Page 4908 – Christianity Today (2024)

on Humility:

God creates out of nothing. Therefore, until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him.

If you perhaps look for praise and would sulk or quit what you are doing if you did not get it—if you are of that stripe, dear friend—then take yourself by the ears, and if you do this in the right way, you will find a beautiful pair of big, long, shaggy donkey hears.

Affliction is the best book in my library.

on the Bible:

The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.

I’d like all my books to be destroyed so that only the sacred writings in the Bible would be diligently read.

on Marriage and Family:

Think of all the squabble Adam and Eve must have had in the course of their nine hundred years. Eve would say, “You ate the apple,” and Adam would retort, “You gave it to me.”

People who do not like children are swine, dunces, and blockheads, not worthy to be called men and women, because they despise the blessing of God, the Creator and Author of marriage.

on Faith:

Faith is the “yes” of the heart, a conviction on which one stakes one’s life.

The truth is mightier than eloquence, the Spirit greater than genius, faith more than education.

Our faith is an astounding thing—astounding that I should believe him to be the Son of God who is suspended on the cross, whom I have never seen, with whom I have never become acquainted.

on Human Nature:

Nothing is easier than sinning.

Human nature is like a drunk peasant. Lift him into the saddle on one side, over he topples on the other side.

God uses lust to impel man to marriage, ambition to office, avarice to earning, and fear to faith.

Temptations, of course, cannot be avoided, but because we cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, there is no need that we should let them nest in our hair.

A lie is like a snowball. The longer it is rolled on the ground the larger it becomes.

on Preaching:

When I preach I regard neither doctors nor magistrates, of whom I have above forty in my congregation; I have all my eyes on the servant maids and on the children. And if the learned men are not well pleased with what they hear, well, the door is open.

It is not necessary for a preacher to express all his thoughts in one sermon. A preacher should have three principles: first, to make a good beginning, and not spend time with many words before coming to the point; secondly, to say that which belongs to the subject in chief, and avoid strange and foreign thoughts; thirdly, to stop at the proper time.

on Church Practices:

A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a cardinal without it.

What lies there are about relics! One claims to have a feather from the wing of the angel Gabriel, and the Bishop of Mainz has a flame from Moses’ burning bush. And how does it happen that eighteen apostles are buried in Germany when Christ had only twelve?

Farewell to those who want an entirely pure and purified church. This is plainly wanting no church at all.

on Music:

The devil should not be allowed to keep all the best tunes for himself.

I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Next after theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.

on Christian Freedom:

Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, aye, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all.

If our Lord is permitted to create nice large pike and good Rhine wine, presumably I may be allowed to eat and drink.

Not only are we the freest of kings, we are also priests forever, which is far more excellent than being kings, for as priests we are worthy to appear before God to pray for others and to teach one another divine things.

on Prayer:

Oh, if only I could pray the way this dog watches the meat! All his thoughts are concentrated on the piece of meat. Otherwise he has no thought, wish, or hope.

No man should be alone when he opposes Satan. The church and the ministry of the Word were instituted for this purpose, that hands may be joined together and one may help another. If the prayer of one doesn’t help, the prayer of another will.

I have often learned much more in one prayer than I have been able to glean from much reading and reflection.

on Himself

Next to faith, this is the highest art: to be content in the calling in which God has placed you. I have not learned it yet.

Our Lord God must be a pious man to be able to love rascals. I can’t do it, and yet I am a rascal myself.

“[Others] try to make me a fixed star, but I am an irregular planet.”

If I rest, I rust.

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

“I am the son of a peasant,” Luther once said, “and the grandson and the great-grandson.” Martin’s father, Hans Luder, was indeed of humble peasant stock. But he became a copper-mining entrepreneur. Hans worked hard to climb the social ladder of the middle class. His motto: “A free peasant is nobody’s slave.”

Hans married Margaretha (also known as Hannah) Lindemann, daughter of an established middleclass family that included doctors, lawyers, university professors, and politicians. Martin’s career track of university education (with the goal of practicing law) was probably influenced by relatives on his mother’s side.

Hans was proud when his son earned a master’s degree. He dreamed of Martin’s future career in law and the financial rewards it would bring the family. So he was furious, at least initially, when his son decided to enter a monastery.

When Martin was ordained, Hans attended his son’s first mass. Afterward, Martin asked his father if this new career wasn’t better than being a lawyer. His father rebuked him, “Haven’t you heard the commandment to honor your father and mother?”

Rebellion Against Harshness?

The older biographical portraits of Hans and Hannah were stern, based on a few stray comments from Martin’s later recollections of his childhood. He remembered his father once whipping him so badly that he “ran away and felt ugly toward him” until his father worked to regain the boy’s trust. Martin was also reported by his students to have said: “My mother once beat me with a cane for stealing a nut, until the blood came. Such strict discipline drove me to the monastery, although she meant it well.”

Comments like these led some twentieth-century biographers, influenced by modern psychological theories, to trace Martin’s deep inner conflicts as an adult to his parents’ harshness. Hans in particular was seen as a tyrant who indirectly sparked the Reformation by provoking Martin’s rebellion against authoritarian fathers of all stripes—Hans, the pope, and even God.

More recent scholarship, however, looks skeptically at the conclusions of such “psychohistory.” The severe discipline Martin recalled was common in his day, and numerous other clues from his life show he was highly esteemed by his parents.

Luther was deeply devoted to both Hans and Hannah, and he desired that they approve of his controversial career. Later in his life, when writing On Monastic Vows, Martin dedicated the book to his father. He wrote that his father’s earlier rebuke about honoring parents had been right: “You quickly came back with a reply so fitting and so much to the point that I have scarcely in my life heard any man say anything that struck me so forcibly and stayed with me so long.”

On his way to the ecclesiastical hearing at Augsburg, when he feared the heretic’s stake lay ahead, Luther’s thoughts turned to the welfare of his mother and father. “Now I must die,” he said. “What a disgrace I shall be to my parents!”

Paul Thigpen, a professional writer, is a doctoral candidate at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

A pulpit generally looks just fine-when it’s seen from the pew.

Commanding center stage-except in a divided chancel-it can be quite impressive. It’s the main focus of attention, a kind of Mount Sinai, from which a preacher hands down divine pronouncements every Sunday.

Maybe that’s why so many floral arrangements find their way to the front and sides of the pulpit. Flowers make Mount Sinai seem a little softer and friendlier.

A pulpit is so awesome, some call it a “sacred desk”-a strange name really, because no one ever preaches from a desk or writes at a pulpit.

But if you think a pulpit looks awesome from the front, you should see it from the back-the view the preacher and choir get. If the front of a pulpit resembles Mount Sinai, the back resembles the valley of Hinnom-Jerusalem’s garbage dump.

You just can’t imagine what’s buried under the “sacred desk.” An inventory would likely include an earring, keys to a Chevy Corvair, a copy of last year’s Christmas program, half a glass of water- long since dried out-left by an evangelist two years ago, a copy of the annual budget, a dozen Mother’s Day bookmarks, a broken Christmas tree ornament,

and umpteen hand-written notes that missed the bulletin and had to be read from the pulpit:

“Thanks for the flowers and prayers . . .”

“The Women’s Missionary Fellowship meeting has been postponed . . .”

“Remember to bring your favorite dessert . . .”

“Please pick up your teen at 8 A.M., after the allnight lock-in . . .”

“Workers are still needed for VBS . . .”

Why, an archaeologist could almost reconstruct the church’s history from digging into the back of the pulpit.

Perhaps it’s good that the pulpit has two sides. The front inspires worshipers; the back keeps the preacher in touch. After all, the world, like the back of a pulpit, is full of discards-lost souls, broken relationships, neglected responsibilities, forgotten messages, and unclaimed opportunities. If a preacher’s pulpit were empty, maybe his sermons would be too.

So if the janitor and the spring cleanup volunteers forget to do the back of the pulpit, maybe they’re fulfilling part of some great, eternal plan.

-Jim Dyet

Schaumburg, Illinois

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Jack felt his voice failing. It tired quickly, whether he was singing, counseling, or preaching. It often became weak and hoarse. Frequently he had a sore throat, and he had virtually no singing voice.

Jack increasingly strained in order to be heard. He kept turning up the volume on the PA. But he suspected this was a temporary solution at best. He would have to find a more permanent answer if he wanted to continue his public ministry.

Jack is like many ministers who fill their weeks with sermons, committee meetings, and countless conversations. Unintentionally, they abuse their voices. Voice fatigue sets in. Even if they don’t develop chronic hoarseness, weakness, or vocal nodes, their effectiveness as speakers may be diminished by weakened or forced voices.

The human voice is like a musical instrument. And like a musical instrument, the voice is not always played beautifully. But you can train your voice to produce a pleasant, confident sound. As your skills increase, your voice can command more attention and strengthen the message-much as a virtuoso summons more from a musical composition than a beginner.

Some people think, God just didn’t give me a good voice for speaking or singing. It’s true that not everyone has “golden pipes,” but anyone can improve the sound of his or her voice. The point is not to develop a “stained-glass voice” but to strengthen the natural voice we’ve been given.

After six months of voice lessons, learning the proper use of vocal muscles and breathing, Jack felt his voice becoming stronger. His hoarseness and sore throats cleared up, and his voice sounded better, too.

Here are some of the things Jack discovered to help improve his voice.

Good posture

Since our bodies house our voices, good posture becomes an important prerequisite for the best use of our vocal instruments. Francesco Lamperti once said, “You don’t sing, your body sings you.”

