Page 5015 – Christianity Today (2024)

As a disciple, Peter was not the kind of guy you’d go to in the clutch, to use sports terminology. In his early years, whenever he opened his mouth, it was usually to change feet. He was the one who, when the spotlight pointed his way, ended up embarrassing himself.

On the day of Pentecost, a holy and historic moment in front of a large crowd, Peter had something to say-of course. But would it be something appropriate or totally off target? His track record wasn’t good. Peter didn’t have a history of rising to the occasion.

If I’d been there as Peter stood, I’d have cringed. Oh, no! What’s he going to say now? But Peter said exactly what was needed. His powerful words pierced the hearts of the crowd, and Acts 2:41 says that “those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”

It was the high-water mark of his ministry.

On the other hand, consider the man named Stephen, whom the Bible describes as “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” His character was deep and sound. In addition to his spiritual depth, Stephen was also an educated man. When he spoke in public, he was persuasive-so much so that those who opposed him “could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke.” This led those who opposed him to drum up false charges against him.

Acts 7 contains Stephen’s self-defense to the authorities who called him in for questioning. His message was every bit as direct, pointed, and scriptural as Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. Like Peter, he was called upon to bear witness to Christ in a tough setting, and like Peter, he was equal to the task.

But unlike Peter, the results were far different. When Peter finished, the crowd responded with repentance and faith. When Stephen finished, the crowd responded by dragging him outside the city and killing him. As far as we know, no one accepted his message that day. In fact, Acts 8:1 says, “On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem.”

It doesn’t seem fair! Peter’s message led to mass conversion, while Stephen’s led to mass persecution.

As a result of his sermon, Peter surfaced as the preeminent leader of the early church. As a result of his sermon, Stephen didn’t surface-he ended up six feet under.

Ironically, Stephen is the one who had shown more spiritual maturity. He deserved success. He hadn’t failed Christ as Peter had. He hadn’t been a public embarrassment to his Lord. He hadn’t displayed his pride and concern with “greatness.” Stephen had agreed to assume the low-profile, no-limelight position of distributing food to needy widows. He was questioned by the authorities because he faithfully obeyed the mandate to be a witness. It was this faithfulness that killed him.

From surface appearances, we’d label Peter’s ministry a success and Stephen’s a failure. Peter got the response and the recognition. As far as we know, only one individual who saw Stephen die became a believer, and that not directly because of Stephen’s witness.

It doesn’t take much imagination to transport these two into the twentieth century. Peter would have his picture in magazines and be a keynote speaker at church conferences. Stephen would have his ministerial life summary in the obituary section of the denominational magazine. While we’d admire his willingness to die, a number of us would say, “You know, I always thought he’d amount to more than he did.”

In the stories of Peter and Stephen, I learn a great deal about success in ministry-in God’s eyes and in ours.

-John Whitsett

Cambrian Park Church of the Nazarene

San Jose, California

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

We are highlighting Leadership Journal's Top 40, the best articles of the journal's 36-year history, presenting them in chronological order. Today we present #27, from 1990. Countless readers told us how Jack Hayford's practice, mentioned in this article, of praying on Saturday night over the seats that would be occupied the next day, stirred them to similar preparation.

I was 22 when I took my first pastorate, a small congregation in Fort Wayne, Indiana. At best we averaged forty-five people in worship.

Before that peak, we had one rough stretch. As some members moved and others went away for the summer, our average attendance over a five-month stretch dropped steadily from forty-seven to forty-four to thirty-three to twenty-two and finally, by the middle of August, to eleven.

One Sunday morning only eight people attended church. When my family came back for the evening service, nobody else showed. No one.

I sat discouraged in the front row next to Anna, my wife, and our baby, who was lying in a bassinet.

I already was defeated after the morning service, but now I felt simply awful. What in the world am I doing here? I thought. If we had had enough money, I would have packed my family in the car and left town. But we didn't have it.

As I was sitting there, I made what I later realized was a crucial decision.

"Honey," I said to my wife, "you stay here with the baby and kneel. I'm going to the nursery to pray. If I we don't pray right now, this will beat us."

While praying in the nursery, I saw a mental picture of the church building on fire-not burning up, but flames were going up from the building, and the cinders were blowing east of the church and raining on top of houses, igniting them. I felt the Lord was telling me he was still intending to bring his "fire" to that church.

I was strengthened and encouraged to stay at the church, which I did for another two years. I can't say the church exploded with Spirit-filled enthusiasm after that. In fact, it never became much larger than it was at its peak. But in those two years, we had a number of families from that housing development to the east start attending.

That incident reinforced for me the priority of prayer in ministry and especially in preparing to lead worship. A pastor, of course, must do many things to prepare to lead people weekly in worship, from preparing a sermon to making sure hymnals are in place. But before I attend to technical matters, I've learned to attend to spiritual concerns.

What Distracts Us from Worship

Prayer helps my heart, mind, and soul focus on the meaning and direction of worship. I make prayer a priority because it dissolves the distractions of worship. My story illustrates a leading distraction: the yearning for superficial success. Certainly, I was concerned about the spiritual welfare of individuals at the time, but I confess I was also overly concerned with mere numbers.

But the yearning for "successful" worship can take other forms, each of which undermines our ability to lead worship in a right spirit.

1. Seeking a smooth service. During one recent Sunday service, I became angry. A group that was to make a presentation didn't show up on time; it was a rainy day, and the van that was supposed to bring them was late. I became irritated and said a couple of abrupt things to a staff member on the platform.

At once, I felt rebuked. First, I realized this group's tardiness wasn't anybody's fault. Second, I remembered the strength of our service isn't in its smoothness; that's not the source of its power. So I immediately apologized to my colleague.

Naturally, we want to run a smooth service. If things are disjointed, people can be distracted from focusing on God. But spiritual power in worship doesn't come from the smoothness of transitions.

2. The pursuit of excellence. Sometimes we get distracted from true worship by being preoccupied with the excellence of the choir, the preaching, or the special music. We even sanctify that yearning by saying that nothing we do for God should be less than excellent. Unfortunately, we sometimes end up sanctifying human pursuit of excellence as though it somehow ennobles God.

The greater truth is that while we ought to aim for excellence, God doesn't need our excellence; it doesn't enhance him a bit. It may make things more lovely, but it also can lead to pride. We become preoccupied with style rather than substance, with how things look and feel rather than with what truths they communicate.

Naturally, I'm not encouraging a studied shoddiness to keep us all humble. From how we dress to how we lead singing, from how we make transitions in worship to how we preach, our worship leaders strive to lead to the best of their God-given abilities. When the choir does well, for instance, we rejoice and are moved deeply. That's perfectly in order, as long as everybody keeps it in perspective.

3. Longing for an effective service. Sometimes we're distracted from worship because we want to make an impact on people. In the first service, for instance, I might say something funny that I didn't plan but nonetheless makes a point in the sermon. I may be tempted to repeat it in the second service mainly because it's cute and people will like it. If that's my motive, the spiritual vitality will be drained from it.

Recently, in the first service, as I came to the key point in the sermon, I became increasingly moved as I spoke. I asked if we wanted to be a charismatic entertainment center or a body that transmits the life of Jesus to the next generation. I was surprised, in fact, at how moved I became. I did something unusual for me-I hit the pulpit. I didn't tap it. I pounded it!

I haven't done that ten times in twenty-one years of pastoring, yet on this morning, I did. But it came naturally, spontaneously, and it genuinely communicated my passion for the subject.

But what was I to do the next service? For me to mimic that emotion would be disastrous. To do so would be to seek merely an effect, an emotional response, not to focus attention on the truth of the message.

By the time we enter the ministry, we've been made conscious of style and technique, intonation and appearances. Those are valid concerns. The machinery of worship is not unimportant. But when we end up being unduly conscious of such things, when they preoccupy us, we are distracted from the worship of God.

Attitude Check

It's not only poor technique that gets in the way of worship, but improper attitudes. Developing a worshipful attitude is, for me, the most important thing I can do to prepare for worship. It's vital for me to nourish humility before God and to sustain a genuine childlikeness before the people I lead.

Unfortunately, our culture tends to think there is something fundamentally immature about childlikeness. But we in the church know there's a difference between childlikeness and childishness. Childlikeness is the attitude I want to nurture. It reminds me that no matter how old or seasoned I become, however mature or expert, when measured beside the Ancient of Days, I'm not that wise or experienced. I'm a mere child, not only at living the Christian life, but especially in leading others in worship.

In addition, I stress the importance of childlikeness because I want to remain flexible, open to the Spirit, as a child is open (usually!) to the leading of loving parents.

As I suggested earlier, prayer is the key activity for me, especially when it comes to nurturing a childlike spirit. When I regularly engage in three particular forms of prayer, I develop an attitude conducive to leading worship.

Putting My Spiritual Garden in Order

When I was a boy, each Friday night my father would give me a list of chores for Saturday. He usually worked on Saturday and wouldn't arrive home until after four o'clock. But then he'd walk with me and examine the work I'd done.

He was a perfectionist, although not an unkind man. He had been in the Navy where everything was shipshape. So, he'd examine my yard work carefully. If I left a couple of leaves in a flower bed, he'd just point, and I'd know to go over and pick them up. If he saw a weed I'd missed, he'd point it out.

For me this was a positive experience. I loved my dad, and I wanted to do well for him. When he looked at what I'd done, I wanted him to be happy. So when he pointed things out that I'd missed, I didn't mind. I would have done those things had I seen them, but I saw them only when he pointed them out.

King David wrote, "Search me, O Lord, and know my heart. Try my thoughts and see if there be some wicked way and lead me in the way everlasting." When it comes to preparing myself for worship, that's my desire as well. I want my Heavenly Father to walk with me through the garden of my heart and see if I've missed anything.

I do this by regularly engaging in cleansing prayer. This is different from my daily devotions; it's more intense. Sometimes I feel like I need a thorough cleaning, like a car radiator periodically needs to be flushed. It usually happens about once a month. I take a day and devote it to prayer and self-examination.

I don't have a specific agenda. I usually prostrate myself and "call on the Lord," as the Psalms put it. I'm not loud, but since I'm alone in a closed room, I feel free to speak aloud. I try to let God stir within me. I don't think I'm finished just because I feel stirred or teary-eyed. I'm ultimately looking for a new perspective on myself, a revelation of pride or self-centeredness, or an insight into what God would have me do next in ministry.

During one of these cleansing prayers, for instance, I was feeling a vague hollowness. I couldn't put my finger on a glaring sin, but eventually I realized I felt empty because I had been squandering my free time. It wasn't an earth-shattering revelation, but I had to acknowledge that I had been watching an excessive amount of television.

I see nothing intrinsically wrong with TV. It's just that there are few constraints to watching it. And it doesn't demand anything of me. In short, if I watch it too much, I begin to get lazy. I also enjoy reading novels and playing basketball, and these are activities that truly refresh me. I felt like the Holy Spirit was prompting me to prune this form of sloth to allow me to nurture better activities.

So, regular cleansing prayer keeps my spiritual garden in order. It helps me maintain attitudes that assist me in leading worship in Spirit and truth.

Getting in Touch

For me, Sunday morning starts on Saturday night, and Saturday night begins with a special form of prayer. Almost every Saturday night about 7:00 or 8:00, I go to the church, walk through the sanctuary, lay hands on each chair in the room, and pray.

Sometimes I'll walk down every row, sometimes I'll go down every other, but I'll let my hand at least slide over every seat. Once in a while, I'll sing a hymn or chorus as I walk. Sometimes I'll do this alone, other times with a few church leaders. Praying through the sanctuary usually takes about fifteen to twenty minutes, but it makes a profound difference in the next day's service. Specifically, it does three things.

1. I become open to God's power. Although God is present with me at all times, when I acknowledge his presence and get in touch with his power, I become more dependent on him.

As I walk along, I might pray, "Lord, you've given me gifts as a speaker. But I also know I can't touch all those people where they need to be touched. Only your Spirit can touch their spirits. I ask you to do that tomorrow."

Sometimes I will so feel the presence of God, I'll be moved to tears. Other times I won't feel a thing. At such times, I go to the back of the sanctuary afterward, look over the room, and pray, "Lord, I'm glad you're here, even though I don't feel one thing. And I'm depending on you being here tomorrow."

2. I allow the Spirit to lead. As I pray through the sanctuary, I'm also asking the Holy Spirit, "What is the one thing you most want to do tomorrow?" By this time, we have the essential outline of the service put together, but without the final details. So, it's a time when we can still adjust and decide which element of the service we will highlight. That decision, then, flows from this prayer time.

In our tradition, a "word of prophecy" is a message from God for the present moment. So sometimes as I'm praying this prayer and walking along, I literally will feel grief for people who have been bereaved. Another time I'll feel weepy for sick people. Yet another time, I'll become angry at Satan's attacks that have divided homes, abused children, or encouraged drug abuse.

I believe these feelings are more than coincidence; they're burdens the Spirit gives me. Naturally, they arise out of a complex set of factors: what I've been reading, who I've been talking with, what I've just seen on the news. But in the end, I believe the Spirit focuses these concerns and gives me a specific emphasis that should be woven into the next day's service.

Often, based on this experience, I will return home and rewrite the introduction to my sermon or the opening remarks of the service. I'm not talking about changing radically any part of worship at this point. It's more a matter of bringing an emphasis to certain parts.

People have told me I have a knack for opening sermons, for getting people's attention. If that's true, I attribute it to these times when I walk through the sanctuary, pray, and literally place my hands on the chairs where individuals will be sitting the next day, spiritually standing with them, identifying with their lives and need.

3. I impart a blessing to people. I also believe that in some personal way I impart a blessing to people by touching the seats and praying. It's not magic. I believe the Holy Spirit uses physical means (such as human touch or bread and grape juice, for instance) to communicate himself to others. I don't speculate on how God does it, and I strongly guard against the superstition such a truth can breed. But I've found God often integrates the visible and invisible realms to communicate himself.

We regularly receive letters from people who have visited our service. They say that as soon as they walked in the door, something began happening within them. They immediately sensed the presence of the Lord. What changes their life is not the smooth service or dynamic preaching, but their conviction that God was present when they were here. I believe our Saturday night prayers are part of the reason people feel that way on Sunday morning.

In the same way, the night before a baptismal service, I'll often go to the baptistery, get down on my knees to reach into it, and stir the water with my hands as I pray. I believe the Lord wants to make every baptistery like the pool of Bethesda-a place where people are delivered from the crippling effects of sin.

There is, of course, no handy formula, no set prayer that will guarantee spiritual results. Praying over the chairs on Saturday night is not a third ordinance. But for me, it has been a practice that has borne spiritual fruit on Sunday morning.

Praying the Sermon

On Sunday morning, like many pastors, I pray in preparation for worship. And this prayer takes a different form still: I pray through the sermon. Sometimes I look at notes as I do it, but most of the time I simply think the thoughts of the sermon and pray about each one.

This has a homiletic aim, of course. It's one way to get the sermon firmly fixed in my mind. But for me the spiritual goal is more important. I liken the process to Elijah stacking the wood at the altar. What I'm doing in my study is stacking wood, and I'm asking for the fire of the Lord to come down upon the message and the congregation. I often pray something like, "Lord, I want to enter the service with my thoughts fresh and clear. And especially I want you to glow within me."

Often it's during this prayer that a fire for the sermon is ignited within me. One Sunday I was praying through my sermon based on the woman at the well. The subject was missions, and the main text was Jesus' statement: "Whoever drinks this water will never thirst again." I was feeling a little empty because it seemed such an obvious thing that people need Jesus to never thirst spiritually again. Ninety-eight percent of those attending the service already believed in Christ, so I didn't want this to be a sermon only to people outside of Christ.

As I was praying, suddenly I was stirred with the thought that many in the body of Christ, even though they know him, still go back and drink at the old watering holes. They find, of course, that it's no more satisfying than before. But the reason they go back is because they've become preoccupied with their own thirst. If they would seek their satisfaction by satisfying other people's thirst, they wouldn't be thirsty for the things that used to attract them.

