May 18, 2012

On being true to oneself in Christ (#9- Ten Lessons for Ten Years in Ministry)

If God, in all His infinite wisdom, had intended for you to be someone you are not, He would have made you that person.  It matters not one shred, then, what your calling in life is: God called you to be yourself, redeemed by His grace and for His glory, in the context of that vocation.

With this in mind, it’s important to remind ourselves constantly that while there are boundaries and expectations of roles and personal propriety in the daily expression of our vocations, whatever they may be (whether ordained ministry or literally anything at all), the color of life and contribution of our personal presence is only present through our being ourselves.  And we ourselves, apart from the natural fallenness of sin, are in fact created in God’s image, whether male or female (Genesis 1:27).

So being ourselves– realizing that our lives, our very natural existences are in and of themselves expressions of the grace of God, and knowing that God found His “very good” creation incomplete without the animated idea of ourselves– is an exercise in profound liberation.  This applies to those of us in vocational ministry as much as it applies to anybody.

Many people don’t realize that the theology world has fads and trends as much as any other field does, and many people further don’t realize that the pastoral ministry world has its own fads and trends, often separate from the theology stuff, as much as any other field does, as well.  Evangelical pastors have their own trendy styles right now.  A good game of buzzword bingo would be helpful to many of us in the middle of our sermons– “community,” “authentic,” “relevant,” “missional,” “incarnational,” and even “Gospel,” (usually with a hyphen and past participle behind it) are everywhere.  We borrow stylistically from stand-up comics.  We liberally include video excerpts from popular movies, often not so much because they actually illustrate the point of our sermons, but because, first, we think it makes us look, well, “relevant”; second, because we think everybody else is doing it, and we don’t want to be less cool than another pastor; and third, because we want to demonstrate our pop-cultural literacy.

We don’t wear ties; we grow our hair in certain ways and leave our shirt tails out.  We listen to U2.  (May I add here that I have never really, well, gotten U2?  Somebody explain them to me.)  We sit on stools and rebrand our sermons “talks” or “teachings.”  We build big-box worship settings whose insides look alternatively like talk-show sets or small-college black-box theaters.  And this is just younger pastors, the under-40-to-45-or-so set, although certainly not all.

I just can’t be that person.  I still wear a tie (and, most of the year, a jacket) on Sunday mornings– although I have a strict no-ties-after-noon rule.  I preach.  I don’t use video clips; I think they’re distractions far more often than they’re helps.  (Feel free to disagree, of course.)

But I’m just not Mr. Southern Baptist, either.  I don’t get wearing a tie all the time.  I’ll vote for a Democrat once in a while (but don’t get too excited about that one).  Occasionally, I read Rachel Held Evans’ blog, often (but not always) agree with it, and have so far refrained from apostasizing.  I don’t think confrontational, door-to-door evangelism is helpful at all in ninety percent of the United States anymore– in fact, it’s hurtful.  I think my denomination often looks absolutely ridiculous in its self-presentation to the culture.  I know from personal experience that alcohol consumption can be limited and does not automatically make one a drunkard, and that Paul’s point in Ephesians 5:18 is that not only is drunkenness a sin, but all excess– not just other people’s excess– is sin as well.  Pardon me while I put away the Oreos.

I had an evangelist at my church once several years ago who was talking to me, with his wife, before a revival meeting one evening (yes, we still have those; that’s another article).  He was rattling on and on about some Southern Gospel quartets he liked, and which ones I needed to book soon, and asking me about which groups I liked the best, and had had at Pleasant Grove.  Now I’ve had some on the occasional Sunday evening; traditional Gospel, done well, and convictedly, can still be a tremendously Christ-honoring experience.  But I’ll never forget the look on his face when I just said, “Well, I’ve got to confess, I’m just not all that into Southern Gospel.”  His mouth literally dropped open.  After an awkward ten-second pause or so, his wife volunteered, “Well… then… what do you like?”  I replied that well, I guessed the radio station I was listening to in those days had a lot of Sixties- and Seventies-era rock and soul.  Her reply was priceless: “I think I heard some Sixties music… once.”  The conversation then turned toward whether I would be completely proud of my choices in music if the Rapture occurred at that moment, and my reply to that was that my eschatology was still somewhat in process; after subsequently explaining (to an ordained minister, no less) what eschatology was, I was advised to read my Bible.

Many evangelicals are in total paroxysmal mode these days over the need for men to be “manly” in order to be authentic Christian men, and by extension, leaders.  (I always thought it was more important for men to be Christlike in order to be authentic Christian men, but that’s just me.)  The idea of crawling out of bed at 3:30 a.m. on a rainy November morning to sit in a tree for hours, then celebrate defined success as the golden opportunity to dress a dead cervine mammal just doesn’t resonate with me.  A truck would rarely do me much good.  I don’t like guns, but I firmly support people’s Second Amendment rights.

Now some people might call me very manly.  I mean, I live alone ten miles outside of a town of 500, for petesake.  Most of my “cooking” involves disproportionate quantities of meat and/or cheese, and is consumed in inappropriate dishes while watching either a sporting event or “SportsCenter.”  But it’s not the be-all and end-all.

In pastoral ministry, the only ideal to which one needs to be concerned with conformity is the ideal of the person of Christ.  Recognize that you have your own needs, and your own strengths, and don’t apologize for them.  Take time off, and don’t apologize for it.  Feed your brain on something besides denominational publications.  Find someone you can love, not necessarily romantically, and be Christ to him or her.

