with substantial gains for his own side, he would do something that would add fuel to the fire of his enemies. The Bohemian revolt might have been bottled up after Ferdinand won the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, but the way he clamped down on the Protestant rebels alarmed other Protestants in Europe. His Edict of Restitution, demanding return of lands to the Roman Church, showed more zeal than tact, and stirred up more opposition. He turned back the Danish army, but also invaded Denmark, which may have convinced Sweden to go to war. Things looked good for Ferdinand when he stopped the Swedish army in 1634, but then France entered the fray and turned the tide. Ferdinand II died in 1637, leaving the embattled empire to his son, Ferdinand III (1608–1657). The new emperor was less of a zealot, and apparently not much of a warlord. The Catholic forces saw their fortunes slip away over the next eleven years, culminating in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, in which Ferdinand III was forced to make many concession s.

Charles of Zerotin (1564–1636)

Count Charles was a powerful friend of the Unity of the Brethren. He first came in contact with Comenius when Comenius was a student at the Unity’s Latin school at Prerov. Charles was lord of the city and had a special interest in the school. Having been educated abroad—as a pupil of Beza in Geneva—he was always seeking to upgrade the quality of the Unity’s educational system. With the support of Count Charles, Comenius went on to study at the Reformed Gymnasium at Herborn in Nassau. Thus Charles’s own respect for foreign schools, his love of education, and his reformed leanings all had an impact on young Comenius. Throughout his life, Zerotin established friendly relations with leading personalities in Europe. He fought in the armies of Henry IV of France, was a friend of Philip du Plessis-Mornay, and corresponded with Queen Elizabeth and King James I. The count was also an accomplished writer. In 1608 Charles became the supreme vice-regent of Moravia. But seeing the rise of anti-Protestant sentiment in succeeding years, he withdrew more and more from public life. He stayed out of the Bohemian uprising in 1618, and thus was allowed to keep his estates after the Catholic victory at White Mountain. On his estates, he sheltered a number of Unity leaders, including Comenius, until an imperial mandate made him expel them. It was during his years at the Zerotin estate that Comenius wrote his first major work, The Labyrinth of the World. He dedicated the book to Count Charles.

Ludovicus de Geer of the Netherlands (1587–1652)

Louis de Geer was a wealthy industrialist in steel and war supplies. He received his largest order ever in 1631 from King Gustavus Adolphus to arm the Swedes during the Thirty Years War. It was after this that de Geer became Comenius’s patron. Through the de Geer family’s financial support and sometimes overused hospitality, Comenius was supported and introduced to important ties not only in the Netherlands but in other parts of Europe as well. In the 1640’s, when Comenius failed to complete his huge didactical works within a particular time frame for use by Swedish schools, Louis de Geer temporarily cut off financial support. Comenius depended on the de Geers to allow him the freedom to write, minister, teach and continue his relentless quest for a home for the scattered Brethren exiles. Two other benefactors failed to come through with money at this crucial time as well, and in his own defense concerning the length of time needed to produce the pansophical works, Comenius said, “I don’t just turn books by the dozen, I write them. I do not bring forth premature miscarriages.”

John Milton (1608–1674)

The author of Paradise Lost (1667), John Milton and Comenius were linked by a mutual friend and patron, Samuel Hartlib. Milton and Comenius were both educational reformers of their day, though in many important areas, such as the education of girls and women and universal education, Milton tended not to agree with Comenius. Also Milton contemptuously dismissed Comenius’s very successful Latin grammar book, Janua Linguarum Reserata. Though Hartlib was more a disciple of Comenius’s educational ideas, he nonetheless urged Milton to write down his educational practices. Milton’s pamphlet, Of Education was addressed to Hartlib in 1644, and it inspired some parents to enroll their children with Milton. However, Edward Phillips, nephew and former student of Milton’s, had this to say about his uncle’s educational ideas: “Now persons so far manuducted into the highest paths of literature both divine and human, had they received his documents with the same acuteness of wit and apprehension, the same industry, alacrity, and thirst after knowledge as the instructor was indued with, what prodigies of wit and learning might they have proved!” What recommended Milton’s plan, like Comenius’s, was a defined curriculum that progressed towards a clear goal in stages and with compassion and discipline. Both Milton and Comenius had a curious characteristic in common—the need for privacy and peaceful quietness. Unlike Comenius, Milton was to gain “a private and quiet life.”

Samuel Hartlib (1596[?]–1662)

Prussian-born and Cambridge-educated, Samuel Hartlib was, like Comenius, an enthusiastic school reformer. Hartlib promoted inventions, dabbled in the sciences, published his own and other’s manuscripts, tirelessly wrote letters, and associated with Jan Comenius, John Milton, John Dury, Robert Boyle and many other great men of his age, a fact of which he was quite proud.

Hartlib was an early disciple of Comenius in educational reform. When Comenius visited England (1642) at Hartlib’s urging, he stayed for the duration with Hartlib. Throughout the years, Comenius depended on Hartlib’s correspondence and travels for raising funds, although Hartlib himself was not necessarily attentive to his own profit and trusted that God would see to the necessary blessings for reforming schools or whatever. He felt that education ought to promote “exercises of industry” and “advance piety, learning, morality.”

Comenius considered Hartlib his special friend, honored and esteemed. Milton also considered Hartlib a friend and praised him highly.

Hartlib was one of the Secretaries of the French and Latin tongues under Oliver Cromwell. It was Hartlib who brought Comenius together with such notables as John Dury and John Pell, a mathematician.

John Dury (1596–1680)

The Scotsman John Dury, like Samuel Hartlib, worked for the Council of State with the Secretary for the Foreign Tongues under Cromwell’s government in England. John Dury was given the task of translating into French John Milton’s Eikonoklastes. At this same time, Dury was librarian at St. James and traveled widely throughout Europe.

Comenius met with Dury on his trip to England in 1642 and they remained in correspondence and friendship during their long lives. Dury, as is true with so many of Comenius’s acquaintances, was interested in educational reform and scientific thought. Dury was also an ecumenical who valiantly worked for Protestant union in Germany.

Count Nicolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf (1700–1762)

A pietistic Lutheran all his life, Nicolaus von Zinzendorf was a kindred pietistic spirit to Comenius and these two non-contemporaries were bonded by an ecumenical spirit that worked for the unity of all Christian believers regardless of denominational preferences.

Zinzendorf began his Moravian identity by his act of kindness that allowed Moravian refugees to find sanctuary on his land in 1722. By 1737 he was consecrated as a bishop by Comenius’s grandson, Daniel Ernst Jablonsky, in the Renewed Church of the Brethren, Comenius’s remnant seed of the Unitas Fratrum.

One thread linking Zinzendorf and Comenius was a hymnal. Both were major figures in Moravian hymnology. In 1661, Comenius prepared a hymnal which contained three sections divided by historical content. In Comenius’s day the songs went unaccompanied. By Zinzendorf’s day, when Comenius’s hymnal went through its third printing, congregational singing was accompanied by organ; other changes had also occurred. Zinzendorf said of the new songs he provided for the church, “I invent a new song of which I know nothing before and which will be forgotten as soon as it has served its purpose.” He is credited with writing over 2000 hymns.

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

Meeting of the Minds

Paul Heidebrecht and The Editors

Jan Amos Comenius and Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes (1596–1650), the great philosopher-mathematician from Touraine, France, was Catholic and Jesuit-trained. Like Comenius, he was a realist, but he never integrated the spiritual and the natural; thus he developed his dualistic philosophy. He is generally the first modern rationalist thinker.

In 1642, Descartes met Comenius at Endegeest near Leyden, Holland. The meeting was arranged by Samuel Hartlib, a mutual friend. Comenius was by this time a renowned educationist, Descartes was already a celebrity for his new philosophy. They met, cordially, for four hours, discussing their respective views of reality.

The two were not on the same wavelength. The fact that Descartes was Catholic and Comenius Protestant is not insignificant, but should not be overplayed. It was a conflict of mindsets. Descartes had little use for Comenius’s efforts to integrate spiritual realities with the discoveries of science, nor for his dedication to the pansophic ideal of a unified knowledge, nor for his proposal for a universal language.

Comenius, on the other hand, found Descartes’s rejection of Biblical authority in the natural sciences quite disturbing. Descartes’s use of doubt to arrive at truth and his intellectual arguments for the existence of God were simply foreign to Comenius’s way of thinking.

Later, Comenius was to write scathing critiques of Cartesian philosophy. In these, he further showed the great gulf fixed between his own Christian humanism and Descartes’s rationalism. It is apparent that Comenius never really understood Descartes’s analytical geometry nor his contributions to mechanical physics. What he did understand was that Cartesian philosophy was a clear threat to the unity of knowledge Comenius was striving for in his pansophism, which incorporated spiritual elements with scientific evidence.

Both Descartes and Comenius lived in free-thinking Holland for a time. They also both had significant interactions with Sweden. Earlier, Comenius had been hired to reform the Swedish school system. Later, Descartes was invited to tutor Queen Christina. It is said that Christina developed an aversion to Comenius and refused to study from any of his books. Later in life, possibly through Descartes’s influence, she converted to Catholicism, abdicating her throne.

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

The Thirty Years War

Comenius was only 26 when it started; he was an old man by its end. Europe exploded into war and for 30 long years princes and generals jockeyed for position while the common folk saw their land laid waste. Historians estimate that half of Germany’s population was lost in the fighting. War followed Comenius as he moved throughout Europe. It served as a painful backdrop to his life. In some ways the war robbed Comenius of lasting fame; but it also gave his writings an edge of urgency—education would bring understanding, and understanding, peace.

1—The war began in Bohemia, Comenius’s homeland. Bohemians, mostly Protestant, were unhappy with Emperor Ferdinand II of Austria. They had enjoyed a measure of independence under Ferdinand’s predecessors, but this emperor was cracking down. A devout Catholic, Ferdinand had closed one Protestant church and destroyed another. As a staunch enforcer of the Counter-Reformation, he was determined to make all his lands thoroughly Catholic.

The violence began May 23, 1618, with the Defenestration of Prague— Bohemian rebels stormed the royal palace and threw Ferdinand’s governors out the window (they landed in a manure pile and were not killed). The Protestant rebels elected Frederick V as their king.

But Ferdinand was a Hapsburg, part of the dynasty that had held thrones throughout Europe for nearly two centuries (mostly in Austria, Spain, and Germany, known then as the Holy Roman Empire). Ferdinand got help from his Spanish cousins and defeated the Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. In typical Hapsburg fashion, Ferdinand was expanding his power. Not only did he reassert his control over Bohemia, but he was also named emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

2—King Christian IV of Denmark, a Protestant, perhaps fearing such consolidation of power, moved against Ferdinand’s empire from the north. But the Catholic forces, led by Wallenstein and Tilly, prevailed and actually invaded Denmark.