Proper external posture means your head lines up with your back, causing your rib cage (not your shoulders) to lift. Your feet will be flat on the floor with the weight evenly distributed, your knees unlocked.

Poor posture crowds the breathing process. After adopting good posture, one speaker’s voice stayed strong to the end of his sermon for the first time.

The internal posture maintains a space inside your mouth for a perpetual “Ahh.” This helps relax your jaw and tongue and opens your throat. The volume of speech determines the size of the “Ahh”-the softer your voice, the smaller the “Ahh.” When singing, the pitch determines the space needed inside your mouth-higher notes require more room, lower notes less.

Reduced muscle tension

Tension is an enemy of good performance, whether we’re speaking, singing, or trying to sink a putt. Reduced tension means we’ll be free of tightness in our bodies generally, Lightness in our shoulders, jaws, and tongues specifically. If the muscles above and below the vocal cords relax, then the breath can freely vibrate the vocal cords in the larynx, or voice box.

Incidentally, a mirror works well as an effective, but inexpensive, teacher. Speakers can use a mirror daily as they practice to monitor their posture and watch for signs of tense muscles.

Proper breathing

The vocal process that produces sound can be divided into three basic areas: (1) the breathing technique-the activator of the sound; (2) the vocal cords-the source of the sound; (3) the resonators-the reinforcers of the sound, adding quality, volume, and control.

Much as a violin bow vibrates strings to produce sound, your breath causes your vocal cords to vibrate. The breath carries the sounds into air-filled chambers (resonators) in and behind the mouth and nose. The chambers act much like stereo speakers, adding quality and dimension to the sound.

Breathing should be free and silent with no obstruction in the way. Any tightening of the muscles above or below the larynx can inhibit the breath and keep it from carrying the sound into the resonators. When the muscles reduce the effectiveness of the breath in this way, voice fatigue and strain follow. Results can range from loss of stamina and inferior sound to chronic hoarseness and sometimes even temporary loss of voice. It can lead to a major problem: nodes developing on the cords.

“Tone can be no better than the breathing habits that gave it life,” Jan Peerce, a famous tenor, once said. Here are some steps that can help ensure effective use of the breath

• Open your throat as if to begin a yawn (“Ahh”).

• Relax, then open your jaw, inhaling through both your nose and mouth. Take only enough breath for a sentence.

• Keeping your mouth open, speak an average length sentence (or read this one), staying relaxed the whole time.

• Think of aiming the moving air about three feet in front of you. This helps keep the sound from hanging in the back of your mouth, projecting it out instead.

• It also helps to imagine your lips not touching your teeth. This keeps the muscles around your mouth from tightening and allows enough room for consonants to flow over your tongue and for vowels to resonate in the chambers.

Amplify with your entire face

Sandie burst into my studio one day, interrupting a lesson with another student. “I’ve got it at last!” she exclaimed.

“What do you have?” I asked.

“I can feel the sounds vibrating in my head,” she explained.

This is often called “the mask,” a term used by the early Italian singing school. The sound of your voice vibrates your whole face, not just your mouth. We had worked for some time to achieve this. Now Sandie demonstrated her “mask”: her voice was in fact producing a new sound. Sandie learned to let her breath carry her voice, her best voice, so it would resonate properly inside her head.

Some do not like the way their voices sound. They may feel a lack of vocal confidence, thinking their voices sound unpleasant or weak. These perceptions may be caused by a lack of resonance from the mask. If your breath can freely carry your voice to the resonators in the mask, you can enhance the sound vibrations and add timbre, strength, and control. Without this, your voice may sound thin, lack color, and project poorly.

In today’s technological world, a voice with poor resonance is often amplified by microphones. That [ merely changes small, thin, uninteresting voices into loud, thin, uninteresting voices. Resonance is critical to achieve a quality sound in a voice.

Good vocal health

Friedrich S. Brodnitz, M.D., says, “To no group should the preservation of physical health be more important than to men and women who make professional use of their speaking and singing voices.” Here are some things to do to keep your body and voice in good condition: ;

• Limit starch, dairy products, and rich food- especially before speaking or singing.

• Walk, swim, do aerobics. These are good “toners” for the body.

• Get enough rest to restore body energy. An afternoon nap may not always be possible, but strive for at least seven or more hours of sleep at night.

• Never yell or force your voice. Once at Wrigley Field-on a rare day when the Cubs were winning-I discovered I could outshout others with a resonant, breath-supported voice: “Yeah Cubs! Way to go!” Fans turned to see who was making all the noise. My voice carried over the shouts around me, but I didn’t have to strain or force my voice to do it. As we left at the end of the game, however, I heard other people complaining, “I’ve lost my voice.”

• Drink lots of liquids, preferably not too hot or too cold. Many speakers request ice water, but tepid water would be better. Cold contracts muscles- and vocal cords are muscles. They’d do better to be kept warm and flexible.

• Avoid clearing your throat. Often this is simply a nervous habit, but it irritates your vocal cords. A good warm-up of your voice will relax the muscles and clear out the phlegm, reducing the need to clear your throat.

• Avoid medicated lozenges, mint, or menthol. These dry the throat and tend to create more phlegm. Drink warm tea or water instead.

• Avoid extended time in a loud environment, such as basketball games. When I attend a Portland Trail Blazers basketball game, I wear ear plugs. This protects both my hearing and my voice. Ear plugs automatically cause me to cut down the volume of my voice. Because I hear it louder inside my head, I’m not so apt to push my voice to be heard above the noise.

• If there seems to be a chronic voice problem, consult a throat specialist.

Exercising your voice

Vocal exercises will help develop your voice. They should be done consistently, even on days when you have no sermon to preach or solo to sing. Most of us talk for hours each day and can abuse our voices almost as easily in conversation as in formal speaking.

After some general stretching and loosening exercises, spend five to ten minutes doing the following exercises before speaking or singing:

• Loosen your jaw: Take your jaw between your thumb and index finger and shake it up and down rapidly without moving your head. Repeat, “Yah, yah, yah” vigorously. Move your jaw from side to side.

• Massage your face from the hinge of the jaw to the temples. Place a finger at the jaw hinge on each side, move your fingers in a circular motion from there, up to the side of the forehead. This will relax the area and helps alleviate a tight jaw (TMJ syndrome).

• Move your head slowly to one side as far as possible and then back to the opposite side. Drop your head slowly back to the shoulders and then on to the chest. This isometric exercise should be done often. I do this in the car when I stop for red lights or at my desk.

• Maintaining good posture, inhale slowly. Then let out a slow, breathy sigh, starting in a high voice and going down, much like a descending fire siren.

• Do the same descending breath exercises as a short sentence: “How are you? I am fine.” If you produce these sounds freely, you should have the sensation that your vocal cords are doing nothing at all. Your breath should move your voice, and the resonators should reinforce the sounds. Learn to trust these sensations, and guard against forcing your voice. When you can visualize the correct technique, the sound will take care of itself.

• Practice humming a scale (from high to low) maintaining a relaxed jaw and tongue, keeping an “Ahh” space inside your mouth. Keep your lips together, but not tightly. If your breath freely moves your voice, your lips will vibrate noticeably. My husband, a preacher, always hums during a hymn before his sermon to make sure his lips tingle. This assures him he has the correct room for the breath to bring his voice forward in the mouth.

• Read aloud when practicing a sermon or speech. This helps make the procedures a natural part of your speaking process. Try underscoring syllables to be stressed for better comprehension and expressiveness .

With daily practice on these techniques, your voice can be strengthened and revitalized. You might wish to evaluate your progress by recording your voice.

Rick, a pastoral student, listened carefully to his voice on tape. As a result, he gained new appreciation for the value of good vocal technique. His voice felt more relaxed the next time he preached, and his wife noticed a marked difference in its sound.

If possible, studying with a voice teacher can provide another set of ears to listen for things you cannot hear. Because the techniques for singing are so similar to those for speaking, singing instructors can often help speakers.

-Emily E. Shine

speech and voice instructor Western Seminary

Portland, Oregon

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

My secretary keeps a small sign on her desk,

SECRETARIES RULE THE WORLD.

She definitely rules our congregation's world, not as the autocrat but as the crucial, hidden link in the chain of most church projects. Unfortunately her value is often taken for granted-until the chain breaks or she goes on vacation!

Since our secretaries are such a vital part of the church's ministry, we pastors are wise to use them well. However, I didn't know how to do that. Nothing in seminary prepared me to work with a secretary. Nor had church management seminars addressed the subject.

Consequently, I've spent many hours talking with my present secretary, Janet Grishaber, trying to discover the pressure points and possibilities of secretarial life. Together we've come up with ten things I can do that not only keep her motivated but also help her do her work better.

1. Prepare her for reality. People regularly tell our secretary how blessed she is to work in a church office. She stifles her guffaws. She was fairly "worldly wise" when we hired her, but I think the incredible level of nit-picking, cattiness, and hypocrisy by churchgoers (not to mention the occasional scraps of the staff) shocked even her.

Too great a shock can shipwreck a secretary's faith, so better to let her know that the church, in spite of some pious stereotypes, is full of very human people (and some inhumane). This is something I would have been wise to do as she began working in the church.

2. Highlight her work as a ministry. More than a secretary in a business firm, a church secretary performs a vital church ministry. She is the servant's servant, ministering to the ministers and to the church in quiet ways. Few other individuals contribute to the success of the church's programs as does the secretary.

Therefore, we try not to make distinctions between "ministry staff" and "clerical staff." We let our secretary know we value her as ministry staff.

In addition, we invite her to our staff meetings. We don't just bring her in as the note taker; she shares her views on a number of things we discuss. We consider her an essential part of our team.

