WHEN THE MINISTERIAL FAMILY CAVES IN

Leadership Forum

Tension in the ministerial family is as old as Moses and Zipporah on the way to Egypt. Those who speak for God have never been immune to the stresses that plague husbands and wives, parents and children. In fact, their work makes their home life more vulnerable than most, while the stakes run higher. The nightmare of every church leader is that his high calling may be discredited by family meltdown.

In the following forum, three pastors and a pastor’s wife consider the hazards. Their discussion centers around a troubling but insightful book, Man of Vision, Woman of Prayer (Nelson, 1980) by Marilee Pierce Dunker, daughter of the famous Bob Pierce, who founded World Vision, one of the largest Christian relief and development agencies. “We are used to frank biographies, especially of film stars and entertainers,” wrote Eternity magazine’s reviewer, “but this book sets a new record for the evangelical world. It is amazing that the daughter who chronicles this heartbreaking story clearly loves-yes adores-her father.”

Bob Pierce’s ministry began in southern California in the late 1930s, and by the end of World War II, he was a fast-rising comet in the Youth for Christ movement. His wife, Lorraine, held faithfully to her husband through times of both exhilaration and disappointment; life with Bob was a breathtaking crusade to reach the most for Christ in the least amount of time. His vision took him to China twice before the Bamboo Curtain dropped; two 1950 trips to Korea broke his heart. He founded World Vision that year to try to help the thousands of war orphans and others who were literally freezing and starving to death.

The emergencies of a desperate world never let up after that, and neither did Bob Pierce. His accomplishments were prodigious; the number of children receiving care went from 2,200 in 1954 to 20,000 ten years later. Meanwhile, the needs of a wife and three daughters back home paled by comparison with the agonies overseas. The book chronicles the gradual breakup of a gifted, driven man. His emotional circuitry begins to malfunction around 1963, his temper becomes harder to control, and leaves of absence do not suffice. A 1967 face-off with the World Vision board results in his leaving the organization he founded; the next year his eldest daughter, then twenty-seven, commits suicide; and in 1970, Pierce is legally separated from his wife.

The final eight years, until his death of leukemia in 1978, are a gauntlet of alienation, harsh words, and suffering for everyone. Only in the last week of his life comes one shining evening of reconciliation.

The Pierce tragedy, though lived at the pinnacle of a worldwide organization, harbors many of the same forces that pressure local church leaders. In that, it is a warning to everyone involved in ministry. The four participants who delineate that warning are: Gordon MacDonald, pastor of Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts, and a current board member of World Vision; C. B. Hogue, now pastor of Eastwood Baptist Church in Tulsa after a long pastoral career and ten years of denominational work that required much traveling; Mary LaGrand Bouma, wife of the pastor of the Christian Reformed Church, Hammond, Indiana, and author of two books, including Divorce in the Parsonage; Kent Hughes, pastor of College Church, Wheaton, Illinois. Among the four, they are the parents of sixteen children altogether.

Leadership: Each of you has now read the story of a Christian leader who was publicly revered but personally chaotic. What feelings did this book arouse?

Kent Hughes: I would have to say it made me angry. At times I almost doubted the man’s faith. When, near the end, he refused to forgive, I kept thinking, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

I felt that here was a man who did not try very hard at home. He fell into some easy rationalizations, the most flagrant being that if he took care of others, God would somehow take care of the Pierce family.

Mary Bouma: My feelings of anger seemed to build the longer I read, even though the daughter has given us a loving portrait. I was struck by the fact that spiritual gifts in a person’s life do not necessarily mean spiritual maturity. Bob Pierce was obviously very gifted, but also very self-centered. Where were the counselors who should have stood up to him and exhorted him?

Gordon MacDonald: My feeling for him is deep pity. I don’t mean to excuse him, but he was a product of his age. The late 1940s and early 1950s were made for high-octane people like him. He came along from childhood with great insecurities-and started a movement. He assumed the Lord would somehow take care of his family; a whole generation was brought up to believe that. Thousands of post-World War II missionaries did the same thing.

Down through the centuries of the church, it has often been the unbalanced, highly emotional person who has awakened the masses to a new reality. The Pierce model can be seen time and again.

Bill Hogue: I didn’t feel anger, mainly because I too have done a lot of traveling in the ministry-and every so often I think about what could have happened to me. I was rather swept by a feeling of pathos for both Bob and Lorraine Pierce, because of the missing ingredients that each of them never quite found.

He carried a tremendous need for fulfillment, an insatiable drive to accomplish, that never seemed to be met. There was also a lack of stability; they never really managed to put their roots down and establish a true mooring to come home to.

But we must not forget the fact that in addition to psychological explanations, there is another force in the world who delights in capturing spiritual leaders. In this case, the Evil One succeeded.

Leadership: Juan Peron, the Argentine dictator, once said, “Only the fanatics accomplish.” Do you agree?

Kent: I don’t like to concede that, even though I admit Gordon’s point about many great founders being imbalanced. I remember hearing Bob Pierce preach, and it was always a string of emotional stories, mingled with tears . . . then the handkerchief would come out . . . it was the outpouring of a deeply agitated soul.

Gordon: I don’t care for the word fanatic, but I know what you mean. Leaders like this are never listeners. They speak; you give ear. You don’t advise them, and you certainly don’t disagree with them. If you do, they simply go on to the next person. That’s almost an inevitable mark of strong founders of organizations.

Kent: Does it have to be that way?

Gordon: The ideal scenario would be that all of us, in our compassion and sensitivity, would see the needs of the world as Bob Pierce did, propose action, and others would witness to the validity of our vision-but that’s not the way we are. We live in a fallen world. So every once in a while, a driven personality comes along to shake us and get us going. God seems to use the somewhat dark dimensions of humanity to launch beautiful things.

But for every Bob Pierce who succeeds, of course, ninety-nine others fail. Their weakness catches up with them.

Bill: Leaders like this, at some point along the way, make a commitment to a cause, and after that they are unstoppable. Frequently that commitment arises from a catalytic experience-in Pierce’s case, the 1947-48 trips to China. Something snaps in their minds, and they say, “This is what I can do, and I’m going to do it no matter what.” Their commitment is settled; from that point on, don’t confuse them with the facts.

Gordon: Bob Pierce came from a childhood of poverty, and when he saw the poverty in Korea, he instantly identified with it. Here were needy children like he used to be.

Leadership: On page 115 Marilee Dunker quotes one of his letters home: “I feel ‘sovereignly sent’ toward whatever it is that is just ahead.” Was he?

Bill: He believed he was. In his mind there was no doubt that God had laid a hand on his shoulder and told him to rescue as many Korean children as possible.

Sometimes, however, we make decisions in the name of God because they fit our personality and interests. I have people in my church who come with open Bibles claiming, “I just got a word from God,” and you can’t shake them until they hit bankruptcy. One man plunged into a business because “God told me to do it,” and his family has suffered terribly.

There are times when you really do get a word from the Lord through the Scriptures. But there are other times when you only assume so because of personal wish.

Leadership: What other early problems do you see that should warn us?

Gordon: I would have been disturbed over something that, oddly enough, impressed people in those days: his proneness to tears, his abnormal intensity, his inability to respond with balance. He could weep over individuals and masses alike. Why?

I remember as a small child when a couple came to my father, and the fellow said, “Pastor MacDonald, we’d like you to marry us, and on our wedding night I’d like to preach.” What was he trying to prove?!

My father wisely told him he belonged elsewhere on his wedding night.

Mary: There’s the point where Bob Pierce was away from the church and, apparently, the Lord for more than a year. He comes back, falls at the altar, rededicates his life to God-and the next Sunday his father-in-law reinstates him as the youth pastor of the church. This only encouraged his pattern of instability.

Kent: I do reflect that in those years, nothing much was happening among evangelicals before highly energized men like Pierce and other Youth for Christ leaders came along. We owe them a great deal for getting things moving, creating excitement and visibility. But in the rush, they got by with things that should not have been overlooked.

Bill: When a young man or woman made a commitment to Christian service in those days, everybody got excited. The person showed a little bit of gift-and people exaggerated it, poured coal to the fire, pushed the person toward prominence as quickly as possible.

Gordon: Do you remember that key moment in 1947 when Lorraine was just emerging from an emotional collapse, and Torrey Johnson, the president of YFC, came to her bedside to plead that Bob be released to go to China for youth campaigns? What could she do? She desperately needed him . . . but those were the days of war heroes, and the man who would give up family and go to dangerous places was highly revered. Two weeks later, Bob Pierce got on an airplane and was gone for the next four months.

Bill: I’m old enough to remember those years. The GIs had given themselves in total, unselfish service . . . we were soldiers of the Cross. We would do the same.

Gordon: By contrast, Lorraine Pierce had prayed as a teenager, “You know I love you, Lord. But don’t ever ask me to marry a traveling evangelist!” A sense of place was extremely important to her, whereas Bob was the opposite. My wife, Gail, and I are somewhat the same, and we’ve had to compromise on this. A house was never that important to me growing up as a preacher’s kid, but Gail considers a place to call one’s own extremely important.

Mary: Throughout these early years, Lorraine doesn’t seem to share her own spiritual insights with her husband. She is obviously a woman of prayer and the Word, but she keeps it to herself. She doesn’t give him the benefit of her wisdom.

Leadership: Why was Bob Pierce’s public ministry so compelling?

Kent: For one thing, his cause was so valid. He brought American audiences face to face with human need. Most of the evangelical church hadn’t awakened to that before.

Gordon: He had a charisma like no one you’ve ever heard. Someone told me, “When you went to hear Bob Pierce, you made sure you had nothing in your pocket but a bus token to get home,” because he had a way of almost literally putting a vacuum cleaner over the audience and extracting every dime.

Kent: I heard him in the later years, after he had been to Switzerland for his physical breakdown, after his daughter had committed suicide. And still he preached for nearly two hours, appealing for support of his latest relief project. It was amazing.

Leadership: What did you make of his private expressions of love and devotion? Marilee Dunker includes scores of letters in her book. What does “I love you more than life” mean when you’re gone six months at a time?

Kent: Well, I suppose I wouldn’t want most of my private letters published, either. But in his case, there seemed to be an affected piety throughout.

Leadership: Don’t words lose their meaning when you use them so often? Do ministers turn into professional wordmongers, putting holy phrases into microphones so much that verbal Christianity gets divorced from flesh Christianity?

Gordon: Yes, that’s a problem. The flesh part of living is denied, and the energy is put into romantic statements instead. C. T. Studd wrote the same kind of letters from Africa and didn’t see his wife from 1916 to 1929, when she died in Spain.

Leadership: Then what does love mean in the mouth of a professional?

Gordon: To some of these people, you could love your wife . . . and then explain away the separation as the ultimate sacrifice. It was a living martyrdom.

Mary: Now we understand better what commitment means. We’re more in touch with our feelings, but we understand that love is not basically feelings; it’s action.

Gordon: The thing that frightens me is that thirty years from now, our children will sit down and have a conversation like this about us! We think we’ve got it all together-but my kids will look back and say, “Dad was a good guy and tried hard, but boy, was he stupid!”

Bill: Mine are already doing it! (Laughter.)

Leadership: What makes for meaningful communication in a ministry marriage?

Mary: If I had to pick one thing, it would be commensurate education. That may surprise you-I know it certainly did me at the end of my research for my book. I had interviewed two hundred ministry wives, and when I went back and read through all my notes again, I said, “I can’t believe this.” Healthy, communicative marriages in the ministry were those in which the wife’s education had not been cut short.

Many wives, of course, work hard and long to put their husbands through seminary, and what do they get? A silent husband who assumes she cannot function on the intellectual level at which he has now arrived.

I thought I had found an exception to this rule when I interviewed a pastor’s wife in Seattle whose marriage was strong, I knew. I asked if she had studied beyond high school-and was suddenly embarrassed: she had not even finished high school. But as it turned out, neither had her husband. They were part of a group that didn’t require seminary or even college, and they had done a lot of informal learning together. As a result, they got along extremely well with each other.

The marriages in trouble were the marriages with big educational gaps.

Leadership: Why is that?

Mary: You think differently once you’re college-trained. A liberal-arts education prepares you to discuss things conceptually. And even if the wife is somehow innately gifted in this area, her husband is all too likely to dismiss her gift because she doesn’t have the academic proof. That’s why I counsel ministry wives everywhere to get their college education, even belatedly if necessary.

Gordon: This problem is compounded if a wife becomes a mother too soon after marriage. It’s very easy for her to go on “intellectual hold” for eight to ten years, unless her husband is sensitive to her need to grow.

Leadership: You spoke earlier of Bob Pierce’s insecurities. Is that common in ministerial ranks?

Gordon: I believe it is fairly safe to say that most leaders are insecure. In fact, insecurity is one of the greatest urges to leadership. It works like this: insecure persons approach a mass of people and do one of two things. They either climb on top of the group in order to control it and make life predictable, or else they crawl under the group and become invisible.

There are outstanding exceptions to what I’ve just said, but I believe it describes the majority of leaders, including pastors. That’s why when I speak to pastors’ wives, I say, “Begin with the assumption, until proven false, that your husband is an insecure man.”

Leadership: Are you insecure, Gordon?

Gordon: Yes, I am. God has helped me to face it and then build scaffolding around myself to deal with it, but it’s true. For example: I rarely get into trouble politically in the church, because if you disagree with me, I’ll instinctively assume you’re right and I’m wrong. Five seconds later, I may come back and say no, I’m right after all-but in those five seconds, I have avoided a lot of bad words!

In my marriage, it’s the same way. My first instinct is always that Gail’s right and I’m wrong.

Mary: Then what percentage of the people in the world are insecure? It seems like that’s one of the big excuses these days-everybody’s “insecure.” My daughter said one day after I’d told her for the fifteenth time that our foster daughter was insecure and needed special consideration, “I am so sick of insecure people that I have to go around protecting all the time! What about us secure people-don’t we have rights, too?”

Gordon: Secure people are great, average folks. They are the middle managers, the schoolteachers, the muscle of society. But they rarely create great movements or generate great ideas.

Bill: So up with insecurity!

I admit I’m insecure. It hurts me deeply when somebody doesn’t like me. Why don’t they like me? There’s got to be a reason. Is it my tie? Was it something I said? Did I handle them wrong?

Gordon: That’s what makes you a people person, Bill. Your insecurity drives you to major on decoding people, reading every little snatch of body language, facial expression, and so forth. You’ve become an expert at reading the silences and noises of people, and so they say, “He’s a fine pastor-he loves us.”

Kent: I’m an insecure person, too, but I married a woman of superior ability. She has almost a legal mind; she reads a lot and thinks very clearly. She’s so confrontive that she can nail me when I need it.

Mary: Then you’re not as insecure as you might think, if you can benefit from her alertness.

Leadership: But all too often, it’s easier to be out with people who don’t confront. Marilee Dunker writes about her father and overseas missionaries: “Daddy loved these people; in many ways he felt more at home with them than he did with us.” Can this happen in a local church?