Fresh from victory over the Danish, Emperor Ferdinand issued the Edict of Restitution, demanding the return of land seized by Lutherans since 1551. It restated official toleration for Lutherans, but excluded Calvinists and other Protestant groups (more bad news for Comenius and the Brethren).

3—Gustavus Adolphus II of Sweden, a Lutheran stronghold, invaded Germany in 1630. The Swedes won substantial victories in Germany over the next dozen years, even after Gustavus’s death in 1632. The tide was turning, and the Hapsburg forces began to seek peace negotiations.

Another force in this conflict was France, a Catholic nation, but heavily populated by Calvinists. Under prime minister Cardinal Richelieu, France substantially funded the Swedish campaign against Ferdinand. The French interest was more nationalistic and dynastic than religious. France was poised to become a major power if Ferdinand’s empire weakened. Also, there were still sharp memories of the fighting between the house of Hapsburg and the French house of Valois in the previous century. France’s Louis XIII was of the house of Bourbon, but was still wary of the Spanish-Austrian Hapsburg cooperation. The fall of the Hapsburgs would seem sweet.

4—French forces entered the conflict in 1643, invading southern Germany. Fierce battles ensued, but Ferdinand’s power was waning.

Finally, in 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia was negotiated. Imperial power was dismantled as the various German states won sovereignty over most of their affairs. France won some important bits of land. Calvinists won toleration. The Bohemian question— the return of the Brethren to their homeland, which Comenius pressed for—was never touched.

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

Jan Amos Comenius: Christian History Timeline

Here we place the events of Comenius’s life in chronological context with the horrid Thirty Years War on one side and, on the other, the exciting lives and achievements of his contemporaries.

Comenius was a true world Christian. As the selected events listed indicate, he was widely traveled, but not always by his choice. He lived many lives in his 78 years—Bishop, Educator, Refugee, Peacemaker, Author, Futurist.

His life intersected the lives of many notable Europeans. Many pioneers in science, art, philosophy, literature and politics were contemporary with him. It was a time of great cultural and intellectual ferment and Comenius was active in the thick of it all.

Comenius

1592 Born in Eastern Moravia

1604 Orphaned by death of parents at Uhersky Brod

1614 Attends Prerov Latin Schol, Herborn Gymnasium, University of Heidelberg

1616 Ordained a minister in the Unity of the Brethren curch at Zeravice

1618 Appointed pastor at Fulnek

1620–1627 Lives in hiding in Bohemia after Hapsburg victory at White Mountain. Writes The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart

1628 Flees Bohemia for Leszno, Poland

1632 Consecrated as bishop in the Unitiy of the Brethren. Publishes Janua Linguarum Reserata for language study

1641 Visits England to set up pansophic college. Publishes The Way of Light, a plan for universal education and peace

1642 Forced to leave England due to civil war there, begins work with Sweden. Moves to Elbing, Prussia

1648 Returns to Leszno, where his second wife dies. Becomes senior bishop of the Unity

1650 Moves to Saros-Patak, Hungary, to head Bretheren schools there. Publishes Lux in Tenebris on prophetic visions

1655–1656 Returns to Leszno, but is forced to flee; most of his pansophic work is burned; Settles in Amsterdam with De Geer as patron

1657 Complete educations works (Opera Didactica) published in Holland

1658 Publishes Orbis Pictus, first illustrated textbook

1670 Dies in Amsterdam; buried at Naarden, Holland

Other Personalities

1605 William Shakespeare (1564–1616) writes Macbeth

1609 Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) builds first refracting telescope

1611 King James I of England (1566–1625) publishes King James Bible

1620 Francis Bacon (1561–1626) writes Novum Organum, analysis of knowledge

1621 William Bradford (1590–1657) becomes governor of Plymouth Colony

1623 Jakob Boehme, German mystic (1575–1624) publishes Mysterium Magnum

1629 Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) appointed prime minister of France

1631 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) settles in Amsterdam as painter-teacher

1637 Rene Descartes (1596–1650) publishes Discourse a la Methode

1647 George Fox (1624–1691) founds Society of Friends (Quakers)

1653 Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) delcared Lord Protector of England

1665 Isaac Newton (1642–1727) invents differential calculus

1667 John Locke (1632–1704) publishes An Essay Concerning Toleration

1667 John Milton (1608–1674) publishes Paradise Lost

1678 John Bunyan (1628–1688) publishes Pilgrim’s Progress

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648)

For three decades this horrible war spread destruction across Europe and was the backdrop that influenced many of the turns in Comenius’s life.

1618 War begins with revolt in Prague

1620 Ferdinand defeats Bohemian Protestants at White Mountain

1625 King Christian IV of Denmark enters war against Hapsburgs

1630 King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden enters war

1632 Gustavus dies in battle

1643 France officially enters war

1648 Treaty of Westphalia ends the war

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Pastors

IDEAS THAT WORK

Jessica Moffatt with Ruby Galloway Farish

Helping the unemployed

HELPING THE UNEMPLOYED

My church members were shocked when they read the Tulsa Tribune on August 20, 1986: “A part-time letter carrier who recently was told he was about to lose his job sprayed gunfire inside an Edmond, Oklahoma, post office this morning, killing 14 people and wounding 6 others before taking his own life.”

Why would the threat of a job loss trigger such a massacre? we asked in our church. Could a tragedy like that be prevented? What can we do?

With renewed determination we continued our plans for a workshop for the unemployed. When it was held four days later at First United Methodist Church in Tulsa, twice as many people attended as we anticipated.

Dearly there were deep hurts among the unemployed, both within and without our congregation. But we had begun to find that as a church, working together, we could assuage those hurts and offer practical help.

Starting up

The impetus for “Jobs First,” our ministry to the unemployed, came from church member Bob Johnson, who was laid off in June 1985. “I turned to the church, even though it was embarrassing,” he recalls. “I found out there were seven of us without jobs in my adult Sunday school class. Every one of us had degrees and professional skills. We polled other classes and discovered that in each of them 6 to 7 percent were unemployed.

“I wondered if they all felt as I did. I had never been out of work in my life. I was forty-eight, so I didn’t know if I could find another job in horticulture or in any other area. It was like a death, losing my job. I went through those stages of grief they talk about: anger, denial, and depression.”

Johnson and four other members of the class became convinced the church can help the jobless in its midst. First, the class members contributed to a fund they established for use by members in financial crisis. Those who later found jobs could pay back what they had needed, interest free. Those who could not pay back the money were to find creative ways to serve others.

Jobs First became a full-fledged ministry in September 1985, when our congregation held a three-day event during which we asked, “What is God prompting our church to do in this community?” Twenty-nine diverse ministries were set in motion at that time, including this one to the unemployed.

After the weekend, people who had signed up for Jobs First determined the scope of unemployment in the church. They called church members, took surveys, and designed a card for use in Sunday morning services. “Unemployed?” asked one side of the card. “Job Openings?” asked the other. Congregants filled in the appropriate side and returned the cards.

The registered number of unemployed climbed to 85, but the number of job openings were a fraction of that. It was apparent Jobs First needed an administrator to help these people find jobs. Both Bob Johnson and a subsequent ministry leader had now found full-time employment, so in April 1986 we hired Debbie Pruett, already a volunteer with the ministry, to be part-time director.

Strong and practical help

We offer career counseling, referrals to community and social service agencies, help in writing resumes and application letters, assistance in locating housing and transportation, and screening for financial help. The ministry is developing a team to pray with the unemployed, a monthly newsletter, and quarterly seminars. Periodic telephone calls are made to check on the status of applicants. Ultimately, however, securing the job is between the job hunter and the employer.

Currently Jobs First is working with 80 applicants. Professional career consultants usually work with 30-40 cases at a time for an average fee of $1,500 to $2,000 per client. Jobs First offers its services free. Church members make up 60 percent of the applicants. Of the other 40 percent, half attend regularly.

“We represent both the severely deprived, who live under the bridge, and top oil executives,” says Pruett. “Some of our applications come from older people who need income for survival, some are from persons recovering from drug problems or alcoholism. Sometimes we work with folks who say they want a job, but who are unwilling to make necessary personal changes to become employable. You can see how much we need Christian support groups and counseling.”

Stabilizing self-esteem

This Christian support and counsel sets Jobs First apart. As much as the unemployed need job leads, they need consistent encouragement.

Statements of unemployed church members reveal the bewilderment, shame, and doubt they feel:

“I feel like hiding out. How can I face my church friends when I’ve been fired?”

“I’m embarrassed. I can’t give to the church or even pay for my family to come to the church dinners.”

“We’ve started having these big fights in our family. Everybody is scared of what’s going to happen, and we’re taking it out on each other.”

“Does God really love me and want the best for me? I’m not even sure I’m a Christian anymore, and I always thought of myself as a strong believer.”

Dr. William D. Young of the University of Tulsa discovered as length of unemployment increases, individuals feel there is no point in looking for work, because they hold no control over their employability. Purposelessness and feeling out of control erodes self-esteem.

So Jobs First emphasizes showing people how to stay active in their job search. The ministry recently sponsored a one-day workshop, “Which Way Is Up?” for the unemployed or those in career transition. The workshop covered not only practical topics such as preparing a resume and taking advantage of community resources, but also included a session titled “Staying Power: Scriptural Principles for Survival in Tough Times.”

One of the participants said the day “changed the way I’ve been thinking about myself.”

Steady gains

The search for employment remains a struggle since the Tulsa unemployment rate is 9.3 percent. Some companies dismiss experienced, qualified workers so they can hire temporary replacements who will work for less money and with no benefits. One young woman from First United Methodist lost her secretarial position to a CPA who was willing to do all the secretarial work along with the accounting.

Yet there are steady gains. Jobs First is now getting calls from agencies who trust us to find them reliable employees. One employer was agonizing over the prospect that several of his fine employees were going to be dismissed from their jobs. He knew employers are more interested in the resume of a working person than one who has become a depressed unemployment statistic, so he registered his employees with Jobs First before they knew they would be jobless.

And the help has begun to come full circle. John Bayliss, one of the early job seekers who helped develop the Jobs First ministry, is now employed as maintenance manager for a cement company. He is in a position to hire workers and help those who, like him, needed a job.

Jessica Moffatt is minister of community ministries at First United Methodist Church in Tulsa. Oklahoma.