I can't convey in print what a difference that made in the service, but it became a powerful point in the message. It helped people identify with the woman at the well and to recommit themselves to satisfying others' needs and not just their own.

Leading Worship and Worshiping

One distraction happens not before but during worship. During the service, there are a host of technical things to think about: how to make a smooth transition from one chorus to the next, when and how to get people to interact, how to signal the instrumentalists to cut a song short, knowing when and how to modify a sermon. The worship leader has so much to think about, there's hardly opportunity to worship personally.

At one level, of course, that can't be avoided, especially for the younger minister. For the first few years of leading worship, maybe pastors ought to make sure their need for worship is fulfilled in other settings such as private devotions or visiting other churches.

But before long, one learns to both lead worship and worship. Some of that is due to experience, and some is due to the thoroughness of preparation. The more the details of worship are fully in hand, the more it is possible to operate on these two tracks at the same time: leading and worshiping.

It's like the concert pianist. He's practiced the piece, worked thoroughly on technique, and memorized every single measure. When he steps on stage, he keeps all this preparation in mind. But because his technical preparation has been thorough, he also will be able to engage himself fully in his playing. He will be recalling the various details as he moves through the piece, but he's doing more than playing a series of notes with certain physical techniques. He's personally involved in playing it with feeling. In some sense, then, he is able to enjoy the music more than the audience, which has not put as much into preparing for the evening.

Likewise, the worship leader, especially if he or she is well-prepared about the details of worship, can function on two tracks, with the spirit worshiping the Lord and the mind thinking about what's coming next.

Even more important than that technical preparation, however, is the prayer preparation already accomplished. When that's been thorough, the worship leader feels less like the pianist in control of the concert and more like the piano being used to play something beautiful and majestic.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Ambition.

The very word conjures conflicting images. Parents want their daughter’s fianc‚ to be ambitious enough to support their princess. Yet voters are generally suspicious of candidates they perceive as politically ambitious. No minister wants to be perceived as ambitious in a self-centered way. Yet what pulpit committee would seek a complacent pastor with no discernible ambition?

Pastors wrestle with it: What’s good about ambition? How much is necessary, and how much is too much? Is raw ambition ever extracted from holy ambition, leaving only pure ministry motives?

Or, more profanely, will we ever quit worrying about having as many in our Sunday school as that Jubilee Center of Joy across the street?

Spotlight on Ambition

We’ve all wrestled with ambition, usually grappling with this slippery animal in the dark. The many pastors I talked with recently shed some light on the beast. Most confirmed there is a benevolent side to ambition.

“If personal ambition is defined as getting a good education, trying to keep my appearance pleasant, working to be the best I can be,” says Tom Carter, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dinuba, California, “then ambition is not a problem. If it leads to pride, there’s a problem. We stumble most often with what we do with ambition.”

Michael Walker of White Rock United Methodist Church in Dallas agrees: “Ambition, like anger, can be an appropriate drive when kept in its place. A person without ambition is mentally and emotionally in neutral. The issue is not ambition, itself, but whether that ambition controls us. Does it merely provide input, which we hear, measure, and take into account, or does it dictate our actions?”

Ambition appears to be rooted in who we are. “I took the standard psychological tests at the time of ordination,” says Don McCullough, pastor of Solana Beach (California) Presbyterian Church, “and I ended up at the 98 percentile for achievement orientation. That set me questioning ambition.

“Then I studied the apostle Paul, and I realized that not only was he incredibly ambitious-both before and after he became a Christian-but that it took that kind of personality to accomplish what he did. Ambition got converted with Paul.

“So I had to ask, Am I ambitious for Don McCullough or for Jesus Christ? I have to answer that question daily-while realizing that achievement orientation is a part of my personality.”

If ambition is part of one’s personality, mere denial or massive coverup may be fruitless, if not counterproductive. Philip Greenslade writes in Leadership, Greatness, and Servanthood, “Nothing looks sillier and indeed more conspicuous than a leader trying to recede into the background. … Resignation in a leader is more dangerous than overambition.”

Ambition, when rightly applied, can be a necessary and benevolent aid for a pastor. “We have a big commission from the Lord,” exclaims Dave Philips, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, “so shrinking from it isn’t good. Ambition is okay if it is holy ambition, a calling from God to use our gifts in accordance to what he’s given us. We ought not withdraw into passivity out of a false sense of humility.”

Jerry Hayner of Forest Hills Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, agrees: “Ambition can be a God-given quality that causes people to accomplish things greater than the status quo. Without this good kind of ambition, we’d be less than the people Christ calls us to be.”

It’s the dual quality of ambition, then, that perplexes us. Good, holy ambition drives the mills of excellent ministry, helps accomplish tasks the unambitious might deem impossible, transforms churches, maximizes gifts. Raw ambition, on the other hand-personal aggrandizement, the quest for position and esteem, the desire to claw one’s way to the top-pours sand in the ministry gears and forces the machinery to produce an unholy product: human pride.

Ambition Rising

Our ambitions may lie sleeping much of the time, hardly disturbing our ministries. And your ambition may not be jostled awake exactly as mine would. But for most pastors, certain predictable occasions awaken questions of ambition. Pastors reported three broad situations that force the issue:

Decisions. Darrell Johnson tells of his experience wrestling with a new call when he pastored Union Church of Manila in the Philippines: “Preaching in Manila was about as good as things could get for me. On any given Sunday I’d have people from all over the world visiting our congregation and maybe 350 missionaries among the regular attenders. Almost weekly I’d be invited to address some mission board.

“Then as I contemplated going to a more stable, hom*ogeneous church-Fremont Presbyterian in Sacramento, California-it seemed like stepping back. When I accepted the call, friends wrote to congratulate me on my ‘promotion.’ While Fremont is a great church, it didn’t feel like a promotion.”

Johnson was doing what so many pastors do when facing a new opportunity: weighing how it fits not only with a sense of God’s will, but also with one’s sense of accomplishment and place in ministry. Pastors want to heed God’s call, wherever it may lead, but feelings of worth and achievement enter the decision.

Johnson understood what was going on. “I had to come to terms with why I work so hard on my preaching,” he recalls. “Is it to preach in a place of prominence, or is it to communicate God’s message? As I worked through my call to Fremont, God helped me rediscover what my ministry is about.”

Johnson learned what many pastors discover: a decision about relocating can force the question of ambition. First, pastors want to know if the change is God’s will, and that brings up questions of gifts and abilities. Should they be used in as large an arena as possible? Or is that just raw ambition wanting to make a bigger splash? What if the call appears to narrow your influence-can your ego accept that? Such questions produce sleepless nights.

Other decisions force the ambition issue, such as how to further growth in a church. Extending the kingdom of God is a laudable task-as long as God is in it. Unfortunately, it also tends to involve the pastor’s ego.

“About forty years ago,” relates Tom Carter, “our church split, and another Baptist congregation was formed. The parting left a bad taste, and members sometimes talked of getting the two churches back together. Both churches had about 150 attending, and neither could afford more than one pastor, each of whom was spread thin. Then about four years ago when the other church was without a pastor, the question came up: Is this a good time to reunite?

“I thought the reunion could be God’s way to reconcile us. But my support of the idea forced me to ponder motives: Am I in favor of this because I’d pastor a significantly larger church and be able to hire an associate? And doesn’t a merger often lead to diminished ministry? Is this a good idea or my selfish dream?

“Finally I was convinced the merger would be for the good, although I did have some lingering doubts about my ambition. It has proven workable after four years, so I’m glad my doubts didn’t derail the plan.”

Any decision to launch something significant in ministry probably carries with it questions of motive and personal ambition. That, in itself, isn’t bad. Nor should it put decisions on hold. It merely presents an opportunity to reexamine why we do what we do.

Comparisons. Consider the way comparisons force their way into a pastor’s thinking, such as comparisons to:

-Classmates and associates. “Those who graduated from seminary with me were competitors because of our backgrounds,” recalls Howard Childers, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Amarillo, Texas. “The models held up to us in seminary were, for the most part, large, affluent churches. So in the back of our minds was the thought, We may make some early sacrifices, but we’ll eventually pastor the kinds of churches we came from. Most of us now pastor midsized churches, so the Holy Spirit has forced us to deal with our idols.” Questions of Have I done as well as they? are bound to surface, however, as pastors view their peers.

Another pastor said, “A young guy I once hired now pastors a church with half again as many members as ours. I find I think about him a lot!”

-Other pastors. Most towns have a pastoral pecking order, as do denominational associations, so most pastors know exactly how large their churches are in comparison to the others. Also, in small towns, the effectiveness of a pastor sometimes is determined by who gets the “best prospects.”

“It’s always a temptation to feel proud when people switch to your church from another,” confesses Tom Carter. “And when active Christians move to town, everybody wants them. It can become a game of who can grab them first.”

The ambitious pastor often wins such games, but may lose part of his pastoral soul in the process.

-Other professions. “A lawyer my age sends his daughter to school in Esprit clothing, drives a Mercedes, and skis in Colorado,” laments one pastor. “I provide my daughter clothes from J. C. Penney, drive an outdated Dodge, and shovel my driveway in the winter. I’m as educated, and I work as hard as he does, yet he has all the perks!” Such thoughts dog underesteemed pastors and can lead to unholy ambition.

The pastor who comes from a family of wealth or prominence may feel rather insignificant at family gatherings. When talk is of stock portfolios and Caribbean vacations, an investment in Kittel and a junior high trail hike hardly sound significant. This family member, no matter what he accomplishes in his ministry, probably will feel the underachiever of the litter. And that may produce restlessness.

-The highly accomplished. Comparisons become brutal when we look at people at the top of their fields. Barry Moller, associate pastor at Solana Beach (California) Presbyterian Church, relates how such comparisons bring out ambition, both good and bad: “Recently I heard Lewis Smedes speak, and I started thinking, I’d love to be able to communicate as authentically and profoundly! Such wanting to be better can be both a blessing and a curse. It can make me ambitious to improve myself, and that’s good. But frantically chasing everyone else’s best gifts can also cause me to beat up on myself mercilessly. If I can’t be happy being effective in ways God has gifted me, I end up not only ambitious, but unfulfilled and depressed.”

Expectations. Most pastors struggle with expectations placed on them by three sources:

-Themselves. “Pastors get to a certain point,” explains Dave Philips, “where they decide they’ve either (1) accomplished what they wanted or (2) have failed to reach their expectations.”

Mike Walker elaborates: “Some people have a private agenda, like writing a book or preaching to a congregation of a thousand.” If that goal isn’t met, they grow restless. Pastors typically have an idea of how brightly they expect their star to shine. Some who find that brilliance too early must face the ominous What now? Others who never achieve their expected candlepower agonize over their smoldering wick.

-Parents. Some people enter the ministry to please parents and gain their approval. Trying to please someone as important as a parent can be an unrelenting prod for a pastor.

-Parishioners. “For fifteen years,” Darrell Johnson concedes, “accolades after a good sermon would trigger a drive to make the next week’s sermon even better. I couldn’t simply rest in a job well done; I had to improve on it the next time out. Otherwise, I feared, people would think the sermon they affirmed the week before was an exception.” Driven by such expectations (in this case, Johnson admits, imagined), ministry is one frightening sprint toward acceptability through accomplishment.

What do all these situations have in common? Each forces the pastor to do an ambition check: Am I serving God or elevating myself? So how do we decode our ambition quotient? Let’s look at the symptoms of raw ambition.

Symptoms of Naked Ambition

I asked pastors if they felt ambition had discernible stages. Is it a progressive, growing problem that can be detected early and headed off? If so, maybe a holy radiation therapy could destroy the malignancy.

No such luck. Tom Carter sang the dominant theme of the chorus of responses: “I see ambition more as a continual tug of war, a struggle back and forth that I never fully win. Sometimes my heart seems to be ambition on the loose, and other times my ambition is under the control of the Holy Spirit.”

The problem of naked ambition rarely becomes apparent through a slow strip tease; uninhibited ambition seems ready at any moment to shed respectability and bare itself, to our shame. It does so in a number of ways.

Jealousy and competition. I once heard a minister tell of a former senior pastor who was leaving one congregation and trying to convince his staff to follow him to the new church. His crowning argument was revealing: “Look, there’s only one church in that whole town that’s doing much of anything, and if you guys come with me, we’ll bury it!”

When “the competition” becomes the other thriving churches rather than the La-Z-Boys and Bud Lights and Out on a Limb gurus, and when a drive to accomplish great things for the Lord gets twisted into an entrepreneurial bent to eliminate other church ministries, ambition has streaked one’s soul.

Jerry Hayner says, “We can get caught up in doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons, such as wanting to be seen as more successful than the next pastor. I have to keep in focus what I’m supposed to be doing and not allow myself to get caught in a competitive or jealous mind-set.”

Discontent and fruitlessness. Barry Moller described this as feeling you need to “dance harder, dance faster, and dance better.” The problem, he says, is that “when raw ambition drives me, doing something better becomes the sole motivation. Successes are never satisfying, because I start focusing on what I haven’t done, and I cannot even rejoice in my accomplishments.”

A midcareer pastor noticed this problem: “As my influence broadened, what earlier I’d thought would be satisfying turned out to feel-I’m almost ashamed to say-more like a stepping stone. At first, I thought pastoring a church like this would be the summit of my ministry, but now it’s beginning to feel normal. I find myself wondering if I should make a mark somewhere else.” He’s not endorsing this phenomenon; he just recognizes the insatiable appetite of ambition.

Other pastors feel ambition’s presence in periods of ministry listlessness. “The overly ambitious pastor risks losing spiritual power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit,” warns Tom Carter, “and that can make a ministry fruitless.”

Perhaps the experience is a little like dashing madly after happiness: it can’t be found in direct pursuit. Ambitious striving often produces the opposite effect from the one desired. Seek prominence, and it eludes your grasp; “seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.” These things may well include fruitfulness and fulfillment in ministry.

Darrell Johnson personalizes the experience. “It’s easy for us, like the church in Ephesus, to forsake our ‘first love.’ That hit me as I reread the account of Jesus with Mary and Martha. I realized my great ambition used to be to sit at Jesus’ feet. I used to be willing to spend the time to listen and pray. But lately I had become so busy preparing that I wasn’t taking the time to be with Jesus. I had become a ‘human doing’ rather than a human being. I had to hear what John wrote to the church in Ephesus: ‘Repent and do the things you did at first!’ “

Compromise and sham. Seeing the film, Glory, about the 54th Massachusetts Regiment in the Civil War, again brought home to me people’s pernicious penchant to work any situation to fit personal ends. The heart of the movie is the selfless commitment of the 54th Regiment’s officers and ex-slave troops, but a self-serving quartermaster and a crooked, plundering general offered startling counterpoint to the soldiers’ sacrifice.

Ministry, like war, offers opportunities to twist a noble pursuit for selfish ends. When what begins as pastoral service becomes the means toward ignoble personal gain, you can be sure vainglorious ambition is present.

Money can be one sign. Dave Philips remembers a reported conversation in which a cynical pastor stated flatly, “The ministry is a job-J-O-B-and we pastors are in it to make a living, just like everyone else. We do our best in order to get the best living we can.”

“A preoccupation with money,” levels Philips, “is a sure symptom of ambition on the loose, especially if the goal is to obtain more than someone else.”

Compromised convictions are another sign. Don McCullough describes this as “sensing deep down that I’m making compromises, hedging the difficult word in a sermon, doing things for the applause rather than for the sake of the truth. It’s so human to do these things, but so important to notice it, to feel the inner check from the Spirit, saying, Who are you trying to impress, Don?

Jerry Hayner sees this compromising tendency in such things as:

-“Cheap evangelism” to pull in numbers of people. “There’s a difference between a church growing and bloating,” he says.

