Pastors

Turning Gray

Rodney Clapp

In some cultures, old age has been respected. The wisdom of the ancient Greeks was seen to reside especially in older people. The Hebrews were told to “rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly” (Lev. 19:32). Modem Japan looks on its elderly with reverence.

But in the United States, Ronald Reagan’s age was considered a political liability. His campaign officers made certain Reagan was seen riding horses and chopping wood. The message was clear: Mr. Reagan may be approaching seventy, but he’s not really old. In our country, old is synonymous with useless, rundown, obsolete. Presidential candidates aren’t the only ones affected by this attitude.

If some things get better with age, pastors aren’t among them, according to many churches. In fact, it is an “unwritten law of the ministry,” says one observer, that beyond fifty it is increasingly difficult to gain a church appointment. One minister, age fifty-one, says, “Churches may not come right out and say they want a younger man-that’s not ‘spiritual.’ But they do.”

Some churches, in fact, will admit it. “Our search committee is definitely looking for a younger pastor,” says one member of a North Carolina church. Her church’s attendance has been falling since 1976. “Our past two pastors were older men,” she explains, “getting ready to retire.”

Ben Lacy Rose, former General Assembly moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and a veteran pastor, says the problem is nothing new. Now retired, Rose recalls writing an article on the anti-old bias when he was a young pastor. The reasons for the attitudes, he says, are much the same now as then.

Some protection exists in denominations such as the United Methodist Church, where ministers are assigned parishes and so are “guaranteed” an appointment regardless of age. But what of pastors in other denominations and in independent churches? What are the biases, real or imagined, just or unjust, that they face? And, short of planning to retire fifteen years early, what can pastors do to prepare for the later years of ministry?

Roadblocks for older pastors

By age fifty-five, a pastor, like all mortals, is showing a few wrinkles, perhaps some gray hair or baldness. However enthusiastic and vigorous he actually is, his looks are no longer those of a young man. Charles Wickman, interim pastor at the Addison (Illinois) Bible Church, recently completed a dissertation at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School on those who had left the ministry in frustration. He became aware of obstacles facing aging pastors. “Churches put a higher premium on the pastor being a parish promoter than the pastor himself usually does,” Wickman says.

In other words, it’s important to churches how their pastor will be perceived at the Lions Club or a football game. In society’s eyes, the older pastor is at a disadvantage. He is not considered to have the fire and dynamism of a younger man. As a Methodist minister from Kentucky puts it, the ideal pastor is about thirty-five, married, and with children-old enough to be experienced but young enough, it is assumed, to be energetic.

Churches do not simply want pastors who look energetic; they really want energy. According to Robert Tenery, pastor of the Burkmont Baptist Church in Morganton, North Carolina, ministers are expected to sit with surgical patients, make social and evangelistic calls, attend basketball games with the young people, and preach great sermons every Sunday without needing time to study. It is often assumed an older pastor won’t be able to do everything.

Churches also assume older pastors have more difficulty attracting the young. “Thriving churches are perceived to have strong contingents of young, vigorous, ambitious people,” Rose says. “It is considered especially important to attract those who are newly married, establishing families, and concerned for the future.” The pastor is expected to be “looking out for tomorrow,” as one church board member put it. The pastor in his late fifties is feared to be “coasting” till retirement, overly cautious, afraid to take risks such as going into debt to construct a new building. Congregations may believe older pastors are bound to stop striving and rely on past achievements. Or a church may want a minister who will stay ten years-past the point of an older pastor’s impending retirement.

Finally, some churches hesitate to call an older pastor because they assume he is too well established to move. Wayte Fulton, a retired minister now serving as interim pastor at Hope Presbyterian Church in Winter Haven, Florida, says small churches are often afraid they can’t match an experienced pastor’s salary. Or they surmise an older pastor would be unwilling to move, and the invitation is never extended.

Advantages of an older pastor

To say churches are biased against older pastors is a half-truth. Not all older pastors are discouraged, and not all churches look for youth.

Youth may offer vigor, but experience appears to develop its own kind of muscle. Charles Wickman, at fifty-one, is now in an interim pastorate. But a California church is waiting for him when he finishes his graduate work. That church, Wickman says, recognizes older pastors are likely to handle conflict better than their younger counterparts.

“Younger pastors feel more threatened when the kingdom they’re building is attacked.” Older pastors have seen their kingdoms rise, crumble, fall, and (maybe) rise again. They’re not as likely to feel personally attacked when the board challenges one of their ideas.

Experience may also bring a deeper appreciation of the laity. It also teaches not to jump to conclusions during conflict. A minister’s experience may help in the preparation of sermons as well. “A fifty-five-year-old ought to prepare a good sermon in half or a third the time it took when he was thirty-five,” says veteran preacher Wayte Fulton.

Older pastors may be wiser in economizing their energy-better able to judge when a hospital visit is necessary and when one more visit would be a nuisance, or when counseling has accomplished all it can and when more sessions would be wasted time and breath.

It may be true that older pastors lose some physical stamina, but as one board member says, “It is replaced by a more precious commodity: wisdom in the Lord.” His pastor has special credibility when speaking on matters of the family, he adds. At fifty-seven, the man and his wife have successfully raised a Christian family. Their children are the living results, and they lend a special authority to their father’s preached philosophy and theology of family.

This is true not only of child raising but of spirituality in general. Spirituality can ultimately be learned from no book or class: it must be lived, learned in daily experience. Churches realize-even if they occasionally have to be reminded in a youth-crazed culture-that an older person’s long spiritual pilgrimage counts for something.

As is widely known, the average age in America is creeping upward. This will probably deepen society’s-and churches’-appreciation of the advantages of age. But in the meantime, older pastors still face many obstacles. Ministers who do nothing to prepare for their later years of ministry are often stuck with a host of problems, many of which cannot be changed. But those who look ahead say the later years are among the best. Preparation is the key.

Preparing for ministry’s later years

Preparing is not done suddenly, but gradually and steadily. “If you don’t make a valuable contribution where you are now, no one will want you later,” observes one pastor. Working with devotion and intelligence, at whatever age, lays a solid foundation for later years.

One of the liabilities older pastors have is that they are seen as “out of date” or “behind the times.” With many older ministers, of course, that is not the case, and it doesn’t have to be with any. “Keep on top of what’s happening,” says Wickman. The key is to read. Sometimes pastors’ libraries are a dead giveaway of their age: all the books are twenty years old.

There are also a number of common sense measures. Health will be an important job consideration in later years, so obviously the pastor should stay in shape physically.

“Pace yourself,” one pastor advises. “Commit a pleasure. Don’t take yourself too seriously.” Since middle age can bring burnout to persons in any profession, understand the dynamics of burnout ahead of time. “Midlife changes can bring tiredness, hopelessness, and restlessness. Too many pastors settle into a rut and take sabbaticals on the job,” he says. Anticipating these problems and recognizing them as common can help the pastor keep them in perspective and overcome them.

If a pastor is seriously dissatisfied with the ministry when younger, he should consider other occupations while there’s time to retool.

Even pastors who aren’t planning to break with the ministry should develop other interests. “If an older pastor can’t find a church for a while, he may be able to lean on other interests that have helped him develop skills. A person needs two or three interests,” said Cary Weisiger, seventy-four, who still serves interim pastorates at United Presbyterian churches in California.

Weisiger, Rose, Fulton, and others also recommend older pastors consider smaller churches for their later ministries. Since children will be through college, salary needs are not as acute. The small church may allow the minister not to overextend but still to serve a vital function.

Finally, recognize that you can’t ease off and “coast” to retirement. Fulton suggests deciding what retirement age will be, then sticking to it. “Work the same number of hours you always did. Retirement is fine as long as you don’t retire before you get there. Keep working. Then when you get up to go, go.”

The mature years, according to Paul Tournier, can be ruined either by self-satisfaction or rancor and disillusionment. The minister who has had a solid earlier ministry, has prepared for the later ministry, and resists complacency can look forward to a later ministry that is just that-a true ministry.

-Rodney Clapp

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Every Church Needs a Bag Lady

Dennis Sawyer

She usually arrived midway through the morning worship service, attired in three or four dresses, an apron, and a coat. Her red wig, often off to one side, was usually secured by a tight-fitting knit cap, even in summer. She resembled an older, slightly frail Munchkin from the mythical land of Oz.

Stealthily, she would seek a seat near the back of the sanctuary. As she did, coats and Bibles would seem to sprout alongside the other worshipers, occupying any vacant seats. Undaunted, Katie would keep looking, a large shopping bag dangling from each hand, until she found a row with an empty seat, usually near the front or beside a first-time visitor. Setting her two bags in the aisle, she would kneel, cross herself, then pick up her bags, rustle past the other parishioners, and nest.

During the remainder of the service, she would gesture eccentrically and mumble comments either to her neighbors or toward the pastor. At the conclusion of the service, she would strike a pose of reverent prayer before leaving quickly and quietly.

Then came the Sunday with a special program and Communion. The church was nearly full. Katie, in her familiar attire but with one addition-combat boots-could find only an aisle seat in the second row from the front. She proceeded with her usual gesturing, rustling, and mumbling until the Communion service began. At that time, she became very reverent and still.

The deacon serving her row extended the tray of bread pieces past Katie to the next person, from whence it proceeded toward the other end. Katie looked around, bewildered, then shrugged, reached into one of her shopping bags, and pulled out a loaf of bread. She offered some to her neighbors (who politely refused), took a whole slice for herself, and placed the remaining loaf back in her bag. She held her bread until all partook together.

I was the new pastor, trying valiantly to learn the names and faces of my new inner-city congregation. Katie hadn’t been at the top of my list; but in those few moments during Communion, she worked her way into my heart forever. The moment she offered her bread to others, I knew this church and its pastor had a lot to learn from Katie. That morning, I served her the Communion cup personally, and at the last amen I dashed to the back of the church to greet her officially before she left.

The following Sunday, it was obvious Katie was distraught. Throughout the service, she flashed some official-looking envelopes toward the pulpit with her right hand, while slapping her forehead with the back of her left hand, feigning a dead faint. After the benediction, I went to find out what was wrong-but before getting to her, Evelyn, a frequent resident of the nearby mental-health facility, had pulled off Katie’s wig and told her we should not try and hide things in the house of God.

It took a long time to calm Katie down, and most of the congregation avoided both of us that morning. Katie showed me her papers from the welfare department. They stated she owed six thousand dollars, and the authorities were terminating her financial assistance and proceeding with litigation.

It was difficult to gather all the facts, because Katie’s verbal skills were severely impaired. We talked again that week, and I could see this was going to be a time-consuming process. But what did those Scriptures mean that said, “Comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men” (1 Thess. 5:14)? What about Jesus’ warning to those who ignore the stranger, the hungry, the sick? And then there was “Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Heb. 13:1-2).

Granted, some strangers are stranger than others-but how could I brush off Katie? How could our church “comfort the feebleminded” unless we had some of them in our midst, shopping bags and all? As pastor, I would have to set an example.

I spent whole days arduously piecing together her life story and the sequence of circumstances that had put her at odds with the government. I spent days of equal arduousness trying to communicate with the automatons at the Department of Human Services.

Katie was born in Germany on Good Friday, 1905. When asked her exact birth date, she says, “It changes every year.” That is why her birth date is listed differently on almost every document. The date she gave depended upon the year they asked.

Katie was born hard of hearing and tongue-tied-literally. No one discovered her tongue problem until she was fourteen years old. Her mother then took sewing scissors and snipped the under part of her tongue, freeing it for the first time in her life. Katie’s family had come to America when she was three, and she had lived with her parents until her mother passed away in 1938. She spent the next thirty-three years in institutions for the retarded. Then someone discovered her hearing loss, fitted her with a hearing aid, realized she wasn’t retarded, and released her. She had been on her own for twelve years.