Ruby Galloway Farish is a free-lance writer from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

MORE IDEAS

Discipleship for Busy People

Discipling believers ranks high on the priority list for most churches. Yet too often, few members are intentionally spending time with other believers to encourage growth in Christ.

Associate pastor E. Stanley Ott and other leaders of Covenant Presbyterian Church in West Lafayette, Indiana, found this gap between intent and practice when they studied their congregation a few years ago. Several people in the congregation were well-equipped to teach and build others in Christ, but almost none were actually doing it.

“Why not?” Ott asked.

“We’re just too busy,” they told him.

Ott wrestled with how to incorporate small-group discipleship into people’s already hectic schedules. From that frustration came the “flex group.”

A flex group is a small group (no more than seven) that meets for a limited number of weeks to study a single concept or topic. A person need simply find an uncommitted breakfast, lunch, or other time slot for four to seven weeks in a row. The concept allows people with tight schedules (most church members), who would have to turn down long-term commitments, to be involved in small-group nurture.

At Covenant Presbyterian, a college student led a five-week flex group of five other students on principles of teaching Scripture. One man met another over breakfast for thirteen weeks to discuss John Stott’s Basic Christianity. One wife and mother led a short study with other harried moms on the biblical view of rest.

Ott trains flex group leaders to keep sessions on track, since most last seventy-five minutes or less. Most begin with a short Scripture reading, followed by discussion of a few key questions with application. Then group members discuss what is happening in their lives and pray for each other.

“People who have never before been in a Bible study have joined flex groups simply because the short-term commitment didn’t overwhelm them,” says Ott. “It’s surprising how many people are willing to help others if they don’t have to be in charge of some program or assume an office.”

Spare-time Sermon Preparation

Pastors often find themselves with small blocks of time between appointments. Those snatches of time in the car, in restaurants before breakfast or lunch meetings, and in hospitals may add up to several hours in a week but typically go unused.

Don McClure, pastor of Calvary Chapel of Redlands, California, has found a way to use those times for reading and study, cutting his later sermon preparation time.

“I used to try hauling a few commentaries with me when I set out for appointments, thinking I could study in spare moments. But the books were bulky and heavy, they didn’t fit in my briefcase, and usually they just cluttered the back seat of my car,” he says.

A few years ago, McClure changed his strategy. A week or two before the sermon, he flips through various commentaries and reference books and photocopies the portions dealing with his upcoming passage or topic. Then he puts the copied pages into a file folder, labels it, and carries that in his briefcase.

“I’ll be in the barbershop and just pull out a few pages and begin reading,” he says. “By the time I actually sit in my office with blocked-out sermon preparation time, I already have a strong feel for the text and how I want to present it. I used to spend my first few hours of sermon preparation just gathering materials and doing preliminary reading. Now I already have that out of the way. I’ve found I can prepare a sermon using only 50 percent of the office hours I used to.”

Video for Shut-ins (and Other Video Ideas)

Like many pastors, William Brigden, of Healy (Kansas) United Methodist Church, recorded worship services on audio cassettes for shut-ins. But four years ago, the church invited a guest speaker who employed a variety of charts during his presentations. Realizing listeners would not be able to understand much of the presentations, Brigden got a video store owner to loan the church a video camera, and he videotaped the sessions.

The videotapes were an instant hit, not only with the shut-ins but with others in the church who had missed the guest speaker. Now, several upgraded cameras and tripods later, the church records each Sunday service on videotape and later takes a tape and video player to shut-ins.

Through the videotapes, shut-ins feel more in touch with the church. One woman broke her hip and during her recuperation at home watched the weekly videotapes of the services. When she returned to church several weeks after the accident, Pastor Brigden greeted her, “We’re so glad you’re back.”

“I never left,” she said. “I’ve been here every Sunday.”

Other ways Brigden has found to use video regularly and effectively in the church’s ministry:

Funerals. When a funeral was particularly well-attended, the church’s sanctuary could not hold everyone. So the church set up a television in the nearby fellowship hall so people there could see the service.

On occasion, relatives who live far away are not able to attend the funeral. Brigden will send them a videotape of the service, if they wish. This gesture has been well received; in one case, an appreciative relative gave a memorial to the church to help purchase additional video equipment.

The nursery. Nursery workers usually miss the worship service, but at Healy United Methodist, thanks to the video equipment, they are able to watch the service while caring for children.

The larger community. Though Healy is too small to have its own cable system, other communities nearby do have cable, and various church programs are recorded and then rebroadcast there.

“Adopted” Children

At the Siren (Wisconsin) Covenant Church, Pastor Carol Nordstrom and the Sunday school teachers were looking for some way to help the children feel more a part of the church. They hit on a program they call “Very Important People.” Here’s how it works:

Leaders ask adult members who do not currently have children in the home, usually older adults, to “adopt” one or two of the children for one year. During the year, the adults arc responsible to simply befriend the child, spend time with him or her, and perhaps give the child occasional cards or small gifts.

“Adults befriend their VIPs in a variety of ways,” reports Nordstrom. “Some take the children fishing, to the beach, or to ball games. Some have attended school programs their VIPs were performing in. One widow taught various crafts to a teenage girl who had always wanted to do handwork. A couple in their sixties held an overnight slumber party for a young girl and three of her friends.”

The only problem, according to Nordstrom, is that a few adults have felt they couldn’t afford to give their VIPs the kind of gifts and activities some of the other VIPs were getting. So now the program leaders emphasize gifts of time rather than money, and suggest inexpensive activities adults and children can do together.

The program begins and ends each year at a church Valentine’s dinner. The adults and VIPs from the previous year sit together. Then following dinner, the coming year’s matches are announced. Although some adults choose not to continue, most do, and they often request the same children for the coming year.

The program has carried over into other areas of the church. “Older widows attend Sunday school programs to see their VIPs,” Nordstrom says. “Adults and the children-even teenagers-sometimes sit together in church. Now we have confirmation students ask the adults about their faith. The VIP program has helped our adults and young people get to know each other.”

What’s Worked for You?

Each account of a local church doing something in a fresh, effective way earns up to $30. Send your description of a helpful ministry, method, or approach to:

Ideas That Work

LEADERSHIP

465 Gundersen Drive

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Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

FROM THE EDITOR

Terry C. Muck

The pastor of a small church in southern Indiana was telling me about his year-old ministry. Amid his upbeat comments about his church’s building program and the growth of the congregation, he spoke about his burr in the saddle. Let’s call him Bill.

“Bill doesn’t like me. As far as I can tell, there’s no reason. We just don’t hit it off. So he often manufactures situations to make me look bad. At our last board meeting, for example, he asked the board to discipline me because I hadn’t been turning in written monthly reports. It caught me cold.

“Fortunately, one of the elders spoke up: ‘Bill, how can we discipline Pastor for that, when we’ve never asked him to turn in written monthly reports?’ “

Unfortunately, not all attacks are so easily blunted. Some persecutors want our jobs, threaten our reputations with slander, or torpedo the neighborhood outreach program we’ve spent six months setting up.

How do we handle the feelings unfair persecution creates? Self-righteousness and revenge raise their sinful heads whenever we’re attacked without provocation.

Psalm 69 is usually read as a messianic psalm. Rightly so. In describing a difficult personal struggle, David suggests many images that aptly apply to the sufferings our Lord was to face. Yet Psalm 69 also tells the story of David’s reaction to unfair persecution.

He finds himself sunk in the mire with no foothold, worn out calling for help. His enemies hate him without cause. The only reason he can cite is his zeal for the Lord’s house.

Yet despite being unfairly accused, by the end of the psalm, David, his troubles notwithstanding, is asking all heaven and earth to praise God.

By observing what he does, we can gain some insights into our own situations. To be sure, we don’t face the same physical dangers David faced. Our abuse is more psychological. But that doesn’t mean it is less dangerous. It’s like the difference between being drawn and quartered and being subjected to the Chinese water torture. Both cause us to cry out like David.

“Save me, O God.” The first thing David does in the face of persecution is recognize his helplessness and cry out to God for help. Verses 1-4 are David’s version of the first three Beatitudes. Only those who are humble in spirit and mourn their weakness in the face of sin can become the merciful, righteous peacemakers the world requires.

David cries to God with the pathos of his own weakness, but also the assurance that there is someone who can redress the questions of injustice.

“You know my folly.” David prays that his own reactions to suffering won’t adversely affect the work of the kingdom. Verses 5-12 demonstrate the selfless concern that only a Christian committed to the gospel could display. After all, I’m the one who has been wronged. I’m the one who deserves better. Yet David pleads with God not to let his possible overreactions to his situation harm the very people he serves, the people of God.

It goes against our sense of fairness to place the work of the kingdom ahead of our own agony. That outward focus, though, is exactly what we need to endure internal pain.

“I pray to you, O Lord.” David never quit praying despite his persecution’s long history. David prays specifically and confidently for God’s immediate intervention.

It’s difficult to pray in the face of long, drawn-out persecution. That’s why we develop the prayer habit when things are going well. We charge our solar prayer batteries while the sun shines, so that in the dark nights of the soul, we can call on reserve power.

“Pour out your wrath.” David’s fourth step is problematic for some. He calls for God to let his “fierce anger overtake his enemies,” and asks that they be “blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous.” Is this an attitude we can square with the New Testament concept of grace?

A closer inspection reveals two factors we shouldn’t overlook:

First, we notice David is doing exactly what the Lord teaches in Deuteronomy 32:35-“It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” David is indeed turning vengeance over to God.

Second, he seems to realize that he can’t handle revenge himself. After the strong imprecations in verses 19-28, he suddenly catches himself and in verse 29 says, “I am in pain and distress; may your salvation, O God, protect me.” Protection, in this case, from his own anger? I think so.

I know my own weakness here. I can get angry at someone one day and write him off for good. I go home mumbling about the complete lack of redeeming qualities in someone I feel has wronged me. Yet the next morning if that same person walks by my office and says, “I liked the last issue of LEADERSHIP, Terry,” I suddenly see this person in a whole new light: insightful, discerning, and kind.

It frightens me to think I am so susceptible to my own emotion. Perhaps that’s why God reserves vengeance for himself: we’re incapable of handling it.

“I will praise God’s name.” Unbelievably, David’s final note in this psalm is a resounding call to praise God. Praise God when we are being persecuted? Sounds difficult. Actually, it sounds impossible. Yet David does it.

Psychologists James and Lange postulated a theory of emotion: The feeling of an emotion follows an act that typifies it. For example, when you don’t feel loving, if you perform a loving act, the feeling of love will follow.