-Shoddy workmanship to find a shortcut to one’s goals. Some pastors have been known to begin skeleton programs, destined to fail for lack of substantive structure, simply because they want to enhance their dossier.

Darrell Johnson adds interpersonal compromises. “When I get overly irritated with people ‘getting in my way,’ it means I’m following my own agenda, not Christ’s. Jesus Christ built up people. Ambition uses people.”

Self-promotion and divine displacement. Probably the greatest indicator of naked ambition is the drive for which the first commandment was written: “You shall have no other gods before me.” We place ourselves before God, exactly reversing John the Baptist’s statement that Jesus “must become greater; I must become less.”

This drive is insidious. “Often you first see it in attitudes,” says Jerry Hayner. “People may say all the right things, but their disposition of mind and spirit betrays the message. Objectively, everything looks fine, but subjectively they’re pursuing their own agenda.”

The signs of the subjective going bad? Barry Moller says, “When I take my focus off the persons who will benefit from what I do, my ministry becomes an ego thing. I may be helping people, but my being effective is more important. God and other people are still in the equation, but they’re not the main figures.”

All this talk of how naked ambition exposes an emperor/pastor who has no clothes can be embarrassing. How, then, can we recognize the garments of holy ambition?

Signs of Holy Ambition

Holy ambition is Joshua conquering the land, Nehemiah restoring his people, Paul going on to Derbe after being stoned in Lystra, 80-year-old John Wesley riding horseback from sermon to sermon. “Godly ambition is vision, dreams that are God’s dreams,” says Mike Walker.

So how does this holy ambition appear in our lives?

All for Christ. A striking mark of holy ambition is that it elevates Christ and not the ambitious striver.

“On a sabbatical recently,” says Don McCullough, “I was laboring to craft noble thoughts into worthy sentences and chapters of a book. In the midst of that hard work, my mind started wandering perversely to some of the personalities whose ghostwritten books sell in the hundreds of thousands, and I started thinking, Why should I worry about writing good sentences, when the public eats up the stuff these celebrities spill out?

“But God didn’t allow that attitude to remain. Suddenly, there at the keyboard, I felt overwhelmed with the presence of Christ, and the message was clear: ‘There’s really only one reader you have to worry about-me!’ We’re all trying to please somebody, but we have to remember who it is we’re trying to please. In the end, only the Lord matters.

“J. S. Bach wrote on each manuscript SDG-soli Deo gloria, to God alone be the glory. Perhaps we need to imprint that on everything we do.”

When holy ambition is in control, a sense of grace presides, according to Dave Philips. “Holy ambition is a response to God’s gracious calling; it’s based on utter humility that concedes, ‘I can do all things, but only through him who strengthens me.’ We see examples in Gideon (‘How can I save Israel?’) and in Mary (‘How will this be?’) when they were tapped by God. Both responded humbly but obediently.”

“One way to verify an ‘all for Christ’ ambition,” says Tom Carter, “is to ask myself, Do I care who gets the credit for what I do? If mine is a holy ambition, I won’t care. I can do things for the advancement of the kingdom without worrying about getting the praise. I don’t have to be stroked or thanked.”

Self-denial. Pastors who find themselves doing godly things they’re not inclined to do may well be onto the meaning of holy ambition. Jerry Hayner says, “When I am moving toward surrender of self-will to God’s will, God pushes me to grow in ways I never expected. For instance, I have to force myself to pursue church growth and to be an evangelist. I need godly ambition to do these things.”

We may be ambitious for a TV ministry, a speaking tour, and book-signing sessions. Yet God may have other ambitions for us.

“Holy ambition often is confirmed in the little things,” Howard Childers points out. “God’s ambition for me and my church may be realized in such things as people beginning to love one another, the choir gaining a few new members, a growing sense of trust-the little things with scant fanfare but importance in God’s eyes. I see myself as a pastor, so I need to look for pastoral signs of success, not published sermons or people cheering.”

The person operating from holy ambition is willing to fail, if God’s greater purposes are furthered. “At times God has used me through my experiences of brokenness and deficit and inadequacy,” offers Barry Moller.

Freedom and fit. When I asked Darrell Johnson how holy ambition is manifested, there followed a long pause. Finally he spoke with deliberate care: “When I have holy ambition, I feel content and free to do what I can do. When I’m driven by any other motive, I’m uptight; I’ve got to produce. But when my holy ambition is to lift up Christ, I can say with conviction, Lord, here I am. You know who I am. You know my schedule. I’ll give it my best shot. So here we go. You’re big enough to make this happen.

“In a committee meeting, for instance, when I’m well motivated, I sense that Christ is present. I don’t have to push my agenda. I can articulate my views but then feel free to lay it on the table and see how it works. After all, Christ is there orchestrating his will. I don’t have to be threatened personally, as if it were my plan that I had to push through.”

This sense of freedom was confirmed by Barry Moller. “Success-blessing-seems to come from the inside out,” he said. “You’re not working hard at it. As it flows more naturally and intrinsically from within, the more holy it becomes. Ambition has a passive side. We need to open ourselves to God’s work and let God accomplish things in us and through us.”

The one chained to ambition is never free. The one discovering the dimensions of God’s ambition for him or her is both free and fulfilled.

Training the Ambition Within

Good ambition. Bad ambition. Both present. Both at work. So how do we tame the ravenous beast of selfish ambition and yet feed the workhorse of holy ambition?

Reflectively. “A person needs to have reflective time, not just productive time,” Jerry Hayner advises. “Whether it’s in a retreat setting, a study leave, or a prayer closet, we need to step back, gain some distance, and look at the whole picture: What’s really happening in my life? in my ministry? If I keep going this direction, where am I headed?

“Once in college, some friends and I pushed an abandoned boat into a pond and used it as a float. Hanging on to it, we just paddled along, caught up in conversation. The next thing we knew, a storm blew up, and we’d drifted 150 yards away from shore. Then the boat sank, and since I couldn’t swim, I nearly lost my life.

“I think of that episode as a parable about life: If we don’t keep our eyes on a reference point, or if we don’t stop regularly to take a good, hard look around, we’ll drift into danger.”

Don McCullough needs to go no farther than a hospital to become reflective. “Visiting the dying or performing a memorial service puts ambition in perspective for me. I realize that some of the things I strive for aren’t important. It makes me ask myself, Don, just how do you want to invest your life?”

Not all reflection is so grave, however. “When I begin to take my aspirations too seriously,” chuckles Dave Philips, “before long I’ll see myself in a mirror and think, Wait a minute! Anyone who looks like you can’t be that great!”

Devotionally. Prayer and Scripture reading remain powerful correctives to errant ambition. Peter Joshua, an evangelist who was a product of the Welsh Revival, gave Darrell Johnson a piece of advice: “When you walk into the pulpit, acknowledge, Lord, I want them to think well of me, but more than that, I want them to think well of you.”

“I used to beat myself, agonizing over my motives,” Johnson recalls. “But that, in itself, is still self-absorbed behavior. By simply acknowledging my mixed motives and giving them to God in prayer, my task is put into perspective.”

Strategically. These pastors mentioned discipline and accountability as strategies that effectively combat arrogant ambition. For discipline:

-Rest. Take a Sabbath. Mike Walker advises: “The Sabbath is pacing that God put into the order of the universe, and most of us get into trouble if we get out of that pattern. If I’m too busy and important to take a day off, it’s a signal that I’m too ambitious.”

-Practice the discipline of servanthood. Again, Walker counsels: “We ought regularly to do something menial-carry out the trash, change diapers, help a secretary carry a heavy package. If everybody is allowed to cater to us, we begin to believe we’re somebody special, and that’s poison. We need to avoid the cloying symbols of power.”

Probably the best strategy is to become openly accountable to “dear friends who love and trust you and raise honest questions, making you deal with hard issues,” as Howard Childers put it.

Don McCullough spoke to those gathered at a men’s retreat recently, saying, “Yes, I have an achievement-oriented personality, and here’s how I struggle with it . . .” He says, “It’s hard not to deal with motives when you’ve opened yourself like that.”

Gracefully. All this soul searching and breast beating can get heavy, and we can be unmerciful with ourselves, something we’d never do with another. Mike Walker says, “We need to live under a theology of grace-not a theology that overlooks willful ambition, but one that accepts humanness and knows that God accepts us. That helps deliver us from an oversensitive conscience continually condemning ambition. The temptation to selfish ambition is not wrong-only yielding to it.

“It’s like a teenager feeling guilty for having sexual drives: it’s not the drives that are the problem but what one does with them. Some of us, I fear, have been conditioned to take on guilt merely for being tempted with selfish ambition. That’s why we need grace-even for ourselves.”

“I have to recognize the reality that mixed motives will be with me continually,” maintains Barry Moller. “And I need to embrace that mixed bag as the only place from which good may come.”

Holy ambition or wholly ambitious? The answer is yes.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Speaking to Fewer than Seventy-five

Preaching with the Small Congregation by Laurence A. Wagley, Abingdon, $10.95

Reviewed by Grant Lovejoy, instructor, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas

Intuitively we know the sermon should take the size of the congregation into consideration. After all, researchers have confirmed that the small church is not just a miniature large church. Until recently, though, no one had suggested how preaching could build on the unique strengths of the small church. Now Laurence Wagley has written Preaching with the Small Congregation to do just that. He tells how pastors of congregations with average attendance under seventy-five can develop a style customized for the small church.

Wagley, professor of preaching and worship at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, started this research to encourage and assist his students who were pastors of small congregations-like the one in which he had grown up.

“We live in a culture that values bigness,” he writes. “If it is not big, loud, and expensive, it must be failing. … It is not surprising that members and ministers of small-membership churches are demoralized and consider their practice somehow deficient.”

Wagley encourages the small church to work from its strengths: intimacy, emphasis on preaching and worship, flexibility, and capacity to involve people. His thesis is that a participatory approach to preaching best uses these small-church assets.

Members may participate in the sermon in many ways. The preacher may speak briefly and then step into the midst of the congregation, saying, “You have heard what I have said about this issue. What do you have to say?” Or, following the preacher’s remarks, the congregation may move to another location-a classroom, for instance-to participate in a discussion.

Then again, the congregation can retell a biblical story. Having announced his intention a week earlier, the preacher invites someone to read the biblical story and then asks, “How does the story begin?” As people reply, the preacher affirms the responders, asks questions to elicit further insight, and helps members explore the dynamics of the story. The preacher may summarize the congregation’s insights to conclude the message.

A participatory sermon on grief may begin (or conclude) with a testimony by a church member who has faced grief and is prepared to talk about the experience.

Sometimes the preacher takes a minute or two to raise an issue involving conflict or tension. The preacher then calls on the congregation to help describe the nature of the problem. Members tell how it affects them personally and as a community. The preacher may then ask the congregation questions such as “How do most people deal with this problem?” “Do some solutions make the problem worse?” “How have you dealt with this problem?” “Are there things we could do to help?” “Are there any biblical answers?”

Wagley thinks this type of preaching offers several advantages:

-It follows the example of Jesus, who conversed with people more often than he gave an uninterrupted monologue;

-It helps church members better remember the sermon’s biblical content;

-It encourages members to study during the week;

-It is more likely to change people because they are involved, not detached;

-It minimizes clergy-laity distinctions.

He also discusses how participatory preaching can move naturally into congregational decision making. In fact, he recommends the shared sermon as an excellent way to deal with controversial decisions, because the method is perceived as even-handed and above board. It helps people work out their differences in the context of Scripture and worship.

Wagley knows there is resistance to his proposal. In a phone conversation, he said that pastors are more hesitant about it than church members and are surprised by church members’ positive response.

Does this approach compromise the prophetic role of the pastor? Wagley admits it threatens the prophetic role as some conceive it. But he writes that it is only a threat when the proclamation of the Word is considered the exclusive preserve of the clergy. He thinks the prophetic role should be extended to the whole church. The participatory sermon helps the whole congregation speak a prophetic word to the world.

“I believe participatory preaching is more persuasively prophetic than a lone voice saying, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ ” Wagley writes.

He concedes that participatory preaching is not an everlasting balm.

“Church members surveyed after sharing in a participatory sermon often respond, ‘This was great, but I wouldn’t want it every Sunday.’ ” Wagley agrees, though he is less explicit about it in his book than in our conversation. He thinks there is a place for traditional didactic sermons, though he thinks even these should include both narrative and dialogic elements.

As a church grows beyond seventy-five in attendance, the pastor usually will cease using the participatory sermon on Sunday mornings. The dynamics of a larger congregation undermine the effectiveness of this sermon style. However, even in large churches the participatory form still may be useful on Sunday or Wednesday evenings, if those services have the intimacy and flexibility of small congregations.

When I asked about weaknesses of this approach, Wagley identified three: it can become superficial, relying on the minister’s gift of gab rather than study of the text; it can become predictable if the members climb on their same soapboxes week by week; and it requires the preacher to have both imagination and interviewing skills.

One other potential weakness comes to mind: the participatory preacher must affirm people’s contributions and yet correct statements that are off the mark. Sometimes truth and accuracy may be sacrificed on the altar of acceptance and good personal relations.

These potential difficulties aside, Laurence Wagley is to be congratulated for filling a gap in homiletics literature. When combined wisely with other sermon approaches, the participatory style can contribute to the well-being of small congregations. Talking together about the Scripture and its implications deepens insight on both sides of the pulpit.

A Homiletic Clinic

Biblical Sermons: How Twelve Preachers Apply the Principles of Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson, Baker, $14.95

Reviewed by Michael J. Hostetler, graduate student, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

I’ve never preached a sermon in which I haven’t imagined, somewhere in the congregation, the imposing figure of Vic Walter, my homiletics teacher, scribbling notes on an evaluation form he soon would hand me.

For eleven former students of homiletics professor Haddon Robinson, fantasy becomes reality in the pages of Biblical Sermons.

This book is a companion volume to Robinson’s Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages, published in 1980. Here, however, he wants “to demonstrate how the approach to homiletics in Biblical Preaching is worked out in sermons of several experienced communicators.”

The format is simple. Robinson presents twelve sermons, each followed by a few paragraphs of his analysis and an interview with the contributor.

The keynote and strength of this book is its refreshing variety. The reader might expect twelve examples of expository preaching to consist of twelve traditional deductive expositions, yet some of the sermons are inductive. While two expound a single verse, others work through a paragraph or more, and two cover an entire book of the Bible. Three narrate stories.

Robinson enjoys this mix: “Any preacher who prepares forty to a hundred sermons a year knows the weasel sameness that sucks life from a message. Sermons hammered together like a doghouse each week are a burden to preach and a chore for a congregation to hear. Unfortunately, the ‘great awakening’ in some churches is not a period of history but the moment when the sermon ends and the congregation stands for the final hymn. Perceptive preachers know that variety is not only the spice of life, but of preaching as well.”

The inclusion of traditional, deductive expositions and story sermons highlights an important insight of the book: that expository and narrative preaching are not on opposite ends of the spectrum.

“Expository sermons . . . are not identified by the form they take,” writes Robinson. “Any form that communicates the message of a passage clearly so that the listeners understand it, accept it, and know what to do about it is adequate.”

When I asked Robinson to explain this, he emphasized that behind every sermon, regardless of form, must lie the historical, grammatical, and literary study of the text. That is what exposition is all about.

The form the sermon takes in the pulpit, however, should be influenced by the culture in which it is preached.

“For a long time classical rhetoric has dictated form,” said Robinson, “but now in our visual age, with communication taken over by electronic media, traditional deductive forms are being replaced by more conventional forms. We must take theology and move it to image.”

Therefore, even narrative forms, when grounded in expositional study, can be regarded as expository. Further, they are probably more suited to our times than more traditional approaches.

The book includes sermons by eight pastors from different parts of the country, one conference speaker, one evangelist, and two presidents of educational institutions.

