A Conversation With Paul Rees

A beloved churchman discusses how a healthy devotional life should bear fruit in our relationship with others.

Many people have asked us to do an interview with Paul Rees. So when we wanted an elder statesman of the faith who could talk about the devotional life from both personal experience and observation of the Christian community, we immediately thought of him. Rees’ still-active ministry has lasted over fifty years as a pastor, denominational executive, and leader of Christian organizations. He pastored First Covenant Church of Minneapolis from 1938 to 1958; he is a past president of the National Association of Evangelicals; and he has served as minister to ministers at Billy Graham Crusades. He currently serves as an editor-at-large for World Vision International.

At eighty-one years of age, Rees speaks with a soft voice and calm presence. It’s the presence of a man who long ago settled the ultimate questions of life in his own mind and now is only concerned in helping others do the same. His words carry a convincing ring of authority while they convey a heart full of love for Christ and his kingdom. He’s known as a peacemaker, one who unites the church. We found him to be a man deep in spiritual insight.

Terry Muck, Harold Myra, Dan Pawley, and Paul Robbins met with Rees and discussed the devotional life and its broader implications for evangelism.

How does one cultivate an intimate relationship with God?

Take time to pray. Ministers frequently ask each other, “How do you get the time to pray?” There is no clear-cut answer to that. What is obvious is that you get the time by making the time. You prioritize. If the cultivation of an intimate life with Christ is really important to you, you organize and arrange your agenda so there is time for quietness and openness. A helpful resource here is Max Warren’s short book, The Master of Time.

Who have you known who has obviously walked close to God?

Let me answer that with a specific example. The introduction to a new anthology of A. W. Tozer’s writings describes Tozer as “a man who walked with God and knew him intimately.” I knew Dr. Tozer; when I was with him I felt an unmistakable sense of God’s awesomeness. When we prayed together, this awesomeness of God was combined with a childlike confidence. Tozer approached God with what might be called a trembling reverence.

Can you think of people besides Tozer who displayed trembling reverence toward God?

I think immediately of Charles Cowman and Edwin Kilbourne, founders of the Oriental Missionary Society, known today as OMS International. Kilbourne seldom raised his voice above a conversational speaking level even when he preached. But there was something about the way he referred to the Lord that made you know he was intimately Godconscious. I once roomed with him at a conference in Shanghai. Awaking at what I regarded as an early hour, I looked over at his bed. It was empty. Then, as my eyes grew accustomed to the near-darkness of the room, I saw that he was kneeling at a chair quietly praying. It’s a scene I’ve never forgotten.

What is the spark that ignites permanent, day-by-day intimacy with God?

Sometimes it’s the example set by someone else. Sometimes it’s facilitated by temperament. Some of us have to practice prayer and meditation with greater discipline than others do. I have a sister-in-law in her eighties who never went beyond high school. She has lived the strenuous life of a farmer’s wife. But she has always conveyed this sense of how incredibly real the Lord is to her and how natural it is for her to listen to him and talk to him. The Holy Spirit is, of course, the great igniter of the spark of which you speak.

We read about Martin Luther spending three hours a day in prayer. How can church leaders who want to pray more often get started if they don’t have this habit built into their lives now?

First of all I’m reasonably confident that when you talk about Martin Luther’s three hours a day in prayer, you are not talking about three hours of un-interrupted speaking to God. You’re talking about three hours in which Martin Luther’s attention was given to God’s Word; to this, Luther would respond by listening and meditating.

There’s a certain impoliteness about our doing all the talking to God and not allowing him to speak to us. The book of Habakkuk is instructive along this line. In the first chapter the prophet is perplexed and baffled. He says, “I know that we’ve been sinful; I know we’ve been wicked; but we’re certainly not as bad as those Assyrians.” Then in the second chapter the prophet says, “I will stand on my watch and hear what the Lord has to say to me.” Listening to God is part of the transaction. To the church leader who wishes to develop a deeper devotional life I would say, don’t be intimidated by someone who spends hours in prayer; begin by talking and listening to God for ten minutes or so each day. Read straight from the Scripture or use devotional aids such as those by Oswald Chambers, but don’t worry so much about the length of time you spend. Start with something you find both meaningful and manageable, and let it become a developing norm.

It sounds like the idea of two-way prayer—speaking and listening to God—is crucial.

Prayer is indeed a two-way street. By learning how to listen to God we learn to listen to other people too. Years ago our board of administration of the National Association of Evangelicals had a special dinner in honor of Billy Graham. Eight of us sat with Billy at the head table. Now, one brother, not a member of the board, but a very prestigious church leader at the time, had been invited to sit with us at the head table. This man absolutely dominated the table talk. Billy, characteristically, contributed to that domination by listening so well. He actually began to draw the man out, asking many questions. When it was over, I was disappointed in the man, but filled with admiration for Billy. He was the guest of honor for that occasion, yet played the role of the eager listener. What someone has called “the awesome power of the listening ear” needs to be cultivated in our communion with God. The intimacy that is privately disciplined will then be experienced in many a non-private situation in the course of a day.

Can you talk more about what you referred to as devotional aids?

I get the feeling pastors read very few books on the inner life. Their reading usually is related to church programs, organizational affairs, denominational responsibilities, and academic theology. We should insist on making inner-life books part of our diet. Pastors can’t talk persuasively from the pulpit or in counseling sessions about the power of prayer unless in their own devotional lives they’re informed and involved.

Where would you suggest church leaders start in that kind of reading?

S. D. Gordon’s Quiet Talks on Prayer stimulated me fifty years ago. Even today I don’t see how anybody can read it without profiting. I also recommend A. J. Gossip’s book on prayer called The Secret Place of the Most High. People who think the life of prayer is a remote or esoteric thing should read Stewart’s Tile Lower Levels of Prayer. For strong meat read E. M. Bounds’ Preacher and Prayer, Peter Forsythe’s The Soul of Prayer, Samuel Chadwick’s The Path of Prayer, A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, or Thomas Kelley’s Testament of Devotion.

Holiness ought to be an exciting experience, yet many people view the word holiness negatively. How do you explain this negative view?

There’s a widespread misconception that the pursuit of holiness is a monastic hangover; that the person who lives a life of holiness is not living in the real world.

It would help if Christian leader made more of an effort to teach the biblical concept of holiness. Sanctification should get as much emphasis as justification, reconciliation, and other doctrines of the faith. Here is where Tozer is helpful, because he was not afraid to talk about holiness in the most down-to-earth terms. He hasn’t left the impression that Christian holiness is strictly other worldly. It is other worldly in the sense that all of the Christian gospel involves an appreciation of the transcendent. But Tozer shows that the life of holiness is for any believer who desires immediate and continuously renewable fellowship with the Savior. Experiences of holiness can be very real, but they soon become remembered stereotypes to be talked about in conventional cliches unless there is, in ever-present reality, what St. Paul calls “the renewing of your mind.”

Are all Christians called to a life of prayer?

Yes. We’re called to the life of total commitment, and total commitment means total dependence. In turn, total dependence calls for total, habitual, penitential, joyous prayer. It’s not because we have been ordained to the ministry that we are called to a life of prayer. It’s simply because we’re Christ’s people, and we’re involved with him in a profoundly dependent way.

As you said earlier, we do have different temperaments. How can someone who has a gregarious personality—who doesn’t understand how to be alone for even five or ten minutes—develop a guilt-free spiritual life?

Whenever we intentionally or unintentionally place people under guilt without recognizing what the grace of God can do in their lives, we are not ministering to them in the fullness of God’s truth and love. The real accent in the New Testament is not on how human I am, but on how Christian I can be. A gregarious temperament need not be denied, but neither should it be a dictator. We tend to make too much of the fixities of human personality and not enough of its flexibilities.

Can you relate that to holiness?

A Christian’s holiness always co-exists with the imperfect. Bishop Steven Neill in Christian Holiness talks about “The Perfectionist Error” and “The Conformist Error.” One sets the standard unbiblically high, the other unbiblically low. When we’re talking about holiness, we’re not talking about sinless perfection, but about an attitude of heart toward God. This struck me in a fresh way in a recent re-reading of something Paul wrote to Timothy. He speaks of the “love that springs from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a genuine faith.” One is reminded of a saying of Kierkegaard: “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” To this I would add a quotation from The Pure in Heart, by the distinguished preacher/scholar W. E. Sangster: “Modern psychology knows no technique of mind transference so effective as that of the sensitized, adoring contemplation by the saint of the Saviour, and when we add to this the power of the Holy Spirit, the miracle of sanctity is understood.”

When is your quiet time?

The early morning hours. No telephone is ringing; the house is quiet. I can be engaged with the Lord and let his Word speak to me. I can be open to impressions that the Holy Spirit wants to make on me. For instance, I have had the experience of someone’s name suddenly appearing in my consciousness, a name not thought of for months, even years. I am instantly aware I must pray for this brother or sister.

What do you struggle with in your quiet time with God?

A variety of snags and snares such as the battle for concentration. Here, however, is a specific. I am often reproved by the Word for the times I’ve been insensitive to my wife’s need for a healthy sense of personal worth. Since she doesn’t play the piano, sing solos, or address groups, she battles the question of how significant she is in our ministry. I’ve sought to be more open about my shortcomings in this area.

You seem to be very open to discussing it.

I don’t think I’m being any more vulnerable when I tell you of this particular struggle, or when another minister tells you of his struggle with depression, than Stanley Jones was one day when he said to me, “I have not known a depressed hour in forty years.” Now, who’s telling the truth? Perhaps each of us is. We tend to feel that when someone is described as being vulnerable, it means he or she has to admit to some surprising weakness. But it might mean admitting to some surprising blessing. We’re attacked, you know, just as much through our blessings as through our blemishes.

What have you and your wife found helpful in your spiritual growth as a couple?

The morning and evening times of prayer we have together. A few years ago, Edith went through a period of severe depression. During that time our prayer life together took on a quiet urgency, an expectant patience, an acute sense of what it meant for one of us to be singularly dependent and the other faithfully supportive. It was an experience of mutuality in a new form. Not once did Edith show any signs of trying to blame the Lord for her condition. Her prayers were so intelligent, in my view, so theologically perceptive, that they drew us into an extraordinary intimacy of heart and spirit. It was like writing a new chapter in the book of our wedded life. In fidelity to all of the facts, I should add that in the end the Holy Spirit used medical science to bring about her release. For this too we gave thanks to God.

How long have you prayed together with your wife?

To some degree, throughout more than a half century of our married life. When the children were growing up, we involved them in the prayers too, so Edith and I were not as intimate in our prayers then as we are now. A new level of prayer togetherness was reached when I had open-heart surgery ten years ago this summer. They reached new heights when Edith went through her time of depression.

There is so much tragedy in the world and in life. You’ve faced the personal tragedy in your life of the death of a daughter and son-in-law. How do you come to grips with what sometimes seems to us to be outrageous tragedy?

From my father and my mother I inherited the truth that God’s love is never measured by our comfort; that in Jesus himself we have an illustration of how the perfect love of the Father was entirely compatible with Gethsemane and the Cross. I remember one time I was convinced my father was being mistreated and misrepresented by a group of churchmen. The temptation was to be bitter. A fresh invasion of Christ’s love counteracted that poison. Stanley Jones used to say, “It’s not enough to be resigned to your suffering. The Christian way is to take hold of suffering and use it.” Or as David put it in Psalm 4, “Thou has enlarged me when I was in distress.” In counseling I have sometimes tried to illustrate the difference between hurt and bitterness. You cut your flesh. If the wound heals normally it may leave a scar, but there’s no infection. If you neglect it, however, it can turn into blood poisoning. As a pastor, I have found if you allow a person to become bitter about a situation or another person, it can sour the whole family, and usually their circle of friends also. We can’t eliminate pain and tragedy but we can deal with it on God’s terms, and be the better for it.

How were you able to establish priorities as a young minister? What would you say to young people just starting out in the ministry?

My father was an early riser. When I was about fifteen, I began to realize that he rose early to pray in his study, and this had a tremendous influence on me. I had a brother four years younger than I who was a very different type of person. His sleep and work habits were the opposite of mine; he was a night person. I’ve been no good at working on that sort of schedule. I’m at my freshest at five o’clock in the morning. So I think my father’s example, together with the dividends I have derived from this early-morning time of quietness, has served to establish the habit as something that is creatively meaningful to me. But I don’t disparage anyone who has a different schedule.

My counsel to younger brothers and sisters goes something like this: In your lifestyle set priorities. Determine the time of day or night when prayer and meditation are best for you. Hold to that as a discipline, but don’t be enslaved by it. Changed circumstances may call for a change of pattern. Learn what a medieval saint called “the practice of the presence of God” in any and all circumstances. Keep short accounts with God. Don’t let guilt even begin to fester. Take forgiveness and freedom in the name of Christ our great high priest.

How have the Scriptures become the living Word for you, more than just a reference work for sermon preparation?

This also takes me back to childhood impressions. My grandmother would sit reading her Swedish Bible and her face, almost invariably serene, would at times be aglow. I could tell this Book was different. That childhood experience gave me a start in my reverence for the Bible that has never lost its grip on me. Habits of Bible study followed. By the way, I’ve never been able to buy the package that says the professional use of the Scripture must be separated from the personal use.

Do you read the Scriptures systematically?

Not as rigidly as some do. Yet usually I follow some pattern. Right now, for instance, I am exposing myself to the New English Bible in a way I’ve not done before. The NEB has been out for more than ten years. Although I’ve dipped into it, now I’m taking what Campbell Morgan calls “the great chapters” of the Bible and focusing on them more intently. Also, I’m going through my copy of the New International Version, putting my own underlining and code signs into it and, by so doing, making myself comfortable and intimate with it.

As editor-at-large for World Vision you travel to and speak in many churches. What are the major concerns of church leaders in day-to-day ministry?

One of the chief concerns of many pastors is “How can I relate better to the laity?” What does it mean for us as pastors to “prepare God’s people for works of service,” as we read in Ephesians 4:121 On the whole, clergy-lay relationships have improved in recent years; laity are not as patronized, ignored, or reduced to numbered tithing-units as before.

When I started out in the ministry, Sunday night meetings were evangelistic services; you knew you were preaching to many people who had made no profession of faith. This is much rarer today. We’re preaching to a laity that to a greater extent is taking its Sunday faith and making it work on Monday. But these priceless lay-folk need to feel what any athletic team needs to feel: that they have in their pastor a skilled and devoted coach.

Has this increased concern with discipleship reduced the emphasis on evangelism in our churches?

Yes. Currently we’re seeing a lot of shifting of denominational allegiances, increases in church membership, and a far-reaching emphasis on discipleship; but we hear extremely little that speaks convincingly about the growing ranks of the newly converted.

Some say the heavy emphasis on discipleship has achieved its task of bringing about better internal communication, but has reduced evangelism programs.

I doubt that we are knowingly discouraging evangelism in favor of discipleship; nevertheless, we may be limiting ourselves to the one at the expense of the other. We’re putting so much emphasis on the internal dynamics of the corporate church that we are underplaying a stark fact: most of our church people are spending much of their lives out there in the world, and they are inadequately equipped to handle the dynamics of that world. Help is greatly needed to sharpen the cutting edge of the church’s evangelism, which is not in the sanctuary but in the marketplace.

How can churches and church leaders develop people who will model the Christian life of Christ to unbelievers?

First of all, we can’t ignore the different plans for church growth, discipleship, and evangelism. But sometimes what is missing in the working out of these plans is the simple function of agape love. I latch on to that bit of redundancy simply because love is such a grossly misused word in our society. More than once I have heard Richard Halverson say that he had misgivings about all of our evangelistic plans that are so highly methodologized, if I may re-sort to verbal awkwardness. Yet he and his Washington congregation remarkably modeled an effective evangelistic outreach. His overwhelming concern was that he and the members of the congregation should be motivated and activated by the caring love of the crucified and risen Lord. Such love is torrentially motivating. Such love is more than a sentiment; it is an action. Neither at the individual nor at the corporate level can it be egocentric. Only as it is an authentic manifestation of “the Man for others” can it be regarded as New Testament evangelism.

What about methodology?

When I read some church growth books, I some-times wonder how all the jargon and neat definitions would have sounded to those whose language and whose thinking are recorded for us in the book of Acts. I suspect those brothers and sisters of the apostolic church wouldn’t have had a clue as to the meaning of some of our terminology. I am being extreme, admittedly. Like an earlier Paul, I speak “after the manner of men.” It would be wrong of me to leave the impression that I think the principles of church growth are to be slighted, much less denied. After all, too much reliance on ardor is as unwise as too much emphasis on order.

Are we in the church guilty many times of saying, “All right, God, here’s my gift; use it”? Shouldn’t we be saying instead, “Lord, here I am; use me just as you wish”?

