Page 5021 – Christianity Today (2024)

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 circumstances 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.

Any venture into leadership is hazardous. The long and well-documented Christian tradition confirms this. Leaders are necessary, but woe to those who become leaders. In leadership, possibilities for sin emerge that previously were inaccessible, possibilities exceedingly difficult to detect, for each comes in the form of a virtue. The unwary will embrace immediately a new “opportunity to serve the Lord,” innocent of the reality that they are swallowing bait, which turns, soon or late, into a curse. “Let not many become teachers,” warned James, who knew the perils firsthand.

The temptations we face in the early years of our faith are, if not easily resisted, at least easily recognized. If I kill a man, I know I have done wrong. If I commit adultery, I have the good sense not to advertise it. If I steal, I make diligent effort not to get found out. The so-called lower sins, the sins of the flesh, are obvious.

But the higher sins, the sins of the spirit, are not so easily discerned. Is a certain instance of zeal energetic obedience or human presumption? Is one person’s confidence a holy boldness inspired by the Holy Spirit or merely arrogance instigated by an anxious ego? Is this suddenly prominent preacher with a large following a spiritual descendant of Peter with five thousand repentant converts or Aaron indulging his tens of thousands with religious song and dance around the golden calf?

It is not easy to tell. Deception is nowhere more common than in religion. Wiser generations than ours did not send men and women into this perilous country without a thorough briefing of the hazards and frequent check-ups along the way. Even then shipwreck was frequent enough.

The foolishness of our times is no more apparent than in the naivet‚ with which we grant leadership and the innocence in which we rely on leaders’ sincerity and motives. The religious leader is the most untrustworthy of leaders; in no other station do we have so many opportunities for pride, covetousness, and lust, and with so many excellent disguises to keep such ignobility from being found out and called to account.

Since becoming aware of the dangerous mission on which I and my friends have been sent, I keep a sharp lookout for guidance. I have found the provocative and amusing Book of Jonah a friend in this work.

Jonah’s story is familiar. The first movement shows Jonah disobedient; the second shows him obedient. Yet both times, by God’s reckoning, Jonah fails. He never does get it right. But the lessons of his life fit well the contours of the pastorate.

Buying Passage to Tarshish

When Jonah received his prophetic call to preach in Nineveh, he headed the other direction to Tarshish. Tarshish is Gibraltar, or Spain, or some place in that general direction-the jumping-off place of the world, the gates of adventure.

Jonah’s journey to Tarshish is initiated, ironically, by the word of God. Jonah does not simply ignore the word and stay in Joppa. Nor does he hunker down into his old job, whatever it is, anesthetizing his vocational conscience with familiar routines. He goes. He’s obedient-kind of. Except he chooses the destination.

Ironies abound in the pastoral vocation, and here is another: Jonah uses the command of the Lord to avoid the presence of the Lord. Lest we miss the irony, the phrase Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord occurs twice in one verse.

Why would anyone who has known God’s voice flee from his presence? Because a curious thing can happen to us when we get a taste of God. It happened first in Eden, and it keeps happening. The experience of God-the ecstasy, the wholeness-is accompanied by a temptation to reproduce the experience as God. Then the taste of God becomes a greed to perform like God.

It happens in ministry. I flee the face of God for a world of religion, where I can manipulate people and acquire godlike attributes to myself. The moment I entertain the possibility of glory for myself, I want to blot out the face of the Lord and seek a place where I can develop my power.

Anyone can be so tempted, but pastors have the temptation compounded because we have a constituency with which to act godlike. Unlike other temptations, this one easily escapes detection, passing itself off as a virtue.

If we speak the Word of God long enough and often enough, it takes no great leap to assume the pose of the One who speaks the Word. If the pose is reinforced by the admiring credulity of the people around me, I will continue to flee the presence of the Lord, for that is the one place I would be exposed as a pretender.

Why Tarshish? For one thing, it is a lot more exciting than Nineveh. Nineveh was an ancient site, with layer after layer of ruined and unhappy history. Going to Nineveh to preach was not a coveted assignment for a Hebrew prophet with good references. But Tarshish was something else. Tarshish was adventure, the exotic appeal of the unknown. First Kings 10:22 reports that Solomon’s fleet of Tarshish fetched gold, silver, ivory, monkeys, and peacocks. Scholar C. H. Gordon says that in the popular imagination it became a distant paradise. Shangrila.

Yearning for Shangrila is familiar enough to those of us in ministry. We are called by God to a task and provided a vocation. We respond to the divine initiative, but we quietly decide our preferred destination. We are going to be pastors, but not in Nineveh for heaven’s sake. Let’s try Tarshish. Let’s be religious without having to deal with God.

To all the pastors lined up at the travel agency in Joppa to purchase a ticket to Tarshish, someone needs to say that Tarshish is a lie-that pastoral work is not a glamorous vocation.

Pastoring consists of modest, daily, assigned work. It is like farm work, involving routines similar to cleaning out barns, mucking out stalls, spreading manure, pulling weeds. This is not, any of it, bad work in itself, but if we expect to ride a glistening black stallion in daily parades and return to the barn where a lackey grooms our steed for us, we will end up severely disappointed and resentful.

Much in pastoral work is glorious, but the congregation, as such, is not glorious. The congregation is like Nineveh: a site for hard work without a great deal of hope for success, at least not as I want it measured. But somebody has to do it, to be a faithful representative of the Word of God in the daily work and play, virtue and sin, of a congregation.

People who glamorize congregations do us grave disservice. We hear tales of glitzy, enthusiastic churches and wonder what in the world we are doing wrong. Why don’t our people turn out that way under our preaching?

On close examination, though, it turns out there are no wonderful congregations. Hang around long enough and, sure enough, there are gossips who won’t shut up, furnaces that malfunction, sermons that misfire, disciples who quit, choirs that go flat-and worse. Every congregation is a congregation of sinners. And if that weren’t bad enough, each has a sinner for a pastor.

Yes, in a congregation there are moments of splendor. Many and frequent. But there also is squalor. Why deny it? Every honest pastor is deeply aware of the slum conditions in the congregation-the unending tasks of clearing out garbage, finding space for people to breathe, and getting them adequate nourishment-and ventures into the streets day and night, risking life and health in acts of faith and love.

We ministers experience this week after week, year after year. These are the identical conditions Moses faced at the foot of Sinai, and Jeremiah in the streets of Jerusalem. Paul faced them in the lecherous pews at Corinth, and John among the bruised reeds in Thyatira.

Some propagandists in the land are lying to us about what congregations can be. They are lying for money. They want to make us discontent with what we are doing, so we will buy a solution from them that, they promise, will restore virility to our impotent congregations. The profit-taking among those marketing these spiritual monkey-glands suggests that pastoral gullibility in these matters is endless. Pastors, faced with the failure of these purchased procedures, typically blame the congregation and leave it for another.

The Devil, who is behind this smiling and lacquered mischief, so easily makes us discontent with our work that we throw up our hands, disgusted, and go on to another parish that will appreciate our gifts in ministry and our devotion to the Lord.

Responsiveness or Restlessness?

When I began, at age 30, at my present congregation, I determined to stay there for my entire ministry. Nothing was particularly attractive about the place; it was only a cornfield at the time. But I had been reading St. Benedict, pondering his radical innovation, which struck me as exceedingly wise. As abbot in a community of monks, he added to the three standard counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience a fourth-the vow of stability.

In St. Benedict’s century, the sixth, monks were on the move. The monastic movement had started in the Egyptian desert 350 years earlier among solitary men and women seeking a holy life. Through the years the movement attracted hundreds of men and women who wanted to give their lives to God to redeem the age and save the world. Beginning as a loose gathering of hermits around outstanding exemplars of austerity and prayer, the monasteries developed into communities of prayer and work all over Europe, Syria, and North Africa.

The monks were not “group” people; they were spiritual anarchists, not easy to rule. In the third century Pachomius had written a rule for community living. It gave a semblance of order to these bands of intense and ardent seekers after God. The vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience disciplined them into powerful agents of social action and contemplative prayer. They developed into high-energy communities. But their latent anarchism combined with their quest for the best made them liable to spiritual wanderlust. It was not unusual for monks to seek another monastery, supposing themselves to be responding to a greater challenge, attempting a more austere holiness. But was it really more of God they were after?

By Benedict’s time, this restlessness disguised as spiritual questing was widespread. When the monastery in which the monks lived proved less than ideal, they typically went looking for a better one with a better abbot or prioress and more righteous brothers or sisters. They thought that if they just got into the right community, they could have a more effective ministry.

Benedict put a stop to it. He introduced the vow of stability: stay where you are.

When I learned of this as a new pastor, it seemed wise counsel, and I took it. Earlier, I had been inducted into the pastoral career system: get career counseling, work out career patterns, work yourself up the career ladder. It struck me at the time as glaringly immature, the kind of thing that spouses do who never grow up, leaving the partner who proves no longer gratifying.

Somehow, without us noticing it, the pastoral vocation was redefined in terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement-Tarshish, not Nineveh, was the destination. The moment we did that, we started thinking wrongly, for the vocation of pastor is to live out the implications of the Word of God in community, not sail off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune.

The Right Destination

One day, while reading Benedict, I came upon a passage about the spiritual vocation and found myself substituting pastor for monk and congregation for monastery. With my substitutions the passage reads like this: “What is useless and destructive is to imagine that enlightenment or virtue can be found by seeking for fresh stimulation. The pastoral life is a refusal of any view that will make human maturity before God dependent on external stimulus, ‘good thoughts,’ edifying influences and ideas. Instead, the pastor must learn to live with his or her own darkness, with the interior horror or temptation and fantasy. Salvation affects the whole of the psyche; to try to escape boredom, sexual frustration, restlessness, unsatisfied desire by searching for fresh tasks and fresh ideas is to attempt to seal off these areas from grace.

“Without the humiliating and wholly ‘unspiritual’ experiences of parish-life-the limited routine of trivial tasks, the sheer tedium and loneliness-there would be no way of confronting much of human nature. It is a discipline to destroy illusions. The pastor has come to the parish to escape the illusory Christian identity proposed by the world; he or she now has to see the roots of illusion within, in the longing to be dramatically and satisfyingly in control of life, the old familiar imperialism of the self bolstered by the intellect.”

After reading this, I began to understand my place as a location for a spiritually maturing life and ministry. I saw that the congregation is not a mere job site to be abandoned when a better offer comes along.

The congregation is the pastor’s place of ministry: we preach the Word and administer the sacraments, we give pastoral care and administer the community life, we teach and we give spiritual direction. But it is also the place in which we develop virtue, learn to love, advance in hope. By providing us contact with both committed and frustratingly inconstant individuals, the congregation provides the rhythms, the associations, the tasks, the limitations, the temptations-the conditions-for our own growth in Christ.

Ecclesiastical Pornography

People view the parish variously, but most tend to either glamorize or repudiate it.

Parish glamorization is ecclesiastical pornography-displaying carefully posed photographs (skillfully airbrushed) of congregations without spot or wrinkle. These provocative pictures are usually devoid of personal relationships. The pictures excite the lust for domination, for gratification, for uninvolved and impersonal spirituality.

My own image of the desirable congregation was shaped by just such pornography-a tall-steeple church with a rah-rah congregation. Even though I long ago quit looking at the magazines and lining the walls of my vocational imagination with the pictures, I am still vulnerable to parish lust.

Parish repudiation takes place more subtly, often by imagining alternate structures. How many of us, at the end of a long day, dream of starting a retreat center where only hungry and thirsty people come, or forming intentional communities where only highly motivated people are let in, or escaping to a seminary or university where the complexities of sin and the mysteries of grace are no longer vocational concerns, replaced by the still formidable but more manageable categories of ignorance and knowledge?

All such fantasizing, however, withdraws energy from the realities at hand and leaves us petulant.

Not everyone is called to be a pastor-numerous and diverse ministries exist in the church of Christ-but those of us assigned the pastoral vocation must accept the nature and conditions of our work.

St. Paul talked about the foolishness of preaching; I would like to talk about the foolishness of congregations, God’s choice of venue. Of all the ways in which to carry out the enterprise of church, this has to be the most absurd-a haphazard collection of people who somehow get assembled into pews on Sundays, half-heartedly sing a few songs most of them don’t like, and tune in and out of a sermon according to the state of their digestion and the preacher’s decibels, awkward in their commitments and jerky in their prayers.

But the people in those pews are also people who suffer deeply and find God in their suffering. They make love commitments, are faithful to them through trial and temptation, and bear fruits of righteousness, Spirit-fruits that bless the people around them. Babies, surrounded by hopeful and rejoicing parents and friends, are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. The dead are offered up to God in funerals that, in the midst of tears and grief, give solemn and joyful witness to the Resurrection. Sinners repent and take the body and blood of Jesus and receive new life.

And these two realities are mixed, impossible to separate.