Often, our feelings for God are similar. Even when our present circumstances don’t lend themselves to praise, if we praise anyway, the feelings follow.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow-even if the blessing is only our physical capacity to raise our faint voices in words of awe and respect.

Terry C. Muck is editor of LEADERSHIP.

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

What Wesley Practiced and Preached About Money

Charles Edward White

John Wesley knew grinding poverty as a child. His father, Samuel Wesley, was the Anglican priest in one of England's lowest-paying parishes. He had nine children to support and was rarely out of debt. Once John saw his father being marched off to debtors' prison. So when John followed his father into the ministry, he had no illusions about financial rewards.

It probably came as a surprise to John Wesley that while God had called him to follow his father's vocation, he had not also called him to be poor like his father. Instead of being a parish priest, John felt God's direction to teach at Oxford University. There he was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, and his financial status changed dramatically. His position usually paid him at least thirty pounds a year, more than enough money for a single man to live on. John seems to have enjoyed his relative prosperity. He spent his money on playing cards, tobacco, and brandy.

While at Oxford, an incident changed his perspective on money. He had just finished paying for some pictures for his room when one of the chambermaids came to his door. It was a cold winter day, and he noticed that she had nothing to protect her except a thin linen gown. He reached into his pocket to give her some money to buy a coat but found he had too little left. Immediately the thought struck him that the Lord was not pleased with the way he had spent his money. He asked himself, Will thy Master say, "Well done, good and faithful steward"? Thou hast adorned thy walls with the money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold! O justice! O mercy! Are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid?

What Wesley did

Perhaps as a result of this incident, in 1731 Wesley began to limit his expenses so that he would have more money to give to the poor. He records that one year his income was 30 pounds and his living expenses 28 pounds, so he had 2 pounds to give away. The next year his income doubled, but he still managed to live on 28 pounds, so he had 32 pounds to give to the poor. In the third year, his income jumped to 90 pounds. Instead of letting his expenses rise with his income, he kept them to 28 pounds and gave away 62 pounds. In the fourth year, he received 120 pounds. As before, his expenses were 28 pounds, so his giving rose to 92 pounds.

Wesley felt that the Christian should not merely tithe but give away all extra income once the family and creditors were taken care of. He believed that with increasing income, what should rise is not the Christian's standard of living but the standard of giving.

This practice, begun at Oxford, continued throughout his life. Even when his income rose into the thousands of pounds sterling, he lived simply, and he quickly gave away his surplus money. One year his income was a little over 1400 pounds. He lived on 30 pounds and gave away nearly 1400 pounds. Because he had no family to care for, he had no need for savings. He was afraid of laying up treasures on earth, so the money went out in charity as quickly as it came in. He reports that he never had 100 pounds at any one time.

Wesley limited his expenditures by not purchasing the kinds of things thought essential for a man in his station of life. In 1776 the English tax commissioners inspected his return and wrote him the following: "[We] cannot doubt but you have plate for which you have hitherto neglected to make an entry." They were saying a man of his prominence certainly must have some silver plate in his house and were accusing him of failing to pay excise tax on it. Wesley wrote back: "I have two silver spoons at London and two at Bristol. This is all the plate I have at present, and I shall not buy any more while so many round me want bread."

Another way Wesley limited expenses was by identifying with the needy. He had preached that Christians should consider themselves members of the poor, whom God had given them money to aid. So he lived and ate with the poor. Under Wesley's leadership, the London Methodists had established two homes for widows in the city. They were supported by offerings taken at the band meetings and the Lord's Supper. In 1748, nine widows, one blind woman, and two children lived there. With them lived John Wesley and any other Methodist preacher who happened to be in town. Wesley rejoiced to eat the same food at the same table, looking forward to the heavenly banquet all Christians will share.

For almost four years, Wesley's diet consisted mainly of potatoes, partly to improve his health but also to save money. He said: "What I save from my own meat will feed another that else would have none."

In 1744 Wesley had written, "[When I die] if I leave behind me ten pounds . . . you and all mankind [may] bear witness against me, that I have lived and died a thief and a robber." When he died in 1791, the only money mentioned in his will was the miscellaneous coins to be found in his pockets and dresser drawers.

What had happened to the rest of his money, to the estimated thirty thousand pounds he had earned over his lifetime? He had given it away. As Wesley said, "I cannot help leaving my books behind me whenever God calls me hence, but in every other respect my own hands will be my executors."

What Wesley preached

Wesley's teaching on money offered simple, practical guidelines for every believer.

Wesley's first rule about money was Gain all you can. Despite its potential for misuse, money in itself is something good. There is no end to the good it can do: "In the hands of [God's] children, it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked. It gives to the traveler and the stranger where to lay his head. By it we may supply the place of a husband to the widow, and of a father to the fatherless. We may be a defense for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them that are in pain. It may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame: yea, a lifter up from the gates of death!"

Wesley adds that in gaining all they can, Christians must be careful not to damage their own souls, minds, or bodies, or the souls, minds, or bodies of anyone else. He thus prohibited gaining money through industries that pollute the environment or endanger workers.

Wesley's second rule for the right use of money was Save all you can. He urged his hearers not to spend money merely to gratify the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eye, or the pride of life. He cried out against expensive food, fancy clothes, and elegant furniture: "Cut off all this expense! Despise delicacy and variety and be content with what plain nature requires."

Wesley had two reasons for telling Christians to buy only necessities. The obvious one was so they would not waste money. The second was so they would not increase their desires. The old preacher wisely pointed out that when people spend money on things they do not really need, they begin to want more things they do not need. Instead of satisfying their desires, they only increase them: "Who would expend anything in gratifying these desires, if he considered that to gratify them is to increase them? Nothing can be more certain than this. Daily experience shows that the more they are indulged, they increase the more."

Wesley especially warned against buying too much for children. People who would never waste money on themselves might be more indulgent with their children. On the principle that gratifying a desire needlessly only tends to increase it, he asked these well-intentioned parents: "Why should you purchase for them more pride or lust, more vanity or foolish and hurtful desires? . . . Why should you be at further expense to increase their temptations and snares and to pierce them through with more sorrows?"

John Wesley's third rule was Give all you can. One's giving should begin with the tithe. He told the one who does not tithe, "Thou dost undoubtedly set thy heart upon thy gold" and warned, "It will 'eat thy flesh as fire!' " But one's giving should not end at the tithe. All of the Christian's money belongs to God, not just the first tenth. Believers must use 100 percent of their incomes as God directs.

And how has God directed Christians to use their incomes? Wesley listed four scriptural priorities:

1. Provide things needful for yourself and your family (1 Tim. 5:8). The believer should make sure the family has the necessities and conveniences of life, that is, "a sufficiency of plain, wholesome food to eat, and clean raiment to put on" as well as a place to live. The believer must also insure that the family has enough to live on if something were to happen to the breadwinner.

2. "Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content" (1 Tim. 6:8). Wesley adds that the word translated raiment is literally coverings and thus includes lodging as well as clothes. "It plainly follows whatever is more than these is, in the sense of the apostle, riches-whatever is above the plain necessities, or at most, conveniences, of life. Whoever has sufficient food to eat, and raiment to put on, with a place to lay his head, and something over, is rich."

3. "Provide things honest in the sight of all men" (Rom. 12:17) and "Owe no many anything" (Rom. 13:8). Wesley said the next claim on a Christian's money was the creditors'. He adds that those who are in business for themselves need to have adequate tools, stock, or capital for the carrying on of that business.

4. "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith" (Gal. 6:10). After the Christian has provided for the family, the creditors, and the business, the next obligation is to use any money that is left to meet the needs of others.

In giving these four biblical principles, Wesley recognized some situations were not clear-cut. It isn't always obvious how the Christian should use the Lord's money. Wesley accordingly offered four questions to help his hearers decide how to spend money:

1. In spending this money, am I acting like I owned it, or am I acting like the Lord's trustee?

2. What Scripture requires me to spend this money in this way?

3. Can I offer up this purchase as a sacrifice to the Lord?

4. Will God reward me for this expenditure at the resurrection of the just?

Finally, for the believer who is still perplexed, John Wesley suggested this prayer before a purchase:

Lord, thou seest I am going to expend this sum on that food, apparel, [or] furniture. And thou knowest I act therein with a single eye, as a steward of thy goods, expending this portion of them thus, in pursuance of the design thou hadst in entrusting me with them. Thou knowest I do this in obedience to thy word, as thou commandest, and because thou commandest it. Let this, I beseech thee, be an holy sacrifice, acceptable through Jesus Christ! And give me a witness in myself, that for this labor of love I shall have a recompence when thou rewardest every man according to his works.

He was confident that any believer who has a clear conscience after praying this prayer will be using money wisely.

– Charles Edward White

assistant professor, Christian thought and history

Spring Arbor (Michigan) College

1987 WINTER QUARTER 27

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

PEOPLE IN PRINT

Treatment for Slipped Disciples

Restoring Your Spiritual Passion by Cordon MacDonald Oliver Nelson, $12.95 Reviewed by Mark Galli, pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church, Sacramento, California

I write with a bias. I was trudging through one of those stretches of passionless ministry when I read Restoring Your Spiritual Passion. To lie frank, I review as one whose passion for ministry has been restored, and this book played no small part.

Author Gordon MacDonald writes “Who of us does not crave the passion or the power to be godly people? To give witness to our faith, to serve and give selflessly? To own control of our drives and dispositions? But for many it is easier to talk about passion than to find it or, having found it, to maintain it.”

That rings true especially for those in positions of spiritual leadership. The smuggle to maintain and nurture my spiritual passion remains one of the greatest challenges of my ministry. When passion evaporates, ministry seems trivial. Yet, when filled with SpititUAi passion, I find it difficult to imagine more significant or rewarding work.

MacDonald, who spent twenty-two years in the pastorate before becoming president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, understands the weariness that can weigh down Christian leaders. This weariness, however, cannot be identified simply with the psychological states of stress and bumout. In a phone conversation, MacDonald said it goes deeper than that; it is “when the whole spirit just sags.”

MacDonald sees a number of reasons why this weariness troubles us today. The hurried pace of modern life and the unceasing demand for church programs are but two. He moves on to thoughtfully analyze seven conditions that threaten spiritual passion, such as the Drained Condition and the Driedout Condition. Writing about the Distorted Condition, he describes something not a little familiar: “I have frequently found myself in the state of what I describe as oversensation. As one grows older, it is possible to be involved in so many interesting and exciting things that adrenalin becomes something of an addictive drug. Life becomes a peak-to-peak hopping of wonderful experiences, each a bit emotionally higher that the last, until there comes a time when the peaks can’t get any higher or more frequent. The inner being is fed on thrills and excitements. It is a rather spiritually deficient diet that leaves one exhausted and weary.”

