Clergy Appreciation Day/Month

Dogs do some things better than humans. For one thing, most dogs have a far better sense of smell than we do, and there is a physical reason for that. The sinuses of humans have about 6 million receptor cells that can sense the chemical odors afloat in the air. By contrast, the average beagle has more than 300 million receptor cells in its snout—that's 50 times more cells for smells. The dominant sense through which most humans perceive their world is their eyesight, but the dominant sense through which dogs perceive their world is through their nose. A human can walk down the sidewalk and perhaps perceive a faint aroma of flowers upwind a few feet ahead. A dog walking the same sidewalk perceives as well the traces of every dog or animal that has been in the area.

Just as dogs and humans have different levels of ability to perceive smells, people have differences in their ability to perceive other things. Some people hear much better than others. Some people have greater ability to perceive emotions in others. Some have greater ability intellectually to perceive ideas as they read.

Most important of all, some people have greater ability to perceive things spiritually and morally because they have devoted themselves to prayer and to learning from the Bible and applying it to their lives and their world. Others have greater spiritual discernment because of the spiritual gifts and callings that God has placed on them. For many reasons, all people do not have the same ability to perceive.

A CEO has taken on a new job, and the outgoing CEO says to him, "Sometimes you'll make wrong choices. You will. You'll mess up. When that happens, I have prepared three envelopes for you. I left them in the top drawer of the desk. The first time it happens, open #1. The second time you mess up, open #2. The third time, open #3."

For the first few months, everything goes fine. Then the CEO makes his first mistake, goes to the drawer, opens up envelope #1, and the message reads, "Blame me." So he does: "This is the old CEO's fault. He made these mistakes. I inherited these problems." Everybody says, "Okay." It works out pretty well.

Things go fine for a while, and then he makes his second mistake. So, he goes to the drawer and opens up envelope #2. This time he reads, "Blame the board." And he does: "It's the board's fault. The board has been a mess. I inherited them. They're the problem." Everybody says, "Okay, that makes sense."

Things go fine for a while, and then he makes his third mistake. So, he goes to the drawer and opens up envelope #3. The message reads: "Prepare three envelopes."

When you get a chance to be saved, you gotta grab it.

—Bear Grylls, popular star of the Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild, in a commercial promoting the Alpha Course

Pastor and Author Matt Woodley writes in a blog post titled "Evangelized by the Pizza Man”:

My friend Emilio owns a tiny pizzeria that makes the best New York pizza on Long Island. Emilio hates "organized religion." Above the stove where he sticks the orders, he also collects small newspaper clippings about flawed and fallen ministers. I call it his "rack of shame." Every time I come in for pizza, he leans over the counter, slides a few clippings on to the counter, and whispers, "Hey, look at this. This padre walked off with $80,000. This pastor slept with three church members. This guy abused little boys for twenty years. Okay, do you get why I don't need your church?" Then, with a triumphant flair, he sticks the articles back on his "rack of shame."

A few months ago, fed up with his clergy-bashing, I blurted out, "What does this prove, Emilio? So priests and pastors do despicable things. What if I started a rack of shame for people in your profession and then declared that I will never eat pizza?" Actually, over the next few weeks I tried rummaging through newspapers looking for articles about pizza guys doing nasty things—spitting in the bread dough or using cheap Ragu instead of homemade sauce—but apparently pizza guys live pretty clean lives.

Finally, after a month or two of bickering back and forth, I came to Emilio and said, "I need to order two slices of cheese, and I need to ask your forgiveness."

He bristled and shot back, "Is this a joke or a trick?"

"No, really, Emilio, I'm truly sorry for being a jerk and for arguing with you—and I want the cheese slices, too. The truth is that ministers do screw up. We can be pretty decent people; but sometimes we're frauds and hypocrites. Sometimes I'm a sham."

Emilio immediately softened, and we've actually become friends. But I didn't say this as an evangelism strategy. I said it because it's true and it's the gospel. I love the line that summarizes the gospel this way: "We are more flawed than we'd ever dare to admit; we're more loved than we'd ever dare to imagine." I'm not sure why it's so hard to get this simple truth. I qualify for the cosmic rack of shame, but through God's infinite mercy, Jesus took my place on the rack and set me free.