Bill: Certainly. Betty and I had four children, three of them in diapers at the same time. (In those days, I didn’t have any sense, and neither did she!) And then we adopted a girl who was not of our race. I had been the youngest of eight sons and no daughters, and Betty decided we weren’t going to have eight sons trying to get a daughter. So we got one in another manner. What was I doing all this time? Running all over creation. I was totally insensitive to what she was going through day by day.

She now knows my deep feelings of regret about that.

Gordon: The greatest trap for a pastor is to love people where there are natural boundary lines. In the church, you can reach out to people as much as you want-and then withdraw. When you’ve had enough, you ask for your coat.

You can’t do that with your family; you have to go home to them. You have to love unconditionally. If that’s hard for you, then you travel like Bob Pierce did.

I sense myself doing the same thing with my congregation. “I love you, I want to meet your needs,” I say-but then when they come and want to be close to me, well, my calendar is full for the next five weeks.

Leadership: How much can a married person travel without damaging the family?

Gordon: I don’t think people should take on apostolic ministries until their parenting responsibilities are largely finished. Gail and I are now in our twenty-third year of marriage, with one child in college and the other in high school, and we find that we appreciate the spaces. When I’m gone for three days, she gets an amazing pile of things done, and we find it works to empower the relationship. When I get home, she has all kinds of things to share with me-books she’s been reading, experiences, things God has been putting into her heart-and we have hours of tremendous conversation.

Leadership: But don’t you have to deal with quantity somewhere along the line? How many nights a year can you be gone?

Bill: I’ve probably traveled more than anyone here, and I don’t think you can state a figure. The key is to have an understanding of why you are gone and to spend quality time together when you’re home.

Leadership: Wouldn’t Bob Pierce say, “I did all that. There was a reason why I was gone: I was doing God’s work. We had an understanding”? And as his daughter says, he was away an average of ten months a year for fifteen years straight.

Kent: One problem was the assumption that God could not work if he was not on the scene. He was ubiquitous; wherever the action was, Bob Pierce was there. Pastors can slip into the same pattern, even in small churches. That’s why they’re out every night of the week.

You have to believe deep inside that you are expendable. God doesn’t need you.

A friend of mine was once called to fill a pulpit while the pastor went on a four-week vacation. On the second Sunday, my friend was shocked when he stood up to preach-there was the pastor sitting in the congregation. The man simply couldn’t bear the thought of having the service go on without him.

Leadership: Mary, how much travel is too much?

Mary: It depends on the relationship, but the wife should definitely be consulted. I’m an independent person who can be happy with my husband gone a few days-I don’t have to cook big meals! But some women feel differently, and whatever their feelings, they should not be ignored.

Bill: We’re back to the subject of insecurity, aren’t we? Some women have no personal fulfillments apart from their husbands. They think of themselves as objects to be used, and if the “user” is not present, then they are at loose ends.

Mary: There aren’t many of those left, at least not in the younger generation.

Gordon: I have a new question: how much travel is too much for the person doing the traveling?

I think traveling can become a narcotic. The minute you fly 700 miles from home, you become a novelty. The crowd eats you up; you’re treated like a superstar, taken to the nicest restaurants, put in the best hotels. You become larger than life. And if you are not broken before God regularly, the travel will do a job on you very quickly.

You come home high as a kite, raving about how the power of God was upon your ministry, and your wife says, “Yeah, well, back here there were dirty diapers and a leaky faucet and the car needs antifreeze.”

In the book Marriage to a Difficult Man, Elizabeth Dodds tells how every time Jonathan Edwards went on a trip, Sarah Edwards went into depression. She felt pressured by the responsibility of the congregation he was leaving behind, and by the time he would come home, she would be filled with resentment.

Leadership: Most pastors don’t get the chance to fly 700 miles away-but they do get to travel to church for the Tuesday night board meeting, the Wednesday night prayer meeting, the Thursday night committee session . . . can the same things happen in miniature?

Bill: Absolutely. It’s only a matter of various levels. When you’re a pastor of 200, you get asked to speak to the Lions’ Club. The same process is in effect: you come home telling how great you were, and she’s unimpressed.

Gordon: And it’s exacerbated if there’s any duplicity in the pastor’s lifestyle. If she sits on the front row on Sunday morning watching him preach, smile, and pray but keeps remembering the Thursday morning blow-up, the integrity gap widens. And when the congregation pours out love and affection in his direction, it only makes her angry.

Kent: If, on the other hand, he is living authentically, and she is developing her ministry as well, whether it be speaking or writing or something else, the two can rise together. There’s a great potential for both to grow in ministry.

When my wife says to me, “What you said this morning didn’t ring true,” I have a choice. I can either reject what she has to say, or I can own up to it. Or maybe she has stated only a partial truth, and I need to ascertain my degree of authenticity.

Gordon: In our home, we have always encouraged disagreement. When the children expressed the slightest difference of opinion with me, I always tried to say, “Let’s roll with that-tell me why you think that way.” It’s all right for a father to say, “I was wrong. I made a mistake.” I determined early on that I was not going to carry the burden of always being right.

As far as I’m concerned, my only responsibility at home is to make sure somebody is in charge at each moment. It may be me, it may be Gail, it may be one of the kids. When Mark learned to drive, I would say to the rest, “OK, as long as Mark is behind the wheel, he’s in charge.” We have learned as a family always to find out who’s in charge at a given moment, and it has taken a great burden off me.

Leadership: Did any of your wives read the book? What were the reactions?

Gordon: For Gail and me, it was yet another warning. We feel like we are walking on cut glass every day. We have been surrounded, it seems, by failure-moral, marital, emotional-and we don’t entertain the idea for one moment that we are immune. We’re all only a step and a half from trouble, and if we don’t listen, if we don’t surround ourselves with the counsel of wise people, we too will end up taking ourselves too seriously.

The older I get, and the larger my perimeters of ministry, the more frightened I become. I am doing things now that in my twenties I fantasized about-and I’ve never wanted to run so hard in my life. I’m doing it out of obedience to my call, but I see how dangerous it is, and I’m afraid of what it might cost in my marriage, my spiritual life, my emotional health-but I don’t see any way to go back.

Kent: My wife was very angry, not so much at Bob Pierce as at the kind of Christianity that allowed such a thing to exist. I feel the same way about the current teachings on prosperity. Christians are so stampeded and intimidated by people who seem successful. Nobody stands up and takes exception.

Leadership: Earlier we were saying that Bob Pierce was a product of the postwar era. But are you also saying that here in 1983, “there but for the grace of God go we”?

Gordon: It’s worse today than ever. Satan is more seductive than he ever was.

Leadership: How so?

Gordon: Television is showcasing Christian leaders who live incredible lives. The money that is flowing to speakers and musicians-it’s frightening.

Leadership: What about ministerial families? Are they in greater danger now than the Pierces were?

Bill: Yes, because the age is far more materialistic as well as humanistic.

Mary: And divorce is being sanctioned as never before . . . even promoted. Lorraine Pierce hung tough to the end and refused to give in to her husband’s attempts at divorce. How many women would stand like that in the 1980s?

Leadership: Why don’t alert Christians resist these negative trends in leaders?

Gordon: For the same reason they didn’t stop Bob Pierce. I’ve talked to some of the World Vision board members from the past, and they have said with tears in their eyes, “We were only laymen. Every place we looked, we saw effectiveness; we saw God’s blessing upon that man. He asked us to join his board. Who were we to tell him he couldn’t do what he was doing? He had started the movement. We saw his poor business methods, but he always came out smelling like a rose, and we said, ‘The man has a gift of faith-we can’t stand in his way.’ “

Kent: There was no way to call him to accountability.

Leadership: What are the red flags for the non-celebrity today, the pastor of the average-sized church?

Mary: Questions to ask: Are you taking advice from anyone? When were you last challenged, and how did you handle it?

Gordon: I will thank Gail to my dying day for teaching me to be a listener. In our early days we’d be driving home from a get-together, and she’d say, “Did you hear what so-and-so was trying to tell you?”

And I’d say, “What do you mean?”

And she’d tell me, and I’d get mad-until I called the person the next day and found out Gail was dead right. I hadn’t heard what the person wanted to say.

A pastor has to learn to ask good questions, to draw people out.

Kent: Another crucial understanding is that God doesn’t need us to do his work. It is our privilege to serve him. So while I take my work seriously, I must not take myself too seriously.

Leadership: Gordon, if you had been on the World Vision board in the 1950s, do you think you would have had the courage to speak up?

Gordon: Well, I don’t know-it would have been very tough. I have made some strong speeches in more recent times, and as one result, I’m now chairman of the personnel committee, whose main duty is to look out for the spiritual welfare of the key executives. I’m very committed to World Vision and pray for its leaders every day, and we are not going to let this happen again.

At my church, I have ten associates. When I sit down with each of them, I don’t ask how their particular program is coming. I leave that to our administrative pastor. What I am most concerned to ask is “Where are you with God today? Tell me about your marriage. How much time have you spent with your kids lately? What are you reading? How would you say your spiritual disciplines are coming along?”

Mary: What about senior pastors? Who pastors them? Who asks them the hard questions?

Bill: We senior pastors have to remind ourselves constantly of two things:

1. Not every good thing that happens to us is a “Praise the Lord.” A flow of money or accolades or recognition is not necessarily proof that we have entered into a special relationship with God.

2. Authority does not equal infallibility. People in our congregations, out of respect for the pastoral role, often assume, “He’s my pastor; he can do no wrong.” But we can-and if we do, they are horribly disenchanted.

Leadership: How are ministry families affected, for good or bad, by transience?

Gordon: My father-pastor made three moves while I was growing up, with the result that geography has never been significant to me-only relationships. I learned to be adaptable, and I’m glad. We’ve raised our children to do the same, to consider all of the pastoral lifestyle a privilege.

On the other hand, it hit me with force a few years ago that if my lights went out in an airplane crash someday, Gail and the children would also lose their home, their church, their community, their school, and their intimate friendships. That’s when we decided to buy a place up in New Hampshire.

Bill: When my youngest son was applying for a university scholarship, he of course had to list all his various awards and positions throughout his schooling up to that point. On his application, he closed with this classic statement: “I would have enjoyed fulfilling all of these responsibilities had it not been for my nomadic father.”

Moving is tough on children, to be sure. But it can be tragic for the minister himself if it occurs because he has lost the desire to grow. He has a set of sermons that he keeps recycling, saying, “Well, I’ll be moving in a couple or three years anyway.” When that happens, he has become a robot in ministry.

Mary: One day in a new parsonage I found my twelve-year-old daughter arranging her bedroom precisely as it had been in the previous place. When I asked her why, she replied with a sudden grown-up air, “I read in a magazine that one way to minimize the trauma of a move is to arrange your bedroom the same way as before!” Later on she announced, “Nobody should ever move a child at this age-it just shouldn’t be done.”

Gordon: When I was a kid, I was brought up to believe that the Lord sometimes said “Move,” and you moved-right now, no questions asked. If you were in the middle of the school year, it didn’t matter.

It’s much different today.

Mary: The PKs I’ve interviewed have generally been positive about their situation. The only exceptions have been where the father was under fire. Some PKs have been told, “Your dad ought to get out of here”-that’s devastating.

Gordon: About four years ago I had to make a terrible decision about whether to move into another form of leadership outside the pastorate. The key moment was one Thursday night when Gail and I said, “Let’s see what the kids think.” We outlined the new position with all its benefits but then added that I would not be a pastor anymore.

Kristi looked at me and said, “You mean you wouldn’t be preaching every Sunday?”

“No.”

“You mean we wouldn’t go to a church where you’re leading?”

“No.”

The tears started. Mark said, “We wouldn’t be PKs anymore?”

Such a prospect was beyond their imagination. My decision was clear from that night on.

Kent: The same thing happened to me. I was having a hard time in a small church, and I began talking about alternatives. My kids all began to cry and said, “But Dad-you’re a minister.”

Bill: When I was asked to become director of evangelism for a state convention of churches, I was pastor of a fine church. One Sunday morning after worship, as I was coming down the aisle, a couple of elderly women stopped me. One grabbed me by the arm and said, “Now Brother Bill, tell us again what you’re going to be doing.”

I decided to impress them with the official title of my new job. “I am going to be the secretary of evangelism for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma,” I announced.

She looked at me for a moment, completely puzzled. Then she asked, “Well, do you take shorthand?” (Laughter.)

Before I could explain, the other lady said, “Oh, what hurts me the most is that you’re leaving the ministry.”

Gordon: Bill, when you made that move out of the pastorate, what effect did it have on your family?

Bill: Some of them were already in college or soon headed there. But for my wife, it was traumatic. We talked many, many hours about that. I took her with me on the road as much as possible, and she also got involved in teaching at a church. But it wasn’t easy.

Mary: I talked to one woman who got a divorce at such a point. Her husband moved into a campus ministry without consulting her; she was not college-educated, didn’t feel comfortable in that setting-and that was the end of the marriage.

Gordon: In other cases, pastoral marriages are cracking because men and women are viewing their work more and more as a career, not a calling. Gail and I have come to believe that the greatest coming crisis in pastoral ministry is the growing number of pastors’ spouses who want their own careers. They would be horrified, Mary, that you walked in here this morning and introduced yourself as a pastor’s wife. That’s totally out of bounds.

Mary: Yes, I know-they tell me so! They say, “You’re an author; you’re not a pastor’s wife or a homemaker.” It’s odd: a chemist can write something and still be called a chemist, but when I write something as a pastor’s wife, people right away want to change my label.

Gordon: When the pastorate becomes a career, it is only a job. It sounds good to say, “OK, one person in this marriage will do a pastor’s job while the other does a social worker’s job or a lawyer’s job”-but it doesn’t work that way. I fear for the quality of pastoral ministry in the 1990s as this mentality proliferates.

Leadership: Isn’t this in some sense a reaction against the Lorraine Pierce experience? Contemporary wives are saying, “I’m not going to submerge my life for the sake of his ministry; I’m not going to be taken for granted. I’m going to be totally separate.”

Gordon: Yes. No one defends what happened to Lorraine Pierce. But the ditch on the opposite side of the road has problems, too.

Mary: Sometimes pastors’ wives tell me, “I didn’t know he was going into the ministry. That all came up after the wedding.” I feel for them, because often they haven’t even been consulted.

But once they are there, I say, “Do you believe in the sovereignty of God, or don’t you? God has put you into this marriage, you’re both Christians-now you rely on 1 Corinthians 10:13 and go on.”

Bill: I’ve been in a lot of churches and a lot of parsonages over the years, and I can see how the modeling of some pastors’ wives aggravates this misunderstanding. When young women see a pastor’s wife who always sits meekly on the second row and never says anything because of her subservience, no wonder they think I don’t want to be like that. On the other hand, if they observe the opposite-the aggressive pastor’s wife who essentially runs the church-they may assume that they, too, can do anything they like in such a role. Both are distortions.

Leadership: What are some of the things that have worked for you in maintaining family health?

Gordon: When we entertain Christian leaders in our home, it’s amazing how many of them will totally ignore my wife. All their comments and questions are directed to me. So I’ve learned to play a little game. When dinner is ended, I spring to my feet and begin clearing the table. I take my sweet time loading the dishwasher and cleaning up the kitchen, thereby forcing this man to sit and interact with Gail for twenty or thirty minutes.