Katie is a very wise woman with severe language impairment and social-skill deprivation. However, she was able to secure a job stuffing and sealing envelopes. Over a period of years she had accumulated seven thousand dollars. When the welfare department found out about her “funeral fund,” they put in their claim for “overpayment” and severed all benefits.

It took nearly a year to get Katie’s finances in order. During that period, our family adopted her. For the past two years she has joined us for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Often on Sunday evenings, we have driven her to her residence at a local senior center for indigents. It was on one of these rides home that Katie began to warble the old gospel song “I’ll Live for Him Who Died for Me.”

I asked Katie where she had learned the song. Katie replied, “I just now remembered it. My mother used to sing it to me.” We used the message of the song to introduce Katie to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Later, I interviewed Katie from the pulpit. With help she shared her life story and her experience of salvation in Christ. She concluded by saying, “I can talk a lot better now because you people talk to me. No one ever talked to me before.” Immediately, by acclamation, Katie was adopted by the entire congregation.

Now when Katie comes to church, people clear a nearby seat, hoping she will choose to sit near them. Members often offer to bring her to church or take her home. She is regularly invited to homes and restaurants. With the help of the congregation she has been moved into her own apartment, no longer bothered by senile men in boxer shorts.

Katie dresses more appropriately now and often brings only one shopping bag. On special occasions, there’s just a purse. She isn’t simply a recipient of our Christian benevolence. She is an integral part of the body of Christ. Didn’t Paul write, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Cor. 12:27)?

One Sunday morning the elders were called forward to lay hands on a very ill infant. Katie solemnly rose to join the elders as they prayed. Her simplicity and sincerity brought tears to many eyes.

The baby recovered rapidly. As a congregation we discovered that when Katie prays, God answers.

We cried again during a fellowship hour when, after singing “Happy Birthday” to her, she saw the cake with lighted candles and said, “My mother made me one of those once.”

Katie has taken a lot of our time, but she has touched our lives, made us think, and made us laugh. Her involvement isn’t always appropriate; however, she has an uncanny ability to discern people’s true motives and spirit. She needs to learn not to point, make faces, and say, “He’s a bad man; I don’t like him; he’s going to hell. He doesn’t have Jesus in his heart.” We are still teaching her to wait her turn and not interrupt the conversations of others. Discipline is part of love, and Katie has had to be corrected often. Through our acceptance and tolerance we have earned the right to correct her in love. Using the words appropriate and inappropriate, we have taught her to wear one dress at a time, make and keep appointments, and listen quietly during church.

Yet any time I want to chuckle, I think of how Katie often slips into Chicago City Hall courtrooms during the lunch recess, sits in the judge’s chair, and pretends to be a magistrate. Or how, when approached on the street for money, she makes funny faces and noises- … la David drooling at the gates of Gath-so people will think she is crazy and leave her alone. I even wonder if our church is getting to be like David’s ragtag army of “all those who were in distress or in debt or discontented” (1 Sam. 22:2).

Yet God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, so that no one may boast before him. God chose Katie. He chose you and me. The more we realize our lack of qualification, the more we admit that none of us deserves esteem in the kingdom, the more we are freed to love, to give, to share.

And that is why I say, not entirely in jest: Every church needs a bag lady.

-Dennis Sawyer

Philadelphia Church

Chicago, Illinois

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Why Join a Church?

Ben Patterson

A defense of an old-fashioned idea.

He was a Christian, a pillar in the community, a world-renowned physician, an exemplary family man, and he was elected to serve a three-year term as elder. I was just out of seminary at the time, a new member of the church staff. One evening my wife and I were invited to his home for dinner. During our time together, he confided to me that he really didn't have time to attend the elder meetings, but he thought that was excusable, given his demanding schedule. What was important, he said, was that his name be connected with the church.

I admit that sounds awfully conceited of him, but at the time it didn't seem so. He was such a gentleman.

He finished his three years attending less than a fourth of the meetings. A new slate of elders was elected. One evening about three months after his term had ended, this gentleman showed up at an elder meeting. Everyone was glad to see him but a little puzzled over why he was there. Finally, someone asked him.

His brow furrowed as he said, "This is the night we meet, isn't it?" The others in the room began fumbling for a discreet way to inform him that his term had expired.

When I heard about the incident, I had a good laugh. Then I got mad. I had bought his line about the main thing being the association of his good name with the church. Now it came to me that his attitude denied just about everything the New Testament teaches not only about eldership but also about the body of Christ. It was then and there I decided that if I ever got a shot at being a senior pastor myself, I would quickly put some teeth back into being an elder as well as a church member.

I have had my chance these nine years and have worked hard at it. I am now more convinced than ever that congregations should make membership a very serious thing for every Christian.

Against the Tide

I know what I am trying to do flies in the face of a lot of current practice. Where I live, the fastest growing churches minimize the idea of membership. It is seen as an outdated formalism. What matters, they say, is not that you are a "card-carrying" member of the institution but that you actually participate in the fellowship. They have a point. But it is a half-truth, and as the British diplomat remarked in Lawrence of Arabia, an outright lie is better than a half-truth. In an outright lie you know where the truth went, but in a half-truth it is easy to forget.

Why emphasize church membership? Because every Christian is a member of the church, that's why. "The same act which sets us in Christ," writes P. T. Forsyth, "sets us also in the society of Christ." When a Christian joins a particular congregation, he or she merely bears witness to what is already the case spiritually.

The rejoinder to what I have just said is "If we all are already spiritually joined together in the body of Christ, what's the big deal about membership in a local congregation? What can a membership card add?" Those rhetorical questions are usually followed by a lot of disparaging talk about the organized church as opposed to the true, "spiritual" church.

That kind of response is proof that the Gnostic heresy is still alive and well. The Gnostics, you will remember, set the spiritual against the material and said only the spiritual mattered. For them, the material world, with its concreteness and particularity, was a hindrance to realizing the spiritual, and the more they could avoid it or minimize it, the more spiritual they would be. The Incarnation only appeared to have happened, they said. God could not have inhabited a physical body in space and time, for space and time were evil.

By the same token, it is the Gnostic heresy that lies behind the disparagement of the concrete, particular, organized church. For just as God once stooped to take on concrete, particular, organized flesh, so his Spirit continues to stoop to inhabit his church. The church is to be just as visible and concrete as its Lord was during his public ministry. As a matter of fact, it is through the church that our Lord's public ministry is carried out in the world today.

In the church, as in the Incarnation, there is no dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical. Professor Dale Bruner has argued in a presentation to a group of collegians, "The alternatives are not 'spiritual or organizational,' they are 'spiritual organization' or 'unspiritual chaos.' The church of the New Testament is not a spiritualized, ghostly community of believers without form or organization; it is the organized church of Corinth, Ephesus, and Philippi with real, concrete governments and leaders and elders and institutions—and this is the will of God. The historical Christian church is not invisible. The Christian church is precisely as visible as the Christian man."

Paul's metaphor of the church as the bride of Christ best illustrates this. Can you imagine a man saying to his fiancée, "Dear, we are spiritually one. Please, let's not spoil it by having a public ceremony and moving under the same roof and making love and opening a joint checking account and getting all organized to live together. Let's keep this lovely thing between us spiritual." The fiancée might well doubt the future of their relationship.

In the New Testament, the reality of the spiritual is measured by the degree to which it becomes physical. To join a particular part of the body of Christ is not to bring something into existence that was not there before. It is simply to make actual what is spiritual, to prove that the spiritual is real.

It is true that a name on a membership roll makes for nothing in itself. But how seriously can we take a person who says he wants to be part of the church but doesn't want to sign his name publicly? It is true the organized church is filled with foibles. But are those who shun a commitment free of foibles? To paraphrase a line from Chesterton, one gets the impression they believe in the One Holy, Apostolic, and Absolutely Pure Church of Christ, of which they regret to say they are the only members. Yes, the church is blemished. But Christ still loves her, says Paul, not because she is without blemish but that he might one day present her so. He sees the church, warts and all, and knows he must first love that which he would change. The church on the corner is not the church it should be, but it is the church that will one day be all God has called it to be. To go public and join it is the first step in loving it as Jesus does.

Getting Practical

So we emphasize membership. The church I pastor, like many others, fleshes out its conviction by requiring ten weeks of membership classes for everyone who would join the church. This underlines the importance of one's decision.

We stress at the outset that coming to the classes is not a commitment to join but to take the necessary steps for making a responsible decision whether to join. Of course, most people who sign up for ten weeks of two-hour classes are already fairly sure they want to join. But not all actually do. That pleases me—not that they decide against joining, but that they take the issue of church membership seriously enough to be honest about it.

I repeat, the reason for the classes and the membership covenant flow directly out of New Testament teaching on the nature and purpose of the church. But there are other reasons. One is historical precedent. We know that in the early centuries it was the church's practice to require a year of instruction before baptism. In many parts of the world, a lovely custom was observed at the end. The catechumens were baptized the night before Easter, symbolizing their identification with Christ in his death.

Until the period of instruction and baptism was complete, these men and women were dismissed from the worship service just prior to the Eucharist. Even though they had professed faith in Jesus Christ, they were not allowed to partake of the Sacrament until they had been made ready for responsible church membership! Our ten weeks of classes sound like a big deal to many. To a pastor in the second or third century, we would look positively superficial. (Which we are, but that is another article.)

Another reason for the classes is prophetic. By emphasizing church membership this way, we swim against the current of American culture. Membership flies in the face of the outrage of church shopping and consumer religion in which people move from church to church and preacher to preacher on the basis of private shopping lists. The typical American Christian increasingly chooses a church not because of the lordship of Christ and his call for disciples but because of how shrewdly a given church has marketed its services. It is the almighty individual and his or her needs that stands in the center of this appalling state of affairs.

In Flannery O'Connor's apocalyptic novel Wise Blood, Hazel Motes meets a semiliterate street preacher named Onnie Jay Holy. He is preaching "The Holy Church of Christ without Christ." Why join his church? Onnie Jay gives three good reasons.

Number one: "You can rely on it that it's nothing foreign connected with it. You don't have to believe nothing you don't understand and approve of. If you don't understand it, it ain't true, and that's all there is to it. No jokers in the deck, friends."

Number two: "It's based on the Bible. Yes sir! It's based on your own personal interpitation of the Bible, friends. You can sit at home and interpit your own Bible however you feel in your heart it ought to be interpitted."

Number three: "This church is up-to-date! When you're in this church you know that there's nothing or nobody ahead of you, nobody knows nothing you don't know, all the cards are on the table, friends, and that's a fack!"

No one is better than O'Connor in using the grotesque and bizarre to make a point. Unfortunately, a character she meant to be grotesque turns out to be not that far from reality in the modern church. Our membership classes may be just spitting into a gale, but they are attempting to challenge Onnie Jay Holy's "Church of Christ without Christ."

Membership classes also help build a stronger congregation. It is a proven fact that the manner in which a person enters a church (or any organization) greatly influences the way he or she will function. Men and women take their allegiance to Jesus Christ and his church seriously because, in part, they took the time to be instructed in what church membership means. They also form friendships with other classmates that last years after the classes are over. The bigger a church gets, the more important those contacts become.

I also get to know new members in a way I could not if there were no classes and I were not teaching them. Teaching is a chore—I've taught them for the last nine years—but it is more than rewarded by the relationships I am able to form with members of my flock.

There is much we do not do that we should. Our most glaring fault in Irvine is that we do not do enough to help these new members into the mainstream of the church. When the classes are over, they are more excited than they will probably ever be about the church. Too often they become disappointed when we fail to help them find their place. But that in no way erases the value of the classes. We must simply meet the expectations we create.