That’s an essential distinction. The Calvary principle is that you lose yourself to find yourself. But finding yourself is not the true quest. The true quest is for an authentic locale that, according to St. Paul, is “in Christ.” It is a phrase he never tires of using. We do less than justice to it when we make it merely the reflection of a theological position. By implication it affirms a profound submission: He is sovereign Lord; I am willing subject. Indeed, my offering to him—bits of time, fractions of money, fragments of service—can be an offense if unaccompanied by the totality of my allegiance. Neither a worm-of-the-dust posture, encouraged by some evangelical teaching, nor the prevailing narcissism of Western culture is able to speak for that holistic redemption that is ours in Jesus Christ the Lord. We need to be on guard against a stealthy narcissism creeping our way. We are currently heavy on self hyphenations: self-worth, self-actualization, self-realization, self-love. Right-fully viewed, there’s a certain validity about these recognitions. My concern is that we do not succumb to them as a kind of obsession. Even pietistic preoccupation with ourselves can shadow the peerless wonder of our salvation, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

It’s interesting that our conversation has shifted from the topic of the devotional life to that of evangelism.

That’s a very natural shift because the two are intimately related. For example, intercessory prayer is crucial to evangelism. So many persons in church visitation programs have tremendous feelings of un-easiness, if not of guilt, about going out, buttonholing people, and laying the gospel on them. Surely it is at least part of the answer to such fears to say that prayer makes a huge difference if we go having prayed; and if we go praying, it’s amazing how God opens up opportunities for witnessing by preparing people’s hearts for the gospel. Humble, earnest, expectant prayer is a kind of linchpin here.

If you were in a local church pastorate again, how would you develop the relationship with your congregation?

The desire for a more integrated responsibility for evangelism is at the core. Laymen are beginning to see that we have what I sometimes call an unfinished Reformation on our hands. Most of us Protestants never have carried the implications of the priesthood of believers to their proper conclusions. Our churches have been full of lay people who think evangelism means that twice a year you put on an evangelistic crusade, often mistakenly called holding a revival. The pastor, or the invited evangelist, does the soul-winning and the members pay the bills! It’s rather sad. But there’s a growing perception among lay people that something is missing here; that evangelism isn’t just Billy Graham’s responsibility. It’s the responsibility of all of us in the church.

How does the rat race fit into all of this? Many feel that at today’s fast pace they can barely squeeze church responsibilities into their schedules.

If I were a pastor again, I would emphasize to members of the congregation that it is possible for them to be over-involved in church activities. I can easily believe, for example, that for some members who have to choose between a midweek church event and a meeting of the Parent-Teacher Association, the latter needs their Christian presence more than the former. We have given people the feeling that if they are really loyal, they have to be in everything the church program is providing. I think one of the most Christian things we can do is to encourage our people to be a Christian presence in secular organizations.

Earl Lee, pastor of the First Nazarene Church in Pasadena, California, is the father of Gary Lee, one of the former American hostages in Iran. When things began to heat up in the last days of the hostages’ confinement, Earl’s wife was away at a women’s retreat. His mother-in-law, who lives with them, phoned his church study one day. Rather frantically she said, “Earl, you have to get over here. I’m frightened.” Earl asked what was the matter. “Well,” she said, “the representatives of NBC, ABC, and CBS, camera people, and newspapermen are here in the yard and I can’t get out of the house!” Earl said, “Oh, you don’t need to be afraid.” Not fully reassured, she urged him to come home. And as he drove he rehearsed how he would tell the media people what a nuisance they sometimes made of themselves. But an inner voice cut him short: “Earl, that’s not the way to do it; open up to these people.” Earl said, “It was unmistakable. I knew it was the Holy Spirit talking to me.” When he reached the house, there they were, spilling over on lawn and driveway. He walked in among them and said, “Well, what can I do for you?” They said, “Surely you have a statement you want to make to the press.” He told them he didn’t. He was adamant but friendly. He then went inside and calmed his mother-in-law down. Coming back out he said, “I don’t know whether all of you can fit in the house or not, but if you want to come in, you’re welcome.” For the next three days while all the tension was on, there were the press and television people inside and out. Some of them slept on the floor. All of them had access to such food supplies as the family could afford. After a couple of days of this, one person said, “You know, Reverend Lee, I’ve never seen anything like this; the way you folks have treated us has had an effect on the way we treat each other. We’re like a family here.” A woman reporter went over to Earl. “Reverend Lee,” she began, “somebody gave me a copy of your little book The Cycle of Victorious Living. Can I talk to you?” She went on, “I was intrigued by your book, but what really hooked me is the way you’ve conducted yourself during this crisis, with so much pressure on everyone.”

The sequel to that extended conversation was a happy one. After the crisis was over and his son returned home, Earl received a letter from this young woman. It told about the day and hour when she opened her heart to Jesus, and how real he had now become to her. I suggested that what we see here, in a setting that was highly dramatic, is a nonconventional, fleshed-out evangelism which, in many a less dramatic context, could yield priceless consequences.

- More from Leadership Journal Staff

Pastors

Depression in the Clergy

Enos D. Martin

Pastors suffer from depression at about the same frequency as the general population—and two to four percent of the general population suffer from depression at any one time.

The privileged position of ministry does not exempt pastors from the same problems their people experience. In fact, they suffer additional stresses unique to this set-apart status. As a result, depression is a significant problem afflicting the clergy.

During 1980 I surveyed one hundred clergy randomly selected from a denominational yearbook. Twenty percent reported they have had moderate to severe depression at some time in their lives. Furthermore, depression is a very frequent symptom in pastors I see who come for outpatient or inpatient psychiatric treatment.

Stresses That May Trigger Depression

Stress does not always result in depression. For example, although John the Baptist’s imprisonment caused him despair, imprisonment for Paul occasioned joy and singing. It is important, therefore, to consider the individual who experiences stress, rather than simply identifying the stresses that triggered the depression. Regardless of the state of the pastor’s inner life, the expectations and conditions unique to the ministry (and which demand unusual energy to cope with) are usually experienced as stresses.

Complex role expectations. More is expected of pastors than of any other professionals. They must play the role of theologian, philosopher, businessman, politician, educator, preacher, public relations expert, and counselor—often without adequate specific training in a number of these areas.

Financial pressures. The esteem pastors are offered and the expectations placed on them compare with that experienced by physicians. The financial remuneration, however, suffers in comparison.

An interesting finding of a recent LEADERSHIP survey (Spring 1981) was that over 60 percent of pastors said they do not feel they have been financially deprived. However, responses to the survey imply that many ministers are uncomfortable acknowledging that finances are a problem. They feel they should be “above such worldly concerns.” One pastor on facing retirement stated, “I have to admit I don’t have much money to go on.” Then he quickly checked himself by saying, “But I didn’t go into the ministry to make money in the first place.”

Lack of firm roots. Many pastors are required to move from one parish to another. Moving means losing relationships which have become important to the pastor and the family. Furthermore, if conflicts with the congregation are resolved by moving on, neither the pastor nor the congregation have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes.

Interpersonal conflicts. A pastor is expected to solve conflict situations, but in a much more difficult situation than other counseling professionals. A psychiatrist is able to work in a very structured setting. He defines when he can see the patient, for how long, and who will be involved. At the end of each day’s session, it’s the last contact until the next week.

The pastor does not have this kind of structure. He can be called on at all hours. He knows these people and their families and cares about them deeply. If he tries to limit this emotionally draining interpersonal involvement, he is accused of being uninvolved and uncaring. The inevitable stress engendered by these conflictive situations can lead to depression.

All of the above stresses are external. But the pastor’s ability to handle eventual stress hinges on the state of his or her own inner world. If it is relatively free of conflict, then full attention can be given to assessing the external stresses and deciding on appropriate responses. But if pastors are preoccupied with conflicts about personal self-worth and the appropriateness of personal feelings, their ability to respond to the external problems is impaired. Among internal stresses, there are certain recurring themes.

Idealized self-image versus actual self-image.

Growing up involves living with a performance gap. The reality of the present position plays a part in forming an actual self-image. The anticipated ability and maturity plays a part in forming the idealized self-image—the self that will be when a goal is reached.

Unfortunately, this straightforward approach is complicated by another factor: self-worth. Children who are told often enough that they are “not big enough, good enough, or smart enough” come to believe that if they can’t perform well, they’re not worth much. This conviction is largely unconscious and is unaffected by changes in the real world. Pastors often explain their feverish attempts to accomplish more by pointing to biblical passages: “Doesn’t the Bible say we are to be diligent, above reproach, faultless, zealous?” They may intellectually know they have great worth as children of God, but at their deepest emotional level, they are far from convinced of this truth.

This conflict between pastors’ sense of what they are and what they ought to be manifests itself in a variety of ways. They may be outstanding, with everyone approving enthusiastically of them. Yet on closer observation, it becomes apparent that there is a driven quality to their behavior.

Some may be continually oversensitive to how others see them. After preaching they may ask their spouses, “Well, how was it?” The spouses soon learn they are trapped. If they respond with honest feelings, the pastors are devastated by even a minor criticism. If they are routinely positive, their sincerity is doubted.

Another due to this conflict is the hypercompetitive attitude in pastors. In subtle ways they frequently check on how they compare with neighboring ministers. If they feel superior to others, it helps quiet the nagging inner voice that they are inferior. This conflict between the idealized self and the actual self is often manifested as an “all or none” attitude in pastors. Either they are “all perfect” with no failures, or they are “nothing.”

The congregation is often unaware the pastor has such low self-esteem. At best, the pastor can continue an outwardly effective career, but inwardly can never relax and enjoy the fruit of the labor. At worst, the pastor’s preoccupation with the need to prove self prepares the stage for depression. This usually occurs when faced with a situation that no longer allows for a defense against the feelings of inadequacy in the usual way.

For example, Pastor Lloyd, a hard-driving person, always worked hard but felt inadequate. Since he accomplished great amounts of work, he was given additional conference and congregational responsibilities. He was finally so overloaded there was no way he could get it all done. When this reality dawned on him, he became depressed. He felt he must be “no good” since he could not do everything the church required.

Conflict over anger. A pastor’s shaky self-esteem frequently arises from inner conflicts regarding the appropriateness of his or her feelings, particularly angry feelings. Anger can be so intense there may be a fear of losing control and hurting someone. In addition, the expression of anger raises theological questions: “Doesn’t the Bible say that even the experience, much less the expression, of anger is inappropriate? Won’t God surely punish, or at least fail to bless, those who allow themselves to be aware of anger?”

Many pastors are never fully aware of what it is they are resisting, beyond a vague sense of uneasiness. They find various ways of defending against this. One way is to re-label the anger: upset, irritated, unhappy, concerned, righteously indignant.

There are many indirect ways in which pastors express their anger: perpetual lateness, a quickness to agree but a slowness to produce, frequent forgetfulness. Although on the surface they passively accept whatever others expect of them, they always resist in some way.

Another common way to handle anger is to project it onto others. “I’m not angry; they’re angry with me.” This method may protect pastors from feeling angry, but it distorts their perception of reality and alienates them from other people.

Sometimes anger is turned into physical complaints: backaches, headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, and so on. Checkup after checkup reveals no physical reason. The endless search for relief may lead eventually to depression, a depression superimposed on the pre-existing physical complaints.

One pastor reacted to the discomfort of angry feelings by developing a syrupy sweet personality. He could not allow himself to admit any anger. To do so would have been to take the lid off his boiling cauldron of anger, which would have been intolerable and overwhelming to him.

When pastors can no longer ignore anger and yet have found no appropriate way of expressing it, they may unleash on themselves the anger they cannot acknowledge or verbalize. In the intensity of their rage and depression, they may even feel suicidal and may commit that act.

Conflict over sexual impulses. Although pastors may deny to themselves they are sexually attracted to someone other than their spouses, they are keenly aware of their sexual urges. As with anger, they handle it very privately; rarely are even their closest friends made aware of the temptation. The management of sexual impulses that the pastor perceives as unacceptable may lead him to avoid interpersonal sharing, and depression may result from a lack of such relationships.

One pastor was convinced he had an unusually strong sex drive. He feared to reveal his problem to anyone lest he be barred from the human race. Yet, the intense struggle with managing sexual impulses is usually not so much related to the strength of the sex drive as to nonsexual issues. The desire for sex outside the marriage may arise from a non-satisfying emotional relationship with the spouse, anger at the spouse, or a need to prove one’s manhood.

For others, the problem involves the development of an intense emotional relationship with someone other than the spouse, which may occur in an extended counseling situation. The early involvement is rationalized as necessary, appropriate, and harmless. Finally, after continued contact for an extended time, the emotions are so intense that there is great difficulty in avoiding the temptation, and the pastor becomes depressed over the situation.

Patterns to Prevent Depression

A minister can develop several habits to help prevent stresses that could, if unchecked, lead to depression.

Learn to set limits. Pastors should clearly define the limits of what they will expect of themselves and what they will allow others to expect of them. But this raises painful questions: “If I can’t respond to all legitimate requests for help, how can I demonstrate God’s unlimited love for man? How can I say ‘no’ if the church calls? Isn’t this saying ‘no’ to God? What does my inability to meet all requests say about my worth as a person?”

The Scriptures give an instructive example of church leaders unashamedly setting limits on what they would allow others to expect of them when the apostles turned some responsibility over to others in Acts 6. They could set firm limits because they clearly perceived what God had called them to do. Christ’s parting words gave them a clear mandate to preach and teach the gospel. The unfaithfulness of the early followers did not discourage them (Acts 5:1-10); the hostility of local Jewish leaders did not frighten them (Acts 5:17-29); beatings by those in authority did not dissuade them (Acts 5:40); and the accusation of failure by fellow disciples did not confuse them (Acts 6:1-4). Modern-day pastors may feel at a disadvantage in defining their own call. Their sense of call is often distorted by inner strivings: to be liked, to be the most respected, to be the most exemplary pastor in the community, to avoid conflict, to control people. Thus, establishing priorities is a must to remain faithful to their call and stay sane in the process.

A bishop, the conference minister, or the board of elders can be a valuable resource to pastors in fixing these priorities. They might also seek the advice of a neighboring pastor. This should not be seen as a sign of weakness or a declaration of failure.

An awareness of their own biological rhythms can help pastors manage their priorities. Some are early risers, some work late at night; some are full of energy, ideas, and enthusiasm, others need to push themselves to accomplish anything creative. These and other patterns can be modified to some extent, but those who accept their own rhythms and work within those confines are the most effective and efficient.

Sam Eastwood was a pastor with many creative ideas. He often wished he needed only five hours of sleep rather than the eight hours he usually required each night. He always planned his schedule to allow for five hours of sleep; he usually ended up exhausted and fell asleep in his study. He would then be preoccupied with having failed once again. He simply did not know his own body’s limits.

By educating congregations about a pastor’s call, goals, and limitations, pastors can actively respond to the expectations placed on them and thus decrease their stresses. Saying “I can’t” is only the first part of the communication. The second part is: “The resources for solving the problem may well be within you.” This approach helps others gain self-awareness and self-confidence as co-workers with the minister. It prevents the development of a stifling dependency on the pastoral leader.

Learn to be assertive. The key to the success of relationships is whether one can openly discuss negative feelings with the person who aroused them. The more one suppresses feelings, the more they intensify. Occasionally, they may become so intense that the minister explodes in anger. Quickly, there is an apology, an attempt to undo the damage, and a vow never again to express such feelings. The other person in the relationship senses withdrawal, and the relationship is as effectively destroyed by the withdrawal as it would have been by the explosion.

Instead of suppressing feelings or exploding, a third option involves expressing one’s thoughts and feelings to strengthen the relationship. There are several principles to keep in mind:

• Own the problem. No matter how objectionable another’s behavior, pastors should share their own reactions rather than attributing their feelings to others. When the pastor says to an elder, ”You don’t care about others because you insist on having the last word,” the elder now will have to prove he or she is not a nasty person. In contrast, the pastor could say to the elder, “When you interrupt me, I feel hurt, as though what I have to say doesn’t matter.” This helps create an environment in which productive discussion can continue.

• Describe the behavior. Don’t judge or evaluate the person or his motives. Simply describe the behavior which triggers the negative feelings in you. For example, “When you look the other way when I approach you, I feel rejected.” This describes the situation without communicating a rejection of the other person.

• Use “I” messages. Express your feelings in the first person. “I feel hurt, rejected.” Avoid saying, “You wanted to hurt me; you are rejecting me,” or using the third person, “People feel rejected when you act like that.”

• Support the person. The motivation is to help maintain and improve the relationship. Let the other person know you care about him or her and your relationship. Then the two of you can lay down your defensive weapons and be open to each other.

• Respond to the feedback. Notice the verbal and nonverbal components of the response from the other person. Before giving an answer, repeat back what you heard that person say: “1 hear you saying that my busyness has angered you.” Accept whatever truth is pointed out about you without defensiveness, and then continue to express your feelings and thoughts. “I can understand how my unavailability has angered you; this is something I want to work on.”

Don’t quit expressing yourself after one round of giving and receiving feedback. Effective relationships require persistent feedback throughout the course of the relationship.

Take time for relationships. A central issue in neurotic depression is a sense of hopelessness, particularly if meaningful relationships are absent. Recovery from depression often begins with regaining hope; hope exists when the sufferer has given up on life but finds that someone has not given up on him.