What makes me myself?  Well, whatever it is, I won’t apologize for it.  There probably aren’t a whole lot of Southern Baptist ministers who are particularly into nineteenth-century philosophy and literature; or learning foreign languages (German, right now), or the NBA (and especially, Major League Baseball), and music– not just listening to it, and not just pop music, but participating in, and making music.  There probably aren’t a whole lot of Southern Baptist ministers who love the Book of Common Prayer, and Charlie Rose, and jazz.  But that’s okay.  I don’t need anybody to love any of these things.

I’ll close by relating a moment of near-perfection I experienced about six months ago.  It was a difficult time for me for a number of reasons, but I had been asked to sit it on piano with a big band in the Kansas City area the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving, and I went down and did it (again, not many Southern Baptist ministers would do this).  The forecast called for rain and snow mixed, and it was pouring and cold– not a good scenario for a 130-mile trek back home in the dark.  I wasn’t ready to retire at only 9:00 p.m., so I drove to Westport to listen to another big band with which I am privileged to sit in somewhat more often.  Now this band, New Jazz Order, is just electric.  I can’t really keep up with them.  New York and Paris musicians routinely fill in with them as they swing through Kansas City.  The friend who got me connected with them, a brilliant saxophonist and fellow Cardinals baseball fan, told me on my first gig, “You don’t have to be Albert Pujols.  You’re just [then-rookie and then-utility man] Skip Schumaker tonight.”  Now this band plays every Tuesday evening in a, well, endearingly awful bar in Westport.  I don’t drink, and discourage tavern patronization as a rule, but I went, ordered a Sprite, and sat down to listen.  It was time for the band’s break at 10:15 soon enough, and I had some conversation with their leader about several things.  He’s brilliant himself– not just as a trumpeter, but as an arranger (his arrangement of “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” is a simply perfect moment, and he can make the always-fresh Stevie Wonder a near spiritual experience) and composer (we need to hear his original work more often).  So anyway, before it was time for the band to start up again at 10:30, I told him that I probably needed to get to bed, but not before a Thad Jones chart.  The first number after the intermission (which is often the best moment of any musical show) was Jones and Lewis’ “Big Dipper,” which is a fun, greasy, shuffle standard of the Jones repertoire– except it was so musically nailed by New Jazz Order that evening as to almost apotheosize it.  I had to leave.  I was moved.

The rainy drive up empty, dark Kansas City freeways to my usual Northland motel was perfect itself in its usual indescribable way.  The next morning, I got up fairly early and attended Morning Prayer at a Northland Episcopal church whose marvelous pastor reads the liturgy for whoever will show up at 9:00 a.m.  I did that day, and the three of us read Scripture, prayed Cranmer’s (modified) words, meditated, and left.  And for whatever reason, the prayer of St. John Chrysostom which always closes Morning Prayer, hit me real hard that day in its usual acknowledgement of the presence of Christ where only two or three are gathered in His name (there were three of us).  I was yet more profoundly moved, by His presence in prayer, and by His presence in hospitality by a fellow pastor’s reading a liturgy so gladly and warmly for just me.  I drove onto I-35 and started weeping with joy and thanksgiving (and the next day was, well, Thanksgiving Day).

I need to get back to my old monthly habit of Tuesday night jazz and Wednesday Morning Prayer.  It’s what I do.  Through both experiences, I meet Christ.

One need not be “spiritual” to be, well, spiritual.  And I am a pastor, by God’s grace, just by being myself.    Further, I think that over ten years, God has somehow used me, despite my frequent resistance.  Dear colleagues, whoever you are, wherever you are, God made you who you are for a reason.  Be you, for God’s glory, and take care of that you you were created to be.  And may God grant you many days of joy, and friendship, and service.

3 Comments

Filed under Ten for Ten

Tagged as ,

May 17, 2012

When Christians attack: Dealing with church conflict from the pastor’s perspective (#8- Ten Lessons for Ten Years in Ministry)

I had a conversation once several years ago with a man who will remain nameless, but who was a prominent state senator in Missouri and statewide office aspirant with a long and distinguished military career.  He told me that the most difficult political job he ever had to accomplish was the position of Chairman of Deacons of the Southern Baptist church of which he was a member.  I chuckled for a moment, then he looked at me and said, “I’m not kidding.”

I’ve been burned a few times at this point, but I’m still reasonably confident when I say that I really believe that the vast majority of members in churches I’ve served have been people of good faith and intention.  It takes time to discern what the priorities of a congregation are, but the three congregations I’ve served have been populated with members who, generally, want a church that takes care of its own in times of crisis and despair, welcomes those who are without a church home, and attempts to reach those with no saving knowledge of Christ (roughly in that order, even).  These are good things.  In fact, they’re basic articulations of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission!  People of good faith disagree about a lot of things, and sometimes get hurt in the process. But people of good faith find ways to move on, even when others are ungracious to them.

To be honest, one way in which I am simply not cut out for pastoring at all– and continue to serve as a minister only by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit– is the fact that I am highly conflict-averse.  Even after ten years (seven in church positions), I don’t understand why a lot of church conflict happens.  The Church is the Body, visible and militant, of the Prince of Peace, a reality that shouldn’t mean we have no conflict with each other or the world, but rather that the fingerprints we leave in the world should be fingerprints of reconciliation.

And so it continues to simply floor me that the Church attracts so many people who are just, simply, mean.  It floors me that so many congregations– not my own– are characterized by constantly adversarial relationships between pastors and deacons, Sessions, Consistories, boards, or whatever each congregation calls the ubiquitous quasi-legislature that inevitably checks the primary preaching elder.  It also floors me that people leave the Church on a weekly (if not more often) basis, never to return, because the most hurtful things they’ve ever heard are things they were told by a plain old mean professing brother or sister in Christ.  It floors me that thousands of pastors are fired every year in the U.S.