Furthermore, in the Bible I find no other form of church. Nothing in Israel strikes me as terrifically attractive. If I had been church shopping in the seventh century B.C., I think Egyptian temples and Babylonian ziggurats, or the lovely groves dedicated to Asherah, would have been far more attractive. If I had been religion shopping in the first century A.D., I am sure that the purity of the synagogue, the intriguing rumors surrounding the Greek mystery religions, and the Hellenic humanism tinged with myth would all have offered far more to my consumer soul.

A bare sixty or seventy years after Pentecost, we read about seven churches that display about the same quality of holiness and depth as any parish in America today. With two thousand years of practice, we haven’t gotten any better.

Every time we open a church door and take a careful look inside, we find them there again-sinners. We also find Christ, of course, but he’s inconveniently and embarrassingly mixed into this congregation of sinners.

Frequently, certain persons arise with designs to purify the church. They propose to make the church something that can be an advertisement to the world of the attractiveness of the Kingdom. With few exceptions these people are or soon become heretics, attempting to fashion a church so well-behaved and efficiently organized that there is no need for God.

They abhor the scandal of both the Cross and the church. They want nothing to do with Nineveh. They are going to Tarshish.

It is the very nature of pastoral work to embrace this scandal, accept this humiliation, and daily work in it. Not despising the shame; not denying it either.

To listen to many pastors talking to other pastors, you’d never suspect they work amid scandal. Every report glows with successful programs and slick conversions. I used to hear such stories and be impressed. No longer. I think it far more likely that these people are presiding over some form of Greek mystery religion or Baal shrine.

The Joppa Travel Agency

In 1962, as the organizing pastor of a new congregation, I arrived with my wife and 2-year-old daughter in a small town that eventually would become a suburb of Baltimore. I was determined to develop a congregation that would be clean and intense. We were going to avoid all the trappings of religion and culture, and live out the gospel in gutsy commitment and passion.

It didn’t take many months to find myself mired in something very different. I was in Nineveh. Here people were in trouble, sick with illusions, inconstant, bored, fitful in devotion. I had naively supposed that in a new congregation-meeting for worship in the basement of our house, holding church school in family rooms and basements all over the neighborhood, and financing and constructing a church building-all the inconvenience would filter out the half-hearted, the superficially religious, the God-drifters.

In a year I had collected something far more like the congregation at Ziklag. You will remember that David, out in the wilderness and persona non grata in the court of Saul, gathered an outlaw band for survival. “All the worthless and discontent fellows of Israel joined him.” They established their base at Ziklag. That was what I saw on Sunday mornings.

I had to revise my imagination: these are the people to whom I was pastor. They were not the ones I would have chosen, but this was what I had been given. What was I to do? “Master, someone sowed tares in the night.” I wanted to weed the field. The Master’s response was targeted to me: “Leave them to the harvest. Let them grow together.”

Wise counsel, for my untrained eye could not have discerned the difference between young weed and young grain. In fact, I still can’t tell the difference. So, I gradually gave up my vision of Tarshish and settled into the realities of Nineveh.

But not easily, and not all at once. I wish I could boast of keeping my vow of stability, but I cannot. Three times I broke it. Three times in the past twenty-seven years I have gone to the travel agent in Joppa and purchased a ticket for Tarshish. Each of these times I had come to a place where I didn’t think I could last another week. I was bored. I was depressed. There was no challenge left, no stimulus to do my best. The people did not bring the best out of me. The things that I was gifted in were not recognized or valued. Spiritually, I was in a bog-a spongy, soggy, suburban wasteland. No firm ideas. No passionately held convictions. No sacrificial commitments.

Preaching to these people was like talking to my dog-they responded to my voice with gratitude, they nuzzled me, they followed me, they showed me affection. But the content of my words meant little. The direction of my life was meaningless. And they were still easily distracted, running after rabbits or squirrels that promised diversion, excitement.

I was certain that I was with the wrong congregation. I was a pastor, with the eternal gospel on my tongue and the radical love of Christ in my heart, and here I was surrounded by wimps. They were nice wimps-kind, friendly, appreciative-but their lives were shaped by comparative pricing and commercial comforts. They didn’t match the faces in the travel posters I had seen about beckoning churches.

So I decided to leave for Tarshish. I read the travel folders (in my denomination they are called Church Information Forms). I bought my ticket (this is called “activating your dossier”). I wasn’t denying my calling to be a pastor, but I respectfully asserted my right to determine the locale. Assertion was a key word in my vocabulary those days.

I did that three times. Each time, I gave up and went back to the work to which I already had been assigned, to Nineveh. I never did get to Tarshish, but I can take no credit. I tried. But I was rejected for passage.

Something interesting happened each time, however. After swallowing my pride and accepting my frustrations, I found new depths in my own life and depths in the congregation that I had no idea existed. Each time I grew up a little more. At least some of that growing up was “in Christ.”

Looking for and accepting a call to another congregation is not in itself a symptom of escapist irresponsibility. God calls us to different tasks, to new places. Geographical stability is not a biblical goal. God’s people and their pastors move about a great deal: Ur to Canaan to Egypt to Sinai to Kadesh for a start.

Then to Babylon and back. Back and forth between Galilee and Jerusalem. Up to Antioch, over to Athens, across to Rome. And then “to all the world.”

Plenty of times sin or neurosis or change make it so difficult for a pastor and congregation to stay together that it is necessary that the pastor move to another congregation. The pastor who in such circumstances stays out of a stubborn willfullness that is falsely labeled committed faithfulness cruelly inflicts needless wounds on the body of Christ.

But the norm for pastoral work is stability. Twenty- and thirty- and forty-year-long pastorates should be typical among us (as they once were) and not exceptional. Far too many pastors change parishes out of adolescent boredom, not as a consequence of mature wisdom When this happens, neither pastors nor congregations have access to the conditions that are hospitable to maturing in the faith.

In Nineveh: Professionalized Obedience

The first movement of Jonah is the movement of disobedience, sailing off adventurously to Tarshish. The second is the movement of obedience, walking across the hot desert to Nineveh.

We expect this to be a movement crowned with success, but it is not. Jonah obedient turns out to be just as much in violation of God’s will as Jonah disobedient.

Turned from his disobedience by the seastorm and the great fish, Jonah goes to Nineveh as commanded. He preaches the Word of God as instructed. But Jonah is angry. He despises Nineveh. Jonah obeys to the letter the command of God but betrays the spirit of God with his anger.

Jonah is a thoroughgoing professional. If he can’t go to Tarshish to be a pastor without the inconvenience of the presence of the Lord, he will preach with professionalized orthodoxy to avoid the presence of the Lord.

When the Ninevites repent and are mercifully forgiven by God, Jonah’s pouting displeasure betrays his indifference to God and the people who have just become God’s people. Jonah may have a professional reputation to uphold, but he cares nothing for the congregation. He has preached destruction in forty days, and destruction it had better be!

I find this a most alarming and accusing detail in this story. Here it becomes even more autobiographical than in the first movement, for I am more often than not obedient to my call. I do my work. I carry out my responsibilities as a minister of Word and sacrament. I visit the sick and comfort the grieving. I show up in church on time to conduct Sunday worship, pray over church suppers when asked, and play second base at the annual church picnic softball game.

But in this life of obedience, there is a steady attrition of ego satisfaction. As I carry out my work, I find people are less and less responding to me and more and more responding to God. They hear different things in my sermons than I intended. I am offended at their inattention. They find ways of responding to the Spirit of God that don’t fit into the plans I have made, plans in which, if they cooperated, would not only glorify God but rebound to my credit as one of his first-rank leaders.

In myself, and in my colleagues, I find that irritation, anger, and resentment toward the congregation are the sins “crouching at the door” every time I enter or leave the church. I am angry that they are responding to God in ways other than I proclaimed.

Here it is again, one of the oldest truths in spirituality: In our virtuous behavior, we are liable to the gravest sins. When we are responsible and obedient, we most easily substitute our will for God’s will. When we are good pastors, we have the best chance of developing hubris-pride and arrogance.

To give us proper warning, the story shows Jonah obedient far more unattractive than Jonah disobedient, for in his disobedience he at least had compassion on the sailors in the ship; in his obedience he had only contempt for the citizens of Nineveh.

What We in Fact Are

There is a happy ending to this. The wonderful, grace-full surprise here is that in both movements in Jonah’s life, the disobedient and the obedient, God used him to save the people.

In Jonah’s escapist disobedience, the sailors in the ship prayed to the Lord and entered into faith: “Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows” (1:16).

In Jonah’s angry obedience, the Ninevites were saved: “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil which he had said he would do them; and he did not do it” (3:10).

We never do get a picture of the kind of pastor we want to be in this story, but only of the kind of pastor we, in fact, are. Holding up the mirror and showing us our doubled failure would be a severe burden were it not for this other dimension: that God works out his purpose through who we actually are. He uses our lives-as he finds them-to do his work.

He does it in such a way that it is almost impossible for us to take credit for it, but also in a way that allows us to gasp in surprised pleasure at the victories he accomplishes, whether on the sea or in the city, and in which we have our strange Jonah part.

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

It was Sunday evening, and I’d just reached the safety of the vestry. We’d had an especially good service, with some committing their lives to Christ and others looking for counseling, ready to go forward in faith. I’d spoken to several of them, trying to help them on. But by now my mind was whirling, and every bone in my body seemed to be aching.

Just then, someone knocked on the door, and in came Alaine, one of the most helpful women in the fellowship. I asked her about a pre-baptism class she’d taken earlier in the day. “Fourteen were there,” she said, beaming “That was more than we’d ever had before!” On she enthused about our blossoming fellowship, the conversions, and growth in numbers.

I listened, knowing in my head that it was true and yet feeling strangely numb. Her bright outlook merely deepened my gloom; I felt none of her joy. I was tired and empty. I stood there wondering if it was all worth it.

“Alistair, you must be thrilled with all that’s happening!” That was it. Something snapped inside me, and self-control disappeared.

“Right now I feel like throwing myself under a bus,” I blurted and promptly burst into tears.

Poor Alaine. Her pastor, whom she respected, at that moment should have been rejoicing with her at the answers to prayer and signs of God’s blessing. Instead he was sobbing. All she could say was, “Oh, you poor soul,” and she patted my shoulder and left.

Bless her-for weeks afterward, every time I saw her, she found something encouraging and positive to say about my ministry.

That moment of tearful despair scared and humbled me. I was forced to accept something about my frailty as a pastor. Normally I can control despair and doubt about my own ministry, suppressing it from my own consciousness as well as hiding it from everyone else. But that volcanic-like eruption-probably caused by a mixture of fatigue and strain-made me realize that I’m not always a confident, full-of-faith minister. Even when things are going well, I can be overcome with uncertainty.

Frightening Questions of the Heart

You don’t have to be in the pastorate long to discover that ordination is no immunization against doubt. Although I know now that other pastors also battle doubt, and although I have discovered ways to deal with it, the questioning in my own heart sometimes frightens me.

At times, these doubts are of the most fundamental kind, concerning the very existence of God or the truth of the gospel: Is he really there? At other moments, they center on whether or not I’m the kind of disciple Jesus requires. There is so much that’s wrong in my life. How can I say I have left the old way and am living in the new?

Then again, the questioning can be about direction: Am I in the right place? Am I doing what God wants? Can I be in God’s will when there are so many problems? Sometimes the difficulty is motivation; I doubt whether I can go through with the hard work that lies ahead. Sometimes, frankly, the price of doing God’s will seems too high.

The Gardens where Doubt Grows

At one time I imagined doubts simply came, that every now and again these nasty phases just happened as part of the rhythm of life. Later I came to think of them as satanic attacks. Both explanations can be true, of course, but now, a few years further down the road, I also see other specific circumstances in which doubt forms. Just as my garden can be allowed to become weedy, so there can be an environment in which doubts grow. Recognizing these environments puts us halfway to winning the battle.

Fatigue. Sometimes I drive home late at night, perhaps from an exhausting meeting or a difficult pastoral call, and I can hardly bring myself to get out of the car and into the house. The engine switched off, I just sit there behind the wheel trying to summon the energy to go to bed.

Eventually I go into the house, get a glass of milk, and find myself still sitting at the kitchen table a half-hour later, head in my hands, wondering why my ministry is so poor, or doubting if the effort is worth it.

When I finally go to bed, sleep doesn’t always come. My body is tired to the point of being sore, but by mind is whirring, reliving decisions, conversations, and projects. When that happens, one of the easiest mental distractions is to begin to compose my resignation from the ministry.

Most often my mind has slipped into a negative gear because weariness has made everything seem a burden. In fact, tiredness is the most common and significant cause of my doubt.

Pressure. Some pressure is inevitable and even healthy since it motivates us. But abnormal and sustained pressure begins to damage our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual strength.

Not long ago, one of our church leaders phoned to ask me yet again to visit someone he felt was in need and, lovingly but firmly, scolded me for not having gone already. That needy person could only be visited in an evening, so later I looked back through my diary to see when I could have gone-I found I hadn’t had a complete evening off for more than two months.