The development and maintenance of a meaningful relationship takes commitment of time in both quality and quantity. Pastors often say their spouses and children are the most important people in the world, but the time they commit to relationships with these important people is often limited. Unfortunately, the spouse and children seldom raise red flags signaling their desperation. If pastors consistently place the family as number two in their priorities behind the needs of the congregation, they will discover that eventually the children, and perhaps the spouses, will develop a deep resentment toward them for this. If the children do not turn out later as they would wish, pastors are overcome with depression and guilt at having failed in this primary responsibility.

To maintain a personal relationship with God, pastors must make deliberate efforts to schedule time on a consistent basis for devotional meditation, reflection, and prayer. This time with God is easily usurped by crises in the parish, and the pastor needs to be very determined about protecting it. When pastors feel a great sense of spiritual emptiness because they have not kept up their relationship with God, then they experience guilt and a sense of in-authenticity, because they are talking about something they really are not experiencing.

Finally, pastors need to make a place in their lives for personal friendships. A best friend in the congregation may cause problems; therefore, pastors often find it helpful to have close, intimate friends who are not a part of their congregations. By growing and testing perspectives with a close friend pastors gain internal strength to minister to their congregations.

Pastors Can Cope With Depression

Despite efforts to develop optimal living patterns, pastors still may fall victim to depression. It then becomes essential for them to develop an approach for dealing with it.

Recognize the signs. Everyone tends to deny initially that he or she could be suffering from depression. Therefore, pastors consciously need to have special attention to clues indicating that depression exists in their lives. If interaction with people is more and more distressing, and if they are constantly withdrawing, they may be depressed. If they are unable to control their appetites, misusing alcohol, or overeating, depression may underlie this behavior.

If pastors find they have many aches and pains for which there is no real physical basis, this may signal depression. If they have lost interest in activities which used to bring pleasure, such as hobbies, and there is also disinterest in sexual activity with the spouse, depression may be present. If mornings are the worst time of day, if they struggle with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, and if death seems to offer a way out, depression is likely.

Analyze the feelings. Once pastors sense their depression, they can attempt to analyze the specific feelings associated with it. Why do they have these feelings? What triggers them? Who triggers them? How are they triggered? When are they triggered? Are they proportionate to the event which triggers them? Remember, some depressions result from a real or imagined loss. If this can be identified, they should allow themselves to experience the sadness about the loss without feeling guilty about the emotion. Put the loss in perspective: What does it mean in terms of their lives, in terms of their relationship to God?

Get feedback from supportive others. It’s not always easy for pastors to be clear on exactly what is triggering their feelings. It’s helpful to have feedback from others to gain perspective. Often pastors are tempted to avoid sharing painful feelings with others for fear of what they will think; but if they have taken the time to develop a meaningful relationship with another person, it will be easier to share.

The pastor will also find that sharing struggles with God helps to lift despair. The psalmists found that verbalizing their grief, anger, and depression led to renewed hope for them. In a similar way, as pastors open their hearts to God and verbalize their anger and depression, they will begin to gain a new perspective on themselves, as well as an awareness of being accepted by God in spite of their anger and negative feelings.

Remain involved in life. Pastors should resist the tendency to withdraw because of their depression. Rather, they need to define tasks they can do successfully. For example, if they find that administrative tasks are a great stress to them, but they enjoy preaching even though depressed, they should continue preaching. It is mandatory; though, that they begin decreasing their commitments and taking control of their schedules to reduce these pressures.

Seek professional help. In spite of one’s best efforts and the help received from friends and from God, there are times when one needs to obtain professional help for depression. Pastors may feel that if they were truly Christians they wouldn’t need such help: “I don’t want such unspiritual solutions as pills or doctors.” They should consider getting professional help if they find they have severe insomnia, suffer from persistent suicidal thoughts, or experience unremitting depression.

The relationship a pastor has with the therapist is a specialized type of relationship in its intensity and specific focus. The two basic components in this relationship are: the support of another human being who is able to hear all that the pastor is thinking and feeling and to still accept him; and the feedback given by the therapist concerning areas the pastor may be handling in a self-defeating manner, or which may not be leading toward his goals.

Many pastors who have had professional therapy testify that they experienced God’s grace through this means. Though spiritual issues may not always be dealt with directly, the benefits which a pastor experiences from therapy often include an improved spiritual sensitivity and an improved relationship with God and others.

Ideally, the pastor’s therapist should have some training and experience in the treatment of religious conflict. He must be prepared to see religious conflict as significant in the treatment of the religious person, and should be willing to deal with it as an issue in itself, not just as a symptom of something still deeper in the psyche.

A young pastor who had suffered a severe depression was asked what his advice would be to depressed clergy. He encouraged pastors to avoid getting so wrapped up in church work that it becomes equated with self-worth. He urged pastors to avoid taking criticism of sermons as personal rejection. He warned against making one’s whole life a service to the church; pastors need family and social life as well. This young pastor found that people believing in him and praying for him were very important to him during his period of illness. He also talked about the trust he had placed in his therapist and the freedom he had felt in group therapy.

And what part did God play in the whole picture? How did the pastor view his spiritual life during this time of deep emotional depression? His response was: “God works through people as he worked through his Son, Jesus Christ. God is always there, loving and caring. Sometimes we are so preoccupied with ourselves we do not receive the gift of his love.”

- More from Enos D. Martin

Pastors

Hearing God’s Voice and Obeying His Word

Leadership Journal

A dialogue with Richard Foster and Henri Nouwen

Richard Foster has been a Quaker pastor in California and Oregon. He taught at George Fox College and now teaches at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. He has written Celebration of Discipline and Freedom of Simplicity (Harper & Row), recently published books that call for increased commitment to live the Christian life. Yet it's obvious from Foster's quick laugh and soft eyes that for him Christian commitment doesn't mean something hard and austere, but something warm and loving.

Henri Nouwen is a Catholic priest and psychologist who has taught at Notre Dame and Yale Divinity School. He has written The Genesee Diary and The Wounded Healer (Doubleday), books that take a look at what it means to be a Christian and a minister in modem society. But Nouwen's prophetic words are tempered by an intense, electric concern for those around him. He's easy to love and his quick, reasoned thinking invites acceptance.

In reading their books, one realizes they are saying many of the same things. Yet they are from widely divergent traditions and use different language to express their thoughts. We decided that for our issue on the devotional life it would be interesting to get these two men together and talk about getting to know God.

Leadership personnel Terry Muck, Harold Myra, and Roy Coffman met with Foster and Nouwen.

Leadership: Since the spiritual life is such a personal matter, perhaps we could start with where each of you find yourself each of you find yourself now in your spiritual journey. What's happening in your life?

Henri Nouwen: Spiritually, I'm in one of the most difficult periods of my life. At times I've felt my spiritual direction to be clear-cut; right now, however, everything is uncertain. When I came from Holland to the United States, I became a diocesan priest, a psychologist, and a fellow at the Menninger Clinic. I joined the faculty at Notre Dame, taught in Holland, and came back to teach at Yale Divinity School.

People started to respond more and more to what I had to say, and that led to an increasing sense of "Yes, I obviously must have something to say." I earned an additional doctorate in theology, so I have all the credentials affirmed by the church and academia. I should be happy.

But these past months I've come face to face with my own spiritual abyss. None of this success has made me a more saintly or holy person. Let me try to describe what I mean. Last semester, I traveled all over the world. I spoke to large audiences. I've never been so praised by such varied groups, from Southern Baptist to Greek Orthodox, from young people to old people. All this created a sense of having arrived.

Yet my inner life was precisely the opposite of that. More and more I felt that if God has anything to say,he doesn't need me. I found myself experiencing two extremes at the same time: high affirmation and great darkness.

In the midst of this situation, I spent several prayerful days with some new Christian friends whom I had met at one of my lectures. During that time, I came in touch with my own brokenness in a new way. Those days together brought many valuable lessons. One of the most beautiful was that my friends experienced themselves as representatives of God's love, and discovered in themselves the ability to care for someone they had expected to learn from, not teach.

Richard Foster: I've had a similar experience, Henri. Back in my earlier years of coming to God, I was very intense; you know, I'M GOING TO COME INTO GOD! During that period, I once spent three days fasting and praying. After doing so, I felt an urging to call a man I had confidence in for his spiritual guidance. He lived quite a distance, but I called and asked him if he would come and pray for me. He came, and I was all ready to place myself before him and let him minister to me. Instead, he sat down in front of me and started confessing his sins. I thought, "I'm supposed to do that to you." After he finished and I had prayed forgiveness for him, he looked at me and said, "Now, do you still want me to pray for you?" All of a sudden I realized his discernment. He knew I had thought of him as a spiritual giant who was going to come and set me right. Only then did he place his hands on me and pray for me.

Leadership: What made you believe so intensely that you needed to find God?

Foster: Desperation. Not so much for me at first, but for people I saw who needed help. Later, I began to feel how very much I also needed God.

Leadership: Although there is a deep hunger in church leaders to spend time in solitude seeking God, many would say, "It's impossible for me. I'm trapped by the demands of my ministry."

Nouwen: I'm like many pastors; I commit myself to projects and plans, and then wonder how I can get them all done. This is true of the pastor, the teacher, the administrator. Indeed, it's true of our culture, which tells us, as much as you can or you'll never make it." In that sense, pastors are part of the world. I've discovered I cannot fight the demons of busyness directly. I cannot continuously say to this or "No" to that, unless there is something ten times more attractive to choose. Saying "no" to my lust, my greed, my needs, and the world's powers takes an enormous amount of energy. The only hope is to find something so obviously real and attractive that I can devote all my energies to saying "Yes." In effect, I don't have time to pay any attention to the distractions. One such thing I can say "Yes" to is when I come in touch with the fact that I am loved. Once I have found that in my total brokenness I am still loved, I become free from the compulsion of doing successful things.

Foster: Let me tie into that with an experience from the first church I pastored. I had finished my doctorate and I was supposed to be an expert. I went to a tiny church in southern California that would rank as a marginal failure on the ecclesiastical scoreboards. I went in there and worked and planned and organized, determined to turn this church around. But things got worse. Anger seemed to permeate everyone: the conservatives were mad at the liberals, the liberals were mad at the radicals, and the radicals were mad at everyone else. I hated to go to pastors' conferences because I d'1dn't have any success stories to tell. I was working myself to death but it seemed to do no good. Then I spent three days with my spiritual director.

Toward the end of that time he said, "Dick, you have to decide whether you are going to be a minister of this church or a minister of Christ." That was a turning point. Up until then I had allowed other people's expectations to manipulate me and my own expectations.

Leadership: It's fascinating that we have two opposite illustrations here; Richard in an early pastorate that really wasn't successful, and Henri in a life full of successes; but both of them falling short of God's desires.

Foster: Yes, and even spiritual exercises and disciplines can be terribly hollow. The real center is hearing God's voice and obeying his Word.

Leadership: You both talk about receiving spiritual guidance from other people. Richard spoke of his spiritual director. That's a term some Protestant readers will be unfamiliar with. What is a spiritual director? What authority does he or she have?

Foster: Spiritual directorship is a Christian idea. It means having someone who can read my soul and give me guidance in my walk with Christ. Many churches call it discipleship.

Nouwen: The church itself is a spiritual director. It tries to connect your story with God's story. Just to be a true part of this community means you are being directed, you are being guided, you are being asked to make connections.

The Bible is a spiritual director. People must read Scripture as a word for themselves personally, and ask where God speaks to them.

Finally, individual Christians are also spiritual directors. The use of an individual person in spiritual direction has as many forms and styles as there are people. A spiritual director is a Christian man or woman who practices the disciplines of the church and of the Bible, and to whom you are willing to be accountable for your life in God. That guidance can happen once a week, once a month, or once a year. It can happen for ten minutes or ten hours. In times of loneliness or crisis, that person prays for you.

Leadership: How do you find such a person?

Foster: This is itself a great adventure in prayer. I ask God to bring me someone, and then I wait for the salvation of God to come. My first director was an older woman who worked nights in a large hospital. Six days a week at eight in the morning, the end of the night shift, we met together to learn about prayer and to share our experiences with God. We began to learn what it means to walk with Christ, and the experience was a wonderful one for both of us. But it began by asking God to give me someone who would travel the road with me.

Leadership: Many pastors who are lonely don't feel there's anyone they can turn to for this kind of help.

Nouwen: If you are seriously interested in the spiritual life, finding a spiritual director is no problem. Many are standing around waiting to be asked. However, sometimes we don't really want to get rid of our loneliness. There is something in us that wants to do it by ourselves. I constantly see this in my own life. It is so beautiful to realize we don't have to be lonely if we really want to become open to the dependency of God's love and the love of our fellow men and women. It isn't an easy dependency. If you allow someone to love you, that love will take you to painful places.

When Abram became Abraham, it didn't get easy for him. When Saul became Paul, it didn't get easy for him, or for Simon when he became Peter. But it is so true that if I want to break out of my loneliness, God will send me his angels. A spiritual director is not a great guru who has it all together; it's just someone who shares his or her sinful struggles, and by doing so, reveals that there is a Presence that is forgiving.

Foster: I began to learn this in a pastorate in Oregon. It wasn't too long before I realized I needed people to help me. So in a dozen different ways I said, "Folks, I love you, and I need your help. I would love it if you would come to my office not just when you have a problem or when you are angry. Come any time and give me a booster shot of prayer." People began to stop by for ten minutes or so and pray for me. Grinning, they would say, "I've come to give you a booster shot of prayer." I'd get on my knees before these people in an act of submission and let them pray for me. It did amazing, wonderful things for my spirit.

Nouwen: Richard, I like the idea of asking people to come pray for you, but for some congregations that might be a little bit too explicit or formal. The very first thing for me to communicate to people is that I would really love to know them. In other words, I say, "Listen, come and tell me what is happening. Drop in. Interrupt. Constantly get me off my horse and throw me down and talk to me." The minister should be continuously interrupted. I'm always running somewhere, and I need people to say, "Stop! You didn't notice I was trying to say something to you."

Leadership: How do you cope with those interruptions? Don't they derail you as well as help you?

Nouwen: What I'm talking about is having a spiritual attitude that wants to be surprised by God. We crowd our thoughts with so many agenda items that we don't take time to listen to God. God doesn't just talk to me at the end or at the beginning of a project, but all the time; he may have me change directions in the middle. Now, I don't mean that you sit around waiting until God speaks in a burning bush. That may happen, but God also uses people to speak to you. Listen to them; stretch out your hand and let your people guide you.

The minister in one sense is a useless person; useless in that he or she can be used at any time by any one for anything. I was talking yesterday to a priest in Philadelphia who said, "I'm so worried about the summer; I'm a white priest in a black neighborhood. What do I do?" I replied, "Be sure to walk the streets. Make it clear that you are there. You don't have to talk all the time; just hang around. Tell the people you don't want anything. Act totally useless, waiting to be with them and love them."

Leadership: How can we communicate love?

Nouwen: I remember a student whose father was never able to express any affection at all for him. The boy decided to become a minister and came to divinity school. I was one of his teachers. Even though others think I'm a good teacher, he told me, "I never enjoyed anything you were saying. I came to class, and I left it."

I tried very hard to be interesting, but he couldn't hear an adult male tell him anything because it reminded him of his father. One time he was sick, a little illness. I was biking around one evening and suddenly realized I was near where he lived. I decided to drop in. I said, been thinking about you today. Are you feeling better?" He said, "You came to see me? You thought of me?" I touched him, put my hand on his hand, and said, "I love you, I really do; that's why I'm here." And I meant it; I really felt it. Later, he told me he'd cried for several hours because it never had happened that an adult male said, "I love you." And he added, "That taught me all I wanted to learn."

Foster: One day I had a strong feeling to call a parishioner who is a college chaplain. I said, "John, I didn't call you to ask you to do anything. I just wanted to say 'Hi.' On the other end there was a deep sigh of relief and he said, "I'm so glad you called." Then he began to share a deep inner need. So often love is communicated not in the big event, but in small acts of kindness. One of the greatest expressions of love is simply to notice people and to pay attention to them.

Nouwen: If you really want to know God, go to his people. Go to your barber and talk about God. Tell the carpenter about what you're experiencing. Take time to read the lives of the saints. They always knock you off your feet because they tell you that the preoccupations you have aren't the ones you should have. Be in touch with those women and men who did crazy things like falling in love with God.

Foster: I agree. There is a danger, however. Don't let your experience get behind your reading. Rather than read twenty books on servanthood, get the idea, and then serve people. Some of us have experimented with this little prayer: "Lord, lead me to someone today that I can serve." Also, pastors should take spiritual retreats. Moses did, Elijah did, David, Paul, and Peter did. Jesus took time to retreat. Why should we think we can do without it?

Leadership: Give us some idea of what should happen at a spiritual retreat.

Nouwen: One word: prayer.