By the time I come back, he’s found himself in the presence of a woman who can ask very good questions and is often better-read than he is.

Most men have few good conversations with women. They rarely get into anything beyond problematic or programmatic subjects.

Mary: Bill, how did you and your wife wind up with three sons in the ministry and the fourth one a doctor? What did you do to encourage their spiritual potential?

Bill: I’m not sure I know. I do remember the greatest compliment I ever got, when one of them said, “Dad is the same at home as he is at church.” Apparently the ministry was not something foreign. It was in harmony with the rest of our lives.

Betty instilled in each of them a strong sense of their worth. I tried to show my esteem for them by making quality time to be with them. Whenever they played basketball or football, I was there. Many times I remember being reprimanded by a church member for not running to the hospital or agreeing to a committee meeting at a certain time, but I held firm.

The other thing was quality vacation time. We did the two things you couldn’t do where we lived in west Texas. We’d either go to enjoy the water or else the mountains. I didn’t try to study or do a lot of reading on vacation; I was there simply to spend time with the kids.

Mary: But how did they get pointed toward the ministry?

Bill: We laid our hands on them and committed them to Christ while they were still in their cribs. After that, we didn’t push one vocation over another, so long as they would be faithful to God and the church. The central question was “What does God want you to do? What is he saying to you about your life?”

One of my boys-the big football player-had more fun in university than I would have liked, and he always brushed me off by replying, “Dad, I think God’s calling me to be a millionaire.” (That would have been fine with me.) But gradually he got involved with the Baptist Student Union on campus, and then became a director of student ministries. Finally one day he called me and said, “Dad, I want you to come over and see me.”

“Well, what do you want, Rod?” I asked. “I can’t come right this minute.”

“Dad, it’s very important to me that you come,” he answered. “I want you to come and lay hands on me in a different way than you used to. I really think God has called me to preach.”

Leadership: How does the pastor’s wife influence this kind of process in the children?

Gordon: The wife is the emotional pendulum of the family. Everyone else catches her moods and, to some degree, responds similarly. If she is joyful about the ministry, the children will be too. If she’s a martyr, the kids will hate their lot in life.

Gail has always made sure, to the best of her ability, that the mood is up and even when I come home for dinner. I’ve often heard her say to groups, “My husband works in a disordered world. The people who seek him out generally have disordered lives. He has to have a place of order to which he can retreat.”

So the supper hour is sacred for us. She’s given standing orders to the kids to be home then, no matter what. We take the phone off the hook and enjoy sixty to ninety minutes together. The memories of those times are precious. Sometimes we’ll have a little period of prayer; sometimes somebody will burp and we’ll never make it through the prayer for all the hysterics. When I was a kid, you had to stifle the laughter, but not at our house. You just go ahead and roar.

Bill: Now that all five of our children are married, Betty and I are continually amazed at how they plan to come home at the same time. The entire clan gets together once or twice a year, even though they range from New Orleans to Canada. They work their schedules so they can be home together and play like a bunch of kids again. The spouses don’t know quite what to think, but it’s beautiful.

Kent: From the time our four have been little, Barbara has said again and again, “Aren’t we lucky your dad is in the ministry?” And the kids say, “Yeah, he could be a salesman or a truck driver and be gone lots of nights-this is so much better.”

Another little thing: she always says, “Dad’s at work,” not “Dad’s at church.” Everybody else’s dad goes to work, and so does theirs. We think that’s an important point to make.

We try to let them see the privileges that go along with the pastorate. For example, they get the run of the church building-gymnasium and all. They get to go along on trips where I’m speaking.

Gordon: I made a commitment years ago that when each of my kids turned sixteen, I would take them on a trip they would never forget. In Mark’s case, that forged a relationship between us that is the basis of discussion to this day. Next year will be Kristi’s turn.

The other thing that binds us together is that from the very beginning, I’ve always sat on the front row with my family during worship services, not up on the platform. I go to the pulpit only when I have a specific task to perform. Otherwise I’ve always been sitting there stroking my children’s hair, scratching the back of their necks, kneading their shoulders and they never wiggled a muscle for fear I would stop. We never had a behavior problem in church with either of them.

Now that they’re older, they simply would not miss a church service-and I’ve pondered whether their faithfulness is not built to some extent on a subconscious association with good feelings of warmth and intimacy.

A side benefit has been that most of the families at Grace Chapel sit together. We’ve never said they should-they just do it from watching us. They don’t know any differently.

Kent: I got to thinking one day about the pastoral image as viewed by my sons. In some ways, pastors are not totally masculine-they’re always dressed up, always neat, always in a shirt and tie. That’s when I decided to do more outdoors things with them, to teach them to hunt and fish. I enjoy those things myself, but a second reason was so the ministry would not come off entirely prissy in their eyes.

Bill: Have you ever noticed how preachers are portrayed on television and in the movies? They’re almost never strong, masculine types. I took some of the same steps, Kent, to make sure my three boys knew their dad was a man like anybody else’s dad.

Leadership: One way to summarize Man of Vision, Woman of Prayer is to say, “Here is the result of a philosophy that says, ‘Ministry first, family second.’ ” What’s your philosophy? Is it so simple as to say, “Family first, ministry second”?

Kent: I don’t believe in splitting the two. As Gail MacDonald says in her book to pastors’ wives, “Your family is the Lord’s work.” When my children were young, I wrote them into my schedule just like other people. I’d come and take them out of school early just to go get an ice-cream cone or fly a kite; I didn’t care what the school authorities thought.

Now that all four are teenagers, they remember those times. Instead of feeling deprived as children of the parsonage, they feel honored.

Bill: If the wife has the same sense of calling to ministry that the husband does, there is unity. A wife is not just baggage brought along. Together they model a relationship to the whole church. People come to know Christ in a personal way because they see Christ in her as well as in him.

Pastors

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER

Harold L. Myra

We have been watching with pleasure the evaluations of our new column “To Illustrate.” Apparently, many of you find at least one illustration usable and perhaps many of them challenging.

In this issue you’ll find a bonus illustration, “Making Truth Memorable.” As I commented to my own pastor, I thought this might even be preached as an entire “sermon” in itself, for dramatic brevity can hammer a concept home.

How was it selected for LEADERSHIP? Terry Muck commented to me after a game of racquetball, “Dean heard the illustration in church and told it to Marshall and me. It was so powerful it made tears well up in our eyes. … ” I mention how our LEADERSHIP editors chose this illustration to indicate their own hearts for ministry, with material growing out of their own involvement in the church.

* * *

As I read the galleys for this issue, I found myself saying over and over, “That’s it; that’s exactly what should be said!” However, on this subject of preaching, there are limitations to the help LEADERSHIP can offer. Neil Wiseman, a pastor who has taught homiletics, insists that preachers learn to preach by modeling. There’s a lot to that. In fact, we’ve decided to provide an additional resource in this area; sometime this spring, you’ll see information on a series of tapes from Christianity Today and LEADERSHIP. Each will have a contemporary “great sermon” and, on the reverse side, a collection of unusually effective illustrations. We’re very much excited about this new service, which can provide both excellent models and illustrations for messages (more on that as the program develops).

* * *

We are also concerned about a need we increasingly sense is as deep as that which launched LEADERSHIP three years ago. We find time and time again that pastors’ wives are in a situation just as pressured and awkward-and just as promising and fulfilling-as their husbands. Yet there is very little specific help for them.

How are pastors’ wives to view their unique potential, their marriages, their relation to the church, to their children, to God? How can they get past the negatives and embrace the positives? We’ve encountered strong feelings. Some, for instance, dislike being called pastors’ wives, feeling it puts them in the shadow of their husbands’ ministries, typecasting and limiting them. Others like the identity but find coping very difficult.

Occasional articles in LEADERSHIP on the subject have been well received, but so much more should be done.

After sensing these needs for several years, we’ve concluded we should develop a magazine to explore with full candor the role of the minister’s wife. We recognize there are also husbands of female ministers, but we believe their needs are so different that meeting them would require a separate publication. Right now, the vast majority of spouses of ministers are women, and good magazine publishing requires high specificity to be effective.

We invite your ideas concerning this new publication. If you were named editor, what would you put into such a magazine? (In fact, maybe you’d like to be editor-write us if you believe you could be the person we’re looking for.) How about a name for this magazine? We’ll pay $250 to the person who first sends us the one we eventually use.

The first issue will appear in January; it will be published six times a year.

* * *

Fred Smith, our good friend who writes regularly for this journal, recently made some interesting statements about the value of having enemies. “They plumb the depth of our Christian maturity,” he observed, “exposing our self-centeredness, arrogance, and self-righteousness. They attack and expose our motive, for seldom do we form an enemy out of a mere mistake of fact or even opinion.

“Enemies are personal, not positional. Therefore, we are commanded to love them. This command is like a spiritual thermometer stuck into the depths of our feverish little souls. It is interesting that the Jewish historian and sociologist Hart puts the command to love our enemies as the greatest difference between Christianity and all other religions.”

Enemies. Do you have any? Do they slander and vilify you? Have you been, or are you being, hurt or even crushed by them?

For help in this area, I’ve found Thomas … Kempis’s Imitation of Christ a treasure. Thomas Nelson has recently released an excellent new translation by E. M. Blaiklock, from which I’ve drawn the following quotes:

“You are not more holy if you are praised, nor the baser if you are reviled. You are what you are. … If you give heed to what you are in yourself, you will not care what men say about you. ‘Man looks upon the outward appearance, but God upon the heart.’

“Who are you that you should be afraid of mortal man? He is today, and tomorrow will not appear. Fear God. … What can anyone do against you by words or violence? He rather hurts himself than you. … If for the moment you seem to go under and to suffer shame unmerited, do not be put out by this . . . but rather look heavenwards to [God].”

Blaiklock’s translation is available in paperback; I heartily commend its wisdom.

Harold L. Myra, President, Christianity Today, Inc.

- More from Harold L. Myra

Pastors

RULES FOR THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor was a highly regarded preacher, teacher, and counselor in seventeenth century England. He believed that life could be holy in every respect. His Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) accentuates this fact; it is a plea to seek righteousness in every area of living. Following are excerpts from his practice of prayer.

1. We must be careful, that we never ask anything of God that is sinful: for that is to ask of God to dishonor himself. Let us principally ask of God power and assistances to do our duty, to glorify God, to do good works, to live a good life, to die in the fear and favor of God, and eternal life.

2. We may lawfully pray to God for the gifts of the Spirit, such as preaching, good expression, a ready and unloosed tongue, good understanding, and learning, with these restraints:

That we cannot be so confident of the event of those prayers as of the former.

That we must be curious to secure our intention in these desires, that we may not ask them to serve our own ends, but only for God’s glory.

We must submit to God’s will, desiring him to choose our employment, and to furnish our persons as he shall see expedient.

3. Whatsoever we may lawfully desire of temporal things, we may lawfully ask of God in prayer, and we may expect them, as they are promised in Holy Scripture.

4. He that would pray with effect, must live with care and piety. For although God gives to sinners and evil persons the common blessings of life and chance; yet they by contradicting some necessary ingredient in prayer, (such as mercy, humility, purity, and sincerity) do defile the prayer, and make it a direct sin.

5. All prayer must be made with faith and hope.

6. Our prayers must be fervent, intense, earnest, and importunate, when we pray for things of high concernment and necessity. In other things, we are to use a bridle: and, as we must limit our desires with submission to God’s will, so also we must limit the importunity of our prayers, by the moderation and term of our desires. Pray for it as earnestly as you should desire it.

7. Our good desires must be lasting, and our prayers frequent, assiduous, and continual; not asking for a blessing once, and then leaving it; but daily renewing our suits.

8. Let the words of our prayers be pertinent, grave, material, not studiously many. God hears us not the sooner for our many words, but much the sooner for an earnest desire.

9. In all forms of prayer, mingle petition with thanksgiving.

10. Whatever we beg of God, let us also work for it. For God loves to bless labor and to reward it, but not to support idleness. Read Scriptures; and then pray to God for understanding. Pray against temptation: but you must also resist the devil. Ask of God competency of living: but you must also work with your hands the things that are honest.

11. To this purpose let every man study his prayers, and read his duty in his petitions. For the body of our prayer is the sum of our duty.

12. In all prayers, we must be careful to attend our present work, not wandering upon impertinent things. Strive to obtain a diligent, sober, untroubled, and composed spirit.

13. Let your posture and gesture of body in prayers be reverent, grave, and humble. Stand or kneel, or lie flat upon the ground on your face, in your ordinary and more solemn prayers; but in extraordinary prayers, the reverence and devotion of the soul, and the lifting up of the eyes and hands to God with any other posture not indecent, is usual and commendable. For we may pray in bed, on horseback, everywhere, and at all times, and in all circumstances.

14. We, who must love our neighbors as ourselves, must also pray for them as for ourselves. This is called intercession; we are to remember our relatives, our family, our charge, our benefactors, our creditors; not forgetting to beg pardon and charity for our enemies, and protection against them.

15. Rely not on your single prayer in matters of great concern. Make it as public as you can, obtaining others to pray with you, this being the great blessing of the communion of saints: that a prayer united is strong, like a well-ordered army. God loves to be tied fast with such cords of love, and constrained by holy violence.

16. Every time, that is not seized upon by some other duty, is seasonable enough for prayer: but let it be performed as a solemn duty morning and evening, that God may begin and end all our business, and “the outgoing of the morning and evening may praise him.”

- More from Jeremy Taylor

Pastors

MY CHOICE OF BOOKS

David duPlessis

I was the first in a South African family of nine boys, and thus was expected to be a perfect example to my brothers. That is one reason why the Bible was the first book to make an impact upon my childhood days. Devotions every morning and evening were the strict rule of life, and so before I was twelve years old, I had read the Bible through around the table.

At age twelve, I had a profound encounter with Jesus as my Savior. From then on, I wanted to be like him. His earthly father, like mine, was a carpenter. But mine was also a reader, and in his bookshelf I soon found Pilgrim’s Progress. Here in simple story language were the truths of the Bible. They rooted my life more firmly in the Word of God.

In later years, when more and more problems appeared, I found Bunyan’s Holy War a great help. His writings so impressed me that I often wondered whether one would have to go to prison in order to write such wonderful books.

One such problem arose when my parents, because of their interest in divine healing and the practice of speaking in tongues, were publicly disfellowshiped from the Dutch Reformed Church. However, from our new friends in the Pentecostal movement we heard of Andrew Murray and began to read his works. He had just recently passed away at the age of eighty-nine, and it was a great comfort for us to find this Dutch Reformed minister saying such things as “The blessing of Pentecost is a supernatural gift, a wonderful act of God in the soul. My brethren! It is an unspeakably holy and glorious thing that a man can be filled with the Spirit of God.”

In another place he wrote: “Pentecost makes the Church what it ought to be. The power of Jewish prejudice, and of pagan hardness of heart was overcome, and the Church of Christ won glorious triumphs. This grand result was achieved simply and only because the first Christian Church was filled with the Spirit.”

I collected a complete set of Murray’s writings in both English and Afrikaans. I still recommend them, especially The Spirit of Christ, The Full Blessing of Pentecost, The Divine Indwelling, and The Power of the Spirit. They give a firm foundation and a balanced ministry according to the Word of God.