He next describes the varieties of people who affect spiritual passion. Very Resourceful, Very Important, and Very Trainable People generally add to our enthusiasm for ministry, but Very Draining People and Very Nice People tend to sap our spiritual energy.

Very Nice People, for example, “fill the pews and rooms and programs. En masse they provide substantial amounts of money .. . to fuel organizations sometimes called ministries. VNPs are . . . good people. And we make many fine friendships with VNP’s.” But he also notes, “Spiritual energy or passion is profoundly affected by the VNP’s. … Leaders spend exorbitant amounts of time solving the problems of programming, interpersonal conflict, and enlargement that VNP’s create by their presence.”

MacDonald hardly advocates ignoring those who tire us; Jesus certainly didn’t. In our conversation, MacDonald stressed we shouldn’t “accuse people of belonging to any of the categories.” But he wants us to note with what groups we spend the bulk of our time. If, for example, we spend time only with VNP’s, we should not be surprised that we feel drained.

He fills out the analysis of spiritual weariness with four spirits that destroy spiritual passion (competitive, critical, vain, and adversarial) and two inner battles that war against spiritual passion (ambition and pride), and then turns to describing “a few principles that when followed seem to develop, maintain, or restore spiritual passion.” In particular, he details our need for safe places, still times, and special friends.

Safe places are rest stops for roadweary travelers, places made safe by Christ meeting us there. Although we can experience a safe place anywhere, MacDonald notes that we might set aside a particular locale, a place free from interruptions, where we can “hear the secrets God whispers to the inner spirit.”

Regarding corporate safe places, he writes: “Those of us who have lived in the freer Protestant traditions have not been adequately taught the value of the holy places: sites exclusively reserved for worship and spiritual blessing. … We must come to see that genius is involved in setting aside on the maps of our lives places reserved only for the restoration of spiritual passion. We do not appreciate how much we lose by trying to restore our passion in spaces used for other things. Whenever possible, sanctuaries should not be treated as public auditoriums.”

In the chapter “The Still Times,” MacDonald discusses various principles that can restore spiritual passion. He concludes by noting that we can overcome “the hostile elements that cause fatigue only when Sabbaths find their way into the calendars of our lives: monthly, weekly, daily, hourly.”

Finally, MacDonald describes the seven “special-friend teammates” instrumental in restoring and maintaining spiritual passion, including the sponsor, the affirmer, and even the rebuker, a truth teller who may be “the most important member among our special friends.”

MacDonald told me he didn’t want to offer a list of specific suggestions, “gimmicks” that promise to restore passion in a few simple steps. Instead, he wanted to lift up themes, attested to in Scripture and church history, that would not only challenge our present practice of leadership but give leaders a sense of direction.

That is precisely what the book did for me. MacDonald had me examining anew my life and calling, and then molding my work patterns accordingly. It was not long before my weariness faded and a renewed passion for ministry began to blossom within.

And that, it seems to me, is more than enough to expect from a book by this title.

In Praise of the Pastorate

This People, This Parish by Robert K. Hudnut Zondervan, $7.95 Raiewed by John Throop, associate rector, Christ Episcopal Church, Shaker Heights, Ohio

“I come and go across the face of this parish. One morning a baby is born. Two mornings later a woman dies. A couple comes to get married. A man goes to the hospital for tests. … It is the ebb and flow of our life together. This people, this parish is like a great sea heaving, the tides strong and the currents swift. In every home, as I go down the street tonight, some frail craft is plying that sea between sorrow and joy. The doors open, and I am asked in.”

Robert Hudnut, senior pastor of Winnetka (Illinois) Presbyterian Church, speaks of his love affair with parish ministry in This People, This Parish. Hudnut writes reflectively, asking the reader to journey with him through his twenty-five years of church ministry to see the presence of God in the many events of his life and work-and ours, too.

The book is notable on two counts. First, Hudnut helps the reader get a feel for who pastors are and what they do. Many books develop a theology of ministry from the seminary greenhouse. Other books are practical, how-to manuals. Yet these books do not convey the richness, the humanness, and the incarnational wonder of pastoral work. Hudnut writes out of deep feeling, yet with strong theological underpinnings.

Second, it is rich in spirituality. Here is a man firmly committed to Christ and to bringing others to Christ’s love.

Hudnut is moved by worship. He has a strong devotional life. He is dedicated to his life of service. Most of all, he knows his limits. This People, This Parish allows us to peer into the soul of a pastor, to see his commitment to Christ-something few colleagues, and even fewer laity, are able to do with a pastor.

It is refreshing to view a pastor, after twenty-ffve years, still in love with the parish ministry and with God himself. Hudnut considers kindling this love, as in a marriage, a key element for the future of strong parish ministry. Christian spirituality, a strong devotional life, is the fire that kindles. “When I was at Union Theological Seminary in New York between 1956 and 1959,” says Hudnut, “there were no courses in spirituality. I continue to see that what is most lacking in mainline Protestant churches is spirituality, ways to educe God in the experiences of life. I have written this book to give pastors and their people a renewed sense of optimism that this can be done.”

Hudnut writes, “God speaks and reveals himself through percepts rather than concepts. We perceive rather than conceive C;od, and so it is necessary to see, touch, taste, smell, and hear God at work in life.”

In chronicling nearly 150 events, Hudnut does an admirable job perceiving God’s presence in parish life.

“We need each other in order to ‘see’ Jesus,” Hudnut continues. “That is how he becomes visible. We see Jesus in the other. Our job in this parish is to be transparent to Jesus. So often we are opaque, occasionally translucent, rarely transparent.”

True transparency is rare, but it is life giving in ministry. Hudnut writes: “She called to see how I was. She had been in the hospital recently, and we had been in touch occasionally since. But the call was not to inform me of her condition; rather it was to check in on mine. Not that I had been sick or distressed. She just wanted to know how things were going.

“I was surprised. Such calls to a pastor are rare. It is one thing for the pastor to inquire of a parishioner how things are going. It is quite another for a parishioner to make the inquiry of the pastor. I was touched.”

In another place, Hudnut states that those who show such concern or, even more rarely, speak casually yet sincerely of how they pray for the pastor are people who are etched into the pastor’s memory. Hudnut hopes This People, This Parish will encourage the burned out or discouraged to refocus on the joy of ministry.

Based on This People, This Parish, to be a part of the body served by this minister would be a blessing indeed. Thankfully, we can be a part of his flock during a couple of well-spent hours reading this book.

Quick Reference for Deep Hurts

Helping Women in Crisis by Kay Marshall Strom Zondervan, $7.95 Reviewed by Nancy D. Becker, associate pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois

After a hospital visit to a badly injured child, you receive a call from the child’s mother: “I did it,” she says. “I hurt my child.”

The mother of a five-year-old girl tells you her daughter has been molested by her Sunday school teacher, a man who has taught in your church for many years.

A married woman of the church confesses that she has been having an affair, but she doesn’t want to give up either her lover or her husband.

It is the nature of crisis situations that they arise inconveniently and have to be dealt with immediately. Kay Marshall Strom’s book, Helping Women in Crisis, is a succinct, thorough, and clearly written book to be read and kept within reach for just such crises in women’s lives.

Strom saw a need for this book while working with the subject of wife abuse. She realized women may face particular crises that few ministers feel adequate to handle. So Strom condensed a great deal of experience and research from the literature of crisis counseling into a highly useful work.

Each chapter deals with a specific crisis situation, considered in a model counseling situation. Then comes a brief summary of the issues for quick reference, a list of specific do’s and don’ts for counseling, a resource list of crisis agencies, a suggested reading list, and a place to fill in local sources of help for quick reference.

In the chapter on teen pregnancy, for example, Strom presents a case study: “You ask Stephanie if she has considered the possibility of placing the baby for adoption.

” ‘I don’t know,’ Stephanie says thoughtfully, ‘I’m not sure I could just say good-by to my baby and give it away.’

“You tell Stephanie that adoption procedures have changed in recent years. … You assure Stephanie that, should she decide on adoption, it will in no way indicate a lack of love for the baby.

“‘Do I have to make up my mind ahead of time?’ Stephanie asks. ‘Couldn’t I get to know the baby first and see how things go before I decide?’

“You tell Stephanie that although it is her legal right to wait, for the good of l everyone involved she should make l the decision before the baby is born.” | This concise, direct style is typical of the book.

The “Quick Overview” in each chapter is designed to be read under pressure, perhaps while hearing about the problem on the phone. In the chapter on infidelity, for example, the overview reads: “Spouses involved in adultery are very adept at rationalizing, excusing their sin and blaming their action on others. Refuse to accept this. If you are talking to the unfaithful spouse, insist that she accept the responsibility for her actions. If you are talking to the wronged spouse, insist that she refuse to accept the blame. … “

Strom offers specific advice for male counselors in crisis situations involving women: don’t be physical, don’t encourage dependence, see the problem from the woman’s perspective, and beware of operating from possible prejudices and stereotypes about female behavior

She enlarged on this in an interview by pointing out the difficult stance a male counselor has to take in comforting the woman. He has to be careful not to comfort by such natural physical signs as putting an arm around her. On the other hand, some men go too far in the other direction, becoming stiff and formal. The skill is to be caring and comforting without physical contact.

Strom deals straightforwardly with a counselor’s dilemma concerning confidentiality. In most cases, a counselor is required by law to report incidents of child abuse, child molestation, and incest. “‘Please don’t call the police,’ pleads the mother of the fifteen-yearold victim of incest. ‘I’ll have Shelley stay with her aunt for a week or two until this blows over and I have a chance to work this out with my husband.’

“You tell her that you can’t make such an agreement with her. For healing to be possible for either Shelley or her father, the secrecy must be broken, no matter how much it hurts. If you are unsure how to proceed, get some telephone counseling from a child abuse hotline.”

Strom said her prayer for the book is that it might provide the tools needed by counselors to deal directly and effectively with women who come to them in times of immediate trauma. It’s a book to keep close at hand for reference when crises crash unexpectedly and inconveniently into our lives.

Clergy Malpractice by H. Newton Malony, Thomas L. Needham, and Samuel Southard Westminster, $12.95

It can’t happen to me! pastors think to themselves, but in a suit-prone nation, even ministers are no longer immune. Clergy Malpractice deals with the some times tricky interplay of legal, professional, and biblical realities.

