Pastors

COMMENTS FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Paul D. Robbins

During the forties and early fifties I was raised in a minister’s home. For several days I’ve pondered over the differences and similarities between our home and the homes of Peru, Indiana. Frankly, I think we were like most Christian families of our community: it would have made little difference to our internal workings or outward relationships if my father had been an auto mechanic instead of a pastor. Dad earned a living, Mom ran the house, and we children went to school, did our household chores, and helped clean the church on Saturdays. Life moved at a steady pace and the church rolled on. My parents’ lives were wrapped up in serving God and providing advantages for us that they themselves had been denied.

This is why Daniel Yankelovich’s book New Rules: Searching for Self-fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down caught my eye. After pointing out that 70 percent of all 1950 households consisted of a working father, a stay-at-home mother, and one or more children, he startled me by saying that this norm has collapsed in a single generation. The “typical American family” now accounts for only 15 percent of all households. There are fewer typical families than there are households consisting of a single person-the fastest-growing category of households reported by the U.S. Census. “In thirty years we have moved from a society dominated by the husband-provider nuclear family to a variegated society with many types of households, none of which predominates.”

What kind of people have we become? “All national surveys show a preoccupation with self,” says Yankelovich. “Seven out of ten Americans (72 percent) spend a great deal of time thinking about themselves and their inner lives-this in a nation once notorious for its impatience with inwardness. We have become a society of individual seekers of self-fulfillment who want to modify life in every one of its 1950’s dimensions-family, career, leisure-the meaning of success, relationships with other people, and relations with oneself.”

What is the fallout created by this massive sociological change? Yankelovich says self-fulfillment seekers deploy defective strategies to achieve their ambitious goals. A typical self-fulfillment strategy presupposes that economic well-being is a citizen’s automatic right guaranteed by the government. But, as the daily headlines remind us, a strategy built on the presumption of an everexpanding affluence is bound to run into trouble even in a country as abundant as ours.

More important, Yankelovich believes most people unwittingly bring a set of flawed psychological premises to their search for self-fulfillment, in particular, the premise that the self is a hierarchy of inner needs, and self-fulfillment an inner journey to discover them.

Among the married people Yankelovich interviewed, those most devoted to self-fulfillment were experiencing the greatest trouble in their marriages. Fulfillment seekers focus so sharply on their own needs that instead of achieving a more intimate, giving relationship, they grow further apart from each other.

“In looking to their own needs for fulfillment,” says Yankelovich “they are caught in a debilitating contradiction: their goal is to expand their lives by reaching beyond self, but the strategy they employ results in constricting their lives, drawing them inward toward an ever-narrowing closed-off ‘I.’ “

It’s hard to imagine what effect today’s cultural flow would have had on our little group of Christian families back in Peru, Indiana. My guess is it wouldn’t make any difference if we had today what we had back then- commitment. Dad was committed to Mom; the folks were committed to the kids; our home was committed to the Lord; and our energies were committed to the church. The idea of individual self-fulfillment in a semi-rural community would have been a contradiction of terms.

With this contradiction in mind, I found myself reviewing a series of sermons, How the World Began, that Helmut Thielicke preached to a West German congregation in the middle 1950s. He asked, “How can I gain the greatest satisfaction in my life? How can I achieve my greatest development and get the maximum from my potentialities?”

Thielicke goes on to say, “Now, for me, it is of utmost importance to make it absolutely clear that it is gravely wrong to put these questions in this way. Why? These questions emanate from the assumption that I stand alone in the world. I conceive of myself, so to speak, as an organism, or- to speak in Goethean terms-‘as a molded form,’ which is supposed to develop in a living way and be brought to fullest possible development.

“Now, over against this view, the Scriptures present the word of the Creator: ‘It is not good that man should be alone.’ It is not good, therefore, that he should be a self-contained organism which proceeds to develop itself; he must rather have a vis-a-vis, a partner, a companion, a thou.

“And here the Scripture touches on one of the fundamental mysteries of our life. It is remarkable-and this has become my personal conviction, confirmed at every step of the way by life itself-that I do not attain the greatest possible development of my personality when I consciously try to develop myself, when I am constantly considering, ‘Where will I have the best chance to live life to the fullest? How can I reach the maximum accomplishment, and where can I experience the greatest pleasure?’ On the contrary, I arrive at this fulfillment of my personality and my life as a whole when I do not think about it at all; but rather, when I forget myself and devote myself to someone else or something else.

“I once knew two elderly sisters. One of them was the mother of a family who seemed to have within her all the fullness of life. She had poured out her life in service to her family, sacrificed herself for them, and in the process she had become a living, vital person who had developed all that was within her to an amazing extent.

“Her sister, on the other hand, was a highly cultivated spinster who thought of nothing but the development of her person, and had absorbed all the benefits culture could provide. It was she, the very person who sought development, who had made her person an end in itself, who seemed dried up and unfulfilled compared with her sister who had forgotten herself and lived for others.”

Commitment to others and the forgetting of ourselves. This is the message taught me at my mother’s knee: God so loved us that he committed himself to others in an incomprehensible way to achieve their redemption.

Between now and New Year’s Eve, I plan to do a lot of thinking and praying about the subject of commitment. I’m developing a self-evaluation survey, which so far includes the following questions:

To what degree have I and the members of my family bought into the illusions of searching for selffulfillment?

How committed am I to God? To what degree do I love him, try to glorify him, and enjoy him?

How commited am I to my spouse? To her growth, development, and achievement? How committed am I to our marriage, whatever comes?

How committed am I to my children? Do I see them as personal possessions, or as significant others who rank first in my responsibilities?

To what degree am I committed to ministry and the call of Jesus? What is my most honest answer when I hear him say, “Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep,”?

Do I really believe that “whosoever wants to save his life will lose it,” and “whosoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will save it”?

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Four Keys To Better Family Life

Roger C. Palms

A pastor can have an effective ministry and have adequate time for his family too.

Recently I met a pastor who has a radio ministry to children. Between that broadcast, the need to answer the correspondence that comes as a result of it, and his ongoing parish ministry, he is working seven days and nights a week. As he was telling me about the great success of his ministry to children, I asked him, “How much time do you spend with your own children?” He replied, “Oh, I don’t have time for that, but they have to understand that this is my ministry.”

A clergyman’s wife asked me a difficult question:

“Can God really bless my husband’s ministry?” Then she told me why she asked. He is a church leader with a responsible position, much in demand in leadership circles, and so busy with Christian causes that he has found it “necessary” to move out and live on his own. She is left to cope with the children, raising them herself. She cried as she asked, “Isn’t he supposed to be home with us?”

These two conversations, coupled with my own pastoral experience, raised anew for me a concern for church leaders’ families. Are we saying often enough to our church leaders, “Your family is your ministry too,” and saying it before a wayward drift begins?

I’ve thought about this in light of my own family, and have realized that in many ways it is easier to avoid family crises outside of church ministry than within church ministry. There are reasons for this.

We can be tempted to build into our concept of church ministry some of the very weaknesses that lead to the breakdown of marriage and family. Clergy do this without realizing what they are doing. I know. I did it, and left the ministry because of it.

In the ministry I was caught by the need to prove myself a good pastor. I taught by my actions and words that God’s work is church work, and I was always trying to do a little bit more. Consequently, I was always on call. Even when I was home I was not mentally there. If the phone rang, I jumped. Just having a necktie on kept me professionally ready- what if a parishioner came by and found me in jeans?

One evening shortly after supper, a retired minister in our community telephoned and asked if I would go fishing with him until sundown. I had intended to do some calling that evening, but this man was elderly and had a heart condition. He could go fishing only if someone went with him to lift the boat into the water and start the motor. I also like to fish, so I agreed to go. An hour and a half later I was home. In the meantime, a member of the congregation had telephoned and demanded to know where I was. I returned the call when I came home, and I found the need was so minor it could have easily waited. But this person circulated the news that the minister was never available, he was always out fishing. Feeling that kind of pressure, I drove myself all the more to prove that I was a hardworking minister. That was a trap, for I never could do enough.

My own problem? Yes, but it is not unique to me. I’ve watched other clergy get caught by it too. Some snap mentally, others burn out and shift vocations, and others, because they are not home building strong family ties, give in to other pressures-including the temptation to find new relationships with other women.

Very few clergy neglect family and home because they plan to; it happens slowly, and part of the reason it happens is that the most intimate relationships are not occurring at home, not because the ministers don’t want them to, but because they have allowed the ministry to become a twentyfour hour job.

We need to be quiet sometimes, relax sometimes, and be with our family. We do the congregation a great disservice if we do not show them that this is important for us and for them too. If we imply that our busyness is the “Christian way,” they may praise us for our hard work, but they will not learn that we have a responsibility to our families and that they do too. No one else is going to supply the needs of my wife and my children. God gave them to me.

In my present responsibilities I travel nearly one-third of the year. I have been asked, “Doesn’t this take you away from your family too much?” For me personally, it is too much. But I’ve asked my family about it, and they say I am not absent as much now as when I served as a pastor or a campus minister. In those days, even though I was around more, I wasn’t really “there.” I was out with people at night and I was working days. I was always “at work.” The phone would ring and I would be gone. It was difficult for me to relax. I couldn’t put on old clothes and declare that the rest of the day was mine, because I felt it wasn’t.

