Pastoring

In Japan, the average Protestant church has fewer than 50 people. Missionaries quietly refer to Japan as a “graveyard.” No wonder one famous Japanese author wrote, “Japan is a swamp… whenever you plant the sapling of Christianity, the roots begin to rot.” And yet—God has not given up on Japan.
Consider Pastor Lam Wai Chan, a reluctant missionary from Singapore. He arrived in Tokyo assuming he would “fix” a struggling congregation. Instead, he discovered a few elderly believers who had weathered decades of disappointment and still showed up, still prayed, still loved Christ. Lam felt God confronting him gently: “They have faithfulness. What about you?”

So Lam offered the whole sinking church back to God. No flashy programs. No clever marketing. Just prayer. Slowly—beautifully—the church doubled. Children returned. New families wandered in without invitation. Lam tells anyone who listens: “God promised to preserve this church, and He has never failed me once.”
Or consider Pastor Mizuno, who has served the same rural congregation for nearly 50 years. When she returned to simply helping each person meet God daily in Scripture, the congregation revived, growing from a handful to more than a hundred. Her testimony is simple: “I made mistakes. But I was faithful. God sustained us.”

Japan remains less than 1% Christian. The soil still seems hard. Revival may come slowly. But faithfulness is its own miracle.

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes:

A few years ago, I was having a breakfast meeting in a diner in Waco, Texas, with a stern, imposing former teacher named LaRue Dorsey. I wanted to understand her efforts as a community builder because of my work with Weave, an organization I co-founded that addresses social isolation. I was struck by her toughness, and I was a bit intimidated. Then a mutual friend named Jimmy Dorrell came into the diner, rushed up to our table, grabbed Mrs. Dorsey by the shoulders and beamed: “Mrs. Dorsey, you’re the best! You’re the best! I love you! I love you!”

I’ve never seen a person’s whole aspect transform so suddenly. The disciplinarian face Mrs. Dorsey had put on under my gaze vanished, and a joyous, delighted nine-year-old girl appeared. That’s the power of attention.

Each of us has a characteristic way of showing up in the world. A person who radiates warmth will bring out the glowing sides of the people he meets, while a person who conveys formality can meet the same people and find them stiff and detached.

The first point of my story is that you should attend to people in the warm way Jimmy does and less in the reserved way that I used to do. But my deeper point is that Jimmy is a pastor. When Jimmy sees a person — any person — he is seeing a creature with infinite value and dignity, made in the image of God. He is seeing someone so important that Jesus was willing to die for that person.

A sheep named Baarack received a much-needed shearing after rescuers in Australia found the abandoned animal with more than 75 pounds of wool weighing it down. A video of his transformation on TikTok has more than 18.5 million views. After rescuing Baarack, sanctuary staff gave him the long-overdue shearing and found the fleece clocked in at about 78 pounds.

According to Kelly Dinham with Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary, sheep need at least yearly shearing to keep their coats light enough for the animals, otherwise it will continue to grow. Despite his heavy fleece, Baarack was actually underweight after being sheared. The wool around his face impaired his vision, too. Dinham said they found grit and debris "pooling in the gap between his cornea and the lid." And a grass seed stuck in there had caused an ulcer.

If a sheep goes for an extended period of time without adequate care, the overgrown wool can lead to build up of manure and urine that then could lead to infection, according to a North Dakota State University fact sheet on sheep shearing.

Possible Preaching Angle

This illustration easily applies to the Chief Shepherd and his sheep (and the undershepherd and their flock). As the sheep of his pasture, we need to be under the care of our Shepherd, otherwise we can wander off (Luke 15:4) or be attacked (Acts 20:29). We need those peaceful streams and quiet pastures, and his loving care (John 10:1-18; Psalm 23:1-6).

In the film Greyhound, actor Tom Hanks plays the captain of a US destroyer that is commanding the escorts of a 37-ship convoy. They are crossing the Atlantic in 1942, at the height of the “Battle of the Atlantic.” The story focuses on the three-days that the convoy is in the “Mid-Atlantic Gap,” where they do not enjoy the benefits of air-cover. The convoy is subjected to relentless attack by a U-boat “wolf pack.” The U-boats sink seven ships from the convoy and one of the accompanying escorts. The escorts in turn sink a number of the U-boats. The majority of the convoy makes it through, delivering essential troops and supplies.

The intensity of the combat is unrelenting. Hanks is on the bridge of his ship throughout. A running motif of the film is that he never gets to eat. His stewards keep preparing him food, and bringing it to him, but when it arrives there is yet another attack and the food almost invariably crashes to the deck. In a poignant scene towards the end, he changes his boots for slippers because his feet are bloodied by standing for such a long period.