The goal of us all is that Christ be able to present the church holy and without blemish one day. We cannot do that ourselves. It is his work. Whatever we do to aid him, we are called to love the church as he does and to find concrete ways to put that love into practice.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

C.E. Doesn’t Run on Autopilot

John R. Cionca

In Christian education, pastors serve a dual role — ministering directly and managing others who minister.

After eleven years in Christian education, I became a senior pastor. Previously I had been a specialist-holding C.E. positions in three churches, completing three graduate degrees in education, and serving several Christian and public-school organizations as a consultant. Suddenly I was a general practitioner in a congregation of 250.

As a minister of Christian education, I had always wondered why senior pastors showed so little interest in C.E. Oh, they definitely wanted a strong Sunday school, but when it came to direct involvement, they seemed conspicuously absent.

Now after five years on the other side of the fence, I’ve gained a new perspective. The pastor is interested in Christian education … and missions and counseling and shepherding and stewardship and preaching and . . .

I am still convinced education is a top priority. After all, with Americans now watching an average of six hours of television a day (and in the crucial value-forming years between six and eighteen, the average young person sees 35,000 commercials), I ask myself, How much exposure to the Word do my people receive? Looking at many of their lives, I think of the Lord’s words to Hosea: “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” My sixty minutes of weekly preaching hardly begin to offset the molding capabilities of the world. Any pastor who thinks he can adequately teach and train disciples alone is likely suffering from a malfunctioning diode.

I can’t put Christian education on autopilot and expect it to have significant impact. Even though as senior pastor I have many more responsibilities, I cannot neglect the vital ministry of education.

Resident Chief of Staff

I have changed the way I see my role in the church. I am not a specialist, working with intricate systems and programs. I am not even a general practitioner treating all the patients myself. I am more like a hospital chief of staff. We pastors are the ones primarily responsible for the welfare of those who come to our institution. We are involved in both preventive and curative medicine. We proclaim what people should and should not do if they want to remain healthy. We also meet regularly with the hurting, sometimes even taking them through a spiritual chemotherapy in an attempt to arrest growing cancers.

Important as my function might be, however, I am not the only doctor in the house. The size of the task is beyond any one doctor, or minister. A well-run hospital has a medical staff with expertise in specialized areas. God has not called me, a pastor, to be the only healer; the Great Physician has called me to be a chief of staff.

Our ministry is multiplied as we recognize and develop the team of gifted people the Lord has given to every church who can teach God’s Word.

We are all aware that 2 Timothy 2:2 instructs us to pass our knowledge on to others who are faithful and will join us in the teaching process. We have preached from Ephesians 4:11-12 that our task is to prepare God’s people for the work of ministry. In 1 Corinthians 12 we have observed even that messed-up church had all the spiritual gifts, implying that each local church has everything it needs for building itself spiritually.

Yet because of deadlines, pressures, and expectations, I was finding over 90 percent of my weekly hours given to “things I do” rather than encouraging and helping others who share the ministry of our church.

My sermons, no matter how well developed and delivered, are just not enough. Little Johnny needs the memorization of the AWANA program; Mary needs the encouragement of the senior high youth leader; Mr. Clark needs the spiritual discoveries he makes at the home Bible study. If we want to maximize learning, we must concentrate on what our lay people are doing.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned since trying to become the resident chief of staff.

Look for the Right People

What type of person makes a good teacher? I once heard someone say the best worker is always FAT- Faithful, Available, and Teachable. I now agree.

Working with people, I have become less impressed with background and credentials, and more impressed with attitudes and performance.

He may be a pipefitter or an executive, she may be a lawyer or a homemaker, but the faithful, available, teachable person is able to minister in a deep way to students.

Sometimes we are overly concerned that teachers have a good Bible knowledge before teaching. A friend of mine became a Christian when he was twenty-six years old. Immediately he was encouraged by a pastor to get involved teaching Sunday school. The man began to teach a class of children, and each week he diligently studied the printed teacher’s guide to be adequately prepared for his kids. It was not unusual for him to call the pastor’s elementary-age daughter to figure out how to pronounce the names of certain Bible personalities or book titles. If you were now to ask Dr. Donald Orvis, seminary vice-president and professor, what helped him grow spiritually, he would include at the top of the list his early teaching experience where he was just “one step ahead of the pack” each Sunday.

A knowledge of Scripture is important. Maturity is desirable. But the right attitude and demonstrated faithfulness in small ways are the most important characteristics. Obviously, some Christians need more encouragement and closer supervision. Nevertheless, FAT people grow in Bible knowledge faster than others, and working with them in ministry is a joy.

Recruit with Class

If there is an unpardonable sin in teacher recruiting, it’s the old trip-them-in-the-hallway trick, where you thrust a Sunday school quarterly into their hands as you pick them up and point them toward the junior department.

We have all learned the hard way that “you get what you pay for.” The same principle applies to recruiting. Paint an inadequate picture, tell a prospective worker that the task will not be too hard, and you receive an inadequate, half-committed teacher.

I’ve used the following plan in recruiting program leaders, and many of them, in turn, are finding it effective in recruiting teachers.

1. Telephone the prospective worker. “Hello, Mary. I’ve been looking at our church membership list trying to think of someone who could work well in Sunday school with our sixth-grade girls. As I prayed over a number of possibilities, I thought you might be one who could really help our gals. Would it be possible for us to meet this weekend to discuss the responsibilities of the sixth-grade worker? If you are like I was a few years ago, perhaps you have some doubts. But I would really like to have an opportunity to chat with you about it, and then allow you enough time to think about it on your own. I have Saturday morning at 10 o’clock and Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock open on my schedule. Would either of these times be convenient for you?”

2. Share the importance of the program. I walk through the details of the job description and explain the materials. It’s also important to stress my availability as a resource to the teacher.

Then, as I prepare to leave, a prayer is appropriate. I encourage the prospect to pray about this opportunity during the week-is this invitation God’s call?

3. A follow-up phone call is made five to seven days later to see what questions the person might have and to see if he or she is interested in observing a few class sessions.

4. If the worker is willing to teach, we set up a time to sign an Annual Appointment to Service-a one-year teaching contract. Materials are further explained, and the new worker is told the time and place of the next department staff meeting.

5. If certain individuals are not able to make the commitment, I try to determine if they would be more comfortable as a substitute teacher or if they have an interest in another area of ministry.

We recruit teachers to serve one year. Shorter terms do not allow workers to assume ownership of the position. The time is insufficient for training, and it is unfair to the students. On the other hand, placing someone in a position indefinitely is unfair to the worker. At the end of each yearly appointment, the teachers have three options: (1) turn in their materials and be finished with their responsibility, (2) sign on for another term of service in the same area of responsibility, or (3) request a change in ministry.

Our experience has been that teachers who have been regularly encouraged have been more happy to renew their commitments year after year.

Communicate Regularly

A year ago when our church began two morning worship services and two hours of Sunday school, we did a poor job of communicating. Some of the teachers didn’t find out which hour they were teaching until the assignments were printed in the church newsletter in July. They hadn’t been consulted, and some of them felt taken for granted.

We should have called a faculty meeting to present our options and let the teachers point out any problems or oversights.

This fall we did much better, even though the assignments weren’t made until August. We informed the teachers two weeks before making the information public. The teachers were much happier-and so was I.

Program leaders, I’ve discovered, need a minimum of monthly communication, and perhaps as much as weekly visual contact with their teachers. As a pastor who is not directly involved with supervising the educational staff, my amount of needed communication is somewhat less. Most teachers do not expect the senior pastor to be intimately involved with their classroom, but any contact I make greatly builds my relationship with them.

No matter what size the congregation, pastors can do a number of things to build bridges to teachers. About three times a year, I ask one of the elders to take charge of the midweek service so I can sit in on the AWANA program. I’m not there to speak or critique. I may take part in a balloon relay with the kids, but my primary purpose is to chat with the leaders afterward, to sympathize with them about cramped facilities, and to affirm them in their important ministry.

I know other pastors who write a note of encouragement annually to each teacher, or who call each teacher once or twice each year, asking them for one classroom prayer request and one personal prayer request. All these involvements show that we’re not only concerned with a good sermon. We also highly value the teaching ministry of each worker.

Train the Staff

When it comes to auto repair work, I have changed the oil, rotated tires, and given tune-ups. Usually anything more would necessitate a trip to the garage.

This year, however, I performed my first successful brake pad and shoe transplant. The manuals described how to perform this type of operation, but it wasn’t until a friend of mine walked me through the procedure with one of my cars that I was brave enough to tackle the other one on my own.

More often than not people will do only what they are comfortable doing. If we want teachers to be good communicators of biblical truth, we need to walk them through the procedure necessary.

Each year we plan some type of teacher training experience. We have taken advantage of programs offered by nearby Christian colleges. One year we spent four consecutive Wednesday nights demonstrating teaching techniques. This year we had a one-night seminar with teachers spending the first two hours in age-level groups-early childhood, childhood, youth, and adult-watching a couple of thirty-minute video recordings of sample lessons and then evaluating the teacher’s performance. Afterward the four groups came together, and I briefly affirmed the importance of teaching and the fact that they were actually the shepherds of their individual classes.

We’ve discovered our teacher training not only improves skills but builds motivation and camaraderie among the staff.

Helping the Failures

I have only known one person who felt he had the gift of confrontation. Needless to say, he left a trail of scars among the congregation when he was asked to resign. If you’re like me, you do not like confronting, and therefore you tend to allow a person to stay in a job longer than he should.

In many cases, people who are failing know they are not doing a good job, and they are open to suggestions. There are other people, however, who are ignorant of their failure or stubbornly cling to a position for whatever personal reasons.

Where there is openness to change, training is the answer. If, after several sessions, the individual continues to resist change or is consistently unable to fulfill job requirements, removal is the only answer. Failure to remove an inadequate worker, especially a failing program leader, will cause others to remove themselves. This is where our one-year contractual period has helped. It provides a natural transition point.

But instead of outright removal, our first effort should be to retool and reclaim the failing worker. Instead of letting things fester until I simply want to remove people, I’ve learned rather, as I see the early stages of failure, to meet with those people, encourage them, and discuss the problems.

A few years ago, I had to intervene in a disagreement between a program leader and a couple who were youth sponsors. After realizing their differences were not going to be resolved, I asked the couple, “Is your concern more in serving the Lord wherever he needs you or in specifically teaching junior high?” They assured me they wanted to serve God in whatever way they could. We eventually moved them into the singles ministry, where they have served effectively.

Sometimes struggling ministries don’t mean the people are failures; sometimes it means people simply need to be reassigned.

Esteem Teachers Publicly

When my wife was working on her master’s degree, there was always a time when I could help with house cleaning, laundry, or dishes. I learned something about myself and the nature of people from those occasions. When she recognized and voiced appreciation of my work, I was open and even sometimes eager to do more work for her. However, when I put some of my own work aside to help her and my effort was not recognized, or I felt it was taken for granted, I found myself withdrawing and helping even less.

People continually wonder, Does anybody care? People need recognition. “I am willing to work with these junior highers, but does anybody notice?” Our availability and regular communication can go far to build that sense of appreciation. But in addition, we can take other steps to show we notice and care.

We sometimes highlight a department in the church newsletter or recognize the ministry of a specific teacher in the bulletin.

I mention in sermons interesting anecdotes from the classrooms that teachers tell me.

I also like to publicly pass along any compliments I hear. “I want to thank the Bible school workers, especially Pat, for their work this past week. I got three phone calls from parents who told me their children came home singing the songs they learned last week.”