I was one of them, in January 2003, only nine months into my first position.  I have no desire to disparage that church, so I won’t.  There were good people there, and I intended to resign anyway (I didn’t get the chance to do so).  My perspective was very small, and my toolbox was nearly empty; I, as a nineteen- and twenty-year-old, tried to impose a county-seat-style ministry on an impoverished congregation in a tiny town with an equally small, but completely different, perspective.  The pressure of the position, one for which I was not prepared in any way (I wasn’t even licensed), but called as a baptism by fire, I think, threw me into a nasty bout of digestive illnesses, something I continue to struggle with to this day.  I was also a full-time college student and driving forty-five miles each way for every service, three times a week.  It was too much.  But I learned.

Since then, I have been privileged (in a James 1 sort of way) to experience brief, but highly acute episodes of serious church conflict from the perspective of the pastor’s office (and the Associate Pastor’s office as well).  During those episodes, which usually seem interminable in the moment and in retrospect were usually relatively brief, I’ve had several common responses.  There’s a general inner gnawing.  There’s sleeplessness (it is nothing for me to stay up till 3:00 a.m. or even later, if only just to write– but the wee hours are all that much worse if there’s church conflict).  There are bad eating choices, and bad reading choices.  (I have a tendency to explore bad theology as a means of psychological escapism; Christian atheism a la Thomas Altizer was my last bad foray, to be honest).   Everybody’s natural reaction in threatening situations is either fight or flight; mine is flight, and that road atlas next to my living-room recliner has been badly dog-eared with longing looks at the maps of far-off states, or Canadian provinces, or obscure islands of the nearer oceans during those times.  Welcome to Escapists Anonymous.  My name’s Brian.

But if I can block the Greek chorus of doubt from my mind, those episodes have yielded some particularly sweet, and productive, sessions of study in God’s Word.  And I won’t boast, but the Spirit has empowered some of my finest sermons during seasons of intense church conflict, or depression– sometimes on no Saturday-night sleep at all.  (That’s no fun.)  I can notice that God is working in the lives of people more clearly– through a loving member’s smile, or a kind word– or through somebody who is obviously finding a deeper faith through it all.  I can notice, even, that simpler things, more common blessings, are more appreciated when they seem more rare: an afternoon drive to town, a song you haven’t heard for a while, a Facebook message from a friend.

How to approach conflict, then?  I’m not the best guy to answer that.  Pursue its resolution in appropriate channels, but realize that some people enjoy it too much.  I’ll never forget the meeting where somebody with whom I disagreed on an issue looked me in the eye and said, “I’ll go around and around with you all night.  I don’t care.  You’ll never persuade me.”  I realized that he enjoyed the conflict, and because I knew him, my pain.  I gave up, because it wasn’t that big of a deal.  And pray.  For me, I’m honestly not to the point where I can just pray, “Lord, thank You for this conflict.  It’s a privilege to learn endurance.”  No– I pray to get out of it, and to learn something along the way.  God has never failed to grant that request.

And I’ve learned one more thing from my seasons of conflict.  Many people on church rolls are lost, unregenerate tares.  Jesus knew this would happen, and allowed it (why I don’t know).  And I know that tares aren’t wheat, and don’t produce a fruit worth harvesting, a sign that the Devil has worked to counterfeit the Holy Spirit’s work in the mystery that is the Church (Matthew 13:28).  And I further know that in this life, tares and wheat grow together in the Church, “until the harvest,” and when the harvest comes, the Lord will say to His reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them.” (Matthew 13:30, NKJV)  Many of them will plead self-righteousness and busy status in the Church, and Jesus will look at them in the judgment and say, “I never knew you; depart from Me.” (Matthew 7:23, NKJV)

And I shudder.  Because here’s the thing.  Call it Stockholm syndrome, even.  But the more I deal with meanness in the Church, and provocateurs of conflict, I see their humanity.  I see that they hurt others because they hurt deeply themselves, and feel such profound disappointment in their own lives.  I see that often, they look at Church personalities as psychological symbols of the frustrations they feel with authority and the world.  And I love them.  I have church members even where I currently serve for whose salvation and blessing I regularly pray.  And you can’t help it– the more you pray for someone, the more you love them.  It’s a funny thing, or better, the presence of God working in your life.

Conflict is inevitable.  Burnout isn’t, necessarily.  Love never is inevitable.  For me, love isn’t a choice– it’s an evolution brought on by the Spirit’s sweet presence.  Pursue His presence, and the Church will be a place you can love, and from which you can learn– for God’s glory, and your good.

 

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Ten for Ten

Tagged as , ,

May 17, 2012

Attention-deficit America

When Americans talk politics, a few stock attitudes toward their own political process often emerge.  Politicians are all alike.  Politicians are all corrupt.  The two parties are the same.  Our leaders aren’t dealing with the real issues.  There are varying degrees of truth to each of these statements.  On the last one, the truth comes only by asking some tough questions– questions with tougher answers than we may want to admit.