Now it is different. When I’m home I’m home. Though I go to the office every day, and sometimes bring work home in the evening, the work is not open-ended. I can be finished. I put on my comfortable clothes; I putter around the house; I’m there in both physical appearance and mental attitude.

In talking to clergy who have come to grips with the “never finished” problem of ministry and watching how they teach by example the values of family time, I’ve learned some useful lessons:

1. Pastors should demand time at home. One minister I know is very specific about his demands. He says, “I limit the time that I work to fifty hours per week and report to the session how I spend that time. I told them when I was called as minister that I wanted a minimum of three nights a week at home. If I’m going to make a statement to the workaholics in the congregation, then I must make a statement about my own time and family. Ministers have to look at themselves and see how they are doing.”

There are pastors who speak of “family needs,” but the family does not get them or their attention. They just want time for themselves without the family. And an occasional clergyman will use “family” as an excuse to do as little work as possible. But most clergy are not lazy; they work hard. They also want to build a solid home life based on love. That takes effort.

One associate minister, a woman, told me, “Schecluling is difficult. There is a great temptation to allow my profession to run away with my life; a temptation to allow my prideful desire for success, in the sense that the church community sees success, to overrun my other calling as a wife and mother.” But she has learned that “God called me to ministry, but he has also called me to be a wife and mother. This too is a first priority, because this too is Cod’s call.”

2. Fellowship groups of pastors need to plan times in which they talk about the temptations that each faces-social, financial, sexual. This is not a time for triumphalism, a “let me tell you how I did it,” but an honest opening up of problems that we all face and an exploration of ways to overcome them.

A minister in the Midwest stated, “There are six clergy in our group, and we are able to discuss personal needs openly. We have cried together and prayed together; and I know that if I face a problem in my family, I can call on one or all of them.”

A young clergyman, preparing to leave soon with his family for the mission field, said, “We have friends we can go to for counsel. When we were in school one of our professors told us in class, ‘If there is a conflict between a class assignment and your family, spend time with your family;’ I’ll never forget that.”

Another pastor commenting on the regular get-togethers planned by the clergy in his area emphasizes that it is not just a “professional” group. “We meet for breakfast and talk. It helps us to know what to pray for in the other families’ lives.” Describing a similar fellowship group, an East Coast minister said, “I have found great benefit in this, especially a sense of not being alone.”

3. It is necessary to schedule family nights in the church calendar, not for people to go to a church meeting, but to stay home or go out together as families. Churches can covenant for families to be together, play games, talk, pray. It helps clergy when the rest of the congregation is doing this, and it gives a talking point later when people ask, “How did the evening go with your family?” There is reinforcement and learning in that.

Several things happen when family time is scheduled and expected. For one thing, the children know it. One pastor grinned as he said, “I bought my first fishing license because my son wanted us to go fishing together.” Another pastor, whose children are grown, said, “My wife and I joined a community choir together. For us this is good recreation.” Some pastors schedule family times around school events so they can attend them with their children. Others plan picnics or other outings as families, but not necessarily with other people in the church. The goal is family togetherness, not another church function.

The daughter of a minister said, “When I was growing up, I watched a successful pastor lose all of his children to the world, and his wife too. He preached hard and worked hard, but he never spent time with his family. When his wife left with another man, she said of the clergy-husband she was leaving, ‘He’s never home anyway.’ My own dad knew that if you work hard in your ministry but neglect your family, you have forgotten your purpose.”

4. Parish calling and other ministry schedules can be arranged so that neither the pastor nor the same parishioners are obliged to do all of the work. Some clergy admit that they have not always wanted to delegate work-their work was their escape. A minister confessed, “I was using my job to avoid my family. When the children got on my nerves I would say, ‘Well, I have to go make some calls.’ That was legitimate; there were always calls to make. But I wasn’t being fair to my family.”

Clergy tend to start staying home more as they begin to realize their family is a special God-given congregation. A pastor said, “I have to continually remind myself I am not indispensable, not personally responsible for the salvation of the world. I am responsible for touching those lives around me. I find that being a minister is not radically different from being a parent. The serving, care-taking, listening/counseling, being-there kind of ministry at home is as important as pastoral counseling.”

Pastors who do not have staff colleagues tell me that church members can be taught to allow the minister to have at least one night when telephone calls go to a deacon or an elder. A name, number, and date can be placed in the bulletin just as when the pastor is on vacation. A congregation can be urged to purchase a phone recorder for the pastor as an anniversary or Christmas gift. It is expensive, but they can know they are helping him to have a quiet time with his family. Children will accept the demands on a parent’s time and attention the rest of the week when they know there will be no intrusions on their special family times. These times have to be worked at; they don’t come easily.

Looking back, a minister recalled, “When I was in seminary, my children were pre-schoolers. I stopped at the library every day on my way home and checked out one children’s book to read to my children. They knew that I was thinking about them while I was away, and I was compelled to sit down with them as soon as I came home. It gave us a physical closeness as we read the story together.” Then this minister added, “If I am too busy for my family right now, I will be too busy for them ten years from now. And they will learn from me that being too busy for one’s family is appropriate behavior, for I will have taught that lesson by my example . “

One night last winter, my son and I put on our warmest clothes and lay down in the back yard to watch a display a shooting stars. It was a time of awe that we experienced with each other. It was not a long time that we were out because it was so cold, but it was a memorable time. I won’t forget it; I don’t think he will either. But as I thought about that, I realized that I probably would not have done that when I was serving a church as a pastor. I would have been at a church meeting or out making calls, taking advantage of the fact that people who work all day are home in the evenings.

Each of us can minister effectively and still have time for our family. Someday we will stand before God and hear those words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” We will hear those words not only because we have faithfully served the church; we will hear those words because we have also served the ones God has placed closest to us-our family. They are our ministry too.

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

BEING HONEST WITH GOD

Alexander C. DeJong

Beth was young, only 28. She was graduated from college with honors. She taught two years in a Christian school, had two small daughters, a husband-and cancer. Her doctor described it as terminal.

She became more and more disheartened. Behind polite smiles were guilt, resentment, fear, and brooding apathy. When asked one day by an elder, “Are you ever angry with God?”, she replied with a small smile, “No, I may not be angry with God, my Heavenly Father. He knows best!”

It sounded pious. The words appeared theologically sound. The elder felt good, and he was able to report glowingly about her submission, trust, and surrender.

But Beth’s words were not honest. They did not come from her deep-down self. She played a successful role as a good church member, but she continued to be an unhappy, angry, resentful, guilt-laden daughter of God.

The Father who counts the hairs of our heads and the malignant cells in our bodies wants to hear how his child really feels. In fact, he doesn’t mind when his child lets him have it. He’s big enough and experienced enough to take it.

Job cursed his birthday:

Let the day perish wherein I was born . . . let those curse it who curse the day . . . (Job 3:3, 8).

Jeremiah told God in no uncertain terms what was on his heart:

O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived. Thou art stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me (Jeremiah 20:7).

He even was angry with the man who didn’t abort him in the womb:

Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father . . . Let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew without pity . . . because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great (Jeremiah 20:15, 17).

St. Teresa of Avila knew intimate friendship with God. One day she fell off her donkey into a mud puddle. She looked up to heaven and said, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so many enemies.”

Let’s not ask, “Is it right to talk this way? Isn’t it sin?” Try to hear these words of angry complaint as “honest conversations of children with a Heavenly Father whom children trust.”

Beth needed encouragement to be honest with God. She needed to tell it to God like it is. She needed open faith, genuine trust in God as a friend, and released feelings to the Savior who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities.

Why try to put up a front with him?

-Alexander C. DeJong, editor SECOND MONDAY

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

A Survey of Ministers Wives

Pat Valeriano

The wife of a minister for twenty years, Pat Valeriano takes the results of a LEADERSHIP survey of ministers’ wives and comes to some intriguing conclusions about the joys and struggles these wives face.

I had just sent the children off to school; now I could relax after a hectic Sunday. The telephone rang.

“Hello, this is Mrs. Smith. May I speak to the pastor?”

“I’m sorry, he’s not here now,” I say.

“Well, can I see him today?”

“He won’t be back until this afternoon. Why don’t you call him later at the church office?”

“Well, maybe you can help me. I don’t know what I’m going to do about my son. He refuses to obey us. We tell him to do one thing and he does another. What should I do?”

I’m concerned. I’m flattered. I’m bothered. I realize it’s going to be another typical day in my life as a minister’s wife. Three phone calls later, I’m so immersed in counseling, encouraging, and listening that I forget I wanted to take time for a nap this morning.

* * *

The joy of being a pastor’s wife was a common theme in the comments I read from 166 ministers’ wives who responded to a survey sent out by LEADERSHIP journal. Fifty-four percent are under 40 years of age, and 41 percent are between the ages of 40 and 60.

An interesting breakdown shows 53 percent of the wives serve in churches with 100-500 members; 23 percent in churches with less than 100 members; 14 percent in churches of 5001,000; and 9 percent in churches over 1,000.

Respondents were fairly evenly divided among urban, suburban, and rural locations. In longevity of service, the largest group (41 percent) has been in the ministry for under 10 years; the next highest group (27 percent) for 20-29 years; and the third highest group (22 percent) for 10-19 years. Another interesting statistic is that 61 percent feel their husbands’ salaries are adequate.