Or, in a sermon about how Bible study is not just intake but an opportunity for us to share the blessings we receive, I said, “I don’t mean to embarrass Bev, but I learned this week she did exactly that. She was struck by two verses in the devotional she was reading, and when she went that day to visit Bill in the hospital, she wrote them on a small card. Bill told me later that they were just the verses he needed to hear.”

How important is appreciation and recognition of staff. Its value is beyond measure.

In a hurting world, people need the healing words of the Great Physician. God has strategically assigned us to work in the church as resident chiefs of staff. Our involvement in the teaching ministry of the church extends beyond our own preaching. As we develop others who can teach and minister, we see what God intended the church to be.

Last winter our elderly custodian slipped on some ice behind our sanctuary. The paramedics were called, an ambulance transported him to the hospital, and an x ray revealed some broken ribs and a collapsed lung.

In the emergency room I was impressed with the medical team of doctors, nurses, paramedics, x ray technicians, and other support staff. One man was wheeled in with his hand all bandaged. A young woman came in carrying a crying baby. Another woman had a leg injury. A boy was holding a gauze pad to his eye. Each was taken to one of the many treatment rooms.

For my friend Earl’s sake, and for the sake of the others, I was glad more than one doctor was present. I was glad the chief of staff had done his job well.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

PEOPLE IN PRINT

Depression: the Pastor’s Vocational Hazard

Coping with Depression in the Ministry and Other Helping Professions by Archibald Hart, Word, $10.95

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

A pastor I know once fell into a severe depression. He managed to drag himself out of bed most mornings, but he dodged parishioners’ calls, took lots of naps, and coped by “unhooking” himself from contact with others. Only with time did his inward crisis eventually resolve.

Not every minister will face it in quite so stark a form, but Arch Hart believes depression has become the pastor’s vocational hazard. Coping with Depression in the Ministry and Other Helping Professions details Hart’s insights into mastering this troublesome emotion, which he calls the “dominant mood of our age.” Years of counseling pastors and teaching at Fuller Seminary’s School of Psychology enable Hart to open new doors of understanding. He offers a vivid exploration of depression’s many faces, its purposeful role, its varied treatment. It is a discussion he believes will unlock the depressed person’s “prison of misunderstanding.”

“It has been my experience in working with many ministers, Christian workers, and their families,” writes Hart, “that not only is depression the most common emotional problem, but it is also the most destructive.”

Hart’s writing reveals the touch of a man keenly aware of pastors’ pressures, needs, and hurts. In a phone interview, I asked him where he gained his sensitivity. He offered a telling anecdote from his D.Min. classes at Fuller. When he teaches about depression in the ministry, he said “a light goes on” in the pastors’ faces and “70 percent of the class says, ‘Yes! Depression has been a major hazard for me.’ ” And of the ministers Hart sees in counseling, “Depression is a factor in practically every instance when something has gone wrong.”

When depression is diagnosed and treated, however, Hart guesses that 70 percent “report dramatic improvement in their work satisfaction and self-esteem.”

Hart frames his analysis with another special sensitivity: He is careful not to ascribe depression to weak faith or a neglected prayer life. Spiritual life certainly plays an important preventive role in building resistance to depression, he admits, but to assign all depression to a spiritual cause he considers both damaging and simplistic.

Depression is more complex. To adopt a single-cause theory only increases misery for the depressed, says Hart. Instead he outlines an array of root causes.

Abusing the body, for example, takes an inevitable toll on emotions. “Depression is tied to our physiology as much as to our psychology,” he writes. Most of us have noticed a dramatic loss of energy and occasional moodiness after Sunday’s pastoral duties. Hart labels that “post-adrenalin blues.” Often, he writes, Sundays deplete the pastor’s supply of adrenalin, and temporary depression is a common side effect.

Hart uncovers other causes: the inherent loneliness of any leadership position, the responsibility of caring for others’ souls, and sharing daily in others’ sorrows. These conditions make it difficult to leave work behind at the office. And pastors seem especially prone to unrealistic career expectations.

Hart links some depression to biochemical problems beyond the individual’s conscious control. “More and more we are recognizing that defects in body chemistry, specifically in the neurotransmitters that link nerve to nerve, may cause depressions. … Fortunately they respond well to treatment with antidepressant medication.” Recognizing this can be liberating for troubled pastors who have gotten nowhere mastering their moodiness. Professional intervention can signal the end of self-recrimination, the beginning of healing.

Hart counsels pastors to use caution in quickly attributing their own (or a parishioner’s) depression to sin. If the cause indeed lies elsewhere, such a strategy will only increase the guilt and deepen the depression.

Hart offers another thesis that makes his book unique: Depression has a constructive, purposeful role. Too many miss what he calls “God’s creative purpose” in depression. While we surely do not seek depression, Hart writes, much misery is rooted in believing that depression is purposeless, unnecessary, and always destructive. The symptoms of depression-low mood, lack of energy, social withdrawal-point to depression’s purposeful place. These responses, like any pain, can prompt us to pull back so psychic repair can take place.

“Depression is a healing emotion,” he said in our interview. “You have to cooperate with it. It pulls you out of your environment . . . back into yourself.” Just as bereavement after a death allows a person to put loss into perspective, he explained, so with depression. It slows us down, conserves our activity, so that energy can be funneled into coping with the real or imagined loss. Sometimes something goes wrong; the sense of loss can get perpetuated in unhealthy ways. Normally, though, depression ends in healing and renewed effectiveness. “Now I have gotten into the habit of thanking God when I am depressed,” Hart added.

Hart has received a steady flow of letters since the book’s release. “Most of these,” he says, “come from ministers thanking me for giving them permission to see their depression as something normal.” As his book gains even wider readership, it is sure to challenge myths and offer fresh hope. Ministers and other helping professionals will benefit from the encouragement.

White-Collar Clergy in a Blue-Collar Church

Blue-Collar Ministry by Tex Sample, Judson, $12.95

Reviewed by Frederick A. Newenhuyse, pastor, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Franklin Park, Illinois

Many of us in ministry have graduate degrees and come from upper-middle class families, yet we find ourselves ministering to working-class congregations. In my church, for instance, only 5 percent of the members have college degrees. The fact that I’m an avid weightlifter and can hold my own in church softball means as much as my Harvard B.A. and North Park M.Div.

The issue of pastoring blue-collar churches has been a neglected one. Tex Sample’s book, however, addresses the issue squarely and promises to be a valuable contribution.

Sample, raised in a working-class family in southern Mississippi, knows his subject well. (“Tex” is his real name-he was named after a former slave named Texana.) At an early age, he realized there was a boundary between the working-class families and the upper-middle class members of his Methodist church.

While on summer vacation from Millsaps College, Sample worked in the oil fields and received what he describes as “the best education” he ever had. He spent the next fifteen years “trying to be an intellectual and escape my roots,” only in recent years to rediscover the values of his heritage.

Sample believes the church for too long has neglected its ministry to the working class-which he defines as “craft and kindred workers, operatives, laborers, and service workers.” Instead, the church has sought to identify itself with suburban white-collar culture. Pastors too often see working-class churches as steppingstones to more affluent parishes, and they neglect to participate in the richness of blue-collar society.

Now a professor at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Sample manages to keep one foot in the blue-collar world. He teaches a course at the seminary entitled “White Soul,” which explores country music and Christianity. He also plays on black softball teams and frequents the bowling lanes and music halls of working-class Kansas City.

Sample advises pastors of working-class churches to “play” with their people. “Find out where they bowl and go bowl with them,” he said when I interviewed him. “If they play softball, join the team. ‘Play’ with them at church dinners and ice-cream socials.”

He believes blue-collar folk don’t go to church to learn from a white-collar pastor so much as out of deeply-held Christian convictions. “They go to church because they love Jesus,” he said.

In his book Sample describes how the dominant theme of Christianity in America has espoused a “winner religion.” Working-class people often feel left out of this theology. Deprived of the status society gives to the white-collar world, they need to hear the gospel that affirms we are saved not by our merits but by the free grace of God in Christ.

Too often a working-class Christian feels trapped by society’s rules: rules he didn’t make. He may show up in church sporting an orange jacket and green slacks to be “color-coordinated” and not understand the mores that label him poorly dressed.

Sample’s book offers practical advice to the pastor. He describes how the working-class world relies upon a system of “reciprocity” whereby favors are done and then a favor is expected in return. The new pastor in a blue-collar church will find a reservoir of goodwill and kindness extended to him; and yet at some point he will be expected to do something tangible in return. The political “ward-heeler,” Sample writes, serves as a helpful model for ministry-he makes the rounds of the community, knows his people in their daily situations, and bestows favors upon them. They in turn support him.

Sample analyzes the working-class ideal of “belonging,” which is different from the upper-middle class ideal of “individual achievement.” Ministers in such a setting must be sensitive to this subtle difference in values, particularly being careful not to preach an ethic of success that eliminates the majority of the congregation.

Blue-Collar Ministry is rich in both theory and practical considerations, and it can give pastors of working-class churches a new appreciation and understanding of the people they daily serve.

The Preacher and the Act of Worship

Preaching and Leading Worship by William H. Willimon, Westminster, $7.95

Reviewed by Doug Beacham, pastor, Franklin Springs Pentecostal Holiness Church, Franklin Springs, Georgia

“I am excited about the preaching I hear today; particularly some of the younger preachers are taking the Bible with renewed seriousness,” says Will Willimon, author of a newly released book that effectively deals with the related issues of preaching and worship.

This eight-chapter book can be read in a few hours and is useful for both the beginning preacher and the preacher who has practiced the art for years. It is one of five new releases by Westminster called The Pastor’s Handbook series. Other titles include Helping Laity Help Others, Planning for Your Church, Developing Spiritually and Professionally, and Cultivating Religious Growth Groups. I also read the last book mentioned and found it useful with up-to-date analyses of small groups and specific guidelines regarding the entire lifecycle of church small groups.

Willimon stresses the “handbook” nature of the entire series: “We wanted to keep it nontechnical. There were areas about which I wanted to write more, but the editors insisted that it remain a handbook. So we tried to keep it specific and concrete.” And they have.

At first glance I wondered, Why another book on preaching? The fact that it was written by Willimon, however, offered enough incentive to test the waters. A United Methodist minister, his most recent pastorate was in Greenville, South Carolina. This summer he became minister to the university at Duke in Durham, North Carolina. He has taught preaching at Duke Divinity School as well as other seminaries.

Willimon has written extensively on preaching, including Word, Water, Wine, and Bread (Judson), an excellent brief study of how three specific church worship practices have evolved over the past two thousand years; Worship as Pastoral Care (Abingdon) which analyzes the effects of worship; Integrative Preaching (Abingdon) which relates preaching to the pastoral needs of a congregation; and Preaching and Worship in the Small Church (co-authored with Robert Wilson) which is part of the Abingdon Creative Leadership Series edited by Lyle Schaller. These books, obviously, go into greater detail than Preaching and Leading Worship.

There were only two main areas that I thought suffered from the handbook approach. First, while not completely absent, there was a lack of illustrative examples. For instance, in an otherwise excellent chapter, “The Word in Worship: How to Construct a Biblical Sermon,” Willimon mentions in brief paragraphs “the typical ways biblical texts are used (and abused) in sermons.” He lists transference, allegorization, parallelism, universalization, psychologizing, and moralizing. After brief descriptions he writes, “Few preachers are able to avoid all these pitfalls. In fact, any of them may be legitimate interpretive devices-as long as we know that we are using a device that may abuse the meaning of the text if it is not employed with care” (italics his). Although sentence examples are given for the six problem areas, we could use a few more pages of analysis and example.