Foster: I think the Protestant world needs to rethink the whole question of retreats. I remember preaching a sermon about the need for "tarrying places", based on Peter's experience at Joppa, and then adding, "If any of you want to take a spiritual retreat, I will find a place for you to go." One individual took me up on it, and I called every retreat center I could find in southern California. Everyone gave me the same story—they had facilities to accommodate 500 people, but not just a single individual. As far as I could determine, the Catholic retreat centers were the only places that would take an individual person. Why can't we build places for this in our churches?

Nouwen: That's an excellent idea. I know of parish houses in Canada where the third floor is arranged as a retreat place.

Foster: And you don't always have to go away. You can have retreats by arranging a room in your house for prayer and quiet reflection. I know one family that has a chair designated as a quiet chair. When someone sits in that chair, they are to be left alone.

Nouwen: The discipline of silence has been very important in my teaching. Last semester I offered a course in Spiritual Direction. One of the requirements was that students spend one hour of silence with a selected Scripture passage during our afternoon together. After that hour of silence, I invited them to come together in small groups and share with one another what they had experienced in that period. Many realized for the first time that there is something other than discussion. They would say, "I was impressed that the Lord had something to say to me, and it frightened me when it happened."

Foster: A silent period spent listening to God is indispensable. We often hear the question "How can busy pastors find time for a regular devotional life?" That's like asking, "How can auto mechanics find time to work on an automobile?" How could they not?

Leadership: We can see a pastor reading this and feeling enormous guilt. Some of the psychological studies indicate pastors may have insecure personalities, and that's one of the reasons they have gone into the pastorate. Yet they're susceptible to the pressures of pastoring. How can we help them get up in the morning and not run out simply to do the pressing and the urgent?

Foster: I was told in seminary that ideally if I preached from the Old Testament I should study the Hebrew text, and if I preached from the New Testament I should study the Greek text. I was told to spend time each week working on my sermon delivery. Pastoral counseling, they told me, is crucial to my ministry. I added up the time it takes to do all these things, and the total was staggering. And once in the ministry, I found out very quickly that those things might build churches, but they don't necessarily help people. So I had to go back to square one and ask, "What am I to do?" The answer that came was "Love God and walk with him." Once the pastor is settled and centered on that, all the guilt feelings aren't there about what I have to do or what I haven't done.

Nouwen: It may well be that many pastors are insecure people, but that can be both an asset as well as a liability. Insecure people need social contact. Many people with that kind of personality might choose the ministry because that us a way of dealing with their need. I don't think that's bad. One of the most beautiful ways for spiritual formation to take place is to let your insecurity lead you closer to the Lord. Natural hypersensitivity can become an asset; it makes you aware of your need to be with people and it allows you to be more willing to look at their needs. In a sense, you let your psychological trembling become trembling for the Lord; and you use the insecurity of human relationships to develop a firm relationship with God

Foster: The disciples are some of the best examples of that.

Nouwen: Your insecurity can be neurotic, but it can also lead to a very deep spiritual life. Instead of telling clergy, "You're insecure, that's why you became pastors," we should tell them, "Your insecurity is a vocation; it's an invitation to really live the spiritual life."

Leadership: How can ministers accept their insecurity that way?

Nouwen: Here the spiritual director is important. You need a person with whom you feel free to be insecure. Let me paint a picture. You're in a big room with a six-inch-wide balance beam in the center. Now the balance beam is only twelve inches off the fully carpeted floor. Most of us act as if we were blindfolded and trying to walk on that balance beam; we're afraid we'll fall off. But we don't realize we're only twelve inches off the floor. The spiritual director is someone who can push you off that balance beam and say, "See? It's okay. God still loves you." Take that nervousness about whether you're going to succeed and whether you have enough money—take the whole thing up on that narrow beam and just fall off.

Foster: That's one of the great values of reading the saints. They had this utter vulnerability to fail by human standards.

Nouwen: Let me share a little story. In Bolivia, an American pastor was trying to start a catechism class for Christian boys there, but they didn't want to attend. And although this pastor was very concerned that they needed to come, he had firmly decided, "I'm not going to force people into catechism." He loved yoga, and would get up at five in the morning to do his exercises. One of the boys discovered that and asked, "Can I come and do yoga with you?" He said, "Sure." In a month, he had twenty boys around him doing yoga; soon he started to read the Scriptures as part of the yoga exercises. The boys thought it was beautiful, the same boys who would not come to catechism class.

See what I mean? The beautiful mystery is that in the yoga setting the pastor was doing it himself—he was living his faith. I can see a pastor in a church saying, "I'm going to pray tonight, and if you want to pray with me, you are welcome. I'm going to read the Scriptures, be silent for half an hour, and then share what I think about it with whomever is there."

Foster: One of the beautiful things that Henri is saying is the importance of corporate worship.

Leadership: There seems to be a hunger among Christians for worship, both corporate and private. Why this thirst for spiritual things?

Foster: There's been a great disillusionment with the superficialities of modern culture, especially the religious culture, and a longing for something that can really help.

Nouwen: The churches in the United States, Catholic as well as Protestant, have never concentrated on the idea of spiritual formation. Pastoral care, yes, but a nurturing of the intimate life with God, no. The Catholic church was involved in getting herself established in the United States, building churches and schools. The Protestant church majored on bringing people together for fellowship—the place where you go with your pains and family struggles. There's a pastoral richness there that's good.

But the mystical (and that's a good word) has been shortchanged in our culture by Catholic and Protestant alike. It's unfortunate, because in the Christian tradition there is an enormous treasury of this. If you really study Luther, you find a spiritual life that most Lutherans are quite unfamiliar with. Wesley was deeply steeped in literature of the spiritual life. Calvin quotes straight from the Desert Fathers.

Foster: Yes, many don't realize that the longest section in Calvin's Institutes is on prayer.

Nouwen: In the sixties we were very concerned with social change; we learned that change comes slowly at best, and that it doesn't come at all without a spiritual grounding. The real protesters, the ones who are still protesting, receive their strength and inspiration not from social theorists but from the mystics. Jim Forrest, head of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, came to see me last night. What did he talk about? He talked about Thomas Merton; he talked about prayer. We prayed more than we talked. Prayer gives him strength to continue to fight for a better world.

There is a beautiful Jewish story about a little boy who went to a prophet and said, "Prophet, don't you see'? You have been prophesying now for fifteen years, and things are still the same. Why do you keep on?" And the prophet said, "Don't you know, little boy, I'm not prophesying to change the world, but to prevent the world from changing me?"

We must say "No" to war, killing, and poverty, not because people are going to listen, but because it belongs to an authentic witness of the living God. And you can only do that when your heart is rooted in the love of God, not in the response of the people. Maybe more people are seeing that and are saying to their ministers, "Tell me about the spiritual life. Tell me how to pray."

Leadership: We've talked a lot about prayer. What is prayer?

Nouwen: Prayer is first of all listening to God. it's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity.

Take this room. Imagine you've never out of it. Prayer is like going outside to see what's really there. Prayer in its most basic sense is just entering into an attitude of saying, "Lord, what are you saying to me?"

Foster: The problem with describing prayer as speaking to God is that it implies we are still in control. But in listening, we let go. Real intercession is what comes out of listening. People are tired of hearing about "ten steps that will change your life." That isn't where it's at, because then people tend to focus on the steps instead of hearing and obeying God.

The spiritual life is not something we add onto an already busy life. What we are talking about is to impregnate and infiltrate and control what we already do with an attitude of service to God. For pastors, this might mean silent prayer in their board meetings. One of the greatest revelations to me was to experiment with being in communion with God in board meetings. I learned I didn't always have to speak and control, and that I could pray for people in the room who had a heaviness with life. It's like living on two levels. On one you are doing the activities of the day, but on a deeper, more profound level, there is this inward prayer and worship.

I also think it's important for people to develop hobbies that allow them to pray. I like to do stitchery. I don't have to think about it; I can rest and listen and worship. I also think it's very important what we think about in the evening before we go to sleep, and in the morning as we wake up. So many of us allow the late news to dictate what we think about when we go to bed.

Leadership: What can we do to help us center our thoughts on God?

Foster: Many different things. My boys and I have built a basketball standard out by our driveway. I go out alone at ten at night and shoot baskets. It's a time to pray. And as I shoot baskets, I invite God to remind me of my day. Are there things that need to be confessed? Was I curt to my secretary? Do I need to set something straight? In the morning I've been having fun experimenting with prayer during that period of just starting to wake up. You aren't fully conscious, but you aren't fully asleep; during that in-between period I try to surrender my day to God.

Nouwen: People who live a spiritual life become very sensitive to their surroundings. Notice their houses; they are uncluttered. Your physical place becomes more spacious when your life is lived spiritually. The idea of going on retreat for prayer is crucial, but we also need to pray daily. It's not only important to set aside time to pray, but also a place to pray. I have a special place to pray, and I spend a predetermined amount of time in this space. The only reason to be there is to pray. After the time is up I can say, "Lord, this was my prayer, even if my mind was full of confusion."

Foster: There are many practical ways to increase the spiritual atmosphere of the home. In our home we don't answer the telephone when we are eating or if I'm reading stories to the children, because I want my boys to know they are more important than the telephone.

Nouwen: The obvious assumption of always answering the phone is that the person on the phone has something more important to say than what you are saying—which is not true. The same applies to the television. My mother always said, "I don't understand why you tolerate this stranger to talk in the middle of my room. We didn't invite him. Turn him off."

Foster: I have another suggestion for discipline that I have found very helpful. Tell people not only when a meeting starts, but when it ends. I don't mean only business meetings, but social meetings too. I always invite students from eight to ten in the evening. At ten I say, "Let's close with prayer."

Nouwen: A word here on the form of prayer. Prayer involves the body. It can be done in many different postures. You can stand, kneel, lie flat, hold hands, lie in bed, or sit in a chair.

Foster: You do what is appropriate for the type of prayer you are praying. A friend who is now a philosophy professor has prayed with me a great deal. I remember one time we met together to pray for some people in our congregation who had serious problems. As we began, my friend, who is over six feet tall, flattened himself straight out on the floor. I had planned to just kneel, but I realized his posture was appropriate for the kind of concern we had.

Nouwen: What is also important about different postures is that sometimes your mind is too tired to concentrate in the right way, and your body position can get you in the proper frame of mind.

Leadership: What about the content of prayer?

Nouwen: Too many Christians think prayer means to have spiritual thoughts. That's not it. Prayer means to bring into the presence of God all that you are. You can say, I hate this guy, I can't stand him." The prayer life of most people is too selective. They usually only present those things to God they want him to know or they think he can handle. But God can handle everything.

Foster: You've heard people say, "I don't know what to pray about." Or, they will get a prayer list and pray for missionaries because they don't know what else to do. A lady said to me not too long ago,"I can't pray for more than two minutes at a time. What can I do?" When people say that to me, I reply, "What have you been thinking or worrying about this last week? Pray about that."

Nouwen: Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue. It is a move from self-centered monologue to a conversation with God.

- More from Leadership Journal

Pastors

Older, But Never Old

Fred Smith

Getting older is like racing in the Indianapolis 500. The last 10 miles are what the first 490 are all about.

A fifty-five-year-old friend of mine was talking at a party about being middle-aged. His wife heard him and said, “So who do you know who’s 110?”

How old is old? Everyone is old to someone. To a six-month-old baby, a toddler is old. Ask a ten-year old how old is old, and he’ll say, “Thirty.” Yet there are people who are sixty and think of themselves as middle-aged.

North Americans are obsessed with two things: educational degrees and staying young. I asked an advertising copywriter with one of the major cosmetics companies, “When you write cosmetics ads, what are you really selling?” He answered with one word: “Hope.”

People fight age. Our society does not respect its elder members as Eastern societies do. For us, aging is a problem. A friend recently noted that when he was twenty, he would read the obituary of a fifty-five-year-old man and think, “Why even put it in the paper? An old-timer has faded away.” Now that my friend is sixty-five, however, he sees young men of sixty and seventy passing away, and he’s alarmed by the attitudes of the present generation. When I heard another friend call himself old for the first time at seventy-six, I was offended. It’s a serious problem when people begin to refer to themselves as old, because they’ve put themselves in a classification that is almost a holding pattern for death. They’re starting to coast to the finish line. I wrote my friend a memo telling him that although he was older, I hoped he’d never be old. Older is a fact, but old is an unhealthy attitude.

Advantages of Aging

I think it’s important to look at some of the benefits of getting older.

Selective tension. Older people are usually tense over important things, not over everything. So many young people are tightly wound about everything; their lives have no peaks and valleys. As we get older, we shouldn’t lose tension; we should apply it selectively.

At one point in my life I was playing too much golf and relaxing more than I should. I noticed my memory starting to slip. When I ran into a well-known psychologist with whom I’d done some lectures, I mentioned my memory problem and equated it with getting older. He said, “No, that isn’t the cause; it’s your lifestyle that’s become more relaxed. You’ve lost the tension in your brain.” He went on to explain that the brain is a muscle, and he suggested that if I brought back some constructive tension into my life, my memory would improve.

This challenged me so much that I accepted a few speaking engagements on topics that would produce tension. And, as he said, I found my memory returning. Tension is part of living. Getting older means we should be able to allocate tension to the important instead of the trivial.

Clarified values. Growing older gives us an opportunity to sort through our value system. For example, we can better see that the spiritual really does contribute more to our life than the economic. We finally agree with the philosopher who says that who we are influences our happiness much more than what we have.

The temptation then, of course, is to try to force our value structures on younger people. We don’t stop to realize that they haven’t had the years of maturity and growth that gave us discernment about values. We can’t expect them to accept these values with the same certainty we have. We can only encourage them to accept them on the basis of our experience until their own experience ratifies our beliefs.

Experience. Proverbs 20:29 says, “The glory of young men is their strength; of old men their experience.” Experience turns knowledge into wisdom. We can get knowledge in school. Take that knowledge, run it through the press of experience, and out comes a concentrate—wisdom.

Experience, like faith, is a teacher. Faith is better than experience, because faith keeps us from bearing the scars of experience. But none of us is able to live totally by faith, and we have to experience some things for ourselves. If we have good sense at all, however, our experience leads us to the same place faith would have led us. Experience convinces us that “this is the way, walk ye in it.”

Increased excitement. As the years get shorter, the excitement of fully utilizing them can be a great motivation. Don’t become depressed or afraid; feel the same excitement as if you were racing in the Indianapolis 500 and had completed 490 miles. The last ten miles become the most exciting because they’re really the reason you ran the first ones. All your experiences, friends, associations, and education are consummated in these last years. Since most older people need less sleep, they can utilize this time more fully.

A good friend of mine is completing his Ph.D. studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. He’s seventy years old. He’s taking the degree from one of his former students. This is what age does for you. It lets parents live long enough to see their children become their teachers. That’s exciting.

Sure, only a small percentage of the people are doing this. But it’s the elite who are fighting against the deterioration of nature and the lack of health, who are seeing that the last act is always the best.

Tested relationships. As we grow older, relationships mature. For example, when you’re first married, you don’t know what to fight over. Because of inexperience, you fight over anything. You even quit going out with a couple who likes French restaurants because you like Mexican ones. But as we get older, we recognize areas of importance and unimportance. We have tested our friendships over the years and know which ones will hold and which ones will always be tentative.

Yet we don’t get cynical about the ones that won’t hold, for we know most relationships are temporary or partial; thus, we look for others who give as well as get. We learn to trust people with whom we can talk confidentially. They’re interested in our kids and what happens. They’re real. And it’s a wonderful thing to know we will probably be neighbors in heaven.

Death is part of life. A final compensation we have as we grow older is the full realization that death is a part of life. When I look at death, 1 Corinthians 13:12 is an important verse to me: “Then shall I know even as also I am known.” Whatever I have known up to now has always been fragmentary. The great hope of heaven is that I will know the full truth.

I think it’s important, as we go along through life, to create certain thirsts that death will satisfy. The thirst for truth is one of these; so are the thirsts for immortality, for God, and for renewing relationships with those who have died. You start developing these in your teens; you feed them and nurture them, and then when the time comes to die, it’s really graduation.

I hope my death is not a long, painful one. I used to ask for sudden death, but I decided that was basically selfish. When we hope for sudden death, we’re thinking about ourselves. One woman who lost her husband after a short time of illness said, “I’m so thankful we had time to say goodbye.”

I’m not much to insist that mourners celebrate because this seems phony to me. There’s a time of loneliness and mourning that should be carried out; but I’m afraid we are getting to a place in some churches where we impose celebration. But the person who died can celebrate; he or she can sing a hallelujah chorus because the race is finished.

Perils of Aging

When I was in my forties, I started making a list of things I would not do once I was old. I knew I’d need the list, because then those things would seem so natural to do. There were little things on it—like not sleeping with my mouth open and not wearing mismatched clothes. But several more important things on the list are worth exploring.

Reminiscing. A television talk show host told me that if she interviewed someone on the air who dwelt on the past, she never asked that person back. I say, good for her. I get sick and tired of listening to people reminisce. They apparently have no present and no future; everything is past. That’s a sure sign of age.