That realization made me angry. Doesn’t he realize how hard I’m working? I thought. But I also felt guilty-guilty about neglecting my family, guilty that I hadn’t visited someone with a problem, and guilty that I clearly wasn’t organizing my time properly. Other ministers seemed to cope. Why couldn’t I?

I also feel undue pressure when I am ill (or someone in my family is), when a relationship is strained (especially with my spouse), when work demands more skill or time than I possess, when finances trouble me, or when I’m uncertain about the future.

Sometimes when we Christian leaders feel such pressures, we think we, of all people, should be able to overcome them. We preach our sermons to ourselves with applications redoubled. But when the stresses continue, guilt grips us, and we feel like failures. Then doubts begin to surface about our faith, our calling, and God’s fairness.

Lack of results. I remember a painful fifteen months as a pastor when I didn’t see a single conversion or baptism. To make things worse, we were erecting our church building at the same time, which increased pressure on everyone. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were doing the right thing and whether God was with me as the church’s leader.

Similarly, the first time I went with other church leaders to anoint a sick member with oil, we prayed fervently. But not long afterward, the person died.

Others see people healed with the same kind of prayers, so the problem must be with me, I thought.

At such times, I feel like a runner who, unknown to himself, has weights strapped on. He sees the track ahead of him, and he expects to run the race at a certain speed. But he finds he can’t move as fast as he should. His pace drops. He wonders what’s wrong. As he slows more and more, he may give up on that race because he isn’t doing well.

Tough Decisions. Your teenage daughter has begged you to let her attend an all-night party at a friend’s house. “Everyone else in the class will be staying,” she pleads. You decide she must come home at a reasonable hour. You don’t feel safe about her staying overnight. She dissolves into tears and moans about being the odd one out among her friends. At such times, it’s hard for parents to stick to their decisions, especially when they know they’ve hurt one of their children.

Similarly, when pastors make decisions that are unpopular, they can doubt. Maybe you’ve changed the pattern of worship or dismissed a member of staff or advocated changing the church building or turned down a request for marriage. Such decisions hurt others; such decisions hurt you. Sometimes it’s the oldest, most faithful members who are the ones distressed. At such times it’s not unusual for the pastor to think, I’ve been here for only two years, and I’m upsetting people who’ve sustained this church through decades. Am I right to do this to them? The emotional hurt of people can seem more real at that moment than the sense of God’s guidance.

Antidotes to Doubt

Must we simply learn to live with doubt? Or can we, in fact, deal with doubt and dispense with it? I think the answer to both questions is yes. As long as I am less than perfect, my faith will be less than perfect, and some doubt is likely.

At the same time, I do not accept for a moment that my life need be ruled by doubt. If I swim in the sea, I can’t avoid waves crashing on me, but I don’t have to be drowned by them.

There are several antidotes to doubt. Here are some that have helped me.

Get control of my schedule. First, I’ve learned that when I’m disciplined, doubt isn’t given the chance to take root.

If I just let things happen, they happen badly. Other people impose their priorities on me, and my load quickly becomes more than I can carry. Then there are the must-do things of each week, like sermon writing and hospital visiting. Add to that unexpected but genuine emergencies, and the result is that I’m tense, worn out, and weak. Under these circumstances doubt rises up and cripples me.

However, if I were organizing a bus trip, I would be silly not to know our capacity. I might find one hundred people trying to squeeze onto a forty-seat coach. It’s just as foolish to have an open policy about my weekly schedule.

For me, taking control meant cutting out of my workload things I shouldn’t do. I’ve learned to say, “I’m sorry. In all honesty my schedule won’t allow that.” I’m still as busy as before, but now I’m doing more of the things that are right for me. I am now increasingly effective and satisfied in ministry, and I sense more often that I am right with God.

As part of this discipline, I try to balance my schedule with both demanding and rewarding kinds of ministry. When busyness increases, I am tempted to cut out the easier elements. But that leaves only the draining, difficult side of the work, and that quickly brings me down. So, as the number of difficult cases mounts, I make an appointment to visit people or groups with whom I can relax, laugh, and enjoy the fruits of ministry.

Take the focus off myself. Many times I doubt because I am preoccupied with myself-my image, my performance, my results. I become overconcerned that I not make mistakes and that my leadership of the church is well received. When I am the focus of my ministry, doubt is never far away.

Conversely, the more I take my eyes off myself, the less I doubt. So I regularly remind myself how paramount God is to ministry, and how secondary I am. The church is his church and isn’t owned or run by anyone else, including those who have served it well over many years. Sometimes God’s plans will clash with theirs, and I may have to be the servant that takes the brunt of their blows.

That’s never a nice place to be. Moses couldn’t have found it much fun to lead the people out of Egypt when he received constant criticism, and especially when the people told him they would rather be slaves back in Egypt. But it was God’s will for him to lead them to the Promised Land, and he had to obey God no matter the cost. He had to leave it to God to sort out the negativity of the people.

Likewise, there are things more important than my ministry reputation. Doing God’s will is primary.

Listen to objective feedback. When I burst into tears in my vestry, feeling a failure and doubting whether anything good was happening, I was practically the only one in the church who felt that way. Others were full of enthusiasm for the church. And that sort of thing has happened more than once. I’ve learned, therefore, that if I’m going to overcome doubt, I have to pay heed to others’ evaluations of my ministry, especially the objective ones.

I give weight only to opinions of those I respect, whose views in the past have proven accurate. And I challenge criticisms if I suspect they are unsubstantial.

For instance, once someone whispered to me quietly, “People are saying . . .” and he proceeded to describe a criticism. He was doing me a favor, he said, letting me know the groundswell of opinion.

I groaned inwardly, but then, based on my experience with this man, asked, “Exactly how many are saying this?” He looked flustered and didn’t want to reply. I pressed the point.

“Well, two people anyway,” he said.

We should listen patiently to any opinion given us about our ministry. But some are worthy of more respect than others.

Persevere. Those fifteen months without seeing conversions or baptisms were hard on me. But I came through them, and they were followed by fifteen months of remarkable blessing: More came to faith at that point than in the several years preceding. The doubt turned out to have no substance. So I’ve learned that sometimes I simply must grind it out and not give in to doubt.

When I was ill once, and doubts flooded my mind, there was nothing I could do but keep going. God seemed far away. I couldn’t do the work to which I had been called. But neither could I change my circumstances. I only could wait for healing to come. Eventually it did, and as I got on with the work, I sensed God’s presence again and found I was used in a new ministry. Again the doubts were found to be empty.

Most doubts, I’ve learned, have the solidity of a snowman. In the cold and dreary times of ministry, I try to remember that God has used me in the past, and, when things warm up, he’s likely to use me again. In the meantime, with his help, I persevere.

Doubt Isn’t the Unforgivable Sin

It’s not possible, of course, to banish all doubt. And it comforts me slightly to know that in the final analysis, doubt may not be such a great sin. After all, there are some people who don’t doubt, who know God’s will clearly but live in blatant disobedience. I’d rather be in the group that is plagued with doubt but tries to remain open and faithful to God.

I’m also encouraged by the one whom Jesus gently chastised with, “Why did you doubt?”

No, Peter didn’t find faith easy, and yet he ended up leading the early Church. If Jesus can do that with him, somehow he can use me, too.

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

He was an ordinary pastor, Brother Palmer, the sort of pastor you would expect a Methodist bishop to send to our south Arkansas town.

South Arkansas in the middle of the twentieth century was unprepared to face the present, much less the future. The Civil War hung like a heavy shroud on this declining railroad town. Less than one hundred years before, Yankee soldiers had unceremoniously marched through our swamps to Vicksburg. To our shame, no significant resistance was offered, except a brief skirmish at Boggy Bayou.

Perhaps this was the genesis of the unspoken guilt, or perhaps it was earlier when Zulu warriors were chained and transported up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and forced to chop cotton. But, whenever and however the guilt arose, it permeated our life.

A pastor distinguished only by his mediocrity, Palmer seemed committed to irrelevance. Despite the fact that desegregation was fracturing our fragile community and some of our neighbors and relatives were warring with the Army Reserve units, Brother Palmer was warning us of “immoral thoughts.”

Even though we knew Bishop Hicks never left a pastor in our pulpit longer than four years, Brother Palmer was a trial to even the most committed saint. We were too cowardly to say anything to him directly and too embarrassed to mention his flaws to one another, so, in characteristic Southern fatalistic fashion, we silently conspired not to mention Brother Palmer at all.

To me, the only redeeming feature of Brother Palmer’s sermons was that they were short. They allowed us to get to Lawson Cafe’s hickory-smoked pork ribs before the Southern Baptists showed up.

I never liked Brother Palmer’s sensitivity. It seemed so effeminate-unChristian really. He seemed to me an incorrigible sentimentalist. And, although Southern ethos was full of tradition and veiled sentimentalism, we fiercely hid true emotion.

For instance, when Mr. Wiley tried to kill himself, no one expressed surprise or shock. Such an act was expected from an unstable person whose alcoholism had brought dishonor on his family and town. The only thing that bothered us was that he failed. Such a vulnerable act demanded resolution, and we perversely expected Mr. Wiley to act like a man and do his duty. Although we never said anything to him, he knew what needed to be done and did it. Mr. Wiley’s death reestablished our community’s fragile equilibrium and sense of decorum.

Brother Palmer, however, proved a greater threat than we’d thought. Dwight Washington, a high school scholar and track star, had a conversion experience at our revival service. He foolishly thought he would be equally welcome at our sacred morning worship service. But when he was politely asked to leave during the assurance of pardon-because “nigras” should go to their own churches-Palmer suddenly changed.

Not that he castigated us. We could handle that. We tolerated, even enjoyed his paternalistic diatribes. No, Brother Palmer did the intolerable: he wept. Right in the middle of morning worship, as if it was part of the liturgy, he started crying! Not loud, uncontrollable sobs, but quiet, deep crying.

Old Man Henley, senile and almost deaf, remembering the last time he cried-when his wife died-started crying too. And then the children cried. How we hated Brother Palmer!

Within the year the Bishop removed Palmer from our church. We heard later that he had a nervous breakdown and his marriage failed. Although no one said it, we felt at the time that God had correctly punished this foolish man.

But I never forgot Palmer. Although I had not cried that Sunday-of course not!-I was affected by his vulnerability. It was the unknown quality in my life that I could not quantify, could not control. It was spontaneous, clean, and raw. It was appealing and repulsive-both at the same time. It was God. And I had to have it. By his innocent example, Brother Palmer birthed something in my life that became a call to the ministry.

At first his vulnerability irritated me. And then it piqued my curiosity. Why would he respond so foolishly? Was this the spirit of God-to cry when Dwight could not come to church? As I pondered this oddity, I was drawn deeper into my call. His tears precipitated my theophony. It became my call, that moment when I stood like Isaiah and experienced a powerful cleansing and a demanding God. He wanted my life, but only if I knew how to weep.

During World War II, in a small Latvian town, a Jewish mother and her 2-year-old daughter hid for months and months from the Germans. The mother taught her daughter to stay quiet, to hold her emotion. Finally, when liberated, her small daughter asked, “Is it all right to cry?”

When a friend of mine was raped and taken to the hospital, she told me the physician in charge cried. Those tears did more to help her healing than all subsequent counseling.

I cry when I see a deaf child sing off key in Vacation Bible School because his father mercilessly beat his head against the kitchen door.

I learned theology at seminary, but Palmer taught me to cry. And I weep often now.

Sly Palmer understood: at times a good cry is the calling of God.

-James P. Stobaugh

Fourth Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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

TEMPTATION

The February 26, 1974 edition of Insight told the story of Major William Martin, a British subject who is buried near Huelvo on the southern coast of Spain. Martin never knew the great contribution he made to the Allied success in the Second World War, especially in Sicily, because he died of pneumonia in the foggy dampness of England before he ever saw the battle front.

The Allies had invaded North Africa. The next logical step was Sicily. Knowing the Germans calculated this, the Allies determined to outfox them. One dark night, an Allied submarine came to the surface just off the coast of Spain and put Martin’s body out to sea in a rubber raft with an oar. In his pocket were secret documents indicating the Allied forces would strike next in Greece and Sardinia.

Major Martin’s body washed ashore, and Axis intelligence operatives soon found him, thinking he had crashed at sea. They passed the secret documents through Axis hands all the way to Hitler’s headquarters. So while Allied forces moved toward Sicily, thousands and thousands of German troops moved on to Greece and Sardinia-where the battle wasn’t.

Satan works with more cunning than even the Allied plan, getting us to fight many temptations in places where the real battle isn’t. Often, temptations hurt us most where we least expect them.

– Vialo Weis

Ardmore, Oklahoma

TRIALS

In A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond tells about the birth of a giraffe:

“The first thing to emerge are the baby giraffe’s front hooves and head. A few minutes later the plucky newborn calf is hurled forth, falls ten feet, and lands on its back. Within seconds, he rolls to an upright position with his legs tucked under his body. From this position he considers the world for the first time and shakes off the last vestiges of the birthing fluid from his eyes and ears.

“The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heals.