As I gave leadership to the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa throughout the 1930s and early ’40s, I gathered books from Pentecostal movements in other countries on salvation, healing, baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the Second Coming. In this way I learned of an American named John Alexander Dowie, founder of Zion, Illinois. Unfortunately, the writings of many of these old pioneers are now out of print.

A hint of things to come in my ministry occurred when I read The Christ of Every Road by E. Stanley Jones. I was tremendously impressed by his brand of ecumenism. Could it be that the Pentecostal movement, denounced by most churches as a passing cult, would some day be accepted as a work of God? I eventually read all of Jones’s works.

I became more interested in the autobiographies of pioneers in missions and Christian unity, drawing inspiration from them to press for reconciliation in the body of Christ. The book that helped me most was The Household of God by Bishop Lesslie Newbigin. Two years before it was published, I had met him at an International Missionary Council meeting, and we had enjoyed a lively exchange about the unique contributions of Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, and Pentecostalism. When pieces of that discussion appeared in his books I was thrilled but I was also challenged. He pointed out that experience without the discipline of doctrine leads to fanaticism. However, doctrine alone can become pure formalism.

It was at the same meeting that I met Willem Visser ‘t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, who invited me to that body’s Second General Assembly in Evanston in 1954. This launched me on a serious review of all books on Christian unity. When I found myself as the only Pentecostal observer at Vatican II in the 1960s, I knew I had even more study to do. One book I found most helpful was Steps to Christian Unity by John A. O’Brien, a Notre Dame professor of theology. His key text throughout was John 17:20-21, a Scripture that has become the passion of my ministry because it was the passion of Christ.

I thank God for books, both classic and modern. But as the apostle John reminds us at the end of his gospel, there are yet other things that Jesus did (and is doing) that, if they were published, the world itself would not be large enough to contain.

David duPlessis has for 35 years been Pentacostalism’s unofficial ambassador to the rest of Christendom.

- More from David duPlessis

Pastors

LISTENING TO THE LISTENERS

Haddon Robinson

He who hath ears to hear gives better sermons.

“What do you think of sermons?” the Institute for Advanced Pastoral Studies asked churchgoers-and got an earful. Sample responses:

“Too much analysis and too little answer.”

“Too impersonal, too prepositional-they relate nothing to life.”

“Most sermons resemble hovercrafts skimming over the water on blasts of hot air, never landing anyplace!”

No wonder sermons are occasionally mocked as “the fine art of talking in someone else’s sleep.” Communication experts dismiss them as “religious monologues.” Communication flows best on two-way streets, they argue, while preaching moves in only one direction. And because congregations can’t talk back to register doubts, disagreements, or opinions, many sermons hit dead ends.

A second rap is that most ministers overcommunicate. They load new concepts and duties on their congregations before previous ideas can be digested and absorbed. Content keeps coming, but when frustrated listeners can’t stop the conveyor belt, they stop listening.

Yet monologues afflict the clergy like a genetic disease. Experiments with dialogue sermons, in vogue a few years ago, have gone the way of the CB radio. What is more, those trained in theological seminaries, where content is king, succumb to the empty-jug fallacy. Getting ideas into someone else’s head is akin to filling a jug with water. Preachers invest large segments of time gathering water from books, commentaries, and old class notes but seldom consider time spent with people a valuable resource. While they often possess the gift, knowledge, and fiery enthusiasm, their sermons sound like “manualese”-textbook exegesis. The empty-jug fallacy is summed up in a bit of doggerel:

Cram it in, jam it in;

People’s heads are hollow.

Take it in, pour it in;

There is more to follow.

Heads are neither open nor hollow. Heads have lids, screwed on tightly, and no amount of pouring can force ideas inside. Minds open only when their owners sense a need to open them. Even then, ideas must still filter through layers of experience, habit, prejudice, fear, and suspicion. If ideas make it through at all, it’s because feedback operates between speaker and listener.

In recent years, automakers have begun outfitting some models with fuel efficiency gauges to let drivers know how their habits affect consumption. Whenever you stomp on the accelerator, the needle plummets; whenever you drive gently, the indicator rises. Very quickly this feedback helps pinpoint wasteful actions.

Preaching seems to be a zero-feedback situation, a monologue with no return. It does not have to be so. The pull toward monologue can be broken. In fact, significant preaching has always involved dialogue. The most astute preachers allow their eyes and ears to program their mouths. As they stand in the pulpit, they respond to cues from the audience telling them how they are doing. As they prepare, they study not only content but also people, hearing the spoken and unspoken questions. After speaking, they listen intently to find out how they have done.

Most people do not realize that important feed-back takes place during the act of preaching. Listening seems passive-a typical Sunday spectator sport. Yet able communicators listen with their eyes. They know that audiences show by their expressions and posture when they understand, approve, question, or are confused. People nod agreement, smile, check their watches, or slump in their seats. Great preachers do not build strong churches nearly as often as great churches through their feedback make strong preachers. These congregations give their preachers the home court advantage by actively listening to what they have to say.

Feedback, however, begins as the sermon is still brewing. Here pastors hold an advantage over other speakers, since they interact daily with members of the audience. Yet this advantage is not automatic. To benefit, preachers must listen: to questions people ask, and for answers they seek. They must observe: needs (expressed or unexpressed, admitted or denied), relationships (personal, family, community), experiences, attitudes, and interests. Jotting down what they observe each day will help take note of the passing parade. This in turn colors and shapes the handling of biblical material and the approach to the message. Let a preacher take a truth from Scripture and force himself to find twenty-five illustrations of that truth in daily life, and he will discover how much the world and its citizens have to tell him.

This dialogue with the congregation and the wider community can be more focused. In order to develop a sensitivity to current questions, John Stott, the internationally known English minister, joined a reading group that met monthly. They explored the ideas and implications of significant books, usually secular, from a Christian perspective. At times they attended films or plays together and then returned to the church to discuss what they had seen.

When Stott preached on contemporary issues, he formed an ad hoc group of specialists to help him learn the personal dimensions of the problem. At some of these gatherings, Stott actively participated, while at others he merely sat and eavesdropped on discussions between different points of thought. As an outgrowth of the challenging dialogue, Stott’s sermons, while solidly biblical, were as up-to-date as next week’s newsmagazine.

Pastors in smaller churches legitimately object that such groups develop more easily in large urban or suburban congregations. Yet even in rural and inner-city communities, men and women wrestle with substantive issues, and many would welcome the opportunity to discuss contemporary life and thought with a minister.

Churches, large or small, can organize systems of feedback. A church in Iowa turns monologue to dialogue by basing its midweek Bible study on the passage for the following Sunday’s sermon. The pastor provides notes explaining the text, and then the people divide into small groups to explore further meanings and implications for themselves. Out of this encounter, the pastor zeroes in on terms, ideas, and issues he must address and, as an added benefit, often finds illustrations and applications for his sermon. Surprisingly, everyone agrees studying the passage beforehand heightens rather than diminishes interest in the sermon. They are made aware of the biblical material, and they become curious about how the preacher will handle it.

A pastor of a small church in Oregon goes over his sermon with members of his board every Thursday at breakfast. Everyone reads the passage before-hand, and the minister takes a few moments to sketch the broad outline of his message. During the discussion that follows, each shares what the passage says and what it might mean to the congregation. While the minister prepares the sermon, he does not do so in solitary confinement; instead he benefits from the insights and experiences of others in the body of Christ.

Rehearsing the sermon aloud also offers opportunity for feedback. John Wesley read some of his sermons to an uneducated servant girl with the instruction, “If I use a word or phrase you do not understand, you are to stop me.” By this exercise, the learned Methodist developed the language of the mines and marketplace. Many preachers have taken a lead from Wesley. Some have risked their marriages by practicing on their wives. Since preachers’ wives marry “for better or for worse,” they can cut their down side risks by offering constructive criticism. At Denver Seminary we offer courses to equip wives in making their husbands’ sermons better. Less courageous ministers-or those with weaker marriages-might run through their sermons with a shut-in or a friend willing to contribute an ear.

As people file out of the sanctuary on Sunday, they mumble appropriate clichs: “You preached a good sermon today” or “I enjoyed what you had to say.” While these responses are nice, they are often little more than code words to get past the minister as he guards the door. Preachers need an organized program of feedback following the sermon to determine whether they have hit their target.

Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, devotes the last fifteen minutes of the service to questions and answers. Some sermons raise more questions than others, of course. When questions are few, members tell what the sermon could mean in their lives. Both questions and testimony not only benefit the people but provide immediate information to the pastor.

According to Reuel Howe, feedback sessions are more productive if the minister is not present. In his book Partners in Preaching, Howe suggests inviting six or more lay people, including a couple of teenagers, to take part in a reaction group following the church service. The pastor does not attend, but the conversation is recorded. When the tape runs out, the session ends. The pastor listens to the recorded comments later in the week. Several questions structure interaction.

1. What did the sermon say to you?

2. What difference, if any, do you think the sermon will make in your life?

3. How did the preacher’s method, language, illustrations, and delivery help or hinder your hearing of the message?

4. Do you disagree with any of it? What would you have said about the subject?

Laypeople find these opportunities stimulating. In fact, through them, many learn to listen to sermons more perceptively and develop a keener appreciation for good preaching. If the minister listens carefully, he will discover how his congregation responded, what they heard and did not hear, what they understood and did not understand.

However it comes about, feedback is the lifeblood of communication. Without it, preaching seldom touches life.

When the church was young, Christians gathered at a common meal for Communion and communication. As a teacher explained the Scriptures, listeners broke in with questions and comments. So lively was the feedback that New Testament writers like Paul wrote ground rules to keep this interchange under control. Later, as Christianity fell under the influence of Greek and Roman rhetoric, oratory replaced conversation, and dialogues became monologues.

The infant church possessed what the modern church must rediscover. Only as we talk with people-not at them-will preaching remain a vital and effective carrier of God’s truth.

Haddon Robinson is president of Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary.

Leadership Spring 1983 p. 68-71

- More from Haddon Robinson

Pastors

On Finding a Spiritual Director

Eugene H. Peterson

A seasoned pastor seeks a guide to the interior regions of faith.

Twenty-five years ago in Baltimore I heard Pete Seeger play the five-string banjo. I was seized with the conviction that I must do it too. I was in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University at the time and had little money, but poverty was no deterrent in the rush of such urgencies: I went to the pawn shops on East Baltimore Street the next morning and bought a banjo for eleven dollars.

I found an instruction manual in a used-book store for fifty cents. I was on my way. I applied myself to strumming and frailing and three-finger picking. I had neither the time nor the money for formal instruction, but in odd moments between seminars and papers, I worked at making the sounds and singing the songs Seeger had introduced into my life.

In the years following, the impetus of the first enthusiasm slackened. I repeated myself a lot. From time to time I would pick up another instruction book, another song book.

Occasionally someone would be in our home who played the banjo, and I would pick up a new technique. At such moments I became fleetingly aware of a great pool of lore that banjo players took for granted. I recognized some of the items from the footnotes and appendixes in my instruction books. Eventually I realized if I was going to advance, I would have to get a teacher. It wasn’t that I lacked knowledge-my stack of instruction books was now quite high. It wasn’t that I lacked material-there were already far more songs in my books than I could ever learn well. But I didn’t seem to be able to get the hang of some things just by reading about them.

I have not yet gotten a teacher. It was never the right time. I procrastinated. I am still picking and singing the same songs I learned in the first few years. My crisp, glittering banjo sound that used to set feet tapping and laughter rippling now bores my wife and children to tears. I am not a little bored myself. I still intend to find a teacher.

* * *

A desire for prayer was kindled in my early life. When the embers cooled, as they did from time to time, I applied the bellows of a lecture or a book or a workshop or a conference. The evangelical movement, in which I grew up, gave frequent exhortations to pray. I was told in many and various ways that prayer was urgent. There was also a great quantity of didactic material on prayer, most of it in books. I responded to the exhortations and read the books. But useful as these resources were to get me started and established, there came a time when I felt the need for something else-something more personal, more intimate.

But what? As I groped for clarity, I found out what I did not want. I didn’t want a counselor or therapist. I was not conscious of any incapacitating neurosis that needed fixing. I did not want information; I already knew far more than I practiced. It was not for lack of knowledge that I was unsettled. And it wasn’t exactly a friend I wanted, a person with whom I could unburden my inner hopes and fears when I felt like it.

My sense of need was vague and unfocused. It had, though, to do with my development in prayer and my growth in faith-I knew that much. But I didn’t know how to get it. I began to pray for someone who would guide me in the essential, formative parts of my life: my sense of God, my practice of prayer, my understanding of grace.

I knew from my books that in previous centuries, spiritual directors were a regular part of the life of faith. I also knew that in other traditions it was unthinkable for persons with any kind of leadership responsibilities to proceed without a spiritual director. Spiritual intensities were dangerous and the heart desperately wicked: anyone entering the lion’s cage of prayer required regular, personal guidance. But this knowledge, like the footnotes and appendixes in my banjo books, was outside the orbit of my associations.

Besides, I like doing things on my own. Figuring them out. Mastering skills. Fasting. Frailing. Double-thumbing. Meditating. It was all right for a person who was uninstructed or unmotivated to get help, but I was neither. It was better to strike out through virgin territory on one’s own. “Just Jesus and me” was deeply embedded in my understanding of the mature Christian life. The goal was independence from every human relationship and intimacy with Christ alone.

All the same, going against the grain of training and inclination, I found myself with a focused prayer: “Lead me to a spiritual director.”

I considered various friends and acquaintances. Somehow no one seemed right. I sensed they would not understand my needs. I may have been wrong in this-in one instance I know now that I was. But no one seemed to be the answer to my prayer for a spiritual director.

I was in no real hurry. I kept alert. In the course of this waiting and watching, I met a man whom I gradually came to feel was the right person. The more I knew him, the more confident I became that he would understand me and guide me wisely.

At this point I greatly surprised myself: I didn’t ask him. I was convinced I needed a spiritual director. I was reasonably sure this person would help me. And suddenly I felt this great reluctance to approach him. We were together quite regularly, and so I had frequent opportunities to approach him. I procrastinated.

It didn’t take me long to get to the root of my reluctance: I didn’t want to share what was most essential to me. I wanted to keep control. I wanted to be boss. I had often felt and sometimes complained of the loneliness of prayer, but now I found cherished pleasures I was loathe to give up-a kind of elitist spirituality fed by the incomprehension or misunderstanding of outsiders but which would vanish the moment even one other comprehended and understood. I wanted to be in charge of my inner life. I wanted to have the final say-so in my relationship with God.

I had no idea I had these feelings. I was genuinely surprised at their intensity. I tried the route of theological rationalization: that Christ was my mediator, that the Spirit was praying deeply within me, beyond words, and that a spiritual director would interfere in these primary relationships. But while the theology was sound, the relevance to my condition was not. What I detected in myself was not a fight for theological integrity but a battle with spiritual pride.