Class reunions hold no interest whatever for me. There is so little to talk about that everyone talks about the past. And if you’re objective about it, very few people have come anywhere near the potential of their life. So you’re suddenly faced with this horrible thought: these people, who were going out to do so much, have done so little.

When I talk about reminiscing, I’m not talking about the study of history, which we analyze and learn from. Reminiscing is simply trying to relive the best parts of the past while believing it is something worth revisiting. Part of maturing is learning you can never go home again. Once you get out of bed, you can’t find the warm spot again.

Unfair comparisons. As we get older, we tend to make unrealistic comparisons. We talk about the good old times and the quality merchandise we had when we were young. I remember the quality crank that spun a Model T Ford engine and the quality piece of wire that pulled out the choke. I also remember the tremendous amount of aerobic exercise it took to get the thing started and the danger of breaking your arm if it kicked. Was it really so much better than sliding into some leather-seated sports car and driving off in regal splendor?

This tendency to make unrealistic comparisons , carries over to the church. The preacher doesn’t preach the old-fashioned gospel, we say. I had fun once at a preachers’ convention by getting up and expounding about how we needed to return to the old-fashioned forms of the faith; how we needed to go back to reverence for the old-fashioned Book. The longer I carried on, the more amens I picked up. Then I said, “What I mean is, let’s really go back to the old-fashioned circuit riders, when people only had to go to church once every three months.” Graciously, they didn’t stone me, but those preachers gave me stony silence.

There’s always a danger when we compare the present with the past, because we usually compare the bad of the present with the good of the past. It’s like buying a new business: right away you see the benefits of an unfamiliar operation, but you overlook the disadvantages and liabilities. Only after you get into it do the liabilities stare back at you. We have to say, “The past had its good points, but my memory is selective, and I cannot compare objectively.”

Predicting. Every economist, when he gives his forecasts, should state his age in the first line. He ought to say, “I am sixty-three years old, and my predictions for the economy are thus and so.” That’s because as people get older, they either become very pessimistic or Pollyanna optimists.

People who are not truly excited about the future take refuge in blind optimism: “Young people are great; the country will survive; right will win.” It’s all a spiel. The other extreme, of course, is to become cynical and pessimistic. A realistic view of the future is hard to come by because there’s a fine line between cynicism and idealism.

A cynic and an idealist, if they’re objective, will see the present exactly alike; it’s the future they’ll see differently. The cynic, because of his bitterness, says the future will be exactly like the present. The idealist says it doesn’t have to be; change can come, improvement can be made, an individual can make a difference. Every age suffers its pessimists; every age needs its idealists. The Christian must remain an idealist.

Responsibilities of Aging

Getting older brings us several new challenges.

Be a mentor. We can make a contribution to younger people. I am deeply grateful for two or three mentors in my life. The best way I can express my appreciation is to be a mentor to others. I feel a real responsibility to be available to younger people who find help in my advice. At least five men from thirty-five to fifty years of age currently look on me as their mentor.

Young people need more than anything else someone they respect who believes in them. A woman said to me, “You were the first to ever believe in me.” I was thrilled. She’s capable and wellknown now, but there was a time when people didn’t believe in her. When you reach back to the younger generation, it’s not to criticize but to coach. I won’t force my coaching on others because then they would be threatened, offended, or hurt. Coaches and students need a spirit of mutual respect.

I’ve refused more young people than I’ve accepted; many come to con me into helping them do what they want to do without any thought of accepting the changes I think they ought to make. Part of the wisdom of being older is to say to these ambitious young men and women, “You are not for me. You’re trying to get, not give.” One of the ways I can tell is when they try to impress me rather than listen to me. If I give them a thought and they try to give me two, I know they’re not for me.

Let God evaluate your contributions. Aging is like spending money: if you had $1,000 and you’re down to the last $50, there’s a certain depressing realization that you may not have invested it but just spent it. Many people think they have wasted their lives. I received a letter from a well-known man who said, “I want to confess that for fifteen years I have been doubtful of my true contribution to life.”

If we think too much about this, as we grow older, we feel guilty about it. The greatest help to me in this area has been a growing belief in the sovereignty of God. God doesn’t depend on me to save the world or even run it. When I was young, I acted as if God must be tired; that he wanted to take a vacation and was training me to take over. Then I realized God doesn’t get tired; that he can work for good even in my mistakes. This led to a great release from the fear of missed opportunities.

God evaluates our contributions in light of our opportunities. When people say, “If I had my life to live over again, I’d do it differently,” they are assuming they’d be different people. But God knows we lived it as we were, and only God can say whether we were good or bad. The man who spent seventeen years in jail missed a lot of opportunities to do good, but he also missed a lot of opportunities to do bad. These things we have to leave with God.

Live in the unique. Living with a certain relaxation is a great freedom of the Christian faith. We’re too often tempted to substitute legalism for discipline. Discipline we’re responsible for, but legalism we’re not.

When I sit down to do some planning (and I think God is pleased that I do planning; it shows respect for life) I ask, “What are the unique things in this period of my life that I can do?” When one’s children are small, for example, that’s a unique period. Grandparents sometimes try to raise grandchildren like they should have raised their children. Their responsibility to their grandchildren is not the same as it was to their children. We must recognize what is unique to each of life’s periods and then live it that way.

Take the example of the woman who didn’t have money to go to the beauty parlor when she was young and beautiful. Now when she is older, her husband hits it rich; and suddenly we see her wearing the clothes she would have liked to wear when she was thirty, and she’s trying to get the beautician to make her look youthful. The whole effect is artificial. She’s not living in the uniqueness of her stage in life.

Maintain a sense of humor. Much of our humanness is comical. We all make so many mistakes that we have to learn to laugh first at ourselves and then at other people.

I went to a convention and was handed a lapel button. When I wore it home, my wife asked me what it said because she couldn’t read it without her glasses. I said, “I won’t tell you. Go and get your glasses.” She did, and we had a big laugh about it when she read the button: “I go for older women.”

A good sense of humor usually indicates a person has been able to turn the world over to God. As a business executive, I’ve always insisted that my subordinates delegate my job to me. I resent any of them trying to take over my job. I try to delegate their jobs to them, and I want them to return the favor.

Our relationship to God is similar. We needn’t get tense about the way God is running the world; we can trust him with it. If I wanted to be a little bit mean, I would say that some of the older preachers preaching the imminent return of Christ give me the feeling that he must return soon because there are no more great preachers to turn the world over to. God can handle it all, and the lubricating effect of good humor can help us accept it.

- More from Fred Smith

Pastors

A Day in The Life of a Paraclete

Claude Buchanan

The Servants of the Paraclete is a counseling service in St. Louis, Missouri, where priests suffering from burn-out go for guidance.

When the alarm goes off early in the morning, I find it a real struggle to pull myself from the warmth of the covers. After some twenty-two years in the priesthood, I hit the deck uncertain of the new day and the demands it will surely present. I think of the priest who called a few nights ago. His first words were, “I’m just tired of giving.” As this new day dawns, his words come to mind.

I join the community for morning prayer. I beg for an increase in faith. Little of what I do this day will bear visible results. As I grow older as a priest, I can no longer lean too heavily on the natural satisfaction so present in the early days of my priesthood. My faith must grow in abundance so I can see, hear, and feel God’s presence in myself, in my surroundings, and in those I am called to serve.

After morning prayer, one of our guest Fathers asks for a few moments of my time—just to talk. As a paraclete, I have heard the story so many times, but for the priest who now sits before me, what he has to say is all important—unique. He is precious in the Lord. I listen as I would wish to be listened to in my time of need.

The phone rings, and it means a trip to the airport to meet a priest confused in soul and body. As he walks towards me from the airplane, I try my best to see through his untidy appearance, the defeated look. In faith I know his hands have administered life unto many. In the silence of my heart, I beg God that he again will experience the joy, the fullness of loving service.

It is my turn to prepare the evening meal. I’m convinced this is a holy task. Over the entrance of our dining room we formerly had a small sign that read, “Good food is good for the soul.” When the dining room was redecorated the sign disappeared. I miss it. A man can come to the table burdened with the weight of many problems, enjoy a well-prepared meal, and go away refreshed in mind and heart.

The Father that arrived this day is silent at the evening meal—impossible at this time to break through the hurt, his confusion. Just being present to him is all I can offer at the moment.

There are those precious moments throughout the day and especially in the evening hours when I can truly lift my mind and heart to my Father. Time to get my head on straight and hope for a better tomorrow. I may find some way to build a bridge of understanding and trust with the priest that arrived this clay. He feels much alone tonight. Possibly tomorrow he’ll find a brother.

It is a struggle to live out our priestly calling, no matter what our particular ministry might be. I personally find the joys of my priesthood far outweigh the sorrows. My life is nothing too great, but it is in these everyday happenings that I’m to work out my salvation, saying with Paul, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

- More from Claude Buchanan

Pastors

The Central Work of Prayer

Ben Patterson

Prayer is the first thing we talk about but the last thing we do.

The great baseball catcher Yogi Berra was involved in a ball game in which the score was tied, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. The batter from the opposing team stepped into the batting box and made the sign of the cross on home plate with his bat. Berra was a Catholic too, but he wiped off the plate with his glove and said to the pious batter, ”Why don’ t we let God just watch this game?” That is good theology when applied to the outcome of a baseball game. It is terrible theology when applied to the way we live our lives and carry out the work of the church. Worse than that, it is fatal.

But too often that is precisely the outlook we bring to our vocation as Christian elders, deacons, and pastors. God is in attendance at the game, but only as our honored spectator. Our prayers are merely ceremonial functions: tips of the hat, verbal recognition over the loudspeaker between innings, or requests to throw out the game ball. He even may have the best seat in the stadium, but he rarely, if ever, gets on the playing field.

Am I overstating things a bit? Not if I am to believe half of what I hear from my colleagues about the weight and frequency assigned to the role of prayer in their work. Prayer is always getting nudged aside, neglected, or perfunctorily performed as more pressing concerns take center stage. Many of us feel we just have too much to do to have time to pray. That is the problem. At bottom, we don’t believe we are really doing anything when we pray, other than pray, that is.

It is this attitude I would like to address, for I believe it is one of the most subtle and pernicious forms of worldliness in the church today. Why don’t we believe we are getting anything done when we pray?

Two reasons: the world’s view, and the world’s pace.

The World’s View

The world’s view is basically a philosophical issue. It is the view of secularism; the view that this material world is all there is; that we live in a closed system of cause and effect with nothing outside; that official reality is only what is accessible to our senses. The secular world view is what Peter Berger called a “world without windows.” There can be no such thing as prayer in that kind of world.

Of course, any Christian can see that that world view is at odds with the faith. For the church, however, what is more significant than secularism as a formal philosophical system is secularism as a sociological phenomenon. For secularism as a sociological reality, says Os Guinness, is the notion that religious ideas, institutions, and interpretations are losing practical social significance.

For instance, it is fine to pray in your support group, for it can be a warm exercise in intimacy. But pray as a means of doing the business of the church? When we must get something done, we need to start talking, writing, telephoning, spending, budgeting, mobilizing, organizing, and mailing. Those kinds of things take time. So prayer gets preempted. It is a pleasant luxury that would be wonderful to spend more time on, if only we did not have so many necessities pressing in. After all, we must complete the budget and formulate policies and act on the proposals from the fellowship committee.

God’s view couldn’t be more in opposition to that fatuous notion. Our battle is not with those so-called necessities, but “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” We therefore fight our battle with truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, and the Word of God. And we “pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Ephesians 6:12-18). That places our work in a totally different perspective, doesn’t it? That demands an entirely different agenda of what things must get done, does it not?

What if we saw the true stakes, that the territory being fought over is none other than us and our people? What confidence would we place then in our organizational charts, lines of accountability and authority, budget reports, and plans for the Labor Day picnic? My hunch is we’d all be too frightened to not pray. We’d all become foxhole Christians. Can there be any other kind?

It isn’t that those business items are trivial; they are to be included in the responsibilities of Christian leaders. They are, however, trivial in comparison to our vocation to be men and women of prayer. To paraphrase Calvin Coolidge’s famous remark about the business of America being business, the business of the church is to pray.

The World’s Pace

The world’s view leads to the world’s pace. There is a sign reputed to be on the Alaskan highway that says, “Choose your rut carefully. You’ll be in it for the next 200 miles.” The view that sees the material reality as all there is, or at least all there is that is worth bothering with, creates a pace that is frantic at times, monotonous at others.

I read an article that created a great deal of anxiety in me. It was entitled, “If You Are 35, You Have 500 Days To Live.” Subtract the time you will spend sleeping, working, and tending to personal matters such as hygiene, odd chores, eating, and traveling. In the next 36 years you have 500 days of leisure. If this world is all there is, then none of us should waste our time praying. We should be literally grabbing for all the gusto we can get.

We see precisely that all around us. Yet, as leisure time increases, so do the problems of emptiness, boredom, and restlessness. We have, as a culture, a frantic determination and anxiety to relax, unwind, and have fun. Where an earlier generation may have been compulsive about work, we are compulsive about what we do with our leisure time. Martha has become the patron saint of American recreational life.

Of course, this affects the church. Activists that we are, we all feel there is so much to do and so little time to do it. A sign of our times, religiously, is the fact that Hans Kung’s otherwise brilliant theological work On Being A Christian did not have a chapter in it on prayer. When asked about its absence, he apologized and admitted it was a serious oversight. But, he explained, at the time of writing he was so harassed by the Vatican and busy trying to meet his publisher’s deadline that he simply forgot. That is my point exactly. Prayer is always the first thing to go when we get caught up in the world’s pace. And only prayer can deliver us from that pace.

We would do well to take our clues from St. Benedict of Nursia. He founded his Benedictine order as a reaction to the worldliness of the sixth-century church. His slogan was Ora Labora, from the Latin ora, pray; and labora, work. He taught his followers that to pray was to work, and to work was to pray. Following that rule, the Benedictine order broke down the artificial dichotomy between work and prayer. From there they also bridged the gap between the manual arts and the liberal arts, the physical and the intellectual, and the empirical and the speculative. A great tradition developed in which learning, science, agriculture, architecture, and art flourished. Much of what is thought of as beautiful nature in Europe today, particularly in France, was created by the Benedictine monks who drained swamps and cleared forests.

We must learn that prayer is our chief work. Only then can our work become prayer: real service, real accomplishment, real satisfaction. This simple truth alone explains why so many workers in the church find themselves exhausted, stretched to the breaking point, and burned out.

The apostle Paul, when writing to the church at Colossae, wanted to encourage them by telling the things being done on their behalf. He mentioned one of his colleagues, Epaphras, whom he described as “always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in the will of God, mature and fully assured … he is working hard (italics mine) for you.” Epaphras’ hard work for the church was his earnest prayers on their behalf!

How often has our telling someone we’ll pray for them been a cop-out meaning we won’t do anything that really matters, anything concrete; or meaning we want to maintain a safe distance from them and their need.

Our prayer is our work! Only when that is true for us will our work be prayer: real worship, praise, adoration, and sacrifice. The classical postures of prayer, arms stretched out and hands open, or head bowed and hands folded, are gestures of openness and submission to God. They express perhaps the greatest paradox of prayer: that only when we give up on man’s work can God’s work begin and, mysteriously, can man’s work come to fulfillment. As Dr. Hallesby puts it in his book Prayer, ‘Whenever we touch his Almighty arm, some of his omnipotence streams in upon us, into our souls and into our bodies. And not only that, but, through us, it streams out to others.”

Ora labora.

- More from Ben Patterson

Pastors

What I Learned About Rurban Ministry

James D. Berkley

A pastor on the rural-urban fringe talks about the challenges of pastoring small churches.

Luftaufnahme Weinberge am Kappelberg im Herbst, bei Stuttgart, Baden Württemberg, Deutschland

I am convinced pastors must be jugglers. Jugglers maintain dexterity and poise while simultaneously keeping several items in constant motion. Bowling pins, balls, knives, and hoops in whatever combination are no problem for the professional juggler. When the opportunity arose to learn juggling at a summer camp, I passed up my afternoon naps just to try. After chasing countless dropped golf balls more miles than I would like to admit, I finally mastered the skill of juggling three golf bells. And my respect for the professional juggler tripled.

My juggling resembled my pastoral prowess. I was able to handle a reasonably limited set of responsibilities without great difficulty, but toss in a fourth or fifth factor, and casualties came raining down like dropped bowling pins. To confound things, I shifted pastoral roles from leading youth in a large metropolitan Church to pastoring a small church in an agricultural market town. It was then that I decided more than ever that pastors must be jugglers.

Rurbia

After moving to Dixon, California, a town of about 5,500 residents whose major claims to fame rest in tomatoes and a now-defunct radio range, I discovered a new word: rurban. Dixon, I learned, is a rurban community. It definitely was not the quaint little backwater rural village I expected, and its geographical and political independence kept it from qualifying as a suburb. Rurban communities like Dixon lie somewhere on the nebulous rural-urban fringe.

