History
Ingrid Peterson
Gentle Clare of Assisi had to defy family and church to follow in Francis’s way.
131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference)
Christian History Magazine Editorial Staff (Author), Galli, Mark (Editor), Olsen, Ted (Editor), Packer, J. I. (Foreword)
Holman Reference320 pages$10.99
Courtesy Assisi Foundation
While praying before a cross in 1193, a woman named Ortulana of Assisi received a prophecy about the child growing within her womb: “Do not be afraid, woman, for you will give birth in safety to a light which will give light more clearly than light itself.” When the child was born, Ortulana named her Chiara, or Clare, “the clear one.”
In many ways, the light of Saint Clare, disciple of Saint Francis, has been hidden under Francis’s bushel—until now. Last year’s celebration of the 800th anniversary of her birth has sparked what a Minnesota newspaper described as “Clare mania.” And for good reason: Clare carved out her own unique, attractive way of being Franciscan.
Noble Family
Clare of Assisi was born into the noble Offreduccio family, which boasted seven great and wealthy knights. Her father, Favarone, was a count, who probably fought and died in a crusade. Clare’s mother made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the tombs of Peter and Paul in Rome, and the shrine of Saint James of Compostela in Spain.
As a beautiful noble woman, Clare had many suitors, but she refused all marriage proposals because she had made a private vow of virginity. In addition, she divested herself of her inheritance and gave the money to the poor. In fact, her sister Beatrice tells us that Clare sold part of Beatrice’s inheritance, too!
During her early teen years, Clare prayed regularly with other women, including other noble women. Like her mother, Clare slowly earned a reputation for good works and virtue.
Following Francis
By this time, Francis had publicly rejected his father’s wealth and was enlisting help to rebuild the walls of the Church of San Damiano. Before Francis ever mentioned having a community of brothers, he prophesied at San Damiano that “ladies will dwell here who will glorify our heavenly Father throughout his holy church.”
Perhaps he was searching for women to fulfill this prophecy when he first visited Clare in her home. (Beatrice, though, later said Francis came because he heard about Clare’s holiness.)
Francis continued to visit Clare, and she “more frequently” visited him (both accompanied by their companions). Though Clare was already living a holy life in a community, Francis wanted her to start a new way of life. Then again, maybe Clare, having heard him preach, needed little persuasion.
In any case, on the evening of Palm Sunday 1212, Clare slipped through the door of her family home and made her way down the winding streets of Assisi, outside the city walls, through the dark olive groves, to the small chapel called the Portiuncula, where Francis and his brothers waited. She put on the drab garb of the Poor Brothers, and her hair was cut. Francis’s brothers then accompanied her to the Benedictine monastery in Bastia.
“After the news reached her relatives,” The Legend of Saint Clare notes, “they condemned with a broken heart the deed … and, banding together as one, they ran to the place, attempting to obtain what they could not [that is, Clare]. They employed violent force, poisonous advice, and flattering promises, trying to persuade her to give up such a worthless deed that was unbecoming to her class and without precedence in her family. But taking hold of the altar clothes, she bared her tonsured head, maintaining she would in no way be torn away from the service of Christ.”
After another relocation, and another attempt by her family to bring her home, Clare and her sister Agnes, who had joined her, moved to San Damiano, dedicating their lives to Francis’s way, as poor virgins in imitation of the poor Jesus.
Poor Ladies
Soon other noble women came to live and pray with Clare, including her mother and her sister Beatrice. They called themselves the Poor Ladies. (Today members of her order are known as Poor Clares.)
Their life together was austere: they ate food the brothers begged for them, wore simple clothing, lived from the work of their hands, and fasted often. Clare’s health, in fact, broke down as a result of her fasting. Nonetheless, she continued making cloth, providing altar linens to more than fifty churches around Assisi.
Clare called the Poor Ladies her sisters, rather than nuns, for she believed they equally shared in the humanity of Jesus. When she was 21, she reluctantly agreed to accept the role of abbess, though she never used the title during her forty years of service.
Nor did she ever ask her sisters to do anything she would not do herself, including, as one sister later wrote, “giving them water by hand, washing the mattresses of the sick sisters with her own hand, and even washing the feet of the serving sisters.” One account of her life adds that Clare washed the mattresses of the sick, “not running away from their filth nor shrinking from their stench.”
Clare’s reputation spread, and many sought her healing touch for themselves or others. The Legend of Saint Clare tells how Francis sent Brother Stephen to her because he was afflicted with madness. Clare made the sign of the cross over him and then permitted him to sleep in the place where she usually prayed. Shortly he arose, healed; he returned to Francis freed of his insanity.
Clare always made the sign of the cross over the person who needed healing, indicating from where she drew her miraculous power.
Clare and her Poor Ladies remained devoted to Francis and cherished his visits and teachings. When he died in 1226, they felt the loss deeply. Thomas of Celano described Francis’s funeral procession as it passed by Clare’s Monastery of San Damiano:
“Redoubling their sighs and looking upon him with great sorrow of heart and many tears, they began to proclaim in a restrained voice: ‘Father, father, what shall we do? Why do you abandon us in our misery? Or to whom do you leave us, who are so desolate? Why did you not send us rejoicing ahead of you to the place where you are going—us whom you leave in prison, us whom you will never visit as you used to?’ ”
Hunger Strike
In 1216, after much pleading, Clare had received from Pope Innocent III the right to live without communal property. But two years later, Cardinal Ugolino issued a new rule for her monastery, and it did not include this Privilege of Poverty. Clare objected, but without effect.
Then, after Francis’s death in 1226, a papal bull prohibited Francis’s brothers from serving as preachers to the Poor Ladies; there was concern about the possibility of sexual indiscretion.
At this point, Clare protested vigorously, refusing the food that the friars supplied her monastery. Her biography says, “The pious mother, sorrowing that her sisters would more rarely have the food of sacred teaching, sighed, ‘Let him now take away from us all the brothers, since he has taken away those who provide us with the food that is vital.’ ” In short, she went on a hunger strike.
When Pope Gregory heard of it, he rescinded this aspect of his rule. In 1247, another rule was imposed upon her order by Innocent IV. Clare, unhappy with this rule, wrote her own Form of Life, which was eventually approved.
Clare’s Way
Clare’s spirituality was profoundly influenced by two central mysteries of the Christian faith, the Incarnation and the Redemption.
Clare was impressed at how the Virgin mother carried Jesus in her womb. She concluded that she and her sisters had a similar mission: “As the glorious Virgin of virgins carried him materially, so you, too, by following her footprints, especially those of poverty and humility, can without any doubt, always carry him spiritually in your chaste and virginal body, holding him by whom all things are held together.”
The impoverished state of Jesus’ birth, life, and death became the basis of Clare’s poverty. In her Testament, Clare urged her sisters to always observe poverty “out of love of the God who was placed poor in the crib, lived poor in the world, and remained naked on the cross.” In addition to physical poverty, though, Clare sought spiritual poverty, emptying herself to make room for God.
For Clare, the Passion of Christ showed that temporal suffering is transformed into eternal glory. Urging Agnes of Prague, who had established a sister foundation, to persevere in poverty, Clare wrote, “If you suffer with him, you will reign with him. [If you] weep [with him], you shall rejoice with him; [If you] die with him on the cross of tribulation, you shall possess heavenly mansions in the splendor of the saints, and in the Book of Life your name shall be called glorious among [all].”
Death of a Saint
In August 1253, as Clare lay on her deathbed, her Form of Life was finally given papal approval, the first rule written by a woman to be so approved. Two days later, on August 11, she died and was buried in the church of San Giorgio, where her body remains today.
During her forty-year ministry, in spite of the many obstacles she had faced, Clare’s order had grown rapidly. It began as a single house in Assisi; by the time of her death, there were 147 houses of “Damianites” throughout Europe.
Like Francis, Clare was canonized rapidly, two years after her death, by Pope Alexander IV, a close friend of the Poor Ladies.
Ingrid Peterson, O.S.F., is a lecturer at the Tau Center, Sisters of Saint Francis, in Winona, Minnesota. She is author of Clare of Assisi: A Biographical Study (Franciscan Press, 1993).
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.
- More fromIngrid Peterson
- Celibacy
- Francis of Assisi
- Incarnation
- Poverty
- Prayer
- Saints
- Suffering and Problem of Pain
Pastors
Steve Harper with Bob Moeller
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
(The late-night phone call relays the tragic news that a cherished member of the church has died unexpectedly. A woman knocks on your office door and tearfully reports that her husband is gone, and she doesn’t know if he’s coming back–or if she even wants him back. A seminary student asks you to pray about the inoperable tumor discovered in his brain.
They all want you to pray. But the words of prayer don’t come easily at such times.
What should you ask God to do in such situations? What do you say in the presence of deep suffering? What words do you use when you don’t know how or what to pray?
We asked former pastor Steve Harper, one of the co-founders of The Shepherd’s Care, Inc. (a resource ministry designed to help pastors cope with the pressures of ministry) and recently a professor of spiritual formation at Asbury Theological Seminary, to help explain the ministry of prayer in seemingly hopeless situations.)
THE DYING
When I haven’t known how to pray, I’ve often asked the person, “How would you like me to pray for you today?” They’re often in the best position to know their own needs. They are the ones lying in the bed, living with the tubes, enduring the surgeries. If they say, “Pray that I won’t suffer,” or “Pray that I’ll get well,” that’s exactly what I’ll do.
In addition, when I’m called to the bedside of a person given little hope of recovery, I tend to pray for two things.
First is for the person to experience the presence and comfort of Christ. I’ve never faced a situation where I could not pray, “Thank you, Lord, that even in the midst of this darkness, you remain with us.”
Second is to pray for the person rather than about the disease. I can say, “Thank you Lord, for Mary’s long, good life. She has raised five beautiful children.” Or, “Thank you, God, for my friend Jim. I’m so blessed to have him as a friend and to be his pastor.”
Am I thereby consigning them to the grave?
I would never wish to give that impression. However, on several occasions I have had people say, “Don’t pray that I’ll be healed. Instead, pray that I will experience a peaceful death. Pray that in the not-too-distant future I can be with Jesus.”
Apparently, these individuals had a deep sense in their soul that they wouldn’t be healed. They understood the concept of holy dying as well as holy living. Such people are often way ahead of me in understanding the realities of their situation.
But how should we pray for those who don’t wish to die but who, in all likelihood, are dying?