The interviews offer practical insight into how each speaker goes about the preaching task. For example, evangelist Larry Moyer, in talking about his use of humor says, “I don’t think I’ve ever preached a nonhumorous evangelistic sermon.” And conference speaker Nancy Hardin, who speaks mostly to women, notes, “Women in particular respond to personal experiences and appreciate vulnerability in a way that differs from a group of men.”

Robinson’s analyses and the honest responses of the contributors in the interviews make Biblical Sermons a preaching clinic. It’s the type of book that can spark the creative flame in the preacher whose fire has dwindled.

Character and the Congregation

Christian Spiritual Formation in the Church and Classroom by Susanne Johnson, Abingdon, $13.95

Reviewed by Nancy D. Becker, pastor, Ogden Dunes Presbyterian Church, Portage, Indiana

Most pastors are eager to enrich the spiritual life of their congregations. So they read books and attend seminars, which give them programs or practices they can initiate to help their parishioners enjoy a deeper walk with Christ. But with overloaded schedules and overworked staffs, pastors resist placing yet another program onto their workloads.

Enter Susanne Johnson, who wrote Christian Spiritual Formation in the Church and Classroom to help such pastors, teachers, and lay leaders strengthen spiritual maturity among Christians in the context of the usual structures of the local church.

In a phone interview, Johnson, assistant professor of Christian education at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, said she once asked a group of pastors to list everything they were doing to provide spiritual care for their people.

Many drew a blank.

“Yet,” she said, “most of the things they were already doing constituted spiritual guidance.” She explained that leading public worship, proclaiming the gospel, announcing forgiveness, leading committee meetings, teaching the Bible, and praying on behalf of the congregation and with individuals are all ways the pastor guides the inner spiritual journey of each member and the church as a whole.

Johnson says the goal of Christian education is not so much the imparting of information about Christianity as the formation of Christian character.

“Christian spiritual formation,” she writes, “is a matter of becoming the song that we sing, the Story that we tell. We ourselves are to become the living texts of Christianity.”

Study, then, is only a small part of Christian education. Much more life changing is the spiritual growth and education that takes place when a Christian is part of a faith community. Johnson’s list (partial and paraphrased here) of people, events, and processes can serve as a checklist by which leaders can gauge the spiritual environment, or “ecology” as she calls it, of their church:

-The exemplars, spiritual guides, role models, official and ordinary saints of the church.

-The way the church interprets and reflects upon its faith.

-The church’s internal life, including how its policy, administration, supervision, leadership, and politics foster active participation in the church’s life and work.

-The liturgy where the Christian story is dramatized and rehearsed through ritual, rite, silence, and song.

-The spiritual disciplines, including the means of grace and works of mercy, especially the way people are trained and immersed in them.

-Environmental influences, including all the formal and informal ways a church enculturates members into its life and work.

As important as these are for determining how faith is formed, Johnson also recognizes that “formation of Christian character is actually an indirect matter. We are not to get up each morning and wonder if we are more formed than the day before. Our call is not to fixate on self-formation but to follow Christ and learn to live his Story as our own.” Nonetheless, participation in the church is absolutely essential if we are to form Christian character.

Johnson, herself an ordained minister, sees regular worship as the primary source of spiritual guidance. Pastors concerned with the spiritual formation of their congregations, she says, should expend their primary energy in creating and developing the worship service: “The focal setting for spiritual guidance is worship. … We initiate, form, and guide Christians through our common prayer and private prayer, through our giving, receiving, rejoicing and confessing, adopting, naming, instructing, washing, anointing, blessing.”

When I asked Johnson about her own spiritual growth and formation, she recounted a time in her pastoral ministry when she had to lead a weekly Communion service in a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

“Each week I had to think deeply about the Lord’s Supper just to prepare the two-minute invitation. The process of reflecting and participating in Communion with a congregation had a profound effect on me.”

Although her theology is troubling sometimes, and her theory abstract at others, practical consequences for the local church are not far away, for Johnson reminds pastors that “the church . . . is the decisive context for Christian spiritual formation.” And that simple reminder will encourage pastors to commit themselves more fervently to their weekly tasks.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: THE SMALL CHURCH

Developing Christian Education in the Smaller Church by Carolyn Brown, Abingdon, 1982

Anyone who knows the frustration of trying to adapt graded curriculum materials that work in middle-sized or larger churches to the small church that has one class for grades K-6, or has been stymied by the space restrictions of a tiny, two-room, open-country church, or has dealt with a critical shortage of cash, equipment, and purchased resources, will appreciate Brown’s book. She helps readers overcome just such difficulties.

Activating Leadership in the Small Church: Clergy and Laity Working Together by Steven E. Burt,

Judson, 1988

Looking at small-church leadership from a relational rather than hierarchical model, this book seeks to energize the small church by effectively strengthening relationships. Other topics include the search process in seeking a small-church pastor, the affirmation and training of volunteers, and ideas for size-appropriate activities and outreach.

Beyond Survival: Revitalizing the Small Church by James R. Cushman, McClain, 1981

Cushman, formerly a field staff member with Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center and now an associate for small-church development with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), analyzes the historical development of small churches in the company towns of Appalachia. He finds, for instance, that small churches often are hesitant to speak out on community issues, because community and business leaders sit in their congregations.

This makes it especially difficult to affect their community. He also outlines five stages for revitalizing the small church.

Making the Small Church Effective by Carl S. Dudley, Abingdon, 1978

Dudley, former small-church pastor and now professor at McCormick Theological Seminary, broke ground in Unique Dynamics of the Small Church (Alban Institute, 1977) when he showed us that the small church is not just a stunted large church, but a different animal altogether. In this book, considered by many as the bible of small-church literature, he analyzes the small church’s relational and interactive structure and makes the case that the small-church pastor should be a generalist and “lover.”

Entering the World of the Small Church: A Guide for Leaders by Anthony G. Pappas, Alban Institute, 1988

Pappas, editor of The Five Stones small-church magazine (P.O. Box 214, Block Island, RI 02807), brings together the small church and Robert Redfield’s studies of folk cultures. For instance, “spear waving” (asserting power or challenging a leader) is common to both primitive society and the modern church! Many keen insights follow.

Small Churches Are the Right Size by David R. Ray, Pilgrim, 1982

Ray formulates what he calls a “small theology.” A small-church pastor and conference minister in the United Church of Christ, Ray affirms the uniqueness of small churches. He reminds us, for instance, that the small church’s identity is tied to its personality and collective experience rather than to the programs it offers.

The Small Church Is Different! by Lyle E. Schaller, Abingdon, 1982

Nobody helps us understand statistical data better than Schaller. But he also mixes his teachings and theory with anecdotal illustrations based on his many years of consulting. Like others, Schaller highlights the importance of small-church members’ shared experiences.

The Pastor and People by Lyle E. Schaller, Abingdon, 1973

In this book Schaller explores the relationship between the pastor and congregation. His “Card Game” of priorities is one of his many noteworthy ideas. The pastor and a few key members write on cards their top priority for the church. Then one by one, they turn the cards over and explain their statements. This exercise checks utopianism in both pastor and people.

New Possibilities for Small Churches by Douglas Alan Walrath, ed., Pilgrim, 1983

Walrath, currently the director of Bangor Theological Seminary’s Small Church Leadership program and a former small-church pastor, brings together small-church experts to contribute their insights. “Possibilities for Small Churches Today’ by Walrath and “The Art of Pastoring a Small Congregation” by Carl Dudley are the best chapters. Dudley, for instance, notes, “Small churches have access and influence disproportionate to their size.”

-Compiled by Steve Burt

small-church consultant

Bethel, Vermont

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Plenty of resources-books, classes, conferences-offer help to pastors in the early years when they are honing their skills. But what about the closing years of ministry? What are the unique struggles and strengths of the “golden years”? How can older pastors use this time to its fullest? How can younger pastors prepare themselves now to minister effectively then?

To talk about the practical dimensions of ministry from ages 55 to 70, LEADERSHIP brought together four pastors who have ministered energetically and effectively during this period:

-Ed Bratcher, author of a book about ministry, The Walk-on-Water Syndrome, is recently retired from a fifteen-year pastorate at Manassas Baptist Church in Virginia.

-Art Brown was a missionary to Portugal for fifteen years before spending the last twenty-two years of ministry as pastor of Western Springs Baptist Church in Illinois.

-William Buursma has pastored Third Christian Reformed Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for seventeen years. He will retire in January 1991.

-Lee Moorehead last pastored First United Methodist of Madison, Wisconsin, where he served for eight years prior to his retirement in 1984. He has coauthored Six Stages of a Pastor’s Life.

Leadership: What advantage does age bring a minister? From what resources could you draw at age 55 to 70 that were not available earlier?

Lee Moorehead: Experience, for one. And for me it culminated dramatically in the last two weeks of my official tenure.

Shortly before I retired, I was called by the family of one of my dearest friends, our choir director and minister of music, and was told that he was missing. Immediately I went to the family home and spent nearly all of the next forty-eight hours with them. The police were searching for him, and as the second day wore on without them finding him, things became more ominous. The next morning, just before I was ready to go see the family again, a police official called me and said they’d found his automobile at an abandoned farm. His body was in it; it had been an ugly suicide. I had to go and tell the family.

In the last two weeks of my ministry, then, everything I knew and practiced as a minister was called into service. I had to ransack my experience to know what to say, first to the people of our congregation on the following Sunday morning, and then, the following evening, to the huge crowd, many of whom were not churchgoers, that gathered for his memorial service.

William Buursma: As we get older, I suspect we can minister better under extreme circ*mstances because over the years we ourselves have suffered loss. A young person facing a situation like Lee described will have little experience to draw on. You can be sympathetic, but you can’t be completely empathetic; you can’t deeply know what these people are experiencing. But by age 55, you’ve likely lost parents, close friends, perhaps children. An older minister has an advantage there.

Art Brown: Feelings, pain, joy-they all have a cumulative effect upon us. In the later years of ministry, there’s no question you draw on your pastoral experience and knowledge, but also from all the deep emotions you have known.

Moorehead: You also draw upon what you believe about the Christian gospel. We have learned personally that there are no simple, glib answers. But we’ve also increasingly learned to draw upon the Christian faith to answer life’s sufferings and mysteries.

Ed Bratcher: During this period of ministry, I’ve enjoyed a greater freedom in many practical ways:

Our children were grown, so we didn’t have the day-by-day demands of having children at home-no more changing diapers, no more anxieties about teenage children. That freed me to focus more on ministry.

Financially we were a little better off, as well. So, during this period, my wife and I enjoyed a number of continuing education opportunities. We’ve gone to Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Africa.

I had more time and more money in my 50s and early 60s to minister more creatively than at any other time. By the way, the church liked my emphasis on continuing education. It communicated to them that I was not sitting around, biding my time until retirement.

Brown: There’s also more freedom to ask the congregation for things. Earlier, my church had no provision for continuing education. I timidly suggested we have one. Years later I discovered they were glad to hear my requests about this and other things. Later in ministry, I became more direct about housing, professional expenses, and such things.

Bratcher: More importantly, when we get older, we become more like father figures. Many people yearn for someone to come to, someone they believe has gone through some suffering, someone who will not judge them.

Part of being a father figure has been the opportunity to use hugging to express love. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I found that difficult, with men or women. But as I become older, this has become more natural.

Leadership: Can pastors be leaders, who initiate change and call the congregation to greater things, while they are loving, accepting father figures?

Moorehead: Being a father figure can be a detriment if you hide behind this benign figure and never take stands on crucial issues.

Bratcher: At the time I was becoming more of a father figure, I also was dealing with controversial issues more openly. I preached a sermon a couple or three months before I retired that I don’t think I would have preached four or five years earlier: “Is He White or Is She Black? Some Thoughts on the Nature of God.” That’s a lively title for a Southern Baptist congregation.

But looking at it merely in terms of self-preservation, when you get up into the 60s, unless you’re seriously negligent, no one is going to fire you.

Consequently, you’ve got more security. That security can give you more freedom to speak and lead your people boldly.

Moorehead: In Wisconsin, where I pastored last, one election included a referendum to make the state a nuclear-free zone. Many churches were taking stands on the issue. So I did as well, and I preached a sermon about the issue.

At the end of other controversial sermons, I encouraged people to talk back, either in the sanctuary or in a class that followed. But on that occasion, I simply told them what I stood for and what I thought our church ought to stand for and left it at that. I knew some would be unhappy, but I went ahead. I don’t take credit for great heroism, though. It was a little easier to speak like that during the latter part of my ministry.

Brown: I think Lee is right, although I didn’t see my last year or so as a time to get things off my chest.

Moorehead: Exactly. That’s another matter.

Buursma: At the same time, I find as I grow older I become more mellow. I had an awful lot of answers in my 20s and 30s. I was more dogmatic. Unless we become bitter and rigid, I think the aging process brings with it an ability to look at life with kinder eyes. We’ve learned through our own failures and frustrations. We learn to understand dimensions of life we used to condemn. We’re able to be more compassionate.

Bratcher: As you get older you realize more and more that you’re here only by the grace of God and by the grace of people. For me, journaling has helped me become more conscious of my experiences. And recently I’ve written to many people who have helped me through the years. Reiterating how they helped me has re-emphasized the fact that I didn’t do it all alone. That process tends to make one less judgmental.

Leadership: So an older pastor can be both more prophetic and less judgmental? Isn’t that a contradiction?

Buursma: Not at all. To be prophetic means to apply the Word of God to the congregation, even if there’s personal cost. To be judgmental is to be censorious, to lack empathy and compassion for the weaknesses and frailty of others. One can never be perfectly nonjudgmental and prophetic, but the older minister can do both better than he or she used to.

For example, a few years ago our church leaders suggested our congregation move from one to two morning services. I supported the idea strongly because I believed we would plateau if we didn’t. So, without consulting the congregation, we simply announced that at a certain date we would start holding two Sunday morning services.

We did that for almost two years, but it was two years of frustration, unhappiness, and polarization. Some people complained about not seeing their friends, others about the lackluster singing of smaller services.

I stuck my neck out for a year and a half saying that if we were serious about reaching out to our community, we needed two morning services. Ultimately the leadership decided we’d lost on that issue and agreed to go back to one service.

I was prophetic, applying the Word of God to the life of the church. I had more courage to do that and stick it out as long as I did, because I knew I would retire in another two or three years. Ten to twelve years earlier, I might have chickened out more quickly.

Unfortunately, I can’t say I was completely free from being judgmental, only better than in earlier years. Frankly, there were times I made the issue a spiritual test: people in favor of two services, I felt, were more sensitive to the challenge of evangelism. But I was certainly less prone to this attitude and more ready to repent of it.

Brown: For me the distinction is this: we pronounce judgments-God’s judgments, we hope-and we want to do that clearly. There are standards. Yet to be judgmental, to be hostile or narrow in attitude, is different. Our tone indicates whether we are pronouncing God’s judgments or simply being judgmental.

Over the years, as we deal with such issues, we begin to think less about our own feelings and more about the feelings of others. Even the people we think are wrong become a concern to us. We increasingly understand why others believe and feel as they do.

Bratcher: In Manassas, which is near Washington, D.C., we had many employees of government agencies as members of the congregation. Once after I preached that loving our enemies would include loving Ayatollah Khomeini, a Secret Service man stalked out of our church. That week I made an appointment to see him in his home, and we talked over the situation. He didn’t change his position; I didn’t change mine. But we had a better understanding, and he came back to church. I think that was both prophetic and nonjudgmental. I don’t know I would have done that when I was younger.

Leadership: Some say that ministerial life becomes insecure around age 55, that finding a new call then is nearly impossible, so you’d better mind your manners. You seem to be saying just the opposite: you can speak and lead with a greater sense of security.

Buursma: We have to acknowledge that a pastor at age 55 is not much of a marketable commodity today. Churches want younger ministers. That’s a blow to your ego and creates insecurity.

Bratcher: It depends on where you find yourself at age 55. If you haven’t found a good fit with a congregation, things can be precarious.

