Most pastors suffer the occasional bout of low self-esteem. Especially on the Mondays when we drink the blackest coffee we can find while we re-examine our calling.
Insufficient, inadequate, incapable, unnecessary—the pastorate has a way of making us wonder if we’re really suited for this kind of leadership.
These feelings of insignificance, however, stem from a misunderstanding of what true leadership is. Having superficially trained ourselves on the burgeoning, popular leadership lore, we tend to prize our lives most when we see ourselves becoming powerful and influential—or in other words, becoming “necessary” to the churches we serve.
Eugene Peterson and Marva Dawn present a simpler, two-step philosophy of true success in their book, The Unnecessary Pastor (Eerdmans, 2000).
First, pastors should become Christ-centered.
Second, Peterson and Dawn advocate “just being there,” helping God happen to the world, without needing to be the fulcrum of His work.
Peterson quotes Henri Nouwen on the matter: “The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.”
Peterson starts the book by reminding us of three misconceptions fueling the fallacy that a pastor must be necessary. First, calling is not defined by cultural presumption (that pastors be paragons of goodness and nicety). Second, it is not defined by personal ambition (to be a pastor of influence and power whose charisma and skill hold the congregation together and keep it focused). Third, calling is not defined by congregational expectations (that pastors be leaders who can out-fox, out-preach, and out-wheel-and-deal all competing congregations in the area).
Unfortunately, most of us pastors cling to our own necessity and buy into search-committee romances. Why do we have these occasional near-suicidal Mondays? Because we cannot possibly live up to this all-important job description.
We have taken upon ourselves too much of the work of God. We are out to save the day, if not the world. When we find ourselves inadequate to save either, we pout about our failures.
Peterson laments, “Ecclesiastical affairs require armies of ordained men and women to keep the wheels turning. Instead of putting us on the front lines of reconciling love for the world, [ordination] has conscripted us into jobs and agendas that effectively remove us from the very world whose plight is the reason for our ordination.”
We can be cured, but not until we agree to our “unnecessariness.” Peterson sets forth his case in three pastors who took their place in Scripture because they agreed to being unnecessary. The first is Paul, who knew how to let go of a church and turn the reins of ministry over to another, demonstrating a leadership of humility. The second is Timothy, who could take a church whose ministry was confused and inept and hurting, and reform it. The third is Titus, who understood how to build community in a religiously ignorant culture.
From the Pastoral Epistles, Peterson builds the argument for the Christ-loving pastor who is willing to be less important—even unnecessary. Dawn’s chapters, which examine the pastoral theology of Ephesians, are interspersed between Peterson’s. Marva Dawn is not the guru you turn to for polishing your skills as a mega-church leader in search of reputation. She is not an image consultant for the fame-hungry. There are many of those kinds of books on the market, and any single title among them will likely outsell her honest look at what God has called us to be. In a way, the book’s subtitle (“rediscovering the call”) happens as you read her work.
Dawn is a glistening soul who is committed to her own “lifelong immersion in the texts of Scripture.” With lingering strains of the same doxology she began in Reaching Out without Dumbing Down (Eerdmans, 1995) and A Royal Waste of Time (Eerdmans, 1999), she reminds us of the unnecessary life exemplified in praise.
She calls on pastors to crave the true mystery that ushers us into wonder. Such a praising life can seem irrelevant in tending the busy machinery of the church. But without it, neither the pastor nor the church has true life.
In a splendid chapter, Dawn helps the pastor deal with principalities and powers. She leans heavily on Jacques Ellul to support her case, but she delivers ministers from seeing all their woes as the result of mismanaging the relationships within the church.
Dawn’s work always throbs with two great ideas: adoration and community. Whatever she starts out to say, she ends up speaking about these great ideas. It is no shortcoming. Her health and need, her scholarship and research, come to focus on these transformational truths.