Part One: The Joys

Most ministers’ wives are happy in their roles.

Ninety percent said they “always” or “often” enjoy being a pastor’s wife. In fact, 85 percent said under no circumstances would they want their husbands to change professions.

Granted, there are problems unique to the calling; but the wives said, in effect, that the problems are outweighed by the joys.

¥ “I love being a minister’s wife. I feel fulfilled in this way of life.”

¥ “I’m thirty-five years old, and am just beginning to feel and experience the reality of my role. Responsibilities of the position strain my spiritual life, but the struggles build character. Therefore, I must view my position/role as God’s instrument for building me and helping me to build others.”

¥ “I feel privileged to be a pastor’s wife, and I enjoy the consideration I receive. Everywhere I’ve worked, my presence as the minister’s wife has caused people to think of their spiritual condition. Some have taken positive steps toward the Lord. I’ve had an influence with parishioners that I never would have had as a lay person.”

Sixty-five percent of the respondents feel fairly well equipped to be effective as pastors’ wives. Nearly 37 percent are college graduates. The experiences gained in previous education or previous jobs, regardless of the chosen field of study, seemed to prepare many wives for dealing with people.

¥ “When I was in nursing training, I met a young divorced woman who was supporting herself and a son while trying to get some training along the way. She appeared to be a very hard person, and somewhat wild in her lifestyle; but as I began to know her better, I discovered a lonely, vulnerable person. I was able to minister to her, and I learned not to judge people by first impressions. That’s helped me in dealing with church people.”

Similar comments suggest that we wives feel our most important skills are those used in dealing with and understanding people. A further 32 percent consider their training as teachers most important. They see the role as one of positively relating to people.

The most rewarding aspect of being a pastor’s wife, said 43 percent, is “Seeing people grow in Christ.”

¥ “People share burdens and problems with us, problems they would not share with anyone else. My husband and I are able to pray for them, counsel them, and see God work miracles in their lives.”

The second most rewarding aspect of being a pastor’s wife (26 percent) was stated as “Teamwork with my husband.”

¥ “It’s really fun for me to support him in the worship service, to sit there and know he knows I’m appreciating what he’s saying from the pulpit. By responding to him this way, he feels uplifted and appreciative of my presence. I actually have a ministry to him from the pew.”

¥ “I used to feel it was important for me to be in the church service on Sunday morning because people expected it, the visitors expected it, or perhaps because there would be someone to counsel after the service. I still feel it’s essential for me to be in the services, but I’ve changed my reasons why. I’m there now solely to support my husband and to worship God. I very seldom criticize my husband’s sermon or comments. If he asks, I will give my opinion, but always in a loving way. If I disagree with him on a portion of Scripture, I never accuse him of being wrong, but I discuss it with him, objectively presenting my thoughts on the particular subject.”

¥ “I try to encourage my husband, not only with my presence, but also verbally. At times he has left the pulpit feeling as though he has delivered the worst sermon of his life. I believe he has a special gift in preaching, and I can count on one hand the number of times he’s preached a bad sermon. I tell him this, and always remind him how the people love and respect him. You can find encouraging things to say in most circumstances, and you should do so.”

This sense of shared ministry came through in answer to a related question: “What is the most important role of a pastor’s wife?” Fifty-eight percent listed “support and encouragement of my husband” as the most important role. Phrases such as “our people,” and “we share the ministry together” show a oneness of spirit uniquely expressed by these wives.

¥ “I’m much more involved in my husband’s work than I would be in any other type of job; I go with him to his job. Sundays I go with him to work, and I do things with him, which, if he were working somewhere else I wouldn’t be able to do. The fact that I’m with him on part of the job ensures that I’ll be more involved in the ministry.”

¥ “When you share your husband’s ministry on the front lines, you lead people to the love of Christ. In this way I see that this is a calling from God, not just a job.”

¥ “It’s given me a chance to grow, mature, learn, love, share in lives, and be involved in a wide range of experiences. I have enjoyed it to the fullest.”

¥ “I feel a unique sense of worth when my husband comes to me for insight into women; he respects my advice. Many times he has commented, ‘I never knew women felt that way.’ Once after asking my opinion about a comment of a particular woman he was counseling, he thanked me, and said my suggestions had made a noticeable difference in the results of the counseling session.”

Ninety-four percent said their children “never” or “seldom” complain about being “PK’s” (preachers’ kids). There were comments scattered through the responses that said raising children was a rewarding part of the ministry.

¥ “We have had people in our home whom other| children have never had the benefit of knowing: African pastors, foreign missionaries, | evangelists, other preachers. Our kids have ] been able to talk to them, play games with| them, and find out more about the world and what makes people tick.”

¥ “Our children have seen areas of the country and met new people and different cultures they never would have had the opportunity to know if they were not PK’s. My youngest son wants to be an engineer; most kids don’t even know what that is. When we lived in California, he was around parishioners who worked on Lear jets.” |

¥ “My daughter spent two summers when she was a teen-ager with the youth mission group. They saw 200 children won to Christ. The excitement and satisfaction of watching her growing relationship with God is worth any disadvantage that might come with being in the ministry.

Part Two: The Struggle

Many find one end result of the ministry is intense loneliness.

Despite the overall positive tone of the survey, some common areas of conflict and struggle did surface; interestingly, they were not the stereotyped problems of low salary and living in a parsonage.

Many felt the pressure of being a jack-of-all-trades. In my own experience as a minister’s wife, I’ve found myself constantly going back to the common, perhaps even hackneyed quote, “All the world’s a stage . . . and one man in his time plays: many parts.” In reality, ministers’ wives have many roles-as do most wives-wife, mother, friend, counselor. But for us it creates priority problems.

The question was asked, “If you could change anything about being a pastor’s wife, what would it 4 be?” A surprising 21 percent said they would not change anything; they are happy as they are. But others offered many areas they would like to see changed.

¥ 21 percent would like to have more privacy; to be able to separate their personal lives from the ministry; and to be able to spend more time with husband/family.

¥ 19 percent would like to be thought of as an individual rather than always referred to as “the pastor’s wife”; would like to be considered human rather than having to be perfect; and would like to be free of the stereotyped expectations of the congregation.

¥ 13 percent longed for freedom to express their true talents in jobs of their own choosing at church.

The single biggest problem facing pastors’ wives is that of friendship. Fifty-six percent said they do not have close friends in the church. For some (28 percent), this is intentional.

¥ “A couple in the church we were at before we went into the ministry became very involved with their pastor and his wife. They would go out every Saturday together. They were so close as to exclude and neglect others in the church. It caused much jealousy and resentment. Eventually the problem became so intense it caused the pastor and his wife to leave the church. Seeing this happen made me be very cautious in forming friendships in our own church.”

¥ “Sometimes I find it difficult not to form friendships, especially when certain parishioners tend to get closer to you than others do and you seem to relate to them better. But there have been many times when I’ve turned down invitations to go out for fear of alienating others in the church.”

Some wives talked about being manipulated by those with whom they had made friends.

¥ “We’d been at our church for eighteen years and had become very close to one family. We went on vacations together, had children the same ages, and enjoyed the same activities. For a time, everything was all right. But then word got back to us that the wife was using our friendship for certain things and talking about it to other people. I felt our private life was being spread all over. We talked together about it many times, but the more we talked, the more it caused hurt. The woman was a domineering person, and began telling me what I should or should not do as a pastor’s wife. It got to the point where she would get very upset if we did anything without telling her about it first.”

In the survey, 21 percent mentioned the lack of personal privacy and the fear that personal confidences would be betrayed.

¥ “Not long after we had come to the church, I formed a great friendship. Something inside me said not to get too close, but I was hungry for a close friend, so I did anyway. We talked a lot; she knew when someone in the church offended me, and she knew my personal feelings about the church. Later, we had a split in the church, and she went with the other side. She betrayed all my confidences. Only if you experience this personally can you imagine the pain it brings.”

The husband’s busy work schedule is viewed by 25 percent of the wives as another source of conflict.

¥ “My husband is a caring person. He shows this to his family and to me; but often his ministry means making repeated decisions that squeeze out family time. This hurts. When he works with no days off, and then we might have an evening or two of no church work, I somehow feel angry that I am supposed to be so delighted with his time off.”

¥ “At one time early in our ministry, my husband became so involved in his work that he put his family second. He would be out every night visiting or at meetings-all the obligations that befall a pastor. I was pregnant with our third child and having asthmatic problems as well. I would see him drive by our house, and in my heart I screamed at him.”

Of course, a spinoff problem from this situation is that we sometimes feel left out of our husbands’ ministries. Louis McBurney, a psychiatrist who counsels pastors, claims this is a frequent theme he hears in his talks with pastors’ wives.

¥ “I would like our ministry to be more of a team effort. After all, I was called to full-time Christian service too. I feel I have ideas that could be helpful, but it seems too many times they just aren’t appreciated. So I end up finding my place and ministry outside the church. It’s sad!

I have hurt feelings that my ideas do not merit attention, nor are they sought by my husband. He turns away from communicating with me. Emotionally, I feel starved.”

The end result of many of these conflicts and struggles is intense loneliness. Many times we are far from our families and in a whole new culture. Seeing families and friends together, and being left out because of unfair expectations, produces lonely and sometimes resentful wives.