Emilio, my outraged, anti-clerical, unchurched, pizza-making friend, helped me see the gospel again. I guess he evangelized me. I guess I have to be more careful: Jesus keeps sneaking up on me. I never know where he'll pop up next!

You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself.

—Athanasius of Alexandria, Patriarch of Alexandria and Church Father (c. 293-373)

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes about a kingdom called Gondor which for many years has had no king. While waiting for the rightful heir to come and claim his throne, a series of stewards has been placed in charge of the land. The steward in charge at the time of the events described in the book is named Denethor. He has two sons, Boromir and Faramir, both of whom figure prominently in the story (and subsequently, in the movie). As steward of the land, Denethor had the power of the king but without the title and without the full measure of honor. He was able to make decisions and to pass judgment. He received the respect and admiration of the people of the land. His primary task was to do whatever was best for the land in the absence of its rightful ruler. In all he did he was to remember his position—to remember that he was not, and never would be, the king. As a constant reminder of his temporary position he was forbidden to rule from the king's throne. [Tolkien writes:]

Awe fell upon him as he looked down that avenue of kings long dead. At the far end upon a dais of many steps was set a throne under a canopy of marble shaped like a crowned helm; behind it was carved upon the wall and set with gems an image of a tree in flower. But the throne was empty. At the foot of the dais, upon the lowest step which was broad and deep, there was a stone chair, black and unadorned, and on it sat an old man gazing at his lap.

That man, of course, was the steward. Where the king was allowed the full honor of sitting upon the throne, surrounded by splendor, the steward was consigned to rule from a plain, unadorned chair that sat at the foot of the throne.

Denethor was not a very good steward. He dreaded the day the king would return, for he knew that with the return of the king would come his own return to obscurity. He jealously guarded the power that had been given him and did not look forward to the day when he would have to relinquish the kingdom to its rightful owner. This attitude affected his every decision, and he often ruled based on his own desire for preservation rather than on the basis of what would be best for the kingdom he was sworn to protect.

Denethor said," The Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men's purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, my lord, is mine and no other man's, unless the king should come again."

To this Gandalf replied, "Unless the king should come again? Well, my lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom against that even, which few now look to see.

Denethor went beyond the care of his office and became corrupted by the enemy. His abuse of what had been entrusted to him led to his own corruption.

This concept of stewardship is one that has been largely lost to our time and our culture. We understand ownership, borrowing, leasing, and mortgaging but have little knowledge of stewardship. Yet it is a crucial concept in the Bible. Scripture tells us that we are to regard all that God gives us as if we are stewards, not owners (see, for example, Luke 12). This is true of wealth; it is true of talents; it is true of opportunities and children and spouses and property and businesses and everything else. Where God has given richly, much is expected in return. At no time does God give us full and final ownership of what he has given us. He gives us but the opportunity to be stewards of his gifts.

Stewardship is more difficult than we may think. How tightly we like to cling to those things that we regard as ours. How tightly we cling to our money and how quick we are to set our hope in the uncertainty of riches (1 Timothy 6:17). How difficult it is to release our children to the care of God, knowing that we are but stewards of them for the short time God grants them to us. How prone we are to hold fast to all of the wrong things. How hard it is for us to understand that we do not occupy the throne. No, we are those who sit in the steward's unadorned stone chair, far below, in the shadow of the throne.

Denethor held fast to the wrong things. Drunk with corruption and power and unwilling to hand over the kingdom, Denethor, steward of Gondor, eventually took his own life, ending his years of poor stewardship. He would rather die than give up the power that he thought was his. He would rather die than humble himself before the king.

Denethor's son, Faramir, took his father's place as the next in a long line of stewards. And no sooner did he do this than Aragorn, the heir to the throne, returned to Gondor. Faramir was faced with all that was so important to his father. Would Faramir be like his father? Or would he be a faithful steward? [Tolkien writes:]

Faramir met Aragorn in the midst of those there assembled, and he knelt, and said: "The last steward of Gondor begs leave to surrender his office." …

Then Faramir stood up and spoke in a clear voice: "Men of Gondor, hear now the Steward of this realm! Behold! One has come to claim the kingship again at last. Here is Aragorn son of Arathorn… . Shall he be king and enter into the city and dwell there?" And all the host and all the people cried yea with one voice.