Adoration and community stand at the center of what Bonhoeffer called “our lives together.” Dawn is always “together.” She is either together with Jesus, from whom comes the bright sheen of her thinking, or she is together in the community of faith, holding Jesus within her while she looks around for others involved in her same inner worship. In a world of academics and power mongers, I must confess I find all she writes delicious.
I discovered myself wishing the book was longer, a wish I seldom have. I wished I could sit and confess in the authors’ presence, confess that I often found myself too necessary. I once wanted to grow a church, and I wanted it to be big. I went to leadership conferences and have even led a few. I have always lobbied for pastoral authority and vision-driven influence.
Now my repentance has found a text. I discovered long ago as a pastor that I often grew tired of assuming my call was to succeed. Now, I grow tired of those I meet who have taken up my old compulsive habits.
Peterson and Dawn’s book is a path back to the altar of honesty. Dawn and Peterson have come to set us free of our addictions to self-importance. It has always been better to be needy than necessary. Their book rightly teaches us that we are unnecessary. When we doubt it, we are irrelevant as well.
Calvin Miller is an author and professor of preaching at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama.
Frontline Evangelism
Where every pastor is very needed. Rick EzellEvangelism is one of Christianity’s highest touted values, but the least practiced. In a country where only 14 percent of pastors credit their churches with earnest evangelism, Mark Mittelberg’s book, Building a Contagious Church (Zondervan, 2000), calls churches to take up the frontline in the battle for the lost.
Like the advertisement of a few years ago—”It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile”—postmodern society bears little resemblance to that of our fathers. More secular than ever, people are no longer a few steps away from God; they are far removed with many barriers between them and conversion. Today’s football fans don’t know what “John 3:16” refers to, much less quote the words of that verse.
Since the world has changed, Mittelberg says, evangelistic methods must also change.
Building a Contagious Church offers a practical, insightful strategy for increasing a church’s effectiveness in evangelism. The book weaves anecdotes and studies into a call for transformation in the church. At the heart of this strategy is a six-stage process Mittelberg implemented while director of evangelism at Willow Creek:
1. Church leaders must own and model evangelistic values.
2. Evangelistic values must be instilled in the people.
3. The church must empower someone in the church to lead the evangelistic charge.
4. Every believer in the local church must be equipped and mobilized to share in the evangelism mandate. Drawing from his personal evangelism training curriculum, Becoming a Contagious Christian (Zondervan, 1996), Mittelberg identifies six evangelism styles and expands on them from a corporate perspective.
5. Develop an evangelism team that will carry the banner of evangelism in every ministry of the church.
6. Provide high-impact outreach ministries and events.
Evangelistic entropy, warns Mittelberg, is “the second law of spiritual dynamics … that all of us in the Christian community, if left to ourselves, move toward spiritual self-centeredness” and away from evangelistic fervor. And if the evangelistic vision does not exist in the church, the results of evangelistic events, no matter how creative, will be negligible.
Mittelberg declares, “If we really want to achieve our church’s redemptive potential, we’re going to have to revolutionize the way we view and do evangelism. We’re going to have to declare war on every front, push back evangelistic entropy, and make reaching and retaining lost people for Christ our top priority.”
He warns of what he refers to as “the great evangelical rationalization,” namely, “If one person came to Christ through this, then it’s all worth it.” Instead, we should be seeking to reach as many people for Christ as possible. Mittelberg suggests that in a fully mobilized church, we can seek at least 10 converts for every 100 attenders each year. With that kind of growth rate, churches can double in size every seven years, and the growth of Christianity would become epidemic.
Mittelberg writes with compelling passion. His insights, while mostly from a large church perspective, have practical implications for mid-size to smaller congregations. I will use many of his ideas in my own church.
There were times I felt the book was laden with promotion of Zondervan and Willow Creek Association products, and the full transcripts of Bill Hybels’ sermons made a long book even longer. Nonetheless, the book serves as a call to arms and provides some weaponry for the battle. Mittelberg has encouraged me to take my position on the frontline.
Rick Ezell is senior pastor of Naperville Baptist Church, Naperville, Illinois.
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership.