3. Keep her informed. I begin each week by looking ahead to the week's appointments and making sure my secretary's calendar and mine agree.

Moreover, when I leave the of fice, I tell her when I plan to return. It makes her look foolish if she has to tell person after person she doesn't know when I'll be back.

Equally troubling to her is my underestimating when I'll return. Again, if she tells five people to call back at 1:30 (as I told her), and I do not return until 3:00, it makes her look bad. When I can't help being late, I try to phone her.

I also let my secretary know when I like to counsel, study, visit, and the like, so she can schedule people accordingly. I am a morning person, so she guards my mornings for study. She schedules my appointments in the afternoon.

When it comes to a new project, I don't assume rny secretary knows what I want or how I want it. I am continually learning to communicate my expectations more precisely. And if the project is touchy or important, I have her do it in stages, so we're both aware of what is needed at each step. I don't want to add "mind reader" to her job description.

4. Watch for internal injuries. On one Sunday my secretary was hassled by three different people: one griped that the sanctuary temperature was too high, one complained about not having holes punched in a handout, and one bristled at the special music in the morning service.

Unfortunately she hears from such people with regularity. A good secretary shields the pastor from much of this-but at an emotional cost. She may not want to add to my burdens by dumping her load on me, but I want to be sensitive to what she bears and give her opportunity to ventilate.

5. Affirm her regularly. Church secretaries are often forced to live by the adage, "When I did ill, I heard it ever; when I did well, I heard it never." Affirmation and encouragement create the proper kind of atmosphere for a church office. So I try to offer gratitude and praise for any job she does well.

In addition, I've found one simple suggestion helpful: remember her birthday and Secretaries Day. My secretary became unsubtle about this at one point.

One morning, I noticed a day circled in my personal calendar, with the words, "This is a special day." I didn't think I had written it, but I couldn't remember. I asked my wife, and she did not know. I wandered around my office, scratching my head. Panic set in as the day drew closer. I had a responsibility to someone I did not know how to fulfill.

My secretary finally had pity on me and told me she had marked that day it was her birthday. Like an idiot, I wondered at first why she would do that. Only later did I realize that she (rightly) felt her birthday was a time for affirmation.

(By the way, Secretaries Day is the fourth Wednesday in April. Mark it!)

6. Trust her. The church secretary during the interim preceding my arrival at this church was not trusted by the board. They sharply questioned what she did with her time, suspecting, I suppose, she sat sipping tea and reading Harlequin novels! They actually sent men in to monitor her work.

While candidating, I wrote to this secretary to get her feelings about the church and staff relations. Though a discreet woman, she freely expressed her deep hurt at the way she had been treated. She never got over the board's lack of confidence and left soon after I came.

7. Be aware of ALL her responsibilities. In order to understand all our secretary was doing, we asked her to list all her duties and do a time study of them. We were amazed to discover the number of things she did in addition to the items on her job description. Even though I work closely with her, I had failed to notice everything she accomplished weekly.

In larger churches, a secretary does many tasks that do not directly affect the pastoral staff, tasks such as bookkeeping, reporting to local authorities, financial accounting, banking, and the like. That realization has helped me know better how much work to give her, and when.

8. Support her publicly. At a minimum, this means I don't announce her mistakes in public: "The secretary made a mistake in the bulletin this week," or "My secretary failed to tell me about this appointment." If she has made a mistake, then I tell her in private.

I'm also prepared to stand by her when she is wrongly accused.

One person called the church a number of times during office hours one day only to get the answering machine. He immediately assumed the secretary was goofing off, or at least doing something less important than answering his call.

In fact, she had been at the bank to straighten out a mistake in the deposits, and then she had attended a staff meeting. When he left several sharp messages on the answering machine and then raised the issue at a board meeting, I strongly protested his unfair expectations for her.

9. Don't put her on the spot. I don't volunteer my secretary's services to church committees or other organizations of which I am a part, at least not without asking her first. She may be at the breaking point, and one more thing would do her in.

And I never ask her in front of the people who need the help. I don't want to make her play the heavy, the one who has to say no. As her boss, I take final responsibility for what she does and doesn't do.

10. Be a pastor to her. My secretary had a rugged last couple of years: she watched her parents' marriage fall apart and then her father die. As a single woman and a pnvate person, she had few people with whom she could share her struggles. In the office, as a professional secretary, she kept her hurt to herself.

When I discovered some of what was going on with her, I began asking her about her family. Only when I took the initiative, did she talk about her pain. Because I mistook her professionalism as a sign of complete emotional health, I hadn't realized how much she needed pastoring during that difficult time.

These ten reminders have helped us both minister more effectively.

-Kenneth Quick with Janet Grishaber Parkway Bible Church

Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I was not yet out of college, only 20 years old and starting a new church. My wife, Darla, and I were newlyweds playing house and, in a way, playing church. Darla would cook up someone’s new recipe, and I’d experiment with someone’s recipe for church growth.

My recipes usually called for ingredients from marketing: I’d identify people’s needs, build programs to meet those needs, and then administrate those programs. The programs worked, people’s needs were met, and the new church grew. Since we didn’t have any children and were in a rural community, my wife and I could make regular visits to every attending family. People loved the personalized attention they received.

It wasn’t long, though, before I realized my methods were restrictive. My passion for meeting people’s needs was building a congregation with ever-increasing needs. The church grew because people came to have their needs met. But when I could no longer meet their needs, they could leave just as quickly as they came. I came to see that few in the church had actually adopted my vision-they just appreciated having their needs met.

I began to realize that need-meeting, as a method of church growth, works only to a point.

Woodridge Church, for example, my latest church plant, is in a metropolitan setting. If I introduce programs that meet people’s needs and attract visitors, many of the visitors will tell me, “There are fifteen churches within a fifteen minute driving distance that have better programs than you do.” I can’t compete with that.

After five years of on-the-job training in my first church, I began preparations to start a new church. I decided need-meeting would not be the basis for my new venture. Instead of focusing on the purpose for the new church, I tried to discover what its passion would be.

My Passionate Values

Prayerfully I reflected on my experience and identified values I felt had been missing in my pastorate. Programs, strategy, and meeting needs would still be important to me. But the basis for my church-planting ministry would be passion-deeply felt values explained in visionary language.

I’ve been refining these values in each of the four churches I’ve started. Here are several values that reflect my passion now.

1. We will be a contemporary and progressive evangelical church, intentionally committed to discipleship. Each one of those words communicates a value to which people can give themselves.

Darla and I were once in a music store, buying an electronic keyboard. The store manager asked, “Are you starting a group?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but probably not the kind of group you’re thinking of. We’re starting a church.”

Before he could change the subject, I pressed on to talk about our being progressive: “This church is going to be contemporary and relevant. People often feel that the church is answering yesterday’s questions, but I think real Christianity is on the cutting edge. It’s relevant and provides real answers to today’s questions. In fact, we don’t want this church just to be contemporary, we want it to be progressive-to be moving ahead, not static. I know God is powerful, and his church should make an impact on our city.”

Intrigued, he visited the church, accepted Christ, and became a significant part of our new church.

2. Our worship will be seeker-sensitive. We have chosen a slightly different tack than seekerdirected churches, where everything is done with converting seekers as the goal. The main purpose of weekend services in a seeker-directed church, for example, is to help seekers come to faith.

We don’t want to cater solely to seekers, but neither do we want to limit our ministry to believers only. Instead we want to walk the middle ground.

Our goal on Sundays, consequently, is meaningful worship for believers that is also sensitive to seekers. We plan each service knowing seekers will be present. We are sensitive to their needs and concerns, but we don’t plan the service exclusively for them.

We assume that God is opening them to new possibilities like worship. Though they do not yet fully believe, because God is already working in them, we feel they can have a meaningful worship experience. For us that’s enough. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul says that proper worship should be so powerful that unbelievers will fall on their faces and worship God. They will say, “There really must be a God!”

We tell our people that our worship will be a safe place to bring their friends. We’re not going to offend them. In fact, we’re going to celebrate the fact that they’re investigating But at the same time we want to unabashedly worship the Savior.

For example, we use terms a seeker can understand. We want them to be uninhibited as they sample worship-as if they were taking a test drive. We also encourage believers to translate the language we use into deeper expressions of worship. For instance, when we say celebration, they should understand worship. A Scripture study means a sermon, and investigate or think through means consider the commitment this calls for.

3. The process is as important as the product. We want people to accept Christ, but we want to honor the validity of their journey to him as well. So we celebrate the process of people coming to Christ and growing in him. We will not allow ourselves to be alarmed if their lifestyles or practices are inconsistent with our own. Instead we rejoice when they move in the direction of committed discipleship.

God uses different things to bring people along. We’re content just to be part of the process, helping them grow to the next step. We don’t ask, “Do they fit our mold?” but “What is it God wants them to experience through this church?”

Some lifelong Christians have joined our new church. But since they’ve adopted this value, they view the church as a process too. They’re not going to evaluate its success in terms of numbers, programs, and money. They don’t expect the new church immediately to offer all the services of an established church. We’re all in process.

4. We build people, not programs. A statement of purpose answers the question, “What kind of things are we trying to do?” But in terms of people-vision, we first ask, “What kind of people are we trying to build?”

We want people to become the Michael Jordans of Christianity. We want them to be impact players, in their work, in their homes, and in their neighborhoods. It’s not that we want only the supertalented; we want ordinary people to make a difference wherever they are. It might be that their pain and weakness makes as much of a difference as their success and triumph.