¥ “We pastored a church in a small town in the Midwest, far from a large city that might offer activities to occupy my time. The people were warm and friendly in church, but no one seemed to want to be close friends. They seemed too involved in their own families. Then I met a woman whom I became very interested in. She was friendly and tenderhearted. She always asked about me, how I was doing and how I felt. She would tell me she missed me if I was not at a service, but she never invited me to her home once. After a Wednesday night prayer meeting, I invited her over for a cup of tea while our husbands had a meeting. She appeared hesitant, but she came. During the course of the conversation, she told me outright she couldn’t be close friends with the pastor’s wife because it might offend other people. I was very hurt, to say the least, and it made me hesitant to try to be close to any other woman in the church. I didn’t want to be put down again.”

The general pain brought about because of friendship struggles often has its roots in false expectations parishioners place on the pastor’s wife. Many people immediately put up a wall as soon as they discover we’re the spouse of a “holy” man. More than 20 percent of the wives agreed with the statement: “I feel people shy away from me because I’m a pastor’s wife.”

¥ “I worked in a hospital in Indiana for three years. While I was there, a nurse returned to work after fifteen years away. I was assigned to help her become oriented again to nursing. We had some good times together. Then one day as we were working, another nurse asked a question about my husband’s ministry. The look that came over the face of the new nurse was almost comical. ‘Your husband is a minister? Oh, I had better be good now!’ Even though we still were friends, there now was a reserve in her attitude. She no longer was relaxed with me because she had some preconceived idea of the level of spirituality a minister’s wife must have.”

These false expectations inhibit us from being ourselves in all situations. We stifle feelings until we are like pressure cookers about to go out of control.

¥ “We have a woman in our church who has always been in charge of planning the work with the various fellowship dinners we have each year. I came up with several ideas for fellowship and special days in our church, and some were successful. Yet at every meeting she has something negative to say about my ideas. One day I accidentally left her name off a list concerning one of the ministries we both were involved in. She asked me about it, and I explained to her that I had erred. But all day, and even during the evening worship service, she blatantly showed her displeasure toward me. I was so tired of struggling with her pettiness and childish attitude. She had hurt my feelings so many times and even embarrassed me in front of others. But because I was the minister’s wife, I again had to stifle my feelings, until the pressure grew so intense it was turning my church life into a nightmare.”

Seventeen percent of the wives agreed that “Our family lives in a fishbowl with more expectations and increased pressures.” Unrealistic expectations demanded of preachers’ kids cause ministers’ wives to be overcautious about their children’s behavior, not to mention the pressures that fall on the children themselves.

¥ “Several times our family has talked about our life in the ministry. Once, after talking about the good times we’ve had, all the people we’ve met, and the places we’ve been to because we’re in the ministry, one of our boys made this statement: ‘I wish people wouldn’t expect us to be perfect. Mrs. Smith said I wasn’t like the previous pastor’s son at all; he was so clean and neat all the time.’ “

As ministers’ wives, we learn valuable lessons from our mistakes and the pressures, and a lot is expected of us. But many people expect instant maturity from our children, and won’t give them the chance to go through the process of growing up. When the child realizes he or she cannot maintain the expected lifestyle of perfection, scars are left.

¥ “We have a youth leader who expects more out of our teen-ager because he is a PK than the rest of the kids in our youth group. In this man’s view, our son is not allowed to experience the temptations, mistakes, or failures that the average young person goes through. He is to be ultraspiritual and mature at all times. And when he isn’t, the youth leader makes it obvious to my son, as well as those around, how he feels about it.”

Part Three: A Servant Attitude

Pastors’ wives believe their various roles carry great responsibilities .

Pearl Buck said, “To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy, a whole heart, and a free mind.”

Even though we as ministers’ wives have a great responsibility to God, to our families, and to our parishioners, it can be a responsibility with freedom. We are free to be ourselves; therefore, we are free to serve with joy in spite of the minuses that do exist in ministry. We can either resist, fight, and struggle with these conflicts, or we can rest at the feet of the Lord.

The Old Testament story of Ruth has been a constant source of encouragement for me as a pastor’s wife. Even though Ruth was not married to a pastor, she did, as a child of God and as a woman, have to make a decision that would affect her entire life. Knowing she was leaving behind all that was familiar, she chose out of love and faith to go with Naomi. But her life wasn’t a piece of ordination cake from then on. Soon she was out in the fields toiling to provide for herself and Naomi. Ruth’s life was a life of ongoing servanthood. Ministers’ wives are servants too.

A majority of responses reflect a servant attitude to the question: “In what ways have your talents been of benefit to you in your role as a pastor’s wife?”

¥ 32 percent-teaching

¥ 27 percent-music ministry

¥ 22 percent-reaching out; listening to people

¥ 15 percent-making people feel comfortable

¥ 14 percent-organizing programs and activities

Less than 4 percent answered the above question by saying, “feeling fulfilled and confident.”

Sixty percent of the wives expressed the need to further their training so they can serve better. Even though there is a lack of courses, seminars, and books for ministers’ wives, two books were mentioned as being helpful: Who Is the Minister’s Wife ? by Charlotte Ross (Westminster Press), and So You’re the Pastor’s Wife by Ruth Senter (Zondervan).

Some wives offered ideas for cultivating and maintaining lives of servanthood as the pastor’s wife.

Equip Yourselves

Only 11 percent of the respondents said they wanted no additional training. Others disagreed.

¥ “We need to be equipped to handle the continual challenges and responsibilities we face each day. I’m always taking teachers’ update courses, attending classes, and expanding my interests. This gives me greater confidence in dealing with people and situations.”

Twenty-six percent wish they had more training in counseling. This need was especially acute among the younger wives with less than five years in the ministry. Of this group, 30 percent expressed a desire for help with counseling as compared with only 10 percent in the next two categories (5-20 years, and 20-plus years). Apparently experience is valuable training for counseling skills.

¥ “A lady in the church once came to me crying and very upset. She opened up to me in a way she couldn’t do my husband. She shared intimate and deep-seated hurts. I felt very uncomfortable and inadequate. I didn’t know what to say or whether even to say anything. I let her talk, mostly, and we prayed together. After awhile she left, and I still don’t know if I helped her.”

Discern and Develop Your Gifts

Regardless of how adequately trained the minister’s wife is, she will always have a difficult time fitting into her church’s ministry if she is unsure of her gifts, and is unable to communicate what these gifts are to the congregation.

¥ “God has given each of us a special gift to use in ministering to the body of Christ. But parishioners have a tendency to confine the gifts of ministers’ wives to certain categories, usually the nursery or the primary ages or the music program. This stereotype has been going on for a long time, and I think we ourselves might be the worst offenders. We let people decide what our gifts are rather than discovering them for ourselves and making them known when we come into a pastorate.”

¥”After my husband and I entered our first pastorate, I was asked to sing, play the piano, or teach young children. Since I am not musically inclined, I decided to teach beginners. I figured this class might be suited to me since I was a beginner myself. After awhile I graduated to the junior high, where I remained for six years. I loved the boys and girls, but I still felt unfulfilled. Finally, after all those years of being pushed and pulled into roles I was not particularly suited for, I discovered I had the gift of teaching young marrieds. I finally felt the satisfaction that comes when you are doing what you feel God has called you to do.”

Our first pastorate was no different. However, when my husband and I candidated for the pastorate we’re in now, I had determined to put into effect three principles for using my gifts:

1. I would be firm in my conviction to know the gifts I truly believed God had given me (Romans 12:4-8).

2. I would be willing to use my gifts where they would be needed (I Timothy 4:14).

3. I would make known immediately what I felt my gifts were (II Timothy 4:5).

Well, during our first question and answer session, I made it so clear what I would not do in the church that the people were afraid to ask me to do anything. So for the first few months I was stagnant-which was not a happy position either. I began offering my help in the areas of ministry in which my gifts were needed. Now I have developed a five-step process that has worked for me to integrate gifts into the ministry of a church:

1. Know what your gift is, but be willing to try new areas of service to exercise it.

2. At the beginning of your ministry, make it known where you feel you can serve best, always using much love, tact, and grace.

3. If you’re already in a particular ministry and want to change your area of service, then begin by talking to the person in charge of that ministry. Explain your feelings and desires regarding your gift(s).

4. Be assertive, yet in a manner seasoned with love, tact, and humility.

5. Make sure you use your true gifts; they will become more effective as you exercise them, and your purposefulness and fulfillment will increase.

Be Open to Others

To the question, “How do you handle the problem of friendships?” the most common answer (28 percent) was “Greet all, love all.”

¥ “Many times people are afraid to get too close to the minister and his family; they feel as if they are spiritually dwarfed. You have to spend time with people and experience what they experience. They have to know you are human too. “

¥ “People to whom I am not close sometimes relate to me on too formal a basis. By more personal contact, I try to remove this air of formality. Helping them realize I am not a super-Christian breaks down the wall.”

¥”I never refuse an invitation to be with a woman from our church if time permits. I’ve found the gesture alone is sometimes enough to let people know I am really interested in them. Saying yes to people when they ask for my time and company makes me more approachable when I’m needed for counseling and other serious occasions.”

¥ “Friendships play such a big part in our lives. Friends often make the difference between whether or not we feel uplifted at the end of a long day.”