The film is based on the book The Good Shepherd by C. S. Forester, and the title indicates the spiritual symbolism of the story. Hanks’ character is clearly a committed Christian, who is shown praying at his bedside, and he has a prominent sticker of Hebrews 13:8 in his cabin.

Possible Preaching Angle:

C. S. Forester must have realized convoy escort duty is a good parallel for the work of Christian ministry. Pastors and leaders are called to protect their flock from the attacks of the enemy and ensure that they reach their destination safely.

In his essay "Sinsick," theologian Stanley Hauerwas explores the notion of authority using a medical analogy. If a medical student told his advisor, "I'm not into anatomy this year, I'm into relating" and asked to skip anatomy class to focus on people, the medical school would reply, "Who in the [heck] do you think you are, kid? … You're going to take anatomy. If you don't like it, that's tough." Hauerwas delivers his crucial point by saying: "Now what that shows is that people believe incompetent physicians can hurt them. Therefore people expect medical schools to hold their students responsible for the kind of training that is necessary to be competent physicians. On the other hand, few people believe an incompetent minister can damage their salvation."

The church has said for millennia that bad teaching is more deadly than bad surgery. … The need for formal structures of training, hierarchy, and accountability in medical schools and medical boards is obvious because we don't want our doctors to simply be popular or relatable; we want them to practice medicine correctly and truthfully, participate in a medical tradition broader than themselves, and serve under the authority and oversight of others. We need to be as discerning in whom we trust with care of souls as we are with care of our bodies.

Sheldon Yellen manages a $1.5 billion company that operates in 31 countries and employs 7,000 people … all without a smartphone. The CEO of Belfor, a privately held property restoration company, only uses a flip phone. Belfor said, "You can't show and feel emotion, compassion, passion, or intent through a smartphone, through text."

Having a flip phone encourages phone conversations, the CEO said, which he strongly prefers to texting. "If someone has something to say to me, they know they can pick up the phone. I'll answer their question," he said. "I am approachable, and I can't convey that through a text."

Yellen said. "A young kid was trying to get a meeting with me and sell me a product. Finally after three months, he got his appointment. He's sitting across from me, and three times during the first 10 minutes this kid looks down at his smartphone and starts texting." Yellen told the young man: "I'm not trying to be rude or arrogant, but I think you're going to have to go. I'm not asking you to get down and bow, but you just spent so [much] of my time texting someone when you're sitting with me. You gotta go, and one day you're going to thank me."

Smartphones are not allowed at Belfor company meetings. There is an unspoken rule that no one brings in their phone. "My thinking is: Let's have our meeting; let's get on with it," Yellen said. "In a lot of situations, we have a basket in the room or outside the room for cellphones." Yellen added, "I want people to talk to me. I want them to hear my passion."

Possible Preaching Angles: 1) Prayer; Communication; Fatherhood of God; We have direct access to the Sovereign Lord of the universe and we can express our deepest need, our love, and thanksgiving at any time. He always gives us his full attention. 2) Pastor; Pastor's role; This is an excellent reminder for pastors to "live in the moment" and be approachable by their flock.

The NPR radio show "This American Life" featured a story about a French comedian named Gad Elmaleh, probably the most famous stand-up comedian in France. He performs in huge arenas and gets mobbed everywhere by fans and paparazzi. But about a year ago, Gad embarked on a strange quest. He decided to try making it as a comic in America in English. This is an incredibly difficult and totally unnecessary thing for anybody to try to do. In France, everybody knows Gad Elmaleh. It was going great for him, but instead he gave all that up to start again at the bottom, doing small clubs and venues. He had to reinvent how he does his whole job. And he was struggling, and sometimes his acts completely bombed.

So a reporter turned to four famous American comedians and asked them to watch a video of a 15-minute set Gad did at the Comedy Cellar. They all agreed he's a pro, but that he has a long way to go to make it in America. Could he be a great comedian in America? Here's how the reporter summarized his findings about Gad's chances for success in America:

The comedians I talked to were adamant. For Gad to come up with the kind of material he's going to need to be great in America—the personal stuff, the stuff he really cares about—the only way to develop that is to do painful sets on stage where he tries out all kinds of stuff and lets himself bomb. In France, he doesn't do that. And Gad told me it goes against all his instincts—against 22 years of training—but he's going to have to override that instinct. He's going to have to embrace bombing, learn to fail at comedy at a whole new level, if he's going to succeed here. It's a concept that's totally foreign to him.