I always honor their request to pray for healing. Jesus never said to a person, “No, you’re going to die so I’m not going to pray for you.” That’s entirely foreign to the spirit of his ministry.
So I always pray for healing. Even if the person’s plea for longevity flies in the face of medical realities, I can still pray, “Lord, display your sovereign power in this situation. Demonstrate your power as the Great Physician,” or “Continue to offer your constant and comforting presence,” or “Jesus, be Lord for my friend.”
THE IMPOSSIBLE
When it comes to praying for people with difficult medical problems, I am careful not to impose my perspective, or even the doctor’s perspective, on the patient. I’ve been in situations where the doctors said, “He’s going to die.” But he didn’t die. I’ve learned not to take my cues from the medical chart.
For example, my wife worked with a woman who went in for a routine check-up and discovered a massive tumor. The doctor’s prognosis wasn’t encouraging. Nonetheless, we began praying for her recovery. We chose not to treat her as if she were a dying person (she would have picked up on that quickly).
Instead we held out the hope that by our prayer and faith God could heal her, and we related to her as if she was going to recover.
Again, we prayed for her as a person rather than simply about her disease.
One day, while undergoing examination, the doctor discovered the tumor had vanished.
When it comes to praying for the sick, I must ultimately take my guidance from God. On more than one occasion, I’ve sat in a hospital parking lot asking how I should pray for the person I was about to see. My job is represent Christ and pray as Christ wants me to pray in that moment.
A SOUND PRACTICE OF PRAYER
“Is any one of you sick?” James 5:14 says. “He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.”
This passage troubles many people. Is it a blanket promise to heal everyone who follows the instructions? Or is it a description of a spiritual principle calling us to pray for the sick because God answers prayer (much like the descriptive promises found in Proverbs)?
I was interested in becoming a doctor during high school. My theology of anointing with oil, laying on of hands, and calling the elders has been influenced to some degree by how I’ve watched doctors practice medicine.
If two patients in two different rooms are suffering from the same disease, medical wisdom dictates you treat both those people in essentially the same fashion. They ought to receive the same drugs and undergo the same procedures.
Yet, doctors will tell you the same treatment can yield entirely different results. But it’s still a sound medical practice to treat the same disease in the same manner that’s been effective in the past.
That principle also applies when calling the elders to pray and anoint with oil. Where would doctors be if they said, “The last time we administered penicillin, it didn’t do any good. If word gets out, I’m in trouble. Let’s not use it anymore.”
I cannot allow my ego to get in the way of practicing “good medicine,” or in this case, good ministry. When people ask, “Could we have an anointing ceremony with the elders?” I respond, “When do you want us there?”
Knowing whether or not the person is going to be healed is completely immaterial. Good ministry is following what James says we ought to do and leaving the results with God.
If I were to judge if we are too reckless or too cautious in praying for healing on the basis of James 5, I would say we err on the side of timidity. One reason is the influence of scientific rationalism on the church. Science and technology can’t accept supernatural healing. Yet, when Jesus sent out the first disciples, he commissioned them to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal. I have to take the example of our Lord seriously.
The other reason we tend to shy away from healing services is the bad name false “faith healers” have given healing ministries. We fear guilt by association.
The third reason is ministerial pride. A pastor is never more on the spot than when he or she stands beside the bed of a critically ill person. The potential for embarrassment or sense of failure is enormous.
How do I deal with the troubling questions that arise when a person doesn’t get well?
First, I take a serious look at the depth of my prayer life. It may not be all that it should be. The “failure” may propel me to seek a deeper level of communication and intimacy with God than what I’ve settled for.
I also try to steer clear of allowing my ego to be so wrapped up in the experience that I won’t risk “failure.” The apparent certainty of the James passage contrasts sharply with my thirty years of ministry in which some people I’ve prayed for have gotten well while others have not, but this difference must not keep me from practicing good ministry.
It’s helpful to remember that all physical healing is temporary at best. I think of Lazarus, the man Jesus raised from the dead. You’re not going to bump into him today, because the next time he died, he stayed dead. Undoubtedly the second time Lazarus got sick the prayer chain kicked in, but to no avail.
Why would God heal him once and not the next time? I can’t answer that. It’s all wrapped up in the mystery of God. So when someone asks me to anoint someone with oil and pray for their healing, I do. I just don’t know what God will do.
FAITH AND FUNERALS
When called to a family who has just lost a loved one, particularly when it’s an untimely death, I pray the reality of the situation, “Lord, a great tragedy has occurred here today. We are stunned and saddened by this unspeakable loss.”
In my prayers I avoid the facile explanation I heard in one sermon. The family had lost an infant. “God needed a little rosebud in heaven,” the minister began. “So he looked down and found the most beautiful rosebud on earth and took the flower to heaven.”
I was so angry with the insensitivity of the pastor’s remarks that it was all I could do to remain seated. It was absurd theology. God doesn’t need rosebuds in heaven. He’s the one who said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. If he wanted a garden, he could plant one without infants perishing. Such sentimental explanations of a tragic loss only add embarrassment or fury to the suffering.
The first funeral I performed was for a 16-year-old girl from my youth group. She and her mother had driven to a lake cabin to pick up her dad’s car. They knew he was in the cabin with another woman.
As the young girl drove behind her mother on the dirt road back home, the dust boiled up, and she lost her sense of direction. She veered to the other side of the road, and a car hit her head-on.
In that situation, I could do nothing but acknowledge the depth of evil that claimed her life. That was the reality of the situation, and that’s how I prayed.
When I’m not certain if the deceased was a believer, I shy away from any comment regarding their eternal state. In my prayers I bear witness to the gospel: “Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die'” (John 11:25). While I express appreciation for the deceased because they were a unique human being, in the final analysis God alone knows the spiritual destiny of people. Apart from the saint who dies with the Twenty-third Psalm on her lips, it’s best I stay away from passing judgment.
When someone loses their lifelong mate, even though the death might not be considered untimely, I show sympathy: “Lord, it would have been wonderful if Roger could have been with Doris for just a few more years … “
I go on to present death in the larger context of eternity and God’s desire for us to experience fellowship with him forever, saying, “But thank you God, that life on earth is not all there is. There is much, much more.”
THE MYSTERIES OF SUFFERING
When I was a professor, a student in my theology of prayer course stopped me after class one day.
“My cancer has come back,” he said. He was a young man who had undergone treatment for a brain tumor four years earlier, and the therapy appeared successful. The tumor had disappeared.
“I’m in seminary to become a preacher,” he said, “and it looks like I’ll never get to be one.” He asked me to tell him if he had heard God’s call correctly.
Prayer is often linked with profound questions about the will of God and the mystery of suffering. Such issues force us into a position of humility. I could not answer his question with any final authority.
Nevertheless we talked that day about how deeply the will to live is ingrained in all of us, and I prayed with him for his complete healing.
In the crises we regularly encounter, we always have a prayer. Not because we can always find the right words. I don’t have to utter a “Dear God” and an “Amen” to be praying. I simply have to be living in a relationship each day with Jesus Christ. If I’m doing that, even when I don’t have a prayer, I know I’m being heard.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
- More fromSteve Harper with Bob Moeller
- Conflict
- Crisis
- Death
- Faith Healing
- Funerals
- Grief
- Healing
- Pastor's Role
- Pastors
- Prayer
- Suffering
- Suffering and Problem of Pain
Pastors
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
(God isn’t always obligated to follow the order of worship in the bulletin. Sometimes he does the unexpected. LEADERSHIP contributing editor Bob Moeller collected the stories of eight church leaders who were surprised by God. Such sovereign, holy moments remind us that worship is, after all, entering God’s presence.)
WALKING THE VIA DOLOROSO
By Penny Zettler
A few years ago I served as a co-pastor during a week of family camp at our denominational campgrounds. We decided to structure our daily worship by celebrating a different holiday each day.
To observe Easter we took a life-size wooden cross and, as a group, walked it down from the chapel to a peninsula on the lake. Families traveled together, children held the hands of their fathers, and young mothers carried their infants. We had formed our own Via Dolorosa procession.
Because the cross was heavy, several men were forced to take turns carrying it. Watching my own father bear the cross for a portion of the journey moved me powerfully.
When we reached the point overlooking the shimmering lake, we stood the cross up so, from the campgrounds across the water, its reflection could be seen clearly. Then I handed everyone a dark ribbon to nail to the cross.
As the sound of the hammer reverberated across the lake, I was moved by thoughts of how sad and expensive the crucifixion truly was. We watched as children approached the cross with their parents, holding their ribbons and nails. Tears flowed down our faces. It all became personal. Even the children seemed to understand something of salvation’s great price.
The next morning we met at the cross for devotions. But during the night, the dark ribbons had been replaced with white ones. Everyone seemed thrilled to see the cross now covered with bright ribbons.
Especially the children. Their astonishment turned to delight: “Look Mommy! See how different the cross is this morning.” Fathers helped their children reclaim the white ribbons from the cross, and parents explained to the significance of what had happened. Then came a service of celebration.
Years later, the impact of that worship event still echoes as the sound of a hammer across the water.
The sound of the hammer made the crucifixion personal.
********************
Penny Zettler is pastor of families and Christian education at Friendship Church in Prior Lake, Minnesota.
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS THAT STUCK
By Dale Freed
During the first fifteen months at my present church, I encouraged our congregation to be more transparent. I started small groups, talked about accountability, and tried to foster an atmosphere where people could admit to one another their needs and problems.
On New Year’s Sunday, I took that approach one step further: I challenged people to respond to several possible commitments for the upcoming year.
I began by offering ways to keep New Year’s resolutions. Then I stepped out of the pulpit and walked down to the level of the pews.
“I’m going to read a list of items,” I said. “If you wish to commit yourself to that specific life-change, you can respond in any manner you’re comfortable with. You can raise your hand, say something, stand up, come forward, or do whatever you like.”
I began the list first with “personal intimacy with Christ.” Immediately a woman got up and came to the altar. “Believing with parents for the salvation of their children,” was the second item. I was stunned as a group of people moved en masse to the altar to kneel and pray.
The remainder of the list included healing for marriages, a call into full-time Christian service, victory over a secret sin (the secret must be confessed to someone), becoming a sacrificial giver, restoring broken relationships, and finally, leading someone to Christ during the next year.