Moments later, when the new king has been crowned, it is Faramir who leads the cries of "Behold the king!"

Faramir was everything his father was not. He was a good and faithful steward who looked forward to the return of his king and who was willing and ready to hand what had been entrusted to him to its rightful owner. Faramir proved his character.

It is said that Queen Victoria, who reigned over England for over 63 years said, "I wish Jesus would come back in my lifetime. I would lay my crown at his feet." Would you do the same? Will you lead the chorus of "Behold the King!"?

In The Story of Christian Theology, theologian Roger Olson writes:

A popular misconception—perhaps a Christian urban legend—is that the United States Secret Service never shows bank tellers counterfeit money when teaching them to identify it. The agents who do the training, so the legend goes, show bank tellers only examples of genuine money so that when the phony money appears before them they will know it by its difference from the real thing. The story is supposed to make the point that Christians ought to study truth and never heresy.

The first time I heard the tale as a sermon illustration I intuited its falseness. On checking with the Treasury Department's Minneapolis Secret Service agent in charge of training bank tellers to identify counterfeit money, my suspicion was confirmed. He laughed at the story and wondered aloud who would start it and who would believe it. At my request he sent me a letter confirming that the Secret Service does show examples of counterfeit money to bank tellers.

I believe it is important and valuable for Christians to know not only theological correctness (orthodoxy) but also the ideas of those judged as heretics within the church's story. One reason is that it is almost impossible to appreciate the meaning of orthodoxy without understanding the heresies that forced its development.

Dr. Katrina Firlik was the first woman admitted into the neurosurgery residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Her recent book, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, provides a glimpse into the training of a brain surgeon. In one chapter she shares a story from the last year of her residency—a time when she was already becoming jaded to the tragedies of neurological devastation:

I walked into yet another examining room … a brand-new consult from out of town: 18-years-old, cerebral palsy, spasticity. Okay, okay, I've seen this before, I just need to get a good history before my attending walks in. Efficiency is key. I looked at the patient for a second: very skinny, special wheelchair, arms contracted, head support in place, mouth hung open. It was clear I wasn't going to get the story from him, so I turned to the parents, my back toward the patient, and started to take down the history. …

[When my mentor walked in], I cringed. … He sat down on the examining table, the only seat left in the cramped room. After introducing himself, he surveyed the compact scene—the patient, the parents—and then focused his gaze back on the patient. After what seemed like several, almost uncomfortably quiet seconds, he looked the patient in the eye and asked, "So, when did you graduate from high school?" The young man's face lit up like I had no idea it could.

My mentor had noticed something I had missed. The patient was wearing a large high-school ring, so large that it looked a little silly on his bony finger. His body, far more than his mind, had borne the brunt of his cerebral palsy. He was a proud, beaming high-school graduate, who used a specialized computer to help him communicate. For the remainder of the visit I sat in the corner, duncelike, humbled by the enormity of this ring now staring me in the face.

We make snap judgments everyday. Many are innocuous, dealing with the routines of life. But God is always speaking, especially in our everyday routines. When we pre-judge another person and assume we know their story, choosing not to listen to their verbal and non-verbal communication, we make the saddest mistake of all. It's so easy to view people as a statistic and not as a person for whom Christ died.

After his ordination in 1969, author and pastor Phillip Johnson received a call to serve one large church and ten smaller churches on the northern coast of Newfoundland, Canada. On the first day of his new circuit ministry, Johnson learned that in order to get to the smallest of the churches, he would have to travel 40 miles by snowmobile to a tiny village. When Johnson arrived, only one person had shown up for worship—a fisherman who had traveled about 20 miles to get there.

Johnson initially thought about just saying a prayer and calling it a day. But then he realized that together, he and the fisherman had already logged 60 miles of travel and had 60 more miles to return home. With that in mind, Johnson decided to conduct the whole service as if there were a few hundred worshipers. They did it all: the hymns, the readings, the prayers, the sermon, the Lord's Supper, and the benediction.