To be specific, I have met three individuals recently who had problems in their 50s. One was in his early 50s and had been at his church about fifteen years. Another was around 55 and had been at his church for twenty years. Both felt there was no place for them to go. So both left the pastoral ministry. One retired early; the other became a counselor. This to me was tragic, because they were talented individuals who had more to contribute to the church.

The third person is around 55 and has been at his present church about two years now. He feels it’s a mismatch, the wrong congregation for him. He’s depressed and panicking; he doesn’t know what to do.

Situations like these, naturally, will raise your insecurity level.

I, on the other hand, was fortunate to start serving my last church when I was 50. When I turned 55, I realized I probably wasn’t going to go anywhere else, but that was fine. I was enjoying ministry there. So I simply settled in, focused my energies, and decided to enjoy the remainder of my ministry. In this circ*mstance, I had little problem with insecurity.

Leadership: Besides decreased “marketability,” what else makes ministry during this period more difficult?

Moorehead: We’re tempted to start winding down, becoming careless, less committed to working hard for Christ and his church. Preaching especially can become lackluster if we feel it is no longer necessary to devote a lot of time and effort to sermon preparation.

The way I fought that was deliberately to recommit myself to preaching. On Thursday of each week, I took my lunch, went to a retreat center, rented an inexpensive room, and stayed for the whole day, sometimes until 8:00 at night. It was important to have concentrated time not only to prepare sermons, but also to study in general.

Bratcher: During this period I was especially wary of becoming “professional” in my execution of ministry. For instance, I was concerned that I might start just going through the motions during funerals. So I would pray earnestly, especially before funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies, that I might be sensitive to people. I didn’t want to wear a professional mask during my last years.

Buursma: I had just the opposite experience. The longer I’m in a church, the more emotional I become, because I’ve learned to know and love those people. I’ve had approximately two hundred funerals in this pastorate, and the first ones were easier. Now that I’ve lived with these people seventeen years, it’s like burying family. I have to struggle not to break down.

Brown: Multiple interruptions began to wear on me in the later years. By that I mean when I was studying and the phone would ring, and simultaneously someone would knock on the door, and a moment later the secretary would stick her head in to have me sign something. I thrived on that tempo earlier, but not my last few years.

Buursma: I think there is a negative side to the pastor as father figure. Some people imagine that the older minister is increasingly out of the mainstream. They think we don’t understand what’s going on. I’ve noticed, for example, that the jokes younger people share with one another are no longer shared with me. I suppose they feel I won’t catch on.

To some degree, that’s threatening. No one likes to feel that other people think you no longer can understand.

Leadership: How do you deal with that perception of a generation gap?

Bratcher: In some ways you simply have to accept that you’re not going to relate with younger people in certain ways. For instance, I didn’t like rock music. And I didn’t want to give time to understand it or even become acquainted with Christian rock groups. I made no bones about it. That became a barrier, an important area of our young people’s lives that I chose not to be interested in. So, I could no longer communicate with them at certain points.

Nonetheless, in working with young people, I found I could still relate. We still enjoyed a closeness. When I was about 60, one high school senior dashed to my office one afternoon because she had just gotten her SAT scores, and they were embarrassingly low. Before she could face her father or mother, she wanted to talk with me, to get some affirmation and strength.

So, although there were some barriers that age threw up, I didn’t feel myself excluded.

Leadership: So if common interests, like rock music, are not the contact point, what is?

Bratcher: To the high school senior, as with others, I was a father figure-in her case, maybe a grandfather figure! I was someone she could talk with about her heartache. In general, young people have a spiritual hunger. Many want to understand Scripture, to grow in their faith. I can relate to them at those points. But in the last few years I didn’t try to play basketball or touch football with them.

I don’t think my athletic limitations hurt my ability to relate to them as pastor. They knew I played racquetball three mornings a week, and that I could beat nearly anyone in the church. They showed interest in that.

Leadership: What does age do to your ambitions?

Buursma: By the time you turn 55, you know you’re not going to be the Billy Graham of the next generation. You know you have achieved whatever you will achieve. There will be no tremendous bursts of new inspiration and insight.

Along with that comes a letdown, a shadow in one’s life plans. Some of the goals you had as a young pastor are never going to be realized.

I have gifts in journalism. There was a time I thought I would be a good candidate to become editor of a particular magazine. At one point I was nominated for the position, but another person was chosen. He’s done an outstanding job. Nevertheless, that was one dream that never became reality.

Bratcher: You also realize that age itself thwarts some dreams. When I was 61, a denominational position dealing with pastor-church relations was being developed for Virginia. I was recommended to the position by some friends. But I didn’t get it. The person who made the decision was open about the reasons-he said he was building a team and wanted people who would be around awhile. To put it simply, I was too old.

That’s tough to hear. When I was in my 50s, denominational leaders sought me for positions on boards and committees. But once I got into my 60s, there were fewer invitations. Naturally, this was disappointing because I always had enjoyed that type of work.

Moorehead: In the Methodist system of appointments, spring is the nervous season, because most annual conferences are in the process of making appointments. Many people are wondering who is going to become a district superintendent, who is going to which church.

A lot of pastors at age 50 or 55, who feel qualified for a larger appointment, are plunged into deep discouragement when they hear they won’t be moving as they’d hoped, and especially if they are moved to a less desirable church.

Leadership: How does age affect your physical stamina for the demands of ministry?

Buursma: We are no longer able to study for long hours. When I was younger, I could study, if I needed to, until 2 or 3 A.M. I have to start earlier now, otherwise I fall asleep. That’s simply a physical fact of aging.

Brown: A few years ago I discovered I wasn’t enjoying standing on Sunday morning for two services, a Bible class between, and greeting at the door after services. By the time the morning was finished, I had been standing for four to five hours. I was tired!

Another thing, working fifteen or sixteen hours a day a few years ago was a piece of cake for me. Now I don’t enjoy that pace.

So the inner clock sends out subtle signals that tell us there isn’t as much energy inside.

Leadership: Is that discouraging?

Brown: Not discouraging, but it does make you question yourself when it first sets in. When I first noticed a lack of energy, I began wondering if I was exercising enough, or if something was wrong with me. I shared this with a few people, all of whom hastily and strongly reassured me I was as young as ever. However, they did it so hastily and strongly that I had a gnawing suspicion that maybe they weren’t telling the truth! (Laughter)

I finally realized that I was past 60, and at that age, a person gets tired easier.

Leadership: Did your priorities change when you entered this period of ministry?

Bratcher: Yes. I became more interested in crisis ministry. I also became more interested in preaching, particularly in preaching apologetics. I was finding that most people who came to church were not firmly rooted in their faith.

Also, committee meetings and administration become less important. I discovered those things could be turned over to other people.

Brown: When I began serving my last church, I attended every committee and board meeting. I wanted to affirm the committees and boards, and I wanted to know what was going on. But looking back, I see I also felt they needed my great wisdom!

As I grew older, this routine began to wear me out. I realized those committees and boards didn’t need me. So for the last ten years, I never attended a committee or board meeting unless I was invited. I finally was able to trust them and their decisions. I think I could do that because through the years I’d seen people do things remarkably well without me.

I felt this way about the preaching, too. No longer did I have to be in the pulpit every Sunday morning. Earlier, I was careful about who would speak. But in my last years, I invited other staff members and lay people to preach, as well. It was a wonderful experience.

Buursma: I agree. I find my people appreciate it if I don’t zealously guard my pulpit. They not only like the change, but also that I am willing to share that forum.

Leadership: When did you know it was time to retire?

Bratcher: I felt I should retire from parish ministry at age 65. During our later years our frustration level goes up, and our ability to deal with frustration goes down. In the 60s it takes a little longer to regain your strength after a grueling experience or weekend. You need a little longer to recuperate.

It gets back to that internal time clock. I don’t think it’s an accident that our society has chosen 65 as the usual age of retirement. For most people, that’s a good time to retire.

Moorehead: It’s important psychologically for the pastor to set a date for his retirement, and to stick to it. At the time I retired, I felt the church was in excellent condition. People were affirming me and suggesting I continue until age 70. But I wanted to go when people said, “Moorehead, we’re sorry you’re going” rather than wait five years when they would say “Moorehead, we’re sorry-but you’re going!” (Laughter)

Brown: In your later years, the question increasingly and persistently surges: How long can I maintain this pace? How long can I be productive in all the aspects of pastoral ministry? You realize even at 60 that you’re beginning to fade in some respects, forgetting names and dates sometimes, for example.

I’ve heard pastors say, “I want to die in the pulpit.” Well, as for me, I want to die in bed. I don’t think it’s any gift to the church to die in the pulpit.

Moorehead: I believe the minister should be in control of retirement, so I think he or she ought to set the date and do so while still healthy and strong. Then you can think about what you’re going to do in the closing period of your ministry.

You plan your strategy, set goals, throw everything you’ve got into those last years. You’ve got to have some period to do that, a period that the minister should determine.

Bratcher: I agree it’s important to have control of that time. If a minister should still feel productive and energetic at 65, he or she should approach the church and get an agreement to stay on, but only for a specified period, until age 68, for example.

But what I’ve found is that many ministers, when they pass 65, don’t make any announcement. They just drift along, leaving everybody unsure. People begin to wonder how much longer the pastor will stay. That’s when you start seeing a church drift aimlessly.

Buursma: We’re not necessarily in a position to judge whether we’re still effective. Setting a definite date is a good idea. If the congregation says to the pastor that they want him for another two or three years, then maybe he should do it. But the initiative should come from the congregation, and then another date of retirement can be set.

Leadership: In announcing your retirement ahead of time, do you become a lame duck? Can this time of ministry be fruitful?

Bratcher: You only become a lame duck when you start announcing, “This is my last Easter sermon,” “This is my last Christmas Eve service,” or when you defer decisions to your successor. That will undermine your relationship with the church.

Moorehead: Actually, another psychological advantage of setting a date is that you can pour everything you’ve got left into that last year or so, rather than limp out in weak health.

Brown: I announced my retirement eighteen months in advance. In some ways that became the most creative and active time of this latter period of ministry. I focused my energies, knowing I had only a year and a half to prepare staff, church leadership, and congregation for the coming changes.

Moorehead: It’s a matter of stewardship of one’s ministry at this point. To help prepare the way for a successor is a ministry in itself. I know one pastor who dedicated himself to doing the things he knew his successor would want to find already done-even such things as fixing up a deteriorating building, repainting a peeling sanctuary.

Bratcher: The advance announcement also helped my wife and me close out our ministry and say our goodbyes intentionally. A committee was appointed to help celebrate my forty-two years of ordination and fifteen years with the church. On a Sunday on which my birthday fell, they had a special service for me. On a Sunday closest to my wife’s birthday, they celebrated her accomplishments. Then a month later the church put on a farewell banquet for both of us.

None of this took away from the life of the church. It just gave everyone a chance to say their goodbyes in a positive, intentional way.

Leadership: What things can younger pastors be doing now that will make ministry from ages 55 to 70 more meaningful and effective?

Brown: Journaling has been a powerful way to come to know myself and to be open before God and other people.

I would also encourage pastors to get in touch with the spiritual classics before you reach old age. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and many others can deepen our sense of wonder and our capacity to worship and lead worship.

Bratcher: Such reading is important, because the role of the minister is no longer important to society.

People don’t care that we’re ministers; they’re looking for authentic individuals. Among other things, an authentic person is someone who recognizes a need for God. As Art suggests, these classic writers found their place in God and stood amazed at his grace. They can teach us the same.

Also, I think it’s especially important when you’re 35 to realize your need for God’s grace and power. All that excess energy you have at 35 is going to start burning out one of these days, and you’re going to start realizing that you need more than adrenalin to get through ministry.

Buursma: Younger ministers shouldn’t think that by the time they’re 55 or 60 they will be the faithful pastor of their dreams, doing more study, preaching better, visiting more. There’s nothing magical about getting older. It doesn’t transform you or automatically produce new virtues. You won’t find yourself marvelously regenerated.

Although there should be continual professional growth and sanctification, in many respects the minister you are at 30 is the minister you will be at 60. Younger ministers should begin addressing poor attitudes and work habits now.

Leadership: Did you find the time just prior to retirement a peak experience or a time to wind down gracefully?

Moorehead: My later years were a time of spiritual growth when I had to face stabbing questions about suffering. How does Christian theology account for bad things happening to good people? I’ve seen people I love suffer seemingly without justification. But I believe that God inserts these questions into our lives to compel our spiritual growth. For me these questions were more intense in these later years, as was my growth.

Bratcher: I was a little surprised the other day when I realized that I finished my largest and most significant writing project when I was 60 years old. Many people think that at 60 you’re past your prime years of productivity, but finishing that book was one of the most productive things I’ve ever done.

Buursma: In one sense, this last church has been the best because it’s been the most challenging. It offered many good years, but I’ve also had more stress and strain in this church. That’s not so much the fault of the congregation as it is the fault of the denomination. We’re going through considerable turmoil now.

I’ve also noticed, as I have nine months left, an increasing care for me developing in the congregation. I sense they don’t want to hurt me, so in a loving way it seems they’ve agreed to postpone their fights until I’m gone. I’m willing to let them do that!

Brown: The last years were probably the most memorable of all my ministry. If there was any time I felt I might hear the words “Well done, good and faithful servant,” it was then. In the last months of ministry, a lot of love and respect not usually expressed openly begins to surface. I suppose until we reach that period of ministry, we never really know how much our lives have affected so many, many people.

When I was a boy, I heard a young woman say to an older pastor, “I’m jealous of you, because you know the Lord so well.”

He said, “Well, I’ve walked with him for many years.”

That’s a significant point for older ministers. The more we live with God, the more wonderful he becomes. I marvel more than ever now at the awesome majesty of God, and at his love and his grace. I think it takes a lifetime to come to that point. In that respect, ministry from 55 to 70 is a peak experience.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Evangelism is at the heart of any church’s mission, and yet few subjects elicit more nervousness and uncertainty. Pastors and congregations wrestle with what to do, individually and collectively. These concerns are the focus of the latest volume in Leadership’s Mastering Ministry series: Mastering Outreach and Evangelism, co-authored by Myron Augsburger, Calvin Ratz, and Frank Tillapaugh, who represent diverse approaches. This article is taken from that book.

Since day one, the church has used one method to reach out to people more frequently and more successfully than any other. It’s the way the gospel was brought to Europe by Paul, and the way it spread throughout the West by the Dominican and Franciscan orders, among others. It was central in the life, worship, and outreach of the Reformation. It was the means by which lives were ignited and entire towns transformed in the great awakenings in this country.

Today, it remains the one task, more than any other, that most congregations expect of their pastors. It is the main vehicle for communicating to them and the larger community God’s grace and peace.

I’m talking, of course, about preaching.

A church can and should reach out to the community in a variety of ways. But throughout its history evangelistic preaching has been primary. All preaching seeks to communicate God’s grace and peace, but evangelistic preaching is unique. Especially in a day when evangelistic preaching has gotten bad press, it deserves particular attention.

Objections to Evangelistic Preaching

Despite its noble history, some preachers remain hesitant about evangelistic preaching. Many wonder about the place of the evangelistic sermon in a church setting, where the hearers supposedly are already believers. The four objections I encounter most, and my responses, are these:

Evangelistic sermons don’t help believers. Since evangelism is aimed at the unbeliever, and since unbelievers usually constitute only a small minority of a congregation, some preachers reason that the evangelistic sermon is out of place in worship. Not quite. In spite of these assumptions, the evangelistic sermon remains necessary for believers, too, for three reasons.

First, it shows believers how they can present the gospel to their friends during the week. When they hear the pastor articulate the evangelistic message, it gives them a model for their own witnessing. Frequently members thank me for a sermon that gave them ways to explain their faith to a friend at work.