“When it doesn’t get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts. . . . Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs. Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible in order to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they’d get it, too, if the mother didn’t teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it. …

“I’ve thought about the birth of the giraffe many times. I can see its parallel in my own life. There have been many times when it seemed that I had just stood up after a trial, only to be knocked down again by the next. It was God helping me to remember how it was that I got up, urging me always to walk with him, in his shadow, under his care.”

– James R. McKee

St. Louis, Missouri

DEATH

Donald Grey Barnhouse was driving his children to the funeral of their mother. A semi-tractor trailer truck crossed in front of them at an intersection, momentarily casting a shadow on the car, and Barnhouse asked his children, “Would you rather be struck by the semi or the shadow?”

“The shadow, of course,” they replied.

“That’s what has happened to us,” said Barnhouse. “Mother’s dying is only the shadow of death. The lost sinner is struck by the semi of death.”

– George Maronge, Jr.

Birmingham, Alabama

FAITH

An illustration of the balance between faith and works lies hidden within any tree. Leaves use up nutrients in the process of photosynthesis. As the leaves consume nutrients in the sap, a suction is formed, which draws more sap from the roots. Without the sap, the leaves and branches would die. But the continual flow of this sap comes only as it is used up by the work of the leaf.

Likewise, through faith we draw life from Christ. But a continual supply of fresh spiritual nutrients depends on our willingness to “consume” the old supply through our acts of obedience, through our works.

– Ron Jensen

Dodge, North Dakota

CHRISTIAN LIFE

The Viet Nam Veterans Memorial is striking for its simplicity. Etched in a black granite wall are the names of 58,156 Americans who died in that war. Since its opening in 1982, the stark monument has stirred deep emotions.

Some visitors walk its length slowly, reverently, and without pause. Others stop before certain names, remembering their son or sweetheart or fellow soldier, wiping away tears, tracing the names with their fingers.

For three Viet Nam veterans-Robert Bedker, Willard Craig, and Darrall Lausch-a visit to the memorial must be especially poignant, for they can walk up to the long ebony wall and find their own names carved in stone. Because of data-coding errors, each of them was incorrectly listed as killed in action.

Dead, but alive-a perfect description of the Christian.

– Craig Brian Larson

Arlington Heights, Illinois

UNITY

The May 1987 edition of National Geographic included a feature about the arctic wolf. Author L. David Mech described how a seven-member pack had targeted several musk-oxen calves who were guarded by eleven adults. As the wolves approached their quarry, the musk-oxen bunched in an impenetrable semicircle, their deadly rear hooves facing out, and the calves remained safe during a long standoff with the enemy. But then a single ox broke rank and the herd scattered into nervous little groups. A skirmish ensued, and the adults finally fled in panic, leaving the calves to the mercy of the predators. Not a single calf survived.

Paul warned the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 that after his departure wolves would come, not sparing the flock. Wolves continue to attack the church today but cannot penetrate and destroy when unity is maintained. When believers break ranks, however, they provide easy prey.

– John R. White

Manitowoc, Wisconsin

PRIORITIES

It was a 99ø September day in San Antonio, when a 10-month-old baby girl was accidentally locked inside a parked car by her aunt. Frantically the mother and aunt ran around the auto in near hysteria, while a neighbor attempted to unlock the car with a clothes hanger. Soon the infant was turning purple and had foam on her mouth.

It had become a life-or-death situation when Fred Arriola, a wrecker driver, arrived on the scene. He grabbed a hammer and smashed the back window of the car to set her free.

Was he heralded a hero? He said, “The lady was mad at me because I broke the window. I just thought, What’s more important-the baby or the window?”

Sometimes priorities get out of order, and a Fred Arriola reminds us what’s important.

– Ray Tiemann

Fredericksburg, Texas

GOD’S LOVE

Rubel Shelly tells this story: Jason Tuskes was a 17-year-old high school honor student. He was close to his mother, his wheelchair-bound father, and his younger brother. Jason was an expert swimmer who loved to scuba dive.

He left home on a Tuesday morning to explore a spring and underwater cave near his home in west-central Florida. His plan was to be home in time to celebrate his mother’s birthday by going out to dinner with his family that night.

Jason became lost in the cave. Then, in his panic, he apparently got wedged into a narrow passageway. When he realized he was trapped, he shed his yellow metal air tank and unsheathed his diver’s knife. With the tank as a tablet and the knife as pen, he wrote one last message to his family: I LOVE YOU MOM, DAD, AND CHRISTIAN. Then he ran out of air and drowned.

A dying message-something communicated in the last few seconds of life-is something we can’t be indifferent toward. God’s final words to us are etched on a Roman cross. They are blood red. They scream to be heard. They, too, say, “I love you.”

– Larry James

Richardson, Texas

WORSHIP

In Touch and Live, George Vandeman wrote: “A young stranger to the Alps was making his first climb, accompanied by two stalwart guides. It was a steep, hazardous ascent. But he felt secure with one guide ahead and one following. For hours they climbed. And now, breathless, they reached for those rocks protruding through the snow above them-the summit.

“The guide ahead wished to let the stranger have the first glorious view of heaven and earth, and moved aside to let him go first. Forgetting the gales that would blow across those summit rocks, the young man leaped to his feet. But the chief guide dragged him down. ‘On your knees, sir!’ he shouted. ‘You are never safe here except on your knees.’ “

– Vailo Weis

Ardmore, Oklahoma

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48 Summer LEADERSHIP/90

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

A Christian couple I know recently completed their divorce. It required more than two years of difficult and increasingly bitter negotiation. Although they tried not to, they wound up in court anyway, and neither liked what the judge told them they had to do.

They spent thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford on attorneys’ fees. Their animosity toward each other spilled over into other relationships. Their once-close families have become estranged, and the couple now communicates only by letter. Sadly, both the fact of their divorce and the manner in which they pursued it have seriously eroded their Christian witness, and each party feels resentment and contempt for the other.

Did it have to end this way?

Contrast their story to that of another couple. When I met them, Dave and Sharon had been separated two months. They greatly mistrusted each other as a result of long-term disagreements over money. Dave was used to living on credit, while Sharon paid for everything in cash. During their four years together, this had become such a contentious issue that Sharon had developed stress-related illnesses, which finally caused her to leave. Ten days before they came to me, Sharon had filed for divorce.

Each felt strongly about how their finances should be managed. Sharon was also adamant about preserving her health and unwilling to return to a status quo marriage. Yet, just as clearly, neither wanted to divorce. Both believed, as Christians, that divorce should not be an option.

“Until now,” I pointed out, “it sounds as though you have viewed matters largely as a contest over whose money-management philosophy will prevail.” I suggested they consider a fundamentally different question: How can we use our differences over money to strengthen the marriage we say we want to restore?

Although they originally had come to me to discuss a property settlement for their divorce, we spent the next several weeks thinking creatively about ways they could take seriously each other’s concerns. We worked out an interim financial plan (for up to six months), and I referred them to a financial adviser who could help them devise a long-term solution. They agreed to return to marriage counseling, and Sharon withdrew her petition for divorce.

What’s a Mediator?

The role I played for Sharon and Dave was mediator. Increasingly, people are turning to mediation to bring resolution to a variety of legal and other disputes. The proponents of mediation-and I’m one-point out that it’s generally cheaper, quicker, and less stressful than litigation. And for Christians, mediation also provides unique opportunities to demonstrate what remains the hallmark of our faith-our love for one another.

Simply put, the task of a mediator is to facilitate negotiation. As a mediator, I’m different from an arbitrator or judge. I’m not there to render judgment, which is properly the role of the court or of someone vested with authority to decide. I help people examine issues from a Christian perspective and encourage them to work toward a resolution that is pleasing to God. But, ultimately, the responsibility for deciding what to do is theirs.

Nor, as mediator, can I be an advocate. I have to remain neutral. There are times, however, when I can’t maintain neutrality, especially when the Bible speaks prescriptively about an issue.

For instance, if one party in a breach of contract dispute tells me, “Yes, I broke the contract, but people do it all the time. It’s no big deal,” I become an advocate for the truth. Or if a battered spouse comes to me seeking mediation, I’d probably not be able to provide it. Mediation depends on a level playing field, and the power her husband has over her wouldn’t allow that. I’d likely become her advocate to help her find an attorney and establish her legal rights. In such cases I can’t be a mediator.

But the mediation process can work in a wide range of conflicts. Moreover, it doesn’t require a lawyer’s credentials. Pastors and others in church leadership frequently find themselves in the role of mediator, yet may not know how best to proceed. I’d like to suggest some guidelines I’ve found useful.

The Mediation Process

Clarify the mediator’s role. I need to understand what role I am being asked to assume. I’m frequently asked for advice. Sometimes the questions are direct: “What do you think I should do?” Other times the request is more veiled: “Doesn’t that sound reasonable to you?” or “Tell me, am I being obstinate (or unfair or overcritical or judgmental)?” In those cases, I’m being co-opted to validate someone’s behavior.

I’m happy to provide advice in many situations, but not if I’m also expected to act as a neutral facilitator. Once I give advice, my credibility with the other side is lessened, since I may be perceived as an ally of the person asking assistance.

Once while meeting privately with a man in a divorce dispute, I confronted him about the amount of the property settlement he was willing to offer: “I’d be surprised, based on what I know about judges, if you’d get any court to see things your way.”

The man squinted at me and shot back, “Are you sure you’re not on my wife’s side?”

I had to reestablish our relationship. “Let me remind you of my responsibilities as mediator: to help you take a realistic look at what you’re proposing, to help you and your wife come to resolution. You asked me to help you, and I have significant doubts that your request would ever stand up in court. I’m not being unneutral. I’d suggest you check out your proposition with your attorney. Find out what he thinks.”

If people want me to mediate and also need advice, I refer them, as I did this man, to an attorney, a pastor, or a counselor.

While I remain neutral in regard to persons, I’m not neutral regarding basic principles of Christian living, such as respect for justice, fairness, honesty, or kindness. “My interest,” I tell clients, “is in helping you arrive at a just and equitable resolution through a process that truly reconciles you. To achieve this, we will demonstrate a Christ-like love and concern for each other, in spite of the difficult circumstances.” If people balk at this stance, I refer them to another resource.

Develop ground rules. I’ve found it helpful to set ground rules: providing for breaks on request, meeting privately with one side, and keeping all matters confidential.

The private meeting is called a caucus, and I afford each side equal opportunity to meet with me privately. I request a break for a caucus whenever I sense a crucial impasse or when vital information simply isn’t forthcoming with both parties present.

In meeting with an employer and a terminated employee over a severance plan, for instance, the employer may say, “I’ll give a month’s severance pay and nothing more.” But the employee may insist on three months’ pay on threat of litigation. If I can’t make either side budge, I may say, “I’d like to talk with each of you privately.”

I’ll ask the employer, “What has led you to the conclusion that you could provide no more than one month of severance pay?”

He may say, “Well, I didn’t want to bring it up before, but we strongly suspect he’s been defrauding the company. We’re willing to give him a month just to close the books on the matter, but we can’t see any more than that!” Up until that point, we’ve been dealing with what I thought was substandard job performance, but this information brings a whole new perspective to the subject.

Another reason for caucusing is to explore sensitive options in private. If one party is being unreasonable and I confront that party in front of the other, I’ve bolstered the observer’s case. So I get alone with the offending party. In the caucus, I don’t say, “Look, Buddy, you’re being a jerk.” I point, instead, to an independent standard of reasonableness (such as the typical court decisions I used above in the property settlement case) and ask how reasonable the party’s requests are in light of that standard.

Additional ground rules can be added as needed. Occasionally, the participants develop ground rules they believe important. One woman made it a ground rule that her husband not be allowed to refer to her as a “spendthrift.” My experience, however, is that the fewer the rules, the better.

Facilitate storytelling. For many, merely the opportunity to tell what has occurred is cathartic. Thus, once preliminaries are completed, I ask each person to tell his or her story-without interruption from the other side, except for requests for clarification. Typically, I find I need to help keep the story on topic. I spend a fair amount of time helping the parties use words that don’t belittle or infuriate the other, particularly when we’re first getting started.

If the parties start name-calling, I institute a ground rule that requires that such statements be immediately withdrawn if they are made again.

Sometimes the belittling is more subtle. That should not only be stopped, but pointed out for further discussion.

In one case, a man kept referring to his business partner’s habit of “procrastinating.” When I could see it was bothering his partner, I said to the man, “It sounds like you feel your partner is not completing certain tasks on time. Is that correct?”

“Yes, it is,” he replied.

“Could you be more specific?”

“He often makes bank deposits after we’re overdrawn, for one thing.”

I turned to his partner. “Were you aware that your partner had this concern?”

When he replied that he wasn’t, we put it on their list of things that needed discussing.

Build an agenda. As each side speaks, I try to listen carefully and empathetically. I’m listening for issues, the points of disagreement. We need to build an agenda of questions that need to be resolved, and part of my role is to help the parties define the conflict accurately and reach agreement on specific issues in need of resolution.