It was during the sermon that Johnson wondered why he had bothered. The fisherman never looked up. But when Johnson greeted the fisherman at the door and thanked him for coming, Johnson received a pleasant surprise. The fisherman said, "Reverend, I've been thinking about becoming a Christian for about 30-odd years. And today's the day!"

Erwin Raphael McManus writes in The Barbarian Way:

We had an incident while Jet Skiing off the coast of Wellington [during our family vacation to New Zealand]. I had taken the Skis out by myself for a few wild and wide-open runs just to make sure everything would be okay. Then I came back and got Mariah. We were having a blast. Wind in our faces, water breaking in every direction, moving freely at breakneck speed. It was exhilarating. It was nothing less than a worship experience. Then we ended up with a dead engine, and we were drifting helplessly into [a strait].

Here is what happened. A moment before, we were moving wide open toward the strait, and then all of a sudden I felt Mariah let go. Her arms had been tightly secured around my waist, and the moment she released, I heard her yell, "Stop!"

Knowing she was in danger, I immediately shut down the Jet Ski and turned to secure her. I shouted, "What's wrong?"

Mariah's tone made it clear she thought it was obvious: "I needed to get my hair out of my eyes."

I had flooded the engine for cosmetic reasons. I guess it was about an hour later when the Wellington Rescue Squad came out and saved us. Did I mention that the water was frigid? As you can imagine, while we were drifting, we had a lot of time to talk and reflect. Just a bit irritated, I tried to understand why it was so important to get her hair out of her eyes.

It was so simple—she couldn't see. And isn't that the whole point of choosing to live an adventure, to keep your eyes wide open and to soak in the beauty of the life all around you? Mariah was not about to live through the experience with her eyes closed. Eyes wide open is exactly how God created us to live our lives. And this is exactly what Jesus has come to ensure, that we are awakened to live life wide open as we move full speed ahead.

In his book Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande recalls a patient he encountered during his final year of medical school. The older woman's complaint was simple and to the point: "I don't feel too good." She was achy, tired, and suffering from a mild cough, but she showed no signs of a fever, and her blood pressure was fine. Besides a high white blood cell count, she was fine. Gawande visited her twice each day, and she stayed the same. Thinking she was suffering from a mild case of pneumonia, he put her on antibiotics and waited for her condition to clear up in a few days. Nonetheless, the woman's condition never got better. One morning, after the woman had suffered through insomnia and night sweats, Gawande's senior resident simply said: "Keep a close eye on her." Gawande decided he would check on her each mid-day, around lunchtime. Meanwhile, the senior resident had decided to check on her himself twice that morning—which would teach Gawande a valuable lesson as a doctor and surgeon. He writes:

It is this little act that I have often thought about since. It was a small thing, a tiny act of conscientiousness. He had seen something about her that worried him. He had also taken the measure of me on morning rounds. And what he saw was a fourth-year student, with a residency spot already lined up in general surgery, on his last rotation of medical school. Did he trust me? No, he didn't. So he checked on her himself.

That was not a two-second matter, either. She was up on the fourteenth floor of the hospital. Our morning teaching conferences were…on the bottom two floors. The elevators were notoriously slow. The senior resident was supposed to run one of those teaching conferences. He could have waited for a nurse to let him know if a problem arose, as most doctors would. He could have told a junior resident to see the patient. But he didn't. He made himself go up.

The first time he did, he found she had a fever of 102 degrees and needed oxygen flow through her nasal prongs increased. The second time, he found her blood pressure had dropped and the nurses had switched her oxygen to a facemask, and he transferred her to the intensive care unit. By the time I had a clue about what was going on, he already had her under treatment—with new antibiotics, intravenous fluids, medications to support her blood pressure—for what was developing into septic shock from a resistant, fulminant pneumonia. Because he checked on her, she survived. Indeed, because he did, her course was beautiful. She never needed to be put on a ventilator. The fevers stopped in twenty-four hours. She got home in three days.

I'm not a vampire type, when somebody shows me the cross. …But organized religion gives me the creeps.