What about, for example, the practice of disciplining an erring member? (:)r the liability incurred by a lay counseling program? This book provides expert guidance for pastors wanting to rninister in situations where the risks of error (and a lawsuit) are great. The contributors speak from a spectrum of pastoral insight and legal expertise.

Appendices round out this resource with a code for the practice of ministry, a list of resources on legal issues iri pastoral practice, and addresses of companies that offer malpractice and liability coverage.

Getting the Word Out by Theodore Baehr Harper & Row, $14.95

Not every pastor’s voice will grace radio or TV airwaves. But whether the pastor wants to launch into broadcast media or settle for a monthly newsletter, religious communications executive Theodore Baehr has a book full of ideas for spreading the Good News.

For radio or television outreach, Baehr walks through each step-raising funds, deciding on format, determining audience. But he also provides a process to determine the advisability of other, less costly, media. Chapters on public speaking and newsletter editing are helpful here.

This book is written by a communications expert with ready techniques and solid theory.

Strategies for Growing Your Church by C. Wayne Zunkel Cook, $12.95

Solid church growth does not come cheaply or automatically, Wayne Zunkel believes. “It demands our minds, our creative energies, our passion, our hearts.”

Growing in faith and members also requires careful attention to patterns and principles that create the climate for growth. Zunkel draws on pastoral experience and church growth training to discuss such vital ingredients as visionary goal setting and community outreach. He explores ways to multiply small groups and train members to share their faith. He offers chapters on starting a satellite congregation on a shoestring and joining in partnership with neighborhood ethnic fellowships.

To help a pastor teach these concepts, included are plans for twelve one-hour class sessions, work sheets, and transparency masters for lively visual aids.

Innovative Approaches to Counseling by Gary R. Collins Word, $10.95

This book grows out of a counselor’s profound discovery: Significant counseling can and does take place in church foyers, hospital rooms, even street corners. Collins uses his clinical expertise to explore ways to expand counseling opportunities beyond the walls of the pastoral counselor’s office.

Collins looks, for example, at preventive counseling that heads off tensions before they become crises. He explores single-session counseling strategies that quickly identify issues and begin problem-solving processes. Collins also advises on the possibilities- and pitfalls-of training lay counselors.

The settings for such innovative pastoral care are diverse. Collins reflects, “Christ met people where they were- in the streets, in their homes, at their places of worship, near their bedsides.” This book will help the counselor, pastoral or lay, find ways to care in similarly diverse circumstances.

Preparing Your Church for Ministry to Alcoholics and Their Families by Thomas Hamilton Cairns Charles C. Thomas, $16.95

Many congregations can’t miss noticing the needs of their alcoholic families. They want to help but often lack know-how. This book can help build a bridge between the millions who suffer from alcoholism and the untapped potential of churches ready to help.

Whether an annual series of workshops for parents and children of alcoholics or a church-sponsored group patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous, opportunities are there, as the suggestions in this book attest. The author lists signs to alert pastors to the possibility of closet alcoholism, and outlines fruitful strategies for beginning interventions. One also finds a list of books and institutions that can help.

Forced Termination by Brooks Faulkner Broadman, $4.95

Conflict is like death and taxes: inevitable, even in the church. Brooks Faulkner has found ample evidence for that assertion through leading workshops for pastors recuperating from a firing or forced resignation.

As complex as the underlying causes usually are, this book helps clarify how and why such terminations happen. Faulkner suggests, for example, that “When a minister receives a minimum amount of feedback from church members who feel a maximum need to give feedback, it is hardly surprising that the eruption is just a matter of ‘when.’ ” Or, “It’s an American tradition. If you don’t win games, you fire the coach.” If the church isn’t growing, “it is easier to fire the coach than to turn the team around from within.”

One chapter outlines a redemptive possibility: a weekend “retraining” event designed to help pastor and parishioners communicate more deeply. Other chapters give advice to the pastor, and to the church retooling in the wake of resignation.

Pastoral Administration by David Luecke and Samuel Southard Word, $11.95

It’s ironic. Surveys show, say the authors, that while pastors give the most time to administration, they find it the least satisfying of all duties. This manual helps guide the pastor into administration that is an extension of, not an intrusion into, vital ministry.

Fuller Seminary professors Luecke and Southard begin by recognizing that some pastors are people oriented, more likely to resent “administrative busywork.” Others are more task oriented, inclined to worry that individual needs may block decisive action.

Whatever one’s inclination, they argue, once identified, it can be used effectively. Other sections focus on how administrators deal with conflict and keep lines of communication open.

-Reviewed by Timothy K. Jones Christ Our Peace Church of the Brethren The Woodlands, Texas

He who is not angry at sin is not in love with virtue. -Tames Strachan

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

TO ILLUSTRATE

EASTER

Margaret Sangster Phippen wrote that in the mid-1950s her father, British minister W. E. Sangster, began to notice some uneasiness in his throat and a dragging in his leg. When he went to the doctor, he found he had an incurable disease that caused progressive muscular atrophy. His muscles would gradually waste away, his voice would fail, his throat would soon become unable to swallow.

Sangster threw himself into his work in British home missions, figuring he could still write and he would have even more time for prayer. “Let me stay in the struggle, Lord,” he pleaded. “I don’t mind if I can no longer be a general, but give me just a regiment to lead.” He wrote articles and books, and helped organize prayer cells throughout England. “I’m only in the kindergarten of suffering,” he told people who pitied him.

Gradually Sangster’s legs became useless. His voice went completely. But he could still hold a pen, shakily. On Easter morning, just a few weeks before he died, he wrote a letter to his daughter. In it, he said, “It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice with which to shout, ‘He is risen!’-but it would be still more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout.”

-Vernon Grounds

Denver, Colorado

SURRENDER

Bruce Larson, in Believe and Belong, tells how he helped people struggling to surrender their lives to Christ:

“For many years I worked in New York City and counseled at my office any number of people who were wrestling with this yes-or-no decision. Often I would suggest they walk with me from my office down to the RCA Building on Fifth Avenue. In the entrance of that building is a gigantic statue of Atlas, a beautifully proportioned man who, with all his muscles straining, is holding the world upon his shoulders. There he is, the most powerfully built man in the world, and he can barely stand up under this burden. ‘Now that’s one way to live,’ I would point out to my companion, ‘trying to carry the world on your shoulders. But now come across the street with me.’

“On the other side of Fifth Avenue is Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and there behind the high altar is a little shrine of the boy Jesus, perhaps eight or nine years old, and with no effort he is holding the world in one hand. My point was illustrated graphically.

“We have a choice. We can carry the world on our shoulders, or we can say, ‘I give up. Lord; here’s my life. I give you my world, the whole world.’ “

-Richard A. Hasler

Belpre, Ohio

VICTORY OVER SIN

Walking through a park, I passed a massive oak tree. A vine had grown up along its trunk. The vine started small-nothing to bother about. But over the years the vine had gotten taller and taller. By the time I passed, the entire lower half of the tree was covered by the vine’s creepers. The mass of tiny feelers was so thick that the tree looked as though it had innumerable birds’ nests in it.

Now the tree was in danger. This huge, solid oak was quite literally being taken over; the life was being squeezed from it.

But the gardeners in that park had seen the danger. They had taken a saw and severed the trunk of the vine-one neat cut across the middle. The tangled mass of the vine’s branches still clung to the oak, but the vine was now dead. That would gradually become plain as weeks passed and the creepers began to die and fall away from the tree.

How easy it is for sin, which begins so small and seemingly insignificant, to grow until it has a strangling grip on our lives.

And yet, Christ’s death has cut the power of sin. Yes, the “creepers” of sin still cling and have some effect. But sin’s power is severed by Christ, and gradually, sin’s grip dries up and falls away.

-J. Alistair Brown

Cults, Aberdeen, Scotland

VISION

About 350 years ago a shipload of travelers landed on the northeast coast of America. The first year they established a town site.

The next year they elected a town government.

The third year the town government planned to build a road five miles westward into the wilderness.

In the fourth year the people tried to impeach their town government because they thought it was a waste of public funds to build a road five miles westward into a wilderness. Who needed to go there anyway?

Here were people who had the vision to see three thousand miles across an ocean and overcome great hardships to get there. But in just a few years they were not able to see even five miles out of town. They had lost their pioneering vision.

With a clear vision of what we can become in Christ, no ocean of difficulty is too great. Without it, we rarely move beyond our current boundaries.

-Lynn Anderson

Abilene, Texas

SIN’S PERIL

Radio personality Paul Harvey tells the story of how an Eskimo kills a wolf. The account is grisly, yet it offers fresh insight into the consuming, self-destructive nature of sin.

“First, the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. Then he adds another layer of blood, and another, until the blade is completely concealed by frozen blood.

“Next, the hunter fixes his knife in the ground with the blade up. When a wolf follows his sensitive nose to the source of the scent and discovers the bait, he licks it, tasting the fresh frozen blood. He begins to lick faster, more and more vigorously, lapping the blade until the keen edge is bare. Feverishly now, harder and harder the wolf licks the blade in the arctic night. So great becomes his craving for blood that the wolf does not notice the razor-sharp sting of the naked blade on his own tongue, nor does he recognize the instant at which his insatiable thirst is being satisfied by his own warm blood. His carnivorous appetite just craves more-until the dawn finds him dead in the snow!”

It is a fearful thing that people can be “consumed by their own lusts.” Only God’s grace keeps us from the wolf’s fate.

-Chris T. Zwingelberg

Elgin, Illinois

LOVING ENEMIES

In Context, Martin Marty retells a parable from the Eye of the Needle newsletter:

“A holy man was engaged in his morning meditation under a tree whose roots stretched out over the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him.

“An observer came along and said to the holy man, ‘Don’t you know that’s a scorpion, and it’s in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?’

“To which the holy man replied, ‘That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?’ “

-Joseph B. Modica

Elmhurst, New York

COVENANT

In modern times we define a host of relations by contracts. These are usually for goods or services and for hard cash. The contract, formal or informal, helps to specify failure in these relationships.

The Lord did not establish a contract with Israel or with the church. He created a covenant. There is a difference.

Contracts are broken when one of the parties fails to keep his promise. If, let us say, a patient fails to keep an appointment with a doctor, the doctor is not obligated to call the house and inquire, “Where were you? Why didn’t you show up for your appointment?” He simply goes on to his next patient and has his appointment secretary take note of the patient who failed to keep the appointment. The patient may find it harder the next time to see the doctor. He broke an informal contract.

According to the Bible, however, the Lord asks: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” (Isa. 49:15).