It took me exactly one year to ask John to be my spiritual director. But it was not a wasted year. Now I knew at least one of the reasons the old masters recommended a spiritual director and why they insisted that we never grow out of the need for one. It was because of pride, this incredibly devious, alarmingly insidious evil that is so difficult to detect in myself but so obvious to a discerning friend. At the same time I understood one component of my spiritual loneliness, of not having anyone appreciate the intensity of spiritual struggles and disciplines. Again, pride: pride isolates.

* * *

In our first meeting, John asked what my expectations were. I didn’t have any. I had never done this before and didn’t know what to expect. I only knew I wanted to explore the personal dimensions of faith and prayer with a guide instead of working by trial and error as I had been.

In reflecting on what has developed in these monthly conversations, three things stand out.

1. My spontaneity has increased. Since this person has agreed to pay attention to my spiritual condition with me, I no longer feel solely responsible for watching over it. Now that someone experienced in assessing health and pathology in the life of faith is there to tell me if I am coming off the wall, I quit weighing and evaluating every nuance of attitude and behavior. I have always had a tendency to compulsiveness in spiritual disciplines and would often persist in certain practices whether I felt like it or not, year in and year out, in a stubborn determination to be ready for whatever the Spirit had for me. I knew the dangers of obsessive rigidity and tried to guard against it. But that was just the problem. I was the disciplinarian of my inner life, the one being disciplined, and the supervisor of my disciplinarian. A lot of roles to be shifting in and out of through the day.

I immediately gave up being “supervisor” and shared “disciplinarian” with my director as well. The psychic load was reduced markedly. I relaxed. I was no longer afraid that if I diverged from my rule, I would be subject to creeping self-indulgence, quite sure it would now be spotted in short order by my director. I trusted my intuitions more, knowing that self-deceit would be called to account sooner or later. The line that divided my structured times of prayer and meditation from the rest of my life blurred. I no longer had the entire responsibility for deciding how to shape the disciplines. I found myself more spontaneous, more free to innovate, more at ease in being nonproductive and playful.

2. I have become aware of subjects I rarely, it ever, discuss with other people in my life that I regularly bring to my director. These are not shameful things, nor are they flattering things about which I am modest. They are the mundane, the ordinary things in my life. I don’t bring them up in everyday conversation because I don’t want to bore my family and friends. I don’t want people to lose interest in me and look for a more exciting conversationalist in the same way they have gone looking for a better banjo player. But these matters take up a great deal of my life. My director expressing interest in who I am (not what I do) and directing attention to what is (not what ought to be or what I want things to be) makes conversational reflection possible in these areas.

I am used to looking for signs of God’s presence in crisis and in blessing. I must be forced to look to God when I have failed or sinned. I am already motivated to look to God when everything comes together in an experience of wholeness and arrival. But the random ordinary? That is when I am getting ready for the next triumph. Or drifting into the next disaster.

My director keeps exploring everyday ordinariness for the presence of God and the workings of grace. When “nothing is going on,” is there, perhaps, something going on? The flat times, the in-between times, the routine behaviors are also charged with the grandeur of God. I have always known that but have been fitful and sporadic in exploring the territory.

Now, because there is this person with whom I don’t have to hold up my end of the conversation, I have space and leisure to take expeditions into the ordinary. I remembered James Joyce’s insistence that “literature deals with the ordinary; the unusual and extraordinary belong to journalism,” and saw the analogy to what was going on in these conversations.

3. I have been struck by the difference of being in touch with an oral tradition as compared to a written one.

I discovered the prayer masters of the church at an early age and subsequently immersed myself in their writings. Their experience and analysis are familiar to me. I profit from reading them. Some of them seem very alive and contemporary. For a long time that seemed to suffice. But there is a radical difference between a book and a person. A book tells me about the dark night; the person who comments on my dark night, even though the words are the same, is different. I can read with detachment; I cannot listen with detachment. The immediacy and intimacy of conversation turn knowledge into wisdom.

There is also the matter of timing. Out of the scores of writers on prayer, the hundreds of truths about faith, and the myriad penetrating truths of the spiritual life, which one is appropriate right now? Searching through indexes to find the page where a certain subject is presented is not the same as having a person notice and name the truth I am grappling with right now in my own life.

In meetings with my spiritual director, I have often had the sense of being drawn into a living, oral tradition. I am in touch with a pool of wisdom and insight in a way different from when I am alone in my study. It is not unlike the experience I have in worship as I participate in Scripture readings, preaching, hymn singing, and sacraments. These are not so much subjects you know about as an organic life you enter into. In spiritual direction I am guided to attend to my uniqueness and discern more precisely where my faith development fits on the horizon of judgment and grace.

* * *

Quite obviously none of these experiences depends on having a spiritual director. None of them was new to me in kind but only in degree. I do not want to claim more for the practice than it warrants. Some people develop marvelously in these areas without ever having so much as heard of a spiritual director.

Still, for most of the history of the Christian faith, it was expected that a person should have a spiritual director. It was not an exceptional practice. It was not for those who were gifted in prayer or more highly motivated than the rest. In fact, as responsibility and maturity increase in the life of faith, the urgency of having a spiritual director increases.

S”ren Kierkegaard wrote in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript that spiritual direction “must explore every path, must know where the errors lurk, where the moods have their hiding places, how the passions understand themselves in solitude (and every man who has passion is always to some degree solitary, it is only the slobberers who wear their hearts wholly on their sleeves); it must know where the illusions spread their temptations, where the bypaths slink away.” The greatest errors in the spiritual life are not committed by the novices but by the adepts. The greatest capacity for self-deceit in prayer comes not in the early years but in the middle and late years.

It strikes me that it is not wise to treat lightly what most generations of Christians have agreed is essential.

Eugene Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King United Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland.

- More from Eugene H. Peterson

Pastors

Making Truth Memorable

Dell Tarr

Some illustrations reach the entire congregation.

sower's hand with wheat seeds throwing to field

In a sermon entitled "God's Ways Are Unreasonable," missionary professor Del Tarr uses a powerful illustration from West Africa (where he served fourteen years with the Assemblies of God) to illumine Psalm 126:5-6: "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him."

I grew up in a preacher's home in the little towns of Minnesota and South Dakota. I spent most of my free time with the deacons' kids on John Deere tractors, International Harvesters, Cases, Minneapolis-Molines. I learned how to drill oats, plant corn, and cultivate. And never once did I see a deacon behave like Psalm 126 says. What was there to weep about at sowing time?

I was always perplexed by this Scripture … until I went to the Sahel, that vast stretch of savanna more than 4,000 miles wide just under the Sahara Desert, with a climate much like the Bible lands. In the Sahel, all the moisture comes in a four-month period: May, June, July, and August. After that, not a drop of rain falls for eight months. The ground cracks from dryness, and so do your hands and feet. The winds off the Sahara pick up the dust and throw it thousands of feet into the air. It then comes slowly drifting across West Africa as a fine grit. It gets in your mouth. It gets inside your watch and stops it. It gets inside your refrigerator (if you have one).

The year's food, of course, must all be grown in four months. People grow sorghum or milo in fields not larger than this sanctuary. Their only tools are the strength of their backs and a short-handled hoe. No Massey-Fergusons here; the average annual income is between 85 and 100 dollars per person.

October and November … these are beautiful months. The granaries are full; the harvest has come. People sing and dance. They eat two meals a day: one about ten in the morning, after they've been to the field awhile, and the other just after sundown. The sorghum is ground between two stones to make flour and then a mush with the consistency of yesterday's cream of wheat. The sticky mush is eaten hot; they roll it into little balls between their fingers, drop it into a bit of sauce, and then pop it into their mouths. The meal lies heavy on their stomachs so they can sleep.

December comes, and the granaries start to recede. Many families omit the morning meal. Certainly by January not one family in 50 is still eating two meals a day.

By February, the evening meal diminishes. People feel the clutch of hunger once again. The meal shrinks even more during March, and children succumb to sickness. You don't stay well on half a meal a day.

April is the month that haunts my memory. The African dusk is quiet, you see … no jet engines, no traffic noises to break the stillness. The dust filters down through the air, and sounds carry for long distances. April is the month you hear the babies crying in the twilight … from the village over here, from the village over there. Their mothers' milk is now stopped.

Parents go at this time of year to the bush country, where they scrape bark from certain trees. They dig up roots as well, collect leaves, and grind it all together to make a thin gruel. They may pawn a chair, a cooking pot, or bicycle tires in order to buy a little more grain from those wealthy enough to have some remaining, but most often the days are passed with only an evening cup of gruel.

Then, inevitably, it happens. A six- or seven-year-old boy comes running to his father one day with sudden excitement. "Daddy! Daddy! We've got grain!" he shouts.

"Son, you know we haven't had grain for weeks."

"Yes, we have!" the boy insists. "Out in the hut where we keep the goats—there's a leather sack hanging up on the wall. I reached up and put my hand down in there. Daddy, there's grain in there! Give it to Mommy so she can make flour, and tonight our tummies can sleep!"

The father stands motionless.

"Son, we can't do that," he softly explains. "That's next year's seed grain. It's the only thing between us and starvation. We're waiting for the rains, and then we must use it."

The rains finally arrive in May, and when they do, the young boy watches as his father takes the sack from the wall and does the most unreasonable thing imaginable. Instead of feeding his desperately weakened family, he goes to the field and—I've seen it—with tears streaming down his face, he takes the precious seed and throws it away.

He scatters it in the dirt! Why? Because he believes in the harvest.

The seed is his; he owns it. He can do anything with it he wants. The act of sowing hurts so much that he cries. But as the African pastors say when they preach on Psalm 126, "Brothers and sisters, this is God's law of the harvest. Don't expect to rejoice later on unless you have been willing to sow in tears."

And I want to ask you: How much would it cost you to sow in tears? I don't mean just giving God something from your abundance, but finding a way to say, "I believe in the harvest, and therefore I will give what makes no sense. The world would call me unreasonable to do this, but I must sow regardless, in order that I may someday celebrate with songs of joy."

- More from Dell Tarr

Pastors

When Children Suffer

Nina Herrmann Donnelley

The do’s and don’ts of ministering to the ill or dying child.

Joe was sitting on the edge of his bed. An IV tube was stuck in his arm, but otherwise he looked like a fairly chipper six-year-old.

I was a new student chaplain on the general medical-surgical floor at Children’s Hospital. The children on this floor, in most cases, were not seriously or critically ill-which meant that they could be a bit more lively in talking with a chaplain, or a bit more up to ignoring her!

“Hi,” I said, “my name is Nina Herrmann and I’m the new chaplain on this floor. What’s your name?”

“Joe White.”

“Hi, Joe White. Do you know what a chaplain is?”

“No-do you give shots?” he asked, with the universal look of a child faced with a needle.

“No.” I smiled. “They won’t let me.”

“That’s good. Do you play games?”

“I can. But that’s not the main thing a chaplain does. Do you go to church at home?”

“Yeah, most of the time.”

“Do you know the person who stands up in the pulpit and preaches-the minister?”

“Yeah-are you one of those?”

“Yes. Only I work here at the hospital instead of at a church.”

“But you’re a real minister?”

“I sure am.”

His face immediately lighted up. “Good,” he said. “I have a question I want to ask you.”

“Okay,” I said, with the fleeting thought that I might be better off at the dentist.

“Is it true what they say about God?”

(Digression: I was a television reporter before becoming a minister, and one lesson I learned from a number of schooled politicians is this: When faced with a difficult question, answer with another question. That at least will give you some time to think, and at best will help you find out more precisely where the person is coming from.)

“What exactly do you mean, ‘what they say about God?’ “

“You know, like God is there, even though you can’t see him.”

Pretty good for a six-year-old, I thought. He’s already grasping some theology! “Yes, Joe, I believe God is there even though we can’t see him.”

Long pause. Big smile on face. “Good! Then I believe in Santa Claus, too!”

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things (1 Cor. 13:11, KJV).

Other than the fact that it is a humorous story, the example of Joe shows that children are first children, whether well or ill, and that they reason differently from adults. I had put my expectations onto Joe, thinking that he would expect me to answer, theologically, a difficult religious question-and it did indeed turn out to be one packed with theology. But as I was grappling for all my University of Chicago Divinity School “book learning,” Joe was figuring out, very logically, that if God is truly there even though we can’t see him, then Santa Claus must truly be there, too, even though we can’t see him. And when one is six years old, that is very important.

Listening Time

One thing to keep in mind when visiting ill children is that they are, first and foremost, children. Parents will ask you questions which-at least at first-they will expect you to answer. Children will ask you questions which, given some help and listening time, they often will answer for you, frequently with amazing, innocent insight or delightfully logical reasoning.

A key phrase here is “listening time.” Many ministers think that they have to have something to say, some consoling message of Jesus and the lambs hidden in their breast pocket when they visit the ill child. But often they merely need the ability to listen.

In visiting a child who does not have a terminal illness or severe trauma, the minister can bring continuity between times that the child is in church and Sunday school, and can show that the love and caring of a church-the body of Christ-goes beyond the walls of the sanctuary.

If you know that a child is going to go to the hospital, a telephone call beforehand would be nice. Most children don’t get telephone calls from adults. To keep the call special, call the child and only the child. (Be sure, before you call, that he knows he is going to the hospital!) Tell him he’ll be missed for the Sunday or Sundays he’s gone, and that you’ll be saying a special prayer for him while he’s in the hospital. It’s not necessary to promise to come to see him at this time unless you’re especially close. (If you do promise, be sure to keep your promise, or let him know that you can’t, and why. Children remember promises very literally.) Also, tell him that you’ll look forward to seeing him back in Sunday school and church very soon. If you were in the hospital in your childhood, tell him so, without going into great detail. That way he’ll know that you “lived through it” and apparently are fine.

Many children look up to their ministers with a touch of awe. A brief telephone call will mean much and can add some “importance” to going to the hospital. Letting him know you’ll look forward to seeing him in church again soon will help take away some apprehensions of the unknown. (Most children going to the hospital for normal procedures-reassured of this by their parents and others-are not afraid of dying because they have known no one in their peer group who has died in the hospital. If they do have a peer who has died in the hospital, it’s important that parents be reminded to reassure the child that his hospital stay is not like his friend’s and that he doesn’t have anything like his friend had.)

An earlier brief telephone call can be made to the parents to let them know that Johnny and they are in your prayers; that you’ll keep in touch; and that if they feel like talking at any time, they can call you. (This last you should offer at your discretion, in line with your other commitments and with the needs of the family.)

If the child is having surgery and if you have a reasonably close relationship with the family, your appearance will be appreciated during the operation. This is a tense time, regardless of the nature of the surgery, and your presence and a prayer for God’s guidance of the surgeons, success of the surgery, strength and peace for the parents, and a quick recovery for the child will be welcome. Don’t stay long unless you can tell that your continued presence is important to the family. The appearance and prayer are what will count.

If the surgery is critical and the outcome not reasonably certain, you can say to the family as you leave, “I have to go now, but Johnny and you will be in my prayers and on my mind. May I ask the volunteer (or nurse) to call my office with a report when surgery is over?” This move lets the family know that you will be thinking of them and that you realize this is an uncertain and difficult time; without putting the burden of an immediate report on them, it gives you an automatic report to help you follow through quickly should anything go wrong. Most surgical waiting rooms are staffed with volunteers who will call when surgery is over. Be sure you remember to leave your name and number and the name of the patient.