—Stephen King, U. S. fiction writer

At 3:30 p.m. on June 6, 2007, a 21-year-old man with muscular dystrophy named Ben Carpenter drove his electric-powered wheelchair down the sidewalk in Paw Paw, Michigan. As he approached the street crossing at the corner of Red Arrow Highway at Hazen Street, a semi truck came to a halt at the stoplight. Ben began to cross the street from the north to the south in his wheelchair just a few feet in front of the towering truck.

When the light turned green, somehow the 52-year-old driver of the truck did not see Ben in his wheelchair. With Ben still in front of the truck, the engine roared to life, and the mammoth vehicle pulled forward. When the truck struck Ben's wheelchair, the wheelchair turned, now facing forward, and the handles in the back of the wheelchair became wedged in the truck's grille. The wheelchair kept rolling, though, and Ben, wearing a seatbelt, was held in his chair. The truck driver was still oblivious to the fact that he had hit the wheelchair. The truck picked up speed, soon reaching 50 mph. Still the wheelchair and Ben were pinned dangerously on the front.

While the driver continued along in his own little world of the truck cab, people along the road saw what was happening. Everyone seemed to see the drama unfolding but the driver. Frantic observers called 911. People waved their arms and tried to get the driver's attention. Two off-duty policemen saw what was happening and began to pursue the truck. On drove the trucker. On the road behind the truck were two new parallel lines that marked where the wheelchairs' rubber wheels were being worn off. Finally, after two terrifying miles, the driver pulled into a trucking company parking lot, still clueless to the presence of Ben Carpenter pinned to the front of his truck. Thankfully, Ben was unharmed.

The frightening picture of a many-ton truck pushing a small wheelchair can serve as a metaphor for some relationships we have in life. Just as a truck driver is in a big and powerful position and a person in a wheelchair is in a vulnerable position, so some people have powerful positions in life and others have vulnerable places. To varying degrees, powerful people have control; vulnerable people are controlled by others.

For example, parents have power, husbands have power, as do employers, leaders, pastors, denominational officials, and government officials. By contrast, those who are small or weak are often vulnerable, as are the sick, the poor, the young, the elderly, the debtors, the uneducated.

Power is not wrong; in fact, God gives people power and authority to use for the good of others. When God gives people power, he commands them to use it carefully and responsibly. Many powerful people are careful with their power. Others, tragically, resemble this truck driver flying down the highway with a vulnerable person pinned to the grille of their 18-wheeler.

A new, highly efficient system is being used by San Francisco and New York City to detect the presence of toxins in a city's water supply, a possible sign of a terrorist attack. They have found that the best tool for monitoring such threats are bluegills, those little fish so many catch on a lazy summer afternoon.

According to an article by the Associated Press, a small number of bluegills are kept in a tank at the bottom of a city's water treatment plant because they are highly attuned to chemical imbalances in their environment. When a disturbance is present in the water, the bluegills react against it. If the computerized system of the treatment plant detects even the slightest change in a bluegill's vital signs, it sends out an e-mail alert.

Bill Lawler, the co-founder of the corporation that makes and sells these bluegill monitoring systems, said, "Nature's given us pretty much the most powerful and reliable early warning center out there."

In Pixar's movie The Incredibles, superheroes have been forced into everyday life because of numerous lawsuits. This scene appears toward the end of the film, when a villain has unleashed an indestructible robot against the big city.

Frozone, a superhero capable of using the air around him to produce jets of snow and ice, is washing his face in front of a mirror when the giant robot rampages past his apartment window. After digging through a drawer, he pulls out a special remote and activates the hiding place of his superhero costume. But the costume is missing.

"Honey!" he cries, looking down the hall. "Where is my super suit?"

"What?" his wife answers, sounding somewhat guilty.

"Where is my super suit?" Frozone repeats as a helicopter crashes down behind him.

"I…uh…put it away," his wife calls back. "Why do you need to know?"

"I need it!" Frozone answers, beginning to search frantically around the room.

"Uh uh," his wife chides, "Don't you think about runnin' off to do no derring-do. We've been planning this dinner for two months."

"But the public is in danger!"