Second, Willimon is a strong advocate of lectionary preaching. The weakness of what he wrote is not in content but in assuming most pastors use the lectionary and are aware of the resources available to assist in exegesis and commentary on the three-year cycle of Bible texts used in the mainline Protestant churches and Roman Catholic Church. These aids-such as Proclamation: Aids for Interpreting the Lessons of the Church Year (Fortress), a multi-volume set that covers the liturgical seasons-can be of special value to pastors not accustomed to using the lectionary.

These two weaknesses, caused primarily by a desire to be a “brief handbook,” do not minimize the strengths offered by Willimon regarding preaching and leading worship.

The first of these strengths is his emphasis on lectionary preaching. He introduces his argument in the first chapter, “Sunday Morning: Evaluating and Planning the Service.” While dealing with common weaknesses in worship, he offers his reasons why lectionary preaching can help remedy a “lack of focus and coherence in the acts of worship.”

“I see the Bible as setting the agenda for preaching. I am sure you remember the remark by Karl Barth that preachers should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and I agree with him. … But sometimes I think we preachers make the mistake of asking our questions and then running to the Bible for answers. I think it is a better discipline to hear what the Bible has to say and let it set the agenda and raise the questions.”

Such arguments naturally lead to a discussion of the liturgical year. “Without the aid of the church year,” he writes, “our Sundays could lose their focus on Christ and become a programmatic year in which the worship of God degenerates into a mere pep rally for the latest denominational cause or an expression of the pastor’s personal whims.”

For those of us in nonmainline churches, Willimon’s argument deserves a hearing. I use the lectionary for about half my preaching and find it especially useful during Advent and Lent.

The liturgical year forms the clear connection between preaching and leading worship for Willimon. His discussion of the pastor’s role is exciting and offers positive ways for the pastor to be more involved in actually “leading” worship. He does not argue at the expense of lay participation; rather, he argues that effective pastoral involvement enhances lay participation. The pastor should think of himself as “the gracious host (who) makes people feel comfortable, welcomed, prepared for. . . . The pastor sets the tone for the (service). If a pastor approaches the Sunday service in a half-hearted way, half-hearted worship will result. Enthusiasm . . . is contagious-so is nervousness, boredom, and fatigue.”

Specifically addressing pastors in the free-church traditions, chapter three deals with “Public Prayer.” He argues that public prayers are simply private prayers prayed out loud, but they should involve the corporate dimensions of the congregation. Such prayers should be thought out and even written. You may not agree with Willimon, but he engages you in serious thinking about the significance and power of public prayer.

Another area that will generate critical thinking is his view regarding children in worship. He argues they should be fully included in the worship service with adults. If the pastor uses children’s sermons, they should not be moralistic devices actually intended for the adults. Nor should children be removed to another section of the building in a glorified nursery. “Our worship is too verbal and cerebral,” he writes. “Children remind us of the emotional and visual aspects of the faith. … Jesus himself has given children a central place.”

His chapter on the Lord’s Supper and Baptism is an appropriate criticism of the ways Protestants of all stripes have neglected this rite and offered it poorly. He offers some creative suggestions for congregational renewal in celebrating the Lord’s Supper, most of which seek to move the church toward deeper fellowship.

The final chapter, “Getting Everyone into the Act,” is concerned with making worship an act of the people. A major strength is the brief case study of how he and members of his congregation planned the Sunday services during Advent. It shows how to include people in planning and how a pastor can properly guide the group for maximum participation and results.

It is clear Willimon is concerned for the renewal of the church. His concern centers on the central acts of the worshiping community: preaching and congregational worship. His purpose is clearly expressed: “Your enthusiasm, commitment, and competency as a preacher and leader of worship are the first keys to the renewal of worship in the church. Enabling you to be that sort of pastor has been the chief purpose of this book.”

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

Several titles have been published in 1984 that, while perhaps not appealing to every church leader, do address some specific needs.

For small churches (ninety or fewer regular attenders) struggling to provide adequate ministry, Marshall Schirer and Mary Anne Forehand have written Cooperative Ministry: Hope for Small Churches (Judson).

“A small church can be a healthy church,” they write. “But what if there are not enough people to launch a program of evangelism because they are all busy with maintenance functions? What if there is not enough money to pay a pastor? Suppose there is not a meeting place. Cooperative ministry may be able to provide options.”

Six types of cooperative arrangements, with their pluses and minuses, are listed. For small congregations wondering what they can possibly do, this overview offers options . . . and hope.

One of the areas small churches wrestle with especially is youth ministry. How can you have a youth program with only four young people?

Carolyn C. Brown’s Youth Ministries: Thinking Big with Small Groups (Abingdon) is an encouraging array of ideas for youth groups small enough to meet in a Toyota. She includes teaching techniques, worship activities, games, and service projects.

With these creative approaches, small churches needn’t feel impotent. Real ministry doesn’t demand a traditional youth program. As Brown points out, Martin Luther and John Calvin never enjoyed our traditional youth group, yet they managed to attain a certain Christian maturity.

And finally, the puckish periodical The Wittenburg Door has published a book, 101 Things to Do During a Dull Sermon, illustrated by Door art director and sometime LEADERSHIP cartoonist Dan Pegoda. It may help pastors who want to know what thoughts are really lurking behind those blank faces in the pews.

So in the spirit of the Tennessee moonshiner who always showed up at church for the annual temperance sermon “just to find out what the competition is up to,” we quote Dull Sermon Endurance Strategy 59-Baptismal Surprise:

“Hide in the baptismal fount wearing a ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ outfit. Stay out of sight, but begin calling softly, ‘Pastor Billy Clyde . . . Oh, Pastor Billy Clyde. … ‘ When he finally stops and comes over to see who is calling his name, grab his tie and see if you can pull him in.”

Forewarned is forearmed.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER

Paul D. Robbins

This spring, my wife and I stood on the hills overlooking the valley of Elah, where the armies of Israel and Philistia once fought. It’s a weathered valley. A small creek wanders along during the rainy season; smooth stones can still be dug from its bed. As our guide read the dramatic confrontation between David and Goliath, I visualized frightened clans of nomadic tribesmen, huddled around a cowardly king, staring across the shallow valley at the swords and shields of Philistine giants. The victory of David and his God never seemed more heroic.

This scene prompted considerable reflection about Old Testament culture: plunder and pillage as a way of life; enemy foreskins the trophies of success; little boys dreaming of becoming “mighty men of valor.” Winning was more than a Vince Lombardi concept. Winning meant survival; losing meant death.

Survival depended upon two things: the blessing of God and the man who fought by your side. God’s blessing was sought before battle and wildly celebrated after the enemy’s annihilation. But it was, in one sense, intangible. The warrior at your side was another matter. He greatly increased your chances for survival; he who multiplied your chances was a friend; he whose presence inspired you to fight as one was your closest friend. To be bonded in battle to this kind of friend meant life itself.

Astonishing results from such bonding was an idea rooted in Mosaic law: “Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you” (Lev. 26:74). Thus, a man like David who intensely sought God’s blessing as well as warriors who were bonded together could expect a small, undistinguished army to rout a mighty military machine. Blessing and bonding transformed arithmetic into geometric progression. Five warriors could take on a hundred foes-twenty apiece-but one hundred could take on ten thousand foes-a hundred apiece-if the warriors were bonded together under God’s headship.

I suspect that the New Testament counterpart of this concept is found in the sending of the seventy. Many of us have preached sermons explaining why Christ might have sent his disciples out by twos: messengers need companionship, and ministry is a lonely task; messengers need accountability. Could it also be that Christ knew messengers would be maximized geometrically as they formed spiritual combat units?

Modern church history suggests other examples. The bonding of the Wesley brothers-authentic sibling rivals-launched a spiritual renewal that swept England and leaped an ocean. Forty thousand sermons and hundreds of hymns multiplied into several globe-spanning denominations and mission organizations. Who can forget D. L. Moody and Ira Sankey? Without Cliff Barrows or George Beverly Shea, what would Billy Graham’s ministry be? In the last seven years, I have observed him in many different situations, including his active participation as the chairman of the Christianity Today, Inc., board. Not once have I heard him use the phrase “my ministry.” He always speaks of “the team ministry” and repeatedly asks us to pray that God will bless the team.

Perhaps my point can best be illustrated by a negative example. Several months ago, Terry Muck and I interviewed three young pastors who had served together in a very large church. As we probed the subject of multiple-staff relationships, we heard about acute frustration, repressed anger, discouragement, and deep personal hurt. The man who brought them together considered this large ministry to be his God-given, personal responsibility. He was a hard-working man, deeply committed to growth and expansion. Ministry was his life in an obsessive way. He made it plain, warmly and even somewhat graciously, that their sole function was to assist him in achieving his goals and objectives. Personal intimacy was impossible. Bonding was nonexistent. Team was only a word.

Looking back, they agreed that this experience had taught them valuable lessons. But they grieve for the young men and women who took their places; they despair for all the potential ministry lost.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only such story Terry and I have heard in our travels. There are far too many similar versions. Sometimes they are about staff members; other times they are about pastors and lay leaders. The results are always the same-deep personal hurt and lost ministry.

My experience on the hills overlooking Elah has challenged me to face some tough questions. What is the status of my relationships? Are any of my colleagues experiencing geometric results because of my contribution to their lives and ministries? With whom can I experience a bonding of spirits? Another staff member? An elder? A deacon? The whole deacon board? God help me.

Paul D. Robbins is executive vice-president of Christianity Today, Inc.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

My Worst Faux Pas in Ministry

Once while ministering in Lexington, Kentucky, I tried to grab attention by announcing my next sermon: “Five People I Would Like to See Go to Hell.” Obviously, I wasn’t consigning anyone to eternal punishment, but I named five individuals I wished could see what hell is like and return to warn the rest of us.

A reporter heard about it, and a story appeared on the front page of the local newspaper. Half the congregation was amused; the other half was angry at me for creating such a stir.

The night I preached the sermon, another reporter was there. In the next day’s edition, his story was kind and did not question my sincerity, but he observed that such sensationalism does not enhance the influence of the church.

The rebuke was justly deserved, and I resolved never again to resort to such tactics to get a crowd.

-E. Ray Jones

First Christian Church

Clearwater, Florida

One Sunday morning I was preaching from John 13-14 on Jesus preparing a home for us in heaven. I described the Jewish customs of marriage and told how the potential bridegroom would seal the marriage covenant with the bride’s father and then leave for a period of time, often preparing living quarters for himself and his bride at his own father’s home.

I went on to explain that while the groom was gone, the bride would spend the time getting ready for the wedding, preparing her trousseau.

Well, instead of saying “trousseau,” the word came out “torso.” People began to snicker and poke their neighbors. I realized what I had said, but I was too intimidated to back up and correct myself. I went on and hoped they would forget.

They did not, nor have they allowed me to forget.

-Joseph M. Stowell

Highland Park Baptist Church

Southfield, Michigan

I once pastored a church that met in a renovated dance hall. Wanting to save money, our small fellowship used carpet remnants for the center aisle. Over the years, the seams began to loosen, and if you weren’t careful, your foot could catch.

My wife told me, “Honey, you should get those fixed before some elderly lady trips and falls.” Being a man of instantaneous action, I applied a procedure I had learned from my deacons. I tabled the issue.

A few weeks later before a Sunday morning service, as is my custom, I was meditating in my office at the rear of the church. Suddenly realizing I was a few minutes late, I hurried to the sanctuary and briskly walked up the center aisle.

As I reached the front, in full view of the congregation, my foot slipped under a loose seam, and I lunged forward. Fortunately, I caught my balance, but my toupee decided to embark on a journey of its own. I snatched it in midair, deposited it back on my head, and proceeded calmly and coolly to the pulpit.

