A pastor I know was recently rushed to the hospital with sudden paralysis on his right side. While out on a call, a chilling numbness had begun crawling up his right leg. By the time he reached home, he thought he was dying.
Four doctors worked on him into the wee hours of the morning but found nothing. Finally they began quizzing his wife about unusual pressures her husband might be facing. Their diagnosis: “We suspect your husband is suffering from stress; he’s not the first pastor we’ve seen in this condition.” Later they explained that recovery would most likely involve treatment at a mental hospital.
Survival in the ministry today depends in part on pastors’ ability to understand and diagnose their own stress. One of the great stress producers in the pastorate is the inordinate number of meetings we are expected to attend. During a “normal” week, I attend four formal meetings and at least two committee meetings. To say I attend these meetings is misleading; usually I’m in charge, which means I have to come prepared with a message, a devotional, an agenda, or some other presentation. Being in charge is an enormous emotional drain, a drain the congregation does not fully comprehend.
Pastors who love Jesus seldom complain about spending themselves for the kingdom. Being wise as serpents, however, demands that we spend ourselves in something productive. Many church leaders are beginning to see that our present structure of multiplied meetings is unproductive, many times even counterproductive.
How do you gauge the number of meetings that are healthy for you and the church? There are no easy formulas. The size of the church and staff, your geographic location, and the church’s goals must all be factored into the decision. There are, however, some telling questions to aid the pastor and board:
1. Are church meetings preventing us from reaching the lost? Churches that evangelize primarily through meetings will find such a question irrelevant, but churches that reach out through their membership understand that time is needed to make contacts and cultivate friendships with unbelievers. A church calendar cluttered with meetings interferes with the Great Commission.
In a football game, huddles are designed to lead to plays; without the play, the huddle is absurd. Huddles are cozy. Running the play is risky. Sometimes I picture Christ in a black-and-white striped shirt with a silver whistle in his mouth, ready to call a penalty for too much time in the huddle.
2. Are church meetings interfering with family unity? The verbs in Moses’ provocative speech to Israel’s families remind me that it takes large chunks of time to grow a family. Parents were commanded to teach and talk to their children “when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up” (Deut. 6:7). I like to think of these as “home-grown” verbs. They convince me God is unhappy with the rampant absenteeism that prevails in too many of our homes.
Often, I confess, my home is only a stop-off place between meetings where I grab a bite to eat, change clothes, and catch some sleep. God says, “Sit with your family; walk with your family; be there to tuck them in and be there when they get up in the morning.” Meetings must become the servants to that mandate, not the other way around.
3. Are church meetings negatively affecting my physical, emotional, and spiritual health? Charles Simeon, a Methodist pastor of the 1700s who argued for fewer meetings, wrote, “I compare myself to bottled small beer; being corked up, and opened only twice a week, I make a good report; but if I were opened every day, I should soon be as ditch water.”
Bottled beer and ditch water-funny but accurate ways to describe a pastor’s condition. Yet every pastor can relate to being a source of refreshment or flatness. Our vigor is not merely a personal concern. Our congregations are better refreshed by having us twice a week in an animated state than five times in stagnation.
Honest answers to these questions will lead pastors and church leaders into the controversial business of cutting and trimming. But with evangelism, families, and health (ours and the congregation’s) at stake, we have no choice but to break out our ecclesiastical scalpels. If we are skilled surgeons, we can cut with a minimum of blood. Here are some suggestions:
First, begin by educating, which in most cases will amount to un-educating. Like it or not, we must confess that certain meetings have been almost canonized. Sincere but misguided teachers have taught that “People who love their church come Sunday mornings; people who love their Bibles stay for Sunday school; folks who love their pastor come again Sunday night; and those love the Lord show up for prayer meetings.” Simplistic formulas like these have to be debunked.
Re-education is most effective when performed in an atmosphere of love and patience. Instead of bullying our way through the front door, we can slip in the back way. I recently asked a group of our people to identify the sacred words in the title, “The Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting Service.” They quickly saw that corporate prayer was the issue, not Wednesday night.
Using sanctified humor also helps get the point across. I got a good laugh when I shared about a Martian who visited our planet and returned to tell about a strange group called “the church” who exist for the sole purpose of holding meetings.
Second, encourage people to pray about which church programs to be involved with. This helps them see that church meetings are not forever settled in heaven. A new sense of Christ’s headship emerges. Instead of presenting our agenda for his stamp of approval, we invite him to chair our planning committee for reaching the world.
Third, be understanding of people’s reticence to reduce the number of meetings. God’s people are justifiably fearful of compromise, and many erroneously equate fewer meetings with watered-down commitment. Help them to understand the true nature of commitment by showing how Jesus played down programs and played up people and their needs.
When our church began small group ministries in homes, attendance dropped at our Wednesday night prayer meeting. Conscientious members voiced concern about our commitment to prayer.
I explained, “Our commitment to prayer has never been stronger. We have more people praying together than ever before in the history of our church.” Now many are beginning to see the wisdom of beginning new forms centering on the Word, prayer, evangelism, and fellowship.
Fourth, begin consolidating wherever you can. We tried to lump as many meetings as possible on one night of the week and avoid all extra Sunday meetings. Sure, it limited what people could be involved in, but it helped in our goal to make church members more people-oriented and less program-oriented.
Making the needed changes in Christ’s church is pioneer work, and pioneer work is both exhilarating and exasperating. As our church has gone through this trying transitional time, I have asked, and been asked, some hard questions. “Pastor, don’t you think that giving people more time at home will result in more time in front of the TV?” It’s a tough question. I don’t have easy answers. But I know that such questions cannot stand in the way of pioneer advance.
There have been times through this whole process that I have wavered and said to myself, “Maybe you ought to leave well enough alone.” But through a number of incidents, the Lord has encouraged me to keep going. For instance, while sitting around the supper table discussing the breakneck speeds of our respective churches, my brother-in-law, a layman, said, “Paul, I think it’s time we re-evaluate what the Bible means by ‘not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together.’ ” Could it be that some people have an opposite problem from the Hebrews-and are not forsaking meetings but are addicted to them?
Another motivating incident was a recent trip to China. There we found a growing church of more than thirty million believers. The believers we talked to were fortunate to meet once a week for worship; they had no pastor, no church programs. Yet we witnessed a zeal seldom experienced on this side of the world. We learned from them a brand of Christianity that is not all meetings, It was more than attractive; it was compelling. And it still propels me today.
-Paul Caminiti
Grand Rapids, Michigan
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