"My evening is in danger," his wife responds.

Unable to stand it any longer, Frozone bursts out: "You tell me where my suit is, woman! We are talking about the greater good."

"Greater good?" she replies. "I am your wife. I'm the greatest good you are ever gonna get!"

Sighing, Frozone slumps against a wall and shakes his head.

Elapsed time: DVD scene 26, 01:32:44 – 01:33:29

Content: Rated PG for action violence

In the later months of 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was angered by General George B. McClellan's inactivity despite superiority in numbers over the Confederate forces. In the end, he wrote McClellan a letter consisting of only a single sentence:

"If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln."

In today's NFL, the players grabbing the most headlines are quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers. But according to Michael Lewis' book The Blind Side, the ones who grab the second highest paychecks are left tackles.

In the book, Lewis tries to explain the importance of these anonymous, but essential, offensive linemen. He traces their emerging importance back to the career-ending injury of star quarterback Joe Theismann on Monday Night Football in 1985. More than 17 million people watched as an incredibly athletic linebacker named Lawrence Taylor blindsided Theismann, breaking his leg.

Since most quarterbacks are right-handed, the left tackle's main role is to prevent his quarterback from being hit from behind, unseen. And with the next generation of athletic linebackers and defensive ends, it takes a special person to do it. Left tackles must weigh more than 300 pounds and have long arms to block, but they must also be quick on their feet. Today, teams are willing to pay for such a player. By 2004, the average salary of a left tackle in the NFL was $5.5 million a year. Only starting quarterbacks earned more.

The role of the left tackle is literally to be his "brother's keeper." This is the role that God plays on our behalf, and this should be the role of every player in God's church.

Imagine that your organization is an ocean liner, and that you are "the leader." What is your role? I have asked this question of groups of managers many times. The most common answer, not surprisingly, is the captain. Others say, "The navigator, setting the direction." Still others say, "The helmsman, actually controlling the direction," or, "the engineer down there stoking the fire, providing energy," or, "the social director, making sure everybody's enrolled, involved, and communicating." While these are legitimate leadership roles, there is another that, in many ways, eclipses them all in importance. Yet, rarely does anyone think of it.

The neglected leadership role is the designer of the ship. No one has a more sweeping influence than the designer. What good does it do for the captain to say, "Turn starboard 30 degrees," when the designer has built a rudder that will turn only to port, or that takes 6 hours to turn to starboard? It's fruitless to be the leader in an organization that is poorly designed. Isn't it interesting that so few managers think of the ship's designer when they think of the leader's role?

Graeme Keith, treasurer of the Billy Graham Association and Billy's lifelong friend, says:

I was on an elevator with Billy when another man in the elevator recognized him. He said, "You're Billy Graham, aren't you?"

"Yes," Billy said.

"Well," the man said, "you are truly a great man."

Billy immediately responded, "No, I'm not a great man. I just have a great message."

In his book Building a Church of Small Groups, Bill Donahue relays a story from his time as a part-time youth pastor while attending seminary. He was visiting a farm where two of his students lived, and their father decided to teach Bill a lesson:

He asked if I could help call in the sheep. I enthusiastically agreed. Sheep-calling was like preaching. We stood at the pasture fence, watching 25 sheep graze.

"Go ahead," he dared me. "Call them in."

"What do you say?" I asked.

"I just say, 'Hey, sheep! C'mon in!'"

No sweat, I thought. A city kid with a bad back and hay fever could do this. I began in a normal speaking voice, but Tom interrupted. "You are 75 yards away, down wind, and they have their backs to you. Yell! Use your diaphragm, like they teach you in preaching class."

So I took a deep breath and put every inch of stomach muscle into a yell that revival preachers around the world would envy: "Hey, sheep! C'mon in!" The blessed creatures didn't move an inch. None even turned an ear.

Tom smiled sarcastically. "Do they teach you the Bible in that seminary? Have you ever read, 'My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me'?" Raising his voice only slightly, he said: "Hey, sheep! C'mon in!" All 25 sheep turned and ambled toward us. Tom seized this teachable moment.

"Now, don't you ever forget," he said. "You are the shepherd to my kids."