For instance, one woman, sexually abused as a child, helped begin a support group for people with similar pasts. Her contribution to the group became a redeeming outlet for her own recovery. “Starting this group” she said, “has finally helped me deal with the pain I went through.”

5. When we study and serve, the Holy Spirit will produce joy in our lives. One man came to me when his wife suddenly abandoned him. I dealt with his grief, but since we were a small church, we couldn’t refer him to a pastoral staff counselor or a supportive singles’ ministry.

Instead, I told him about our value statements and reminded him the best thing I could do for him was give him an opportunity for study and service so the Holy Spirit could produce joy in his life.

“You know,” I said, “if you’re really going to get past this grief to find real joy, you’re going to need some opportunities to serve and to study. It might be that the very things you find painful are the things that will give you strength to reach others.”

In a month or two, he was involved in a small group where he was able to help another person facing the same kind of problem. He took his eyes off his own pain and need and became caught up in the vision, impacting the lives of others. In doing so his deeper needs for fulfillment and purpose were met.

Discovering the joy of service, however, is a value that has to compete with other legitimate experiences. In my most recent church plant, the mothering church provided funding and a “hunting license” to recruit a core group from among church members.

I found, though, that the members attending the mother church attended there because they liked its many programs and evangelical thrust. Few were receptive to the idea of a new church outreach until I told them about the values the new church would

emphasize. Only then was the gravitational pull of l the mother church weakened for some. Soon I had a So core who were willing to change churches, sacrifice, and commit themselves to a new church.

This emphasis on values, however, goes against the grain of much teaching about church growth and especially church planting. In fact, I found that if I wanted to be passionate about these values, I had to abandon my misconceptions about church growth and adopt a new frame of reference. Here are five principles that have helped me do that.

Don’t Seek Out Just Anybody

Starting a church with next to nothing, the temptation is to do whatever is necessary to get anybody in-as long as they’re warm bodies in the pew. But that’s not necessarily best for the church. Some people can divert the church from its purpose.

• Consumers. These people come with primarily one thing in mind: they are shopping for the church that will best meet their needs. But they’re not that interested in becoming investors in the mission of the church. Unless I can change these consumers into investors, they will distort the values of the church.

The best tools I’ve found to encourage people to buy into the church are the values expressed in the church’s vision. I use vision statements to tell people the reason we meet needs: not because we care so much about their immediate needs but because we care about fulfilling the vision for this church, which aims to fulfill people’s deepest longings. “We want you to join and be part of this church,” we say, “because as you do, your larger needs will be met.” This approach turns consumers into investors. They discover they can be part of something close to the heart of God, and they can be part of a mission larger than themselves.

• Antagonists. It’s better to have empty pews (or in our case, chairs) than seats filled with antagonists. Ernpty pews usually leave the church’s vision intact. But the wrong kind of people tamper with our values and exert a negative influence on the church. New churches seem especially vulnerable to antagonists, who seem frequently to be looking for new power bases. They are black holes of spiritual energy, sucking out the resolve of those around them.

One man visited our new church and responded enthusiastically to its ministry. He eagerly found new friends and became part of our core group. Because he blended in so agreeably, I didn’t adequately explain the church’s values and vision.

Some time later he handed me a five-page, typed statement advocating a radically different worship style for the church. “Either this church will have to change,” he said, “or I’m going to have to leave.”

But of course it wasn’t that simple. He began to lobby his friends in the church with whom he had gained confidence. When he eventually left the church, everyone close to him felt the pain of his withdrawal.

When I recruit someone like that, I’m recruiting trouble. As an optimist, I might think my personality and ministry would win him over. But such people demand too much of my energy. They undercut what I’m doing. If people are not open to the vision I’ve laid out, there’s no reason to try to get them to sign on.

It can be a temptation to accommodate to their views, especially if they seem to be just a degree or two off our vision. But an angle of just a degree, stretched out far enough, can become a major gap. That minor discrepancy in the beginning may become a major source of contention three years later.

That’s why I think the sympathetic or nurturing pastor may not be the best kind of church planter. The pastor with a shepherd’s heart may find it difficult to resist this temptation. The first time someone balks at his vision, his pastoral instincts take over: “Well, this vision is not as cut and dried as it sounds. We can adapt to your concerns.” When a pastor falls back into that shepherding, caring role, he has undermined his ability to lead with vision.

• Those who are different. Some people are not mean-spirited; they’re just different; they simply don’t share our values. But if people who have other values come to our church, they won’t have the cohesiveness to stick through difficult times. It doesn’t matter how much they like me or benefit from my ministry. They need to go elsewhere where they can invest in the vision.

Woodridge, for example, has a set of values more consistent with my Baptist theology. If I were to start an Episcopalian church, however, I would likely have a different set of values:

Where our statement says we’re contemporary and progressive, as an Episcopalian I might emphasize a word like heritage. Or I’d talk about time-tested truth. Another vision word might be diversity: “We celebrate diversity in people’s thinking.” I might also use the word mystery: “Though we grapple to understand coherently the complexities of life, as spiritual people we leave room for mystery, for the fact that God works in ways we can’t fully comprehend.”

(What I would not do, by the way, is say, “We Episcopalians have two sacraments and The Book of Common Prayer.” Instead I’d say, “We have continuity with history. When you sit in our church, there’s a sense of timelessness. Words that the apostles used are spoken again.” Instead of defending liturgy, I’ve stated a value and a vision.)

If core Christian beliefs are at the center, I don’t judge one set of values to be better than the other. They’re just different. No single church can fully reflect God’s multifaceted passion. It would be a mistake for me to recruit someone whose values and personality would better fit another tradition. I would only make them unhappy, and ultimately, our church would suffer because of their unhappiness.

Don’t Duplicate Success

Newly planted churches sometimes fall into the trap of trying to clone themselves on “successful” churches. But clones almost never work. More likely what worked once will probably have to be reworked; it’s in a different place at a different time.

Woodridge was birthed by a large, established church, Wooddale Church of Eden Prairie, a suburb of Minneapolis. But Woodridge can’t be a clone of Wooddale. Daughter churches will likely have a genetic mix: in our case, Woodridge has mixed the Wooddale approach with the community church philosophy, something our team of church planters in central Wisconsin had worked with. We’re similar in that both churches are intentional about ministry, committed to excellence and evangelism.

We’re distinct, however, in that Woodridge is more entrepreneurial. Because of where we are in our development, we are more process-oriented. We’ve inherited a view of ministry from others, but we’ve developed it on our own.

Because we’re not trying to duplicate something that’s already successful, we’ve been able to maintain a positive self-image. We’re doing something new! If we were to compare ourselves with the mother church, we’d start feeling pretty discouraged. Instead, our positive attitude about our uniqueness is contagious. New people can sense the upbeat outlook.

A church planter should, first and foremost, be an entrepreneur. Church planting calls for someone who is a nonconformist, a self-starter, and an innovative leader. Someone may be a natural salesperson, but the church planter should be something more, someone who would say, “If I’m going to sell insurance, then I want to start an agency, not just sell the product.”

Don’t Trust Tested Techniques

A major mistake made in church planting is to seek the perfect program or strategy: “Oh, full color brochures! Now I’ve got it. That’s why Woodridge could start with all those people.”

The brochure helped, but even if we had never printed it, I believe we would have grown.

More than techniques, a new church needs values. Values keep us in line. Church growth can be cancerous growth if the methods used are unbiblical. Values help us clarify the kinds of growth that are healthy. Values determine the methods we use.

Recently I asked our leadership team to evaluate a letter I intended to send to our regular attenders. I wanted to motivate people to stronger commitments of time and money. The leaders, however, asked me to show how the letter was in line with our values. One leader even pulled out our church’s value statement and told me to rewrite the letter using the statement as a guide.

Whenever people start a church by modeling programs after some other church, they should first ask themselves if they have the same underlying values L that motivated those programs in the first place.

Don’t Let Individuals Eclipse Vision

Some people accuse me of neglecting individual needs. “You’re sacrificing people to feed the vision,” they say. Many pastors have a more shepherding attitude than I have: they want to meet the needs of people. They try to sense the direction people want to go.

As a church planter, on the other hand, I’m more likely to say, “Here’s the vision God has given us to fulfill. We have to do whatever it takes to realize that vision, even if it means losing a few individuals along the way.”

I have to be careful that I’m not misunderstood at this point. People are important. People are why Christ died. But when I allow a dysfunctional person to strangle a church’s calling, I undermine God’s purpose for us. Sometimes I have to risk alienating one person for the good of the whole. Still that can be painful and there’s a part of me that regrets it whenever it happens.

Don’t Lead by Consensus

Consensus is highly valued in our country. In the church we see attempts to lead by consensus. That almost never works for a new church.

The problem is that often the vision of the new church, when drawn up by group consensus, won’t be the same vision necessary to reach the community. It may not always take a leader to decide on where to go (although it usually does); it does take a leader to get a group there.

I have never seen strong values come out of a committee. Values, to be held passionately, require a point person. Normally the pastor has to be that point person, inspiring values that reflect God’s heart for the community. Committees function best when they ratify the value statements of the leader.

Sometimes pastors feel they would be dictatorial if they were to propose the values. But proposing what God desires to do is not the same as controlling or manipulating others. Strong leaders surely must be sensitive to the people they lead, especially if they want to generate commitment from people. Still, they must lead.

What has worked for me is to state my values, selling the vision in sermons, classes, and conversations. In fact, seldom does a day go by that I don’t bring at least one conversation around to value statements. And they’re part of almost every sermon that I give.