Not long ago I mediated a case between two Christian families with a dispute over a piece of property one had purchased from the other. As we talked, three separate issues emerged: (1) whether the agreed-upon price was $12,000 or $15,000, (2) under what circumstances the seller could foreclose, and (3) allegations of deception on both parts. Those three issues became our agenda, and one by one we negotiated a settlement that made all of us happy.

Create alternatives. Once we have a basic understanding of the conflict, we turn from the task of analyzing to the more difficult job of creating ways to meet each other’s needs. Creating solutions generally is more difficult than analyzing, because people invest a great amount of emotional energy in being right.

Typically, people keep returning to the past. I’ll say, “Let’s brainstorm a number of creative ways to solve this problem,” and one of the parties will reply, “There’s no need to be creative. He’s deceived me, and he has to pay!”

My response then has to be something like: “We’ve been over that, and I understand you feel this way. But, tell me, what other possible outcomes are there that might make you feel satisfied?” Sometimes the person then lays out an idea that surprises everyone. The trick is to get people to see a number of options, rather than “the one and only fair solution.”

For example, I was working a couple through a legal separation, and they got stuck on the property settlement. The wife wanted $200,000, and the husband was offering $25,000 maximum. As I caucused with each side, I learned that underlying these numbers were deeper concerns. The wife, approaching retirement, had nothing set aside; she wanted financial security, and $200,000 was the bare minimum for her. The husband turned out to be in a cash-flow bind, and $25,000 was the most cash he could come up with without drastic measures.

I realized the conflict wasn’t over the amount of the settlement but about security versus present ability to pay. So I asked the wife, “Do you need $200,000 tomorrow, or could it be paid over time?” I asked the husband, “Do you object to the amount your wife is requesting or the fact she wants it in a lump sum?” When we started looking at alternative payment plans, they worked out a ten-year deal. All they needed was a creative option.

Restructure the conflict. My main task is to get people out of stalemate by encouraging them to approach disputed issues from a different, more useful perspective. To do this, I look for points of agreement they may not have considered. I also begin to peer beneath the surface to gain insight into what is motivating them.

In the example of Sharon and Dave, the key point was that neither wanted divorce. Once they heard that from each other, the definition of the conflict changed dramatically. No longer did they seek to divide property, but rather they grappled with ways to meet each other’s needs. For them, it involved selling their home and using the proceeds to pay off debts and purchase more affordable housing.

In other situations a productive starting point may be more difficult to discern, but I generally find I can help locate it by drawing out what is important to each person.

Understand the interests involved. In the language of mediation, an interest is what motivates people; it lies beneath the surface and is usually basic. Fear, greed, pride, vengeance, anger-all reside in people and especially so when those people are in the midst of significant disputes.

But, in many of the cases we handle, people also know some Scripture and basic Christian values. I can act as a mirror and encourage the person to examine all his or her motives.

For example, in another case where a couple was heading toward divorce, we reached an impasse over the question of maintenance, what used to be called alimony. The husband, who steadfastly maintained he wanted to reconcile, was taking a hardnosed position, asserting that if his wife wanted to leave him, she needed to learn right away what life would be like on her own. I decided to meet with him in private.

“Tell me again what is important for you on this maintenance question,” I asked.

“I don’t think I should have to pay her if she’s going to destroy our family,” he said. “If she wants to go out on her own, I can’t stop her. But I’m sure not going to pay for it!”

“You said before that you hoped you might be able to reconcile with your wife,” I reminded him. “If that’s important to you, how will your stance on this maintenance question help you accomplish that?”

“By teaching her that life will be tough without me,” he replied.

“Do you think that’s really the lesson she will learn?” I asked. There was a long pause.

“No,” he said at last. “What she’ll say is that I’m a jerk and that I’m still trying to control her.”

“Have you considered what it might look like for you to love your wife as Christ loved the church, to lay down your life for her?” I pressed. “The choice is yours, but I’d encourage you to consider how that attitude might help us not only resolve the question of maintenance but also lead your wife to want to restore the marriage.”

The husband ultimately became more willing to provide maintenance, and an agreement was reached. Success came first from his realizing that he had wanted to control his wife-“to teach her a lesson”-and then by choosing a more Christlike motive.

Watching My Boundaries

In mediation, I look for warning signs that tell me the process or my abilities as mediator might be impaired. These “boundaries,” whether personal or professional, must be protected. Let me list a few.

Maintaining neutrality. The ways my neutrality can be co-opted are nearly as numerous as the people who desire my services. However, threats to neutrality usually come in one of two basic forms:

1. “Don’t you think it would be better if. . . ?” In this approach, I’m asked to state a preference, usually regarding a matter at issue. When this happens, I remind the parties of my role and what I’ve already told them-that I would not give advice or recommendations. If they need advice, I refer them to an advice giver. My job is to help them resolve their dispute, not to do the work for them.

2. “I thought you were going to be neutral . . .” This usually arises when I’ve brought up a topic one person would prefer not to consider, such as reconciliation, or I’ve raised a point thus far overlooked. I reply, “You’ve asked me to help you develop a complete resolution-one that incorporates the Christian faith. I think we need to look at this point if we’re ever going to find that kind of resolution.”

Occasionally, however, someone points out that something I’ve said, or the way I said it, inferred I had a preference. When this happens, I try to acknowledge error quickly and take steps to reassure both sides of my neutrality. If one or both remain dissatisfied, I offer to withdraw and help them find another mediator.

Avoiding rescue. By the time people get to me, often they are in difficult shape emotionally and spiritually. I’m tremendously tempted to rescue them from their troubles.

Because of my background in law, this temptation most often arises when people request legal advice. As a result, I make a lot of referrals to Christian lawyers and sometimes insist that a person see an attorney before exploring mediation.

Within the church, this type of request may come in the guise of one party, who thinks he or she has the “correct” biblical response to an issue, wanting the pastor to convince the other party of its correctness. There are times, of course, when this is the proper approach. Christians respect right and wrong, and sometimes that means taking sides in clear-cut issues, such as abuse or immorality.

However, once I take on the role of rescuer, I’ve probably eliminated my usefulness as a mediator, for I’ll be seen in that role by the rescued party and be expected to act accordingly. Not surprisingly, the other side will see me as little more than an agent of the opposition.

Separating the past from the future. Participants in mediation tend initially to use the process to try to resolve past events or injustices. Mediation, however, focuses largely on the future, on helping people agree where they want to go from here. The linking of past and future can cause considerable confusion.

Consider, for example, a conflict that arose during the remodeling of a church. Although a written contract had been signed, many oral changes were made during the construction. When the church found itself being billed for something it didn’t order, the problem erupted. Both sides exchanged contradictory statements regarding what was orally agreed upon, and the project came to a halt.

When the problem entered mediation, each side initially spent much time trying to convince the other of its point of view, which, as might be expected, got them nowhere. Not until they began to look to the future-to answer the question, “Where do you want to go from here?”-did the negotiation become productive. Only then did each side focus on ways to work more effectively together, including writing down changes to the contract. And they agreed to split the difference on the issue in controversy. Had they been unable or unwilling to look to the future, they would have needed a process that could assess liability for past events, such as arbitration or litigation.

Separating past from future also helps people meaningfully consider forgiveness. The past cannot be changed, of course, but a person may be trying to get even for past wrongs by weighing the future proportionately. A husband who feels victimized by his wife’s leaving may try to gain custody of their children, or an employee who feels unappreciated may want to get even by litigating her termination. Legitimate questions of justice may be involved and shouldn’t be brushed aside, but where the true agenda is vengeance, forgiveness offers a liberating option.

Resolution and Reconciliation

The mediation process is not foolproof. In most instances it works about as well as the commitment brought into it by the participants. It can and is abused from time to time, particularly when one side simply tries to postpone resolution or wants a socially acceptable way to get back at the other. When this happens, I explain that mediation appears unproductive and I withdraw from their dispute.

Then I help them see other options. Perhaps arbitration is needed, or even legal proceedings. If so, I urge them to see the proper parties to resolve their dispute. I simply know I’m not the one to help them.

Of course, before we get to this point, I try other means to work with the negative forces. For instance, if anger is the problem, I’ll say in caucus to a husband, “I asked you to meet with me in private because it seems you’re really angry. I’m hearing many words from you about your wife, such as ‘lazy’ and ‘stupid.’ Do you feel as angry at her as these words make you sound?”

Often the man will say something like, “Well, she does make me mad. Anyone would be mad in my situation.”

Then I say, “I wonder if you want anger to motivate you? Or would you prefer another standard to control the situation, something more in keeping with our faith?”

Mediation depends on honesty and good intentions. When both parties earnestly pursue resolution, mediation can yield some truly remarkable results.

Laurie and Carl had been divorced many years but had returned to court several times on a variety of issues. Neither of them obeyed their decree, and each pointed an accusing finger at the other. By the time they found their way to me, they’d run up huge debts with their attorneys and had concluded they’d better try another approach. Moreover, each had become a Christian since their divorce, and they now desired to honor God in the way they resolved their differences.

It took a couple of hours to get the agenda boiled down to the three main issues on which they disagreed: changes in visitation, health care for their children, and payment of overdue child support. I decided to begin with the healthcare question, since they already agreed their children’s health needs ought to be met. But each thought the other ought to pay.

I asked them whether there were any other ways in which this issue might be resolved. They sat silently. “What system have you been using thus far?” I asked.

“Whoever has the children winds up getting stuck with the bill,” Laurie said.

“Okay. So that’s an option,” I responded. I wrote it on the blackboard. “Let’s come up with some more.” We ultimately came up with eight possibilities, including sharing the costs, relying on the deacons’ fund, praying for the children when they were sick, and borrowing money from relatives. As we reviewed each option, I pointed out that only two were clearly unacceptable-the options that each other be solely responsible.

Their perspective on this issue slowly changed. No longer were they arguing over who would pay Instead, they began to work together on how their children’s health needs could be met. They finally came to an agreement that involved sharing costs, praying, and utilizing Carl’s new employee-health plan.

As Carl and Laurie discussed the benefits of each option, the walls separating them began to come down. Over the next several weeks, they were able to resolve each issue in a way that increasingly demonstrated concern for each other. They asked for and received forgiveness for past sins and, in the end, no longer needed my services.

Most satisfying for them was that they had regained control of their lives. The beneficiaries included not only themselves, but also their children. They’ve been able to sustain this new working relationship through subsequent difficult issues.

Probably few things bring greater honor to God than resolving conflicts and becoming reconciled to each other.

From time to time, we may have the privilege of helping nudge this process along by serving as mediators. Though difficult and not without risk, mediation also gives opportunity to provide what so often is missing in unresolved disputes-a means of taking the first, tentative steps back into relationship.

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

Where do pastors turn when they need pastoral care, specialized counseling, or simply a safe place to talk? LEADERSHIP asked counselors Wes and Judy Roberts to list existing ministries they knew of. While not a complete list (we’ll try to offer an expanded list in the future), this is a starting place. You’ll want to inquire about theological orientation, educational qualifications, counseling approach, and other issues prior to deciding which resource best meets any specific need.

It almost always begins with a phone call, often late at night.

“Have I reached the ministry that helps pastors in trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry to be calling so late. I just finished talking to my cousin in Arizona. He said you’ve been supportive of his pastor and church there. He asked me to call you now. I’m at the end of my rope.”

With that he broke down and cried.

“I came home from our church board meeting tonight to find my wife gone. She left a note on our bed saying she couldn’t take the pressures of the ministry anymore and was leaving me and the kids. A baby-sitter was here taking care of the children. I don’t know what to do next. I’m sure the church will want my resignation.”

Another call, another day, went like this:

“I’m going to be in Colorado next week for a conference. Could I meet you for a meal? My district superintendent says I need to talk to you.”

At breakfast several days later, he said, “I ran into a man from our church last week. He was going into an adult video shop. I was coming out. This has been a lifelong pattern for me. I need help.”

Then there was the pastor who emotionally caved in to the relentless expectations of his board.

And the missionary couple who couldn’t convince their superiors on the field, or in their home church, that their daughter had been molested.

And the parachurch worker who hadn’t “met her quota of souls” and felt like a failure.

We all know of casualties among our peers. Christian leaders struggle. Where do we turn for them-or for ourselves?

In 1989, representatives of a number of ministries that minister to hurting pastors met to compare notes and concerns. We were surprised at the variety of ministries that offer counsel, encouragement, and places of refuge for pastors and spouses and other Christian leaders. Such ministries range from cozy bed-and-breakfast places for rest and renewal to long-term, residential, in-depth therapy. Here’s a list of those at that initial meeting. They can be contacted directly for further information.

Barnabas Ministries

Dale Frimodt

Post Office Box 37179

Omaha, NE 68137

402/895-5107

Assists ministers facing personal and ministry-related problems. Aims to help them strengthen themselves, their ministries, and the life and programs of their churches through personal counseling and encouragement, support groups, workshops, and seminars.