Because ours has been a traditional church, somewhat image-conscious, for the altar to be crowded with individuals openly admitting their needs, weeping, seeking God, and praying for one another was a breakthrough. Even today in the spiritual dynamic of our congregation, we continue to feel the impact of that change.
Our image-conscious church was crowded with individuals weeping and seeking God.
********************
Dale Freed is pastor of First Wesleyan Church in Flint, Michigan.
A DRESS REHEARSAL COMES ALIVE
By John Wile
Seldom in a worship service can I give full attention to actually worshiping God myself. Usually I’m preoccupied with such thoughts as, Will the next person remember to get up now?
But a few years ago, I experienced an unforgettable moment of worship during a “dress rehearsal” for our Good Friday service. I had decided to run through the service myself in the afternoon to make sure all the bugs were worked out.
The lights had been turned down. Only a few candles glimmered in the empty auditorium. The plan was to hand each person a nail to hold during the service.
That afternoon I sat alone, singing the songs and reading the Scripture out loud. All the while I held the nail in my hand. At the end of the service, each person was to come forward and leave their nail in a clay pot at the foot of the cross.
When I got to that point in the run-through, I walked down to the front of the sanctuary and bowed before a free-standing cross. Then I dropped my nail in the clay container.
The moment I did, an exhilarating and liberating thought gripped me: Yes! This is exactly what Jesus came to accomplish. And though this nail of mine was not driven in him, I can now leave it here and not carry it any longer. I was overwhelmed by the gift God had given me in Christ, moved by the deep cost Christ paid. I knelt alone and cried.
God’s presence was real that afternoon. Later that night, as the actual service got underway, I invited people to come forward for prayer. I’ll never forget the penetrating sound of nails being dropped one at a time into the clay pots.
Each metallic clink represented a person’s willingness to admit a personal role in the crucifixion while yet at the same time accepting the costly gift of God’s forgiveness.
God’s presence overwhelmed me when I considered the cost Christ paid.
********************
John Wile is pastor of Bethesda Lutheran Brethren Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
THE DANCE OF GIVING
By Norm Leatherwood
I serve an international, inner-city congregation. People from all over the globe worship with us, so we enjoy a cosmopolitan, if not hybrid, worship experience.
One member of our advisory board is from Ghana. At dinner in his home a few months ago, he told us how the churches in his African nation take offerings. There, offerings are a time of celebration: everyone dances past the offering plate, whether or not they have money to drop in it.
We decided to try his method during one of our worship services. That Sunday we explained briefly what we were doing and why. Then the man from Ghana played the drums while his wife and mother-in-law added music with a distinctly African flavor.
Beginning with the back rows, children and adults, whites and blacks, everyone stood and began to dance, moving row by row toward the offering plates.
Though the offering dance was planned, God surprised us by showing us what it meant to be cheerful–even hilarious–givers, just as the New Testament teaches. People seemed delighted to present their offering to God in such a festive atmosphere. Though it was admittedly a stretch for some to participate, the level of joy and enthusiasm was universal.
Another unexpected benefit was that our dancing reinforced an important biblical truth about offerings: regardless of how much we to have to give, God wants us to offer ourselves.
While we don’t take our offerings this way every week, once a month we collect our offering for missions by asking everyone, like King David of old, to dance before the Lord.
God surprised us by showing us what it meant to be cheerful–even hilarious–givers.
********************
Norm Leatherwood is pastor of Friendship Center Church (Assemblies of God) in Chicago, Illinois.
HIGH AND LIFTED UP
By Alvin Parris
One evening I was helping lead a worship conference in Tacoma, Washington. I was playing the piano, and we were singing a newer song entitled, “Holy Is the Lord.” But then, I heard in my heart the Lord whispering the words to the old hymn: “Holy, Holy, Holy.” So I switched the piano accompaniment to that piece. And that’s when I began to sense the presence of God in an extraordinary way.
I was overcome with tears, and the congregation began to sing with me. Then a man got up and ran to the back of the auditorium. He had remembered that in the back room, behind all the props for the Christmas cantata, a banner was stored. Emblazoned on it were the words “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty,” along with an insignia that symbolized our Lord Jesus. It was made of deep purple cloth with silver letters and stood at least six feet tall and four feet wide.
The man began to walk throughout the congregation holding this banner. People began to sing louder and louder. It’s hard to put in words exactly what happened. But somehow, a sovereign act of God shifted the entire theme of the evening toward his own holiness.
I’ve been a music minister for twenty years. That night I realized that after spending that much time leading worship, I had treated the presence of God too casually. I had often depended on ministry methods instead of a relationship with God.
That night, through an unplanned song, God gave me a heightened sense of my accountability to a holy God. Now I can’t be satisfied just going through the motions: good worship mechanics alone cannot prepare me for meeting with God. While I’ve often talked about the holiness of God, that night I experienced it.
Through an unplanned song, I sensed my accountability to a holy God.
********************
Alvin Parris is associate pastor/minister of fine artsat New Life Fellowship in Rochester, New York.
SURPRISE AMONG THE ELEMENTS
By Stu Weber
This year my wife and I were officially “empty-nested.” As the holidays approached, we eagerly anticipated our children’s return.
One Sunday, as I prepared my remarks for Communion, it struck me that our oldest son in England was at that moment making preparations to return to us. Our middle son who works on the other side of the mountains from us, was also preparing to come home. So was our youngest boy who attends college in the Chicago area. The pieces were coming together for us to be reunited around the table. The kids were coming home.
My mind fast-forwarded to the day when our heavenly Father will drop his hand, and all the arrangements to bring his children home will be set in motion. They will arrive from every nation, tribe, and language. I stood at the Communion table that morning and shared those thoughts with the congregation: “The kids are coming home.”
I also recalled what Jesus said when he shared a holiday meal with his disciples. “I have longed to have this meal with you,” he said. “I promise I will not eat of it again until it’s fulfilled in the kingdom.” I finished by saying that if there’s anything that can touch the heart of the Father, it’s the thought of his kids coming home.
It was a pin-dropping moment. A sense of God’s love, awe, and wonder seemed to fill the sanctuary. The thought that we would all one day be seated around his table became tangible. Though several people in the congregation that morning were estranged from their children, Communion seemed to hold out the hope that reconciliation could one day take place around the table.
God used that simple metaphor of kids coming home to break through first to my heart, then to others. The moment was unforgettable.
One day we’ll all be home, seated around God’s table–the thought filled the sanctuary with a sense of awe.
********************
Stu Weber is pastor of Good Shepherd Community Church in Boring, Oregon.
THE EYES HAVE IT
By Pam Howell
Last November we devoted one of our mid-week (New Community) services entirely to prayer and worship. Nancy Beach, one of three leaders directing the service that evening, specifically invited people to bring their personal needs to God. She asked people to stand if they needed prayer for physical health, or job-related problems, or other personal concerns.
Her final invitation was for people to stand who were “spiritually stuck”–to admit they needed God to intervene and move them out of their spiritual apathy.
I was skeptical that anyone would stand. It seemed too personal and sensitive an issue for anyone to reveal to a large crowd.
Yet people got up all over the auditorium, hundreds and hundreds of men and women stood.
Nancy invited them to turn and face one another and sing a chorus. It was an amazing, humbling, and exhilarating moment to see people look one another in the eye and sing: He is able, more than able, to accomplish what concerns me today. He is able, more than able, to handle anything that comes my way. He is able, more than able, to do much more than I could ever dream. He is able, more than able, to make me what he wants me to be.
In our services, we like to talk about the fact that many of the songs we sing have “dangerous lyrics.” That is, you should only sing them if you really mean what you’re singing, because God might take you seriously. That night I realized you can’t look into the eyes of another person and sing “He Is Able” unless you mean it.
In an amazing way, that large congregation became a small group. I could sense the presence of God as people sang encouragement to one another. The joy on their faces confirmed to me that God is indeed able to do much more than I could ever dream.
God was there as people sang encouragement to each other.
********************
Pam Howell is New Community director at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.
SECRETS LAID BARE
By Greg Elmquist
We celebrated our congregation’s second anniversary in November. Our plan was to allow a few minutes for individuals to share what God had done in their lives these last two years through the ministry of the church.
What was intended to be a small portion of the service lasted more than an hour.
The most powerful testimony came from a 14-year-old boy named Doug. Just over a year earlier, he had been expelled from school, was in trouble with the law, and had driven his mother and stepfather to the point where they said they could no longer handle him. That’s when we invited Doug to live in our home. My wife and I determined to show him love. The church determined to be an encouragement, too, and as a result he eventually came to Christ.
That morning he stood up and told everyone how God had delivered him from his teenage rebellion. “I may get in trouble for saying this,” he said. “But just yesterday I ran into some of my old friends who invited me to smoke pot with them. With God’s help, I said no, and got on my bike and rode home.”
His simple testimony seemed to unleash the presence of God in the sanctuary. People began to weep, and one person after another stood and shared what God had done in their lives. There was a level of vulnerability I had never seen before in our congregation.
The non-Christians were, perhaps, most impacted. One woman called me later. “I don’t know what happened to me that day in your church,” she said, “but my life has never been the same. I now recognize my sin, and I want to get rid of it.” She became a believer, eventually quit her job, and moved to our city to attend the church.
It reminded me of what Paul said: “But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!’ ” (1 Cor. 14:24-25).
In the service was present a spirit of prophecy present. By prophecy I mean the testimony of God’s grace at work in God’s people.
Preaching and explaining God’s mercy is one thing. It’s another to hear person after person get up and give testimony to the impact of God’s mercy in their life. Before I had sensed God was raising our church up one note at a time–that Sunday, however, he raised us an entire octave.
A simple testimony unleashed the presence of God.
********************
Greg Elmquist is pastor of Orlando Grace Church in Maitland, Florida.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
- Commitment
- Confession
- Experiencing God
- God
- Worship
Pastors
Steve Bierly
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
“The best advice I can give pastors in small, traditional churches,” said the speaker, “is to move. Such churches won’t accept a pastor who trains others to minister instead of doing all the ministry himself. Plant your own churches. You’ll never change one that already exists.”
I know the feeling. Every year disillusioned pastors committed to growth leave small churches–after trying but failing to bring about change.
It’s true: many characteristics of small churches frustrate growth. In general, small churches are interested in preserving relationships and, thus, status quo. Introduce too much change and people respond with a negative, moral judgment: “Things aren’t right here anymore.”