When I turned around, however, I was greeted with mass hysteria. I had placed my toupee on sideways!

Besides the important lesson of listening to the cautions of your wife, I learned something else: If it’s not your own hair, don’t wear it.

-Jerry Lambert

First Assembly of God

Mansfield, Ohio

Once while preaching in Singapore I was invited to present the gospel to inmates at Chang Gi Prison and was told I would be riding there with a minister.

A man introduced himself as the minister’s assistant and escorted me to the air-conditioned, chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz. “Are you the assistant pastor?” I asked. He laughed and said no.

When I climbed into the back seat and met my host, I asked him if he were a Presbyterian minister. The chauffeur, the assistant, and the minister all laughed as he set me straight. “I am a minister of Parliament, and this is my bodyguard.”

-Mike MacIntosh

Horizon International Ministries

San Diego, California

The sermon was titled “Betting Losers and Folding Winners” and was about the way we often lose confidence when we have everything going for us.

The problem was not the title, nor the text, nor the subject. The problem was that I got so wrapped up in the sermon I lost touch with everything else, including the time. Not everyone else was so enthralled. The senior minister was spying his watch. The children squirmed. The young men saw visions-of getting out someday. The old men dreamed dreams-because they were asleep. Yet on I preached.

As the service ended well beyond noon, I still had not noticed the time. The sermon itself had lasted forty minutes, a l-o-n-g time in a suburban Presbyterian church.

In the coffee hour afterward, I was cornered by an airline pilot and a surgeon, both elders in the church. They looked at each other, then at me. “I don’t know exactly how to say this,” one began. “But winners who don’t know when to fold become losers.”

I wore a crimson blush for more days than I care to remember.

-Michael Jinkins

First Presbyterian Church

Itasca, Texas

While a student in Bible college, I was serving a small congregation in Egypt, Pennsylvania, and a young couple asked me to perform their wedding.

The small church was packed for the occasion as the bride and groom exchanged vows in what seemed to be a flawless ceremony. As we came to the climax of the service, the couple embraced, I pronounced them man and wife, and I introduced them to the guests as “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith”-the name clearly printed in my marriage manual.

Only later, when informed by one of the dear old saints, did I realize I had introduced them by the fictitious name.

-Russell C. Rosser

First Baptist Church

Flushing, New York

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Even Pastors Need Friends

Rick McKinniss

Despite the dangers, one pastor has found that a few close friends are good for him… and the congregation.

Over the years I have heard many reasons why pastors should avoid the entanglements of friendship. Some say friends might be nice, but the time and energy demands of the ministry simply won’t allow for such self-indulgence. Friendships in the congregation are certainly out of bounds, according to many, and even too much ministerial golf is a problem.

Though this has modified somewhat in recent years, both clergy and congregation can have difficulty with the pastor engaging in something so human as friendship. Congregations have been notorious for keeping pastors properly perched atop a pedestal, and many pastors like the view from that perch. They are reluctant to come down and enter relationships of vulnerability and intimacy.

And if the friendship happens to be with a church member, others in the congregation can become suspicious. Charges of favoritism and undue influence have been whispered in the halls of more than one church.

To be sure, not all these reasons are easily dismissed. Maintaining a friendship does demand a fair amount of time and energy (both of which can be in short supply). And certainly some charges of favoritism and influence-wielding are well founded. Pastors at times have had their perceptions skewed and judgments clouded because of improper loyalties to one or two members.

Though some of us may not want to admit it, however, neither roles nor robes nor collars nor titles can hide the reality that we are human. People need friends—even people who happen to be pastors.

Many biblical examples support this position. From David to Jesus to Paul, the wise have always known it is unwise to travel through life without the joy, comfort, and encouragement of companions. Beyond this scriptural precedent, the three best reasons I can offer for pursuing friendship are named Dick, Jim, and Gary.

The Colleague

Dick is the associate pastor of the largest Lutheran church in my town. It’s hard to appreciate the significance of this friendship without knowing what it’s like to be a Baptist minister in Northfield, Minnesota.

I was born and reared in southern Ohio and attended college in Columbia, South Carolina. I graduated from a Baptist seminary. All my life I had breathed Baptist air. Suddenly, four years ago, I found myself in a bastion of Norwegian Lutheranism—five Lutheran congregations in a town of twelve thousand people. Not to mention Saint Olaf College, an American Lutheran Church school that dominates both the topography and the theology of Northfield.

I needed to learn the territory. I began meeting with a clergy study group consisting of five Lutherans and one Baptist (guess who?). It was there I met Dick. With a little cultivation—invitations to lunch, spur-of-the-moment visits to his office—a friendship began to develop. What a gift from God it has become.

First, Dick has become my interpreter of Lutheranism. He hasn’t formally enrolled me in one of his confirmation classes, but he instructs me nevertheless. During our discussions I have gained valuable perspective on why these people believe and act as they do. I will never forget the “Aha!” that exploded in my head one day as we were discussing (arguing?) baptism. All of a sudden I understood why we were constantly talking past one another even while employing the same words and turning to the same Scripture passages: Dick’s focus was on the activity of God in baptism, mine on the response of the believer. Suddenly his rationale for infant baptism became clearer. (We still don’t agree, of course, but now I better understand why he believes such a strange way!)

But beyond the role of interpreter, Dick has become a stimulus for my personal growth and professional development. We are both bibliophiles, but with differing tastes. His passion is history; mine is fiction. Over coffee we’ll share titles, authors, themes, insights, and potential sermon illustrations. I haven’t joined the Historical Book Club yet (Dick is still hoping for the free books awarded for recruiting a new member), but I have expanded my tastes to include more than novels. Similarly, Dick has been introduced to the joys of Chaim Potok, Saul Bellow, and Frederick Buechner. Together we have wrestled with Kierkegaard, Claus Westermann, and Rabbi Harold Kushner. He was challenged that I often did sermon exegesis from my Greek text. I was amazed when I learned he was reading several verses from his Hebrew Old Testament each night before retiring. Iron sharpens iron, Proverbs says, and my mind has grown sharper as it has been honed by my friend.

Our families have also benefited from our friendship. Our children are about the same age and our wives are both nurses at the local hospital. We have celebrated birthdays together, shared Thanksgiving dinners, and crashed together on Easter afternoon after leading nonstop services through the morning. It has added a certain dimension of sanity and stability to our lives to be able to share fishbowl stories with others who understand the joys and traumas of being pastor and family.

The Mentor

Jim is another friend. Actually, it would be more proper to introduce him as Dr. James Mason, because he was one of my favorite professors during seminary. Now, in addition to being my friend, Jim continues to be my mentor in ministry.

In the New Testament, mentoring was a well-established pattern of developing young ministers. Jesus mentored the Twelve, Barnabas brought along Paul and John Mark, and Paul in turn mentored Timothy and Titus. It is hard to read the Gospels or Pastoral Epistles and not feel the warmth of friendship that developed and sustained these mentoring relationships.

My friendship with Jim began during my last year of seminary. I worked as his teaching assistant and grew to know him outside the classroom. After walking through some difficult times together, our relationship grew. When I graduated, I did not want that friendship to become merely a fond memory. Jim was of the same mind.

To maintain our tie has taken a certain amount of determination and willingness to bear the cost. Northfield is about an hour’s drive from Bethel Seminary and the phone call is long distance, but the costs are really minimal. In addition to the joy of sharing life and faith and ministry with another, I gain many other things.

He knows me. He had me in class. He knows how I think, my biases, my values, my strengths and weaknesses.

Further, having preached at my church and spent time with the congregation, he knows my context. He also knows the broader context of the denomination and theological tradition in which we serve. This shared history is invaluable. When I call him for advice, he is able to plug into my situation almost immediately. If I’m stuck on a sermon, he is often able to break the logjam. If I’m facing conflict within the congregation, he offers perspective and helps me see the issues more clearly.

If I am excited about a new opportunity, I can float my trial balloon past his discerning eye. Or if I’m just discouraged, I can dump on his doorstep. As he told me one Monday after a particularly abysmal Sunday, “Don’t worry about it. Some weeks your highest goal is just to get through it.”

I cannot measure the degree to which this friendship has contributed to my satisfaction and success in ministry. Countless pitfalls have been avoided, several tight spots have been navigated, more than one timely sermon has been constructed—all with the help of my mentor and friend.

I’m convinced that potential mentors like Jim are available for almost every young minister. Former professors, veteran pastors serving nearby churches, executive ministers serving the district or judicatory are all potential mentors. Seldom will these friendships just happen. They demand intentionality and a willingness to invest time and money. But for both guide and novice, the joys of the journey are multiplied by sharing them with another.

The Layman

In many ways my friendship with Gary is the most risky yet most beneficial of any I enjoy. Gary is a layman who just happens to be a member of the church I serve. Yet the benefits for me (and for the congregation) far outweigh the risks.

Quite simply, Gary keeps me honest in my Christian walk. My greatest temptation in ministry is the tendency to be a “professional Christian.” It is an easy snare. I can give appropriate counsel, teach what the Bible says, call for a commitment to obedience and devotion, lead a board meeting, and then go home assuming I am leading a Christian life—as if my walk with the Lord consisted solely of making pastoral pronouncements or carrying out professional responsibilities. Gary won’t let me get away with that.

He is in a unique position to call me to account. As an active member of the congregation, he knows what goes on in worship services and at church business meetings. He listens keenly to what I proclaim from the pulpit and to what I teach in the classroom. He is also aware of successes and failures in the various church programs. He has the platform of our friendship to challenge me to become what I believe and to practice what I proclaim. He is not shocked that at times I preach above where I live. What minister doesn’t? But during fun times together or at our regular weekly prayer times, he encourages me to apply my sermons and my counsel to myself. He challenges the “private me” to live up to the “public me.”

Beyond the direct ministry of encouragement, simply the integrity of his life is a tremendous motivation to press on in my own pilgrimage. A college basketball coach, he is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. Yet his personal walk with the Lord, his ministry as a youth leader, and his involvement in church outreach projects always come first. He is a passionate Christian, not a professional one. He is a constant reminder that I want to be the same.

Where to Find a Friend

In reflecting upon the friendships I enjoy, I have sifted out some things to consider in the friend search.

1. The place to begin is with yourself. The old adage “To have a friend, be one” has become an old adage because it is true. Most friendships don’t just happen; they are the result of intention and commitment. To reap the long-term benefits of friendship demands an investment of time and energy.

This doesn’t come naturally for me. Saying yes to friendship usually means saying no to half a dozen other things. In my earlier years, my Type-A personality left little room for actually pursuing friendship.

During seminary, however, a classmate and the Lord made some changes in me. Steve and I enjoyed one another’s company before and after class, but it probably would have gone no further had it not been for Steve’s persistence. The crowning touch of his effort came when he persuaded me to join him and two other classmates on a fishing trip to northern Minnesota.

I had never done any serious fishing before, and when I was informed we would leave shortly after midnight so we could “hit the lake before dawn,” I had a thousand second thoughts about the whole venture. But I went. The joys of sharing a Minnesota sunrise, my first walleye, the camaraderie—the whole experience convinced me the lost sleep was a small price to pay for the profound wisdom of investing in friendships.

2. The most important trait a potential friend can have is allowing you to be you. Without this, no possibility for real friendship exists. This seems elementary enough, but pastors especially discover that the characteristic is hard to find.

A pastor must be willing to be “disrobed” within the friendship. And the friend must be willing to accept you without your vestments or title. Friendships take place between two persons, not between a person and a persona.