Possible Preaching Angles: The advice to "fail at a whole new level" and to "embrace bombing" could apply to so many important areas of the Christian life—service, mission, ministry, preaching, volunteering, the use of spiritual gifts, etc.

The Telegraph, a British newspaper reported that a flock of over 1,300 sheep "had to be rounded up by police in the Spanish city of Huesca after their shepherd fell asleep." The article continued:

According to city authorities, the police were alerted to the presence of the extremely large flock attempting to negotiate the streets in the center of Huesca at around 4.30am on Tuesday when a local resident dialed Spain's 112 emergency number.

The dozing shepherd was meant to be keeping the animals in check outside the environs of the city while he waited for the clock to strike 7am, when he was due to guide the sheep northwards through Huesca towards Pyrenean uplands where his flock will graze during the hot summer months.

The police eventually found the herder, who was still peacefully slumbering. Together the embarrassed shepherd and police officers were eventually able to extract the sheep from the city and return them to their pastures.

In his article titled "Professional Soccer Was My God," former pro soccer player Gavin Peacock writes:

I was never going to be tall, so my dad (who was also a pro soccer player) would take me into our backyard in Southeast London and teach me how to quickly switch directions with the soccer ball at my feet. "The big guys won't be able to catch you!" he said. For hours I would practice turning to the left and right, dribbling in and out of cones, spinning this way and that. My dad was right: the art of turning served me well. Many of the goals I scored in the years to come were a result of that lesson.

At age 16, I left school and signed a professional contract with [English] Premier League Queens Park Rangers (QPR). I had achieved the goal—and I wasn't really happy. I was playing for the England Youth National Team, and it wasn't long before I broke into the starting eleven at QPR. But I was an insecure young man in the cutthroat world of professional sport. Soccer was my god. If I played well on a Saturday I was high, if I played poorly I was low. My sense of well-being depended entirely on my performance. I soon realized that achieving the goal wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Then, when I was 18, God intervened in my life. I was still struggling to find purpose, so I decided to attend a local church. I don't remember what the minister preached on, but afterward he invited me to his house, where he and his wife hosted a weekly youth Bible study. I rolled up in the car I had bought, a 1980s icon, the Ford Escort XR3i. Yet when they spoke about Jesus, they displayed a life and joy that I did not have. They talked about sin as if it had consequence and about God as if they knew him.

I decided to return to the Bible study the following week and the next, and I began to hear the gospel for the first time. I realized that my biggest problem wasn't whether I met the disapproval of a 20,000-strong crowd on Saturday; my biggest problem was my sin and the disapproval of almighty God. I realized that the biggest obstacle to happiness was that soccer was king instead of Jesus, who provided a perfect righteousness for me. Over time, my eyes were opened through that Sunday meeting, and I turned, repented, and believed the gospel. My heart still burned for soccer, but it burned for Christ more.

At the age of 35, Peacock retired after playing for QPR, Chelsea, and Newcastle United, but the schoolboy dream was over. He currently serves as a pastor in Canada. He concludes, "All those years ago, my earthly father taught me the art of turning, but it was my heavenly Father who turned me first to Christ and then helped me turn others to Christ by preaching his gospel."

For four decades, Amos Alonzo Stagg coached football at the University of Chicago. They were the original Monsters of the Midway, long before the Bears borrowed that moniker. For decades during and long after Coach Stagg's heyday, you couldn't go too far on campus without bumping into his influence. Not only did he lead the Maroons to two national titles in 1905 and 1913, but his football legacy includes the huddle, the Statue of Liberty play, onside kick, the T formation, the end-around, and the forward pass. In other words, he practically invented football as we know it.

But that isn't his true legacy. When he accepted the invitation to coach the Maroons, he gave the university president an acceptance speech of sorts, saying, "After much thought and prayer, I decided that my life can best be used for my Master's service in the position you have offered." Amos Alonzo Stagg coached until the age of ninety-eight, but he didn't just coach his teams. He discipled them.

November 19, 2024 will mark the 161st anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." According to a 2013 editorial in The New York Times, this brief (272 words or two-minute) speech still has the power to "do what words are rarely able to do: invoke an eloquent silence." The same article adds, "There is an overpowering immediacy in these plain words."

At the time of the speech, the majority of newspapers praised it, but just to prove you really can't please all the people all the time, this powerful speech received negative reviews. The Harrisburg Patriot derided Lincoln's address by referring to his "silly remarks." (The paper has since retracted their criticism of the Gettysburg Address.) Other newspapers didn't live to retract their words. The New York World accused Lincoln of "gross ignorance or willful misstatement" with his declaration of "four score and seven years ago." The Democratic-leaning Chicago Times observed, "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States." Foreign newspapers also criticized Lincoln's remarks. The Times of London commented: "The ceremony [at Gettysburg] was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln."