It’s really hard to find a polling firm or major media outlet who will ask very specific questions of the public when determining which issues are most important to Americans politically in this election year (most leave the question open-ended), but the results come out similar in most major polls.  Gallup’s most recent poll, from a little over a week ago, shows that Americans’ top three concerns are “economy in general” (no descriptive qualifier), “dissatisfaction with government,” and “unemployment/jobs.”  These are answers so broad, and so vague, as to be almost meaningless.  But together, they might tell us something, since their combined share of the Gallup sample was about two-thirds: Americans aren’t only concerned about the traditional pocketbook issues in a time of tremendous economic uncertainty– they’re concerned about the fundamentals of the process usually pursued to correct the pocketbook issues.  Anybody who’s watching cultural discourse in even a casual way can see that “dissatisfaction with government” is an indictment not so much of gridlock; gridlock is a fact of American political life.  It’s an indictment of the psychodrama that characterizes Washington with disturbingly increasing frequency.  Serious structural issues with profound implications for the ongoing health of the U.S. economy as we know it– like the question of raising the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011 and, next, it looks, the question of extension of the G.W. Bush tax rates in late summer or early autumn of this year– aren’t resolved until the very, very last minute, after markets have significantly tumbled and stability questions are raised (as in the form of a credit downgrade from Standard and Poor’s last August).  And the cumulative effect of these chicken crises is an erosion of popular confidence in the process of republican governance as Americans have traditionally understood it.

Yet most popular media discourse exists in some sort of alternate reality, a reality in which most Americans, even those politically connected, seem content to live.  This is nowhere more evident than in the cultural flashpoint experienced last week after Vice President Joe Biden, and later President Obama, announced support for the legalization of same-sex marriage.  Now of course, Biden is well-known for his glad verbosity, and NBC News is recognized by many as having a cozy relationship with the Administration, but still, an interview with the Vice President is a rare privilege; one wonders why, given only a few minutes, “Meet the Press” anchor David Gregory chose to inquire about the issue of same-sex marriage with the Vice President.  We know how it all went down, ending with the President’s announcement of support just over forty-eight hours later with ABC News’ Robin Roberts.  This announcement plunged the country into its usual cultural tribalism with predictable alliances.

Same-sex marriage is a serious issue, to be sure.  It has existential implications for the future of the most fundamental social institution, marriage.  But even the President’s stance– that states should be allowed to decide its legality– all but ensures that he intends to take no action on the issue before the election (we must allow room for further “evolution” following November 6, should he be re-elected).  The effect of this stance: Chatter and jabber, and distraction.  Remember that Gallup poll?  ”Gay rights issues” were mentioned by less than a half of one percent of Americans as the most important problem facing the country.  Nobody expected the issue of same-sex marriage, or abortion (also mentioned by less than a half of one percent), to be the issue on which this election turned before last week– and few more expect it to do so now.

The press is fascinated this week with the trial of the pathetic John Edwards, a reasonable story to cover, considering that Edwards was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee as recently as 2004.  The George Zimmerman case– was he really injured by Trayvon Martin or not?– continues to make headlines with little discernible relevance to the fundamental issues of the nation, and world.  Issues of racial conflict are always trendy.  Identity politics is always an interesting storyline, and it’s a storyline that feeds Millennial desires to overcome white guilt and Democratic-party efforts to win by building a broad coalition of tiny demographic splinters.  The line between mainstream and tabloid media is ever blurring; mainstream television news and newspapers routinely treat the run-up to the “American Idol” finale and appearances on “The View” as headline news.  It’s distraction.  It’s obfuscation.  It serves the status quo.

The current situation bears odd similarity to the summer of 2001.  Two stories consumed American media, and cultural, interest.  Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.), revealed as having been involved in an affair with former intern Chandra Levy, was the subject of intense media scrutiny after Levy’s disappearance; he was later cleared of all suspicion in her death, but not after constant cable-news coverage destroyed his political career.  And who can forget the shark attacks?  After eight-year-old Jessie Arbogast lost his arm (and nearly bled to death) to a hungry shark on a beach in Pensacola, Florida, on July 6, his uncle dragged the shark by hand onshore and killed it.  It wasn’t an unusually heavy summer for shark attacks in the United States, but the media found little else to talk about (President Bush’s first prime-time address in office, August 9, announced legalization of federal funding for very limited amounts of embryonic stem-cell research on lines of embryos already destroyed, and this was the biggest political story of the summer); popular outcry even led to legislation in Florida banning human feeding of sharks.

A bright Tuesday morning in September ended all of that chatter, and a new, uncertain reality set in.  What Americans, political or otherwise, elected or not, weren’t talking about in the summer of 2001 was the increasing stridency of the Taliban (the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was a warning sign), rising oil and commodities prices, and growing unrest in Israel and Pakistan.  These were salient issues, but not interesting ones, or ones that most Americans could be convinced were relevant to them immediately.

The issues Americans aren’t talking about today are issues of existential crisis.  Greek voters, unable to elect a government, are set to elect a government that will reject all German/ECB-imposed austerity measures, a decision that European Central Bank directors are beginning to openly assure the world will result in the exit of Greece from the eurozone.  This could put increased pressure on the Spanish economy next to impose austerity on an already tottering economy with over twenty percent unemployment; Mariano Rajoy’s new conservative government balks at Germany’s austerity impositions on national-sovereignty grounds.  Most economists now agree that the euro will not be recognizable in its current form a year from now, and the worst economic forecasts show a GDP contraction of as much as five percent for Europe if Greece leaves.

Meanwhile, the conservative Likud-led government of Israel added centrist Kadima to its coalition last week in a move that has been widely interpreted as a prelude for war with Iran.  The new Israeli coalition now controls ninety-four of the Knesset’s 120 seats among right-wing Likud, centrist Kadima, and left-wing Labor members.  A national unity government this is, if ever there were one.