Rurban towns are populated increasingly by urban refugees seeking a small-town atmosphere close to the advantages of the city. They are a relatively new phenomenon, brought about by dissatisfaction with both city horrors and suburban blandness, combined with the convenience of major transportation corridors for commuters. Change is endemic in rurbia as an influx of outsiders continues. Neighborhoods change, businesses change, the population sign keeps changing, and the churches change. Natives try to comprehend the disaster while hordes of newcomers spoil their quiet, settled ways.

Into the changing rurban scene in Dixon stepped one juggler/pastor—a newcomer—and the odyssey to understanding began. What I have learned about rurban ministry, especially about juggling natives and newcomers, might be helpful to any person pastoring, or even considering pastoring, anywhere near the rural-urban fringe. What follows comes from my frantic research, my limited experience, and my dropped golf balls.

The Natives Are Friendly

Let's begin with the natives; after all, the town did. These are the people who lived in this place when it existed as a rural village. To them, it still is, only overgrown. When I arrived in Dixon their driving appalled me. Turn signals were never used. "Don't need 'em." I soon learned to anticipate a right-hand turn when the driver in front crossed the center line just prior to an intersection. Another thing that irked me was their tendency to stop in the road and talk from car to car. Conversation is important, and the other drivers can just wait a minute.

I spent two years on the staff of a church in Los Angeles, and only once did I meet a parishioner outside the church. Here, I can't even drive into town on an errand without waving like a politician and chatting with everyone in the parking lot. When I first arrived, I walked into the bank and the manager I had not yet met greeted me by name. My misaddressed mail even ended up at my correct address. The natives are certainly friendly.

Then I went to the church and settled into my office. To me, an office is a refuge, a place to work. The door may be open for the sake of friendliness, but one knocks before entering. Not so! The pastor's in Dixon was first of all the customary way to get to the secretary's office; second, it was a great place to gather and gossip. In the middle of serious study, during marriage counseling, or while I was on the phone, I learned to expect the door to be flung open with a cheery, "Don't want to disturb you, but I just wanted to slip into the office. And by the way, did you know that Arlene is going to Kansas this summer …?"

I had to re-think my time expectations. A major asset for a successful rurban pastor lies in his ability to relate personally with others. The natives demand it. Personal contact, genuine friendliness, and time to just chat rate high. Tile pastor cut from an urbanefficiency mold experiences problems if he does not take great pains to adapt. The busy ones with a full calendar will put off the person who drops by to chat only to find the minister buried in books behind a closed office door. The task-oriented rather than people-oriented pastor will be misunderstood and will feel frustrated. Conversations and interruptions eat up his time. His day has no pace. Until I realized that rurban ministry demands different ministry expectations, I felt like a digital quartz watch among cuckoo clocks.

The town natives feel besieged by the changes in their community. They want their church, at least, to reflect some of the old values which they cherish. I agree. This rurban pastor is learning that rurban ministry is close ministry. People must be allowed to interrupt my day. The other day I found myself stopping in the middle of the road to talk with a friend. The other cars could wait.

Stalking the Mobile Newcomer

Rurban towns are brimming with another variety of citizen—the newcomer. These urban refugees flock to the quality of life they seek in semi-rural America. They lend the town its rurban rather than rural flavor. More urban than rural, more accustomed to change, more uprooted from family ties, and more contemporary in outlook, these people present a contrast to the natives. And yet they seek at least some of the same values.

After I had lived in Dixon a short time, a new housing tract began filling with rurban pilgrims. A family visited the church and showed some interest. I resolved to visit them soon to acquaint them with our ministry. However, the resolve was washed away in sermon preparation, counseling, funerals, and chats in my office-thoroughfare, and soon a few weeks had passed.

On one of those rare Saturday afternoons when my sermon was put to bed early, I decided to call on their new home. They were friendly, but it was obvious that I had missed an opportunity. The wife summed it up with the statement, "We had considered getting started at your church, but Bob joined a slow-pitch team, I am volunteering at the library, and we are gone skiing most week-ends."

I found that Dixon had a steady influx of new people who created great opportunities for evangelism, but the opportunity with each family was brief. Very easily they settled into new patterns, new routines, and a mammoth activity schedule. For some reason they moved to Dixon for other purposes than joining my church. They hardly knocked down the narthex doors seeking admission. If we were to expect newcomers to find their way into our church, we would have to court them.

Our church has existed since day one in Dixon. All the old timers knew who we were and when we met for worship. Because of this, the only sign was a twelve-year-old temporary sign partially hidden behind an overgrown shrub. It looked like we were daring the newcomers to deduce who we were. "If you can figure out what church this is and when we meet, you might possibly be welcome." We remedied that with a new sign in a prominent place; but before that sign went up, some people had to be convinced that not everybody already knew all about us.

We began to cater to the newcomers. Lesson number two for us rurban pastor: Newcomers provide great opportunities for healthy growth, but they must be actively courted soon after their arrival. Rurban ministry proves a constantly challenging ministry.

Us Versus Them

Newcomers do find their way into the churches. Some are invited by alert neighbors and co-workers, some are regular church-goers who take the time to find a new church home, and others are people ready to take some new steps with their new living situation. Church growth people tell us that persons who have recently moved are primed for conversion. Some members of our church worked to harvest the ripe fruit, and before long we found the church growing.

Then a funny thing happened. At the end of a budget year we found ourselves with a $10,000 surplus. Not in anyone's recent memory had that happened at this church. At the congregational meeting a motion carried to give part of it to relief and missions work—but not without some debate. And after the checks were written, no small controversy arose within the congregation. Some persons, mainly Dixon natives, felt the money should have been used solely for local concerns. It was largely the less parochial newcomers who voted through the measure originally. The natives' unspoken assumption was "The money was raised by us, but it was spent by them." The "us versus them" disease runs rampant in rurbia.

When newcomers first start arriving in rural communities, they are usually warmly accepted by the natives, who are delighted that rural depopulation is being reversed. Their fears of a dying town are put to rest. However, as more and more newcomers flood into the community, the natives become uneasy. It appears that the town is not just getting bigger, it is becoming different. For the native, slightly bigger is healthy, but different is anathema. In the churches, which are intensely personal institutions with great emotion invested, this phenomenon spells trouble.

I am fortunate that in my congregation the winds of change have blown fair. The natives and new-comers have, for the most part, treated one another with friendship, charity, and respect; but it has proven wise to facilitate dialogue between the two parties. On one occasion I stirred up a hornets' nest with a sermon about funerals. I noticed a great many of the funerals I performed also involved fraternal organizations. After sharing one service with men dressed as Indians and participating in another service where my previous week's sermon on salvation by grace was undone, I stated my personal preference for Christian services separate from fraternal rites. This newcomer pastor had failed to understand how deeply these organizations were embedded in the heart of the rural natives. I greatly upset them. It was only after a session explaining my sermon and clearing the air the next Sunday that we could again work as friends. It became a near miss rather than a real conflict because we talked it out together.

Rurban ministry is a changing ministry. Lesson number three: Avert "us versus them" conflicts by resolving them openly before they divide people. Conflicts easily happen in a church composed of diverse natives and newcomers, but Christians of good will can resolve the problems when they meet face to face and heart to heart.

The Great Pew Stink

And then we moved the choir pews. The church originally was designed for the choir to be seated behind the pulpit, somewhat shielded by a low curtain. However, a last-minute design change positioned them on the side where their sound is largely lost. The thought has circulated for years that they really should be on the platform behind the pulpit. So, to see how it would sound, we moved the choir pews onto the chancel for a trial period. I may never hear the end of that one. One elderly lady solemnly informed me that she simply could not come back to worship until we moved the choir back to the side. She was genuinely and deeply distressed. Another accused us of worshiping the choir. The next Sunday the choir quietly reassembled on the side, where it sings today.

Such a controversy can arise in any church, but the rurban church is particularly susceptible because of the rampant changes taking place. As growth occurs, as new leaders arrive on the scene, as the balance shifts from natives to newcomers, the congregation becomes a time bomb waiting to explode. Therefore, caution is due at tins point; rurban ministry most often is a costly ministry for the pastor. In a time of church change, people often react against the pastor. From ancient times, when the messenger who brought word of military defeat was put to death, the leader of changing organizations has borne the brunt of criticism, ill will, and hostility.

I saw it happen. Fresh from seminary and full of promise, Brad assumed the pastorate of a small, rurban church. Unknown to him, the church was dominated by a single extended family whose patriarch controlled its affairs. Brad was a sensitive and gifted pastor who excelled at his task. He began a Bible study which attracted many new persons to the church, and he fulfilled his pastoral role in a way no one could fault.

No one, that is, except the congregational kingpin. He distrusted the growing batch of newcomers swelling the church roll and nervously eyed his lesser splash in a bigger puddle. Within eighteen months it came to a showdown, and Brad felt compelled to resign. When Brad left, a sizable group of the younger members also dropped out and formed a new church. The old church continues, the new church is thriving, and Brad sold shoes for a while before returning to seminary to prepare for an academic career. Brad paid the price of change in that church. It can be a bitter pill to swallow.

I have found it important to keep my perspective. I need a reference group to remind me of my blind spots, and I need the support of fellow pastors to hold me together through the rough spots. The rurban town is generally too small and the communication channels too porous for most rurban pastors to find their support from congregational members. Although a cross-section of folks from the congregation keep me on track in my ministry directions, my support comes from out-of-town friends and fellow pastors. Another possibility is for a rurban pastor to be adopted by the staff of a nearby larger church where he can enjoy the staff interaction and support. We are not superpastors. We bleed when we are hurt. We need one another. Since deep-felt, personal needs are often bulldozed along with the developing rurban landscape, rurban ministry becomes too costly for us to wear the mask of the Lone Ranger.

The Land of Opportunity

All is not bleak in rurbia. In fact, in many ways rurbia is the land of opportunity. In a little over three years in Dixon, I have watched the town grow from 5,500 to 8,000. The church has swelled by a third in that same period of time, even without any great efforts for growth. It is exhilarating to live and work in a modestly growing community. New people new options, new services, and new opportunities appear overnight. This makes rurbia an exciting field of ministry. The sky is the limit.

Because of the unique problems and opportunities of rurban ministry, however, let me venture a few observations on the kinds of attitudes best suited for rurban parish ministry. Since the rurban phenomenon only recently arrived on the coattails of other social factors, rurban specialists have not yet appeared. We are on our own in this field. The person well-versed in urban and suburban ministry, or even the expert on rural parish life will find rurbia a different ball game. I have found that my unique pastoral task is to translate the rurban transition for the church, and to move the church forward into its new and expanded role in the community. Therefore, first I must understand rurban characteristics. I dare not approach rurban ministry with the same set of assumptions I bring from other contexts. I must keep up with the changes taking place in rurbia.

Second, I must be the detergent which makes oil and water mix. The natives and newcomers will not naturally gravitate toward one another. I need to stand between the two groups, drawing them into interaction as sensitively as possible. To some extent, I must personally identify with both groups, seeking to understand their feelings and translating them between groups. I know that eventually the natives will lose their church. It will finally become so different from the rural church it once was that the old church will cease to exist. It is inevitable, but it need not be brutal. The rights of the natives need a champion, even when the natives comprise a small minority. On the other hand, I must also work to keep the newcomers from being shut out by the natives. I am peacemaker, bridge-builder, interpreter, advocate.

I like Dixon. And this is the final consideration for prospective rurban pastors. They must like rurbia. It's not hard. For the same reasons that people are streaming to rurbia, I enjoy my surroundings. I appreciate the home-town atmosphere, the nearby open space, the friendly character of the town, the opportunities to be personally involved in town life, the lack .of urban crime and pollution, and the easy pace of life. Rurban ministry, although never a hideout from the sometimes harsh realities of ministry can afford a large measure of satisfaction. The pastor who escapes the native-newcomer scissors, who even dulls their edges a bit, and who savors the unique opportunities in rurbia will thrive. You might say that rurban ministry is a choice ministry.

I am still learning to juggle better, but I like it more and more. Sometimes I now add a flourish for effect but sometimes I still drop the ball. I am not yet able to handle every ball tossed my way, but I am learning to put as many aloft as possible. I have found that the rurban stage is not the place for hotheads or fumblefingers; irenic spirits and informed practitioners perform best. Rurban ministry appears to be the growing stage of the future. Does anyone care to juggle with me?

- More from James D. Berkley

Pastors

What is Depression?

Enos D. Martin

Different facets of a common struggle

Depression exists in varying forms. The word depression as used in everyday language refers to at least two conditions: a mood and an illness. The depressed mood is that sad, down, blue feeling everyone has experienced. Usually transitory, it does not affect the general state of well-being or level of functioning.

However, depression is also used to describe a grouping of symptoms, the most pronounced of which is the persistent sadness of mood which typically occurs in response to a loss. This depressive mood affects the entire personality. The sufferer is mentally preoccupied with the real or imagined loss, socially withdrawn from family and friends, and spiritually troubled with feelings of alienation from God. The subject may also be physically plagued with decreased appetite, weight loss, and insomnia. A feeling of hopelessness and thoughts about suicide are also common.

Normal Grief Reaction. Glenn Thomas, a pastor, was a dynamic speaker and empathetic counselor who continually reshuffled his church duties for these other interests. When the board requested his resignation, although he initially responded gracefully, over the next few weeks he was troubled with insomnia, loss of appetite, and fatigue. He suffered from headaches and thought he might have a brain tumor. After a physical examination, he was told he had tension headaches. He met with the doctor several more times and finally admitted his distress over the loss of his pastorate. He then decided he would really enjoy a position where he could devote himself full-time to speaking and counseling without the administrative work. After finding such a position, his headaches disappeared and his feeling of well-being returned.

This case illustrates the main characteristics of a normal grief reaction. Thomas was basically healthy psychologically. He suffered a significant loss which triggered a grief reaction. And the depression actually helped him organize his life so that in a few months his depression had been resolved.

Neurotic Depression. John Smith, another minister, sometimes felt that depression was a way of life for him. He was a hardworking perfectionist who became depressed if his work or ability was eclipsed by anyone he thought of as a competitor. He occasionally had trouble falling asleep, or losing his appetite, but experienced no significant weight loss or any inability to function. At times he felt very good and could enjoy his work and family immensely. He sought the help of a psychiatrist after years of going in and out of “low” periods. Through therapy, he became aware of his tendency to interpret his imperfections or failings at work as a reflection on his personal worth. With this understanding, his depressions then became less frequent and less severe.

This case illustrates the characteristic features of a neurotic depression. There were predisposing psychological factors—loss of emotional security during an early childhood hospitalization, and a continuing lack of emotional support because his parents were very unexpressive. This no doubt contributed to his later sensitivity to losses, which frequently were more symbolic than real. Physical symptoms were transient. This type of depression is often a psychological trap which prevents the sufferer from finding new solutions to the problem. This is the opposite of a normal grief reaction in which depression is often the impetus for finding new solutions.

Endogenous Depression. Samuel Trenton, also a pastor, worked long hours to meet the needs of his growing congregation and family. Things were going well, except for an ongoing conflict between two charter members of his congregation. In trying to help resolve the conflict, he was caught in the middle and criticized by both members.

Subsequently, he became depressed. He began to feel his whole ministry was a failure, that he was bad for his congregation and his family. He developed severe insomnia, lost his sex drive, and had no appetite, resulting in a loss of fifteen pounds in little over a month. His favorite hobby of bird watching no longer interested him. He withdrew from friends and found it increasingly difficult to preach and meet people after the service.

Finally, when he collapsed in tears at home following a Sunday service, his wife took him to a local psychiatrist. In the interview with him, the pastor admitted he had frequent thoughts of suicide and had begun to plan how he might do it. He also recalled that years before his mother and an aunt had been hospitalized because they were severely depressed. He was immediately hospitalized and given antidepressant medication. The psychiatrist gave him psychotherapy to help him understand his sensitivity to interpersonal conflict.

The primary predisposing factor in this endogenous depression is the inherited tendency for depression, indicated by the family history of depression. Loss may be present at the onset of the depression, but it is usually not prominent or even immediately obvious. Physical symptoms are severe and persistent in this type of depression. The mood is unremitting; the sufferer loses all interest in life and becomes preoccupied with suicidal thoughts.

- More from Enos D. Martin

Pastors

Influencing Others to Pray

Em Griffin

The influences that led one man to a deeper devotional life.

How does a church leader convince others that developing a consistent prayer life is important? Em Griffin suggests three methods of influence that were important in his life. The material in this article is an adaptation of a chapter from his book on leadership to be published next year by InterVarsity Press.