The Bible indicates the covenant is more like the ties of a parent to her child than it is a doctor’s appointment. If a child fails to show up for dinner, the parent’s obligation, unlike the doctor’s, isn’t canceled. The parent finds out where the child is and makes sure he’s cared for. One member’s failure does not destroy the relationship. A covenant puts no conditions on faithfulness. It is the unconditional commitment to love and serve.

-Bruce Shelley

in Christian Theology in Plain Language

THE BODY

In March of 1981, President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr., and was hospitalized for several weeks. Although Reagan was the nation’s chief executive, his hospitalization had little impact on the nation’s activity. Government continued on.

On the other hand, suppose the garbage collectors in this country went on strike, as they did not long ago in Philadelphia. That city was not only in a literal mess, the pile of decaying trash quickly became a health hazard. A three-week nationwide strike would paralyze the country.

Who is more important-the President or a garbage collector?

In the body of Christ, seemingly insignificant ones are urgently needed. As Paul reminds us, “The head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Cor. 12:21-22).

-David Parsons

Paso Robles, California

What are the most effective illustrations you’ve come across? We want to share them with other pastors and teachers who need material that communicates with imagination and impact. For items used, leadership will pay $15. If the material has been published previously, please include the source.

Send contributions to:

To Illustrate . . .

LEADERSHIP

465 Gundersen Drive

Carol Stream, IL 60188

40 Winter LEADERSHIP/87

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

DANGEROUS DECISIONS

Terry Muck

Before tackling risky business, it helps to know what you’re prepared to handle.

Former world-champion surfer Phil Edwards once commented, “There is a need in all of us for controlled danger, for an activity that puts us on the edge of life.”

Most pastors find that edge-of-life risk, whether they want to or not, in the difficult decisions they’re forced to make. Instituting a new program, confronting a wayward member, hiring a staff person, removing an ineffective worker-these are high-stakes initiatives that may cost a minister not only sleep but a job.

LEADERSHIP set out to discover what happens when pastors make risky decisions, and after an extensive survey and scores of interviews with both the survivors and casualties, Terry Muck combined their hard-won insights into a book, When to Take a Risk: A Guide to Pastoral Decision Making (LEADERSHIPWORD, 1987). The following is an excerpt.

I. D. Thomas, in A Word from the Wise, tells the story of a Georgia farmer living in a dilapidated shack. He hadn’t planted anything, so nothing needed to be cultivated. The farmer just sat, ragged and barefoot, surrounded by the evidence of his laziness.

A stranger stopped for a drink of water and asked, “How’s your cotton doing?”

“Ain’t got none,” replied the farmer.

“Didn’t you plant any?”

“Nope. ‘Fraid of boll weevils.”

“Well,” continued the visitor, “how’s your corn?”

“Didn’t plant none. ‘Fraid there wasn’t gonna be no rain.”

“How are your potatoes?”

“Ain’t got none. Scared of potato bugs.”

“Really? What did you plant?”

“Nothin’,” was the reply. “I just played safe.”

The church leader who never takes risks quickly finds: No risks, no returns.

The Bible supplies many instances of this Law of Risklessness. Proverbs predicts the nonrewards the sluggard can expect. Jesus’ parable of the talents rests on the futility of trying to avoid all risk.

Similarly, our survey showed that the risks of not taking risks are the riskiest of all. Leaders who made few or no major decisions per year, regardless of the type-theological verdicts, institutional judgments, interpersonal choices-were the most likely to have been dismissed from a church at some time in their rninistry.

Conversely, leaders who were willing to take a stand-even when that seemed perilous-usually found secure footing. One pastor recounts a budget skirmish:

“The board had talked over the budget, and we had made the changes we thought necessary. When the budget was presented to the church for ratification, one board member, who had been through the whole budgeting process and voted for our budget, stood and said, ‘I don’t see why we have so much money going to outreach. We’ve never had money for local outreach before. I think we should pay the pianist instead.’

“I thought to myself, You’re a former pastor! You have to know better.

“I had to make a quick decision whether to say anything. I don’t like getting into an argument in front of the church, but I couldn’t stay silent, so I gave a few reasons for the outreach program. Then I said that paying the pianist was going inward instead of outward. This was the first time in our church’s history that we’d had some extra money to put into outreach, and I thought it important to do it.

“I didn’t know how the church would react. They had been through some hard times, and most had the idea it’s best not to rock the boat. In this case, I had one key element going for me. The pianist this board member wanted to pay was his wife. Even people who didn’t want to rock the boat could see the self-interest. His idea was voted down.

“Afterwards many people came to me and said, ‘I don’t think his idea was good. Thanks for taking a stand.’ Only one person objected.”

Taking a risk, paradoxically, may be less hazardous than doing nothing at all.

The Reluctant Risk Taker

This doesn’t mean risk taking is something one merely decides to do and does. Even those outgoing souls who thrive on the thrill of risk sometimes have to force themselves to act-and will readily admit to the continual need to sharpen their skills.

For some, though, risk taking seems next to impossible. They would sooner tame a lion than confront a parishioner. For them, it is not a question of wanting to take a risk; it is a question of going against the natural inclinations of their personalities to resist conflict at all costs.

Such resistance is not to be taken lightly-nor demeaned. The third-century Turks told a fable about a soft wax candle that was lamenting the fact

that the slightest touch injured it. The candle felt cheated by this apparent personality flaw. How the candle admired the rock-hard bricks, impervious to dents and nicks. Seeing that bricks started out as soft clay and only grew hard from heat, the candle had an idea. To acquire the brick’s hardness and durability, the candle leaped into the fire. It quickly melted and was consumed. The moral? It is useless to malign the “disadvantages” inherent in our personalities.

Psychologist Frank Farley, in a recent article in Psychology Today, identifies a cluster of characteristics that make up the “Type T personality,” high-profile people who are risk takers and daring adventurers. The roster of Type T’s includes such people as DNA researcher Sir Francis Crick and aviator Amelia Earhart. Type T’s prefer uncertainty to certainty, complexity to simplicity, and novelty to familiarity. They prefer to work in flexible structures and tend to be stifled by the nine-to-five mentality.

At the opposite end of the personality spectrum are Type t (little t) personalities, people who avoid risks. People at this end of the personality spectrum are rarely public figures. Farley thinks big T’s and little t’s are determined largely through genetics, though very early experiences may play a role.

Little t’s don’t relish decisions, even when the groundwork has been laid and the time appears right. Witness a little t pastor in action:

“Recently our board considered putting ceiling fans in the sanctuary. We talked about the advantages and the disadvantages. I was for the fans because they’re economical. They blow the warm air back down in the winter; in the summer they create a breeze, so we don’t have to run our air conditioner as often.

“Some on the board, however, didn’t want to risk destroying the appearance of the sanctuary. We have a beautiful cathedral ceiling, and who knows for sure what hanging fans would do to the look.

“After all the discussion, we took a vote. The tally was five votes for the fans, three opposed. A split vote is unusual for our board, but the people who voted against the fans accepted it calmly, saying in effect, ‘We voted against it, but that’s the decision of the board, and we’ll support the decision. Let’s get it done.’

“But I haven’t purchased the fans. My head tells me they will save money-the facts support that. My head also tells me the fans will be accepted by the congregation. But my gut tells me not to do it, that it’s not that necessary. I’ve thought about why I’m dragging my feet. If it had been an eight-to-nothing vote, I think I’d still feel uneasy. And I can’t quite say why. Something is just telling rne not to do it. It’s a very real feeling, though not quantifiable.

“Actually, I’m causing more trouble for myself.

Since the committee voted for the fans, I’m supposed to buy them. If I don’t, I have to explain why I haven’t and then get them to agree not to do it. But I just don’t feel right about it.”

This pastor simply does not have the temperament of a Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary War spy who, when about to be hanged, said he only regretted he had but one life to give for his country. Some church leaders (Hale himself probably would have been a minister had not the American Revolution broken out) have the bravado and gusto of a Hale. Others don’t, and struggle with what to do.

Although big T’s take to risk taking more easily, Farley notes that little t’s can develop the necessary skills. But they need to use the skills in ways congruent with their personalities. They are more likely to learn confrontational techniques through analytical descriptions-by the book, perhaps-than through actual experiences (which they may be too timid ever to initiate). People with little t temperaments can be taught to take risks; it simply is more difficult for them.

Terry Muck is editor of LEADERSHIP.

Even people with insecure personalities are risk takers of a sort, although they normally choose risks of a different category. Psychologist John Atkinson showed that two motivations drive people to take risks. One is the motivation to achieve; the other is the motivation to avoid failure. Those motivated to achieve generally take regular, consistent, intermediate risks. Those motivated to avoid failure go to one extreme or another. They either play it unusually safe, trying to avoid risk altogether, or they make extremely risky moves. The person who sinks his life savings in a speculative stock venture after a lifetime of passbook savings is typical of the avoidfailure personality.

Another reason some of us are reluctant risk takers is outlined by Nathan Kogan and Michael Wallach in their book, Risk Taking. They found that people with intuitive personalities tend to see the big picture better. They scan long-range implications of success or failure more quickly than others, and thus tend to take risks and force confrontations earlier. Those who have a more rationalistic orientation, on the other hand, tend to focus on the immediate and overlook the need for risk taking or confrontation until too late. Intuitively, Kogan and Wallach see the optimal personality to be a balance between the two.

A third polarity has been drawn between the perfectionistic personality and the nonperfectionistic personality. Perfectionists are generally motivated by the fear of making mistakes. They are unusually cautious and averse to risk taking. Those with the nonperfectionistic personality, on the other hand, are more willing to put things up for grabs. David D. Burns, in his book Feeling Good, says, “Show me a man who can’t stand to be wrong, and I’ll show you a man who’s afraid to take risks and who has given up the capacity for growth. I probably make three mistakes in every therapy session.”

None of the personality experts who study risk taking discounts the possibility of people predisposed to not taking chances learning to do so. All would agree that training and experience have a great deal to do with a person’s risk-taking skill. Those who trade futures on the Chicago Board of Trade, for example, learn to take risks; their living depends on it. Training for such a position involves gaining a good grasp of the statistical probabilities of various situations-and learning to analyze one’s intuitions.

Few church leaders are trained in risk taking, although decision-making courses are becoming more common in seminaries. Still, they are far down the priority pole in divinity training. Most pastors then, regardless of personality, develop risk-taking skills on the job. Here are some tactics to further pastoral skills and help determine what risks can and cannot be handled.

Tactics: Short-Range

Take a reading of the emotional climate of the risktaking situation. Focus particularly on your emotional situation by asking these questions:

Am I ever a little irrational? Is this one of those times? How do I know? What can I do about it?