I have found, however, that small-church pastors can implement growth principles–with some modification. The following four principles are especially important for growing (and surviving as a leader) in a smaller congregation.
REDEFINE WHAT IT MEANS TO STRETCH
I was inspired by a speaker who said, “Churches don’t grow if their pastors aren’t growing. A pastor who is afraid to stretch and take risks goes nowhere.” This stirs the blood of pastors who want to accomplish something for God.
Such speakers, however, usually define stretching as leading churches through the necessary, painful changes that bring numerical growth. The implication: If you are not doing that, you’re stagnant.
But which requires you to stretch more:
* Learning to love the old guard that blocks change, or leading a group where you call the shots?
* Seeking what God has done and is doing in the lives of your people, or implementing ideas from the latest seminar in your “closed and hopeless system?”
* Believing that Christ’s Church is triumphant even when membership has decreased, or leading a 500-member church in a $1.5 million fund drive?
Clearly, pastors can stretch in small churches and in megachurches, only in different ways.
BE SATISFIED WITH SMALL STEPS
We admire missionaries who labor in hard fields. If a missionary serves five years in a Muslim nation and reports a half-dozen converts, we celebrate progress in a “closed” situation. We don’t encourage that person to leave the field.
Many small churches are hard, almost closed fields. Better to celebrate the small steps than bemoan that “nothing is happening”?
Maybe you haven’t been able to organize the congregation into cell groups, but have you formed a women’s prayer breakfast or an adult Bible class, where sharing and prayer take place?
Maybe your worship service is still traditional, but has the congregation learned a new chorus or enjoyed worshiping in a fresh way? Perhaps no one will mistake your service for a megachurch’s, but is it now more inviting than last year?
Small steps may indicate the Lord is using your ministry according to the timetable of hard fields.
ASSUME GOD WAS THERE BEFORE YOU ARRIVED
Many insist pastors are the ones who “cast a vision.” Pastors must ask, “What can this church be that no other church in the community can be?” And then, when they can answer, pastors must move the church in that direction.
Could it be that sometimes God’s answer is “This church should just be itself”? Maybe, just maybe, God was already at work building the kind of church he wanted before Super Leader appeared on the scene.
If your congregation is primarily older people, why not concentrate on reaching senior citizens and let other churches focus on Baby Boomers?
I served as part-time pastor for a small congregation of mostly senior citizens. They had hoped a young pastor would attract young families, but they couldn’t make the necessary improvements (find teachers for Sunday school classes for all ages, for example).
Most newcomers to our church were friends and family of the members, middle-aged people with grown children. Even with these additions, at board meetings a nagging sense of sadness prevailed because “we’re not getting any young people.”
Since I left, the church has hired a semi-retired pastor and has continued to grow slowly by being what it is–a warm, welcoming, caring family of older believers.
If the congregation is comprised of a few extended families, why not focus on its strength, training people to reach family and friends who do not already attend?
That was our aim with “The Cobblestone Commission,” our congregation’s three-year plan for outreach, in which we (1) held our first “Friend Day,” (2) called quarterly prayer days specifically for unchurched people we know, (3) sponsored a video seminar on parenting (having discovered this was the hot topic on our friends’ minds), and (4) planned a two-day Friendship Evangelism Workshop.
Some experts tell pastors to “make sure your church is the one you would attend if you were ‘church-shopping’ in your community.” Doesn’t this suggest that the Lord wasn’t doing much of anything except waiting for you and your new direction to arrive? Pastors too often seek to remake their churches into congregations similar to the ones they grew up in, served on staff for, learned about in a seminar, or attended while in seminary.
Maybe God was at work here before I arrived. Maybe I should discover where he’s leading, and not just ask him to bless my work.
Successful missionaries help people discover what church looks like in the native culture. A missionary to Africa who expects worship services and programs to start and end “on time” receives a rude awakening.
Just as missionaries are not on the field to establish churches for themselves, American pastors are not on the field to create churches their way, but rather churches that fit the people.
PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE
Many speakers urge pastors to see themselves as strong, take-charge leaders. But such leaders often alienate small churches.
Instead of seeing themselves as CEOs, perhaps pastors should view themselves as secret agents.
After all I’ve said about honoring the church as it is, there are times when change is required. And we must act like a fifth column subversive against the status quo, dropping subtle hints here, recommending a good book there, putting a few seemingly harmless lines in the church newsletter. We must become one of the gang, while at the same time working to make it God’s gang.
Small congregations are skeptical about ideas that come from outside. We must work undercover to plant ideas that will seem to sprout within the congregation itself.
After we arrived at Cobblestone, my wife and I hosted “Listening Dinners” twice a week for three months with every person on the church phone list who would come. I regularly informed the board what people were saying. We also printed comments from the dinners in our monthly newsletters, highlighting the things I felt would contribute to church growth.
Eventually we created “The Cobblestone Commission” as a summary paper and outreach plan. Cobblestone has been able to do a great deal in evangelism in less than a year because I was able to say, “Many of our members would love to see us doing something for growth.” Since members and leadership had already seen these suggestions in the newsletter and had been updated in board meetings, I did not have to say, “As your new pastor, I believe we need to be doing thus-and-so.”
This, of course, takes time. Some urge pastors to push their congregations quickly through growth barriers. Lyle Schaller, in Net Results, has another perspective: “For many congregations the issue is not evangelism or numerical growth, but rather a long-range strategy of planned change. Often that is neither simple nor easy!”
In many smaller congregations, pastors need to view themselves as long-term change agents.
I have decided, however, that my highest goal is to be a spiritual leader. If I can help men and women love God more deeply and serve him more fully, whether the congregation grows numerically or not, my ministry will be a success.
********************
Steve Bierly is pastor of Cobblestone Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
- More fromSteve Bierly
- Church Growth
- Pastor's Role
- Pastors
- Patience
- Small Church
- Small Churches
Pastors
Marshall Shelley and Dave Goetz
An interview with Tim Keller
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
It isn't easy being Reformed on Madison Avenue. Just ask Presbyterian pastor and former Westminster Seminary professor Tim Keller. Four years ago, despite the difficulties, he planted a church in midtown Manhattan, and today Redeemer Presbyterian Church effectively reaches students, office workers, corporate executives, and intelligentsia.
Keller's office, on the twelfth floor of a Madison Avenue high-rise, is wedged between the skyscrapers of New York's famous skyline. And just a five-minute cab ride from the office, the congregation meets for worship three times each Sunday in the auditorium of Hunter College. Its 11:00 a.m. service, rich in liturgy and classical music, attracts a crowd as ethnically and spiritually diverse as any Broadway musical. Its 6:30 p.m. contemporary service could be mistaken for a Broadway musical.
That contrast prompted Leadership Journal editors Dave Goetz and Marshall Shelley to brave the January slush one Sunday to worship there. At ten minutes before eleven, their cab pulled up to the doors of Hunter College. As they stepped out of the cold and into the college, a couple of enthusiastic greeters pointed them to a rapidly filling auditorium.
Shortly before the violin prelude ended, a middle-aged woman in a fur and stone-washed blue jeans plopped down next to Dave. She politely introduced herself, said her toes were cold, and asked how we'd heard about the church. Just then, Tim Keller stood up on stage, and the service began.
By the end of the first 19th-century hymn, it was obvious she was new to hymnody, and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. She didn't sing but used her index finger to follow the words printed in the bulletin. Throughout the service, she kept glancing sideways at Dave's bulletin, to see where he was reading or singing. Then she'd look back at hers and try to follow along.
A quick learner, however, by worship's end, she seemed to have mastered the liturgy, worship that even Jonathan Edwards could have appreciated.
Reformed liturgy, Madison Avenue style.
That paradox shouldn't come as a surprise, however, given the fact that Jonathan Edwards quotes roll off the tongue of Tim Keller as effortlessly as lay-ups roll off the fingers of New York Knicks center Patrick Ewing. As pastor and worship leader, Tim Keller has a head for the Reformed tradition and a heart for worship that pleases God. He spoke to Leadership Journal about what it means for Manhattan natives to worship well.
LEADERSHIP: Is worship doing what comes naturally? Or is it a skill that must be learned?
TIM KELLER: Worshiping God is an instinct that's gone awry. As a result, it must be learned, but as it's learned, it feels utterly right and natural.
Jonathan Edwards spoke of religion consisting in our affections. Our affections consist of that core part of our being that orients our mind, will, and emotions toward an object. Sin has caused our affections to stray (I told you I was Reformed), propelling us to worship relationships, achievement, work-everything but God. Alfred Adler would say we gravitate toward control or power or comfort or approval.
We obsess about those things, comfort ourselves with them, fantasize about them.
Of course, biblically speaking, those things are idols. Worship is pulling our affections off our idols and putting them on God. Obviously, at our deepest level, we were created for worship. But rediscovering that takes skill. It's learned.
When you strip away all of the externals, what is corporate worship?
Individuals worshiping God in harness. Each horse, say, in a team of six horses is affected by the speed and direction of the other five. The same is true of worship.
The word worship comes from an Old English word meaning "worth-ship." I define worship as a private act, which has two parts; seeing what God is worth and giving him what he's worth.
Job says, "I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread" Job 23:l2). When I treasure something, I longingly look at it, for example, in the store window and think about how great it would be to own it. I ponder its virtues, talk to my friends about how great it is. Then I go out and buy it.
Worship is treasuring God: I ponder his worth and then do something about It–I give him what he's worth. Every brand of worship must have those two elements. Public worship just means you're doing it in concert with others.
If the minister is talking about the holiness of God, for example, and you're seeing God's worthiness in terms of his holiness, you're seeing it in concert with the rest of the congregation. Together, God's people are in harness, letting the worship leader guide them to thinking about God in certain ways so they can respond individually by giving him what he is worth.
Of course, not everyone will be worshiping.
So when has a congregation worshiped well?
When a large number of those attending the service are privately worshiping, seeing God for what he's worth and responding in kind. A poor worship service is one in which very few are.
Unfortunately, there's no tangible way to tally the percentages. I've led services where I thought few people were truly worshiping, but then when I talked to my wife, she sensed just the opposite.
As an individual, how do you know if you have truly worshiped or just sat through a religious activity?
Our affections include not only our mind but our will and emotions. Jonathan Edwards said that you can have an intellectual event that hasn't affected you. In order for us to worship, our mind, will, and emotions have to be moved. They're all organically connected.