If you don’t know the family well, a visit during surgery may only add to their discomfort, and could make them wonder if you know something they don’t. It may meet your needs to “pastor,” but it may not meet their needs. A phone call before and a visit afterward may be best.

Assuming that surgery goes routinely, one visit to the hospital is normally sufficient-again, depending on your relationship with the child and family. Most ministers think it’s grand if they can arrive when both parents are there with the child. Three with one blow! And it’s certainly easier to talk with the parents, especially when things have gone well! But we should remember that the child is the one who is hospitalized. He’s the ill parishioner. He deserves our attention, too.

It’s best not to visit the child when he’s still in a lot of pain. That’s “Mommie and Daddy” time. A card is nice-a colorful one that sits up. It doesn’t have to be religious.

Visit the child when much of his discomfort is gone, and at a time when his school friends won’t be there. Ask the child-not his parents-what’s been happening to him (his surgery or illness), and listen, sympathizing when appropriate. Shots aren’t fun! Let him show you his bruises or his scar. Ask him if he’s made any new friends in the hospital and who they are. Let him show you his gifts and flowers. Bring him a church bulletin from the Sundays he’s missed. Even if he can’t read it, it probably has a picture on it. If his name is in the bulletin, have it underlined.

Before you go, offer to say a prayer with him and Mommie and Daddy, if they’re there. It’s nice if everyone holds hands at this time. Don’t be afraid of seeming “uncool.” People expect and want ministers to pray. Even better, ask Johnny and Mommie and Daddy if they want to “help you pray,” or if they want to “pray, too.” Most people don’t think they should-or can-pray when the minister is there to pray. And some are afraid because they think they won’t know what to say as “well” as the minister. But if you can let them know that this is a nice thing and an OK thing, without pushing it, it can help them and you a lot-often especially in serious or terminal cases.

Surprisingly, Johnny may take to it more easily, and thereby encourage his parents to pray, too. I usually say, when adults are present, “Would you like to pray with me before I go?” If they nod “Yes,” I then say, “Why don’t you go first, Johnny?” (or Mommie or Daddy), and then I bow my head. It can catch some people by surprise; but more often than not they’ll pray aloud, and it will turn out to be an important thing for all concerned.

If I’m alone with the child, I’ll usually say, “Johnny, would you help me say a prayer now? Why don’t you talk to Jesus first?”

An important follow-up to the hospital visit is a call when Johnny gets home or a personal welcome when he returns to church, whether the welcome is from the pulpit, as can be done in smaller churches, or person to person.

If your church has a library, get some books written for children on children going to the hospital and having surgery, on children with physical disabilities, and children dying. Also get some books on these topics for adults. About Handicaps, by Sara Bonnett Stein (Walker, 1974), is written for parents and children to read together, with a column for each. Resources such as these can be helpful for parents and children alike.

Someone to Talk To

Watching a child die is a rotten thing. There is no answer for it. There is no real salve for the wound of it. And anyone who thinks there is hasn’t watched a child die. One of the best things a minister can do is to admit all of that, first to himself and then to his parishioners who are the parents of a dying child. It is, in my belief, the first and single most important step in their relationship throughout. The longer the minister tries to pretend that he has the answers, or that there are absolute answers now on earth, and the longer he pushes “strength” and “stoicism” and God as salve for the wound, the further he’ll be from the reality of the process.

Having said all that, I would add that it doesn’t mean that faith in God cannot help during the process of suffering. Faith in God does not make the pain less real or the horror less absolute. But it does give us someone to talk to who is always there: someone to talk to in hope, in fear, in loneliness, in frenzy, in despair, in anger; someone to have to not talk to; and someone to come home to again someday with a “peace which passeth all understanding” (Phil. 4:7).

For seven years I haven’t been able to shake her. And I doubt that I ever will. She was a little girl hungry for a love that went beyond earth, because she knew she was dying, though she never came right out and said it. I had the title of chaplain, so she found me. She came to chapel at Children’s Hospital, and I was preaching that Sunday. She adopted me to talk to.

Her name was Laura and she was nine years old and had leukemia. She was a loner-no brothers, no sisters. She had a mother and a mother’s boyfriend who visited and who cared, but who couldn’t really ever believe that Laura would die.

She had wisps of hair. Once, only once, did she show me a photo of her with long, thick, dark hair. “I cried too much when it fell out,” she explained. “I still cry when I look at the old pictures too long.” She put the photo away. “Will you come to see me when you can?” There was no demand, no schedule. She had been in hospitals too long. She knew the lingo. She would be brave enough to ask, but survivor enough to take what she got. She got me-more often than the textbooks tell you she should have. But, looking back, I wish it could have been even more.

We didn’t always talk. We didn’t always do something. We didn’t always have lights on. It wasn’t always visiting hours. It wasn’t often very long, except for the last two nights. Mostly, we just sat with each other, and sometimes I rubbed her sore legs and knees.

“What’s heaven like?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I have leukemia.”

“What do you think heaven’s like?”

“No pain. To have my hair long again. To be able to run again. To be pretty again . . .”

“That’s what heaven’s like. That and seeing God.”

“But that scares me.”

“Why?”

“Will he be mad at me? I haven’t always been as good as I could.”

“Are you sorry about that?”

“Yes.”

“You could tell God that, even now.”

“I did already. But I didn’t know if it was time, or if he heard.”

“He heard. And any time to talk to God is the right time.”

“Then he won’t be mad?”

“No, he won’t be mad. I don’t think he would have been mad, anyway; just disappointed. But he’ll be glad you talked it over with him. He’ll forget all about it even. He probably has already.”

“Really?”

“Really. So heaven can be just new long hair and no pain and running and being pretty again-though you’re pretty right now, even though I know you don’t believe me.” She shook her head. “So in heaven you’ll be pretty to you, too . . . if that’s still important to you when you get there.”

“It will be.”

I wanted to hold her and throw my arms around her and cry with her and tickle her and laugh with her, then and so many other times. But all of that would have hurt her horribly. So we talked and sat with each other.

In the end I rubbed her legs and gave her Kleenex while blood oozed out her nose and mouth, and sat in a nighttime room with her between shots of morphine that had stopped helping days earlier.

No salve. No answer.

Ministering with Continuity

How do you visit a dying child? With her permission. And more than once or twice or three times-from the beginning, not only at the end.

In Laura’s case, I was lucky. She found me. She wanted a minister to go through this with her, if possible. I was there, and she found me. She was close to her mother, and I didn’t replace her mother. Laura gave me my own place.

It isn’t always that easy in the beginning. But don’t underestimate your potential value in relationship with a dying child. It’s easy to do that because then it’s easier not to get involved with the child. I know. I’ve been that route, too.

It is important when visiting a dying child-just as in visiting an ill but not dying child-to visit the child. That doesn’t mean time should not be allowed for the parents, the siblings and the family together. But the child deserves her own minister, too.

It is a huge task to become truly involved as minister to a dying child and her family. But you are pastor of a congregation. If the child and family are known in your congregation, then many members will be concerned about their welfare, and a lot of them will want to do something but will be afraid or uncomfortable or unsure. You, as pastor, not only represent God (in your own fallible way!) in all of this, but on behalf of your congregation you can represent their caring to the child and her family. By ministering with continuity to the dying child and her family, you also are ministering to and on behalf of your congregation.

I met Laura reasonably early in her next-to-last hospital stay. I had a chance to know her while she still could race about the halls pretty well dragging her ever-present IV pole and bottles behind her with the arm to which their tubes were attached. Often she would be waiting for me by the elevator, to show me some picture or a toy. But it took time for Laura to build up trust enough to talk about God and heaven and leukemia and how she felt as a person. And time is what you need if you are to visit the dying child with her permission.

Try to visit the child each time she’s in the hospital-twice a week, at least. If she’s ill at home, telephone or stop by with some regularity (call ahead). Don’t stay long. It’s important with a child, or any patient with whom you are trying to build trust, to leave before she begins to realize that she wants you to leave. If a parent is always there, that’s OK in the beginning, especially if you don’t know the child well. But soon try to find a visiting time when the child’s parents aren’t there. A head nurse or social worker often can tell you this.

In situations of long-term hospitalization, the unit’s head nurse or charge nurse, social worker and hospital chaplain can be invaluable. Try to get to meet them (remember, they’re busy, too) and leave your name and number and ask that they contact you any time they have new or important information. (It’s best to have the family’s permission.) At the same time, knowing that you are interested and involved will mean much to the hospital staff.

When talking with the child, ask her to tell you what’s been happening to her and how she feels about it. Let her know that it’s OK to be scared or to cry-that it’s normal under the circumstances. Ask her about visitors and gifts and cards; about school and friends and pets. If she cries, that’s all right. Just sit quietly or hold her hand or hold her, depending on the level of trust built up. But be careful not to equate having the child cry in your arms or bare her soul to you with “success.” “Success” is ministering to the child where she is, along with occasionally opening doors that she has the option to go through.

In time, it can be helpful to find one thing that you can do together that can carry over from visit to visit. With one child I played a game of “War” each visit. With another I said nightly prayers. With another I played finger puppets. When a child sees you, if she can think of something happy related to your visit, she will look forward to your visit. Often, the more ill she becomes, the less actively or the less often you’ll do the things that got you “started.” But by then the trust, the relationship, will not need a prop.

Another thing that can be effective through the long process is a small stuffed animal or a doll. Don’t bring it on your first visit, but maybe on your seventh or eighth. Perhaps it will be an animal similar to one which appeared in a story you read together, though it doesn’t have to be.

Tell the child you thought of her and of your visits together when you saw the animal or doll, and you wanted her to have it. Name the toy. Then, as the child becomes worse, sometimes the animal can help you communicate feelings when the child is too depressed or frightened or ill to talk for herself.

“Hi, Mary. How are you today?”

Silence.

“I guess not too good.”

Silence.

“Fido, how do you think Mary is today?”

Silence.

“Hmmm, even Fido’s not talking. I wonder, if Fido felt like talking, how he’d say Mary’s feeling today?”

Mary: “Awful.”

“That’s too bad. Why would Fido say Mary is feeling awful?”

Mary: “Because I have to have another operation . . .”

Another helpful way of communicating is to draw pictures together. Often a quiet child will express her feelings in drawings. If you have trouble in this area, many children’s hospitals have recreation therapists or “child life therapists” who are very creative. Talk with one who knows the child you’re visiting and ask for ideas.

In visiting a dying child, give her some control. Don’t assume that she wants to see you every time, though that may be the case. Ask her.

If she can’t talk much or doesn’t want to talk much, you can bring some church news or tell her a funny story about yourself. But don’t do a lot of this. Just sitting with her and holding her hand, rubbing legs or joints that may hurt (ask before you do this), holding her in your lap and rocking, if possible-even older ill children respond to this-and saying a prayer with her can be enough, or even better than a lot of talking. Let the child guide you.

As I mentioned earlier, prayer is important. Don’t assume that it’s not desired or that there can be a “wrong” time to offer it. Rarely, if ever, is there a “wrong time” for offering prayer, even if it’s rejected.

I said earlier that faith in God gives us “someone to have to not talk to.” A child-or adult-who has been praying and suddenly doesn’t want to pray or who appears to be taking an obligatory, indifferent attitude to offered prayer, likely is angry with or hurt by God.

Children, when angry or hurt with their parents, often will stalk off and say, “I’m never going to speak to you again!” It’s the helpless child’s way of hitting back at the parent who appears to be in control within a situation the child doesn’t understand. The same can be true when “talking with God” suddenly becomes difficult.

If you encounter this reaction, it can be a clue to where the person is in her struggle with the dying situation, whether that person be parent or child.

The minister can be a steady, stable rock for a dying child (even if the minister isn’t feeling inside like a stable and steady rock, and even if the minister weeps occasionally with the child-or the parents). That doesn’t mean that the minister can or should or will replace a parent or sibling or friend. It does mean that a minister can be a visible reminder of God’s love and caring to a dying child and can have a special, ongoing place in the “process.”

It may be that the child never will open her soul to you. But again, that is not the only measure of “success.” Our goal as ministers in visiting the dying child can be quietly, steadily to say, by our presence, by our continuity, by our giving of personhood and caring to the child herself, “God is with you throughout this, and he cares about you and loves you. You are valuable each day to God.”

We may never say that in so many words; but we will say it if we make the commitment of presence-not merely at the end, like the vultures, but from the beginning.

“A little child shall lead them.” Ill and dying children will lead us through our visits with them if only we will let them.

Nina Herrmann Donnelley is a chaplain at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

- More from Nina Herrmann Donnelley

Pastors

Developing an Eager Church

George Mallone

When you encourage initiative and equip the people, expect an energy surge.

Sandy called me with a simple request. “George, a friend of mine is in the hospital. Would you go and share some comforting words?”

I’m all for hospital visitation and helping a friend, but at that moment my ministerial priorities outweighed my ministerial guilt. Mustering up my courage and attempting to be as empathetic as possible, I said, “Sandy, my job is to equip you to do the ministry, not to do all the ministry myself. It is your job to visit your friend. There are three ground rules for hospital visitation: don’t sit on the bed, don’t stay too long, pray and read the Word with your friend before you leave. When you have done these things, call me back, and I’ll share some more tips.”

You can imagine what I felt when the conversation ended. All afternoon I wondered if I had done the right thing. Am I just being lazy? What am I getting paid for? Am I not a pastor? Don’t pastors march hospital hallways every visiting hour?

But after a few hours, new thoughts began: I’m committed to the full employment of every believer. Putting that into practice may create a few awkward moments in relationships with people, but if I love them, teach them, and have confidence in their ministry, someday they will be off the spiritual welfare rolls and be full, active partners in ministry.

Benjamin Franklin once commented that we were better off not knowing two things: how sausages and decisions are made.

Another thing we are better off not knowing: the number of pastors who proclaim the priesthood of all believers but in practice function by sola pastora, by the pastor alone.

Given our usual seminary experience, this is not entirely unexpected. Much of our formal theological training has left us unprepared. In homiletics, we learned to preach. In Christian education, we learned to teach. But where were we shown how to train?

At our church, we have decided to make an effort to train others. In many ways we’re still learning, but we’re making progress. Here are four steps we have found that enable pastors and churches to equip people to assume ministry.

A Change in Attitude

An equipping ministry demands a change of attitude in both full-time staff people and the church as a whole.

Redefine the role. Over time, begin to redefine your role as one who equips others for ministry rather than one who does all the ministry. Describe yourself as a pastor among fellow pastors rather than as the pastor of the church. You will need to say these things from the pulpit so people begin to hear and see you in a different light. At the same time, you must affirm them, encourage them in their gifts, and although they may not have your training, show them they are necessary and useful for building up the body of Christ.

Design structures that fulfill these goals. It is no good to advocate giftedness yet provide no structure for it to work. Church structures, therefore, must be designed to help all believers minister. Here’s one example.

I am the primary teacher in our church. But I believe there are more teachers and preachers in the community, and they deserve the privilege of growing in their giftedness. One way to encourage this growth is to preach no more than 65 percent of the sermons. The remaining Sundays are not given to travel or speaking in other places but to hearing those in our community who are growing in their preaching gifts. It demands that I listen to their teaching, record my response, and spend time with each speaker providing affirmation and giving suggestions for improvement. It also means keeping them up to date on study materials, teaching resources, and giving them further opportunities to preach.