Although sometimes openness will backfire and friends will disappoint you, the product of the ministry is eternal and worth the risk. The personal satisfaction of helping people learn to walk with God goes to the depth of the soul.

¥ “A young college girl, who six years ago was very much a part of our lives, recently stepped back in again. She and her husband had moved out of state, and while there, the bottom had fallen out of their world-everything from complete financial loss to severe marital problems. Through our counseling they moved back to our area and also came back to the Lord. I spent much time with her, more a sharing time than actual counseling, and now they are active in our church again. To see them growing again in the Lord fills me with a sense of worth that is not easily extinguished.”

Keep Your Home a Haven

The most important avenue of continuing service for pastors’ wives, though, is in the home.

¥ “My husband is on the firing line of anger, jealousy, bitterness, and pain every day. It is my main function to make home a peaceful place to be.”

¥ “I try to make our home a happy place to come to. I try to let problems and things that have happened during the day wait until later. I also screen phone calls and, if possible, have my husband return the call later. I usually ask, ‘Is this an emergency, or can the pastor return the call?’ Most of the time the person is willing to be called back. I also try not to get upset when my husband can’t be home on time.”

¥ “I work four days a week outside the home. Usually I have Tuesdays off so my husband, whose schedule is flexible, can plan Tuesdays as his day off also. Most of the time we spend our time at home, although sometimes we go out to eat or play tennis. As I look back, I realize we have had our most serious talks about ourselves, our marriage, the family, and our future on those days. We have worked out more problems during those times than any other. I don’t get much ‘house’ work accomplished, but I do get a lot of ‘home’ work done.”

To the question, “Do you and your husband take time to be alone together?” 71 percent said “often” or “always.” Some wives suggested that taking a complete day off each week helps the husband-wife relationship and is good for the ministry. Emphasis was made on getting completely away from home and work.

¥ “We love our parishioners, but we need a mental break from the pressure of the ministry.”

¥ “I know one minister who dates his wife on a regular basis. Even their children know that on one particular night each week their parents have a date with each other. When something

comes up, the husband simply says he has an important commitment that cannot be broken. He and his wife feel this has made a major difference in their relationship, as well as a big impact on their children, who see their parents’ authentic love and respect for each other.”

* * *

The tangible rewards of this servanthood may be rare. They may not come until eternity. But sometimes they break through in this realm:

“When I received the ministers’ wives survey, my husband had just fought a bout with cancer. He went through chemotherapy and experienced many of the effects that go along with it. We have a church paper that goes out, and his progress was noted in it each month. A lot of people on the mailing list have been involved with our work for years. The response from people all over the world-people we thought had forgotten all about us-showed us an outpouring of love at that crucial time, and our hearts were lifted high. It showed us that the seeds we had sown over the years had borne fruit. The people we had worked with for years were still growing and loving the Lord. Now they were reaching out to us.” #

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

A Message from the Publisher: October 01, 1981

Harold Myra

Do you agree, out of the experiences of your own life, with the following?

“If a preacher uses his position to further his own ends, he is heading for disaster. There are many devoted to causes, but few devoted to Jesus Christ. If I am devoted to a particular cause only, when that cause fails, I fail too. “

This Oswald Chambers statement is one of many I’ve underlined recently. In fact, I’ve quoted Chambers so much that the editors asked me to read through his books and develop selected portions for our next issue’s theme: “The Devotional Life.” I’ve gone through about a dozen Chambers books so far, and I’ve never had a more enriching experience.

There’s one side of Chambers that makes him especially ring true to me personally. He perceives not only piety, but the depth of despair without it. Like many of my generation (I’m 42), I’ve seen more brillant articulations of life’s absurdity than its meaning. Although I’ve hung on fiercely to my faith for the past twenty years, I’ve also wrestled a great deal with the angst of existential despair. When one looks straight into the face of terror, ennui, and wretchedness, which is the world most people know, the haunting images of Ibsen, Sartre, Camus, and Pinter become persuasive. One keeps peeling the onion of orthodox Christianity and finds it, too, full of contradictions and cultural encrustations that must be stripped away, and down it goes until nothing is left-except this historical Christ . . . and has he also been gilded by his followers?

I have heard all the airtight arguments from Christian apologists, but have known deep down that every argument of the orthodox can be met with an equally persuasive counter-argument. Christian books convincingly refute existential despair, but volumes could instantly be written against each piece of logic. Sometimes we feel the very force of our arguments will win converts. Not so. Only the Spirit can enable a man to see one worldview over the other.

About seven years ago I read The Waiting Father by Helmut Thielicke, and I fed on that book; here was a man, in the cynicism of post-war Germany, who not only understood existential despair but felt it. He addressed it from the context of a Lutheran nation that had been as Christian as the United States, but had been thoroughly disillusioned about both God and itself. Thielicke’s many books of sermons are masterpieces of looking at the modern mind (which Schaeffer describes) with full empathy, but then pointing to a living Christ who can only be found through acceptance and obedience.

I would not have expected a British pietist of the World War I era like Chambers to have that same understanding. But as I read Daily Thoughts for Disciples, I saw again and again that he understood all this logic could easily be overturned; that he saw, too, the utter despair that comes from the pure, rational approach (though he read widely and deeply), and that he had felt it himself. “The basis of life is tragic,” he keeps repeating. But his utter commitment to Christ as the Master gives him an unsullied perspective.

Today, a person goes to a movie and afterwards feels like jumping off a bridge. If we are to minister to the moderns who struggle with the media Z that depict despair so accurately, Thielicke and Chambers are good resources. C. S. Lewis, of course, also has a great deal to say, and he was enormously helpful to me in the sixties, along with Tournier, but only occasionally do I sense in Lewis that he felt the angst of the age like those “waiting for Godet.”

Here then are a few Oswald Chambers quotes (from The Place of Help):

“If all that we have is the human, it will end in bitter tears-not sometimes, but every time.”

“If you are serving men for their sakes, you will soon have the heart knocked out of you; but if you are personally and passionately devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ, then you can spend yourselves to the last ebb because your motive is love to the Lord.”

“When we try to understand Jesus Christ’s teaching with our heads, we get into a fog. It is a relationship of life, not intellect.”

“The experience of being baffled is common to us all, and the more religious and thoughtful a man is, the more intensely is he baffled. With regard to your own baffling, recognise it and state it, but don’t state it dishonestly to yourself. Don’t say you are not baffled if you are; and don’t tell a lie in order to justify your belief in God. If you are in the dark, don’t take refuge in any subterfuge which you know is not true. Never take an answer that satisfies your mind only; insist on an answer that satisfies more than your mind, an answer that satisfies by the ‘sound of gentle stillness.’ Jesus describes it as ‘My peace,’ the witness of God that goes all through you and produces a calm within.”

More from Oswald Chambers in the next issue.

Harold L. Myra President, Christianity Today, Inc.

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Preparing Parishioners For A Pastoral Visit

Kenneth L. Gibble

In many churches, pastoral visitation has fallen out of style, but there are ways to maintain its effectiveness.

In some churches, only special groups, such as new members, receive pastoral calls. Frequently, large churches assign one minister, or a team of lay ministers, to handle regular house calls on all parishioners. Whatever your system, here are special ideas to consider for making home visitation a telling ministry.

Pastoral calling in the home has been a venerable institution In many instances, it’s become a stereotype. One pictures a kindly, gray-haired shepherd of the flock, with Bible clutched firmly to chest, knocking on the cottage door of one of the faithful. His gentle summons is answered by a cheerful-looking matron holding a happy baby in one arm and her other wrapped lovingly around the three-year-old hugging her knees. “Why, Reverend Blissful, how wonderful to see you! Please come in; I’ve just taken a coffee cake out of the oven. I know you’ll want to sample it.”

Such bucolic visions were floating in my head when, fresh out of seminary, I rang the doorbell of a home belonging to one of our church families. I should have heard the warning in the casual remark my secretary dropped when she learned of my plans for the evening. “The Smiths? Oh yes, they used to be quite active . . . until we built the new sanctuary.”

I was therefore pleasantly surprised when they greeted my announcement, “I’m the new pastor,” with enthusiasm. They proudly showed me their home, the wedding pictures of their daughter, and the remodeled basement they had worked on for two long years. As the conversation turned to church life, I was happy to hear they were quite pleased with the worship service, the church school program, in fact just about everything, “even though Jane and I don’t get there as often as we’d like.” Mr. Smith, as it turned out, was specially pleased with our church in marked contrast to his former congregation. I should have been suspicious when he spoke angrily and at length of “that kno-it-all who pushed us into a building program.” But the truth didn’t dawn until I got up to leave. It was Mrs. Smith who made the fatal statement. “Yes, pastor, we dearly love it at St. Mark’s.”

The dazed look on my face gave it away. (I learned later not to let my jaw drop open in amazement at unexpected announcements.) “You are the pastor at St. Mark’s, aren’t you?” No, I gulped, I was not. But I was happy to learn they had a new church home and besides, all roads lead to the same place, heh-heh, and it’s been nice talking to you, and have a pleasant evening. Writing it down now, more than a decade later, my ears burn with the same embarrassment they did that night.

Visits in the home have seldom been a source of great satisfaction in my ministry. I can recall times of trying gamely to compete with a television program for a parishioner’s attention, of conversations that centered on the family’s Great Dane (“we call him Marmaduke”), and occasions when I told myself that this time I’d confront a person with his or her lack of involvement in congregational life, only to climb into my car afterwards with head bowed in despair at my cowardice.