We met the train at 3 o’clock Sunday afternoon. I went in my official capacity as president of MCF—the University of Michigan chapter of Inter-Varsity. Joyce, our vice-president, was with me. We’d received word that our new IVCF field rep would visit our group that night. We’d been told to pick her up at the Ann Arbor train station and spend time with her until the meeting. To say we were apprehensive is putting too heavy a cast on the situation. But our exec board was used to flying solo. We hadn’t seen a staff person for six months, and we weren’t sure exactly what it was we were supposed to do with “our leader” until seven o’clock. It turned out that our vague unease was well-founded. She came on like gangbusters! As she stepped off the train she announced, “My name is Lynn Wolf. Please call me Lynn because we’re going to be very close. I’m ready to give you the counsel and advice you’ve been needing this past year.” We took her to the student union for coffee. She told us she felt Christians shouldn’t purchase anything on Sunday so she’d pass, but to feel free if we wanted some. As we sat down at the table she leveled me with an intent gaze and asked, “How’s your quiet time?” Lynn meant well, but it was a long four hours.

It would be easy to read these paragraphs and conclude that I see any attempt to influence someone else’s devotional life as misguided, foolish, or wrong. Not so. I’ve told the story of Lynn because it introduces the topic of a leader’s legitimate attempts to persuade others. As I recall my own spiritual journey, I can see the influence others have had on me. Three separate people have had an impact on my quiet time with Christ, each through a different process of persuasion.

Identification

I became a Christian through the influence of a girl named Ruth. She wasn’t the stated leader of our young people’s group. As a matter of fact, I was! But in terms of real influence, Ruth had the clout. She was attractive and vivacious, with a contagious enthusiasm for God. For most of us, high school is a time of cliques—trying to be part of the “in crowd,” avoiding the outsiders. But Ruth moved from group to group with ease. To her, everyone was a neat friend.

I dated Ruth once or twice at the end of my junior year. It was all very casual, just some good times together. But I wanted it to be more. At the beginning of our senior year she suggested we go together on a weekend retreat. “We’ll have lots of time to do some serious talking,” she suggested. My mind was flooded with images of us lying against a Lake Michigan sand dune gazing at the stars, our heads together in deep conversation. “I’m for it,” I said.

Surprise! The serious talking we did was about Jesus Christ. Ruth assumed I was a Christian and wanted to help me draw closer to the Lord. She gave me the Inter-Varsity booklet Quiet Time. As we went through it together, she showed her excitement that God not only allows us to pray to him, but he actually desires it. She encouraged me to block out some time each morning to read the Bible and pray. So I did—just as simple as that. And I became a Christian in the process.

I obviously wasn’t convinced so much by what Ruth said as by who she was. I was attracted to her and wanted to have a relationship that would go beyond the weekend. I hung on to her every word, the result being that I heard a lot about Jesus. Did I believe what I heard? Yes, but that wasn’t the motive for entering the faith. The impetus came from my desire to be close to Ruth.

Now, identification isn’t the most noble of reasons for changing your whole life around. And yet it’s often where the action is. Not just in guy-gal relationships, but among friends of the same sex. Paul reminded the Thessalonians that they became followers of him, and through him, Jesus Christ.

A few things have to happen for identification to produce lasting change. You need a leader/persuader who’s viewed as attractive and desirable. There’s no absolute standard. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. The more winsome the source, the greater the pull of identification. Second, the one to be influenced has to define himself in relationship to the attractive person. Sometimes it’s a whole-hog desire to be just like his hero, the star-struck Little Leaguer modeling his every action on Pete Rose, including the way he combs his hair. Other times it’s a reciprocal role—lover, employee, disciple, daughter-in which the influenced party tries to live up to the other’s expectations. Either way, he has to know what’s wanted. Finally, the attractive source will hold sway only as long as the relationship is important to the admirer.

Note that Ruth didn’t even know how greatly she affected me. It was only weeks later when I told her that she realized the impact she’d had. That’s typical of change that occurs through a process of identification. It appears to happen in an offhand manner.

Identification poses two problems for a leader. The first is that people may have trouble getting past the person to the issue at hand. The man can get in the way of his message. Remember that the other person swallows the point of view whole because it was given by someone he admires. But opinions need to be chewed and digested if they’re going to affect the body. Unless the leader makes a point of encouraging folks to question, probe, and even doubt his opinions, that vital nourishment may be lost.

The second problem is an ethical one. When the leader is irresistibly attractive, persuasion through identification is seductive. Soren Kierkegaard tells the parable of a prince who falls in love with a peasant maiden. First he thinks he will bring her to the castle so he can woo her. Plan B is to go to her humble cottage accompanied by his chariots, soldiers, and horses. But he realizes that neither course would be fair. How could she help but be dazzled by such princely splendor? So he resolves to cast off all royal advantage. He dons the garb of a poor woodsman and proceeds to her home to plead his cause.

Kierkegaard presents this story as an analogy of Christ stripping off his prerogatives as God—coming to earth as a mere mortal so men would not be roped into the kingdom of God without an honest chance to say no. But it is equally appropriate as a warning to the attractive leader. You may be held in such high esteem that your idle musing is instantly accepted as gospel truth. It’s not a power most of us have, but I’ve seen it happen once or twice.

But if you avoid these two problems with identification, it can be useful. “If you love me, keep my commandments,” says our Lord. That’s a pure case of trying to persuade through identification. We’ve seen that it’s a rather simple, straightforward approach to influence. It drew me into the kingdom, so I know it works.

Compliance

I wish I could say I remained constant in my prayer life after becoming a Christian. The first year, I faithfully blocked out fifteen minutes each morning to read Scripture and talk to God. But when I went away to college, I became much more sporadic. I was like the third kind of soil in the parable of the sower. The seed took root, but trouble and persecution choked it out.

Please understand I was still a firm believer. It was just that I was totally bankrupt in the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, and witness. I came face to face with this problem at the end of my sophomore year.

I’ve always had a rather high need to exert influence. I decided I wanted to be president of the Michigan Christian Fellowship. I noticed that the two previous head officers had attended an Inter-Varsity camp in the summer, so I decided that I’d go to the Campus-In-The-Woods, a remote camp on an island a few hours north of Toronto. The camp schedule called for a forty-five-minute quiet time every morning before breakfast. I thought I’d go nuts.

I’m an activist. Given my spiritual state, there were a number of things I’d rather have done than sit on a rock and pray: swim around the island, play volleyball, repair the door on our cabin, read a novel, write my girlfriend, talk with people, canoe—almost anything was preferable to silent meditation. But I was out of luck. There was a strong pietistic emphasis the whole month. The main speaker stressed that God was more interested in who we are than in what we do. While everyone else nodded solemnly, my every nerve fiber shouted, “No!”

It soon became obvious that I wasn’t playing the game. The camp director took me aside and made the following offer:

Em, I notice that you aren’t taking advantage of our scheduled quiet time. I’ll make a deal with you. You want to speak when we go off the island to conduct church services in Bracebridge. If you’ll settle down each morning like everyone else, I’ll let you give the children’s sermon next week and the sermon the following Sunday.

I was hooked. I wanted to speak in those services so badly I could taste it. I dutifully climbed up on a rock and read Scripture for a half hour. I then shut my eyes to pray for the final fifteen minutes. Once or twice I’d hear the director tiptoe past.

Surprisingly, it turned out not to be an empty pharisaical practice. Despite my poor initial attitude, what I read was helpful. I began to study the life of Christ. I was intrigued by his encounters with people, his teachings, his miracles. My prayers became more balanced. Besides a lot of requests, I began to praise God for who he was, and to confess to him who I was. So all in all it worked. The director had what he wanted, and I complied with his desire that I not disrupt others during the quiet time, and that I engage in prayer and Bible study. And I had what I wanted—I spoke in the church services.

What I’ve described is a pure case of compliance. In order to make it work, the leader has to have control over something the group member wants. It can be a teacher with grades to give, an employer with money, or a pastor with the promise of a church office. The desired reward is conditional on proper performance. It’s really a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” proposition.

Each term I ask students in my persuasion course performance to enlist a new donor to give a pint of blood. Ideally, a person could be recruited by an altruistic appeal. “Think of the life that might be saved by your contribution.” As a practical matter, most students resort to compliance. All sorts of incentives are offered: chocolate chip cookies are high on the list, although back rubs, typing services, and cash are not unknown. I once overheard the conclusion of a successful transaction: “So it’s agreed,” a girl in my class said to a guy, “You give a pint of blood this afternoon, and I’ll go out with you tonight.”

It’s the blatant nature of the agreement that makes us squirm. Personally, I don’t have any trouble with compliance as a persuasive technique as long as the behaviors are ethical, both parties openly agree, and there’s a parity of power between them. The last condition does not always hold. As leaders, we often operate from a position of privilege. Any time we make an offer that can’t be refused, we’ve violated a person’s freedom of choice. But barring this abuse, compliance seems ethically neutral.

There are problems with compliance, however, which trouble me. The first is that it may touch the body but not the soul. There were a number of clays when I just pretended to read the Word. Once I even put my Bible cover around a paperback novel. I gave outward compliance to the director’s will, but there was no inward conviction that this was really the way to go. Early missionaries to Asia found this compliance with the phenomenon of “rice Christians.”

Surveillance is another problem. Persuasion lasts only as long as the guy with the goodies is monitoring our performance. “I have to watch him like a hawk” is the lament of many supervisors who operate by compliance.

I have a final hang-up with using compliance as a habitual style of influence: it can turn us into hypocrites. There’s a place for merit badges, brownie points, and cash bonuses; but self-fulfilling prophecy holds sway. If you’re convinced I’ll only be moved by continually dangling baubles in front of my face, I’ll be glad to oblige. I’ll toss intrinsic motivation out the window. For the long haul, there has to be a better way. What we need is a way to have influence that will last—even after we’re long gone. We want internal commitment that’s not dependent on external props. There is such an animal, and it’s called internalization.

Internalization

There’s a twenty-year gap between my college experience with Inter-Varsity and the time when it would significantly touch my life again. In many ways I was the same person: an activist who continued to find it easier to talk to someone about Jesus than to get down on my knees and pray to him. There were some significant differences, however. I no longer wanted to get to the top of the organizational mountain just because it was there. People had become more important than programs or power. Close friendships had first call on my time.

I also had what I considered a second conversion experience, a new insight into the kingdom of God. I became convinced that our Lord had a special identification with the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, the hurting. It was this conviction that led me to attend Washington ’80, an Urbana-type convention sponsored by Inter-Varsity. Instead of dealing with worldwide evangelism, the conference focused on the concerns of the city.

I came to Washington ’80 with my own agenda. I knew God wanted me to get involved with the plight of the poor, but I was struggling to figure out how to serve without falling into the trap of paternalism. I had an even greater need. I was pretty well strung out in terms of energy. The demands of teaching, family life, friendships, writing, competitive sports, church responsibilities, and speaking had brought me to the point of emotional burn out. I wanted some relief. It was with these needs very much up front in my life that I was influenced by Bill Leslie, pastor of LaSalle Street Church in Chicago. It’s a church whose programs include evangelism, discipling, tutoring, an emergency food pantry, care for the shut-in elderly, job training and search, legal aid services, and aid for unwed mothers. All of these services are offered not only in the name of Jesus Christ, but in a spirit of love that has brought many to the Savior. This is why Inter-Varsity brought Bill to Washington to lead a seminar.

I sat in on Bill’s session; it was good. Afterwards I sought Bill out and said I’d like to get together and talk. We met twice within the next day and a half. The last morning, we had breakfast together. We sat at the table so long after eating that the waitress offered us a luncheon menu. Most of the time I talked and Bill listened.

I shared the changes that God had begun to work in me. Although I started with an account of my journey toward helping the poor and hurting, Bill’s sensitive ear soon picked up the fact that I was hurting too. The continual hectic pace of life I had adopted was beginning to take its toll. Our second time together, Bill shared his own tendency to over-schedule, overextend, and to be overwhelmed by the pressures on him. He suggested that the only way he could survive was through some periodic times of concentrated prayer and meditation. He stressed also that social action unaccompanied by an inner worship would quickly degenerate to an empty do-goodism. Times of contemplation were necessary as a wellspring of power.

I was impressed. But I figured this was a special gift he had. Different strokes for different folks, you know, and that was one ability that was far from me. We agreed we had the start of what could be a budding friendship, and vowed to get together along with our wives when we returned to Chicago.

The exhausting work pattern didn’t let up. If anything, I was dashing from one thing to another more than ever. It was a month before the Leslies and the Griffins could mesh their schedules. During that time I thought a lot about what Bill had said. I picked up a book on the spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, and fasting. I was intrigued by the spiritual depths promised to the believer who pursued these means of grace. I was ready to give it a try.

When we finally met together as couples, I pumped Bill for advice on the specific route to go. He recommended blocking out a day or so for a personal retreat. While it would be possible to do this on my own, perhaps I’d find it helpful to have some direction. I agreed, not knowing exactly where he was going. Then he laid out a specific proposal.

He knew of a conference center where you could stay for various lengths of time. In fact, it was less than ten miles from my home. I could make a thirty-six-hour silent retreat without the interruptions of phones, upcoming appointments, or classroom responsibilities. He suggested the name of a person there whose vocation was spiritual direction. Bill didn’t push it; he just gave me the center’s phone number and suggested I consider the possibility. So that’s what I did, and ended up taking his advice—length of time, place, spiritual director, and all.

It turned out to be a turning point in my prayer life. For the first time I was able to meditate on a verse of Scripture and listen for that still, small voice of God. Instead of flooding heaven with a bunch of junk mail, I learned to concentrate on a single attribute of God, and to taste that for a long period of time. I came away edified and refreshed. I will do it again without Bill’s urging. More important, I’ve incorporated some of the meditation techniques into my daily quiet time. That’s internalization.

The first thing to notice about the process is that it’s made me a true believer. This is different from compliance, in which internal conviction doesn’t match outward behavior; or from identification, in which the belief is more in the person than the idea. Nor is continued belief or action dependent on Bill Leslie hovering over my shoulder to check up on me. Obviously, this is the kind of influence a leader would like to have.

In the pecking order of persuasion, compliance is at the bottom. It borders on the raw use of power and takes continual use of resources and energy to maintain. Identification is a good step up, but is dependent on the desire for a relationship. Internalization is the home run of influence. It’s the ultimate aim of a sensitive Christian leader. The person really believes.

How does it work? In the first place, it takes a credible leader. He has to have some recognizable expertise so his words will have the ring of truth. That was Bill. He’d won my respect by the quality of his deeds. His actions spoke louder than words.

The next requirement is that the person being changed has to have some specific needs or desires that are up front in his life. In my case, I desperately wanted to be effective over the long haul in serving the poor. Equally important, I wanted to get off my high-speed treadmill. Bill’s suggestion tapped into these felt needs. It wasn’t just a happy coincidence. By being a good listener, he was able to spot these desires. He then tied his advice into my overriding values. Even though his solution was outside my previous experience, I was hooked.

Unless you see yourself as a mere coordinator, at least part of your job as a leader involves persuasion. You have to select a strategy of influence. It is necessary for you to put yourself into the shoes of the persons you’re trying to move. From their perspective, compliance doesn’t look too great. Sure, they get something they want, but their actions are in no way linked to their conviction. They could easily turn bitter or cynical when they e themselves going through motions they don’t believe in. It’s not wrong per se to try to induce compliance. It may be the only option open to the leader who hasn’t had the opportunity to develop friendship with the group. But it would be wrong to stay there. Part of loving people is appealing to the highest, most noble thing that turns them on.

Can action taken through compliance turn into identification or internalization? Sure. This happened to me when I took a seminar in Integration of Faith and Learning at my college. The school decreed that it was a necessary part of getting tenure. So there I was—sheer compliance.

The leader of the seminar was an exciting scholar. I was attracted by his quest for learning, his encyclopedic knowledge, his ability to ask a penetrating question. I wanted to please him, to look good in his eyes. Compliance gave way to identification.

My topic was ethics of communication. As I got into the subject matter, I forged an ethical position that for me had the ring of truth. I felt a growing urge to translate this ivory-tower theory into a moral stance that would grab the man on the street. It became an obsession. The last two weeks of the seminar I’d sit down to eat with a book in my lap. I’d wake up in the morning having dreamed about the stuff. Identification with the instructor was no longer the issue. I wanted to do it because I thought it was worth doing.

The conversion of my motivation to a higher plane happened because I had some freedom within the requirements of the seminar. Suppose the leader had put together a lockstep assignment that left no room for deviation. I would have done what was demanded in order to get tenure—but moaned and groaned every step of the way. I think my work would have been rather slipshod. But he gave me some room, and it made all the difference.

It doesn’t take a son of a son of a prophet to conclude that effective ethical influence is best served by giving the group plenty of space. Freedom of choice—that’s what Bill Leslie really gave me. It led to the most lasting results. It’s okay to try to persuade. But never short-circuit the other’s freedom to respond. Responsible means able-to-respond.

Too bad Lynn Wolf didn’t realize that when she stepped off the train.

- More from Em Griffin

Pastors

Gifts and Growth

Daniel W. Pawley

A case study

In Wayne Pohl’s first church, a mission congregation in suburban Grand Rapids, Michigan, he decided every one of his leaders had to be an evangelist. After all, how could the congregation grow if the church board didn’t set the pace? Although most of the men participated willingly, one good administrator threw up every Thursday night before making his evangelism calls. “You’ll get over it,” Pohl assured him. “You just have to get out and do it.” But he didn’t get over it, and a gifted leader was lost.