When I first developed a passion for these values, I wondered if it wouldn’t be risky to start a new church based purely on this kind of vision. What if people disagreed with my values? What if no one wanted a contemporary, progressive, new church, for example? What if I failed to attract people?

It seemed shortsighted to launch a work without the proven methods of defining community needs and developing strategies and programs to meet those needs. I felt as if I was throwing out my box of church recipes.

To my surprise (and delight) these values-the things I felt defined God’s heart for my work- attracted people. When I gave them a vision based on passionately held values, some, frankly, balked. But many became committed and have helped found and shape churches that continue to develop faithful and steadfast disciples of Jesus Christ.

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Overcoming the Doing Addictions

Working Ourselves to Death: The High Cost of Workaholism and the Rewards of Recovery by Diane Fassel HarperCollins, $14.95 Reviewed by Greg Asimakoupoulos, pastor, Crossroads Covenant Church, Concord, California

Once upon a time there was a pastor known in his community as a conscientious caregiver. His twelve-plus years in the pastorate could best be described as goal-guided ministry in motion.

Although he was a human being loved by God unconditionally, you’d never know it by observing him. He was a human doing. Constantly.

What he did was good. But the reasons behind his efforts reeked of an addiction to accomplishment. His name was Workaholic, and he wore himself out.

If you identify with this pastor, you’ll find Diane Fassel’s Working Ourselves to Death intriguing reading. It is one of only a few volumes written in the past decade that attempts to make sense of a national epidemic known as work addiction.

According to Fassel, a management consultant based in Boulder, Colorado, you need not look far to find this disease. Whether in American corporations or churches, addiction to work is as common as any chemical addiction.

One author has called workaholism “the pain others applaud,” another “the only life boat guaranteed to sink.” Diane Fassel calls it “a progressive disease in which a person is addicted to the process of working wherein they seek work because it is their fix.” Simply said, it is an addiction to action.

The author understands her subject well. By her own admission, she is prone to workaholism. I tracked her down in Hawaii, where she says she retreats regularly to escape her tendency to “work herself to death.”

More than a catchy title for her book, the phrase is a red flag she refuses to salute. It is a flag she has repeatedly observed over two years of research.

“Everywhere I go,” she said, “it seems people are killing themselves with work, busyness, rushing, caring, and rescuing.”

Though not written with pastors specifically in mind, Fassel told me clergy are among the most notable professions where workaholism rears its ungodly head, and lives are left in ruin. She cites a convention of Protestant ministers in Iowa:

“The ministers come from farm families where the motto is ‘No one ever died of hard work.’ They believe this statement, for their experience is that hard work keeps you out of trouble and makes a positive contribution to family and community. Unfortunately something new is happening in rural Iowa. Young and middle-aged ministers are leaving the ministry-disillusioned and unhappy. Working harder doesn’t seem to help. They are burned out on caring.”

The results of her research indicate that insurance claims due to stress and addiction are greater among church professionals than almost any other segment of the population. The cleanest of all addictions in the most respected of all professions is taking the costliest of tolls.

Within the book’s 156 pages, she exposes several myths about workaholics, including the false assumptions that workaholics are always working, that workaholics can be managed with stress-reduction techniques, that work addiction is profitable for corporations, and that workaholics get ahead.

Fassel distinguishes between four kinds of workaholics.

The compulsive worker is the classic workaholic, always working, and doing so openly.

For binge workers, intensity, not volume, characterizes their pattern; between “normal” work patterns, they suddenly go on binges of work, often skipping sleep and meals as they do.

Closet workers, aware that constant working is a problem, secretly work when supposedly they’re off (for instance, saying they are going to play golf but instead doing paper work at a library).

The anorexic worker procrastinates and avoids work until the pressure of a deadline forces the issue, and then there is a rush to work and work to squeeze under the deadline.

Fassel also paints the characteristics of the workaholic’s profile: Workaholics are prone to struggle with other addictions, to have low self-esteem, to be obsessive, and to have difficulty relaxing. They can also be dishonest, judgmental, and perfectionistic.

“Essentially workaholics are no longer ‘showing up’ for life,” she says. “They are alienated from their own S bodies, from their own feelings, from their creativity, and from family and friends. They have been taken over by the compulsion to work and are slaves to it. They no longer own their lives. They are truly the walking dead.”

When preoccupied with “piles and files,” the workaholic loses touch with his inner self and works all the harder to fill a spiritual vacuum in his life. The author asserts all addictive behavior to be an effort to deny the pain associated with the absence of love and nurture.

According to Fassel, “Spiritual bank- s ruptcy is the final symptom of work- s aholism. It usually heralds a dead end. | It means you have nothing left. … It is frightening to be out of touch with a power greater than yourself and to find your disease, which you know is destructive, ruling you.”

But there is hope. “When the workaholic’s downward spiral is reversed,” writes Fassel, “spirituality is one of the first things recovering people regain.”

Recovery is the theme of the lengthy last chapter. The author concludes with practical steps to get out of the dungeon of this dysfunction. Not surprisingly, the rungs of her ladder include the Twelve Steps of AA coupled with a system for maintaining daily control.

According to Fassel, recovery begins with admitting one’s powerlessness and resisting the tendency towards isolating oneself and trying to work on one’s problems alone. The help and accountability that come from other people is a necessity.

Those who read Working Ourselves to Death won’t necessarily live happily ever after. But they do stand a better chance of at least living.

Remember the once-upon-a-pastor with which I began? T know whereof I speak, and I heartily recommend this book as “a way” to new pastoral life.

Jump-Starting a Congregation

44 Questions for Church Planters by Lyle E. Schafer Abingdon, $12.95 Reviewed by Dave Wilkinson, pastor Moorpark Presbyterian Church, Moorpark, California

The only thing wrong with 44 Questions for Church Planters is that it came too late I got into church planting over five years ago, and at the time, I could only come up with one question on my own: “What am I doing here?”

I badly needed Lyle Schaller’s help t,) know the other questions I should ask.

Schaller, a consultant with the Yokefellow Institute in Richmond, Indiana, and with the J. M. Ormand Center for Research and Development at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, says that 44 Questions for Church Planters grew out of two roots.

The first was his “personal frustration” as a parish consultant in facing big problems that could have been avoided with proper planning early in the church’s life.

The second root was the requests from many people like me who have been seeking a practical tool to help chart the direction of a new church.

In fact, many of the questions he addresses are fruitful for established churches, as well.

Schaller’s first questions center around the theme, “Why start new churches?” After a survey of the history of church development in America, he states his conclusion that new churches are the major key to effective denominational growth. Schaller then explores twelve theological and practical reasons for en phasizing church planting.

For instance, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, congregations usually benefit from intradenominational competition.” He says that having two or more local congregations of the same denomination usually results in higher congregational health and vitality than when there is one congregation.

“One obvious advantage of . . . intentional redundancy,” he writes, “is that discontented members of one congregation can seek a new church home without leaving that denomination.”

The heart of the book is the second chapter: “Three Crucial Variables.”

Schaller’s first crucial variable in church planting is the pastor who is the mission-developer. He writes: “Experience suggests that the best way to start a new church that will attract a large cadre of enthusiastic charter members and continue to grow in numbers year after year is to identify the right person to be the mission-developer pastor and for that minister to continue as the pastor for a minimum of twenty-five years.”

I called Schaller at home to talk more about this. “In the sixties,” he told me, “the top three criteria for the success of a new church were location, location, and location. But in the nineties, the top three criteria are clearly the pastor, the pastor, and the pastor.”

Knowing that some groups are trying to connect religious leadership with Meyers-Briggs personality types, I asked Schaller if this personality test could help identify good church planters. He explained that Meyers-Briggs is too “gentle” an instrument to give the needed information.

“The key ingredient of a successful church planter seems to be productivity,” he said. “An introverted person who is highly productive will often be more successful than a more extroverted person who is less productive.”

Schaller’s second crucial variable is vision. He writes: “To a substantial degree the vision of what that new mission can and will become creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.” He says vision will determine such things as the choice of the church planter, the timing, the choice of a temporary meeting place, the scheduling and design of that first worship experience, and the selection of land for the first building.

Schaller argues that the creation of this guiding vision is the first priority. This allows the initiating body to identify the mission-developer pastor who will further the vision.

In his introduction, Schaller claims to have reached the advanced stage of life that carries with it a “tendency to substitute honesty for tact.” We see some of this in his observation that “relatively few self-identified ‘enablers’ or ‘facilitators’ have been effective church planters.”

Leadership is Schaller’s third crucial variable. By leadership Schaller means not just the mission pastor but the denominational leaders at the local level with their “leadership skills, experience, visions, courage, creativity, and gifts.”

He writes, “Rarely can this leadership come from a committee with a rotating membership. Far more often it comes from the person with a decade or two or three of experience in church planting.”

In one chapter, Schaller proposes twelve questions designed to help a church determine its identity. For example,

-Are we a commuter or community congregation?

-Which generation are we trying to reach?

-Are we a high demand congrega¢ion or voluntary association?

-When does a new church become old?

In later chapters, Schaller discusses a host of practical questions established churches and new churches need to deal with, for instance: “The Place of Missions,” “Six Questions on Real Estate and Finances,” and “Why Is Continued Growth So Important?”

The Hartford Religious Research Center has said that Lyle Schaller is “America’s most influential religious leader among all denominations.” Schaller’s latest book is another reason why.

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

Counselor’s Guide to the Brain and Its Disorders by Edward T. Welch Zondervan, $15.95

Is the behavior a sin or a disease? The line must be drawn in Christian counseling. So believes Edward T. Welch, licensed psychologist and professor at Westminster Theological Seminary.