When I came to Emmaus, my desire was to be a real person and in some sense to be a friend to the whole congregation. I soon learned how impossible that was. Even small churches have too many people to enjoy close relationships with everyone. Furthermore, not everyone wanted me as a friend (what a shock!). Several folks preferred to relate to me as a pastor rather than a friend. I have come to accept this.

Yet this reality made it even more important to cultivate friends who would allow me to be me. If I was going to see my pastoral role as a vehicle for ministry rather than a straightjacket, I needed to be able to step out of it occasionally—to be Rick, not Pastor. My friends let me do that.

Such friends are not easy to find. But I have found that they renew me as a person before God, so that my role as pastor under God is infused and strengthened with genuine humanity.

3. A friendship is reciprocal. For it to work, both sides must be receiving something from the relationship.

On the surface this sounds cold and economic. In practice it allows for warmth and depth to develop. A relationship that consistently drains one member is bound to run dry sooner or later. A genuine friend has something to give and at times needs to receive. Without this balance, no lasting friendship can be sustained. The relationship becomes a ministry, not a friendship.

The kind of friendship I’m advocating rules out reclamation projects. It is altogether right to befriend the friendless and to reclaim those beaten down by life’s vicissitudes. However, this type of ministry only demands greater resources to nourish you. Similarly, you cannot expect to attach yourself like a leech to someone else and suck out all the life. If a friendship is to sustain itself, it must be reciprocal.

4. Though most of us would rather not admit it, we probably will not be able to develop a deep friendship with someone we view as a competitor.

I know that ideally we serve Jesus Christ without thought for position, place, or privilege—and fellow servants are brothers and sisters, not competitors. I believe in those ideals. Yet often I am unable to convince my emotions. I have worked at continuing my friendship with my seminary and fishing buddy Steve. We have spent some delightful times together since taking our respective churches, but it is difficult to overcome the tendency to compare. It takes tremendous effort to overcome our competitiveness-which-leads-to-defensiveness-which-doesn’t-lead-to-intimacy. I have not, nor will I, let go of my desire for friendship with Steve, but this hurdle must be overcome before we can enjoy the intimacy we once did.

I don’t like admitting that. But it’s true. And I believe part of the reason my friendships with Dick, Jim, and Gary work so well is because we are in different enough spheres that competitiveness is not an issue. We can truly rejoice with one another’s successes and grieve over one another’s failures, which doesn’t happen when even the tiniest bit of jealousy is present.

5. To find friends means being open to serendipity. Friends can be found in the most unusual persons. God loves surprises. And some of his best surprise packages are unlikely people who become our best-loved friends.

Gary, for instance, was at first dead-set against joining our church since it was—horrors!—Baptist. When he and his wife moved to Northfield, I called on them after they made a token visit to us, the closest church to their home. That was as far as it would have gone if God had not continually directed Gary and Susie to our body. I continue to be amazed that a very tough prospect call eventually blossomed into one of my deepest friendships. And I can’t help but believe that one of the reasons the Lord directed Gary here was for the strength and support we both have been able to draw from our friendship.

Seeking a clear word from “the Preacher” of Ecclesiastes can be a difficult proposition. However, there’s some solid ground in these words:

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work:

If one falls down, his friend can help him up.

But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! (4:9-10)

In the midst of all of his searching and struggling, “the Preacher” discovered a truth that remains solid counsel for preachers thousands of years later: Pastors need friends too.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Climate Control: Conditions of a Growing Church

Donald Gerig

Even if we can’t change the weather, we can alter the atmosphere of the church.

After twenty-two years of pastors’ conferences, I have heard my share of formulas for church growth, revival, and renewal. I have done the “pastoral drool” while listening to stories of skyrocketing attendance. I, too, have visited other churches hoping to find the key to growth. But the only church growth I had ever experienced was the plodding, gradual growth that no one writes books about. It seemed a dream for us to consistently have more than five hundred on Sunday morning.

Then it happened! We started seeing our monthly attendance rates 30 percent ahead of the previous year. Before we could get used to that, we found ourselves with more than seven hundred in worship. How did it happen?

The disconcerting thing was that we really could not put our finger on any single cause. I could not give any glorious stories of personal renewal to account for the growth-God had been good to me throughout my eight years here. No new programs had been introduced.

Yes, we had moved into a new building, but that was five years before. And yes, some families had transferred in from a troubled church across town, but the significant growth spurt did not start until later.

It began to dawn on me that what attracted these people, more than anything else, was our “climate.” Realizing how intangible that word is, I began to analyze it, and I discovered we had encouraged the components of a growth climate for several years without even realizing it.

In that reverse way, I learned an important lesson. Programs seldom produce the spiritual dynamic necessary for growth; rather, the right spiritual climate produces programs that enhance growth. That is why you can visit seven growing churches and discover seven different programming emphases. In each case, the right climate already existed and became the fuel for effective programming.

What we need, then, is a clearer understanding of the components of a healthy climate. From our experiences and those of other growing churches, I’ve identified six atmospheric conditions that contribute to growth. These are the elements common to growing churches regardless of their specific programs.

1. A Positive Atmosphere

I risk beginning with an overworked topic, but still it is true: Growing churches emphasize what God can do, not what we cannot do . . . what is best in people, not what is worst . . . how we can build each other up, not tear each other down.

This has to begin at a personal level. Every church has an ample supply of negative people. What is desperately needed to balance these are other individuals who practice a positive faith in their walk with God as well as their relationships with people.

Walking through our sanctuary one Sunday morning while the choir was rehearsing, I overheard the director say, “I refuse to have a bad performance today. We will get this right!” The choir laughed, rehearsed one more time, and did a magnificent job in the service that day. That happened partly because one person decided to expect the best. He chose to have positive expectations.

The runaway bestseller, The One-Minute Manager, reminded us to be eager to catch people doing something right rather than always looking for something wrong. That spirit is catching!

When individuals with that attitude relate both to other individuals as well as God, a climate of expectation can begin to build. The emphasis in a church can begin to shift toward what we can do with God’s help. Challenges can be dreamed and accepted.

Recently we had a special drive to raise $100,000 toward the building debt. The willingness to accept that challenge was simply the logical extension of a positive spirit that had grown in the church over several years. Had the climate not been right, the challenge could not have been accepted.

By the way, on the last day of the campaign, receipts passed $103,000.

2. Trust

The burden in creating a climate of trust rests on the one wanting to be trusted, not the one being asked to trust. You don’t command trust; you earn it. At the risk of sounding trite, it must be said that trust exists when people are trustworthy.

There is no magic to trustworthiness. For church leaders, it means “going by the book.” I am sure part of the trust I have earned has come because I have never tried to circumvent the established order for operation. That means presenting proposals to the proper boards or committees before action has begun. It also means being willing to “lose” graciously on an idea and not seek other means of implementing my plan. It means living by the budget and not seeking to get what I want by “special gifts.”

Once I proposed an organizational change at our church that involved revising the constitution. It went through the appropriate study committee and the church board before going to the congregation. At the congregational meeting it was increasingly apparent that this revision was being resisted. I could have fought. But I chose to lose gracefully on that issue, and to this day we are using the old system and making it work. We made no back-door attempts to circumvent the congregation’s wishes. And it has paid off with a level of trust among us that makes progress possible.

If I were to lock horns with our lay leadership or congregation on an issue I felt could not be compromised, I would either have to openly persuade them to my position or leave. I would never resort to underhanded means of getting my way. Trust is too important to take that lightly.

3. Excellence

Excellence in ministry is not one arbitrary line that measures all situations. If so, we could paint the perfect church and all seek to imitate it. Instead, excellence is each of us, individually and congregationally, doing our best with the unique resources and limitations we have.

Too often we’ve made peace with mediocrity, rationalizing our substandard efforts. People are not attracted to that. Our goal must always be our best in every part of ministry. This emphasis on excellence is nothing more than being consistent with the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). God deserves our best-whether in the way bulletins are printed or how sermons are preached-and that level of excellence is a key ingredient in a climate of growth.

For six years in a row, our church has hosted a concert by the Chicago Staff Band of the Salvation Army. This outstanding brass band is built on excellence, fine music, and clear testimony. It has been interesting to watch our crowds grow from year to year. We have not increased our advertising, but people have come to know this band will always be at its best.

That can happen to an entire church. If people know we will be at our best in ministry, methods, and facilities, they respond.

4. Oriented to Outreach

Ingrown never equals growing. Many churches establish an anti-growth climate without even realizing it by allowing their predominant focus to become the needs of those already in the church. This, I’ll admit, is the easiest path to follow, but it will not produce growth.

The mentality of a growing church is continually one of reaching out to others. Even the personal development of current members will be seen in light of increasing their ability to genuinely care about others and minister to them. The minute we start to plan for others rather than for ourselves we create a climate where we develop and the church will grow.

This, of course, is easier said than done. Every step we take to facilitate ministry to those outside our congregation causes us to struggle past our own comfort. Recently we went to two worship services and two Sunday school sessions to make it possible to handle more people in our present facilities. Though there is nothing unique about this plan, we had to rethink our commitment to outreach. As long as our growth demanded no change from us, it was comfortable. But the minute we had to attend at different hours, divide classes, get used to new teachers, and face the recruitment of additional lay staff, the “cost” of outreach became apparent. Because of their commitment to outreach, however, our people made the changes.

The same outreach mentality has spawned new ministries-ministries that attempt to say we care about others, such as support groups for the divorced and for parents of wayward children. When the church climate is one of genuine concern for those outside the church, growth can happen.

5. Flexibility

The willingness to experiment, to innovate, and even to fail are part of flexibility. You cannot program this spirit, nor can you command it, but a few people placed in key positions can model it. Both by their own flexibility as well as their ability to allow (even encourage) such flexibility in others, the attitude can spread.

Perhaps a strategic time for instilling this spirit is after someone has taken initiative and flubbed.

I felt we started to see this spirit when a holiday outreach activity ended up going very poorly. I’m not proud of that failure, but I was pleased we could fail without it becoming an all-consuming issue. Rather, our attitude was one of appreciation for the willingness of those who planned the program-at least they were doing their best to reach out. We learned some things about outreach events, and more importantly, we demonstrated love in spite of failure. That encourages true flexibility.

Another element is the ability to adapt. Almost no program is so good that it never needs to be changed. We have recently tried to identify whether various evangelistic programs are “sowing, cultivating, or reaping” events. That means we must try to understand the people we are trying to reach and plan events to reach them where they are. Ten-year-old programs probably will not work because people have changed in those ten years.

When the climate is right, when risks are allowed and even traditional events can be adapted, it helps develop sensitivity to the changing culture around us, which is essential to effective ministry and church growth.

6. A Serving Spirit

In a sense, the serving spirit is a summary of a growth climate. Where people truly want to serve and minister, they will be positive, trustworthy, devoted to excellence, oriented to outreach, and flexible.

Just about everything in our society, however, militates against this spirit. It takes a conscious effort to serve rather than be served. We are encouraged today to look out for ourselves or be “fulfilled” (whatever that means). Every opportunity ends up being viewed in light of what we can get out of it.

This attitude easily turns our relationship to God around 180 degrees. Instead of asking what we can do for God, we find ourselves wondering what God can do for us. Christians raised on a pop faith that suggests God is little more than a handy 24-hour heavenly banking service find it hard to relate to words like service, or worse yet, sacrifice.

Thus in church we catch ourselves asking if people want to serve. Put that way, of course, many choose not to, and so dies the growth climate. A better way is to start with the assumption that God’s people will serve. That is a given. The question is not if people will serve, but where and how they will serve. That assumption and commitment to service is the necessary mindset for growth.