Second, the evangelistic sermon gives relatively nonverbal members an opportunity to share the gospel with their friends. Many of our members bring friends to church so they not only can see the gospel at work, but also hear it articulated. Once, a Sunday school class invited their unchurched friends to a dinner, and they clarified on the invitation that a pastor would be present to talk about Christ. My presence as a pastor offered a natural way to introduce Christ into the evening.

Third, people who regularly come to church don’t necessarily have a personal relationship with Christ and, thus, need to be evangelized-to hear and respond to the Good News.

A number of years ago, Archbishop William Temple formed a commission to study evangelism in England. The commission concluded that the church is a field for evangelism when it ought to be a force for evangelism. It has also been estimated by Elton Trueblood that two-thirds of the members of the American churches know nothing about personal conversion. We may disagree about the numbers, but few pastors will deny the reality.

I once preached at a noonday service in which struggling single parents were being ministered to, both with preaching and with gifts of food and clothing. After the service, as people were filing out shaking my hand, one women, well dressed and dignified, said, “Thanks for that message. That was just what they needed.”

I held onto her hand and said, “But don’t we all need it?”

“Well, maybe sometime I’ll be in trouble,” she replied, “and then I’ll need it.”

“Are you married?” I asked. She acknowledged she was. So to make a point I said, “I guess you needed a man in your life. Is that why you got married?”

She stiffened. “I love my husband. That’s why I married!”

“Well, that’s the way it is with salvation,” I said. “It isn’t a crutch we use because we’re in trouble. We walk with Christ because we love him.”

Those who have never known Christ personally and those whose relationship has become stale need to hear the Good News presented afresh.

Evangelistic sermons are simplistic. Some preachers believe sermons must challenge the mind, and they assume evangelistic sermons do anything but that, because they aim at people’s most elementary need. They are right about the aim of the sermon, but they couldn’t be more wrong about its intellectual quality.

An evangelistic sermon will clarify the gospel and highlight its uniqueness in the world today. That means, then, the preacher must understand clearly the alternatives to Christ, many of which are world views that listeners hold. In addition, the preacher will have to work at speaking fairly about these other views, for listeners will turn off anyone who sounds uninformed or biased.

To put it another way, if you’re trying to communicate the gospel in the midst of the modern world, when New Age, existentialist, hedonist, and materialist world views compete for people’s loyalties, you can be sure evangelistic preaching will challenge preacher and listener intellectually.

Not that we must sound academic. In fact, we shouldn’t. That’s what makes the task so challenging. Although we must recognize the complexity of world views people hold, and the complexity of reasons for holding them, we need to translate Christian theology into the clearest and simplest language.

I was invited to speak at a week-long, city-wide crusade in Salt Lake City in 1963. Early in the week, a spokesman for the Mormon Church went on television and said, “Go to this meeting. We need a revival of religion in America. It’ll do you good. But remember, we’ve got all this and more.” I felt my task was to show that they didn’t have all this, let alone more.

On the first night I spoke on Hebrews 1, which highlights so eloquently the uniqueness of Christ. The text and the situation demanded that I speak on Christology. But I also needed to communicate the uniqueness of the church’s Christology in ways people could understand.

So, I said plainly that Jesus is not a prophet in a series of prophets. In that setting, they knew exactly what I meant.

Then I explained that Christians do not say Jesus is like God, as many do when they speak about their prophet, but that God is like Jesus: “If my son walked in and said, ‘I’m John Myron Augsburger, Myron Augsburger’s son,’ people might say, ‘Well, of course. You’re like your father.’ But if they hadn’t seen me and they met him, they couldn’t say that; they wouldn’t have any comparison to make. But they could say, ‘Ah! So this is what the Myron Augsburger family is like.’ ”

I concluded by explaining that no other person or prophet is like Jesus, because he is the only one who expresses to us what the Father is like.

Competent evangelistic preaching need not be intellectually shallow.

Evangelistic preaching is event oriented. Some evangelistic preachers simply aim to pressure listeners for a decision, using any tactic available. Naturally, some church members hesitate to bring friends to such a presentation, fearing the tactics used by the evangelist will alienate their loved ones and put a strain on those relationships.

If that’s evangelistic preaching, I understand why pastors want nothing to do with it. Neither do I. Yet I don’t abandon evangelism in the pulpit.

Instead, I do it differently. When evangelistic preaching becomes merely event oriented, it becomes unlike the rest of the Christian life, which is a life-long proposition. That’s why I take the long view when I preach evangelistically.

When I preach as an evangelist, I recognize that some people present may not know Jesus Christ in a personal way, and some Christians present have ongoing relationships with these unbelievers. My goal is to enhance that relationship by pointing the unbeliever to Jesus, not damage that relationship.

I was scheduled to preach evangelistically in British Columbia not long ago. The organizers and I agreed to have a session for educators. The idea was to encourage Christian school teachers to invite unbelieving colleagues to a dinner meeting where the Christian message would be presented.

In that setting, through preaching and discussion that followed, I aimed to interpret why Christianity makes sense out of life. And when I was through, I wanted the Christian school teacher to remain comfortable driving home with the unbelieving colleague. So, I tried to present the claims of Christ compellingly but leave people the freedom to think and reflect about their decision. That means I must trust the Holy Spirit to work in people’s lives over time, as he always does.

Some Elements of Style

The evangelistic sermon has taken many forms over the centuries. Bishop Quayle said that preaching is not so much preparing a sermon and delivering it as it is preparing a preacher and delivering him. In spite of the many changes in time and culture, that remains especially true of evangelistic preaching.

Fundamental to our preparation, of course, is immersion in prayer and Scripture. But beyond that, I preach more effective evangelistic sermons when I remember the following.

Practice vicarious dialogue. Evangelism is not a gimmick. It’s not some smooth technique of persuasion. Too many people think of the evangelist as a smooth salesman who comes in to sign people up. Instead, when I evangelize, I’m not trying to manipulate people’s minds about their deepest needs and questions and sell them the gospel. Rather, I’m simply trying to describe their deepest concerns and show how Jesus addresses them.

I do that by practicing “vicarious dialogue.” As I prepare my sermon, I try to listen to the objections and questions my listeners may have at certain points in my message: “Yes, but what about this?” or “Okay, but so what?” Then I craft my sermon to respond to people’s questions at appropriate points. This forces me to think seriously about the people I’m addressing. It also helps them see that I am not just trying to get them interested in something they don’t care about; I’m responding to their interests.

Don’t put others down; lift up Christ. Some preachers attempt to convince listeners of the truth of Christianity by debunking the alternatives. The danger is that in seeking to rebut them, they can misrepresent other views or they ridicule others’ opinions. This doesn’t draw people to Christ-it usually drives them further away.

Instead, I try to understand other religions and world views, present them fairly and accurately-but lift Jesus higher.

A friend of mine, David Shenk, who has a doctorate in Islamic studies, does this well in a book he wrote with Islamic scholar Badra Katereqqa: Islam and Christianity. David wrote chapters on how the Christian views the Islamic faith; Katereqqa described how the Muslim views the Christian faith. Then they each wrote a response to the other. In the end, they each acknowledged that their disagreement hinged on the Christian idea that God loved us so much that he entered the world in Christ and suffered. For the Muslim that’s impossible, for the Christian, essential. In sum, David Shenk didn’t try to condemn Islam; he simply showed the Muslim readers the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.

Use language that connects. I was talking once with a man from the inner city of Washington, D.C. When he learned I was a preacher, he asked with a belligerent tone, “Tell me what difference it makes in my life that Jesus died on a cross two thousand years ago.”

Fond of theology as I am, I was tempted to describe to him the theological meaning of the atonement. Instead, I said, “Do you have some close friends?” When he nodded yes, I continued, “Suppose one of them gets in trouble. What are you going to do with him?”

“Help him out,” he said.

“How long are you going to hang in?”

“Well, he’s your friend. You hang in.”

“But he gets in worse trouble still. When can you cop out?”

A little peeved, he said, “Man, if he’s your friend, you don’t cop out. Even criminals won’t cop out.”

I looked at him and said, “And God came to us as a friend and identified with us in our problem. When can he cop out?”

“You mean Jesus?” he asked.

“Yes. If he’s a friend, when can he say, ‘That’s it. I’ve gone far enough with you’?”

All at once, lights went on in his eyes, and he said, “You mean that’s why Jesus had to die?”

“That’s one reason. He couldn’t cop out short of death, or else he wasn’t really hanging in with you.”

He stood up, dusted off his pants, grinned at me, and walked off. As I watched him walk down the street, I muttered to him (although he couldn’t hear), “You don’t know it, but you’ve been evangelized.”

There’s more to the atonement than that, of course. But what I did explain of the atonement, I explained in language this man could identify with.

Diversifying Our Approach

Effective evangelistic preaching also depends on using a variety of elements.

Themes. All evangelistic preaching aims to bring people to a decision about Christ. We make a mistake, however, if we assume that all evangelistic preaching must begin and end on the same note. Christ meets needs in a variety of ways: he’s the propitiation for our sins, yes, but he’s also the norm for ethics, the Shepherd of sheep, the Bread of Life, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

I preached a series of evangelistic sermons in Kansas a few years ago. After the first night’s sermon, a woman shook my hand at the door and said, “Thank you for that message. But I didn’t hear anything about the blood tonight.”

I said, “No, that wasn’t my subject.”

“In our church,” she said, “we hear about the blood in every sermon.”

“Well,” I said, “you come back tomorrow night.”

She did, and she heard about the blood. At the door she shook my hand and thanked me, saying how she appreciated hearing about the blood of Christ. I kept holding her hand and said, “Madam, you do yourself and your pastor a disservice. The gospel has so many elements. If you insist he preach every Sunday on the blood of Christ, he will never get to other themes that could enrich your faith.”

Needs. People come to hear us for different reasons. Some come out of fear of death. Others come out of a sense of emptiness-their lives lack meaning. Some want their salvation assured. Others’ lives are in shambles, and they need help. Some people are troubled by their addictions, enslaved to chemicals, ambition, or bad relationships. Preaching can address a variety of needs begging to be addressed.

Cultures. Although largely young, white professionals attend our church, we do have a number of minority groups actively involved. A message that works for one subculture, of course, may not work for another. I try to remember the variety of cultures I address. And it doesn’t hurt to get help in doing so. Sometimes we invite a guest preacher who speaks the language of the black community, or a music group that appeals more to another ethnic subculture. A different part of the neighborhood often turns out for them, one that doesn’t come to hear me.

Settings. I get calls from university campuses and community groups to speak or lead in prayer. I often accept these invitations and use them to “preach” evangelistically in a new setting.

I was invited to give the invocation at a national insurance conference. Not all of the conference planners were particularly interested in Christianity, but some were Christians and thought prayer was a good thing to have on the program. So I went. When they called on me to lead the invocation, I stepped to the microphone and said, “If I’m going to lead you in prayer, then it’s better if you understand why.”

Succinctly I indicated that I was a committed Christian. I hadn’t come simply as a professional minister who prays for a living, but as one whose walk with Christ is extremely meaningful. I said my intent was to invite God to be working in the life of each person at this event. Then I led in prayer.

After the program, a number of people came and thanked me, not for the prayer, but for my introductory comments. Naturally, I don’t want to misuse such situations. But if handled with tact, we can use them to present Christ to others.

When All Is Said but Not Done: Invitations

It irks me when, after an evangelistic sermon, someone asks, “How many did you get down front?” Evangelism’s effectiveness can’t be measured that way. Yet in many churches, the altar call remains the measure of the preacher’s success. And that can lead to many sorts of manipulation.

I was in one evangelistic meeting when the evangelist closed his message by asking, “How many of you want to love the Lord more? Raise your hand.” Of course, we all raised our hands. Then he said, “If you really mean that, stand up.” Naturally, a lot of us stood up. Then he said, “If you really mean that, come down front.” And a lot of people walked to the front and were taken to a counseling room and prayed for. Later they were reported as people who responded to the invitation. As a listener, I felt manipulated.

Yet at the right time and place, giving an invitation is the right thing to do. It is one way people can make a public commitment to Christ. There are few hard-and-fast guidelines determining the right time and place. Different churches and different sermons will demand different responses.

Sometimes it’s best to let people pray in silence after a sermon, encouraging them to talk to me after the service or during the week. Other times, aiming for a public invitation, I make clear from the beginning where the sermon is heading. Once in a while, I sense in the midst of the service that it is appropriate to invite people to make a public response.

Even though the time and place is flexible, there are two things we do in our church to make invitations meaningful.

First, we don’t want invitations to be strange and unusual. That means sometimes offering invitations in nonevangelistic settings. For instance, after a sermon on Christ’s power in our lives, we may invite people to come forward to have an elder pray for them about some area in which they need to experience more of Christ’s power. That not only gives Christians an opportunity to be ministered to, it also makes invitations after evangelistic sermons less threatening. It’s natural for people to go forward to pray and be helped.

Second, in offering an evangelistic invitation, we try to be clear about the level of commitment we are inviting people to make. If we give a narrow invitation just for unbelievers, they may feel awkward about walking to the front of a congregation of committed Christians. That’s an unnecessary social hurdle to expect them to overcome. On the other hand, we don’t want to play games with people and make the invitation so general it applies to “anyone who wants to do better in life.”

The subject of the sermon, of course, will determine to a large degree what we invite people to do. But we try to be as specific as possible without throwing up needless social barriers.

Rewards of Evangelistic Preaching

In 1980 I spent a year at Princeton Theological Seminary as a scholar-in-residence, and Esther and I lived in a seminary apartment. One morning as I was getting my mail, a young woman approached and asked, “Are you Dr. Augsburger?” I said I was. “Well, my husband and I live upstairs and I wanted to meet you.” Then, she asked, “Where were you in the summer of 1959?”

I thought a bit and said, “Well, I think I was on an evangelistic mission.”

She asked, “Were you in Arthur, Illinois?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Do you remember the young Mennonite girl who brought one of her atheist high school friends to talk to you?”

“I’m afraid not,” I had to admit.

“Well, I was that atheist. We talked for an hour, and you gave me all the reasons I should be a Christian. But you didn’t push me to make a commitment. When we got up to leave, you turned to me and said, ‘Marilyn, I’m sorry for you, because you’re going to miss out on so much that Jesus intends for you to enjoy.’ “

“I never got away from that,” she concluded.

She had become a Christian. She had earned a doctorate in philosophy and, with her husband, was a guest teacher that year at Princeton.

You can see why, then, I remain committed to evangelistic preaching. It’s not just because of the Great Commission. It’s also because of its great satisfaction.

Myron Augsburger is pastor of Washington Community Fellowship in Washington, D.C.

62 SUMMER LEADERSHIP/90

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Tapes for Truckers

It can be a lonely trip from Atlanta, Georgia, to Waco, Texas, for long-haul truckers, and Marvin Donnell wanted drivers to know their Creator cares about them, and a church full of Texans is praying for them.

Donnell, associate pastor at First Baptist Church of Woodway, assembled ten local Christian musicians willing to donate their time to record a tape of three country-western songs he had written and five well-known gospel favorites. The tape is called, “Here’s to You, America,” and its jacket contains a brief gospel message, a toll-free number, and the address of First Baptist Church.

The missions committee of this Waco, Texas, church paid for the production of 1,500 tapes. Most of the tapes have been given away at four truck stops within 100 miles of the church. They are displayed near the cash register and are free to any driver who signs a card. The card has space for the trucker to request prayer or a call from church members. The cards are returned by the truck stop managers to be filed in the church’s prayer room, where volunteer intercessors pray for and contact those who request it. Letters of thanks have come from as far away as Canada.

The pastor also gives away the tapes as he makes pastoral calls on prospective members and to nonmembers seeking counseling or other help from the church. Church members themselves purchase copies of the tapes for personal use or to give away. The income from the tapes is reinvested in the tape ministry.

Donnell calls it a “cutting edge” ministry-planting a seed for consideration of the gospel.