He writes to lift the fog from the sometimes murky relationship between psychology and spirituality. This is a textbook for disciples of Christian therapy. It cross-examines modern medical thinking about diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, showing how even people suffering from psychological diseases with a physical root still retain some moral and spiritual abilities.

Lay Counseling: Equipping Christians for a Helping Ministry by Siang-Yang Tan Zondervan, $12.95

Can lay Christian counselors do more for people than glibly saying, “Let go and let God?”

Siang-Yang Tan, director of the doctor of psychology program at Fuller Theological Seminary, shouts an emphatic yes with this book. Tan outlines a step-by-step approach for outfitting a lay counseling program in your church. He supplies useful resources such as questionnaires, supervision ideas, and literature resources.

What Americans Believe by George Barna Regal, $14.95

In a recession, companies that lose touch with their customers’ needs fail to survive the economic downturn.

Churches also need to know their market, believes George Barna, pollster and analyst of American culture.

So he interviewed over one thousand Americans, both churched and unchurched, about their values, tabulated the results, and drafted this digest about America’s mores.

The respondents’ thoughts about such subjects as Satan and absolute truth are included as well as many charts and diagrams. Barna targets this book for church leaders dedicated to the business of church strategy.

Turning Committees into Communities by Roberta Hestenes NavPress, $2.95

Typically, the most exciting part of committee meetings is the coffee and brownies.

Roberta Hestenes, president of Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, writes to change all that. She advocates merging the intimacy of small groups with the muscle of committees to create loving, productive communities within the local church. Hestenes packs a wallop in this small booklet, telling how to turn mundane meetings into significant ministry.

52 Ways to Help Homeless People by Gray Temple, Jr. Oliver Nelson, $6.95

Paul Simon sings about 50 ways to leave your lover, and Gray Temple, Jr. writes about 52 ways to help the homeless.

To the socially minded, Temple, rector of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, gives 52 rapid-fire, easy-to-follow suggestions for alleviating homelessness in America. How to investigate the welfare programs in your area and stand in a line with a street person for shelter are just two.

Reading Scripture in Public: A Guide for Preachers and Lay Readers by Thomas Edward McComiskey Baker, $7.95

Bible colleges and seminaries graduate students with skills in preaching the Bible.

They also should be able to orally recite God’s Word, contends Thomas Edward McComiskey, a Trinity Evangelical Divinity School administrator. His book teaches techniques for delivering the unique literary structures of the Bible meaningfully and accurately. This is a self-help tool for public speakers wanting to read God’s Word more fluently in public.

-reviewed by David Goetz

Golden, Colorado

CLOSE UP

A Soul Under Siege: Surviving Clergy Depression by C. Welton Gaddy Westminster/John Knox, $11.95

Author: C. Welton Gaddy is the former pastor of Highland Hills Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia. He earned a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Main Help: Gaddy narrates his descent into and journey out of depression. He identifies the emotional minefields hidden in pastoral ministry and suggests principles for preventing burnout and depression.

One practical takeaway: Gaddy discriminates between selfishness and taking care of oneself. He sees responsible self-love as a moral issue for the pastor. Eating properly, enjoying leisure, and balancing work habits are compulsory practices for emotional and spiritual health in church work.

Key quote: “Fighting limits [in pastoral ministry] is a losing battle. Accepting limits is healthy as well as wise. To ignore, defy, or deny limits is to move from the realm of seeking to serve God into the arena of attempting to play God.”

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Like a rnan about to face a firing squad, I was sitting in the front row of the sanctuary waiting for the soloist to finish. In a few seconds I would once again stand before the congregation to preach. Fear gripped me. This fear was not pre-performance butterflies or nervous jitters. No, this fear was deeper and more debilitating and it was weekly.

On the one hand my head told me, You’ve done this for thirteen years, and the church has grown, and many people say they’ve benefited from your preaching.

But my gut said, Do you realize you have absolutely nothing new to say? These people are expecting something. They won’t tolerate a boring monologue. You’ll stand up there and make a fool of yourself. What could you possibly say that these people haven’t already heard, and from far better preachers than you!

Even before I would start my weekly sermon preparation, my dread would nearly paralyze my study. All week I would live in such apprehension, I was emotionally worthless to my family. Every Saturday night and Sunday morning I would mentally resign, telling God, I can’t go on this way. This fear is consuming my life.

Then, on Sunday morning, waiting to walk before the congregation, I once again pled with the Lord, Let me do something else with my life!

What was my main fear?

One Wednesday evening I sat in the home of a parishioners and gathered around me were twelve people, listening attentively. I had spent a couple of days preparing for this Bible study, and I was excited about sharing what I had learned. As usual I had some jitters, but I noticed that they were nothing like Sunday’s.

Driving home I reflected on the difference between Sundays and Wednesdays: most of the Wednesday evening people were freshly minted in the faith, and most of what I said was new to them. Not only that, they were eager to learn. I felt comfortable in that setting because I knew I was helping them.

I also realized that I viewed the Sunday morning congregation differently. It was populated by spiritual Ph.D.’s, people who, I perceived, were daring me to come up with something new and improved, and I didn’t feel up to the challenge. I had as much chance of meeting their expectations as I would surviving that firing squad.

Three types of listeners

After one of those Wednesday evening meetings, I realized that my congregation is composed of at least three kinds of listeners.

• The Corinthians. These people are experienced in church life but spiritually immature. They know the Bible and have heard many four-star preachers- and they come to church expecting me to be as winsome and stimulating as Chuck Swindoll and as analytic and deep as J. I. Packer. This was the crowd I was trying to please on Sunday morning.

Well, I’m not Swindoll or Packer. As high as I may stretch, I will never satisfy that crowd, and I will burn out trying. I had to release myself from their expectations.

• The Barnabas listeners. These are the spiritually mature, people who come to worship expecting to meet with God. All I have to do is lead them to the Word. The Spirit of God is so active in their lives and they are so responsive to him, they readily learn and grow. Barnabas listeners are a delight to preach to because they aren’t dependent on me. They only ask that I honestly and earnestly lead them to think and interact with the Holy Spirit regarding his Word.

• The Bereans. These are the novices, like the Wednesday evening study group. They don’t need theologically sophisticated ideas to rivet their attention. They are excited about the Lord, and they’re eager to learn the Bible. If I can manage to be clear and simple, they’ll soak up the message.

Recognizing that I preach to three distinct groups helped to ease some of my preaching fears. I’ve also taken other steps, including having others share the pulpit ministry. Now, when I stand up on Sunday mornings, I still envision the Corinthian firing squad taking aim, but I simply hope they will forgive me. The people on whom I now focus my attention are the Berean and Barnabas listeners.

-Gerald Nelson Southern Gables Church Denver, Colorado

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Whenever I stand before a congregation, I have to suppress my natural instinct to preach. We preachers have a tendency- some innate drive-to offer answers to our listeners before they’ve even heard the questions. We want to help, but sometimes we forget the process required.

No wonder preaching has gotten a bad name. “Don’t preach at me!” a teenager shouts at his parents. “I don’t need your sermon,” a wife says to her husband. And we know exactly what they mean. People resist answers others have found for them. Now-l’m-going-to-fix-you sermons make my congregation’s eyes glaze over. When I pontificate, they cannot contemplate.

J. B. Phillips, while translating the New Testament, discovered its truth to be pulsing with life and power. He felt like an electrician, he said, working with wiring while the power was still on. This was no dull routine, grappling with the dynamic, living Word! Phillips felt the awesomeness-both the dread and the excitement-of the electric charge of God’s truth.

I’ve found over the years that I cannot merely preach if I want to convey the power in God’s Word. If I want my listeners to handle the electricity of living truth, I must somehow bring people to touch personally the power surging through the gospel. I have, then, always tried to make sure my preaching is really teaching, not so much telling people what the truth is as helping them discover truth for themselves.

Teaching: Risking Discovery

Historically, the church has preferred highly controlled teaching, often choosing the seemingly safe methods of instruction. A catechism, for example, sets up a limited number of predetermined questions to be answered. It’s a weak teaching device, however, because it does not help people discover the source of the answers it gives. Consequently, they don’t encounter the life of Christ in the catechism.

I don’t want to discredit the value of such methods, but they can’t substitute for a journey of personal discovery in the Scripture. When I use a catechism, a hymn, or someone’s witness, I do not call that teaching. I call it an affirmation. Affirmations reinforce the truth, but they do not teach; they do not help people discover truth for themselves, the essence of good teaching.

Helping people discover truth entails some risks, because we lose some measure of control. We put truth in the hands of others and have to let go; we have to trust that they will personally discover its relevance. But what if they get into spiritual difficulties? What if they stray from orthodox interpretations?

Yet, I’ve found I need to take those risks and relinquish rigid control of the text. I’ve learned to trust the Bible to be its own protection against misinterpretation, rather than rush in too quickly to protect it myself.

C. S. Lewis was a master at letting the truth of the gospel weave its way into people’s lives, giving people room to discover its truth. A man who had liked his Screwtape Letters went on to read Mere Christianity, and he was infuriated. He wrote Lewis a scathing letter.

“Yes, I’m not surprised,” he wrote back, “that a man who agreed with me in Screwtape . . . might disagree with me when I wrote about religion. We can hardly discuss the whole matter by post, can we? I’ll only make one shot. When people object, as you do, that if Jesus was God as well as man, then he had an unfair advantage which deprives him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying ‘Oh you have an unfair advantage.’ It is because of that advantage that he can help.