Now after years in the pastorate, Pohl easily could author a bestseller on 1001 Church Programs That Sounded Good But Failed. He was, for instance, the sole creator and developer of “My Brother’s Keeper,” a program to get active church members to shepherd inactive ones. Many of the active members, however, were reticent, and to grab, encourage, and build up another brother or sister seemed an insurmountable task. After the program fell flat, Pohl seriously questioned the dedication and even the Christianity of his parishioners.

That was in 1974. It was his first year at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Trenton, Michigan. This parish, with its stately suburban structure just beyond the steaming, clamoring factories of down-river Detroit, had a highly inactive membership at the time. With little outreach and negligible growth, there was just enough religious status quo to float the church and its $100,000 budget on a sea of self-satisfied content.

“People hesitated to commit themselves to church involvement for many reasons,” Pohl says, “most of which boiled down to one word—fear. Fear of making a mistake, fear of not pleasing the staff, fear of failing the Lord, fear of being forced to do something they did not feel comfortable doing. Yet here I was insisting from the outset that I could only feel comfortable in a total-commitment ministry.”

Would the congregation spark up or would Wayne Pohl lower his expectations? Would pastor and parish end up deadlocked, or would they search together for a viable path to progress?

Today, Pohl is still the pastor of St. Paul, which has become a strong and growing ministry. Growth did not come about by gimmickry or coercion. It came because of a serious, methodical search for the gifts the Holy Spirit had already placed in the congregation, and a commitment to put them to use.

Wayne Pohl had read enough of McGavran, Schaller, Schuller, and Wagner to know that a thorough evaluation of attitudes, programs, and finances was the first step to revitalizing St. Paul. The evaluation had to come from outside. “These people loved their church,” he adds. “How could they objectively look at the warts on it?”

They asked the Fuller Evangelistic Association in Pasadena, California, to do a thorough diagnostic analysis. The Fuller people probed St. Paul’s purpose, philosophy of ministry, growth history, and local community by first sending questionnaires to the staff, and next by talking personally with staff members and laypersons during an on-site visit. In the final published analysis—besides some puffy adjectives about what a great crew the staff members were (“pro-active leader,” “executive style,” “unusual poise”) some interesting conclusions emerged.

It was determined that approximately 150,000 people live within a six-mile radius of the church. Based on the Glenmary Research Center (Washington, D.C.) report that 42.3 percent of Michigan residents are unchurched, Fuller projected that 63,450 people within these six miles were the potential mission field. Most of the surrounding community had basically similar professions and lifestyles. So the church couldn’t help but grow numerically if it really wanted to, said the report.

Although the researchers pointed out that their intent was not to prescribe a detailed “how-to” about the future planning, they did offer recommendations for future action.

The recommendations surfaced during a dinner meeting one August night at a local restaurant. During the meeting, Pohl was called away on an emergency. By the time he returned, the meeting had broken up. Some members were headed for their cars, and some were still standing around in clusters.

“How did it go?” Pohl asked, stepping from his car.

“Pastor, you know what this church needs?” someone replied. “We need a minister of spiritual gifts.”

“That’s interesting,” Pohl answered. “What is one?”

A Powerful Seed

With encouragement from the Fuller people, the staff and committed laity made a key decision: the discovery and implementation of each church member’s spiritual gifts would be central to making St. Paul a growing, committed, healthy body of believers. Fuller had listed the church’s highest priorities: worship, Christian education, discipling, fellowship, and evangelism. Discovering and using spiritual gifts would enable each member, according to his or her strengths, to enter these priority areas of ministry. To help that happen, a minister of spiritual gifts was needed.

After a search, Art Beyer, a former parochial schoolteacher with a master’s degree in educational administration, was chosen. He began to brainstorm with the staff on how they might go about their task. “We sat down, discussed what we wanted to accomplish in helping people discover and implement their gifts, and agreed to establish the program on three basic premises,” says Art.

We should have an area of service for every gift.
Since we are a conservative Lutheran body, we will eliminate the discovery and exercise of the gifts of tongues and miracles-gifts that would be divisive in our church.
We need a list of all service areas so people will know they have a place to serve as soon as they discover their gifts.

These premises led to an adaptation of the 125-question form from Fuller that pinpoints the specific strengths and skills of individuals. The church’s version is entitled the Spiritual Gifts Analysis, with only 85 questions.

The questions are written in the form of statements, with four responses to designate how proficient the person is at performing the function described. For example, five questions scattered throughout the form determine the gift of administration:

1. Easily delegate important responsibilities to other people. Much_Some_ Little_ None_

18. Have the ability to organize ideas, things, time, and people for effective work. Much_Some_ Little_ None_

35. Able to work with facts and figures with positive results and personal satisfaction. Much_Some_ Little_ None_

52. Plan and administer programs that will be of benefit to my fellow Christians. Much_Some_ Little_ None_

69. Able to set goals and objectives, and to make plans to reach and accomplish them. Much_Some_ Little_ None_

Each answer has a point value: 3, 2, 1, or O. If the answers to each of the five questions above were “Much,” it would give the respondent a total of 15 (5 x 3), the highest possible score for any gift. But scores that are slightly lower still could mean that the person is strong in a particular gift. .

The analysis features questions uniquely suited to its needs. For instance, questions that zero in on the gift of teaching have a bent toward teaching Lutheran doctrine.

“It’s essential for churches to personalize their own spiritual gifts program,” says Pohl. Thus, St. Paul’s analysis is adapted to bring out fifteen gifts, each of which can be used readily in a service area. These gifts are: administration, craftsmanship (manual and artistic), evangelism, exhortation-wisdom, giving, helps, hospitality, intercession, knowledge, leadership, mercy, music (vocal and instrumental), serving, teaching, and writing. (The basic Scripture texts for the gifts are Romans 12, I Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4; other scattered references provide the rationale for such gifts as writing, music, and craftsmanship.)

Reactions

Not long ago a couple moved to Trenton from Pennsylvania. They had been member of a Lutheran church for a long time, but they felt burned out and wanted a few years of sabbatical from church involvement. Church membership at St. Paul sounded good to them but they wanted no more involvement than worship on Sunday and the weekly tithe. Pohl talked to them about gifts and about body life. On the basis of Scripture he told them, “If you become a part of this body and do not function, then the body will not work.” The couple had trouble accepting this, so they transferred their membership to another church.

Unusually bold? Yes, but as Pohl points out, “Ninety percent of our parishes across the country require less commitment than the local Kiwanis club.”

Once a commitment to service is understood a membership applicant’s next meeting is with Art Beyer. Art, big-boned, soft-spoken, and prayerminded, administers the Spiritual Gifts Analysis. Although there is a minimum of intimidation, the twelve-page test unnerves some.

Chris took the test with apprehension. “It overwhelmed me a little. I was already in my profession, school teaching, and now some questionnaire was going to tell me what I was good at.”

After her initial hesitation, Chris felt good about taking the analysis. She felt it offered a challenge to discover how she would fit into this particular church.

A young man, Paul, had similar feelings. “I was confused. When you’ve never really been active in a church, all the talk about spiritual gifts can be very threatening.” This is where Art Beyer’s nonthreatening manner becomes important. Says Paul, “As soon as Art explained the analysis in such an easygoing way, I began to lose my reluctance. And once I got into the questionnaire, I realized It was a tool to help me grow, and lost all hesitation.”

Ideally, the analysis test should intimidate no one. Pohl points out, “There’s a certain looseness in taking the test. We don’t say, ‘All right, you took our analysis and tested out with the gifts of helps and serving; you’re a helps-and-serving person from now till the day you die.’ The analysis is not the second inspired writing on the face of the earth.” he adds with a smile.

The purpose of the analysis is to help people serve. “God wants his people to serve,” Pohl says. “Although the analysis encourages them to be consistent with this demand, it does not insist on our way of making them serve.”

Another young woman, Liz, knew she had some kind of talent for making people feel she really cared about them. In her work at a local hospital she would hear comments such as “I feel you’re the kind of person I can really talk to.” When she took the analysis, she scored a fourteen in the gift of mercy and a thirteen in the gift of intercession. “When I tested out with these gifts,” she says, “I got excited; I felt special. It seemed to me I really had something our church needed.”

Experimenting

A gift discovered often will be a total surprise to a person taking the analysis. Cheryl, for instance, who admits she cannot carry a tune, appeared to have the gift of music. She told Art Beyer that the test had made a mistake, so she took the test again, and it came out exactly the same. But it wasn’t until six months later that she took the results seriously.

In December that year, during the gaiety of the holiday season, Cheryl attended a candlelight service for Advent. As the diffused light from the candles glowed, she listened to a group of people play handbells. After the service she approached the handbell choir director, who guaranteed she could teach anyone, even nonmusical types, to play the bells. So Cheryl joined the group, despite an evident lack of formal musical skills, learned to play the handbells and has enjoyed it for two years now. “It’s something that gives me the deepest inner joy,” she emphasizes. “I needed a creative way to express my love for Christ.”

Cheryl’s experience brings out an interesting dimension of the gift program’s success: While the analysis discovers what people are good at, it also discovers what they want to be good at. Cheryl wanted musical involvement; fortunately she found a place to serve, and the body will be enriched because of her involvement.

Of course, before someone like Cheryl can find a place to serve, the minister of spiritual gifts needs to make the person aware of the areas of service for his or her particular gifts. At St. Paul, Art Beyer uses a “Development and Use Form,” which lists more than 200 places to serve.

• After the Spiritual Gifts Analysis has been taken, the person checks each area of service he or she wants to be involved in.

• Art catalogs the responses, then contacts the administrators of each board, committee, and gift area who can use the person’s newly discovered gift.

• It is up to each administrator to contact the gifted person and invite him or her to experiment in some area of involvement that directly makes use of the discovered gift.

Diana was on the church picnic committee last year. Instead of organizing a group of volunteers by their spiritual gifts, she unthinkingly turned in a bulletin announcement: “Volunteers Wanted for Planning Church Picnic.” Beyer caught this before the bulletin went into print, phoned Diana, and reminded, “That’s not the way we run our church, remember?” He gave her a list of people with gifts of helps, hospitality, and serving, and she administered a successful picnic with the volunteers from those areas.

Why are people more prone to involvement once they know their gifts? “Our people feel they have ownership here,” says Pohl. “Furthermore, they understand their gifts are of equal importance. The Bible doesn’t say one gift is more important than another. The Sunday school superintendent’s gift, for instance, is no more important than the person’s whose function it is to print merit certificates. This keeps all the people working together; they feel a sense of mutual contribution and ownership.”

Don, a man whose test pointed to a gift of craftsmanship, was called directly by Art Beyer to use his gifts with the board of trustees. A need for coat racks had been raised, and Don was consulted about what direction to take. His suggestions were well received. So with hammers, drills, and a lot of wood, Don and the trustees built the coat racks, stained them, and installed them. They spent many hours on the project. “Afterward,” Don says, “the trustees received a note from those who had voiced the need for coat racks. The people were thankful and impressed. It was a very satisfying experience.”

The Verities in Action

Don’s statement about receiving personal affirmation from others in the church emphasizes just one of the verities about the body working together to encourage and build up one another. With the gifts program at St. Paul, these verities take on fresh meaning as they are set in a challenging new context.

•The necessity of each church member’s involvement in a share group is stressed. St. Paul’s groups, each with approximately a dozen members, usually meet once or twice a month, sometimes in the same house, sometimes rotating houses. It is the responsibility of one of the pastors to see that new members are channeled into these groups.

One group leader mentioned that the share-group experience will sometimes make or break a person in terms of commitment. It is a time for disclosing the feelings, crises, and disappointments one experiences in his or her larger involvement in the church. This particular leader, whose gift is administration, tells about a time when her frustration level over Sunday school was suddenly very high. “I felt I had a remarkably small proportion of Sunday school teachers who were really committed,” she says. “Trying to get them to attend our monthly teachers’ meeting frustrated me terribly. Just when my frustrations reached a climax, though, I bounced them off my share group. It really helped to have good listeners and pertinent suggestions.”

•The need for personal affirmation from the pastor, while not heavily stressed, is seen as important. One young man, who had recently put his leadership gift to work on one of the church boards, said, “At the beginning, I always was kept from getting too discouraged by Pastor Pohl’s or others’ personal comments on how I was doing. They wouldn’t just say, ‘Hey, you’re doing a great job; keep up the good work,’ and walk away. They were more concerned about how I thought I was doing. They spent time finding out what my feelings were about my board activities.”

In making conscious efforts to affirm people as they exercise their gifts, Pohl will sometimes telephone a member or write a short note. “If someone has sung a meaningful song in the Sunday worship service,” he says, “I’ll pick up the phone on Sunday afternoon to thank the person and tell how the song really moved me.” Last summer the church had two devoted members, each with administrative gifts, who worked under difficult circumstances to put together the Vacation Bible School program for 500 kids. “In situations like that, Pohl adds, “I may take time to write a short note saying, ‘I’m convinced God used you.'”

•Even more important than pastoral affirmation is affirmation that comes directly from the body. In fact, if church members regularly affirm each other’s gifts, personal strokes from the pastor are less needed. “If a Sunday school teacher gets a note from a third grader saying, ‘You helped me to love Jesus, that is far more valuable to the teacher than if I give a framed certificate,” Pohl points out.

Besides the gifts of mercy and intercession, Liz also had the gift of teaching, and she experimented with that gift during Vacation Bible School. There were the normal accompanying doubts at first, but she assumed she could be a teacher because she loved children. The VBS administrator felt that new workers such as Liz should first help the children with handcrafts, a less demanding activity. Finally, she agreed to let Liz do one of the lessons.

Kneeling down in the center of a circle, Liz began to share the story of Paul on the road to Damascus. “I kept thinking the story was going over their heads,” Liz confesses. “How could these kids possibly grasp Paul’s change from a man who hurt God’s people to a man who loved them?”

But through her gift, the kids did grasp it, and they began to ask questions. “I felt this was God working through me,” Liz adds, “and the confirmation I had from the children and other teachers built me up. The gift seemed real.”

How Growth Happens

In any church, the fact that Pastor X phones Volunteer Y to perform Function Z means practically nothing to the volunteer. But when Pastor X phones Volunteer Y because this volunteer has the necessary skills and desire—and knows he or she does—something special happens.

As one trustee craftsman points out, “When you’re gifted to do something, and you, the pastors, and the congregation know it, then a phone call for your services just seems natural”

So the phone calls come. The people get involved. “And the church works better than before,” say the staff and members of St. Paul. Their service can be measured in hours per week, not hours per year. The people interviewed for this article estimate they put in anywhere between ten and twenty hours per week into the programs at St. Paul. This is not exceptional for this church.

It necessarily follows that since the established members are mostly involved in body life functions within the church, their involvement in “the world” is curtailed greatly. Does this mean St. Paul’s evangelism commitment is weak?

“The best means for reaching the unchurched,” answers Pohl, “are the contacts of the new members in the congregation. I could not give you the name of one close friend of mine who is not a committed Christian. But the new Christian has friends, relatives, and neighbors who are not Christians. If there’s a change in that person’s life, that is the best witness God can give.

“It’s the old satisfied-customer phenomenon. I bought a Ford station wagon because I had a neighbor who said, ‘I bought a Ford wagon four years ago; it has 85,000 miles on it, and it purrs like a kitten.’

“That’s how people usually enter the fellowship at St. Paul. They talk to a satisfied customer—someone who says, ‘I bought into this church two years ago; I’m serving and loving it.'”

One parishioner expressed it this way: “I’ve found that being involved in the spiritual gifts program provides a good witnessing opportunity in itself. Some of my friends have actually used me as an example of commitment to the Lord. My best friend was a member of a small church, and he barely dragged himself there once a month. He visited St. Paul with me a few times before I became involved with my gifts, but that was all it was—a visit.

“After taking the gifts analysis, though, I became so involved that my time to spend with my friend was cut down considerably. Ironically, that was when he began to attend St. Paul of his own accord. One day he told me, ‘Watching the people of your church grow has shown me how dead I am spiritually.'”

The friend eventually joined St. Paul, discovered through the analysis his gift of serving, and became an officer of the church. For Wayne Pohl and St. Paul Lutheran Church, it was another sign that their approach to using parishioners’ gifts wisely and systematically has been blessed by God.

- More from Daniel W. Pawley

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Who have you known who has obviously walked close to God?

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Stresses That May Trigger Depression

Idealized self-image versus actual self-image.

Patterns to Prevent Depression

Pastors Can Cope With Depression

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Advantages of Aging

Perils of Aging

Responsibilities of Aging

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The World’s View

The World’s Pace

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Rurbia

The Natives Are Friendly

Stalking the Mobile Newcomer

Us Versus Them

The Great Pew Stink

The Land of Opportunity

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Identification

Compliance

Internalization

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A Powerful Seed

Reactions

Experimenting

The Verities in Action

How Growth Happens

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