Know your God-ordained priorities. Ministry priorities are seldom a choice between good and bad, but between good and better. It would have been good for me to visit the woman in the hospital; it was better to equip Sandy to do it. And if time permitted, the best would be to go with Sandy to visit the woman and provide her feedback as she continued to visit.

What is important is that our God-ordained priorities are clear in our minds so we can handle the myriad requests. When a request to minister comes, I ask myself three questions:

Can someone do this better than I?

Is this an equipping opportunity?

Does this fit in with my goals and objectives?

At times, various pastoral needs will overrule these questions, but where at all possible, ministry should be given over to our fellow priests.

Delegate in faith. If people are to grow in their gifts, then you must be prepared to give ministry to them. By faith, you must believe that God can use them just as well as you. God’s plan will not be thwarted because of your absence. The more time you spend equipping people, the more confidence you will have that they can do the job God wants done.

Work yourself out of a job. We demand this of our overseas missionaries but allow ourselves to be exempt. Genuine church growth is not just bigger churches, but more churches with a higher percentage of ministry participation. Consequently, we should be reproducing people who can plant new churches. This may mean that you equip a team and then leave to start a new work.

Working yourself out of a job, however, is fraught with identity struggle. More than one equipper has questioned, “How can I grow in my gifts if I am constantly giving ministry away? Will there be a place for me at the end?” Both are legitimate concerns; both I have felt deeply. But I can assure you that equippers will never run out of work to do nor a place to belong. As to the identity crisis, it will be real-it will also be the fertile soil for learning the nature of servanthood. Ultimately, it doesn’t threaten identity; it provides it.

Prepare for flak. An energetic equipping ministry leaves little time for lingering at high tea. You may not be at every social event or committee meeting. An educated congregation, still having the traditional role in mind, will no doubt have some questions about your absence. Graciously answer those concerns, but stick to your equipping priorities. You are a servant of Christ, called to do his bidding, and not a slave to people’s notions of your calling.

Exposure to All the Gifts

Eleven years ago I could not carry a tune in a bucket (I still sing pretty poorly). At the same time, I was exposed to men and women who had gifts in worship leadership, and I began to covet those gifts for our church. I remember watching one pastor lead his congregation in singing for forty-five minutes. There was no musical accompaniment, only his gentle voice in leadership. I saw that music was not primarily a performance gift but a gift of gathering the body together for collective worship. I went home and began nervously to model this in our own community. From this beginning, I took every opportunity to expose myself to as many worship leaders as I could find.

Giftedness needs exposure. As one called to equip others, therefore, you need as much exposure as possible to all the gifts. You may not personally have a particular gift (prayer for inner healing, for instance), but you need to know what it is and who can train your community in this ministry. For me, this means I must travel on my sabbaticals, attend one or two conferences per year, and make sure I know other pastors in my area. The latter has led me to a fellowship of some forty men and women who meet fortnightly for prayer and worship. The spill-over from this meeting is that we exchange equipping ministries with one another. I led a workshop on facilitating congregational worship in Bob’s church and he led a workshop on evangelism in mine.

As we have been trained, so people in our congregations will be equipped through exposure to life-on-life situations. An example: Graeme was an unpaid intern in our church. He gave twenty hours a week to study and ministry. In return, I spent time with him in reading tutorials and lectures. One such lecture dealt with church discipline. It was pretty much a process of teacher’s notes to student’s notebook, save for a few personal illustrations I could give.

A short time later, as a co-leader in his house group, Graeme was confronted by a problem demanding discipline. Our elders decided to let the house group handle the discipline and not involve themselves unless it was absolutely necessary. No doubt Graeme felt in over his head, but he had been trained in the principles of biblical discipline, and I was sure this exposure to a real-life situation would be rewarding. It was indeed, for Graeme successfully led the group through the process of discipline and ultimately saw the restoration of the person back to the church. The equipping opportunity had been married to life exposure and produced a mature disciple.

Experimentation in Ministry

I shudder at the memory of my early years of preaching. Just to look at my notes from those days produces a sense of horror and shock. But that gracious congregation believed the principle that gifts grow in an experimental climate. Giftedness does not emerge into maturity all at once but slowly develops through trial and error, affirmation and correction. The tolerance granted to me as a young preacher needs to be extended to all.

An equipping church will foster a climate of experimentation with all the gifts. One year, for two successive evenings, we ran a “gifts fair.” Over thirty workshops were given in which people had an opportunity to hear about a particular gift, to see it in action, to hear how the leaders had grown in their giftedness, to be warned of some of the pitfalls, and to suggest ways the beginner could start. These workshops included areas like helps, administration, working with prisoners, worship leadership, drama and dance, photography, writing music, preaching, counseling, ministry with the handicapped, and leading evangelistic Bible studies. As limited as this was, the climate invited people to experiment with gifts and to see if God wanted to use them in this way.

One of the primary places for gift discovery and affirmation is in small-group meetings. Within a relational environment, people can share their spiritual desires for ministry. When someone wants to use a gift, there is a good chance God has put that desire there. Spiritual pride can occasionally skew this principle; but generally we should encourage people who volunteer a gift.

The small group should manifest an attitude of expectation. If Karen believes God has given her gifts in songwriting, then we want to bring this before the group in prayer and give Karen a chance to share her compositions. We know she is just a beginner and her self-image and confidence are shaky, but affirmation and careful evaluation will help her take the next step along the path. As the group gives Karen opportunity to minister and expects her to grow, she surely will. The group may encourage her to share one of her songs in the Sunday service. Whether she does a great job or falls flat on her face, the group is there to encourage her in the process and to give helpful suggestions.

A Decentralized Strategy

Few of the things we have discussed so far will be possible if a church retains the old wineskins. The pastoral team may have a new attitude about equipping ministry but be defeated if there are not structural changes.

The average church today is highly centralized. Everything happens at the church building (the successful church is open seven nights a week), and the senior pastor or one of the paid staff usually administers the program. Performance by a few is chosen over participation by many. Attendance and passivity are stressed at the expense of interaction and leadership. Therefore, a highly centralized church will need fewer equipped people for its ministry. Unfortunately, it will also sacrifice the priesthood and giftedness of the believer to see this happen. A decentralized philosophy, however, demands more equipping because everyone is working.

In our church, the decentralization strategy becomes visible on four levels: personal, small-group, congregational, and citywide. Each level builds on the previous one.

[Insert graphic page 81]

The basement: personal and family development. In any building, the foundation is most important. So it is with building a body of equipped saints. Individual growth and family strength is the foundation. Growth can’t happen without individuals involved daily in Bible reading, meditation, and prayer. But seldom do we take it seriously enough to teach how it is done and provide materials for it.

Our congregation writes its own study guide to lead members through personal study, discussions with spouse and children, and preparation for next Sunday’s worship.

First floor: interpersonal and small-group development. From the foundation, we build the ground floor-inter-personal relationships and small groups. Four sections make up this level.

First, personal discipleship-the design is to have everyone learning from an older and more mature Christian and sharing information and life with a younger believer. Bible reading programs, Scripture memory covenants, and prayer partnerships all play a part. Each of these involves some training and equipping.

Second, hospitality. As Karen Mains’s book Open Heart, Open Home suggests, hospitality and entertainment are two different things. It is essential that we train in the ways of hospitality. We’ve had special workshops to discuss the dilemmas of hospitality and how to get out of the entertainment rut.

Third, friendship evangelism. Most people come to Christ through contact with Christian friends or family members. Our emphasis should be upon sustaining contact with non-Christian friends and slowly winning the right, by our character and service, to share Christ with them. We try to train people in ways of friendship evangelism.

Fourth, household groups-probably the single greatest tool for gift discovery and development. Ranging from ten to twelve people and meeting in homes for up to three hours per week, these small units are able to know one another in an atmosphere of study, sharing, worship, prayer, and mission. House group leaders in our fellowship are designated by the elders and serve as the primary pastoral team for their groups.

To keep our twenty-five house leaders encouraged and growing, we provide monthly training. Let me share one example.

As one who tours all the house groups to observe our leaders in action, I noticed that some were doing a poor job of leading Bible studies. That night I gathered five leaders in the center of the room and led an inductive study for them. The other twenty leaders sat on the sidelines with evaluation sheets in their hands to critique my leadership. Did I answer my own questions? Did I draw out the quiet and shy person? Were my application questions relevant to where people lived? At the end of the study, people shared their reviews. The leaders all agreed they could now lead a study more effectively because it had been modeled for them.

People are equipped when the activity is modeled and discussed at the same time. Demonstrate, analyze, and affirm.

Second floor: large groups and whole congregation. The traditional church sees the Sunday service as the performance of the few and the best, which is quite different from Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 14:26. Although he believed in forms for worship (the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor. 11), Paul also advocated a system where believers were given freedom to share in that service. Such involvement can be greatly enhanced by equipping more people to participate on a regular basis.

Let me highlight that major change in the church does not happen at the Sunday service level, no matter how good your preaching. Radical change begins at the foundational level and moves up to the congregational level. Sunday services are only an expression of vitality experienced at the personal, family, interpersonal, and small-group levels.

In addition to Sunday services, we also use large-group activities to train people. Saturday seminars, weekly training programs, weekend retreats, summer camps-all are excellent tools for developing effective workers for the mission of the church.

We encourage large groups to become involved in extensive evangelism. While friendship evangelism (intensive) focuses on friends and relatives, extensive evangelism reaches beyond the border of our friendships to unknown people. Thus, activities such as door-to-door visitation, open-air preaching, and evangelistic dinner parties can be great opportunities to train people to share their faith.

Third floor: citywide ministry. Every congregation needs opportunities to participate with all believers in a city in order to proclaim Christ and demonstrate the unity of the church. Crusade evangelism, interchurch worship rallies, and corporate demonstrations for social justice are just a few examples. Each holds the possibility for equipping.

As you can see, these four levels offer dozens of opportunities for people to be trained and to employ their gifts. Again, this is not a program (please design your own), but a strategy for decentralizing the church so that more people fulfill their God-given ministry.

“Outrageous-the whole process is outrageous,” you may be saying. “It would never work in my church. Why, we can’t even recruit enough volunteers for our committees!”

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe believers are tired of fitting into fixed slots that have no relationship to their giftedness. Don’t you feel that anxiety from time to time? An equipping model of the pastor-teacher is one starting point in the emancipation of God’s entire priesthood.

George Mallone is a teaching elder at Emmanuel Christian Community, Richmond, British Columbia.

- More from George Mallone

Pastors

3 Ways to Plan Your Preaching

Marshall Shelley

What pastors do to keep their preaching fresh, balanced, and useful.

Author H. G. Wells, whose active mind created The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and War of the Worlds, knew how precious creative thoughts are.

"Most people think once or twice in a lifetime," he observed. "I've made a reputation of thinking once or twice a month."

Pastors, however, are expected not only to think but to deliver powerful ideas once, twice, even three times a week. It's enough to pale both rosy-cheeked seminarians and ruddy veterans. What is the secret of communicating the Word of God to the people of God without them becoming tired of God?

Parents who love their children try to provide food that's both healthy and tasty. Pastors, too, are in the business of feeding the family. After interviewing pastors from a wide range of denominations, a consensus emerged: balanced diets don't just happen. Pastors must plan a nutritious menu.

Part of the planning problem is the complex role of the sermon. A sermon, like a Swiss army knife, must handle a variety of jobs. Consider the varied preaching models in the Bible.

John the Baptist demanded repentance and baptism. Jesus, in Luke 4, read a passage of Scripture and explained it; on the mount, he talked about lifestyle. Peter, at Pentecost, interpreted current events in the light of prophecy. Paul debated the existence of God with secular philosophers and corrected bad doctrine in struggling churches.

Likewise, today's sermons must play multiple roles. Preachers are caught somewhere between Paul's resolve to "know nothing but Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2) and his equal satisfaction in preaching "the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). Modern sermons waver between the evangelistic and the educational. They must both engage unbelievers and enrich the faithful. They must break hard hearts and heal broken ones.

How do effective preachers decide what to preach? Most tend to fall into one of three categories.

One Week at a Time

In some ways, the simplest approach is to determine each week what the people need to hear. The pastor studies the Bible faithfully and selects those portions of Scripture that speak most directly to the church's situation.

Several advantages of this strategy are apparent. The minister uses only those portions of Scripture that leap out at him, and thus the sermon is more likely to be alive, delivered with energy and urgency.

Most preachers can attest that certain passages almost demand to be preached. Others don't arouse much enthusiasm. Anyone who has used a lectionary has at times asked, "Why in the world did they pick this portion?" Free-style preachers have no such headache; they make their own selections.

Ben Haden, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a one-week-at-a-time preacher.

"I never preach a series," he says. "A series assumes you'll have no visitors, no turnover, and the same people present for every message. We have 300 visitors every Sunday. We're an inner-city church, right next to the worst of the ghetto-not a static congregation at all.

"I always assume that half my listeners are unbelievers who either don't agree with what I'm saying or don't know what I'm talking about. That assumption guides me whether I'm speaking to a civic club, a seminary, or the church. It forces each sermon to be clear, simple, and complete in itself."

Haden's Sunday sermons are always on a practical topic. Systematic Bible teaching is done on Wednesday evenings. "On Sundays, unless a message is a practical help," Haden says, "I won't preach it." This system works for Haden and many other preachers. Not everyone, however, feels comfortable judging the congregation's most pressing need week by week.

Further, personal interests can bias the selection of sermon topics. Some pastors feel so strongly about church renewal that 90 percent of their sermons discuss what the body of Christ ought to be. Others hold the torch for the family, and almost every sermon includes principles for stronger families. These are important needs, but overemphasis can lead to neglect of other subjects. Sometimes in the effort to provide spiritual nourishment, pastors go overboard on the carrots. Nourishing yes, but by themselves not a balanced diet. Week-by-week preachers must be careful to touch the varied needs of the congregation.

"We let the Holy Spirit set the agenda," says Haden. "When the Lord shows me a recurring problem, I'll preach it. I don't expect the Lord to bless topics I think of; he's got to lay it on my heart.

"The Holy Spirit doesn't lead ten years in advance," he says. "I want to be ready to speak when he says speak. The Jonestown massacre broke on a Saturday, and the next day I preached about it and the need for us to put our confidence not in a man, but in God's Word. I couldn't have done that if my topic had been decided a year earlier."

The Leading of the Lectionary

At first glance, those who get each week's sermon text from a lectionary might be accused of stifling the Holy Spirit. Not so, say those who use the denomination's preprinted Scripture readings.

One pastor who uses the Lutheran lectionary, with its texts determined years before, has observed that the Holy Spirit takes the passage and applies it to people's lives in unexpected ways.

"After the service, people often tell me, 'Pastor, that sermon helped me with a personal problem,' " says Roger Pittelko of the Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. "When I ask what problem, they tell me, and sometimes it's a problem I never addressed in the sermon, but the Holy Spirit did."

Pittelko says part of the reason for this is the nature of the lectionary readings.

