{"id":21826,"date":"1997-04-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1997-04-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/1997\/04\/01\/interview-business-of-making-saints-part-2\/"},"modified":"1997-04-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1997-04-01T00:00:00","slug":"interview-business-of-making-saints-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/interview-business-of-making-saints-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: The Business Of Making Saints (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Second of two parts; click here\nto read Part 1<\/a>)<\/em>\nThen study starts to erode. You cannot go to a pulpit week after week and\npreach truth accurately without constant study. Our minds blur on us, and\nwe need that constant sharpening of our minds. And without study, without\nthe use of our mind in a disciplined way, we are sitting ducks for the culture.\n\nThis culture is an evil culture. This culture is the enemy. Through the media,\nthrough friends, through conversations we’re constantly fed lies, and like\nmost lies, they’re 90 percent the truth. So you swallow the lie, and subtly,\nthe edge of the gospel is blunted; you think you’re preaching the gospel,\nand you’re not. You don’t even know it.<\/p>

So the first task in providing pastoral care is to pray and to study the\nWord<\/p>

\nWho’s going to do that except the pastor? People in the congregation are\nbusy in their jobs, reading their periodicals and attending their conferences.\nIt’s my job to be suspicious of the culture. I’m not a culture critic, but\nto be a pastor, I cannot be seduced by the world. This becomes increasingly\ndifficult in this so-called postmodern time. If you’re not sharp, you’re\non the Devil’s side without knowing it.\n\nA student was telling me he saw a video on Michael Jordan. He said, “Michael\nJordan looks so lazy. He looks like he’s not doing anything. Then suddenly,\nhe’s through three people, and he’s slam-dunking the ball.”\n\nAs a pastor, how do you slip through the opposition and make your point?\nYou do it by being lazy—or what looks like being lazy—sitting in your study\nfor half a day reading a book that doesn’t have anything to do with your\nsermon.\n\nAs a pastor I’ve got a responsibility to be alert to my culture so that my\ncongregation is not seduced. If I don’t do it, nobody will.\n<\/p>

Most congregations don’t think they’re paying pastors to do that.<\/p>

\nThat’s true. But they’re not the ones who give me my job description.\n\nI get my job description from the Scriptures, from my ordination vows. If\nI let the congregation decide what I’m going to do, I’m as bad as a doctor\nwho prescribes drugs on request. Medical societies throw out doctors for\ndoing that kind of thing; we need theological societies to throw out pastors\nfor doing the same thing.\n\nAnd if you give up prayer and study, you will soon give up the third area:\npeople.\n<\/p>

Pastors give up caring for people?<\/p>

\nNobody makes a decision to do this. The defection happens slowly.\n\nListening, paying attention to people is the most inefficient way to do anything.\nIt’s tedious, and it’s boring, and when you do it, it feels like you’re wasting\ntime and not getting anything done. So when the pressures start to mount,\nwhen there are committees to run to and budgets to fix, what’s got to go?\nListening to people. Seeing them in their uniqueness, without expecting anything\nof them.\n\nYou quit paying attention, and people get categorized and recruited. It doesn’t\ntake long for pastors to become good manipulators. Most of us learn those\nskills pretty quickly. If you can make a person feel guilty, you can make\nhim or her do almost anything. And who’s better at guilt than pastors?\n<\/p>

Mothers?<\/p>

\n(Laughter<\/em>) Mothers, yes.\n\nWhat happens, though, is that when I see the person, I’m not really listening\nto his or her situation because I don’t have time. I’m thinking, I wonder\nif he’ll say yes to taking on this ministry. Or, I’ve heard her troubles\nfifty times already. She’s not going to tell me anything new<\/em>.\n\nMaybe she won’t. But people are not telling you their troubles in order to\ninform you about their troubles. They’re looking for connection. They’re\nwaiting for prayer. They’re pilgrims, and my task as their pastor is to be\nwith them where they are.\n<\/p>

A lot of pastors would say, “My job is to make sure that pastoral care\ntakes place in the congregation, not to provide it all myself. My job is\nto lead and to create systems in which lay people provide pastoral\ncare.”<\/p>

