One-Minute Maturity - Christianity Today

I bought The One Minute Manager. Then I bought Putting the One Minute Manager to Work. I like the idea of becoming a great leader in sixty seconds.

Given our ecclesiastical penchant for baptizing and marketing secular trends a few years after they've peaked, I've been waiting for someone to come out with The One Minute Pastor: A sixty-second guide to spiritual authenticity, vital prayer, and a fully-tithing congregation.

I wish it were possible. Sometimes I feel as if sixty seconds is all I've got. I went into pastoral ministry because I believe the quest to know God transcends all other pursuits. Yet I find the sheer busyness of this work hinders my pursuing God more than any other obstacle.

Often ministry actually reinforces my inattentiveness to God. And I have days when I feel if God really wants me to get all this work done, he'd better take care of his personal business with me in about a minute.

A phone call from a parishioner struck a chord. "I want to know God better, but prayer and reading Scripture always seems such an effort. Will that ever change?" I mumbled something about C. S. Lewis's insight that "what seem our worst prayers, those least supported by devotional feeling, may really be, in God's eyes, our best." But I didn't have much to say beyond that because she had asked the same question I was asking.

I began to wonder: Am I making any real progress in spirituality? Am I really any more like Christ today than I was five years ago? How do I even pursue that? I felt discontented and guilty about my own lack of spiritual development.

Then a statement in Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines nailed me: "My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing-by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself." If Jesus practiced solitude, silence, prayer, simple living, submission, and worship on a regular basis, the only way for me to become more like him is to arrange my life as he arranged his.

So I began trying to incorporate the spiritual disciplines into the life of a one minute pastor. I started with solitude and silence.

Accompanied in Solitude

Thomas Merton calls solitude the most basic of the disciplines, saying, "True solitude cleanses the soul." This was impossible to do at home. With three children under the age of five, our house has all the peace and quiet of Normandy beach on D-day. So each day I started coming into the office an hour or two before others arrive to take advantage of the stillness.

Then I decided to schedule a whole day away from the church for solitude. I waited for a week light enough to afford a workday away. It never came. So I finally designated a retreat day on the calendar and decided to work around it.

I had never taken a retreat like this before, and I wasn't sure what to do. In my tradition, a retreat is something you do with lots of other people, where you listen to speakers and lots of music, where there is always noise and activity to help you avoid silence and solitude. A really good retreat, by our usual reckoning, usually requires a week of rest afterward, for most are fashioned after the manner of General George Patton, had he been a Baptist.

My retreat, though, began in a chapel on a high bluff overlooking the ocean. The chapel is mostly glass, set in a grove of pine trees, designed so you can stand a few feet in front of it and hardly realize it's there. I sat down inside, alone, and began praying efficiently through a list I had prepared for the day-lest I should have nothing to do.

Sure enough, my worst fears materialized. By 10:30 A.M., I was prayed out. I had said everything I had to say, and God hadn't said anything at all. I wished one of us was more talkative.

So I went down to the shore and watched the surf come crashing in; I inhaled the salty sea breeze and thought about nothing. I was surprised how good I was at it.

It was while watching the sea gulls glide and the pelicans swoop and swerve and crash dive for their lunch that I understood what I was there to learn: my own life had become earthbound and wingless. I was plodding from task to task with blinders on, oblivious to the drama and passion of real life. I had shackled myself with my fear of not pleasing people. I had sculpted messages to find acceptance from those who happened to hold power over what I labeled success-even though their understanding of the spiritual life might not be the same as mine.

In solitude I observed that the purpose of flight is not just to find fish or a place to land. The purpose of flight is to fly, for the sheer joy of it.

The purpose of life is not simply to find techniques to be successful. The purpose of life is to laugh, to weep, to pray, to bring joy to my wife and children, to know God. Being saved means more than affirming a creed and avoiding a few highly visible behaviors. It means to live. Yet the lifestyle of a one minute pastor gave me no time to live, and hence no time to be saved.

Now I often spend my retreat days at the ocean. I still wrestle with restlessness, a sense that I should be doing something. But knowing these waves were crashing thousands of years before me and will be crashing thousands of years after me has a way of putting life in perspective and making me a little less messianic.

According to the Historia Anglorium, Canute, an eleventh-century king of England, decided to counteract the flattery of his counselors by sitting on a chair at the beach and forbidding the tide to come in. When it continued to come in, he took off his crown and hung it on a statue of the crucified Christ, and he never wore it again.

Silence Is . . .

Once a week I schedule a "quiet day," a fast from noise. I try to talk as little as possible. I take advantage of "quiet opportunities." For instance, I won't listen to tapes or the radio when I'm driving. During these days I realize how addicted to noise I've become.

By practicing silence, I have also grown aware that much of what I say is "impression management," designed to enhance my image. I was at a pastors' conference talking with two pastors when one of them asked the other how his church was doing, which is pastors' talk for "How big is your church?" and "How important are you?" After they both answered the question, they asked me the same, and I unthinkingly found myself about to inflate our attendance by fifty people.