Am I afraid? If yes, of what? If not, why not?

Am I ready to act? Will I ever be ready to act? What is holding me back?

It’s equally productive to determine the emotional involvement you have in this particular project. Helpful questions to consider:

What feeling am I trying to express by taking this risk?

Will people think better or worse of me if I succeed?

Do I care what opinion people have of me? What opinion of me would I like people to assume?

Convince yourself of the need to act. Sometimes action needs to be immediate. Make sure you consciously decide to act promptly or else have good, valid reasons for delay. Remember stories like the following:

“One of the elders, a pillar of the church who had been around seemingly forever, became angry over a church financial decision. The board decided to allocate some money to a project Bradley didn’t like. It was obvious to everyone as he left the board meeting that he was very upset. I knew I needed to talk to him immediately, but I believed it was usually good policy to let things cool a little. In this case it wasn’t. The next morning I had Bradley’s resignation as an elder on my desk.

“I prayed over that letter, then the next afternoon I went to his house. We spent the afternoon together, and by the end of the afternoon, although we still disagreed on the financial matter, he had withdrawn the resignation. We saw that in Christ we can have differences and still fellowship.

“I will be forever grateful to God for leading me to work it out quickly with Bradley. Over the next sixteen months, we became dear friends. We shared intimate times; he became a confidant for me.

“Bradley was a farmer. He had a small frontloading tractor, and one day he was carrying a load of stones in the front hopper. He went up a small grade-probably not more than two feet high- but it was enough to cause the load to shift, and it rolled that tractor over on top of him. He was killed instantly.

“I went out to the house. The medics had laid him under a blanket, still in the yard. His wife was in the kitchen. There was nothing I could do except put my arms around her and cry with her.

“Later I thought, What if I hadn’t talked with him when he wanted to resign? I would have regretted it forever. As it is, I can rejoice in the friendship God gave us.”

Tactics: Long-Range

Define your style. Ellen Siegelman, in her book, Personal Risk, has developed an informal self-test that measures risk-taking style. She defines three categories: anxious risk takers, balanced risk takers, and careless risk takers. According to her, knowing your style can help you prepare for a risk. For example, an anxious risk taker needs to push himself to make the decision. A careless risk taker, on the other hand, needs to slow down and do more research before taking action. (See Siegelman’s selfassessment exercise in box.)

Develop an assertion message. Michael Baer, a former pastor in Texas, suggests a technique he learned from Robert Bolton’s People Skills. Professional managers use a simple, brief formula to teach employees basic confrontational technique. It provides a frame work for saying what needs to be said without sending the wrong messages. Essentially it is made up of three parts:

“When you (insert the other person’s behavior), I feel (explain how it makes you feel) because (give a specific negative effect of their behavior).”

1. The formula gives a nonemotional description of the behavior you want to see changed. For example, you might say, “When you come late to board meetings . . .” Keep it specific and do not exaggerate by saying things like “When you are always late for board meetings . . .” Few people are always late.

2. State your feelings about the behavior. For example, you might say, “When you come late to the board meetings, I feel angry.” This lets the other person know you care.

3. Finally, point out the results of the undesirable behavior. You might say, “When you come late to the board meetings, I feel angry because it causes all of us to get home late.”

The formula is not a panacea but a beginning toward confronting others in situations with potential risk. By mastering the technique, some of your reluctance to confront may be dispelled.

The Personal Costs and Benefits

In our survey, pastors who said they made no tough decisions during a year were more likely to be fired than pastors who could identify such decisions. Pastors willing to face decisions last longer.

Yet longevity is not the only indicator of fallout from making or not making difficult decisions. There are other, less obvious factors. To identify those, the survey asked a series of questions about the toll risky decisions take on the leaders’ personal well-being, their ministry effectiveness, and their families.

The good news from the survey results is that when a tough decision is over, most of the pastors who stay (85 percent) and even most of those who leave (81 percent) see benefits from the process they have been through.

Surprisingly, tough decisions cost pastors who stayed more personal pain than those who were forced to leave. Seventy-five percent of the pastors who stayed after a tough decision said the process took a toll on their physical/mental/emotional health compared to only 63 percent of the pastors who were fired. The fired pastors did perceive the cost to their children to be more expensive. But even here the reported difference was small. Ministry decision making takes a toll on everyone in the pastor’s family, no matter what the outcome of the decision.

Ministerial effectiveness, as perceived by the pastor involved, always suffers. Both fired and nonfired pastors recognized that a church in pain cannot serve as well as a church in good health.

What Can I Personally Handle?

Several truths emerge: No one loves risky decisions. For some the fear of consequences is worse than others. Risks must be taken; confrontations must be made. There will be personal and ministry costs, as well as benefits.

Once these truths are accepted and weighed, it is perhaps helpful to go through one final checklist of questions to help determine Just what can I handle personally?

Will taking this risk make me satisfied if I am successful? How do I know? What else would satisfy me? Do I need to risk for that?

Do I allow myself to feel hurt, sad, angry, anxious, or joyous?

Am I aware of my moods and how they influence my actions? Do I recognize my feelings? Can I take a rejection in this case? If I am rejected, how will I act?

What are the limits to the amount of emotion I can show without adversely affecting the body of Christ?

The ultimate reason many of us are scared to make a necessary but risky decision is fear of the consequences. What will happen if we make the wrong decision? It’s helpful to consider the stories of fellow pastors who saw a Ask go bad-yet found healing and productive ministry on the other side. Many of those responding to the survey spoke poignantly about the hurt, pain, and later healing of a risk gone wrong, but none more so than a pastor’s wife whose husband had lost a battle with an elder, which forced them to leave their church:

“I felt a sense of betrayal, a sense that grew on me. After we announced our resignation, we continued

to serve from the end of August through December. I read negative feelings into a lot of what people did. If they didn’t say anything, I thought they were thinking bad thoughts about us. I became suspicious and withdrawn. It could have gotten pretty bad, but the Lord provided insight for me in a dream.

“One night I fell asleep crying out to God, and I dreamed of dried cornstalks in my garden. Ordinarily in the fall I cut those stalks into pieces. In my dream, the Lord gave me a choice: I could cut up the stalks and leave them on the ground, or I could till them into the soil, nourishing it for next year.

“I saw clearly that those cornstalks were like my anger. I could leave the pieces lying on the ground to pick up and throw at anyone who came near me. Or I could plow them under and use this experience to help me grow in the future. I learned that painful experiences could be something nourishing to me and others through me-if I let them. Or I could keep those pieces of pain and anger in my life and allow the resentment to remain. I remember making a deliberate choice that night: ‘Lord, I want this painful time to nourish my life, but you’re going to have to help me because I’m too angry to do it myself.’

“God has indeed helped that process. The pain was real, and I wouldn’t want to go through it again. But God does help make everything work together for good.”

WHAT KIND OF RISK TAKER ARE YOU?

ELLEN SIEGELMAN

***NOTE TO EDITOR***: Reprinted by permission from Personal Risk: Mastering Change in Love and Work by Ellen Siegelman (New York: Harper & Row, 1983).

***NOTE TO EDITOR***: A scoring tally from Pg. 51 needs to be included (3 columns)

Although people are rarely consistent in their decisionmaking styles, most of tlS can detect some regularity in the way we make important decisions. Think of the important life decisions you have made (e.g., marriage, major moves, career changes), and then answer the following questions. You may not answer some with complete confidence, but give the answers that come closest to what you believe. This is not a test; it is just a device to help you understand your own decision-making behavior. For each dimension, choose the one response out of three that best describes how you usually respond in making a big decision.

I. Attitude toward change

1. I prefer security to novelty.

2. I value security and novelty about equally.

3. I prefer novelty to security.

II. Search strategy

1. I make a quick overall survey of possibilities hoping that something will hit me.

2. I keep producing and then going over my possible choices.

3. I think of a number of alternatives but stop after a reasonable search.

III. Attention to feelings

1. I decide among alternatives not only by reasoning but by taking my feelings into account.

2. I make major decisions almost exclusively on the basis of my feelings.

3. I mistrust my feelings as a basis for a major decision; I try to use reason almost entirely.

IV. Decision rule

1. I believe there is one right decision, and it is my job to dig it out.

2. I believe there is no one right decision; I just need to find one that is good enough.

3. I believe in choosing the first decision that really grabs me.

V. Sense of consequence

1. I don’t try to predict the consequences of my decision because I expect things will work out OK.

2. I do think about consequences, tending to focus on the bad things that might happen.

3. I try to think of both the good and bad consequences of my decision.

VI. Predecision emotions

1. In thinking about taking a risky step, I feel mostly anxiety.

2. In thinking about taking a risky step, I feel a mixture of anxiety and excitement.

3. In thinking about taking a risky step, I feel mostly excitement.

VII. Time expended in decision-making process

1. I usually make decisions-even big ones-quickly.

2. I usually take a fairly long time to make big decisions.

3. I usually take a very long time to make big decisions.

VIII. Attitude toward new information

1. I will consider new information even after I’ve arrived at a probable decision.

2. I’m not interested in getting new information after I’ve made a probable decision.

3. I feel compelled either to seek out new information or to shut it out after I’ve made a probable decision.

IX. Postdecision strategy

1. Once I’ve made a decision, I usually don’t think about it before launching into action.

2. Once I’ve made a decision, I often experience serious doubts and may change my mind.

3. Once I’ve made a decision, I usually rally behind it after rechecking.

X. Evaluating the outcome of a risky decision

1. After I have acted on the decision, I tend to worry or regret that I didn’t do something else.

2. After I have acted on the decision, I tend to put it out of my mind.

3. After I have acted on the decision, I tend to think about what I have learned from it.

Scoring: Tally the number of A responses, B responses, and C responses using the following guide to see which decision-making style appears most often.

***NOTE TO EDITOR***: Place scoring tally here.

Style A: The anxious risk taker makes big decisions with great effort, is afraid of making mistakes, takes lots of time, and tends to ruminate and worry about the outcome.

Style B: The balanced risk taker makes big decisions fairly slowly, is more concerned with reasonably good outcomes than with fear of failure or the need to make a good decision, and tends to plan and to review but without worrying too much.

Style C: The careless risk taker makes big decisions quickly with little experience of mixed feelings, may feel “inappropriately optimistic,” and spends little time in introspection or evaluation.

Most people evidence a mixture of styles. The average number of A responses is 6.7. The average number of B responses is 2.3. And the average number of C responses is 1.0. The goal is to be balanced. -Ellen Siegelman

New York, New York

Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

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