Again, these components of a growth climate can not be programmed. Rather, they can only be practiced and modeled. They will not begin with action but with attitudes. They will not be limited to certain settings but will be applicable to all situations. Whatever style church growth may take, underneath will be an atmosphere that is positive, trusting and trustworthy, devoted to excellence, oriented to outreach, flexible, and committed to service.

The beauty is that a growth climate does not have to wait for action by the official board. One individual can begin to model the components of this climate and have an incredible influence. Obviously, when church leaders are the models, growth can happen more quickly. But any person can be the first line of influence.

I recall sitting in a restaurant one Christmas Day. I went in expecting the atmosphere to be grim. After all, who wants to work on Christmas? Much to my surprise, it was almost like walking in on a party. One waitress had obviously decided that if she was going to have to work, she would make the best of it. She had bells tied on her shoes and was joking with customers. She was having a great time, and thanks to her, so was everyone else in the restaurant!

Perhaps that is what it takes in each of our churches-one or two people determined to influence the climate of the church. We may not be able to change weather conditions, but when it comes to the church atmosphere, we can not only survive the elements but adjust them to help the harvest.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

IDEAS THAT WORK

Paul Borthwick

Training young people to serve

The summer work-and-ministry project near a Canadian Indian reservation had finished, and our youth team had successfully painted the camp buildings … and alienated the resident missionaries.

The evaluation was blunt: “They seemed more interested in pairing off with each other than having significant contact with Indian students.”

I was determined to prevent such fiascos in the future.

Service projects can be eye-opening exposure to missions, and they can also benefit those on the receiving end—but not if young people go for the adventure rather than the opportunity to serve.

I’ve discovered the success of a summer missions trip is largely determined before the bus ever leaves the church parking lot.

We significantly increased our requirements for those going out, making them clear from the beginning, and interestingly, the year we began demanding so much more, our number of applications doubled. The students seemed to take the requirements as a challenge and were better prepared mentally and spiritually to minister.

Last summer we sent out sixty-seven people in seven teams, and the response of team members and the missionaries they assisted was excellent.

Our approach? In November we present the next year’s projects. We recruit in February and March, and April begins the training process.

The requirements fall into two categories.

Personal preparation

Each individual is expected to take care of:

Application forms. Students must answer questions such as “How do you know you’re a Christian?” and “What are the strengths/weaknesses you will bring to your team?” We also require them to furnish references: two fellow students who can describe their witness at school and one adult who can attest to the applicant’s ability to work.

Writing assignments. These are given after acceptance onto the team. They may include a book report on a missionary biography or a geographical report about climate, customs, language, and predominate religion of the area where the team is going. The reports must be neat enough to be photocopied, because each team member receives a copy for his notebook.

Fund raising. Participants are responsible for their own finances, including a $50 deposit two to three months before the departure date and the balance six weeks before the team leaves.

Those needing aid write letters to friends and relatives, but they can also apply for support (another application form) from the church missions committee. Those who apply usually receive aid, but only after another book report and a personal interview before the committee (often an intimidating experience for a teenager).

Prayer support. Each student must recruit three prayer partners, at least one of whom must be outside his immediate family. This gives the students a sense of personal encouragement from others in the church. It is also a great way to involve students unable to go on a team.

In addition, miscellaneous expectations include Scripture memorization, getting the necessary shots, passport, parental permission forms, and personal spending money.

These experiences offer a foretaste of the rigors of missionary training. From the red tape of applications to the humbling yet faith-stretching experience of fund raising, from the pain of shots to the anxiety of interviews, the requirements simulate what it’s like to be a missionary.

We don’t want young people thinking of the experience as a vacation. We want them to know hard work lies ahead.

Team preparation

Only in the last two years have we made a concerted effort to prepare the team as a unit, and it has paid off in improved performance. But naturally, this requires teams to be formed at least two months in advance.

The team requirements include:

The team retreat. By far our best move has been requiring attendance at the training retreat, which is fashioned after Teen Missions’ “Boot Camp.”

Usually the third weekend in May, everyone goes to a camp in New Hampshire to learn to work together as teams. The sports competition, the obstacle course, the hours of interaction and training in missions and cross-cultural communication are not a cure-all. In fact, the experience can reveal personal problems or immaturity, but it allows us to discover and address them before our teams depart. As I tell our participants, “We don’t want to drive you 1,000 miles or fly you 10,000 miles just to find out you’re not a hard worker.”

The team covenant. This is a document prepared on the training retreat by team members themselves. In effect, it’s a contract describing the Christian community they want to be as a team. It contains four parts.

1. Team vision. This statement of purpose puts in their own words why the team exists and what type of people they want to be. One group said, “In our common goal to please God and grow toward Christlike maturity, we desire to be united as humble servants of God, radiating unselfish love and serving the people of Surinam, the missionaries, and our team to the best of our abilities.”

2. Team goals. These are the traits that should characterize the team if it is to fulfill its purpose. One group included, among other things:

“Unity and equality: In all situations we will function as one by always looking out for the best interests of the whole team, not just our personal interests. To assure this, we will regard everyone we encounter as our equal. (Gal. 2:6; Prov. 28:21)

“Positive attitude: We commit ourselves to maintaining a joyful countenance by avoiding complaining at all times, by graciously forgiving one another when the need arises, and by submitting ourselves to God, to the missionaries, and to our team leaders. (Phil. 4:8)”

3. Team structure. How will the members do their task and relate to one another? One group said, “Each day we will pray as a team and have a devotion led by a different team member. Each team member will be prayed for by another team member daily. Each member will send a note of encouragement to another team member each day, on a rotating basis. Prior to departure, we will prepare testimonies to be presented at local churches.”

One girl approached her team leader after the retreat and said, “I didn’t want to say anything earlier, but I can’t give my testimony. I’m afraid to speak in front of people.”

“I’m sorry,” said the leader gently. “I guess you can’t go. I hope you’ll change your mind.”

Eventually she did. But that summer, when her turn came to speak, she cried all the way to the church. Her team encouraged her, prayed for her, and helped her through the experience. She made it and gained confidence because the requirements weren’t waived.

4. Evaluation and accountability. How will the group assess its work and correct members? When one group included a statement that they would hold one another accountable for having a daily prayer and Bible study time, one girl resisted. “I can’t sign that,” she said. “I don’t want anyone checking up on my life.” That tipped us off to some of her deeper problems, and it resulted in our eventual decision not to send her.

Drawing up a team covenant does require the leaders to be trained beforehand in leading the discussion. But from junior highs to young professionals, our teams have found a covenant helps keep them together, helps resolve conflicts, and gives a sense of qualitative accomplishment.

The team meetings. In addition to the retreat, three or four other meetings are held with each team to give information, address the parents, answer questions, and cover everything from what clothes to pack to how not to insult a Colombian. Team meetings are also the time we draw a team together in prayer, thus building a spiritual base.

The team notebook. Everyone gets these orientation manuals, which include instructions on cross-cultural adaptation, teamwork training, and space to organize all notes, handouts, and team covenant. We’ve found the notebook creates a seriousness within the team, giving teens a healthy sense of being professionals.

The team commissioning. With most of the preparations done, we set aside an entire Sunday evening service to commission the teams. They explain the work they will do. They recite their team memory verses. The pastor preaches on servanthood. And the service closes with all team members kneeling up front as the elders and pastors lay hands on them and pray for their ministry.

We require participation in this service because it communicates a sense of churchwide support for their work.

Consequences

Increasing our requirements has caused some problems, of course. Besides the logistical problems of organizing all the details, there are always some students who refuse to do the required work or a few parents who want their kids exempted from a particular requirement.

When one student told me he could not make the team retreat, I said, “Well, we can’t send you on a project this year. Maybe you can go next year.”

He was furious and pouted for several weeks about how unfair it was. I pointed out that his reaction confirmed that he lacked the spiritual qualifications to go.

Another time a parent was sore because I wouldn’t bend the requirements, but thanks to the support of the other pastors and elders, I was able to handle the heat.

The rewards, however, far exceed the hassles. Tough requirements and training have drawn out the best in our teenagers, many of whom have amazed their parents. Others have confronted their fears head-on and grown in faith as a result. And the parents feel better about sending their kids away knowing we have taken the project so seriously.

Our dream for these summer projects has been (1) to meet a need in some mission setting, (2) to build participants in their ability to serve together as a team, and (3) to produce people concerned for and open to world missions.

Our stringent requirements have helped us fulfill our dream.

HALLOWEEN OUTREACH

When are people least likely to be irritated by someone ringing the doorbell? Halloween, of course.

Young people from Burlingame Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon, turned the trick-or-treat custom around by knocking on doors in the church’s neighborhood and saying, “We have a treat for you!” and giving goodies to the people along with a seasonal gospel message and a brochure detailing the church programs.

One year homemade granola bars were given out. Another year the junior high girls carved and distributed tiny jack-o-lanterns with autumn foliage artistically arranged inside.

“We don’t try to see how many doorbells we can ring,” says Lucibel Van Atta, the former youth leader who initiated the ministry. “Twenty homes is the most we contact any one Halloween, but we’re willing to talk and show people we’re interested in them.”

One lady who lived alone was so pleased to have visitors that she asked the two teens to come back. They did, and within a few weeks, they were escorting her to church.

A fringe benefit has been the added confidence the experience gives the young people. “I came just for the pizza afterward,” said one teen. “But I got so interested in talking to people, especially the old folks and little kids, that I forgot about the pizza.”

NEW USES FOR A CHRISTMAS TREE

The tree in the foyer is bare the first Sunday in December at Titusville (Pennsylvania) Church of Christ. But by Christmas, the branches are covered with over a hundred cards, each given by a different member of the church. On each card is written some deed the person is willing to do for someone else.

“A beautician in the church usually offers a free haircut and style,” says Minister John W. Morris. “A professional cake decorator offers a cake any time in the next year. Others offer dinner at a favorite restaurant. Even teens are eager to participate—offering to shovel snow, cut grass, or wash cars.”

The Sunday after Christmas, any member who has placed a card on the tree is invited to remove one and claim the gift.

“It’s a tradition that has worked well in our congregation for over ten years,” says Morris.

Peninsula Covenant Church in Redwood City, California, takes a slightly different approach. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, a tall fir at the front of the sanctuary is covered with gaily colored paper tags, each containing the name of a less fortunate local family and details about some of their needs.

Over the next weeks, the tags are removed as members of the congregation choose a family to help celebrate Christmas. The goal is a tree totally bare by Christmas Eve.

Names on the tags come from Christians who minister in the low-income community. Many represent large families with one or both parents unemployed. Others are one-parent families or disabled adults or children. The families know in advance they’ll be receiving gifts, which relieves the tension both giver and recipient often feel when “charity” shows up on the doorstep.

“It has been exciting to see the effects of Project Christmas Tree in our congregation,” says member Pat Sikora. “The flexibility of the program allows each family to express their God-given creativity in new ways.”

Some give boxes of used clothing for the children; others buy a few new items. Some wrap gifts individually; others wrap a big box filled with gifts. One family filled a stocking for each child; another filled a wagon with toys, clothes, and food.

Some enjoy giving anonymously, simply signing the gifts “From your friends at Covenant” so there’s no possibility of a thank-you. Others prefer to deliver the gifts in person. After thinking about the needs of a particular family for several weeks, many want to develop a relationship and continue helping over the next year.

“One year, the high school department adopted a family with eight children and no father,” says Sikora. “They ministered to that family all year, even taking the children to Great America.”

Many parents have found the experience helpful in teaching children the joy of giving. Some choose a family that corresponds in size and age with their own. At least one couple has chosen to give to their Christmas tree family instead of each other.

“Project Christmas Tree is not a one-sided ministry,” says Sikora. “Most of us feel we gain far more than we give.”

What’s Worked for You?

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Ideas That Work

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