I don’t know which is worse: being treated with exaggerated politeness or, more rarely, bearing the brunt of a parishioner’s pent-up hostility. Neither one seems to do me nor the people I visit much good. And so, for much of my ministry I have given high priority instead to hospital visitation and calling in parishioners’ homes after a death or other crisis.

In fact, routine pastoral visitation, characterized by leisurely conversation and perhaps a parting prayer, is a vanishing phenomenon. Schedules of both pastor and parishioner are too full these days. In many respects, the decline of pastoral visitation is cause for rejoicing. Too often it’s been done out of a sense of obligation. Frequently, the most accomplished was an exchange of pleasantries that left both the caller and the called-upon feeling “good” in a vague sort of way. Conversations often did not rise above the level of the insipid.

And yet, even at its worst, traditional pastoral visitation offers ministry. The mere presence of the minister in the home is a sign that the church cares-cares enough to take the time and the effort to be there. Especially for the elderly and the shut-in, this ministry of presence is of tremendous importance. It becomes a confirmation of such persons’ worth; they still count, even though they cannot be present for worship or other congregational activities. Pastoral calling often is a means for parishioners to talk of their fears, joys, and concerns about matters both personal and spiritual. Although not formal counseling sessions, these visits often include helpful counseling.

Family life today, of course, is hardly that of twenty-five years ago. Both men and women frequently work outside the home. Families are broken by divorce and often patched up again, for better or worse, by remarriage. Children live with only one parent or with a step-parent. Even the so-called nuclear family is seldom at home together. A multitude of varied activities keeps its members on the run.

In such a context, how can pastoral visitation in the home be a viable ministry? It is my contention that such a ministry ought to receive a much higher priority than it has in the recent past.

In the field of counseling, pastors have an advantage over a family therapist; they have accessibility to the home. In home surroundings, family members may be less likely to resort to defensive behavior than in a counselor’s office.

Let me illustrate. On a visit to a home in which there have been problems among family members, I saw firsthand the dynamics that contribute to an unhealthy situation. The father began describing to me his recent religious experiences in emotional and highly religious language. He had attended a “Holy Spirit conference” and was extremely enthusiastic about it. I could sense by her nonverbal signals and occasional verbal interjections, that his wife was very uncomfortable with what he was saying. From previous conversation with her, I knew she had strong doubts about the existence of God. I was sure her husband’s comments were upsetting and embarrassing to her. Yet at no time did the husband give any indication of his wife’s discomfort. Even after she apparently could stand it no longer and excused herself from the room, he made no reference to her or what she might have been feeling. Although I did not feel it appropriate at that time to take the role of therapist for what was an obvious family problem, my presence gave me some insights into the conflicts that existed. These insights will help me in future contacts with family members.

However, despite the positive implications that pastoral calling can have for counseling, or at least for an understanding of relationships in the home, I see the primary function of pastoral visitation in terms of spiritual growth: a mission to help the person or persons in that home move into the depth of their human experiences and then to make connections between such experiences and their faith. This occurs when there is a willingness on the part of both pastor and parishioner to give serious attention to the “deeps” of their life experiences, a willingness to risk sharing the pain and embarrassment and joy that such exploration will uncover. It happens when the pastor pays attention to both verbal and nonverbal signals that indicate the parishioner’s willingness to talk of things more important than the weather and the latest ball scores; or when the pastor asks questions that gently but seriously probe the parishioner’s life and faith.

From my experiences and from conversation with fellow-pastors, I’ve learned there are possibilities for genuine ministry through home visitation. Most of my colleagues share the same frustrations I have felt in terms of the superficiality of routine pastoral calling. One of them, however, spoke of the meaningful visits he has when he talks with young people and their parents as preparation for baptism. Another said that visits with couples in anticipation of child dedication were especially productive. Our consensus was that visits which have a clearly defined purpose stand a much better chance of success than those which leave the parishioner wondering: “I wonder what the reason for this visit is?”

With that in mind, let me suggest the model I use for pastoral visitation. I first had to articulate my purposes for a visitation program. Exactly what was I hoping for, for myself and for the people I visited? It helped to put it in writing: “To enable persons to be in touch with the depths of their relationship with God, to others, and to themselves.” Then I developed a visitation plan, which I continue to follow with good results.

I begin by sending the following letter to the church family or individual I propose to visit.

Dear John and Sue, One of the ways Christians grow spiritually is through sharing with each other their hopes, their difficulties, and their faith experiences. I consider that chance I have to share in such ways with the people of our congregation both opportunity and reward in my work as pastor.

I am in the process of visiting in each church home. In order to provide a focus for our time together, I would like you to think in advance about several questions:

1. What has been a personal success or failure or other significant happening in your life lately?

2. What resources did you draw on as you dealt with this event in your life and/or how did you celebrate it?

3. In what ways has your faith experience been important to you?

These are not test questions to put you on the spot. They’re simply a way of structuring our visit. During our time together I’d like to talk with you about them, and any other matters of interest to you.

The church secretary will be making contact by telephone to find a time suitable for a visit.

Yours in Christ,

Soon after I arrive in the home, I make reference to the letter and invite the parishioners to respond to the questions in whatever way they feel most comfortable. I emphasize there are no “right” answers, and that if our discussion takes us away from the questions to other matters, we need not be anxious about it. I point out that the questions are simply tools to help us discuss things we want to talk about.

Using this model for visitation, I find that we are able to move to a deeper level of conversation than usually occurs during a casual drop-in pastoral visit. By addressing the questions directly, we can talk about concerns seldom shared with co-workers, neighbors, or even close friends. Often the visit establishes a bond of intimacy in which it is easy to identify the sacred. If it seems appropriate, I offer a prayer in which we thank God for the way our lives have touched each other during the visit.

Not every visit is a smashing success, of course. On one occasion, the person I visited had the letter in his hand when he greeted me at the door. He announced that he could answer the questions easily enough, and in thirty seconds he had done so. Mission accomplished, I suppose he thought. We spent the rest of our time together talking about the probable causes and possible cures for double-digit inflation!

For the most part, however, the visits have taken on much greater significance. I called on a family who had all but dropped out of congregational life. I discovered the wife at home; she told me her husband had phoned and said the boss needed him to work late. My previous contacts with this couple had yielded mostly small talk. This time was different. “Well, Mary, in the letter I sent you, you may remember there were three questions I proposed we might think about. The first one asks what personal success or failure or other significant event has taken place in your life.”

Her answer was somewhat of a shock. “That question hits home. The truth is my husband and I are separated.” The rest of our visit was spent talking about the causes and effects of this disruptive experience. She was able to express considerable bitterness about the situation. Her confession was, “I feel as if I’m losing my faith.” We began to explore some possibilities for dealing with the changes in her life. Measuring this visit by the goals I had set helped me realize that a successful visit is not necessarily one from which I come away feeling good. Sometimes success means I will “weep with those who weep.”

Ironically, the home I drove to immediately after this visit yielded a much different kind of success. This was a family with whom I have enjoyed personal friendship, as well as a close working relationship in the activities of our parish. Both husband and wife have felt free to come to me for counseling on occasion. I was received warmly and our conversation moved easily into an exploration of issues that the questions in my letter had raised for them. Part of what we talked about was their own relationship. Frequently they talked directly to each other, rather than to or through me, as they expressed frankly both their frustrations and their joys. The honesty, the caring, the intimacy of that visit ranks as one of the highlights of my eleven years as a pastor. At the end, I was able to tell them how much they meant to me, and how they had helped me grow as a pastor and as a person by their concern for me and their willingness to let me be part of their lives.

In Henri Nouwen’s words, visits like these help me and my parishioners to “recognize the work of God in ourselves.” Although Nouwen uses that phrase to indicate the minister’s role, I can testify that I have often been ministered to by these visits. God’s grace can flow not only from the minister to the parishioner, but from parishioner to minister.

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE FORUM

Richard Halverson

Although we felt LEADERSHIP had to deal with the very tough issue of clergy divorce, we wanted to do so within the parameters of our journal’s mandate: providing practical help for local church leaders. Thus, we only examine the question from one perspective, fully realizing many additional questions could be asked and profitably explored.

Ordinarily, we would be content to examine the issue from this one perspective. But because clergy divorce is a complicated, explosive issue, we asked several Christian leaders to respond to our Forum’s wider implications. The many important questions they ask, each of which could be the kernel of another article, demonstrate the complexity of the problem.

It’s most discouraging to hear ministers discuss their experiences with divorce without even raising the question as to whether or not their divorce was on biblical grounds. These men speak sincerely of their experiences of love and acceptance from church sessions and people, but no one spoke of the faithful exercise of church discipline toward them or their former spouses.

While no one can be free of blame in a marriage that ends in divorce, it does not follow that there is not one person who is guilty of breaking a marriage by unfaithfulness, or by unwillingness to live in the bond that has been joined by God. The innocent and injured party in the divorce needs a different form of pastoral care and discipline from that needed by the guilty person. It would be a tragedy for a guilty person to escape church discipline by organizing an independent church. Admittedly, some churches may be legalistic in the use of disciplinary sanction, but surely that is increasingly rare today. A greater danger is to ignore the commandment of Christ and the discipline he has ordained for his church.