Reported by Trisha Taylor, Hewitt, Texas

The Parable Project

When Murray Sink suggested passing out money at Burkhead United Methodist Church, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, some people thought he was joking. He wasn’t. Sink based his suggestion on the parable of the talents, in which a master gave various amounts of money to his servants. The wise servants made a profit on their money, but the foolish servant simply hid his portion. The master rewarded the wise servants and punished the foolish. Sink suggested that after hearing the parable the congregation be given small amounts of money and challenged to make their portion increase, with the money and profits being returned six weeks later.

With the help of associate minister Karen Miller, the board planned to involve everyone in the congregation.

Matthew 25:14-30 was presented as readers theater. A lay person and Pastor Miller conducted a dialogue, pondering the meaning of the Scripture reading.

The dialogue concluded with these comments.

Pastor: We’ll give these people money today, let them have a period of six weeks to increase that money, and see how wise they can be.

Lay person: Real money?

Pastor: Yes, and each person who takes money will use it to earn more.

Lay person: That seems risky.

Pastor: Right! We might lose it all.

Lay person: But we should get back more than we started with.

Pastor: That’s what will happen when people invest the money and use their abilities to increase what they’ve been given.

Then the ushers distributed envelopes containing five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills along with instructions and an envelope to be used for returning the money in six weeks.

The instructions:

1. Use your own abilities and plans to make this money grow.

2. In six weeks you will be asked to return the money to the church with any profit made.

3. For the next six weeks, each worship service will include a Parable Pause, when someone will share his plans and what he is learning about the parable of the talents.

4. If you need help or have questions, please contact a member of the project committee.

The following week an article in the church newsletter described the Parable Project and explained how those who were not in worship that Sunday could obtain their free money.

A spot in the foyer became a clearinghouse for those who wished to advertise a service or project. Posters were mounted to remind participants to work on their projects.

The young-adult Sunday school class combined their money and prepared a fellowship dinner. The response was enthusiastic, and the church hall was lined with all kinds of handmade items and sweets for sale, and ads for services (one VCR owner, for instance, offered to make a video tape of the contents of homes for insurance purposes).

At the end of six weeks, the youth and adult Sunday school classes met together to celebrate the closing of the Parable Project. Participants had the opportunity to talk about their experiences. Many persons admitted feeling skeptical at first, but getting caught up in the enthusiasm of individual and group projects and the power of the parable.

In the concluding worship service, those who had participated placed their gifts on the chancel rail. Cash distributed at the beginning: $1,250. Returned: $3,651.57.

Pastor Miller says, “We discovered we all had gifts and that the important question is, ‘How will we use them for Christ?’ “

Letters to Grow On

Every pastor is concerned about follow-up of new Christians. Gary Carpenter, pastor of the Church of Christ, Kokomo, Indiana, produced a series of 52 instructional letters that are sent weekly to newly professed Christians.

For eight years Carpenter has mailed these two-page letters. In each one, biblical references are interspersed with personal comments. The letters close with half a page of review and study questions on the subject of that particular letter. The letters are designed to “communicate foundational truths in such a way that the new convert should be able to understand that the Christian faith touches every aspect of life,” says Carpenter. “It’s a convenient, comprehensive reference tool.”

Even children receive the letters, although they are written with adults and teens in mind. Some parents review the letters with their families. Occasionally a child will tell the pastor

he didn’t get his letter that week. The church is now developing a group of disciplers who will deliver the letters and go over the material with the new Christian each week.

Positive Visibility

Every church wants to relate the message of Christ to particular people groups. A recognition day for professional teachers gives Pastor Michael Barton and his congregation an opportunity to do that in San Jose, California, each year.

Students in the congregation are asked to submit the name of a teacher they would like to honor. Six weeks ahead those teachers receive a printed invitation sent from the church in the name of the student.

The invitation reads as follows: “Susan Smith invites you to join us for a special day of recognition for your contribution to education. You are invited for breakfast at 8:30 A.M. and a 9:30 A.M. worship service on (date). This day is planned by the students who attend First Church of the Nazarene in San Jose. Please RSVP by calling the church office no later than (date). We look forward to having you as our guest.”

When teachers accept the invitation, the student who submitted that name is notified, and the teacher receives a letter of welcome from the pastor.

On their special day, teachers are greeted by members of the congregation who are teachers. Each guest receives a flower to wear and is seated for breakfast with the family of the student who issued the invitation.

Breakfast is simple. After brief introductions and prayer, the pastor reads letters of commendation he has solicited from the mayor, governor, and state superintendent of education. Centerpieces on each table say, THANKS FOR HELPING US TO GROW. During the meal, music is provided by one of the church’s ensembles. Following the meal, some of the students’ stories, titled “What My Teacher Means to Me,” are read. After breakfast students accompany their guests to the sanctuary for worship. The bulletin includes the name and school of each teacher present. The theme for the day is, “Christ the Teacher.”

For the most recent celebration, 98 invitations were sent, and 30 teachers accepted the invitation to breakfast. Twenty-five remained for the worship service.

Among the thank-you notes from teachers, one read, “Please know how rewarding it is to work with children and parents like yours. I can’t thank you enough for the recognition your church gave me and my peers today.”

Pastor Barton says, “We found the day was not only favorable to the teachers, but also to our church. The congregation gained confidence in inviting people to church. The event increased church visibility in the community and created a positive atmosphere in the lives of those we touched.”

Missionaries-Up Close and Personal

Getting each person in the congregation acquainted with visiting missionaries is a challenge. Many times missionaries speak during worship services and never meet individual members. Pastor Alan Eagle of Salem Evangelical Covenant Church in Oakland, Nebraska, plans for personal contact between visiting missionaries and members of his church.

First, he schedules missionaries into the activities of existing small groups. This means the missionary may meet with a men’s prayer group, a Bible study, or a group of children. Eventually, a majority of the congregation has the opportunity to question the missionary and receive a personal challenge about the mission task. “The missionary becomes less a celebrity and more a real person,” says Eagle.

To get new people interested in missions, a banquet is planned for the Welcome Class featuring the visiting missionary. “It has proven more worthwhile to meet with eight new couples who know little about missions than to meet a third or fourth time with larger groups of people who are already committed to missions,” says Eagle.

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Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I was kneeling on the steps of the chancel with several hands laid on my shoulder. The occasion was my ordination into the ministry, and the pastor was praying a seemingly interminable prayer for God’s blessings and power to be upon me. My legs had started to cramp. Sweat was soaking through my black robe, a garment whose origins were in Northern Europe, and whose wearer was in Southern California on a balmy May evening. And my knees felt like they were piercing the scarlet carpet.

Does he think I need more prayer than usual? I thought. Then, as if in answer to my question, he prayed, “Lord, as Ben feels the weight of these hands upon his shoulders, may he feel the weight of what he has been called to do.”

Amen.

“But may he feel also the strength of your everlasting arms bearing him up.”

Amen and amen!

That is what ministry has been like ever since: an impossible, unbearable job accompanied by an improbable, inexplicable strength.

The apostle Paul took inventory of his vocation and asked, “Who is equal to such a task?” My version of that question comes several times a year as I step into the pulpit: Patterson, I wonder, just what do you think you are doing here? Who are you, of all people, to tell several hundred people what God thinks?

The question has struck me on other occasions, too. One Sunday a man from my checkered past came to see if the preacher was indeed the same Ben Patterson he had known years earlier. I’m sure he wondered what I was doing leading a service of worship. Seeing him and remembering my past, I wondered myself.

Countless hours I have sat with people crushed by life’s weight. I have tried to convey something of the mercy and hope of Jesus. Verily, Patterson, just what do you think you are doing here?

I would have no right, no reason, no hope in ministry were it not for one thing: Almighty God, in his inscrutable wisdom, called me to it. That is all. He has willed it, not I.

Sovereignly, the Spirit blows where he wants, and he has blown me into the ordained ministry. Like the new birth, I was born into this thing not by the will of a man or an institution, but by the will of my Father in heaven.

Hearing a Call Is No Career Move

I often have puzzled over this thing we designate a “call.” What is it? How does it come? How do you know when it does?

Much I do not understand, but there is one thing I am solidly convinced of: a call is not a career. The pivotal distinction between the two may be the most important thing we ever understand about the call of God, especially in these times.

The words themselves immediately suggest one difference. Our English word career comes from the French carriere, meaning “a road,” or “a highway.” The image suggests a course one sets out on, road map in hand, goal in sight, stops marked along the way for food, lodging, and fuel.

Looking back, we can speak of one’s career as the road one took in life. But more often we speak of it looking forward, as the path one chooses and plans to travel professionally, an itinerary charted and scheduled. The destination is primary. The roads are well-marked. The rest is up to the traveler.

A call, on the other hand, has no maps, no itinerary to follow, no destination to envision. Rather, a call depends upon hearing a Voice. The organ of faith is the ear, not the eye. First and last, it is something one listens for. Everything depends upon the relationship of the listener to One who calls.

Careers lend themselves to formulae and blueprints, a call only to a relationship. A career can be pursued with a certain amount of personal detachment, a call never.

When Moses heard God call him to free the slaves in Egypt, he first responded as though he were presented with a career decision. Was he qualified? Did he have the proper experience and unique skills required by such an undertaking? He talked to God as though he were in a job interview: Who am I to do such a thing? What if the people don’t follow? And did God know that he was a poor public speaker?

All of this was irrelevant to God. All that mattered was that Moses believe God could be trusted when he said, “I will be with you.”

In short, all that mattered was the call-and that Moses bind himself to the One who issued the call. There were no road maps, only the Voice.

The Peril of a Professional

If we view our calling as a career, we reduce the servant of Christ to a vapid creature called “the professional.” Well dressed and well spoken, armed with degrees, leadership savvy, management manuals, and marketing studies-all to be used for the good of the Kingdom, of course-we intend to make a mark on the world, gain a little respect for the profession, and shed forever the pastor’s Rodney Dangerfield image.

Sensible and realistic, professionals expect the church to treat them like professionals and negotiate salary and benefits to match.

It is terrifying to realize that professional clergy can apply the skills and sophistication of their trade to build large, exciting, growing churches-and to do it all without believing anything.

“God deliver us from the professionalizers says Minneapolis pastor John Piper. Echoing St. Paul, he asks, “Hasn’t God made pastors the last in all the world? We are fools for Christ’s sake-professionals are wise. We are weak-professionals are held in honor. … Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry. … For there is no professional childlikeness, no professional tenderheartedness, no professional panting after God. … How do you carry a cross professionally? . . . What is professional faith?”

Worst of all, careerism drives a wedge between the God who calls and the person who answers. It leads us to believe that our performance is more important than our person, that how we do in the ecclesiastical marketplace (and it is a marketplace) is more important than how we stand before God.

Careerism would give us confidence in ourselves where we ought to tremble and cry out for mercy. It has no place in the professional syllabus for a Paul who came to Corinth in weakness and foolishness, or for a Jeremiah who ate the Word of God only to get a terrible case of indigestion, or for a Jesus who ended his public life on a cross.

A Call Is Something You Hear

The essential nature of the call is illustrated in a folk tale about a father and a son. They were traveling together to a distant city. There were no maps. The journey was to be long and rough, fraught with dangers. The roads were unmarked and mostly nonexistent. Only the wisdom and experience of the father would get him and his son to their destination.

Along the way, the boy grew curious. He wanted to know what was on the other side of the forest, beyond that distant ridge? Could he run over and look? His father said yes.

“But Father, how will I know whether I have wandered too far from you? What will keep me from getting lost?”

“Every few minutes,” the father said, “I will call your name and wait for you to answer. Listen for my voice, my son. When you can no longer hear me, you will know that you have gone too far.”

Ministry is not an occupation but a vocation. It primarily demands not professional credentials but the ability to hear and heed the call of God. And that simply requires that we stay quiet enough and close enough to hear his voice and be held firm in our impossible task by his everlasting arms.

The Untamed Call

Inherent in God’s call is something fierce and unmanageable. He summons, but he will not be summoned. He does the calling; we do the answering.

“You did not choose me; I chose you,” Jesus told his disciples. There is always a sense of compulsion-at times even violence-about God’s call.

Struck blind on the road to Damascus, Paul said later, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.”

Jeremiah complained that God had seduced him into his vocation, and wouldn’t let him out, no matter how much it hurt: “If I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.”

Spurgeon saw the divine constraint as such a sure sign of a call that he advised young men considering the ministry not to do it if, in any way, they could see themselves doing something else.

At times we try to tame the call by equating a staff position in a church or religious organization with the call itself. But the call always transcends the things we may be forced to do to earn money, even if those things are done in the church. The same distinction we urge our people to note applies to us: our vocation in Christ is one thing, our occupations quite another.

Our vocation is our calling to serve Christ; our occupations are the jobs we do to earn our way in the world. While it is our calling to press our occupations into the service of our vocation, it is idolatrous to equate the two. Happy is the man or woman whose vocation and occupations come close. But it is no disaster if they do not.

If tomorrow I am fired from my job as pastor of New Providence Presbyterian Church and am forced to find employment in the Sunoco station down the street, my vocation would remain intact. I still would be called to preach. Nothing would have changed my call substantially, just the situation in which I obey it. As Ralph Turnbull points out, I may preach as the paid pastor of a church, but I am not being paid to preach. I am given an allowance so that I can be more free to preach.

At times we try to tame the call by clericalizing it. Seminary education does not qualify a person for the ordained ministry, nor does additional psychological testing and field experience. Naturally, these may be valuable and even necessary for the ministry, but none of them alone or in combination is sufficient.

No office or position can be equated with the call. No credential, degree, or test should be confused with it. No professional jargon or psychobabble can tame it. No training or experience or ecclesiastical success can replace it.

Patterson, just what do you think you’re doing? My answer: Trying to follow the Voice.

Only the call suffices. Everything else is footnote and commentary.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

If you can tell where you got the call of God and all about it, I question whether you have ever had a call. The call of God does not come like that; it is much more supernatural. The realization of it may come with a sudden thunderclap or with a gradual dawning, but in whatever way it comes, it comes with the undercurrent of the supernatural, something that cannot be put into words.

At any moment there may break the sudden consciousness of this incalculable, supernatural, surprising call that has taken hold of your life-“I have chosen you.” The call of God has nothing to do with salvation and sanctification. It is not because you are sanctified that you are therefore called to preach the gospel; the call to preach the gospel is infinitely different. Paul describes it as a necessity laid upon him.

“Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” He had realized the call of God, and there was no competitor for his strength.

If you agree with God’s purpose, he will bring not only your conscious life, but all the deeper regions of your life which you cannot get at, into harmony.

-Oswald Chambers

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

A new acquaintance asked me once what my hobbies were. I told him I read. “Read?” he replied. “That’s something pastors do for their job. I mean, what do you do for recreation?”

Not all my reading is recreational, of course-commentaries and biblical references are not high on my leisure reading list. But most of my reading is, in fact, done for pleasure.

A number of professional baseball players play golf in the off season. At first glance, it seems odd that baseball players would find swinging a club at a little white ball relaxing. But they do, because they play baseball and golf with different intents. Baseball is work-work they might enjoy, but work nonetheless. Golf is play.

For me, reading is often play. I read to enlighten my soul, brighten my spirit, and tickle my mind.

And, by the way, such reading usually enlivens my preaching. I don’t consciously think of books as compendiums of illustrations. When I read to relax, I relax-without note paper at hand. Nonetheless, as I prepare sermons, I find, time and again, illustrations come to mind from my recreational reading.

Here are some of the books, authors, and genres that have given me pleasure in my leisure and ideas for Sunday. (I’ve also included the most recent publication date and publisher for each book.)

Books That Offer New Ideas

One day while browsing through new nonfiction titles at the local library, one title, They Went That-a-Way: How the Famous, Infamous, and Great Died (Simon and Schuster, 1988), by the late Malcolm Forbes caught my fancy. In it Forbes, then editor of Forbes magazine, tells stories (one hundred and fifty, in all) of how the rich and famous died. He summarizes their lives in a couple of pithy paragraphs and then describes what brought their deaths.