Back home, the U.S. national debt will surpass $16 trillion by the end of the year.  Inability to compromise  on tax increases and spending cuts will result in crippling $500 billion cuts to both Medicare and defense spending, as well as a reversion to Clinton-era tax rates at the end of the year, a tax increase that will affect every income taxpayer in the country and remove hundreds of billions of dollars from the economy at a time when the weakest of economic recoveries is already faltering.

And yet we talk about same-sex marriage instead.

The issues this fall will be clear: the existential crisis of debt to the Western way of life (and this will be far more evident by late summer to the average voter than it is now), war in the Middle East, and how to pull the U.S. economy back from a self-imposed trip to the brink.  Ultimately, the question in voters’ minds in choosing between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is one of competence: Who is better suited to manage not a political machine, but a nation in crisis?

These questions will require sobriety, focus, and diligence on the part of the American public.  The question for now is whether the American public can pay attention long enough to rise to the task.

1 Comment

Filed under Politics

Tagged as , , , , ,

May 11, 2012

Playing nicely with others: Finding colleagues and making friends in ministry (#7- Ten Lessons for Ten Years in Ministry)

Being a pastor is just like any other line of work in one important respect (and others, of course): If you can’t make friends, you’re going to just kind of dry up and blow away.

In most of the United States, finding other pastors is not difficult.  I serve a congregation located ten miles outside of a town of 500 people.  Our tiny community has three other churches besides my own: an Assembly of God, a Christian church nominally affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, and a United Methodist church.  About a third of my congregation lives in the rural areas of the unincorporated communities of New Boston and St. Catharine; both of those towns have sister congregations of the Southern Baptist Convention, and New Boston has two independent Christian churches.  We’re not exactly crying out with a church-planting need around here.  Southern Baptists, generally, identify themselves in state-level conventions as well as local-level “associations,” and the association with which my church affiliates counts twenty-seven churches, almost all of which are within a very easy drive.  Most of these churches have pastors, and I count myself on friendly terms with all of them.

Often, people will come to their pastors for emotional and spiritual support, and that is exactly what I hope we as pastors want them to do.  That’s a big part of what we’re here for!  But pastors are just as human as anybody in the Church (or outside the Church), and need emotional and spiritual support ourselves.  Sometimes we need ministry advice, or simply to compare notes professionally.  So collegial relationships among pastors are absolutely important.  In my denominational context, I believe strongly that a major purpose of the association is to call an associational minister (usually called a “Director of Missions”) to be a pastor to pastors– I have the absolute luxury of a Director of Missions who is not only that, but also a real, challenging thinker.  (Mike Manning is not my colleague so much as he is my pastoral authority, even though we occasionally disagree– but that occurrence is very unusual, and nobody’s more gracious about it than he is.)

The problem is that sometimes you find yourself a bit of an odd duck.  Don’t get me wrong– I’m a Baptist through and through, and a Southern Baptist by choice– but few of my colleagues are into praying the hours, or the liturgical calendar, or, honestly, encouraging theological conversation that doesn’t assume a revivalist, dispensationalist, or neo-Calvinist posture.  I can’t find a lot of members of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to be the bogeymen that we’re told they are (I wish they would uphold a need for basic Christian orthodoxy as much as they uphold individual soul competency and local church autonomy, though).  I don’t mind fellowship with ordained women at all.  I just can’t get into Southern Gospel or contemporary Christian music most of the time.  I can’t get excited about big-event evangelism.

And everybody has their unique eccentricities with their denominations like I do.  That’s why you have to be somewhat intentional about building collegial relationships outside your denominational boxes.  While I have many, many dear friends and very trusted colleagues in my association, and in SBC life generally, I find my ministerial alliance, small as it is, to often be as good a support network and idea bank as anything.  (I bet I’m not the only one who feels that way.)  I think of these relationships as the non-conference games on the football schedule of professional life.  You seek them out; you cultivate them; you live in them.  I still long for a lunch fellowship in my area that just involves conversation geared toward pastors of either a non-revivalist or non-fundamentalist persuasion.  (Of course, they should be welcome, too.  But they can’t dominate every conversation.)

And it’s even more important in our collegial relationships to model Christian interpersonal living for laypeople in our own congregations.  I will always give another pastor the benefit of the doubt when someone tries to disparage him to me, knowing that every story has two sides and that I probably don’t know the other one.  I almost never give unsolicited advice, and I try never to interfere with the intra-church decisions and conflicts that every congregation must face, and in which their pastors are by nature embroiled.  I will, simply, do my best to be a good neighbor.  And I will also understand that among my colleagues, my neighbors are going to be people with whom I don’t always agree.  Christ died for them, too, and I will spend eternity with them.  (Might as well get used to them now.)

I want my relationships to exalt the calling that the pastorate is, a calling that has honestly taken an absolute beating in recent years.  I want people to understand that when pastors respect each other, the ministry will be a more respected office, which is good for laymen (Hebrews 13:17).  When I disagree with others in a denominationally deliberative context, I will do so honestly, passionately, and forthrightly– but respectfully.  (Our political leaders should do the same thing, come to think of it.)

I’m proud of what I do.  My colleagues are a hard-working (does anybody notice the lives of bivocational pastors?  Wow), loving, passionate lot.  I love them, even if I want to lock them in isolated rooms sometimes.  I look forward to our eternity together.  After all, doesn’t Scripture say that it’s a good thing– even a pleasant thing– for brothers to dwell together in unity?

Leave a Comment

Filed under Ten for Ten

Tagged as , ,

May 11, 2012

The perils and prizes of pastoral visitation (#6- Ten Lessons for Ten Years in Ministry)

If you want to get in trouble as a pastor, and get in trouble fast, do visitation wrong– or, worse, don’t do it.