“But all good wishes. We must just differ; in charity, I hope. You must not be angry with me for believing, you know; I’m not angry with you.”

Lewis responds by giving him but one thing to think about, and then he steps back. He puts the matter in the man’s hands, as if to say, “Your move.” He lets the man now continue the journey of discovery.

Although this can be risky, especially when you’re dealing directly with the Bible, I’ve found the risk small. Our congregation’s Bible study groups aren’t under close staff supervision; we don’t have time to monitor what’s going on in every group. Nonetheless, there have been very few instances where the groups have wandered into the nonbiblical or cultic edges. I believe that’s because the Bible, when it is read sentence by sentence, draws us toward its living center, who is Jesus Christ.

Instead of spoon-feeding truth to the people, then, I risk giving them the spoon, letting them discover for themselves the satisfying taste of the gospel.

Keep the Bible First

Once while traveling, my daughter and I heard a sermon on the radio. The preacher read the text magnificently; it was from Romans 8 and was about hope. The preacher then gave a series of moving, personal anecdotes about hope.

After the sermon my daughter asked, “How did you like the sermon?”

“It was moving,” I said. “In fact, one of the illustrations brought me to tears.”

Then my daughter said something I’ll never forget: “But Dad, I didn’t like the sermon because the pastor basically said, ‘Since I have hope, you should have hope.’ And that’s not gospel.”

I was so proud of my daughter. She saw that the Good News was something more. I’m glad this pastor has hope. But I need to see how that text in Romans gives me a profound basis for hope whether he has hope or not! In a way then, the pastor cheated his listeners. We were denied the opportunity to see the text and discover from it the basis of hope for ourselves.

People, of course, desire a human touch-love and compassion and hope. And they need personal stories to show the gospel in action in daily life. The only trouble is, personal stories alone don’t connect me to the real source of hope.

Personal witness and stories should be seen like all illustrations-as windows to illuminate, to help people look in on a textual treasure waiting to be discovered. If I make my discoveries through such stories, I may become unhealthily dependent on the storyteller, usually the pastor, for my spiritual growth. But if I can discover hope for myself from Romans 8, I discover it alongside the pastor. Although it takes more time, this discovery is more powerful and long lasting.

Yes, we must be people-fluent, understanding them and communicating to their needs. But first we must be textually fluent. That means, of course, I must invest time and hard work to know the text. In fact, I have to know a lot just to raise the right questions! Good teaching comes when I understand the content and deeply know the text before I search for its implications. Then people can be connected first and foremost with the text.

Let the Urgency Come Through

Letting the Scripture speak for itself doesn’t mean I’m dispassionate about my presentation. If I want my learners to discover the text, I need to whet their appetite for spiritual things. To do that effectively I need to convey the urgency of the text.

The best calculus teachers believe a kid can’t really make it in the world without knowing calculus. The best school teachers are convinced their courses are the most important ones offered. Such teachers demand more and challenge more. They also teach more.

I want to capture a sense of urgency that says, “This is not just an interesting option. It is essential that you know.” Learners catch more than content from such teaching; they catch an enthusiasm for the truth. Excited teachers make learning urgent; bored teachers make it a task.

This means, among other things, I must be urgent about my own soul. I must be a growing, maturing Christian myself with an appetite for spiritual things. Only then can I communicate with urgency the need for my congregation to grow and mature as well.

Don’t Get to the Point

Although I’m urgent about what I teach, I’m not urgent about getting to the main point of the text. I’ve learned not to reveal what I know too soon. I’ve learned not to force the discovery but to let the natural drift of the text unfold. I’ve got to give people time to wonder, time to ponder, time for questions to emerge, and time for answers to take shape in the text.

When I preach by raising questions that spring naturally from the text itself, I enable the listener to discover meaning for themselves. It’s a little like Agatha Christie holding the solution to the mystery until the time is just right.

Take, for example, the text about Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. After Zacchaeus received Jesus into his home, the next line says, “They all murmured, ‘He is gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.’ ” Even though I want to highlight this detail quickly, I don’t need to tell the congregation right off why the people murmured.

So first I’ll ask them, “Why did the people murmur? Why are they so upset? What’s going on that they’re so angry with Jesus? And notice, they all murmured-that means the disciples, too. Why are the disciples upset?”

I may journey with my congregation through the various kinds of people who’d have been present in Jericho: Why would the Pharisees murmur? Why the disciples? Why the townspeople? What upsets them so? What expectations did they have that Jesus now has dashed?

Such an approach retains the text’s natural drama.

With this particular story, I can take my congregation on a journey through some Old Testament expectations of the Messiah. I can explore various ideas of what the Messiah would and wouldn’t do with a crook like Zacchaeus. I can consider why people weren’t prepared for a Messiah who came to seek and to save the lost. I can show why they were so surprised by Jesus.

It’s this surprise element in the text that is the wonderful news! When I can help my congregation make such discoveries just a split second before I actually tell them, they get excited about the Scripture and its relevance for their lives.

Let the Truth Sell Itself

We teachers are often tempted to say too much all at once, especially at the end of lessons and sermons. We throw in everything we can think of to make someone a Christian, rattling off the most precious facts of our faith-the blood of Christ, the cross, God’s love-and reduce them to hasty, unexplained sentences.

Instead, I’ve found it is far better to let the scriptural text make its own point and sell itself. And we can trust Scripture to sell itself because the Spirit is already working in people before they even come to the text.

I see this in culture: Woody Allen movies, among other examples, may not be Christian, but they force people to grapple with ultimately Christian issues. I also see the Spirit working in people’s lives: they struggle with grief and worry and meaning in life.

People come to the text not as blank slates but as individuals in whom the Spirit is already working. Since the Scripture speaks to people’s deepest needs, we can trust that it will get a hearing from people. We can be confident people will discover how good it is once they give it a try.

It’s like taking a person to Mount Hood: I’ve been to Timberline Lodge, and I know how beautiful it is. But I don’t have to brag about it beforehand to convince someone of its magnificence. When I get him there, he’ll see its beauty for himself and be impressed.

All I have to do is bring people to the door of Scripture. Once they walk through the door and see for themselves, they’re going to be struck with how relevant Jesus Christ is for their lives.

In our church’s small group Bible studies, for instance, we don’t try to be evangelistic. Our goal is to let the text make it’s own point and then enable the group to talk together about what is being read. We consciously try not to cover everything the first week but only what the text for the first week says.

Our approach is this: “Read this book like you read anything else. When you start into Mark, don’t give him an inch; make him win every point. Don’t worry about whether this is supposed to be the holy Word of Cod or not; just read it with the same seriousness you apply to your own thoughts.”

The amazing thing is that the text inevitably reveals its living center, Jesus Christ. Some weeks Mark (or Paul or John) wins, convincing people of some truth. Frankly, some weeks he loses: people leave thinking they know better than Mark. But over time, the text comes out ahead, and the Christ of the text wins respect.

A crusty engineering professor in our city was shattered when his wife died of a sudden heart attack, and just before he was to retire. She had been a Christian, and after the funeral, he came to see me. I steered him toward the Gospel of Mark and some additional reading.

After several weeks, I could see the New Testament was gradually making sense to him. My closing comment in our times together was usually, “Let me know when you’re ready to become a Christian.”

One Sunday after church, with a lot of people milling around, the engineer stood in the back waiting for me. He’s not the kind of man who likes standing around. Finally he got my attention, and he called out, “Hey Earl, I’m letting you know.”

That was it; he became a Christian at age sixty-five, convinced by the Scripture of Christ’s trustworthiness.

Letting People Hear Their Own Application

Creating opportunity for personal discovery sometimes surprises us in the way results come. One pastor struggled with the way his conservative upbringing imposed artificial spirituality on people. He refused to preach on traditional “sins”: going to movies, smoking, drinking, and so on.

One Sunday his text gave him ample opportunity to talk of such things: “All things are lawful, but I will not be mastered by anything.” However the pastor still would not mention the sins dictated by his tradition. Instead, he deliberately spoke of other addictions tolerated by his church, things such as overeating and watching too much television.

After the service one woman cornered the pastor, handing him her pack of cigarettes. “It may be lawful,” she said, “but I’ve been mastered by these cigarettes. I’ve never noticed that verse in that way before, so I’m giving these to you. With God’s help, I’m going to master them.” Without a word about cigarettes or nicotine, the text itself had spoken to this young woman.

That pastor could have preached against her cigarettes and maybe even have convinced her to quit smoking. But when the pastor does the work of connecting the text so specifically to life, such a decision is not as likely to stick.

Instead, she herself made the connection between the text and her smoking. And I have found that change goes deeper when we make the connection, when we discover God’s Word to us.

When I can help people discover that, then I’m “teaching” a great deal and preaching as I should.

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a good Academy Award acceptance speech and a pastor’s farewell from a church have something in common: both should be short and sweet. And then you should get off the stage.

But what do you do when you tell everyone you’re leaving and then have to stick around for four months?

I recently left a church where I had served in a staff position for eight years. My wife, Becky, and I were excited about our accomplishments yet eager to begin the next chapter in our lives. I had sensed a call to ordained ministry, and that meant a move to receive additional academic preparation.

As with most staff departures, this was not going to be an easy good-bye. In this place two of our three children had been baptized, and it was the only home they remembered. The congregation was full of people who had nurtured our children and who had shared with us joy and sorrow, success and disappointment. We had been together long enough to be richly blessed, and occasionally wounded, by each other.

We faced an additional reality: I would begin my studies in February, but my denominational process required that I announce publicly my decision in September. There was no way to avoid a four-and-a half month transition-135 days of being a lame duck. Even if we had wanted it, this was not going to be a nice, neat transition, a professional leave-taking.