Merely learning a truth about God is intellectual education, not worship.
For example, I can know intellectually that God is good but still be worried silly about something that's coming up this week. If the morning's sermon is on the sovereignty and goodness of God, I've haven't worshiped unless that truth descends from my mind and touches my emotions and my will.
I worship, then, when I realize I've been trusting in my own abilities, not the sovereignty and goodness of God. When I pull my affections off the other things I've been trusting in–which is why I'm anxious–and put them on God, I will be touched emotionally. I may cry; I may not. It depends on what kind of personality I have. But the truth will affect my emotions–and my will.
My will is affected when I decide to change the way I handle that threat next week.
Worship is grasping a truth about God and then letting that truth strike you in the center of your being. It thrills you, comforts you. That's when the truth has moved from left to right brain-from mind to heart. On the spot, it will change the way you feel. And from that moment on it will change the way you act. The whole brain, the whole person is affected.
Some people are moved to tears by listening to "The Old Rugged Cross." Others by "The Wind Beneath My Wings." Is that worship?
Perhaps. But it could also be merely a sentimental connection. That is, the song reminds you of a warm memory. This is one reason why people will say, '"I can't worship if I don't sit in my pew" or "I can't worship because you rearranged the furniture," or "I can't worship if I don't know the hymns."
That's nostalgia, a fond sentiment that people often need because everything else in life is changing. But that feeling isn't worship.
So an emotional experience may not be worship.
Correct. Feelings–perhaps induced by my surroundings or whatever–are stirred, but there is no impact on my whole life. Our emotions become a legitimate part of worship when, in response to a truth about God, we give something back to God: our money, our sin, our praise. Again, the three elements must be there: mind, will, emotion.
I'd rather use the word moved than the word emotion, however. I agree with Edwards who essentially said that if we don't find that our affections have been moved from earthly idols toward God, we haven't worshiped. Our affections are more than just our emotions.
Some of us, myself included, are not emotionally expressive. I don't consider myself repressed; that's just who I am.
However, if I leave Sunday morning having had no emotional connection whatsoever, I haven't worshiped. I must allow my heart to be touched to worship.
Besides nostalgia, what other emotions are often confused with worship?
Conscience clearing. Some people feel guilty because they haven't gone to church for a while, or they haven't been praying, or whatever. So because they're sitting in church, having sung a hymn and put something in the offering plate, they feel better. They feel like good people for being there. Their conscience is dear. Perhaps that feeling is better than the sentimental feeling, but it's still not worship.
Other people are only having an aesthetic experience, which may be better than the other two forms of emotion, but it's still not worship. Even people hostile to the gospel can weep while listening to Handel's Messiah. C. S. Lewis said that his imagination was baptized when he was still an atheist because of excellent Christian art.
After preaching a sermon, I've had people say, "Your sermon was wonderful. It made me feel terrific, but I don't believe any of the things you said." They liked the logic, the delivery, the overall impact, but they couldn't believe it.
So you can withhold your intellect and your will and yet have an incredibly aesthetic experience as you see the gospel presented in an artistic way.
What role should aesthetics play in worship?
Aesthetics, or art, is a movement from the right brain to the left. Consequently, art is often a back door to the left brain–the side of our brain that analyzes truth. Clearly, people are brought to faith through great aesthetics. The power of the art draws people to behold it. After a while they begin to wonder if the ideas that inspired it are true.
That's one reason why large churches that focus on excellence in worship attract more non-Christians. A non-Christian is attracted to the art of a tight-sounding worship band or string quartet. Non-Christians are not, in general, attracted to smaller, close-knit churches where for the Sunday morning special music Brother Joe's seventh-grade nephew gets up and plays "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" on his clarinet. That music is meaningful for the members of Brother Joe's church, who know and love the nephew, and know and love the truth. But those who don't have the relationship already established are only made uncomfortable by the lack of aesthetics.
As a general rule, the larger the church, the more important worship aesthetics become. It can be compared to the difference between two restaurants, both of which have great food. One restaurant is a dive, tucked away in a hard-to-find basement: its patrons are proud of the fact that not many people eat there. It attracts few new customers because nobody knows where it is unless you're told by an insider.
The other restaurant, however, places a premium on good advertising and a pleasant ambiance. It's easy to find, warm and friendly. Everything about the restaurant communicates, "Why don't you buy our food?"
I would go so far as to say that when planting a church, you determine its future size by the importance you place on aesthetics in worship.
Is the reason for good art in worship because God deserves our best?
That's one reason. But, frankly, I doubt that to God there's much difference between the classically trained soloist or Brother Joe's nephew. Even our most highly trained musicians are probably not going to impress Almighty God.
God is the one we want to please, and I doubt he judges on the basis of aesthetics.
To me, aesthetics are important as an effective means for people to grasp the truth about God so they can give him what he's worth–to worship. Good aesthetics remove the obstacle of distraction that bad art places in the path of the would-be worshiper.
Isn't focusing on aesthetics, though, merely catering to our culture's consumer mindset?
Effective evangelism has usually combined excellent aesthetics with communication. George Whitefield's preaching was great aesthetics; he had a gripping voice, he could weave moving stories causing the crowd to groan and weep. His oratory power attracted crowds of five to ten thousand people.
Whether Whitefield's oratory, Willow Creek's drama, or Redeemer Presbyterian's more classical aesthetics, the object is to communicate a message that penetrates the head, the heart, and the will.
And that from a Reformed pastor who quotes Jonathan Edwards! (Laughter)
Contemporary pop music is not the only art that attracts non-Christians. I'm always puzzled when I hear pastors suggest this.
Our largest service at Redeemer is not the one we started with the contemporary band (though that could change). It's the one with traditional hymns and string quartets playing classical music. Perhaps that's because New York faces Europe more than the rest of the country. I've found the people of Manhattan like formality. They're used to cathedrals, art museums, symphonies. So many non-Christians feel safe in a liturgical service because at least there they know what's happening next. There are no surprises.
I've also found that many who, having rejected their Christian upbringing, come back to the faith often do so to a liturgical church. Those types of people tend to be a part of our country's intellectuals: university professors, writers, musical performers.
Dan Wakefield, a writer who moved to New York in the 1950s, was originally from Indiana. When he arrived here, he completely overturned his Baptist roots and became a Bohemian. In one of his books, he describes how he wanted nothing to do with the values of middle America. He completely rid himself of religion.
Now, however, he's near sixty years old, ostensibly needing spiritual meaning, and attends the Episcopal church. Why? Probably because to him the Episcopal church feels safe, it's connected with history, it doesn't feel like a fly-by-night operation, and, to him, it is more satisfying aesthetically.
So, historic liturgy appeals to a certain kind of person. It opens doors to the heart that the art of pop culture can't. Personally, I like both. Each form of art opens different doors into my soul.
One of the struggles pastors face is planning worship when both believers and "seekers" will attend. Can both wheat and tares worship together?
At Redeemer, we say that in the way we communicate to our audience, we are not targeting either believers or seekers. Ours is a worship service calling everyone to respond to the truths of God. We just do it in the vernacular.
In addition to good aesthetics, we attempt to make our worship accessible, which, in many ways, is also good aesthetics. Little things such as the words of the liturgy must be beautiful and understandable–even the words must have good aesthetics.
In historic liturgy, the congregation recites aloud more than in free-church styles. So the words to those forms have to be comprehensible. Our bulletin is actually a booklet, several pages thick, which includes the words and music to the hymns and responsive readings we'll be using, as well as quotes from such literary types like George Herbert, a 17th-century poet, and folk choruses. American folk tunes, amazingly, blend nicely in high-culture worship. The stronger musical line of folk music fits with the classical thrust of the service.
What part to you, as worship leader, play during the liturgy?
To worship in the vernacular, I explain more, saying, for example, "Let's read this passage of Scripture and then spend a few silent moments in confession." Then I'll explain what confession is. Or I say, "At the end of the sermon, I will be calling for a life commitment. Committing our life to God means … "
However, in reality, you can only do so much education and so much evangelism in a worship service. Therefore, a congregation needs venues outside of Sunday worship for both.
When you try to be aesthetically appealing week after week, is there a tyranny of each week having to be better than the last?
I don't feel the "can you top this" pressure some pastors say they feel. But still, just the pressure to create an equally good worship service each week can be powerful.
The pressure can cause me to react wrongly when a service doesn't come off the way I think it should. I'm a detail person, and occasionally I catch myself cringing when I feel a vocalist blew it or the microphone system goes haywire. That's not good. It indicates an over-emphasis on aesthetics.
We recently moved from a smaller facility where we packed out the place to an auditorium at Hunter College, a place that seats 2,200. Our largest service, however, is 800. That has dampened our worship energy, because acoustically, our singing cannot fill the expanses of the auditorium.
That has been frustrating. We purchased an organ, which helps, but we've had to accept the fact that until we fill the auditorium, our singing, aesthetically, will not meet our expectations. Some of our people were disappointed when we first moved in, but we didn't have any alternative.
Yet, just as people can have an aesthetic experience and not worship, they can also worship without good aesthetics.
I need to remember that. So I try to balance truth with love. I'm an advocate of good aesthetics but not in a way that is harsh. I'm committed to excellence but don't want to make it a non-negotiable. Aesthetics are negotiable, truth is not.
How do you arrange your service so people can worship with their mind, emotions, and will?
We break our service down into three cycles of seeing what God is worth and then giving him what he's worth. To begin the service, for example, I often give a devotional that focuses on some aspect of God. The following two pieces of music and then time of silence for confession allows people to respond: to give back to God what he's worth.
Elements of worship such as Scripture readings, exhortations, and sermons are vehicles to show people what God is worth. The offering, prayers of repentance and thanksgiving, and times of confession, of course, are there for people to respond to God.
As worship leader, what must you bring spiritually to Sunday morning?
Before Sunday, I must have been worshiping God throughout the week. I use, daily, Martin Luther's scheme of "garland" meditation, which he describes in a letter. I meditate until some thought of Scripture catches fire in my heart. I collect those thoughts, which stay radioactive all week, and use them in my worship leading the next Sunday. This prepares me to worship in concert with the congregation. My people can sense whether I am or not. I believe the church needs to see me worship, to see my affections being moved by the truth of God.
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
Pastors
Donna Schaper
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
In my twenty years of ordained ministry, the word professional has been both friend and foe.