-Edmund Clowney, president Westminster Theological Seminary

This article points up tragic situations in our country and in the ministry of the evangelical church. Each of these men speaks of the trauma of divorce-that they were not in favor of it. That must come through very clearly. Just because divorce is increasingly common, we cannot learn to simply live with it. It’s a bad business, and we must redouble our efforts to forestall it.

By the same token, it does happen, it has happened, and life goes on. There needs to be some understanding of that. As a pastor, I oppose divorce emphatically. But, as a pastor, I also recognize that life isn’t always as neatly packaged as we’d like it to be. This article should stimulate some good responses and, hopefully, some healing reactions.

-Paul Toms, pastor Park Street Church

LEADERSHIP Journal is living up to its name. Divorce among ministers is a fact of life which must be met head-on without judging people or justifying separation. I commend LEADERSHIP for addressing this controversial subject, and divorced ministers for daring to speak by name.

As I read and reread the discussion, I kept reaching for the feeling tones behind the words. The ministers set a tone of hope as they hard-lined on the sin of divorce while testifying to forgiveness, healing, and the recovery of their ministries. Deeper down I felt another tone. Without intention, the ministers tend to avoid taking the blame for divorce upon themselves, leaving the impression that the wives may have been at fault. Such an impression forces the tone of tragedy which stalks divorce under any circumstances. Although these five pastors remade their lives and rebuilt their ministries, there are thousands of ministerial rejects and their families on the sidelines because of divorce. So mingling with the good news of grace for ministers in marital trouble, there is a strong warning. Divorce among ministers is a tragic fact, always forgivable, sometimes recoverable, but never without its consequences.

-David McKenna, president Seattle Pacific University

This article strikes me as being very relevant. It compels us as God’s people to do some hard thinking about an issue we may try to dodge. It’s tied up, of course, with the larger problem of what we believe Scripture teaches about divorce and remarriage, but that’s not the question being discussed here. In this article, we’re listening to pastors who have gone through the dissolution of their marriages, and who are now wondering whether they are forever disbarred from parish ministry. My own position is that divorce does not necessarily close the door to either church fellowship or church membership or even church leadership. Whatever the tangles, the failures, the sins may have been in an individual case, God’s concern is with the present spiritual orientation of the divorced person. Where is that Christian today in his God-relationship? If a lay person, his past completely forgiven by grace, is living a life of obedient discipleship today, he ought not be excluded from church fellowship, membership, or leadership. By the same logic, neither ought a forgiven pastor, granting all the obvious complications, be excluded from a resumption of his ministry with another flock, or in some conceivable instances, the same flock. In my opinion, LEADERSHIP is rendering its readers a commendable service by bringing this issue to the fore.

-Vernon Grounds, former president Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary

The forum helpfully sensitizes us to the hurt of people who face failure in marriage, especially the pain of leaders who influence others; but the article also demonstrates God’s grace in faithfully working through our failures to produce a likeness to Jesus Christ. As a sinner who knows about failures in areas other than this one, I respond with compassion.

However, the Scriptures need to be dealt with, not just the psychological aspects of failure. Do you want to imply, for instance, that divorced pastors will be normative in the days ahead? Should we balance this with a panel of men who have left the ministry because of marital difficulties?

What can we learn if we ask hard questions like these?

1. What view of women did these men have in their early marriage and how is it different now? Did a chauvinistic attitude on the part of any of these men contribute to failure in their marriage?

2. Which is more important, ministry or covenant marriage? Would any of these marriages have been saved if these men had been willing to leave the pastorate and work on their relationship outside the public spotlight?

3. Is the importance of pastoral ministry in relation to other callings overstated? To what extent do we foster and cater to a unrealistic view of self in pastoral leadership?

-Gladys Hunt, author

You have given us a creative piece of Christian journalism, and it cannot help but draw out sympathy for these victims of domestic tragedy. I sensed an absence of blame and bitterness, and felt genuine contrition on the part of all participants.

What concerns me about the interviews is that they just might loosen the marital cement slightly, and cause other ministers who are going through difficult experiences in marriage (and who doesn’t have such) to want to join the growing number of divorced clergy (If they can do it, why can’t I?).

It is no cliche but a fact of life that the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. But my wife and I have been married forty-one years; we are now in our seventies; and

we bear witness that God’s plan for marriage “until death do us part” works well and holds up in the stretch. God pays dividends of peace, joy, and absence of pain to an unbroken marriage that he pays nowhere else.

At the same time, I admit that my earthen vessel leaks as badly as any, and I claim nothing but divine grace to a sinner in my marriage as in everything else. I look upon these divorced fellowpastors as better men than I and wish them God’s blessing and fullness of joy.

-Sherwood Wirt, editor emeritus Decision magazine

One of my concerns is that evangelicalism today is much more badly infected with secularism and worldiness than it realizes. One of the readings I’m getting is in the area of marital difficulties. Too often you have the feeling, as you talk to those afflicted, that they really don’t see the seriousness of getting a divorce. In no way can we communicate that it’s really okay to get a divorce: “Look, here are five ministers who are divorced and they’re managing all right. ” It’s wonderful to show the compassion of Christ working, but we also need to say explicitly, “Look, this is what the Word of God teaches about divorce.”

There’s a beautiful softness in the responses of these men in this article. But it’s very easy for us to translate compassion into compromise, and that’s something we cannot afford to do. I don’t want anyone to get the idea that Christianity condones divorce.

-Richard Halverson, chaplain United States Senate

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Louis McBurney Answers Questions About The Perfect Prodigal

Louis McBurney

Isn’t the whole process much more complex than this story indicates?

Although The Perfect Prodigal does simplify the procedure by focusing on one specific aspect of David’s problem, and by condensing a 288-hour experience, it is an accurate and sensitive portrayal of the process of psychotherapy.

It looks as though David puts all the blame for his problems on his mother. Is this a cop-out?

It may appear that “blaming” mom is the goal of therapy and the key to healing, but it really isn’t. The goal and key is to identify and deal effectively with conflict. Realizing that mom (or someone else) did in fact cause hurt is the first step toward that resolution. In a real sense, this “blaming” is saying more about self than the other person. It is admitting honestly that there is hurt inside that must be dealt with consciously. When hostility or a sense of rejection remains unconscious, there is no avenue for reconciliation. If one continues to deny the hurt, he must also deny his refusal to forgive the hurt. A very important theological principle is ignored (I John 1:9-10).

What other elements do you see as necessary for David’s complete recovery?

In anticipating David’s “complete recovery,” let me use the analogy of maturation. Like spiritual maturity, emotional wholeness is a goal. Attainment depends mostly on relationships-to God, others, and self. As David and you and I apply God’s principles of self-acceptance, trust, forgiveness, and love in supportive relationships, we grow toward that goal. That requires spending time and risking closeness.

How do you integrate the psychological and spiritual in your therapy, particularly in David’s case?

The Christian approach to psychotherapy must be a balanced one, blending psychological perspectives with spiritual insights. We generally see both of these contributing to the problems of life, for as psychological conflicts increase, spiritual energy is often compromised. We try to identify the specific difficulties in each area, and then bring healing through understanding, confession, love, forgiveness, and grace.

The process of this healing involves acceptance, exhortation, encouragement, and education. The tools are prayer (even before the person arrives for therapy), loving relationships (reflecting God’s forgiveness and acceptance), psychological insights t (removing barriers to spiritual vitality), scriptural guidelines (to renewed thought patterns and relationships), journal-keeping, meditation, and instruction (to help develop improved self-concept, a deeper relationship to God, and communication skills).

When David was freed from his unconscious anger and feelings of inadequacy, it opened him to see God as a loving, approving Heavenly Father. He was freed to be excited and renewed in that redemptive love–to laugh and to love.

What are the pressures of the ministry that create these problems?

As we saw in David’s story, we often bring our problems with us into ministry, sometimes unconsciously. Then the pressures of ministry-counseling, preaching, time-serve as an abrasive, which scrapes away our defensive veneer revealing the unresolved conflicts within. The specific pressures of ministry that seem most catalytic are those related to our needs for control, independence, acceptance, and sexual gratification. Examine your own areas of conflict. Are they not related to these basic issues?

How many people who come to you have this massive problem?

This is a difficult question, for to each person the load has become unbearable. We see each individual as unique, and his or her problems as uniquely overwhelming. Sensing the weight of each one of those burdens, I would have to say 100 percent!

You don’t seem to be very verbal in therapy groups. What is your role?

Melissa and I understand our roles as objective observers, sensitive probers, unobtrusive facilitators, and useful behavior models. At times, these roles can be fulfilled through nonverbal signals, including silence. At other times, we are directive and instructive in our involvement.

What are the options for a troubled pastor if your seminars are full?

As far as we know there are no programs for ministers exactly like ours, but there are many effective alternatives. These include Barnabas Ministries in Omaha; Chalet I in Buena Vista, Colorado; The Narramore Clinic; the Alban Institute; Personal and Professional Growth Seminars in Nashville, Tennessee; and others. I would suggest that troubled pastors first see what their denomination is providing. Many groups have funded counseling designed to be supportive rather than punitive toward the professional in crisis.