Many are ironic, some depressing, others rib ticklers. Alexander the Great, the mighty conqueror of the world, died after chugging six quarts of wine in a drinking contest. About a modern music idol, Forbes says, “The only thing remarkable about the death of Elvis Presley is that it didn’t seem to slow up his career.”

He quotes Lenny Bruce’s philosophy of life: “Look, you only have 65 years to live. Before you’re 20, you can’t enjoy anything because you don’t know what’s going on. After you’re 50, you can’t enjoy it either, because you don’t have the physical energies. So you only have around twenty-five years to swing. In those twenty-five years, I’m going to swing.” Then Forbes adds, “He died of an overdose of morphine at age 40. … Twenty-five years of swinging was more than his 40-year-old body could take.”

The Book of Heroic Failure (Ballantine, 1986) by Stephen Pile kept me laughing from beginning to end. Pile tells the stories of some of the most glaring failures of our day; it’s a kind a spoof on the Guinness Book of World Records. In our day, when the gods of success are held in regal awe, these anecdotes are good antidotes.

Two of the more memorable failures he describes were “The Least Successful Animal Rescue” (after rescuing a cat, the rescuers drove over the cat and killed it) and “The Man Who Almost Invented the Vacuum Cleaner” (his invention blew dust off the rug into the air). He also reports on “The Least Accurate Newspaper Report,” “The Least Successful Bank Robber,” and “The Worst Hijackers.”

“The Worst Phrasebook” is about an English-Portuguese phrasebook written by a man unfamiliar with English. So, he used a French-English dictionary to translate some of our dearest idioms. “A dog’s bark is worse than his bite” became “The dog than bark not bite.” “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush” became “A take is better than two you shall have.”

I used “The Greatest Mathematical Error” in a sermon about choosing Christ:

The Mariner I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral on 28 July 1962 toward Venus. After 13 minutes’ flight a booster engine would give acceleration up to 25,820 mph; after 44 minutes, 9,800 solar cells would unfold; after 80 days a computer would calculate the final course corrections, and after 100 days the craft would circle the unknown planet, scanning the mysterious cloud in which it is bathed. However, with an efficiency that is truly heartening, Mariner I plunged into the Atlantic Ocean only four minutes after take-off. Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from the instructions fed into the computer. “It was human error, a launch spokesman said. The minus sign cost 4,280,000 pounds [nearly twelve million American dollars at the time].

The Portable Curmudgeon, compiled and edited by Jon Winokur (New American Library, 1987), is described on the dust jacket as “More than 1,000 outrageously irreverent quotations, anecdotes, and interviews on a vast array of subjects, from an illustrious list of world-class grouches.” Winokur defines curmudgeon as “anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner.”

Most of Winokur’s curmudgeons are not Christians. In fact, some he quotes, like Voltaire, poke fun at things dear to us: “A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.” Yet, for the most part, the book is filled with potent and pithy sayings that preachers could use about hypocrisy around us.

Other curmudgeons quoted by Winokur include:

G. K. Chesterton: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”

Woody Allen: “It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Channing Pollock: “A critic is a legless man who teaches running.”

H. L. Mencken: “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”

Mark Twain: “It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to bring the news to you.”

The quotes are arranged alphabetically by subject for easy reference. I generally don’t read quote books during leisure or work, but with Winokur I make an exception.

Another exception is Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (Facts on File, 1987) edited by Robert Hendrickson. Unfortunately, this fascinating volume has a title that intimidates most people. But Hendrickson’s explanations of the origins of common phrases are pregnant with meaning and fun to read. And, yes, many will emerge as sermon illustrations. Take this explanation of a common expression:

Fly off the handle: Axes in American pioneer days were frequently handmade, frontiersmen whittling their own handles and attaching axe-heads shipped from back East. Because they were often crudely fitted to the helve, these axe-heads often flew off the handle while woodsmen were chopping down trees or preparing firewood, sometimes injuring the axeman or people nearby. The sudden flying of the head off the axe, and the trouble this caused, naturally suggested a sudden wild outburst of anger, the loss of self-control, or the losing of one’s head that the expression fly off the handle describes.

Authors Who Tickle My Imagination

In addition to certain books, I also find certain authors consistently rewarding. Here are three.

Andy Rooney. An author who questions modern mores in a light and entertaining way is newspaper and television commentator Andy Rooney. He writes about the common things around us, taking them apart and looking at them from different angles.

His article “Fences” (A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney, Warner, 1982) helped me explain once the barrier between God and man due to sin. He also has given me ideas for Christmas sermons in articles such as “A Guide to Christmas Shopping,” “Beware of Children Bearing Gifts,” and “Christmas Trees” (Pieces of My Mind, Avon, 1985; And More by Andy Rooney, Warner, 1983; and Word for Word, Berkley, 1987; respectively).

One of his articles inspired me to preach a sermon comparing Leah’s ugliness (with pale eyes and a name that meant “Wild Cow”) and Jesus’ ugliness as described in Isaiah 53. Listen to Rooney in his essay “Ugly” (A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney):

One of the things that seems to be true about ugly is that it is often associated with deterioration. Anything that doesn’t look as good as it used to is on the way to becoming ugly. It is probably because anything that doesn’t look as good as it used to is growing older and reminds us of ourselves and of death.

This idea, if it’s true at all, doesn’t account for everything ugly, though, because that factor is not always present. It is possible to make brand-new junk that is ugly. Not only that, but a lot of things which look good in their own place become ugly looking someplace else. The object, itself unchanged, is changed by your reaction to it.

A woman’s hair can be a thing of great beauty, one of her most attractive physical attributes. … Now envision a well-set dinner table, with silverware, and candlelight. The soup is served. And this is the strange thing about ugly . . . take just one of the beautiful hairs from the woman’s head and put it in the soup and both the hair and the soup are repulsive. …

A smile is attractive and white teeth in a good mouth are beautiful. Take the teeth out of their natural setting and they are not beautiful, they are ugly . . . even when they’re smiling. Teeth in a glass have about them several of the attributes we associate with ugly.

Frederick Buechner. Converted after writing his first novel, Frederick Buechner then went on to seminary and ordination in the Presbyterian church. Although his theology doesn’t always please me, he never fails to challenge me. He has a way of making common things uncommon, and of seeing the eternal in the finite.

He has written four novels about an unforgettable evangelist named Leo Bebb. These four (Lion Country, Open Heart, Love Feast, and Treasure Hunt) are collected together in The Book of Bebb (Macmillan, 1979).

Of his two autobiographies, The Sacred Journey (Harper & Row, 1982) and Now and Then (Harper & Row, 1983), the first is better. It is about his childhood, teenage years, conversion, and call to the ministry. I have often borrowed for sermons his notion of the journey, especially the idea that our journeys are every bit as sacred as Abraham’s, if only we could see God’s hand in the little areas of our lives.

I first became acquainted with Buechner when I happened to pick up a copy of Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (Harper & Row, 1973). In it, Buechner discusses familiar theological terms (like love, children, Bible, eternal life) in ordinary and delightful language. He explains words I often use but don’t think about, and revitalizes them. Here are his insights on anger:

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back-in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

His second volume along these lines, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who (Harper & Row, 1979), gives short, fresh biographies of biblical characters. Another volume, Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (Harper & Row, 1988), attempts to breathe theological life into everyday words (e.g., comedy, darkness, jobs, joke, x-rated). Preachers are called to give a theological focus to issues that fill the lives of our parishioners. Buechner helps me sharpen that skill.

Soren Kierkegaard. I’ve lost count of how many times Kierkegaard has been recommended to me. I’ve tried, but I cannot read Kierkegaard for long. But one day I discovered a book by him I could handle:

Parables of Kierkegaard, edited by Thomas C. Oden (Princeton University Press, 1978). Oden picked out eighty-six of Kierkegaard’s parables and put them in one handy volume. Kierkegaard is reputed to be one of the best modern story tellers, and this book sustains that reputation.

It includes his famous “God Is the Audience” parable as well as others less familiar, yet also stimulating. Kierkegaard originally told the stories to illustrate his particular philosophical point, but many of them have universal applications. Consider “The Parable of the New Shoes”:

It is related of a peasant who came [barefooted] to the Capital, and had made so much money that he could buy himself a pair of shoes and stockings and still have enough left over to get drunk on-it is related that as he was trying in his drunken state to find his way home, he lay down in the middle of the highway and fell asleep. Then along came a wagon, and the driver shouted to him to move or he would run over his legs. Then the drunken peasant awoke, looked at his legs, and since by reason of the shoes and stockings he didn’t recognize them, he said to the driver, “Drive on, they are not my legs.”

Two Genres I Like to Explore

I’ve discovered a couple of genres of literature that I didn’t realize I would enjoy as much as I do.

Light Verse. I can’t relax while reading poetry; it usually requires too much concentration. But recently I discovered light verse-poetry with a humorous or satirical bent. In particular, I’ve discovered Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein.

Ogden Nash (1902-1971) wrote poetry for the New Yorker and other magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s, and published a number of poetry books. With humor and punch, he stretches the English language to its limits. I love to use humor once in a while, and many of Nash’s poems fit perfectly. I used “The Outcome of Mr. MacLeod’s Gratitude” in a Thanksgiving message.

When Thanksgiving came twice, who walked proud

As that grateful optimist, Mr. MacLeod?

Things you and I would deeply deplore

MacLeod found ways to be grateful for,

And this was his conscientious attitude:

Double thanksgiving, double gratitude.

Whatever happened, no matter how hateful,

Macleod found excuses for being grateful.

To be grateful, he really strained his wits.

Had he hiccups?

He was grateful it wasn’t fits.

Had he hives?

He was grateful it wasn’t measles.

Had he mice?

He was grateful it wasn’t weasels.

Had he roaches?

He was glad it wasn’t tarantulas.

Did his wife go to San Francisco?

He was glad it wasn’t Los Angeles.

Mrs. MacLeod, on the other hand,

Was always complaining to beat the band.

If she had the mumps she found it no tonic

To be told to be grateful it wasn’t bubonic.

If the cook walked out she would scream like a mink

Instead of being grateful she still had a sink.

So she tired of her husband’s cheery note

And she stuffed a tea tray down his throat.

He remarked from the floor where they found him reclining,

“I’m just a MacLeod with a silver lining.”

Shel Silverstein writes children’s books. His artwork is as creative as his poetry, and both these skills have kept him on the bestseller list for years. His A Light in the Attic (Harper & Row, 1981) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (Harper & Row, 1974) are popular with both teachers and students. While he is clever and often funny, I glance ahead before reading them to my kids. A few of his poems take liberties I don’t want to take with my grade-school children. Still, the bulk of his material is worth pursuing. I used the following poem, “Never,” in a sermon about serving Christ.

I’ve never roped a Brahma bull,

I’ve never fought a duel,

I’ve never crossed the desert

On a lop-eared, swayback mule,

I’ve never climbed an idol’s nose

To steal a cursed jewel.

I’ve never gone down with my ship

Into the bubblin’ brine,

I’ve never saved a lion’s life

And then had him save mine,

Or screamed Ahoooo while swingin, through

The jungle on a vine.

I’ve never dealt draw poker

In a rowdy lumber camp,

Or got up at the count of nine

To beat the world’s champ,

I’ve never had my picture on

A six-cent postage stamp.

I’ve never scored a touchdown

On a ninety-nine-yard run,

I’ve never winged six Daltons

With my dying brother’s gun . . .

Or kissed Miz Jane, and rode my hoss

Into the setting sun.

Sometimes I get so depressed

Bout what I haven’t done.

Biographies. Like novels, biographies allow me to escape present circ*mstances and explore another era or culture through the eyes of someone else. They are not only one of my favorite forms of diversion, they shed light on my life.

In addition, biographies are superb sources of human anecdotes, which can become part of one’s sermon arsenal. I read biographies of both Christians and non-Christians. Both can be inspiring; both hold great examples for us to emulate or avoid. And few things capture the imagination of our listeners as a well-told story that happened to a historical figure.

Warren Wiersbe, radio preacher and prolific writer, has written a number of books that summarize famous Christians’ lives in several pages. Three I’ve found helpful are Victorious Christians You Should Know (Baker, 1984), Walking with the Giants (Baker, 1976), and Listening to the Giants (Baker, 1979). The first is about famous Christians from history and includes preachers, missionaries, and hymn writers. The last two tell the stories of famous preachers, particularly those from the last half of the nineteenth century (C. H. Spurgeon, Henry Drummond, C. E. Jefferson, and Phillips Brooks).

Ruth A. Tucker also does a masterful job at short biographies of Christians. Her highly acclaimed From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya (Zondervan, 1986) retells the history of missions by means of biography, using individual missionaries to illustrate broad historical trends in missions. Many of the missionaries’ stories are heartbreaking, and all are challenging. They provide many stories worth retelling to my congregation.

Another approach to Christian biography is James and Marti Hefley’s By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (Baker, 1979). If the purges of Stalin, the Boxer Rebellion, and the Khmer Rouge are considered, millions of Christians have perished in the twentieth century at the hands of violence. The Hefleys admit the task of telling these martyrs’ stories is frustrating because there are so many. But they managed to awaken me to the plight of recent Christians around the world.

For vignettes about secular thinkers, Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals (Harper & Row, 1989) is excellent. He investigates the lives of modern intellectuals such as Rousseau, Marx, Tolstoy, Hemingway, and Sartre, among others, and shows how they failed to live up to their own philosophies. Unfortunately, Johnson assumes the reader already is conversant with the philosophy of the subject. Yet, despite this flaw, the book is hard to put down.

Consider his characterization of Marx: Marx advocated the proletariat rising up against the bourgeois. Yet Marx himself was bourgeois; he despised labor leaders; he never once is reported to have entered a factory. He riddled the capitalistic system about interest, yet borrowed money his entire life, and most of the time was deeply in debt. He argued that his system was based upon the scientific method; in fact, it was a philosophy in search of evidence. Such reading opens one’s eyes to many accepted beliefs of our culture.

Another excellent author of short biography is Michael Grant, an English historian who has written extensively, and in popular idiom, about the Greek and Roman eras. His handling of the biblical material is sometimes suspect, but he does a superb job of helping the reader understand the general historical sweep of the biblical and post-biblical period.

His The Twelve Caesars (out of print, but available in libraries), an updating of Suetonius’s famous book (Penguin, 1957) discusses, in ten to thirty pages each, the Caesars from Julius to Domitian. Suetonius is scandalous and fun to read, but hardly current with modern scholarship. So, I would read both together. Their coverage of Nero prompted a Passion Week sermon contrasting the last moments of Nero’s life, when he knew he would die, with Jesus’ dignity in the garden as Judas approached him.

Grant’s From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Hellenistic World (out of print, but available in libraries) nicely compliments F. F. Bruce’s traditional New Testament History. Grant’s is broader in scope and, in my view, the more interesting.

One other historical writer of biographies is Alan Moorehead, an Australian journalist who covered the North Africa campaign during World War II. His classic works on the discovery of the sources of the White and Blue Niles rivers (The White Nile and The Blue Nile, both Random House, 1983) are still read by students of Africa and the Middle East. His description of the slave trade helped me understand the background of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts and Jeremiah’s Ethiopian friend, Eben-Melech. In addition, his portrayal of David Livingstone is moving, as are his stories of other explorers.

I enjoy all of Moorehead’s works, but especially Cooper’s Creek: The Opening of Australia (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987), a telling account of the race to cross the Australian continent first. Before reading this book, I knew nothing about Australian history, but his wonderful descriptions of the people and geography made up for lost time. In addition, I used illustrations from this book for sermons for several months.

Ecclesiastes says, “Of the making of many books there is no end, and much study is weariness of the flesh.” As an indictment on human pride, I couldn’t agree more. But of those many books, God has used a few to renew my spirit and inform my people. Of those books, may there be no end.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.