With my colleagues I have enjoyed more legitimacy for days off and days on, regular paychecks, standards for salaries, and clergy journals. I have benefited from clinical pastoral training and concepts such as boundaries, self-differentiation, and rescuing. I picked up a second language, that of psychology, which, added to theology, has been useful. Bounded and bordered relationships can be like a good garden. They look better and feel better and grow better.
I have learned other languages: staffing, time management, and programming. I have learned sociological types for congregations, the pastor-centered and the program-centered and the like. I have learned organizational dynamics: that at certain levels of worship attendance, for example, congregations are poised for different behaviors.
Professionalism has been good. It has also been an enemy, an insect boring out the tree from within.
My ministry lost a bit of its sap while professionalizing and credentializing. This loss of sap makes me nervous, especially in my new job as area minister for 125 United Churches of Christ.
Now I have the odd privilege of hearing clergy stories all day long.
Yesterday one minister told me his largest problem was convincing his congregation he did not have time to do pastoral visits.
As he listed his obligations, and the congregation’s resistance to those obligations–they wanted church meetings to decrease and the pastor’s ministry to shut-ins to increase–I winced. He expected me to confirm his resistance to pastoral calling. I could not.
In my own ministry, pastoral calling was central. I visited every member every year and the shut-ins monthly. I did this for the sap. The stories. The connections.
It not only gave me joy; it profoundly affected my congregations. They became more open to the mission I proposed. They trusted me. Had I not been calling, I could never have started soup kitchens or shelters.
Only now do I see the value of those visits. Then I didn’t evaluate.
The man I spoke to yesterday was wearing himself out giving his parish something they didn’t want. He wanted to keep the chairs in his committee room warmed. Participation. Activity. Shared decision-making.
They didn’t want more education or a better investment policy. They wanted him to know them.
His professional works, good as they are, cannot replace the basic intimacy between pastor and people. When that intimacy is absent, all the professionalism in the world cannot fill its space.
When I got home that night, a letter was in the box from a woman who had gone from one parish to a larger one. What did she miss the most? The calling. Now when she meets someone on the street, her question is not how your great aunt is faring since the triple by-pass, but “Who are you?” She misses the sap of the stories, too.
That same day, I met with a 55-year-old clergyman and his wife. He’d just discovered the chair of his board of trustees has Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“I’d thought about leaving this parish soon,” he said, “but now I couldn’t possibly. I have to at least go through this with him.”
A woman pastor recently told me the chair of her trustees had cancer. She had to move, she said, because she couldn’t bear having to minister to the S.O.B. at the end of his life.
The striking contrast in the two statements is surely due to each trustee being a different kind of person. But the softness in the one statement when compared with the hardness in the other matters. One is connected to the key leader; the other disconnected.
Professionalism can disconnect us by giving us permission even to say things like she said. That permission should be withdrawn. We should develop instead a clergy peer culture that encourages us to love “them” no matter what–while not being the slightest bit naive as to what that “what” may be.
Parishes today want us to love them. I think they test us with wild behavior just to see if we do.
I just placed a woman minister whose previous church’s job description stipulated that she mow the lawn! I was reminded that professional boundaries can be beneficial.
Then I saw an African-American layman yell at his pastor for mowing the church lawn. The pastor said the lawn needed it. The layman said he was embarrassed to have his pastor do that. Go figure.
Boundaries clarify, but they’re meant to be crossed. Boundaries also are crosses. They give. They also take.
The wonder of the ministry for me is in the permission we have–through faith–to cross and to be crossed.
Do I want to go back to the pocket cash or the seven-day work week? No. Do I want to look my people in the eye, even the difficult ones, and at least know we are talking the same language?
Yes. I want the sap.
********************
Donna Schaper is Western Area Minister of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ in Ludlow, Massachusetts.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
- More fromDonna Schaper
- Administration
- Church Leadership
- Church Staff
- Compassion
- Management
- Pastor's Role
- Pastoral Care
- Pastors
- Spiritual Formation
- Time Management
- Vision
Pastors
Chris Erdman
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
The way pastors work, we easily confuse an outboard motor for the wind of the Spirit. We are God-called but task-driven. We find ourselves up to our eyebrows in earthbound pursuits: drafting worship plans, writing memos, reading minutes, sorting mail, phoning cantankerous parishioners.
In the wake of our religious activity, God gets pushed to the periphery.
I want to be Moses, but I feel like Aaron. I’m the one down in the valley managing camp life. Mount Sinai’s lofty crags are someone else’s reality. Pastoral work becomes boring, predictable, routine.
Where’s the lightning, fire, wind, voice–where’s God?
Then I visit Mary.
Today is the first time I will see her in her new home. Just a few days earlier, she was moved from the hospital to this nursing home, a move she dreaded, a move she fought tooth and nail. Mary never planned to spend her golden years in a nursing home.
Providence has turned the tables on Mary. Her stroke partially paralyzed one side of her body. Nor can she speak the way she wants to. A woman used to serving others is forced to swallow her pride. She must learn to receive. Even in this bustling center of geriatric care, she sits alone in her wheelchair isolated from family and friends.
As I walked down the hallways of the nursing home, my eyes search for her familiar face. There she is.
“Well, Mary!” I holler.
Mary turns her head: “Oooooh, my friend!” Bright smile. Twinkling eyes. Warm hug.
In this unguarded moment, Mary’s speech is clear. It’s when she tries the hardest that things get garbled. Now Mary desperately wants to talk but can’t. Her desperation only makes her more frustrated. After a few attempts at a conversation, I suggest we wander down to the activity center.
“I have a gift for you, Mary.”
Several years ago Mary gave me a gift, her poetry. Mary’s poetry is not merely a collection of pretty verses but an expression of heartfelt devotion to Jesus–a window into a saint at prayer.
Today I want to return the gift. I can’t give Mary her speech back, but I can give her the gift of memory.
Her eyes betray her eagerness as I open the envelope, and I begin to read the first poem. After just a few words, her eyes brighten, she leans forward, and a question forms on her lips.
“Yes, it’s yours,” I say.
Mary smiles and then laughs.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” I say, and she giggles like a school girl.
“Yes, it’s good, Mary!”
For the next half hour, we read her poem/prayers together–and laugh and worship. Surrounded by wheelchairs and white hair, loneliness and boredom, we roar and giggle and feel the presence of Jesus.
Down here in the valley, among the ordinary tasks of the day, today a bit of heaven opens up. God meets us ordinary people in an ordinary place.
How easily I forget.
********************
Chris Erdman is pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Sharon, Pennsylvania.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
- More fromChris Erdman
- Caring
- Experiencing God
- God
- Pastor's Role
- Pastors
Pastors
William Gullick Boulevard Park Church Seattle, Washington
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
I was standing at the front of the congregation giving an altar call when I saw our eight-year-old learning-disabled son dart away from his mother and come running down the aisle toward me. He had done this before. When he got to where I was standing, I took him firmly by the shoulder and sat him down on the front row.
Immediately a voice within me seemed to say, You have offended one of my little ones. I remembered that earlier in the day I had heard my son say to his mother, "Mama" I want to love Jesus." He didn't know how to express that love, but he did associate loving Jesus with walking down the aisle and talking to the preacher.
I thought to myself, I corrected him for doing the one thing I want him to do more than anything. If I can't understand the needs of my own son, how can I begin to understand the needs of other learning-disabled people?
That day I promised God I would find ways to minister to the needs of these special people. I made it a point to talk to the parents of the learning disabled in our congregation and was amazed at what I found.
"We don't come to church very often," one mother said, "because we can't always keep our son quiet. We know he disturbs those around him."'
"We feel our son is a burden to his Sunday school teacher," another parent said. "He can't keep up with other kids his age, so we just keep him at home."'
When I shared with our leaders what I was hearing, they asked, "What can we do?"
SPECIAL ASSISTANCE
The first thing we did was recruit volunteers to serve as assistants in classes for one month, simply befriending and paying attention to the learning-disabled children. At the end of one month, almost all agreed to continue working.
Our volunteers sat with the children as the leader taught a lesson or led a group activity. They gave individual assistance to anyone who needed help. They assisted in maintaining order, usually by simply sitting beside a disruptive child or briefly separating a child from his classmates, occasionally by taking a child to a parent.
We learned that some of our best workers are older adults who can serve as adoptive grandparents for learning-disabled children. As a reward, the adoptive grandparents invite the children to sit with them during worship or give other special attention. One older man takes his "adopted grandchild" sailing. Even children who tend toward behavioral problems will behave to protect their special privilege.
We have also used other children and youth to assist the learning disabled. This benefits those with the disabilities and helps reinforce lessons for the children and youth.
A special education teacher in the public school, who is a member in our church, provides training and resources for each teacher and assistant. We order materials designed specifically for the learning disabled from a Sunday school supplier.
INCLUDING THE PARENTS
One teacher had problems with a child using profanity. She went to the child's parents and asked for suggestions on how to handle the situation. "My son doesn't understand the difference between negative and positive attention," the mother explained. "We have found that the best way to deal with such behavior is to remove him from direct contact with others for a short period of time."
The next Sunday the teacher sat down with the child before class and told him, "If you misbehave today or talk dirty, I'm going to set you at a table by yourself." The child did repeat his behavior later in the class. The teacher separated him from the others, and after that day she never had a major problem with him.
Since this experience, we have asked each teacher to meet with the parents of their learning-disabled students at least twice a year. During this meeting teachers ask parents what type of behavior to expect and how to deal with it. The parents also assist in establishing realistic goals for the child.
Parents of a learning-disabled child experience significant stress and frustration. We have organized a support group to help them know that others understand and care. We occasionally invite guest speakers, but normally the parents just talk about their problems and the solutions they've found. Each session includes a Bible study.
PUTTING THEM TO WORK
Like anyone else in the church, the learning disabled need something to do. We employ adults with learning disabilities whenever possible, and we look for ministries within the church where they can be active. Some have joined the choir. Others work at registration tables during special meetings and as greeters. Still others help with routine things like setting up tables and chairs or cleaning up after meetings. My own son often goes with me to visit shut-ins.
Many learning-disabled people have had few successes in life and as a result have low self-esteem. Realizing this, we Iooked for things our children could participate in that would give them success.
Many learning-disabled people have good memories. We involved several in our Wednesday evening Scripture memory program. One parent, whose child was involved in this program, took her son to see a psychologist. After a couple of weeks, he asked her, "What does this child do on Wednesday evenings? This seems to be the only positive time in his life."