Pastors have always had some differing approaches to the call for visitation, but I’ve never met a physician of the soul who didn’t deliver a house call now and then.  Some make visitation virtually their entire ministry, a decision which will inevitably cause preaching to suffer; others will rarely visit, a decision which will just as inevitably sabotage the absolutely necessary relational element that makes for a successful pastorate.  Very simply, people will not trust the pastor who will not be there, because that absence reinforces the persistent lies of the soul’s dark tormentor that his God is not there, either.

The thing about a visitation ministry, however, is that to make it work, it has to be first externally structured as part of an overall system of ministry priorities that will flow from each individual pastoral theology, and second internally structured for frequency and time management.  No pastor can do everything all the time, and no pastor can be everywhere at once.  So we have to prioritize.  My pastoral visitation is, to the chagrin of a frankly shrinking number, a high priority, but not my highest one in my pastoral theology.  As I see it, the fundamental call of the pastor is a call to a life of prayer.  When the Apostles realized that ministry to the Jerusalem church was overwhelming to them (and there were twelve of them, mind you), they instituted the Diaconate in order to, first, “give [themselves] continually to prayer.” (Acts 6:4, NKJV)  Prayer will be, I hope, a structured, set-aside discipline within our day as pastors, but prayer will also be expressed as an ongoing, almost subconscious conversation with God, a constant availability on a red phone that never rests on a cradle.  The immediate secondary call, also in Acts 6:4, is to “the ministry of the word.”  The priority of preaching is not just prioritized in Acts 6.  Paul urges Timothy to “give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.” (I Timothy 4:13, NKJV)  Paul also describes “elders who rule well” as those who “labor in the word and doctrine.” (I Timothy 5:17, NKJV)  Sermons don’t magically appear; they require work, preparation, study.  That must be prioritized.  There’s nothing wrong with spending time in the office as a pastor; it doesn’t mean you’re not available– my door’s always open and there are working telephones in it– but it should mean you’re preparing.

That said, elders are required to leave the office to be around God’s people on their turf, especially as crisis looms.  If a believer is sick, James urges him to call the elders for prayer and even anointing (James 5:14).  It’s not a specific description of the presbytery, but our Lord looks forward to rewarding those who visited Him as they visited those who were sick and prison at His return (Matthew 25:36).  And I think that Peter offers the scriptural equivalent of the Constitution’s so-called “elastic clause” for ministry when he commands us to “[s]hepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.” (I Peter 5:2-3, NKJV)  We should strive, then, as pastors to meet our congregations where they feel their visitation needs to be, as best we can, but at the same time acknowledge that we will not succeed at meeting human expectations at all times.

I have found it absolutely imperative to establish for myself personal policies on visitation.  You may like these, or you may find them crazy.  Here are some of them:

1. If a member, regular attender, or immediate, non-church-connected family member of a member of my congregation is in a hospital, I will visit them once every other day, or once every day in a number equal to the number of hours’ drive it will take me to get to that hospital (e.g., three hours’ drive= once every three days), whichever is less frequent, or if I’m in the city where that hospital is for another reason.  My tiny town has no hospital, so driving for hospital visits adds up fast.

2. If a member is homebound or institutionalized for any reason (in a nursing home, rehabilitation facility, jail or prison– yes, I have done jail visits on members), I will do my absolute best to visit that member once a week as long as that institution is within fifty miles’ drive of the church (if it’s more, I’ll just visit when I’m in that town).  They are unable to be a part of the fellowship of the church gathered, so I feel it incumbent on me to take the fellowship of the church to them.

3. If someone who is not a regular attender of our church visits the church twice, I will visit him as I am able for fellowship and conversation about spiritual matters, as well as an introduction to my congregation.

4. If a member or regular attender misses three weeks of worship in a row without telling me that the absence was planned, I will visit him as I am able to try to encourage that person to rejoin our fellowship and repair any rifts that might have occurred in our relationship.

5. If I am unable to attend a funeral visitation for a member or immediate family member of a member, I will make every effort to visit the affected member in his home as soon as possible following the funeral.

6. If a senior adult member or regular attender requests regular visitation, I will honor that request.  If there is no timetable request for visitation frequency, I will visit once a month.

I try to keep visits in categories 1 and 2 to about fifteen minutes’ duration; visits in categories 3 and 4 could be anywhere, but most likely around fifteen minutes to at most half an hour; I will not allow visits in category 5 to exceed an hour (it sounds cruel, but I learned this the hard way with a member.  You are not just one person’s pastor, and you–and that person– need to remember that).

I also have a policy unusual to many pastors I know: I will not sit in a waiting room during a planned operation unless a member specifically asks me to do so.  After doing that a good number of times, I learned that I was far more often in the way of a family than I was actually a help.  My policy is to begin visits on the second day of a hospitalization, after the initial excitement and unsettledness settles down a bit, and a person is ready for the fellowship of the Church.

When it comes to emergency situations, my policy is also pretty simple: If a member’s being rushed to a hospital, I’ll drop everything I’m doing and go.  And, to be sure, I’ll use my judgment in other situations.  I had a member call me one day and ask me for a home visit immediately.  Without going into details, I learned quickly that it was not truly a medical emergency, but it was the worst pastoral crisis I’ve ever faced.  I literally left lights on and left, and eleven hours later, was back in my office.  I was, honestly, traumatized by the day for a good while.  Equally honestly, I wouldn’t trade that day for everything I had.