Called Together Ministries

Linda Riley

20820 Avis Avenue

Torrance, CA 90503

213/214-2332

Ministers to pastors’ wives and women in ministry, offering an extensive mail-order resource catalog, a “Listening Line” for telephone peer counseling, referral services, a free newsletter, and retreats, seminars, and conferences.

Center for Continuing Education

Richard Busch

Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia

Alexandria, VA 22304

703/370-6600

Provides a six-week renewal and growth program for ecumenical clergy. Offered three times a year, this provides a time to come apart from the demands and pressures of ministry for a period of reflection, learning, discovery, and the confirmation and deepening of one’s faith.

Charis Renewal Ministries

Ron and Sharon Davis

16431 SE Renton-Issaquah Road

Renton, WA 98056

206/226-0741

Offers personal encouragement and renewal of body, emotions, intellect, and spirit. A quiet, comfortable atmosphere for refreshment. Individual and group counseling is available, along with programs for those new to ministry and for those considering dropping out.

Fairhaven Ministries

Charles Shepson

Route 2, Box 1022

Roan Mountain, TN 37687

615/542-5332

A retreat and vacation setting to which 1,800 Christian leaders came for counseling (or just for rest and relaxation) in 1989. Qualified counselors available upon request.

Kettering Clergy Care Center

Robert Peach

1259 East Dorothy Lane

Kettering, OH 45419

513/299-5288

Offers professional care and support to ministers, missionaries, leaders, and employees of church organizations and their families. Services available include counseling, crisis-intervention weekends, clergy-burnout prevention, clergy-marriage enrichment, instruction for the boards of congregations, premarital and marital assessment programs, plus a two-week residential clergy training and renewal experience.

The Lake Martin Episcopal Retreat

Forrest Mobley

Route 1, Box 169-M

Tallassee, AL 36078

205/857-2165

Geared for couples of all denominations who are seeking to enrich, revive, even re-establish their marriage relationship. A six-day program provides teaching, private ministry with couples, and quality time with spouses. Only four couples at a time attend to insure that personal needs are addressed.

Life Enrichment

Wes and Judy Roberts

14581 East Tufts Avenue

Aurora, CO 80015

303/693-3954

Seeks to strengthen Christian leaders in their relationships at home, in ministry, and in their leisure. This is accomplished through (1) biblical counseling of the wounded leader, spouse, and family at no fee, (2) consulting with the senior leader, board, and staff to strengthen working relationships and clarify vision, and (3) providing places and programs of rest and refreshment for leadership couples.

Link Care Center

Brent Lindquist

1734 West Shaw Avenue

Fresno, CA 93711

209/439-5920

A training, counseling, and research ministry for missionaries and pastors. Services include (1) prefield training (language learning, managing cross-cultural differences, and communication maintenance for individuals and families) and (2) restoration programs on a restful campus for Christian workers.

Marble Retreat

Louis and Melissa McBurney

139 Bannockburn

Marble, CO 81623

303/963-2499

An interdenominational center designed for ministers and spouses. Up to four couples come for two weeks of individual and group counseling, which is equivalent to about six months of conventional weekly counseling. Each couple has private accommodations, with meals shared family style in this retreat setting high in the central Rockies.

A Mountain Retreat

Vic Hunter

Post Office Box 1025

Conifer, CO 80433

303/838-6267

A “safe house” and resource for the recovery of ministerial calling, courage, and commitment.

Paraklesis Ministries

Sidney Draayer

161 Ottawa, NW-Suite 500

Grand Rapids, MI 49503

616/458-6759 or 800/421-8352

Helps pastors and spouses grow spiritually, emotionally, physically, and relationally through counseling, seminars, consultation, and week-long retreats. Training for church staffs, and specific help for “pastors in crisis” is available.

Pine Rest Christian Hospital

Ken Ellis, senior staff psychologist

300 68th Street SE

Grand Rapids, MI 49548

616/455-5000

A comprehensive mental health center with a wide range of outpatient, partial hospitalization, and inpatient services.

Recovery of Hope Network and Clergy Care

Stephen K. Wilke

2939 North Rock Road-Suite 100

Wichita, KS 67226

316/636-9256 (in Kansas) 800/327-2590 (elsewhere)

Care is provided through five Mennonite psychiatric hospitals in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Four general areas are addressed: career stress, relational breakdown, emotional difficulties, and self-defeating behavior. Clergy Care services are specifically tailored for church professionals.

SonScape Ministries

Bob and Sandy Sewell

Post Office Box 7777

Pagosa Springs, CO 81147

303/264-4777

A place of rest, privacy, creative input, and spiritual retreat in the San Juan Mountains of Southern Colorado. Opportunities for personal sharing and counsel about the red-flag areas of ministry.

Vallecito Pastoral Counseling

Jerry Brown

19731 County Road 501

Bayfield, CO 81122

303/884-2678

Counseling, career assessment, guidance, and consultation for ministers and their families. Located in southwestern Colorado. Therapy and marriage and family counseling is available for such issues as forced resignation, stress, and burnout.

Do you know of others?

If you are familiar with other places and people who offer care specifically to Christian leaders, please write to Wes Roberts, Life Enrichment, 14581 East Tufts Avenue, Aurora, Colorado 10015, with their names, ministry names, addresses, and phone numbers.

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

Not long ago, I visited an inner-city church in Washington, D.C. The facility was old, showing years of use, but it was clean and bustling with people on that Tuesday morning.

As the pastor described their various ministries-legal aid, health clinic, tenants association, tutoring program, as well as worship and traditional Christian education-I realized none of this would have happened without the godly ambition of key people.

What causes someone to recognize a need or an injustice and respond with compassion, courage, and wisdom?

Often it’s holy ambition, a divinely implanted drive.

This urge to achieve something significant for God is displayed at most of the pastors’ gatherings I’ve attended. Even when the stated agenda is rest and renewal, as we hear about one another’s successes, ambition is piqued. Other conversations center on “what I’d hoped to do but was unable to accomplish,” and we all walk away feeling, There’s more I should be doing.

I appreciate the encouragement to greater effort I’ve received from such events. For instance, one pastor testified: “A veteran pastor once warned me not to expect too much of people, because most of them live by God’s minimum requirements. I know what he meant: we give stars for people simply showing up!

“In preaching, he said, ‘Aim low; they’re riding Shetlands.’ But that approach frustrates me. The leader’s job is to challenge people to greater things, to raise the expectations.”

Another said: “For years this church struggled with indecisive leadership. When I arrived, they made it clear they wanted a ‘faster pastor,’ who was willing to initiate ministries and make decisions. I’ve tried to do what needed to be done.”

Yet another said: “The church has often been compared to a ship, but is it the Kon Tiki or the Love Boat? On the Kon Tiki, everyone has to work-you row or you’re thrown overboard! On the Love Boat, the majority of people lounge in their deck chairs and enjoy the ride or complain about the service-their choice.” His goal was more Kon Tiki in his congregation.

These pastors clearly had ambitions for their congregation, and they set demanding standards for themselves, too. May the tribe of those with holy ambitions increase.

And yet, ambition has a flip side.

A couple of years ago, I spent a day with my father-in-law, a Kansas farmer, hoisting hay bales from baler to flatbed truck. Afterward, we philosophized about city life and farm life.

“The biggest difference I see,” he said, “is that city people tend to expect each year to be better than the last. If they haven’t gotten a raise, acquired something new, or found themselves somehow better off, they’re dissatisfied.

“On the farm, you don’t expect the fields to yield more each year. You expect good years and bad. You can’t control the weather, and you pray that you avoid disaster. You work hard and accept what comes.”

This mentality does not translate into passivity, however. Dad Janzen works hard; he derives great pleasure from a field well-planted or a combine well-maintained. But his fulfillment doesn’t come from measuring this year against the last.

I’ve also met pastors who find their ambitions tempered with this godly contentment. Said one: “Ambition says, ‘You could be doing great things for Christ.’ The balancing voice says, ‘Christ is doing great things for you.’ That’s contentment.”

Another pastor, Mike Braun, with tongue firmly in cheek, recently sent us his goals for the year:

“1. To avoid being crucified or assassinated;

“2. To minister without attending a workshop, conference, campaign, or cruise that will help me and my church (1) win the world by l999, (2) improve either my serve, stride, grip, grasp, or gait, (3) sharpen my focus, faculties, finances, or finesse, or (4) deepen my sensitivity, heighten my wit, or fine-tune my feelings;

“3. To avoid merchandized manuals that promise to help me develop a broader budget, bigger evening service, or more bountiful auto allowance.”

Braun concludes, “Though Socrates said the unexamined life isn’t worth living, I suspect the over-examined life is only a half step better.”

His observation points to a significant truth: within a leader’s soul, ambition and contentment must coexist in peace.

Godly contentment is not a warm glass of milk that makes us drowsy, unable to be roused to outreach, compassion, or correcting injustice. Godly contentment means faithful effort.

And godly ambition avoids the sin of those tower builders on the Babylonian plain who decided to “make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” God stepped in to frustrate those plans and fragment those trying to elevate themselves, and he continues to set himself against pride and presumption.

His pleasure is in those who do their work wisely, faithfully, and “heartily, as unto the Lord.” And in those who trust him for the results.

Such is the ambition that brings lasting contentment.

Marshall Shelley is editor of LEADERSHIP.

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

From the perpetually best-selling manual for job hunters comes this: "Vocation or Calling implies Someone who calls, and . . . the concept of Mission with relationship to our whole life lands us inevitably in the lap of God."

So writes Richard Nelson Bolles in an appendix to his What Color Is Your Parachute? a book that has enjoyed phenomenal success since 1970. He continues: "Your first Mission here on earth is . . . to seek out and find, in daily-even hourly-communication, the One from whom your Mission is derived."

Dick Bolles has found his "Mission," including over thirty-seven years in ordained ministry, half of it in Episcopal parishes. When he was let go from a cathedral staff, the victim of a budget cut, he learned the hard way about security and contentment. He retains a strong interest in fellow clergy, however, remarking, "I originally wrote Parachute exclusively for ministers, and four million other people happened to buy it!"

What does this experienced vocational counselor and friend of pastors have to say about the pastoral call and career? Where do call and ambition, and parish exigencies and altruism meet? LEADERSHIP wanted to know, so Marshall Shelley and Jim Berkley ventured to his home in Walnut Creek, California, where Bolles warmly provided some answers.

How were you called into the ministry?

After I got out of the Navy at the end of the Second World War, I went to M.I.T., firmly convinced I was going to be a chemical engineer. I attended Saint Paul's Cathedral in Boston every Sunday, and on Theological Education Sunday one year, Dean Taylor of the Episcopal Theological Seminary preached about the number of churches-something like nine hundred-that were closing that year because they didn't have even a lay minister.

The sermon perturbed me because I knew that graduating in chemical engineering from M.I.T., I could receive about the highest starting salary of any discipline. But I thought, I'm an illustration of why these churches are closing!

I'd been raised as a Christian in the Episcopal church and had accepted Christ as my Savior and read the entire Bible when I was 14. I told my minister back home about this disturbing sermon, and he suggested I visit a seminary with him. That night as I thought about it, I decided, Who cares what the seminary looks like? I've got to become a priest. It's an obscene culture that values engineers but is closing nine hundred churches. So although I felt inappropriate for ministry-I was, and still am, intensely shy-I knew I had to do it.

So I transferred to Harvard to get a broader pre-seminary education. And while at Harvard I was a member of both InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the Student Christian Movement. Neither group could understand how anyone in his right mind could belong to the other group. I roomed with the treasurer and the president of the InterVarsity chapters and we studied the Bible and prayed every night.

I was also involved in the March on Washington and heard Martin Luther King, Jr., give his memorable speech. I've had a traditional evangelical background as far as the Bible and my attitude toward the faith is concerned, but also a heavy commitment to social action on the other hand.

For instance, I was a counselor at the Billy Graham Crusade in Madison Square Garden in 1958, when very few Episcopalians were involved. I've enjoyed my life in the church because I love puzzling people.

In your early ministry, what gave you a sense of accomplishment?

After serving three mission congregations, I was called to St. John's Church in Passaic, New Jersey-the tenth largest church out of 150 in the diocese. I was 31 years old, wet behind the ears, and obviously a poor choice, so they called me. I served there from 1958 to 1966.

It was a white congregation near two other congregations, one black and one Italian. I went to the other two to suggest uniting the three. The Italian congregation was easy, because they had no minister, and the elderly members remembered the founding priest, who they said looked like me. When I'd switch to Italian for the sentences of administration while serving them Communion, they were happy to have a priest again.

But the black congregation wasn't sure it wanted to merge. I used to take a swing through campuses each year in October and visit the college students from my parish. I was near Virginia Seminary in Alexandria, and I remembered the son of the founder of the black congregation attended seminary there, so I dropped in on him. We hit it off, and he asked me what I thought of the congregations' merging. I told him why I'd taken the initiative to do that, and he looked at me and said, "You don't know that I was going to Passaic tomorrow to oppose this merger, but as a result of this talk, I'm going to speak for it."

There was a lot of divine intervention in that merger. We were the first consciously integrated church in New Jersey.

What ambitions did you have entering ministry?