"I'm astounded how often the text deals specifically with a congregational concern, but usually it's because the passages deal with timeless themes," he says. "And we must remember that the Holy Spirit does not work immediately, but mediately through his Word and the sacraments."

With the texts already provided, pastors don't have to spend time searching for something to speak on. The basic truths of Christianity are covered in a systematic way, helping to keep pastors from preaching only personal peeves, and providing unity for the worship service. And it assists the pastor who follows the church year in worship and sermon planning.

Lectionary systems generally contain for each Sunday a reading from the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the Epistles. From October through December they build up to Advent, covering such themes as creation and the Old Testament expectations of the coming Messiah. From January to May, Easter and Pentecost are the landmarks. Themes center around the life of Christ-his character and teachings-and the coming of the Holy Spirit. May through September focuses on life in the Spirit-Christian ethical, social, and outreach responsibilities-and the hope for Christ's return.

"I use the lectionary as a guide but don't follow it slavishly," says Gregg Mast of Second Reformed Church in Irvington, New Jersey. "For the half year from Advent to Pentecost, I follow the lectionary. June to November is more potluck-I'll do a couple of series I feel the church needs. But I consult the lectionary every week. Its seasonal themes give some sense of where the church is."

One Sunday's readings included Isaiah 61 and the story of the Magi in Matthew 2. Mast's sermon was entitled "Star Gazing."

"I pointed out that we, too, are called to follow a 'star'-God's will-and to meet his Son," says Mast. "The star gives light, and light provides both judgment and forgiveness of sin."

Simply using a lectionary, however, doesn't solve the main problem of the preacher. Even with a given set of three texts, the preacher must still decide what to tell the people.

Some opt for a five-minute homily after each of the three readings, basically to explain any unfamiliar concepts in the passage. That's too disjointed for most, however, and it doesn't allow for serious exegesis or application.

As a result, most lectionary users pick one of the readings to speak from, or else they discover a common theme among all three passages.

"I try to find the connecting links between the Scripture texts," says Claudia Grant, pastor of Central Christian Church in Lebanon, Indiana. "Sometimes they're obvious; sometimes they're not. If the passages aren't speaking to me, I ask myself why not-is this an area where I need to grow?"

Those who don't use a lectionary often imagine it to be rigid and confining. But preaching is a sufficiently inexact science that the same text can be presented with a range of emphases. Like a jeweler, the pastor decides which side of the diamond to flash. The reflected light appears in many colors. Even pre-packaged Bible texts can be preached to reflect the needs of the congregation.

Martin Luther understood the universality of Scripture. "A preacher can get no more effective text than the first commandment: 'I am the Lord thy God.' With it he can preach hellfire to the forward and heavenly peace to the pious, punish the bad and comfort the good alike."

This, then, exposes both the potential benefit and danger of the lectionary system. To its credit, it gives balanced exposure to Scripture. "It keeps me in touch with a lot of Scriptures I normally wouldn't touch," says Grant. And because of the Scripture's range of applications, each passage can be personalized to the congregation.

"Our church goal for last year was 'to build a loving community,' " says Grant. "So in most of the Scripture passages, I was able to interact with that theme, and that was the focus of my preaching."

But the danger of the system is that pastors may assume that balanced coverage of Scripture equals balanced preaching. As Martin Luther pointed out, one Scripture can have several applications.

In the story of the Good Samaritan, for instance, Jesus teaches the principle of loving your neighbor. The application for a specific congregation is up to the pastor.

Does it mean making sure next-door neighbors meet Christ? Does it mean tutoring inner-city kids? Does it mean teaching in the Sunday school? Does it mean giving money for world hunger? Any of these is a possible direction the application could take.

The lectionary system helps balance Scriptural coverage, but balancing applications and illustrations is still up to the pastor.

A Series of Series

Those who preach several series each year claim they have the best of both worlds-they can customize topics and texts, and with a little advance planning, they don't sweat each week wondering what to preach. Finding series topics is rarely a problem.

"Several years ago," says James Folkers of Mission Hills Baptist Church in Mission Viejo, California, "I went through my personal library skimming the books and noting key subjects that ought to be preached on. I wrote down over 1,000 topics! The whole counsel of God is a pretty vast subject."

Folkers reviews his list each October to plan his sermons for the following year. He decides on ten or twelve subjects per year and plans a month-long series on each-unity, for instance, or forgiveness, or interpersonal relations, or the church functions: baptism, the Lord's Supper, fellowship, worship, caring for the needy, and evangelism.

Series preaching offers several advantages. It gives purpose and direction to background reading. Concentrating on one topic allows for deeper exploration and more potential impact. If there is some connection between sermons, what is said one Sunday may make next week's easier to grasp. Learning and transformation usually don't happen during a single message, but from repeated exposure. A well-placed pattern scores better in target shooting and in preaching.

Some sets of sermons, of course, are series in name only. Clarence Macartney, the famous Presbyterian pulpiteer, had a line-up of "Great Nights of the Bible." Someone else constructed a string of sermons on "Famous 3:16s," based on texts from the third chapter, the sixteenth verse of various New Testament books. Such "series" have little unity and merely provide the preacher with a hook on which to hang miscellaneous thoughts. These sundry Sundays aren't series so much as collections of individual sermons.

On the other hand, sermons can reinforce one another without being called a series.

"In this transient society, each sermon must be complete in itself," says John Killinger, former professor of preaching, worship, and literature at Vanderbilt University and now pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. "I'll often preach a series, but I won't tell the people it's a series."

During the post-Easter season, he preached three sermons on "The Fear of Death," "What Heaven Is Like," and "Love Beyond the Grave: Can You Contact the Dead?" He didn't bill it as a death-and-dying series, but the effect was the same.

Likewise, when Killinger preaches doctrine, he doesn't call it a doctrinal series (a label guaranteed to lower the congregational metabolism). Instead, his three sermons on the Trinity were called:

Your God Is Too Big-addressing why God doesn't always change things the way we want, and describing how God limits his own omnipotence.

Your Christ Is Too Small-correcting the tendency to view Christ as merely a good human being.

Your Holy Spirit Is Too Vague-focusing on the genuine power available to Christians in the discreet aspects of daily life.

Of course, series preaching has dangers, too. It requires variety as well as continuity; the pastor risks repeating himself and thus irritating the regulars, or else bewildering visitors by assuming they heard last week's message.

In addition, series preaching runs the risk of sparking the interest of only one segment of the body. A series on family communication may intrigue some and ignore others.

But on the whole, a thoughtful series can touch the varied interests of the congregation.

"I usually preach through Bible books or through the lives of Bible characters," says Dale Schlafer of Denver's South Presbyterian Evangelical Fellowship. "It keeps me honest. Certain subjects you like will keep popping up in your preaching if you don't think about it. For me, those are salvation, family, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and lordship. But a series makes me preach topics I tend to avoid-divorce, Satan, sexual morality.

"The beauty of scheduling series," says Schlafer, "is that planning is God's idea, too. He can work through a schedule as well as the spur of the moment. And if a problem arises-say, for instance, gossip and bad report-my schedule is always flexible enough to insert a series on the tongue."

A Question of Balance

No matter which system a pastor uses-week by week, a lectionary, or a series-balancing the pulpit menu is a challenge. Simply selecting a variety of scriptural starting points or tackling a different practical problem each week does not guarantee a well-rounded spiritual diet.

Imbalances can occur when pastors use applications or illustrations of only one type, or when they aim for only one kind of response. Some pastors aim for salvation and repentance in every sermon; others choose to preach love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Some invariably turn their applications to holiness and personal piety; others stress servanthood and outreach.

How can preachers maintain balance? How do loving shepherds make sure the flock is well fed? Unfortunately, there are no easy formulas.

"You fly a lot by the seat of your pants," says John Killinger. "But the mind is a very sophisticated computer-weighing all kinds of factors, data, signs, and portents."

Fortunately, some of that specific data can be spelled out. There are at least three factors to be kept in balance for well-rounded preaching.

Balancing Content

The first thing mentioned by pastors who try to balance their preaching is content. Yes, the whole counsel of God is overwhelming, but they are at least going to make an effort to touch all areas.

David Seamands has a "kerygma list" to keep him from missing something.

"I made a list of 100 theological categories from books on biblical theology," says Seamands, pastor of the United Methodist Church in Wilmore, Kentucky. "These include everything from God's character to salvation to sanctification to eschatology."

Every sermon, he finds, fits into one of the general theological categories. Each week he jots down the date next to the subject he dealt with. He tries to touch each of the 100 topics at least once every two years.

John Killinger keeps track of the types of sermons he preaches. Each year he aims for approximately ten dealing with life situations, ten biblical expositions, ten doctrinal sermons, ten in various series, and a sprinkling of seasonal sermons and personal interests.

"Some sermons ripen slowly in my notebook," he says. "I like to pick one when it's ripe."

One Mother's Day, for instance, he preached on "Some Things I'd Like My Mother to Know."

"My mother was dying at the time," he says. "And I was working through some terrible feelings. I wanted to use the occasion to let the people see what I was going through-pain, but a Christ-centered pain."

Balancing sermon content, says Killinger, "is like painting a picture. There are no rigid limits regarding colors or brush strokes. You need breathing space for things going on in your life and the life of the congregation."

Artists may not have color quotas, but they're always aware of the color mix and the final effect they want the painting to have.

Balancing Style

Variety of presentation can be as important as variety in content. Two aspects make up presentation style: the form of the sermon, and its tone.

Jim Rose, pastor of Northwest Bible Church in Dallas, Texas, works hard to vary his preaching style.

"I want to preach the Word and apply it," he says. "But I don't want to jump out from behind the same tree every time."

Rose plans not only the sections of Scripture he will preach but also the type of sermon structures he will use: problem-centered, narrative, straight exposition, or drama.

"My biggest problem is preaching only the material I love-the Old Testament narratives," he says. "I have to fight my way into the Epistles."

Drama, he has discovered, can communicate with powerful effect. And it need not always be a full-blown production. Two more modest forms of drama can be used on Sunday morning.

"The simplest is a monologue done by the pastor," he says. "For example, Jonah can visit any congregation and tell his story.

"Second, dialogue is very effective. It can be an actual dialogue in Scripture, such as David and Jonathan, or it can be an interview. We've done several 'Meet the Prophet' sermons with a panel of interviewers.

"All the steps of developing a normal sermon are followed-exegesis, illustration, application-except the manuscript is put in role-playing form. Of course, we have to tell the congregation that what is being presented is a dramatization of what Scripture actually says. It's not us writing our own material and adding biblical names."

Balancing the form doesn't add any more nutrients to the menu, but it certainly makes them easier to digest.

The habitual tone of a pastor's sermons can also affect their impact.

"A deacon in a small church I served in Kentucky described a revivalist he'd heard," recalls Killinger.

"He really skun 'em," said the deacon.

"I thought it was interesting that he didn't include himself among those skinned," says Killinger.

After a while, bombast loses its effect. People seem to build up an immunity when exposed to only one type of content or delivery. When people have been used to noise, sometimes a whisper speaks loudest.

Balancing Sources

Sermon ideas come from two directions-Scripture and the congregation. Effective pastors learn to read both.

The purpose of preaching is to apply God's Word to the people. As a result, pastors usually find their main source of direct preaching ideas in Scripture, frequently punctuated by ideas springing from congregational needs.

"My preaching plan is like a piece of Swiss cheese," says Gordon MacDonald of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts. "I plan my series, but I leave holes because I want some of my sermons to be delivered only five or six days old."

Bill Solomon of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, has a similar plan. He's preaching through the Bible, as much as five chapters at a chunk in some narrative portions, but he interrupts the process frequently. Interruptions come from two sources:

Personal devotional life-"If I'm blessed by something, I'm arrogant enough to believe that God will bless others with that thought," Solomon says with a smile.

Counseling-"I'll address an issue any time my counseling tells me it's bothering a great number of people," he says. Recently Solomon preached on "A Christian Looks at Herpes" based on Romans 1 and 2 Timothy 4. "I suggested that this might be a form of judgment on those who 'take pleasure in wickedness.' "

Some pastors actively search out preaching ideas from their congregations.

Ira Gallaway of First United Methodist Church in Peoria, Illinois, once put two three-by-five cards in each bulletin. One card asked, "What is THE sermon above all others you'd like to hear?" The other asked, "What is the faith problem that troubles you most?"

"I got 420 replies," says Gallaway. "I went on a personal three-day retreat to categorize them. For the next year my series was 'Sermons You've Asked Me to Preach.' More than once people met me after the service and said, 'That was my sermon, pastor.' "

Jim Rose's gauge of congregational needs is a bit more subtle. When he's visiting in homes, he likes to ask informal, open-ended questions:

"How are the children doing?"

"What's God doing with you in your business?"

"What have been difficult points in your marriage?"

"These kinds of questions usually reveal the pressure points people are feeling," he says. "I don't know the struggles of every member, but I should be close enough to a representative group to feel the problems and pressures they face."

Keeping ears open is an effective means of inspiration. One pastor said he kept hearing comments in committee meetings such as "We can't do that with the economy as it is" or "Our people don't have the (name one) talent/money/commitment to do it." He decided to preach the Book of Joshua because of its emphasis on faith and victory.

Perhaps the most important source of preaching material, however, is the sense of what God is saying to the pastor personally.

"My mind is usually enveloped in a fairly thick fog," writes author and preacher John Stott. "Occasionally, however, the fog lifts, the light breaks through, and I see with limpid clarity. These fleeting moments of illumination need to be seized. We have to learn to surrender ourselves to them before the fog descends again."

When that flash of insight comes (and it's usually at an awkward time-in the middle of someone else's sermon, in conversation, in the middle of the night), Stott accepts it as a gift and writes furiously, taking full advantage of the excitement of the fresh thought from God. It's not wisdom but conviction that's contagious. Only pastors who've experienced real heat can kindle a flame in the congregation.

Of course, you can't expect special illumination for every sermon, but some pastors do force themselves to discover one fresh insight each week.

"When I'm studying the text," says Everett Fullam, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Darien, Connecticut, "I expect the Lord to speak to me out of that passage. Preaching is the overflow of God quickening the Word in me. My words must be timely even though the Word is timeless.

"So each Sunday when I climb those three steps to the pulpit, at least I believe God has spoken to me. If he hasn't, then I won't."

Fortunately, balancing sermon sources isn't an either/or situation. As Everett Fullam says, "I don't take my preaching agenda from the needs of people, because Scripture is addressed to the needs of people." For pastors at home with both the Word and the world, the balance will be there.

In a sense, that's the secret of balanced preaching in all areas. The pastor can't be something he's not. If he or she has not known the crucifixion and resurrection, or if they have become such commonplace truths that they can be handled with ease in safe clichs memorized years before, then no list of homiletic helps can produce a nourishing spiritual diet.

The most balanced preaching comes from balanced human beings who share their growing faith with their congregations.

Marshall Shelley is assistant editor of LEADERSHIP

Leadership Spring 1983 p. 30-7

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A Change in Attitude

Exposure to All the Gifts

Experimentation in Ministry

A Decentralized Strategy

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One Week at a Time

The Leading of the Lectionary

A Series of Series

A Question of Balance

Balancing Content

Balancing Sources

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