\nI don’t like that. I don’t think it works.\n<\/p>

Why doesn’t it work?<\/p>

\nYou lose the unity and wholeness of pastoral ministry. The person who prays\nfor you from the pulpit on Sunday should be the person who prays for you\nwhen you’re dying. Then there’s a connection between this world and the world\nproclaimed in worship.\n\nClassically—and I have not seen anything in the twentieth century that has\nmade me revise my expectation—a pastor is local. You know people’s names,\nand they know your name. There’s no way to put pastoral work on an assembly\nline.\n<\/p>

But don’t you want to equip the saints for ministry, including the ministry\nof pastoral care?<\/p>

\nCertainly, one task of the pastor is to form people into Christians who know\nhow to care. That way, pastoral care is diffused through the church. I’m\nnot saying a pastor has to do it all.\n\nMy son is a pastor and leads a Stephen Ministry, in which lay people do a\ngreat amount of care for each other. But nothing exempts a pastor from the\nwork. Pastoral care can be shared, but never delegated.\n\nIf the congregation perceives that I exempt myself from that kind of work,\nthen I become an expert. I become somehow elitist; I’m no longer on their\nlevel. Elitism is an old demon that plagues the church.\n<\/p>

In some churches, it would be impossible for a pastor to know everybody’s\nname and to care for everyone.<\/p>

\nThat brings up the problem of size, and I don’t have clear, strong answers\nto that. I did it in a fairly small congregation. On the other hand, when\nI left, there were 500 people, and I was the only pastor, and nobody lacked\nfor pastoral care. But I’d been there thirty years, and I had a lot of people\nhelping me.\n\nI’m not saying everybody ought to do this. I’m saying this is what pastors\nought to do. There are other offices in the church—evangelism, mission,\nadministration.\n<\/p>

Have you seen a pastor of a large church do what you’re\nadvocating?<\/p>

\nI was a student intern at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York\nCity with George Buttrick. At that time, Madison Avenue was probably the\npreeminent pulpit for the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. Buttrick was a\ngreat preacher, and he had a staff of three or four other pastors. But every\nafternoon, he visited people. Not everybody got visited by Dr. Buttrick,\nbut everybody knew people who did get visited by him. They knew he was there.\n\nHe often said, “I can’t preach if I don’t know these people. I can’t be their\npastor if I don’t touch them, if I haven’t been in their homes.” I think\nthat’s true. You can’t do that week after week and then take on management\nmodels that obscure people or turn them into functions in the church. The\nchurch is not a functional place. It’s a place of being.\n<\/p>

Many lay people come to their pastors and say, “Why don’t we have\nsuch-and-such a program?” Do they really want their church to be “a place\nof being”?<\/p>

\nIt’s odd: We live in this so-called postmodernist time, and yet so much of\nthe public image of the church is this rational, management-efficient model.\nIf the postmodernists are right, that model is passe; it doesn’t work any\nmore. In that sense, I find myself quite comfortably postmodern. I think\npastors need to cultivate “unbusyness.” I use that word a lot.\n\nMy father was a butcher. When he delivered meat to restaurants, he would\nsit at the counter, have a cup of coffee and piece of pie, and waste time.\nBut that time was critical for building relationships, for doing business.\n\nSometimes I’m with pastors who don’t wander around. They don’t waste time.\nTheir time is too valuable. They run to the tomb, and it’s empty, so they\nrun back. They never see resurrection. Meanwhile, Mary’s wasting time; she’s\nwandering around.\n\nTo be unbusy, you have to disengage yourself from egos—both yours and\nothers—and start dealing with souls. Souls cannot be hurried.\n<\/p>

If I were to walk into a church, what would tip me off that it was concerned\nabout meeting needs or about “dealing with souls”?<\/p>