For some reason, I've been remarkably devoid of ambition in the church. Seminary classmates told me they figured I would be first to be bishop among my classmates. I said, "You can hold your breath until you turn blue, and you will never see that day!" I had no desire to climb the traditional career ladder through the church.

Tell us about your move to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

I was called to be the canon pastor, the staff member, under the bishop and dean, directly responsible for pastoring the cathedral congregation. About two years later, I was fired because of a budget crunch. I received a call from another parish, but I turned it down.

After a period of unemployment, I was appointed the provincial secretary for college ministry in the nine western states, supervising college chaplains. I loved that, because nobody was trying to tell me what I should do. Nobody had the foggiest notion what the job was! (Laughter)

So you did become a bishop, the bishop of campuses!

No, not a bishop. Never! (Laughter)

One day the bishop took me to a luncheon of clergy and lay people from a number of surrounding towns. I watched him try to guess with what degree of affection and familiarity he should address each person, and sometimes misguess. I said, God, if you love me, spare me ever, ever having to do this!

What did you find most satisfying about pastoral ministry?

Two things. First, helping people change. Once a man who'd had an affair and left his wife and children came to see me, because he didn't want to see his own priest. I helped him end the affair and got him to start courting his wife again. They got back together and were so grateful.

Something like that is rewarding, because so often the ministry is like the drip of water against the stone: you know it's making ridges, but it's taking such a long time for anything to show up.

Second, preaching. I once heard a preacher comment that he never met a man who went into the ministry to preach, and I thought, Well, you have now! He was saying in the old days, many went into the ministry to preach, but now they want to be pastoral counselors or business administrators or whatever. Not me. I love preaching.

But you gave it up.

Not exactly. I still have a "congregation." I love my work because it affects the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and affecting lives is what I offered myself to God to do.

I have a theory about Parachute that I only whisper because I'm afraid I'll be committed. I think it's the instrument of the Holy Spirit masquerading as a job-hunting manual.

What part does ambition play in your ministry now?

Frankly, it is ironic that I, who had little ambition, gained such influence, while others, who would kill to have this kind of effect, may still be seeking it. I don't think you find something by going directly at.

When the Navy trained us to spot airplanes at night, they said the center part of your eye is blind at night. If you try to look directly at the sound at night, you never will see the plane. If you look to the right or the left of the sound, you'll see it out of the part of your eye that isn't night-blind. Ambition is like that.

People who pursue ambitious goals often are some of the most frustrated people in the world. And those who succeeded oftentimes have been ruthless in achieving it and have left bodies scattered over the landscape.

But for every one of the achievers-even the honest ones-there is an enormous number of people who years ago offered themselves for ministry and have never come close to achieving their goals. So we have to offer ourselves to God to do whatever he wants us to do, and let the ambition go by the way.

God has a tremendous sense of humor: the people who don't want influence get it, and the people dying for it don't get it. For instance, I'm still shy, yet I have to get up before groups as large as six thousand people. I pray desperately that the Holy Spirit will speak through me, and yet I know when I'm up there I'm ill-equipped to do much on my own.

In What Color Is Your Parachute? the appendix on finding your mission is practically a gospel tract. Why did you add that to recent editions of the book?

For years I hadn't been particularly vocal about my faith because when I first wrote the book, I feared people would say, "Oh, he's a minister! What does he know about job hunting?" But once the book became popular, I didn't have to worry about that. So I started talking about finding your mission. I was amazed-I discovered huge hungers that had little to do with the choice of career. People were seeking meaning, which comes from a sense of calling, which comes from knowing the Caller.

So I began giving talks on how to find your mission. After one recent talk, a woman came up and said, "I just got back from the death of my mother. This morning a friend called to ask if I wanted to go to a lecture by the author of Parachute. I wanted to decline because I was too covered with my grief, but then I said to myself, Maybe God wants me there. And so I came. There wasn't a thing you discussed that didn't fit my situation. Thank you." I run into that again and again.

Experiences like that made me think that lecture needed to be heard by other people, so I translated it into the form it appears in that appendix.

How do we know God's call for our ministry? Can we chase what we enjoy and assume that's what God wants?

God's call isn't something he sends while we sit around being passive. Frederick Buechner, in Wishful Thinking-A Theological ABC, says, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

Too strong a view of the fallen nature of man causes us to assume that what we delight to do is probably a sin. If a non-Christian doesn't enjoy selling manure, he naturally thinks, Maybe I should get into something else. But Christians, and especially pastors, tend to say, God must have put me here for some reason. So they end up baptizing inertia. I don't think inertia necessarily is divine. Rest-inertia-is supposed to be a part of the rhythm of life, not the definition of life.

Does a pastor wrestling with vocational problems differ from any other executive?

I can't generalize. Pastors run the gamut from those who try to imitate the austerity of John the Baptist to those who think they're chief executive officer of a multinational corporation. The one who's eating locusts and honey has very little to do with the CEO in a secular corporation, but the pastor at the other extreme is virtually identical to a secular executive. Generalizations about the clergy and their secular parallels are self-defeating.

Okay, but don't clergy looking for new positions face problems that business people never encounter?

I'll tell you a story that on the surface has nothing to do with your question but actually has everything to do with the answer. A Pennsylvanian who'd read Parachute wrote once, saying, "You get fat off the misery of other people. I read your book, and it's worthless. I tried using it to get this job I wanted, and I was turned down."

On a whim I called a friend in Philadelphia and asked him to call on this guy and tell him, "Dick Bolles sent me." He did and found the man wanted to be the librarian of the one library in town and was turned down. I corresponded with the man afterward, and about seven years later he wrote, "I'm more convinced than ever your book doesn't work." When I wrote to ask why, he said, "The new librarian left, and when I applied again for the job, they turned me down again!"

He hadn't done any job hunting in the interim; he'd just groused about my book. He knew what job he wanted, and if they didn't give it to him, that proved the book didn't work!

Now the application: The minute you choose only one possible employer, you'll probably be stymied, because you have absolutely no control over his whims. You may remind him of his Uncle Jake, and he's always hated Uncle Jake and wouldn't hire you if you were the last person on earth. Well, the problem with most pastors' job searches is that in defining their vocation, they have essentially defined only one possible employer, namely the church. There's no way out of that bind without beginning to think, I can do ministry for God in places other than the parish. As long as pastors expect to remain within the church, they must get used to the predicament of my friend in Pennsylvania.

So what does a pastor unhappy in his position do?

First, it's important that you look at the gifts God has given you. Stewardship is more than something you talk about on canvass Sunday. You need to inventory your gifts so you can be a good steward. Then ask, Where does God move my heart to use these gifts? And with what circumstances, what particular kinds of problems, what groups of people? People find they have many more gifts than they supposed.

We've had many pastors do that inventory and then look at the opportunities to do ministry in the world God has made rather than just within the church God has made. Isn't that what John Wesley did? He went to the coal miners and marginalized people outside the institutional church.

Does that exercise usually lead a pastor away from parish ministry?

Not at all. Often parish pastors feel trapped in their role until they realize they're free to do any number of things.

An Episcopal priest who's a writer attended one of my two-week workshops, and I asked him why he was there. He said, "Dick, I have to write a book every year, and I don't want to have to write a book every year."

Then a year or so later he visited me, and I asked him, "What's happened since the workshop?"

He said, "I'm still writing a book each year, but the funny thing is, I enjoy it now. I was doing it before because it was the only thing I could think of doing. But at the workshop, I got a vision of all the different types of ministry God could call me to. I decided that among them all, the one I like the best is writing. Now I do it because I want to; then I did it because I had to."

Pastors trying to be intelligent servants of God should first identify the gifts God has given them. I don't mean only their talents and skills, but also their fields of knowledge, their yearnings, and what issues stir them.

What's an effective way of doing that?

Pastors sometimes use umbrella words to describe what they do, and they put them in the jargon of their own profession. Take preaching. There is no such single skill as preaching. Rather, preaching includes various skills. So I ask preachers to describe what they do when they preach.

One person might say, "I really love to take large theological concepts and show their practical application in daily life," which in secular language is "showing the practical applications of theoretical ideas."

Another might say, "I love persuading people. I love holding a congregation's attention. I love the sense that you can hear a pin drop when I'm at my most eloquent." That is "the ability to communicate and arouse enthusiasm within others."

Let's try another skill: the ability to talk with people and help them articulate their deepest fears.

Take that out of church jargon, and that would be called counseling or mentoring. All of this is essentially a translation ability.

We had a skillful career counselor once working with a black teenager from the ghetto. She couldn't get him to tell her anything he enjoyed doing. She said, "You want work? Well, let's find what you enjoy."

"I don't enjoy doing anything."

She said, "What do you do all day?"

He said, "I sit in front of the TV."

"Tell me how you do that?"

"Well, I turn it on and watch, and if I don't like the program, I turn the dial to another one," he replied, gesturing with his hands. "If I don't like that one, I turn to another."

She said, "Oh, you're dramatizing. You're using your hands. Do you like to use your hands?"

"Yeah, I do."

So as a result of his describing that one thing, she began to get him to see a bunch of jobs he could do with his hands, and enjoy.

In a like manner, we have to find out from this person who enjoys translating the feelings into words exactly how he or she does it: What do you do when you're through? Do you like to help the person see concepts in a larger context?

Or a person realizes he or she loves language. It never occurred before that the love of language and this ability to counsel well is the same skill. The principle is that when you were enjoying yourself, you were using the skills God gave you that he most likes to have you use.

Let's say a youth director is great at building ministry programs. What, in secular terms, are the skills being used?

The abilities to define goals and then to figure out the practical steps to work toward them. By the way, that's not a common gift. Lots of people are good at finding goals but don't have the slightest idea of how to work toward them, and many of them are in high positions in government! (Laughter)

The person good at building ministry programs has a bunch of skills at work: motivating, planning, and so on.

The skills a person has in doing a particular activity often work like the muscles in the arm. Merely moving the arm requires different muscles working with each other and sometimes in tension with each other. Skills are like that. Only when the skills are inventoried do we begin to see how they interact with each other.

What did you find when you inventoried your own skills?

I love to make ideas more effective by organizing them, shaping, perfecting, developing, and building into them systems that help people achieve their fullest possibilities. Look at almost anything I do, and you can find that motivation running like an underground river beneath the soil.

The definition of an ideal job is the intersection of many things: my skills, the fields of knowledge I most love, my spiritual interpretation of life, the kinds of people and things I most like to work with, and the setting in which I enjoy working. All these strands meet in what I'm doing today.

When we inventory our strengths, how can we be unbiased? Have you ever met a pastor who says, "I'm a terrible preacher"?

Most of us would go into a mammoth depression if we thought we were performing poorly the essential skills of our vocations. A lot depends on how many skills we think we have. If I think I have only three skills, naturally I'm going to tell you I do at least one of those three-and maybe more-very well, because my whole self-esteem is resting on them.

But if I inventory my skills and discover I have forty skills I'm good at, then I can rest on the forty and not depend on any one for my self-esteem.

We've discovered two steps toward better self-esteem. The first is to inventory talents and skills with at least two other people giving feedback. Second, go out and do "informational interviewing," saying to knowledgeable people, "These are my gifts and talents. Help me understand the different ways in which these gifts and talents are used in the secular world." The very act of talking to other people raises self-esteem, as options become apparent.

Let's consider a pastor who's been in a pastorate for eight or ten years. The initial excitement is waning, and he wonders where else he might have an effective ministry. What advice would you give?

Pray. Moving within the church is the most difficult movement in the professional world. The typical pastor I run into is frustrated, and it's the same theme again and again: "I've been here too long, and I don't know where else to move. I can't seem to get myself seriously considered anywhere else." That's true across all the denominations, except those with bishops who assign people, and in those denominations, pastors are frustrated because they don't like where they're sent.

What can pastors do about it?

I come back to it again-they have to sit down and take inventory. I reiterate this because it's the first step toward anything. We need to put one foot down and move the other foot in front of it. Having inventoried our gifts, even if we end up staying in that parish, reinvigorates our ministry. We see finally what we love to do, and we can call in others in the congregation to take over parts we don't like.

Have you seen this principle in practice?

When I supervised campus ministers for eight years, I once went to a university where six pastors of different denominations worked in a house built by the Lutherans. I was called in because they weren't working well together, and nobody could offer a solution. I prayed for wisdom, as I always do before I enter any new situation, and sat down with the dozen or so staff.

I found they had worked together more than five years. So I asked them each to write down the names of the other people, and under each name, to put down what gifts God had given this person that he or she most delighted to use. Then they went around the circle and explained what they wrote about each person. They each missed every other person in the circle! (One person got all of them right-the receptionist.) They had worked together for five years but hadn't the slightest idea what was going on with the others.

The minister they'd targeted as loving administration was of course the Lutheran, whose denomination owned the building. But he said, "I hate administration. If somebody shows me one more burnt-out light bulb, I'm not going to be responsible for what I do with it!"