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

The Lord’s Chastening Hand

Alan Redpath

Saturday, September 5, 1964. I was to conduct a wedding that afternoon, so I retired to my study to arrange final details for it, and to complete preparation for the following day’s ministry at Charlotte Baptist Chapel.

Suddenly as I was writing, I lost control of my hand. It wandered all over the paper. I called out to my wife; but in a few moments I had lost my speech, my right side was paralyzed, and I found myself unable to walk. I was put to bed, and the doctor was called immediately.

I had little doubt as to what had happened, and he confirmed the verdict. It was a cerebral hemorrhage. A main artery taking blood to the brain had snapped. He said I was a “very lucky man,” because the hemorrhage had stopped just in time. Had it gone a fraction further it would have proved fatal. He suggested that I should forget any work, and take life gently. If I were prepared to do this, he told me, I could expect to live until I was ninety. If, however, I insisted on going back into harness, he thought I would probably have five years, possibly ten, but would be most unlikely to make seventy.

Medically, therefore, I knew the worst, and was left to go through the slow process of convalescence. In an illness of this kind one’s inner defenses are knocked down-physically, mentally, and spiritually. I was reduced to childhood. Physically I could only walk with difficulty; mentally I found it impossible to concentrate or think clearly; spiritually I found that I could not pray or read my Bible. It was indeed a dark, grim experience.

I confess my reactions to the illness were not the most spiritual. We often say from the pulpit, “We should never ask why in such an experience-only what?” Mot “Why has God allowed this?” but “What lessons can I learn from it?” I am afraid I found myself asking why very often. Why had God allowed this to happen to me in the midst of a busy life, and so early in a new pastorate, when he was apparently giving real blessing and the church was filled twice each Sunday?

These and other questions constantly entered my mind. I sank to depths of despair beyond description. For days I could do nothing but weep. At this time someone wrote to me saying that if only I had enough faith I could be healed immediately. I must confess such comments gave me little comfort. I did not question God’s ability to work a miracle in this dramatic way, but there came into my mind the query, “Have I any right to expect him to reverse the laws of nature, which he himself created, simply for my benefit?”

I found myself being attacked by tremendous temptation such as I had not known for twenty years or more. It seemed the devil took advantage of my helplessness to throw everything he had at me. Sinful thoughts, temptation to impurity, bad language were all the shattering experiences of those days. My wife and family suffered from having a husband and father who had reverted to childhood.

After weeks of darkness and complete despair, I remember one day crying out to God, “O Lord, deliver me from this attack of the devil. Take me right home! I would rather be in heaven than stay here any longer and know that the last memory my family would have of me would be of a man living like a cabbage. Please get me out of this situation!”

It was then, the first time for months, that it seemed the Lord drew very near to me, though I am sure he was very near all the time, even if I was unconscious of the fact. I had no vision of him, or any dramatic touch of healing, but I do know that a deep conviction came to my heart, in which he said, “You have this all wrong. The devil has nothing whatever to do with it. It is me, your Saviour, who has brought this experience into your life to show you two things.

“First, this is the kind of person-with all your sinful thoughts and temptations, which you thought were things of the past-that you always will be, but for my grace. I have never intended to make you a better man.

“In the second place, I want to replace you with myself, if you will only allow me to be God in you, and admit that you are a complete failure, and that the only good thing about Alan Redpath is Jesus.”

That, of course, was a truth which I had known in theory, and indeed had preached for some years. But now I know it in experience. “I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to but I can’t” (Romans 7:18). How that verse lived in my life in a new way that day, and ever since!

-Alan Redpath Former pastor of Moody Church

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Toward a Theology of Management

Edward R. Dayton

The pastor was late for the meeting. John Hammond, one of the newer members on the board, was using the occasion to express himself: “Why can’t we run this church like a business? I don’t see why we have so much trouble making a decision. Most of us around this table are businessmen and we don’t have any trouble making decisions at work. Why does it take so long to come to a simple conclusion in a church meeting?”

Across town at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Harry Osborne, an engineer, was using a PERT chart to explain his proposal for a new fund raising system to an adult class. He was well into his presentation when Jack Andrews, who had been sitting rather glumly in the back row, exploded. “Harry, I’ve heard enough! What you’re trying to do is drag all that management stuff into our church. I come to church to get away from the world. I have to put up with management jargon day after day at work. The church is no place for business charts. What we need around here is more time for praying and less time trying to figure things out ourselves.”

All of these stories have at heart a problem which is found in churches everywhere. Some look at the problem and see it as a lack of spiritual understanding. Others see it as an inability to manage well. In reality, it’s the very old problem of understanding the relationship between the sacred and the secular. We’re unable to relate our theology to our leadership problems. The people in each of the above examples live with the dichotomy of “church” on the one hand and “management” on the other. They never have sorted through the processes and structures, methods and forms in which they carry on the work of the church, to see which ones fit their situation and which ones don’t. In short, they’ve never worked out a “theology of management.”

In the church, our response to our world and its systems takes two extremes: On the one hand, we’ve picked up some of the tools of modern management and put them to work without much thought. On the other hand, we’re uneasy about a lot of them-and rightfully so. As Christians, we know people are more important than products and systems. The whole tenor of the New Testament stresses the importance of relationships. The themes of righteousness, justice, mercy, and goodness all have to do with relationships. When we are asked to operate in organizational systems that seem to be based on machine models in which people are components, we naturally wonder whether such systems have a Christian basis. When we further understand that “management” is about people in organizations, we may also wonder about the efficacy of such an art or science.

But to survive, we must manage, for the number of Christian organizations multiplies daily. Two new (Christian schools are started every day in the United States. Mission organizations and other para-church organizations continue to expand. Many of our Christian organizations are taking on a financial size and complexity undreamed of a few years ago. All of these organizations require some form of management.

In response to this, a number of Christians have written books about management; but many of the writers have picked up the management tools of the world and dropped them into the church setting without passing them through a “biblical filter.”

We do the same thing in our churches. We take biblical illustrations and move directly to our own situations without sorting out the fundamental principles in those illustrations. We don’t apply our theology to our culture.

The most obvious place to see this is in our organizational structures. These structures must stand under the judgment of the Bible, but the fundamental judgment is not whether they are organized correctly, but rather, are they just? Are they merciful? Are they loving? Do they produce righteousness? And do they reflect the biblical concept of the personal relationships which are the “givens” of the Christian life?

Dick Wilson graduated from a good seminary five years ago. The first church he served was very small, and he used many of the small group techniques he learned at seminary. But now Dick is in a larger church, and for reasons that are bewildering him and frustrating members of his board, the small group methods aren’t working. What Dick doesn’t understand is the fundamental difference between small group methods and those that are needed for a larger group. He doesn’t understand the different expectations of his people in various situations.

Pastor Ed Johnson helped to begin First Covenant Church, and the church had grown to an average Sunday attendance of 500. Both Ed and some of the old-timers always assumed that the beautiful, close fellowship they had when they began to emphasize church growth could be maintained. But lately, some of the older members are leaving the church. “It doesn’t seem the same anymore,” they complain. Ed Johnson doesn’t understand that the way a church of 500 organizes itself and works is quite different from that of a church of 100.

When the new Christian education building was planned for Calvary Baptist Church, the members decided they would make sure they had all of the funds in hand before they committed themselves for further work. By the time the building was half finished, the people were no longer giving. What had seemed like a spiritually sound idea did not account for the fact that these church members were used to investing in the future. It had taken five years to get enough money to begin. During that time the value of the dollar had depreciated noticeably. Now the membership had no heart to start saving again only to see the value of their savings deteriorate.

When we study theology in seminary or Bible school, we usually do it in the abstract. We are attempting to uncover biblical principles that will stand us in good stead in our life and work. Far too often we do not receive training in how to apply our theology. Rather, it is assumed that we will automatically be able to apply what we believe to the real situation that faces us. The result is that many pastors and their congregations have little ability to judge the everyday world around them. They neatly divide the sacred and secular aspects of life.

We need to learn the task of management, but we need to go about it in light of biblical truth. Unfortunately, most of us are ill-equipped for the task.

I am very much aware of this at the moment, because I’ve been part of the planning group for the Institute for Christian Organizational Development. Recognizing that the executives of Christian organizations need to learn management, but also need to learn it in a theological setting, Fuller Theological Seminary recently formed the institute for just that purpose. The seminary will bring top and middle managers from these groups into a seminar with management experts and theologians. After some straightforward teaching on topics such as planning and communication, the participants will work at solving real management problems using both their management skills and theological insights. In this way they will not only learn better how to apply theology, but will perhaps discover their own theological assumptions.

Many of the managers of Christian organizations and churches come to a role of leadership through an accident of history or because of some personal skills. They lack training in the fundamentals of management. The faculty of Fuller Seminary are responding to this need. But in designing the curriculum, they want to provide the point of integration between “secular” management and “sacred” theology. Hopefully, other schools will follow their lead.

We often speak today about “the loss of the sacred,” and we see this loss in modern management with its pragmatic emphasis on productivity. The extreme here is the acceptance of anything that works, without any concern for the means being justified by the end. The other extreme is a complete rejection of the art or science of management as “unspiritual” and not the way to carry on the work of the church.

We must avoid both extremes. After all, management is simply the business of getting things done through other people. Every leader, and that includes pastors, is a manager, and must continually work out his or her theology of management.

-Edward R. Dayton

World Vision International

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

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