\nSome of this you don’t notice right away.\n\nI would be wary of a church that was over-glamorous, that promised a lot.\nI have no objection to finding all the ways you can to get a hearing. Sometimes\nthat means helping people get their kid off drugs. So I’m not saying we shouldn’t\nrespond to people’s needs, but the rock-bottom thing is “Repent and follow.”\nMy job as pastor is to call people to repent, deny themselves, take up their\ncross, and follow Jesus.\n\nIf I revise “Repent!” to “How I can help you get your life in order?” I’m\nturning away from the gospel. If I take the “Follow” part out and say, “We’ll\nfind out how you can live your life best the way you define it,” who needs\nJesus?\n\nSometimes I feel like a backwoods fundamentalist or somebody carrying a sign\naround Times Square that says repent. But I’ve been a pastor for thirty-five\nyears, and I don’t trust people one inch in defining what they need. We don’t\nknow ourselves. We need God to tell us what we need.\n\nFor me, being a pastor means being attentive to people. But the minute I\nstart taking my cues from them, I quit being a pastor.\n<\/p>

Give me an example of someone who came with expectations you weren’t able\nto meet on his or her terms.<\/p>

\nOne woman had just become a Christian and joined the congregation. She was\naround 40 years old and divorced. She didn’t know much about the faith. She\nwas always living with somebody or other; that was just the way she lived.\n\nShe came to me for a year or so because she was trying to get her life in\norder, and I was teaching her how to pray. Sometimes I’d listen to her and\nthink, Should I say something about her sexual lifestyle? She’s in church\nevery Sunday. She knows what I believe. She’s got to know something about\nthe Ten Commandments. But somehow I never felt I should say anything.\n\nAfter about a year, I said to her, “Would you do something for me?”\n\nShe said, “Sure. What do you want me to do?”\n\n“Would you live celibate for six months?”\n\n“Why would I do that?” she asked.\n\nI said, “I’m not going to give you any reasons. I just think I know you pretty\nwell, and we’re trying to figure out how to live this Christian life. Just\ndo it. Do it for me.”\n\nShe said, “Well, I don’t see the point of it. But yeah.”\n\nShe started to live celibate. After two or three months, she said to me,\n“Thank you for that. I have never felt so free. I didn’t know you could live\nthis way. I know the Bible says something about it, but I thought times had\nchanged so much that you couldn’t do this. I don’t know anybody who lives\nthis way. Thank you. This is wonderful. Things are coming together for me.”\n\nShe thought she was coming to me to bless her in her life the way she was;\nat some point it seemed right to interfere with that. Thankfully, I waited\nlong enough, so the Seventh Commandment became a word of freedom to her rather\nthan some kind of oppression.\n<\/p>

So people come for blessing and sometimes the most pastoral thing you\ncan do is offer correction.<\/p>

\nI would call this “spiritual formation.” You’re forming character. You’re\nshowing people how to practice certain things so they become embedded in\ntheir living. But those things are quite different from what they came to\nyou for. Most people come to church with wrong expectations; they usually\ndon’t think about repentance, not doing something that has become habitual\nto them, and following Jesus instead of their egos.\n\nAs a pastor, I teach them, “Jesus is a real person, and you need to follow\nhim.” Basically, you’re teaching people how to pray.\n<\/p>

How do you go about doing that?<\/p>

\nYou’re going to get tired of this answer, but the first thing I say is, “Meet\nme Sunday morning at eleven o’clock.” I want to get past the idea that prayer\nis a do-it-yourself activity. I’m trying to give some sense of the largeness\nof prayer, the church at prayer.\n\nThen I get to know what kind of life they live. Do they wake up in the morning\nalive, or does it take ten o’clock and three cups of coffee for them to wake\nup? If they’re that kind of a person, I don’t suggest a morning quiet time.\n\nI encourage them to memorize prayers so when they don’t feel like praying,\nthere are prayers to pray.\n\nSomehow, I want to find out how people can disengage from their culture so\nthere is some silence and solitude. I’m willing to work with people to find\nout how to do that, but this is slow work. Most pastoral work is slow work.\nIt is not a program that you put in place and then have it happen. It’s a\nlife. It’s a life of prayer.\n<\/p>

1997 by Christianity Today\/Leadership<\/em> Journal.\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Second of two parts; click here to read Part 1) Then study starts to erode. You cannot go to a pulpit week after week and preach truth accurately without constant study. Our minds blur on us, and we need that constant sharpening of our minds. 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