This is not a pastoral visitation policy that would work for every church.  If it looks heavy to you, I would only reply by saying that it is partly my preference, and also partly a response to a congregation accustomed to very heavy pastoral visitation over the years from previous pastors.  Also remember that it’s not unanimously favored even within my current congregation; I have a number of members who find it consistently insufficient, and others who find it smothering!  I also would mention that the vast majority of visitation in a healthy church should be performed by laymen, especially (in a basically Reformed church context) by deacons, but don’t be surprised when it doesn’t happen and never happens.

You will not please everybody.  But your efforts will, at some level, be noticed.  Timely pastoral visitation can win trust and favor for you, and better, confidence in Christ.  But we cannot visit because it gets us anywhere; some people consider visitation simply expected and offer no thanks whatsoever for it.  And that’s okay.  We work not for people, but for the Chief Shepherd, who at His appearing will give faithful pastors “the crown of glory that does not fade away.” (I Peter 5:4, NKJV)  Keep that in mind as you drive, and drive, and drive some more for God’s glory (and yes, your good).

2 Comments

Filed under Ten for Ten

Tagged as ,

May 9, 2012

Preaching with a long view (#5- Ten Lessons for Ten Years in Ministry)

Everybody’s got an opinion on preaching.  Everybody does.  Even the most fervent opponents of Christianity associate preaching with the practice of Christian worship in the Church.  (And, most of the time, hate it.)  And many Christians assume that preaching is an essential part of their Sunday experience.  (And, in many cases, also hate it.)

When you sit down and think about (as, well, I have), preaching is a ludicrous exercise and, on its face, a waste of time.  (Stick with me, Baptists.)  Who really wants to volunteer to sit down and face a barrage of rhetorical flotsam on a regular basis from a probably unattractive-looking speaker?  Even the apostle Paul (at least in the KJV) called preaching “foolishness.” (I Cor. 1:21)  I’ve felt many times over the last ten years that I was wasting my time preaching, often during the sermon itself!  I cannot count the number of times I’ve watched people sleep through a message I’d worked hours on, or worse, intentionally sleep; I had a man once who would tilt his head back and rest it on his hands in the pew the moment I stepped into the pulpit.  I’ve had services before where I thought I’d written something meaningful in God’s presence in my office (or at home, in early years), only to have three or four people show up; twice in my career, nobody has come at all to a service in which I was to preach.   I was asked once by a deacon if I enjoyed preaching, and I replied that I did.  He told me that he found that odd.  (I think others feel that way as well, and strangely, I don’t think it odd, well, that, say, mechanics find working on cars enjoyable.)   And on those nights, you wonder why you do what you do.

And the answer is because you were blessed by God, and because you were specifically called according to your divine giftedness to do so.  Many in American churches have diminished preaching profoundly; we call the sermon a “talk,” drown it in movie clips and treat it like a stand-up act.  Pastors downplay their roles as preachers in favor of those as (e.g., Joel Osteen) “life coaches,” counselors, companions, and administrators.   Yet we forget so often that a strong case can be made that as God gave the Church, among others, “pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11), that the two roles were intended to be one (they share one common article in the Greek– τουσ δε ποιμενασ και διδασκαλουσ– that can indicate unity).  One cannot be a pastor without being a teacher.  Preaching gives us, at least in my case, two or three occasions a week to pastor the church through teaching.  We have the opportunity to make disciples, to reveal God’s Word, to model patterns for mining the golden depths of His truth and heart, through, well, preaching.  I don’t like to be told what to preach, so I don’t tell others what to preach themselves.  But in my experience, I’ve found expository preaching, usually exegeting a verse at a time through books of the Bible, to be the most pastoral way to approach preaching, and better, to make disciples of my congregations.  (Yes, I also will preach topical series from time to time, but each sermon has a single text which I exegete to argue for an overarching series theme.)

And pastoring is, thankfully, offered with an indefinite call in almost all Southern Baptist churches today.  This approach has led to some painfully long series, I will admit, series that were probably too long.  Matthew took three years at Pleasant Grove.  This Sunday night, I will finish Zechariah with my congregation after nine months.  But I take breaks often, and move series around among services so that people who only can attend one a week will get some variety between the Testaments.  This approach forces me to present the full counsel of Scripture, and to constantly attempt to reveal the overarching redemptive theme of the Gospel in literally every verse of the Bible.  Some of the most powerfully evangelistic moments I feel I’ve had in preaching came in a Pleasant Grove series in the fall of 2008 through Habakkuk, for instance.  It also takes the humanistic onus of decision production off of each individual sermon.  Each sermon is self-contained, and a unique thought, yes.  But each sermon is also going to be part of a bigger picture, and that’s the point.  The real thesis– the Gospel– can be made in half an hour, or five minutes, or five years.  Different people take different times to process the Gospel.  Realizing this truth through long series builds patience and endurance.  ”But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:4, NKJV)  And, in a way, none of us do completely in this life.

I’ve been asked before if I write my sermons specifically for me, or for somebody else in particular.  The answer is no, but the study process always seems to meet me in a sensitive place.  I’ve also been asked why I even prepare at all in view of the Holy Spirit’s ability to give anyone a message at any time.  The answer: Why can’t God meet me in my office to prepare?  He often does just that.

Preaching is a gift.  Make the most of it, because teaching the Scriptures is an unspeakably glorious opportunity.

1 Comment

Filed under Ten for Ten

Tagged as , , ,

April 26, 2012

France’s crossroads: The big questions of life

The French word escapes me, but they call him “Milk Pudding.”  Francois Hollande, the stylistically bland Socialist Party nominee for President of France, is called “center-Left” in the French context, but to an American, he’s, well, just what his party name denotes– a socialist– and we remember that to those of us over here in the United States, socialism carries a much different connotation than it does there.