REACHING OUT
The time came when we decided we wanted to minister to learning-disabled children outside the church. In cooperation with the local school, we began a tutoring program for those with mild disabilities. Our tutors meet one hour each week with children referred by their teachers
The school doesn't permit any Christian content to the tutoring. Last year, of the sixteen children involved in tutoring, none had any connection with a church, but during their time in the program, eleven attended church events. One of them asked Jesus to be her Savior and began bringing her family to church. One of our elders has adopted another as his special project, and the child's parents are becoming receptive to the church.
Through this program we have discovered more needs than we can ever meet. The school principal recently told our tutoring coordinator, "I will send you as many students as you can provide workers."
The program has indirectly given us opportunities to minister to family members. Two young girls in tutoring had older sisters involved in rival gangs. One Wednesday when the older sisters met while dropping off their sisters in our parking lot, they exchanged threats. The next Wednesday one of the older sisters did not return, but the other came with the rest of her gang looking for a fight. Someone from our church invited the gang members in for refreshments, and one of our leaders shared the gospel with them. The gang never met on our parking lot again, but some of them did return for youth activities.
We have put a lot of time and effort into making our church a place where the learning disabled will feel at home. I think my son and others like him who "want to love Jesus"' will find it a much easier place to give and receive his love. And we're finding that learning-disabled persons have a lot of love to give.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
- More fromWilliam Gullick Boulevard Park Church Seattle, Washington
- Children
- Children's Ministry
Pastors
Richard Hansen
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
“Rich, you’ve got to try harder!”
An earnest student, I had conscientiously visited everyone on the hospital floors assigned to me. I had written detailed verbatim reports. Now, my clinical pastoral education supervisor was frustrating me.
“What more should I do?” I replied.
“Just try harder” was his enigmatic reply. So I tried harder. But every week his exhortation was the same. One day, in anger and frustration, I blurted out, “I can’t try harder! I give up!”
“Good!” he replied, softening immediately.
The lesson I learned fourteen years ago still lingers: trying harder doesn’t work. It’s like a pair of Chinese handcuffs: the harder you pull, the tighter they get. Only by pushing both fingers together (the opposite of trying harder) will the handcuffs release.
The same is true in my preaching. When I work too hard to make an impact, when I assume too much responsibility for changing others, I can inhibit the very changes in my listeners I desperately seek. My well-intentioned efforts actually make matters worse.
In his book “Generation to Generation,” Edwin Fried man speaks to the paradox of trying harder: “If we assume that any chronic condition that we are persistently trying to change will, perversely, be supported not to change by our serious efforts to bring about change, then it is logical to consider the possibility that one way out of this paradox is to be paradoxical.”
The paradoxical way: to become less serious and more playful.
But that’s not easy for me, one whose spiritual ancestors are John Calvin and John Knox. They were passionate for the gospel, but playful? Still, having wrestled with the paradoxes of trying too hard, I decided to lighten up. Here’s what I’ve discovered.
COLORING INSIDE THE LINES
Playfulness is sometimes misunderstood.
One of my early attempts came while preaching about sexuality. To introduce the sermon, I asked both the men and women to read responsively some of the more graphic passages from the Song of Songs. Sure that I had made my point, I playfully asked when they were finished, “Did any of you know this X-rated material was in the Bible?”
I was met with stone-faced, hostile silence.
The following Monday, a line of unhappy campers were parked in the reception area for their turn to file into my office: “We don’t use that kind of language in church!” Even a woman of my own baby-boomer generation, whose support I had come to expect, said later, “If I’d had to say ‘breasts’ one more time, I would have died!”
One person’s playfulness is another’s irreverence. So it is wise to know your congregation’s limits.
Another try with my current church brought better results. A guest preacher had described being so excited when his football team scored a touchdown that he jumped off the couch in front of the divided, pumped his arm up and down, and shouted, “Yes, yes, yes. YES!” So I decided to use his antics the following Sunday after a soloist had just sung a deeply moving piece.
“There’s just one thing I want to say after James’s song,” I said in my best preacher’s voice. I paused. Then, pumping my arm, I said, “Yes, yes, yes. YES!” Everyone who had attended the previous Sunday roared with laughter.
My former congregation would have seen this as irreverent. But not this church. They considered it playful–and appropriate.
Playfulness is more than spontaneity. Witty, extroverted preachers are not necessarily playful. Nor is it a worship style. “Free” worship styles can also have cemented boundaries–just try something that isn’t spontaneous!
Neither is playfulness reverse psychology. It’s not stating the opposite of what I desire. (“Guess what? Our church does not need your money this year.”) Such obvious gimmicks are both ineffective and false.
Playfulness does not misrepresent or deny the truth; it creates a new dynamic–within me.
“The major effect of playfulness and paradox is on the perpetrator,” says Friedman. “It takes him or her out of the feedback position. It detriangles and changes the balance of the emotional interdependency. It is the change in the structure of the triangle that gets the other person functioning or thinking differently.”
In preaching, I am the “perpetrator.” Becoming more playful affects me more than my audience. I lighten up. Playfulness frees me from trying so hard to make an impact. Hence, the emotional triangle involving me, the congregation, and the message changes. People are free to listen without activating their defenses. The possibility of impact actually increases.
That’s the paradox.
AROUND THE MAGINOT LINE
I’ve found it helpful to identify who in the congregation I feel most responsible to convince. Ironically, these are often the very people I will never touch. Why? They have built a Maginot Line.
The Maginot Line was the impenetrable system of barriers and bunkers built by France to protect itself from Imperial Germany after World War I. In World War II, however, Hitler didn’t attack France through the Maginot Line. His Panzer divisions made a sweeping detour around it through Belgium. France fell swiftly.
When preachers try too hard to make an impact, klaxons sound and bunker walls go up. My people often know what I’m going to say even before I say it (they know the issues I’m most serious about). When facing a Maginot Line, frontal attacks are valiant but ineffective.
Rather than slug it out in a frontal attack, wisdom suggests a detour. What is the last thing they expect me to say on this issue? What would make them laugh? How can I good-naturedly (not spitefully) be playful? Why am I trying so hard with them anyway?
In a sermon on God’s destruction of Sodom, my self-diagnosis revealed that I especially wanted to reach the folks who cheer for judgment rather than, as Abraham did, pray for mercy. My detour began with a playful scene of righteous folks building grandstands on the hills above that evil city to enjoy the Lord’s impending judgment:
“With football-stadium fervor, they waved banners and chanted, ‘Go God–crush Sodom!’ But Abraham was not cheerleading. Sodom included his own nephew, Lot. For Abraham, Sodom could never be just ‘them,’ those evil people not like us. There is some of ‘us’ in Sodom, for Abraham and for all of us. Realizing this prompts us to pray for God’s mercy rather than cheer for God’s judgment.”
(One elderly farmer who obviously didn’t take the detour said to me afterward, “While you were preaching, all I could think about is wishing God would push the whole city of San Francisco into the ocean!”)
TO STING LIKE A BEE
Trying-harder preaching often goes hand in hand with an over-emphasis on content. As a young preacher, I was certain that if I marshaled enough exegetical evidence (from the original languages, of course), I could bludgeon my listeners into belief. My sermons were like boxing matches: I didn’t always score a knockout, but I expected to win on points.
Since then, I have joined the Mohammed Ali school of homiletics. I must learn to dance like a butterfly if I want to sting like a bee. The footwork of the sermon (how you say it) is just as, if not more, essential than the content (what you say).
Of course, you remember the cartoon of a boxer who dances all over the ring, obviously impressed with his footwork, only to be knocked out by a single punch. Footwork is a means to an end–impact. Playful sermons are not intended to impress the listener (or the preacher) with one’s creativity. They are used to communicate truth.
Once I wanted to preach about the Lord’s Supper as being a prelude to the Messianic banquet. I wanted to communicate the joy felt by the early church as they celebrated this event. However, only by coming at the sermon in a lighter fashion could I detour around my church’s years of solemn tradition. The Sacrament had an aura more of wake than banquet.
I hit on the idea of having eyewitnesses report on their joyful experience. Rather than using real people, I imagined what caterers present at the meals might have observed.
The sermon opened with two caterers pausing for breath while serving the heavenly banquet. Soon they begin to reminisce about their previous catering jobs for the Lord. They remember the joyful Old Testament feasts in the Temple, Jesus’ upper room meal with his disciples, the agape meals of the early church, and twentieth-century expressions that somehow (in the caterers’ minds) lost the intended joy. Finally, the caterers gesture at the people enjoying the heavenly banquet and ask each other, “When they were back on earth, do you ever wonder if they really understood what they were doing?”
This sermon, “Observations of God’s Caterers,” was my fancy footwork around the entrenched expectations of my listeners. Because it was screened through playful, imaginary characters, most who listened did not feel defensive or threatened.
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
Some of us need permission to be playful. Like my personality, my preaching tends to be serious: to travel well-worn intellectual pathways, expressing the doctrines of the faith in centuries-old imagery. Fortunately, I also have some friends who release me to be playful with the great themes of my faith.
One such friend is Frederick Buechner. Another is C.S. Lewis. While studying, I keep an anthology of one or the other close at hand. I often dip into it for fifteen or twenty minutes as I begin thinking about my sermon. Their playful ideas, even on topics completely unrelated to my theme, push me to play with ideas as well. In their company, I see fresh approaches to the old, old story.
One such approach is playing the Devil’s Advocate. Serious preachers like me often have so many points to make, we skip over the questions that perplex our listeners. I have to keep coming back to the question: How might my message not ring true with life on the street?
While preparing for a sermon on Jesus’ challenge to enter the kingdom of God like a child, a woman in one of our seeker Bible studies came to mind. Deathly afraid of being manipulated, she would be repelled by Jesus’ challenge. To her, children are vulnerable.
That caused me to imagine other objections: Is reclaiming childhood innocence a sentimental illusion for an adult? If Jesus is talking about naive, simple-minded faith, what adult wants that?
Soon I not only had lots of questions to ask the text on behalf of my people, but the questions pushed me beyond the pat answers I might otherwise have offered.