In 1949, George Roy and Elizabeth Wood, an American missionary couple serving in northwest China and Tibet, were forced to leave the area. A local leader named Pastor Mung took over the church of 200 people. The Woods returned to America and by 1985 both of them had passed away without ever knowing what had happened to the church they started.

In 1988 the Wood's son George returned to China and met with Pastor Mung and his wife, who were now in their 80's. For 28 years the Communist government had done their best to extinguish the church. Pastor Mung wasn't allowed to preach and he spent nine of those years in prison for his faith. It was illegal to baptize or "indoctrinate" anyone under 18. When the government finally allowed Pastor Mung to reopen the church in 1983 there were only 30 (mostly older) people in attendance.

Assuming that the church was on its last leg, George Wood asked, "Pastor Mung, how many believers do you have today?" Pastor Mung's wife brought them a cardboard roll held together by yarn. The first page was filled with writing—five columns: name, age, gender, address, occupation. There were around 20 names. George Wood continued turning over page after page with the names of the baptized. Finally he asked the Mungs, "How many believers do you have now?" He said, "One thousand five hundred baptized believers." In disbelief George Wood asked, "How did this happen?"

Pastor Mung smiled as he shared his secret for church growth. It wasn't a technique or a program. He simply said, "Oh! Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And we pray a lot!" Then he went on to describe what the Lord had done.

Pastor Mung died in 2006 at the age of 96. But when he passed, the number of baptized believers stood at over 15,000!

Rich Stearns, the president of World Vision, calls it the domino theory of spiritual impact. Imagine a long line of dominoes. When one falls, it starts a chain reaction that can cause dozens or hundreds more dominoes to fall. For instance, Jesus set up 12 dominoes (his disciples), mentored them, empowered them with the Holy Spirit, and then sent them off to go and do likewise. Now there are over 2 billion followers of Christ in the world. That's a lot of dominoes!

Stearns provides the following story about the spiritual impact that one person can have. In the 1880s, Robert Wilder, a missionary kid from India, was preparing to return to the mission field. During college, he even signed a pledge along with friends to become a missionary. But because he was so physically frail, he never fulfilled that pledge. Instead, he encouraged others to take up the task. One domino fell.

During a preaching tour that took Robert through Chicago, he spoke to an audience that included Samuel Moffett. Samuel also signed Robert's pledge, and within two years he landed in Korea. Another domino fell.

A few years later, Samuel shared the gospel with a man who had become disillusioned with his Taoist practice. Kiel Sun-chu trusted Christ, and quickly another domino fell.

In 1907, Kiel was one of the leaders of the Pyongyang revival. In January of that year, spontaneous prayer and confession broke out during regular church meetings. Thousands of dominoes fell. Those days of fervent prayer are now considered the birth of an independent, self-sustaining Korean church.

When Kiel died in 1935, 5,000 people attended his funeral. The church in Korea now numbers about 15 million, and it sends more foreign missionaries than any other country outside the United States. Millions of dominoes continue to fall.

Stearns concludes:

As Christians, we are all dominoes in the chain reaction set off by Jesus 2,000 years ago. The amazing thing about dominoes falling is that the chain reaction always starts small—with just one, seemingly insignificant domino. Whether you are sponsoring children, filling backpacks for children in inner-city schools, talking to your own children, or praying earnestly for [people around the globe], you have no idea what how big the impact will be as God multiplies your faithfulness.

In an interview with Harvard Business Review, psychologist, researcher, and author Daniel Gilbert discussed how managers can motivate their employees. Although he was speaking to a business audience, his answer applies to many different relationships—parents and children, leaders and followers, mentors and protégés, husbands and wives.

We know that people are happiest when they're appropriately challenged—when they're trying to achieve goals that are difficult but not out of reach. Challenge and threat are not the same thing. People blossom when challenged and wither when threatened. Sure, you can get results from threats: Tell someone, "If you don't get this to me by Friday, you're fired," and you'll probably have it by Friday. But you'll also have an employee who will thereafter do his best to undermine you, who will feel no loyalty to the organization, and who will never do more than he must.

It would be much more effective to tell your employee, "I don't think most people could get this done by Friday. But I have full faith and confidence that you can. And it's hugely important to the entire team." Psychologists have studied reward and punishment for a century, and the bottom line is perfectly clear: Reward works better.