The Presbyterian across from him said, "I love administration, but I thought I'd be stepping on your toes if I said that." So they reapportioned the responsibilities among themselves, and then each one began doing what he or she delighted in. It was a revelation for them. That's what can happen in a congregation.

Sometimes pastors, because of the discouraging odds of receiving a hoped-for call, feel they have to jump at whatever call comes their way.

That's a big mistake. Too many unhappy clergy have lived by that credo. There are worse things than not getting a call to an appropriate place, and getting a call to an inappropriate place is one of them.

The fact that a call is extended doesn't make it necessarily an appropriate place for ministry. The key to vocation is not blind obedience: going wherever God leads us because the more we dislike something, the more it must be God's will. When someone says something like that to me, I ask, "Did it ever occur to you the call might be a partnership in which both you and God agree on something?"

There's a difference between vocation for a dog, which is obedience, and vocation for a human being, which, from everything we see in the New Testament, is cooperation. It's God and the person agreeing where to go.

Of course there are cases where someone drags his feet and later says, "Yes, I see why God sent me here." But God doesn't treat people as robots. I find that concept of vocation mindboggling, and every week I see the destructive consequences of it in people's lives.

How should a pastor prepare for an interview with a prospective church?

First, pastors need to have a clear understanding that their vocation is to live consciously in the presence of God, to have the Holy Spirit transforming them into the image of Christ every day. They primarily are called to be a certain kind of person, rather than to do certain tasks.

Then they should determine where what God most needs done and what they most delight in doing intersect. That intersection likely will open up a number of different jobs or works, both within the church and without.

If pastors go into an interview with that clearly in mind, then it becomes obvious that they aren't doing what I think is the single greatest obstacle to getting a job in the church: groveling, saying, "I'll be anything you want me to be and do anything you want me to do if you'll just give me the call." That's the antithesis of their true vocation.

What should pastors keep in mind during the interview itself?

We know what makes for a winsome interview. First, the candidate should talk half of the time about himself and half about the position. If candidates don't talk at all about themselves, people think they're chameleons who are willing to be whatever the parish wants them to be. And nobody wants a chameleon. They want somebody whose behavior they can predict.

The second half of the conversation is about the parish. The successful candidate wants to get the committee to talk. Research has discovered that people most likely to get hired stick to this 50-50 ratio of talk about the candidate and about the church.

The second wise course in interviewing is never to give an answer that's shorter than twenty seconds or longer than two minutes-unlike this interview! (Laughter) I'm famous for fifteen-minute answers to half-minute questions, but in a job interview, that's death. Nobody wants to listen to a monologue. People want succinct, quick answers.

What is contentment in ministry?

Contentment in ministry is the same as contentment in any job. It comes from standing constantly and consciously in the presence of God so that he can transform any task into something meaningful. I read of a checker at a Safeway store in Oakland some years back. Her job wasn't ideal, but she had figured out ways to transform that job. She'd tap out a rhythm you could almost tap dance to as she rang up items on the cash register. She'd offer recipes to customers. She had a jar of cookies at her side to hand out to kids. And to beat the monotony of bagging the groceries, she played a game with herself, figuring out the cleverest way to fit the most items into the bag. She made packing bags an art.

People often see vocational contentment as a happy match between what you have to do and what you enjoy doing. But there's no such permanent match. When you define contentment as an ideal match, which I did for years, you're subject to the fact that it's like passion: it often doesn't last long.

But when you define contentment as the ability to let God transform your job, then you'll find contentment.

Transform it into what?

Transform it so that it is fun or meaningful for you. The checker loved rhythm, so she turned the typing of the keys into a rhythm. She loved helping people, so she helped people rather than simply bag their groceries. She loved figuring out things, so she used that skill in packing bags. She imported her delights into that job.

Our primary interaction during the work day is between us and the Holy Spirit. Every day can be a surprise then. We never know, for example, when the person who irritates us at 11 o'clock has been sent by God. That's the transformation of work.

Is there room for vocational ambition in the ministry?

Everything depends on who the person is. If I'd see ambition in certain individuals, I'd salute it, because it might be the first time they've considered themselves worthy of a greater work for God. But if I'd see that ambition in others, it may appear consistent with their pattern of being secular corporate raiders in parochial dress. If that were the case, I'd pray that they'd jettison their ambition.

Pastors who make their ambition a driving force, who feel compelled to take one larger parish after another to justify their ministries, ought to take note of Raymond Lull, the first missionary to the Arabs. He labored his entire lifetime with only one convert, and yet by doing that, he laid the foundation for the missionary movement throughout the Middle East and Africa.

None of us can evaluate the fruits of our ministries, and so ambition in ministry is a nebulous concept. Maybe the work you're doing right now is the greatest work you could be doing for God.

But most people want to go higher and higher.

Phillips Brooks said there are two kinds of explorers: One has to go over the mountains to take possession of the new frontier he's never seen before. The other kind of explorer becomes familiar with his or her own land and digs deeper and deeper into it. Brooks said the higher ambition is entering into the deeper possession of what we already have rather than going out to acquire something new.

Some Christians seem to need to go out and acquire more and more prestige or power. Others enter deeper into the character God has given them and pay more attention to the kind of people they're becoming.

I wonder: shouldn't ambition for the latter be held with at least as much esteem as the former? We don't have to always go on to bigger and better enterprises.

To what extent ought we derive contentment from our vocation?

Vocation ought to be third. The first and greatest enjoyment anyone can have is being alive in God's creation, being in communication with him and used by him.

The second source of happiness is the relationship with one's partner. Years ago a woman in my congregation told me her husband had announced he was gay and was leaving her. She said, "All my life I've been ready for some younger woman to come along and compete with me for my husband, and I was determined to be more feminine, more charming, more patient than she could ever hope to be and outlast her. But I never dreamed my competitor would be another man. I have no idea how to compete!"

There are ten thousand pastors' wives (and now, husbands) who could say that same thing, except instead of man they'd say ministry. They always have to play second fiddle to their mate's work. How does a wife (or a husband) fight it? The vocation of pastor ought to come third.

I think a lot of our clergy's dis-ease in their vocation comes from the fact that they haven't addressed contentment in their relationships with God and in their marriage; they're trying to make the ministry give them what they are intended to find in their primary relationships.

The ultimate contract for ministry is a contract between the soul of the pastor and God. And from the pastor's side it says, "I am grateful for all you have done for me in Creation and in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and I offer back all the gifts you've given me for use in your service."

That is the true vocation of every pastor, and every Christian.

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

You spend extra hours preparing a particular sermon. But no one notices.

You make six visits to a parishioner in intensive care. When he recovers and returns to church, he points out how much his wife wished you’d seen her while he was in the hospital.

A woman in worship stands during prayer requests and notes, with just a touch of hurt, that her Aunt Lizzie’s name isn’t printed in the prayer list. Of course, this woman doesn’t mention publicly-or privately-that you recently took most of a day to drive out of town to visit Aunt Lizzie.

Such experiences are not unique, nor is the pastor’s resulting discouragement. It hurts when people don’t notice or appreciate our efforts. Ministerial banter often touches on blue Mondays and the resignation letters we mentally compose. Discouragement is no stranger to ministers.

What discouraged ministry looks like

How we deal with discouragement impacts both the minister and the church. It can prompt some ministers to leave their churches. It can lead others to abandon ministry entirely. Before discouragement runs its full course, however, it entices us to dilute our ministry. Here are a few symptoms.

Preoccupation with money. When we are discouraged, we’re more likely to fix our focus on our relatively lower salary. Our paychecks seem to shout on behalf of the congregation, “We don’t appreciate you!” Working alongside church members who earn twice or three times my salary, I’ve sometimes wondered if they respect my leadership. Certainly, many churches ought to pay their ministers more. But in times of discouragement, ministers can let such thoughts skew their perspective.

Letdown. Some days discouragement can lead us to walk away from the office at noon, fully knowing how many lessons and sermons need preparing and how many people need visiting. A discouraged minister doesn’t give a hoot if any of it ever gets done.

Bill, a ministerial colleague, could be found at the local donut shop most mornings until 9:30 or later. His elders had questioned him about it, as he laughingly told me once, but he’d convinced them it was coffee-shop evangelism. I knew better. Neither evangelism nor sweets pulled Bill there. It was low self-esteem brought on by an unappreciative church. Bill’s response was to let down.

Feverish activity. While discouragement some times prompts us just to get by, other times it drives us to work harder than we should.

Jim left the ministry because of his divorce, but the heart of his problem was his absorption with work. He worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day, and never took a vacation. Why? Because, among other reasons, his church rarely showed appreciation for his work. The less they noticed, the harder he worked. When the church finally got around to celebrating his fifteenth year as their pastor, it was too late.

Distracted by extracurriculars. Some ministers respond to discouragement by developing new skills and by using their abilities outside the church. We lead seminars. We pursue educational degrees. We become writers (I’m certainly not writing this because I have run out of things to do around the church!). We open up new avenues, finding fulfillment and reward apart from the church. This isn’t necessarily bad. It may add to our longevity in ministry. But if it’s simply avoidance, then our ministry may be diminished.

I remember hearing one popular seminar leader talk about the importance of putting family before career. He emphasized how he had told his church leaders never to expect him to be out of his home more than two nights per week.

As a young minister, I was impressed. But since then, I’ve reflected on his advice and, more significantly, his attitude. Ministry, as I know it, cannot be packaged neatly into two nights a week. I don’t argue with his message that family must come first, but I now suspect he was motivated by discouragement. His tone of voice and stories suggested that he was, in part, using his speaking career and family to get away from a discouraging church.

Turning the tide

In some sense, discouragement always will attack those in ministry. But I’ve discovered a number of things I can do to hold it back, and sometimes send it running.

Practice what I need. We fondly call it the Golden Rule, doing for others what we would like them to do for us. I teach it to my children and preach it from my pulpit. In fact, I’ve often passed out advice like, “When you’re feeling down and blue, do something for someone else, and you’ll forget all about your own troubles.” Good advice. I need to hear it myself occasionally, since I’m not consistent about putting it into practice.

One new practice I’ve begun has helped. Three years ago someone in our church introduced the congregation to encouragement postcards. We keep them in abundant supply in the pews, and our people use them to send notes of encouragement to one another during the week.

After I received my first one-and so thoroughly enjoyed it-I decided to send out three or four of those cards, myself, to different people every week. Usually, I send out twenty cards for every one I receive, but I continue to derive deep enjoyment out of it. And I can’t begin to recall all the words of appreciation that have been sent me because of the postcards I’ve sent. That’s gone a long way toward helping me defeat bouts with discouragement.

Enlist the help of colleagues. Usually I’m up emotionally the day after Sunday. But one Monday I was down. I didn’t feel like seeing anybody or answering the phone or dictating a letter or attending a meeting. I just wanted my office door closed with the DO NOT DISTURB sign squarely in place.

But when the phone rang, I dutifully took the call.

“Good morning, Andy. How are you doing? Have a good day yesterday?” It was a pastor friend.

I responded in the usual less-than-honest fashion: “Doing fine. We had a great day. What about you?”

Immediately, I wished I hadn’t asked. He’d had a great day, and he was ready to tell me all about it. Biggest attendance since Easter. Seven additions; four coming for baptism. The spirit of unity and enthusiasm was never better. And the elders had met to propose a midyear salary increase.

I endured it. I think I was polite. But after he hung up, I wondered why I was even more depressed than I’d been before his call. It wasn’t jealousy or envy, because I usually find it easy to rejoice when others are blessed. I just felt hurt and neglected.

Frankly, many of us don’t like to be asked, “How was Sunday?” or “How are things going at the church?” If things are going poorly, it only adds to our discouragement. And if things are at record levels, I don’t need additional temptation toward pride and self-righteousness.

What I need are colleagues in the ministry with whom I can share my struggles, pressures, and discouragements. I need friends to encourage me.

To that end, I’ve begun to use the telephone or an encouragement postcard at least once each week to express my appreciation of a ministerial colleague. “I appreciate your service to Christ and the ministry of your church,” I’ll say or write. It’s beginning to reap the same results as do my postcards to my church family.

I’ve begun also to pay more attention to my conversations with colleagues, and I’ve encouraged them to do the same. Instead of asking questions that measure our ministries, we try to ask questions that show concern for the individual. The technique isn’t difficult; we use it all the time with our parishioners. Now we just apply it to one another. Instead of asking about attendance and ministry success, we ask, “How are you?” or “How is your family?” and listen attentively to the reply.

The steps I’ve taken to battle discouragement haven’t been easy. When discouraged, one doesn’t feel like doing anything, even taking steps to overcome discouragement, especially if it entails encouraging others! But my own discouragement reminds me that others feel the same way.

There are moments when I encourage others only because that’s what I’m called to do. It’s only when I remember agape, God’s self-giving love, that I’ve been able to make progress. Agape feels like a thin string of support sometimes, but it’s been enough to carry me between the experiences of overt encouragement, to the point that I find, once again, that ministry is the most rewarding thing I can do.

-L. Andrew Pryor

First Christian Church

Glen Ellyn, Illinois

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