In a moment of silence before speaking, it occurred to me, What am I trying to do? Am I really going to impress these people by convincing them the church is fifty people larger than it is? Am I really ready to sacrifice my integrity for the status gained by fifty lousy people? (So I stretched it by five hundred, figuring if I'm going to compromise my integrity, I might as well make it worthwhile!)

Reading Scripture Uselessly

Reading Scripture is another area where I fight the one minute battle. I used to try to save time by using the same texts for personal reflection I would later use for sermons. I've heard of pastors who center their devotional reading around material they will preach in three years.

But whenever I try to do something like that I end up focusing on how I can "use" the text in a message, and I relate it to every soul but mine. So I've had to deliberately read Bible texts I will not be preaching from.

I've also begun reading books that give specific exercises for visualizing or meditating on Scripture.

Spiritual Exercises, by Ignatius Loyola, has helped me greatly by prompting me, for example, to examine my conscience for the sin most destructive to me or to contemplate the consequences of sin.

The Freedom of Confession

The discipline of confession scared me more than any of the other disciplines. In spite of the fact that our culture values authenticity, being a pastor puts certain boundaries on self-disclosure. We can't just step into the pulpit and say, "I wrestled with lust this week, and I'm not sure I won."

Yet I wanted to do just that with someone-someone whose spirituality I respected, who could keep things confidential, offer unconditional acceptance, and be utterly truthful with me. I finally approached a friend of ten years who also is active in ministry.

We meet weekly for a time of confession. I attempt to disclose fully the attitudes and behaviors I've struggled with during the week. By now he knows my primary temptations, so he often comes at me with direct questions as well.

Finding the right place to meet can pose a bigger challenge than finding the right person. We'd finally settled on a snack bar at a local racquetball club. One Wednesday, while we each finished up an Orange Julius, one of us (who shall remain anonymous) talked about sexual temptations. When we got up to leave, we noticed two 10-year-olds at the next table hanging on our every word.

So now we meet at a secluded table or in empty tennis court bleachers, far from curious ears.

As awkward as I felt about beginning the practice of confession, now I can't imagine doing without it. Knowing I'm going to give account to somebody keeps me from falling into many traps I otherwise wouldn't avoid. And I get a tremendous sense of release from confessing to another person.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "Confession is the God-given remedy for self-deception and self-indulgence. When we confess our sins before a brother-Christian, we are mortifying the pride of the flesh and delivering it up to shame and death through Christ. Then through the word of absolution we rise as new men. … Confession is thus a genuine part of the life of the saints, and one of the gifts of grace."

Service Begins at Home

The discipline of service probably comes least naturally for me. One of the chief places I've tried to practice this discipline is at home. I'm often tempted to play I've Had a Harder Day than You, and I Deserve to Be Taken Care of by You with my wife. (Being a pastor is worth bonus points in this game. I'm not only doing work, I'm doing God's work.)

Recently on vacation at Yosemite, my wife and I, with infant in tow, had hiked about half a mile from our Toyota when we realized the baby's bottle had been left behind; someone would have to go get it. Since there was a tacit assumption (mine) that making sure we had the baby's bottle was my wife's job, I let her know I was frustrated at having to retrieve it.

I didn't say anything directly (like most pastors, I pout), I just gave her enough nonverbal clues to suggest I felt imposed upon.

It wasn't until the next morning that I saw I had turned what could have been an act of service, however tiny, given joyfully in love, into an act of withdrawal and self-preoccupation.

So I've started scheduling times when I take care of the kids or do extra things around the house, and I make an internal commitment not to keep track. I'm still no Brother Lawrence around the house; I've not made an omelet and then thrown myself on the ground in adoration and praise. But at least I've scrambled eggs a few times. And I'm more likely to help clean up afterward.

The Fasting Track

I wasn't sure how to use fasting when I initially tried it. The whole activity was foreign to me. It conjured up images of emaciated types in loin cloths who looked like Gunga Din.

My primary discovery the first day I fasted was how many fast-food restaurants there were in our community.

I've also discovered how much church life tends to revolve around eating: Wherever two or three Baptists are gathered together there shall be coffee and Winchell's doughnuts in the midst of them. It's been humbling to find out how much I think about food.

It has become progressively easier, however. Somehow-and I don't know what the connection is-when I fast I become much more aware of how hurried I am. I've also discovered a real link between fasting and the ability to resist cravings for things besides food.

Fasting is sometimes hard to reconcile with home life. One night when I had forgotten to tell my wife I was fasting, I came home to spaghetti that had been cooking all day just for me, and there was homemade cheesecake for dessert. I quickly decided that the discipline of submission and pleasing my wife was more important that evening than maintaining my fast.

A Disciplined Pastor?

Has practicing the disciplines made me a better pastor? I don't know. I hesitate to ask; one of my problems as a one minute pastor is the tendency to measure everything in terms of career enhancement.

I know one thing: I'm not very good at any of the disciplines yet. Thomas Merton wrote, "We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners all our life!"

I suppose the main thing I've gotten from the disciplines so far is hope-that the effort to become more like Christ has a definite shape. It's no longer just a vague desire. There are things I can do. And, given a lifetime, real change is possible.

That's good news. Because there are no one minute angels.