It’s hard to believe that the French haven’t elected a PS nominee since Francois Mitterrand’s last election all the way back in 1988.  It really goes without saying that almost everything is different now.  Most of the presidential candidates in Sunday’s first-round election spoke at length about preserving “the French way of life.”  Understanding this term is key to understanding so much about the state of French culture, specifically, but more generally to understanding Europe and the West at twilight.  The French love their socialism, and prefer it served soft.  It’s a socialism that attempts to remove the risk and doubt from life without also removing the freedom one has to make decisions to generally pursue personal happiness.  It’s a socialism with elections, yes, and elections with occasionally substantive distinctions among candidates, but socialism in which somebody else is still always ultimately responsible for you: This socialism pays for education, for job training, for health care.  It mandates that if you can find a job, that job must pay a minimum wage of about $12.20 an hour, as well as provide thirty days of paid vacation annually.  As is typical in European mixed economies, France currently has a 10% unemployment rate, but if you can’t find a job, or you just don’t want to work, and you’ve had a job for four of the last twenty-eight months, you can claim unemployment benefits of about half your previous wage for up to two years (three if you’re over 50).  Partial retirement can be claimed at 62, and full retirement at 65.

It really sounds lovely.  The postwar years were great to France, and high birthrates, rapid industrialization, and the end of colonial burden freed the French economy to rapidly expand.  The French political consensus was similar to that of most of the industrial West, especially in Europe, to temper industrialization with a comfortable, generous social safety net, one crafted by de Gaulle and coalition partners ranging from center-right to Communist, in the Fourth Republic era (1946-58).  With average GDP increases at 5% a year from 1946 to 1975, the French could afford such social luxury.

Those days are ending.  Even though GDP growth was a little under 2% last year, government spending is increasingly unsustainable; there’s a $200 billion budget deficit this year, which is nearly 8% of total GDP.  Standard and Poor’s has already downgraded French debt to AA+, and Moody’s may soon follow suit.  Center-right (such as it is in France) President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken some very tentative steps toward improving sustainability, such as modestly increasing the retirement age (two years over an eight-year period) and attempting to reduce the budget deficit to EU guidelines over time.  Hollande, for his part, is calling for the early retirement age to be returned to 60 (even though almost every European country is increasing it, due to growing life expectancy and decreasing revenue for pension programs), the minimum wage to be indexed to both GDP growth and inflation, and 60,000 new federally-funded teaching positions, with a massive tax increase on those making over a million euros a year to pay for it all (few countries in the world have more rich expatriates than France).

The French know this can’t work, but the attachment to a dying system in a dying world order is propped up with sentimentality and anger.  There are scapegoats, to be sure, and scapegoating drives extremism. Many are reporting about the surprising success of Marine Le Pen’s National Front (and, to a much lesser extent, Gaullist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan’s Arise the Republic) on the Right; the French Right’s scapegoats are multiculturalism, immigration, and free trade.  Radical Islam is a problem, yes, for France, and an inability to assimilate with the broader culture has led to sky-high Muslim unemployment, and with it, social spending and general unrest.  But the real unreported story of Sunday’s first round is the remarkable success of the far Left.  Firebrand Jean-Luc Melanchon of the Left Front (into which the Communist Party has folded) brought in a strong fourth-place finish, and combined with the other hard-socialist parties, the far Left received about fifteen percent of the vote.  The Left blames capitalism, and, somewhat oddly, the existence of markets themselves.  Even Hollande has declared France “free from the whims of markets.”  How?  Everything has a market.  If government controls a market, then a market is not sustained by those with capital, but by those with connection.  There’s still a game; the playing pieces just change.

Europe generally is increasingly vulnerable to extremism.  As mainstream, traditional parties flounder in finding solutions to the growing European crisis of debt and spending, and as ordinary Europeans of the middle class and below recognize more and more that an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels and its one-size-fits-none currency are counterproductive to their economic needs, nationalism will become increasingly appealing.  Alternatively, an increasingly appealing solution will be the denial of the Left: blame markets, blame capitalism, blame America; blame the banks.  Spend, since the money is all imaginary, anyway.  (Isn’t it?)  Several commentators noted that the atmosphere around this French election is the most desperate they had seen in their lifetimes.  It’s as if we all know in the West that our lifestyles are unaffordable economically, unsustainable spiritually (and, to some extent, environmentally),  and undesirable ultimately.  They can only be propped up so long.  And somebody always– always– must pay the bill.

Those nations who succeed, then, in the West, over the next five to ten years will be those whose people recognize with greater consensus what really is important in life.  Must everybody have an education– one that increasingly extends beyond the traditional timeframe into the late twenties and even thirties– at others’ expense?  Must everybody be entitled to a personal era of leisure that encompasses the entirety of the final third of life?  Must we each possess gadgetry, housing, and transportation that keeps us the envy of, well, somebody, and more importantly, entertained constantly?  Most fundamentally, must entertainment– mere pleasure– be the ultimate social aim?

Soft socialism is appealing to the human spirit because of its materialist background.  It promises us pleasure with little responsibility.  But there comes a time when pleasure must be redefined to acknowledge reality.  We then find pleasure in less material, far richer things: in family, in freedom, in the divine.  The French are quickly approaching that time.  So is most of the West.  It’s time to decide what our pleasure will be, before time takes the pleasure of deciding that question for us.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Politics

Tagged as , , , , ,