PLAYING WITH WORDS
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word,” wrote Mark Twain, “is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”
That’s a helpful reminder. Words are the raw materials of sermons. The right use of words can inject a sermon with needed doses of playfulness. Here are some questions I ask myself to add freshness to my words:
Can it be understood in different ways? While preparing an Easter message on the Emmaus road experience, I noticed that when the doubtful disciples were confronted with the risen Christ, they “disbelieved for joy” (Luke 24:41, RSV).
It dawned on me that “I can’t believe it” can be understood in two ways: either as an expression of doubt or as an ecstatic expression of joy (like when the 1980 U.S. hockey team won an Olympic gold medal against overwhelming odds: “I can’t believe it!”).
My sermon traced the journey each of us take with the disciples. It began with the “I can’t believe it” of doubt and despair while trudging down the Emmaus road and ended with the “I can’t believe it” of joy, hugging and dancing in the presence of the risen Christ.
Does it mean the same thing to all people? Fresh off the farm, I once heard several teenagers in inner-city Minneapolis exclaim that a sleek passing car was “bad.” I was their youth worker.
“What’s bad about it?” I asked naively. “It looks neat to me!”
That embarrassing moment started me thinking of events in life we wrongly interpret as bad in the literal sense but which a sovereign God sees as being ultimately good.
Does it have a little known or surprising meaning? Dr. Ian Pitt-Watson, professor of preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary, once preached a sermon in which he playfully countered the common assumption that Jesus’ beatitude “blessed are the meek” implies wimpish weakness.
He observes of the word meek: “In the French Bible the word is translated debonnaire–debonair!–with overtones of courtesy, gallantry, chivalry (remember Hollywood’s ‘golden oldies’ and Cary Grant in his heyday?). Debonair: gentle, sensitive, courteous, modest, unpretentious–yet strong and brave and fun and happy.”
Debonair Cary Grant released meekness from the negative images from which I had imprisoned it.
Will different age groups hear it differently? Recently I introduced a sermon by narrating a comic strip showing Barney, the preschooler’s purple dinosaur, being swallowed up by a fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park. I began, however, by asking the congregation, “When you hear the name Barney, who flashes into your mind?”
I offered some possibilities that occurred to me as a child of early divided (Barney Fife, Barney Rubble). Shaking hands at the door afterwards, the older generation bombarded me: “I thought of Barney Oldfield,” “I thought of Barney Google.”
Introducing the sermon by simply playing with one word arrested the attention of several generations.
Not every sermon can or should be playful. But when we find ourselves trying harder to little effect, we may be caught in the handcuffs of trying harder. Freedom comes as we can say with Bill Murray, an alumnus of Saturday Night Live, “Hey, I’m serious!”
********************
Richard Hansen is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Visalia, California.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
- More fromRichard Hansen
- Communication
- Humor
- Preaching
Pastors
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
IDENTITY
In the town of Stepanavan, Armenia, I met a woman whom everyone called “Palasan’s wife.” She had her own name, of course, but townspeople called her by her husband’s name to show her great honor.
When the devastating 1988 earthquake struck Armenia, it was nearly noon, and Palasan was at work. He rushed to the elementary school where his son was a student. The facade was already crumbling, but he entered the building and began pushing children outside to safety. After Palasan had managed to help twenty-eight children out, an aftershock hit that completely collapsed the school building and killed him.
So the people of Stepanavan honor his memory and his young widow by calling her Palasan’s wife.
Sometimes a person’s greatest honor is not who they are but to whom they are related. The highest honor of any believer is to be called a disciple of Jesus Christ, who laid down his life for all people.
-L. Nishan Bakalian Beirut, Lebanon
STRENGTH
On my way to a conference in Colorado, I was driving uphill along a major interstate when I overtook a freight train going the same direction at a slower speed. The train was being pushed uphill by two locomotives that sounded as if they were straining at full power. I’m a flatlander from the Midwest. Is this how trains move in mountainous terrain? I wondered.
A few minutes later, I gradually came alongside the front of the nearly mile-long string of cars. There I found five more locomotives pulling the train. Seven engines in all! Where I come from, I rarely see more than three.
That train was a lesson for me. I had been under serious strain for some time. I was feeling tired and was wondering whether I could persevere under the pressure.
How like God, I thought. When I am pushing a load uphill with all the strength I have and feel like my energy level is depleted, he wants me to know that he is in the lead pulling with power far greater than mine.
-Richard Mylander St. Cloud, Minnesota
SACRIFICE
Judy Anderson, whose husband is the West Africa Director of the World Relief Corporation, grew up as the daughter of missionaries in Zaire. As a little girl, she went to a day-long rally celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of Christian missionaries coming to that part of Zaire. After a full day of long speeches and music, an old man came before the crowd and insisted that he be allowed to speak. He said he soon would die, and that he alone had some important information. If he did not speak, that information would go with him to his grave.
He explained that when Christian missionaries came a hundred years before, his people thought the missionaries were strange and their message unusual. The tribal leaders decided to test the missionaries by slowly poisoning them to death. Over a period of months and years, missionary children died one by one. Then the old man said, “It was as we watched how they died that we decided we wanted to live as Christians.”
That story had gone untold for one hundred years. Those who died painful, strange deaths never knew why they were dying or what the impact of their lives and deaths would be. They stayed because they trusted Jesus Christ.
-Leith Anderson Eden Prairie, Minnesota
HEART
In September 1993, with the Major League Baseball season nearing its end, the first-place Philadelphia Phillies visited the second-place Montreal Expos.
In the first game of the series, the home team Expos came to bat one inning trailing 7-4. Their first two batters reached base. The manager sent a pinch hitter to the plate, rookie Curtis Pride, who had never gotten a hit in the major leagues. Pride took his warm up swings, walked to the plate, and on the first pitch laced a double, scoring two runners.
The stadium thundered as 45,757 fans screamed their approval. The Expos third base coach called time, walked toward Pride, and told him to take off his batting helmet.
What’s wrong with my helmet? wondered the rookie. Then, realizing what his coach meant, Pride tipped his cap to the appreciative fans.
After the game, someone asked Pride if he could hear the cheering. This person wasn’t giving the rookie a hard time. Curtis Pride is 95 percent deaf.
“Here,” Pride said, pointing to his heart. “I could hear it here.”
Sometimes we hear things most strongly in our heart. Curtis Pride heard the fans’ approval in his heart. It’s in our hearts that God wants us to know his approval of our faith in Jesus Christ. “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children” (Rom. 8:16).
-Harry J. Heintz Troy, New York
CONFESSION
Early in 1993 British police accused two ten-year-old boys of the brutal murder of two-year-old James Bulger. The two boys pleaded innocence.
During the two-week trial the young defendants responded to police questioning with noticeable inconsistency. The climax of the trial came when the parents of one of the boys assured him that they would always love him. Confronted with irrefutable evidence linking him with the crime and the assurance of his parents’ love, the boy confessed in a soft voice, “I killed James.”
The miracle of God’s love is that he knows how evil we are, yet he loves us. We can confess our worst sins to him, confident that his love will not diminish.
-Greg Asimakoupoulos Concord, California
HOLY SPIRIT
In the book “Healing the Masculine Soul”, Gordon Dalbey says that when Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Helper, he uses a Greek word, paraclete, that was an ancient warrior’s term.
“Greek soldiers went into battle in pairs,” says Dalbey, “so when the enemy attacked, they could draw together back-to-back, covering each other’s blind side. One’s battle partner was the paraclete.”
Our Lord does not send us to fight the good fight alone. The Holy Spirit is our battle partner who covers our blind side and fights for our well being.
-Tom Tripp Colusa, California
EVANGELISM
While serving with Operation Mobilization in India in 1967, tuberculosis forced me into a sanitarium for several months. I did not yet speak the language, but I tried to give Christian literature written in their language to the patients, doctors, and nurses. Everyone politely refused.
I sensed many weren’t happy about a rich American (to them all Americans are rich) being in a free, government-run sanitarium. (They didn’t know I was just as broke as they were!)
The first few nights I woke around 2:00 A.M. coughing. One morning during my coughing spell, I noticed one of the older and sicker patients across the aisle trying to get out of bed. He would sit up on the edge of the bed and try to stand, but in weakness would fall back into bed. I didn’t understand what he was trying to do. He finally fell back into bed exhausted. I heard him crying softly.
The next morning I realized what the man had been trying to do. He had been trying to get up and walk to the bathroom! The stench in our ward was awful.
Other patients yelled insults at the man. Angry nurses moved him roughly from side to side as they cleaned up the mess. One nurse even slapped him. The old man curled into a ball and wept.
The next night I again woke up coughing. I noticed the man across the aisle sit up and again try to stand. Like the night before, he fell back whimpering. I don’t like bad smells, and I didn’t want to become involved, but I got out of bed and went over to him. When I touched his shoulder, his eyes opened wide with fear. I smiled, put my arms under him, and picked him up.
He was very light due to old age and advanced TB. I carried him to the washroom, which was just a filthy, small room with a hole in the floor. I stood behind him with my arms under his armpits as he took care of himself. After he finished, I picked him up, and carried him back to his bed. As I laid him down, he kissed me on the cheek, smiled, and said something I couldn’t understand.
The next morning another patient woke me and handed me a steaming cup of tea. He motioned with his hands that he wanted a tract.
As the sun rose, other patients approached and indicated they also wanted the booklets I had tried to distribute before. Throughout the day nurses, interns, and doctors asked for literature.
Weeks later an evangelist who spoke the language visited me, and as he talked to others he discovered that several had put their trust in Christ as Savior as a result of reading the literature.
What did it take to reach these people with the gospel? It wasn’t health, the ability to speak their language, or a persuasive talk. I simply took a trip to the bathroom.
-Doug Nichols Bothell, Washington
REMAINING IN CHRIST
On a recent ski trip, I saw to my surprise a blind person skiing. The blind skier, wearing a bright pink vest, stayed directly behind an instructor, listening for directions on how and when to turn.
Over the next several days I saw many blind skiers, invariably following the person who gave them the information they needed to make it safely down the mountain.
Remaining, or abiding, in Jesus means following him in the same way.
-Steve Winger Lubbock, Texas
********************
What are the most effective illustrations you’ve come across? We want to share them with other pastors and teachers who need material that communicates with imagination and impact. For items used, LEADERSHIP will pay $25. If the material has been published previously, please indicate the source.
Send contributions to:
To Illustrate …
LEADERSHIP
465 Gundersen Drive
Carol Stream, IL 60188
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
- Confession
- Evangelism
- Preaching
- Sermon Preparation