Becky and I set out to make the most of a long good-bye. Here’s what we learned.

Feelings to Process Before the Announcement

The first thing we saw was that emotions were snaring us early on. Though we would travel the same route several times, even before the decision was announced, we experienced the first cycle of grief: denial, anger, blame, and acceptance.

During our year-long struggle to come to the decision, we found ourselves repeatedly denying the reality of our move. For instance, we found it difficult even to think about leaving one older couple in the church who had become special, grandparent-type friends for our children. I also found myself getting excited about events I was helping plan, knowing I’d never be a part of them.

When we finally did make the decision to leave, we found ourselves torn between talking constantly about the move and trying to forget about having to leave.

We also experienced anger; in many ways this was not a move we were eager to make. Yes, we were excited about what awaited us, but we felt angry about having to leave good friends and a familiar place. Becky in particular longs for a sense of rootedness. After recent staff changes and the flurry of finishing a new building, things had finally begun to feel settled. Now we were going to move.

We also found ourselves blaming. The three recent years of constant staff changes and confusion at the church had taken an emotional toll. I wondered, had that transition been better handled by the elders, would I have thought of leaving? Perhaps I was to blame: maybe I should have gone to graduate school earlier in my career, when a move wouldn’t have been so disruptive.

Acceptance finally came, but only after many late night conversations, some confusing and frustrating, in which we honestly expressed our anger and disappointment as well as our hopes and plans.

Picking Words to Carry Us Through

We recognized that our leaving would mean different things to different people in the congregation. Some would see our move as a wonderful career step, and others would take it as not much more than another change on the church letterhead. Then again, some would have to say good-bye to special friends or people they’d come to lean on for support.

These different groups needed to be told differently, and we needed to be ready for their reactions.

No matter who we would be dealing with, we wanted to make three words hallmarks of this last chapter in that place: gracious, truthful, and open.

By gracious, we were hoping that we would be at ease in accepting the inevitable tributes, thanks, and words of appreciation that would be coming our way. But more than that, we wanted to express specifically our thanks and our love for others, both publicly and privately.

By truthful, we were committing ourselves to avoiding cliches, euphemisms, and glossing over some tough issues from the past.

By open, we meant we wanted to be “emotionally available” to the congregation, to be a listening ear to those who wanted to share their feelings before we left. Also, we didn’t want to put on a tough or pious exterior that suggested we ourselves were not torn by emotions.

Close Friends React Practically

The opening stage of our campaign went wonderfully well. Arrangements were made for dinners, desserts, or afternoon visits with eight of our closest friends. When they were people important to our children, we included our children. Though the announcement was always hard to make, each occasion was marked by the grace and openness we wanted.

We tried to keep opening pleasantries to a minimum so that we would have as much time as possible to talk about our decision. We quickly saw that often the initial comments or questions of our friends were practical ones-When will you leave? Where will you live? Why did you choose that seminary? Later we’d find that many of our answers weren’t remembered. The questions about details, it seems, provided a non-threatening way for our friends to respond initially.

As the conversation progressed, though, tears were shed, hugs exchanged, and talk made about the future of our relationships.

These were good times, and we regretted we had not spent more time in the previous eight years “just talking” with these special people.

Planning a Few Answers

I announced my decision to the church board in late September, and within a week, the news was announced in a congregational letter and from the pulpit. Even before the news was out, though, we tried to imagine the different reactions and comments we might receive and, in the words of a therapist friend, tried to “calibrate” appropriate responses.

A few people immediately wrote thoughtful notes that, as it turned out, would be their only words on the subject. The most common responses were “I don’t know what we’re going to do without you,” “I knew you would be leaving us sometime,” and “We’re happy for you, but sad for us.”

To such people, and to the casual passing-in-the-hall mention of regret at our leaving, I’d often say, “Oh, you’ll do just fine, I’m sure,” or “Yes, I guess we all move on sometime, but it doesn’t make it any easier,” or “I am looking forward to the new challenge, but leaving you all is a very sad thing for me and the family too.”

When someone would make a special effort to talk to me about our leaving, I would tell them something of my struggle to come to a decision about the new call. I didn’t want to make Cod the “fall guy” for our decisions, but it was a good chance to teach a little bit about God’s call and our need to respond. I would tell them how my own cautious nature made responding to God’s call difficult.

In addition, I would remind them that the church would be facing some months of transition, that some things would not be the same as before, and that was neither good nor bad.

Most importantly, though, I would try to remember to thank such concerned people as specifically as possible for some way they had touched my life, for something my family would remember about them, or for an aspect of faith or hope they modeled especially well.

For instance, one couple had been particularly generous in allowing us to use their vacation home. We told them how much it had meant to use it to get away from time to time. I also spoke specifically to one person I had worked particularly close with on a major church project.

Back to Normal-Except for Counseling

Within a month, it all seemed to end. Lame duck? No way!

There was a fall stewardship campaign to run, a budget to write, classes to teach, and Christmas programs to plan. We were back to business as usual-except for a noticeable increase in the number of people asking to come in to talk about this or that personal issue. A few even acknowledged that my leaving was what finally brought the issue to a head.

One woman, someone who had attended several of my adult classes over the years but whom I knew only casually, made an appointment for what she said would be a brief conversation. She began with some kind words about my ministry. I replied with some of my standard lines.

Then she said, “There is something else I’ve wanted to talk about with you, and I want to do it now, before you leave.”

She began to unfold the story of the fear she had been living with for years. Her husband was chronically unemployed and depressed. His anger at being unable to find a job was taken out on his children, and though she knew of no physical abuse, she worried deeply about it all.

“I don’t want to burden you,” she concluded.

“But perhaps you know someone who could help me.”

I urged her to contact some agencies and family therapists that could deal with her problem.

Such conversations were prompted, I believe, in part by people’s knowing I wouldn’t be around much longer.

Strange Silence About the Move

While busy with the tasks of ministry, I nevertheless was almost depressed by what seemed to be a lack of concern for our big decision and our plans to move. I soon saw the problem, however, for what it was.

So far, all we had allowed people to do was ask questions and react to our decision. We had made our choice, and we had not asked for input from any but a very few who had served as references on applications. We had not given most of our friends anything to do, any way to help. They wanted to help, to be a part of our process, but they didn’t know how.

So Becky began to think of ways we could use; people’s offers of help, things that would really assist us, like providing meals during the final hectic weeks of packing. Others agreed to take the children for a day while we packed, or help in the actual packing. Even though we wouldn’t need the help for a couple more months, our friends were “let in” on our process, and we were given the reassurance of their support.

We also realized that we needed to “give Dermis l sion” for people, especially men, to talk to us. So in some situations we’d bring up the subject of our move and specifically ask for advice about a crosscountry move in February. Nearly everyone had some word to the wise, and most had their own stories of blizzards, icy roads, and thousand-mile detours.

Some people mentioned they were reluctant to | talk because they felt something akin to envy. A move to a new community, a return to graduate i school, and a different career direction were things l they had long dreamed about, but they were slowly slipping away as real possibilities.

One woman spoke of almost regretting her husband’s business success: “We’re so well-

established and doing so nicely, I don’t know that we will ever E venture out in a new direction, ever pull up and start over somewhere else.”

The adventurer and wanderer in her could only dream about what we were doing.

And some people were hesitant to talk to us because they suspected that we were leaving because we were dissatisfied, and they didn’t want to probe a sensitive area for us.

My first preaching opportunity didn’t come until nearly two months after our initial announcement. In the sermon I spoke about my sense of calling, weaving that in with the story of faithful Abraham and Sarah told in Hebrews 11 and the sense of call the Mayflower pilgrims experienced.

Following the service several people expressed relief to learn that I wasn’t leaving because I was angry. One kind and godly woman took both my | hands and said, “I was so glad to hear what you said. All these weeks I’ve been worried that we had done something to hurt you, and that’s why you were leaving us.”

Trying to Mend a Broken Relationship

Other, less pleasant, business needed attending to as well. My relationship with one elder had been strained to the breaking point a year earlier when he and I disagreed sharply over decisions made regarding the termination of another staff member. My concern for discipline he had heard as judgmental; his concern for compassion I had heard as compromise on Christian essentials. We had patched things up well enough to continue a working relationship, but we were each still hurt.

I had been willing to leave without dealing with the residue of hurt; I figured as long as we acted civilly, we needn’t do more. That was not to be.

Because of this elder’s committee assignment, he had heard of my decision to leave before I had formally announced it to the full board. He took it upon himself to alert other elders of my decision and offered his opinion: “It’s probably a good thing.”

After my announcement, he began to criticize routine administrative decisions I had been making for years. When the local weekly paper ran a story highlighting my years at the church and the many staffing changes that had taken place, he chastised me at a board meeting for the tone of the article. While the senior pastor and the other elders affirmed me overwhelmingly that night, I realized clearly a serious problem still existed.

I talked with this elder, and we agreed to meet for breakfast. The tension was thick as we moved quickly from small talk to the antagonism between us. We rehashed many of the year-old issues, only to find once again we disagreed. I asked about some of the more recent incidents, and he said he had done only what he thought was best for the church. We were at another impasse.

“To me, it feels as if you are carrying out a personal vendetta in a public forum,” I said.

“Well, I feel as if you’ve used your position to make me appear wrong in front of others.”

We left the restaurant acknowledging the impasse and hurt but with the hope that time might heal what we had not been able to. I felt no great sense of accomplishment or resolution, but I was thankful we had made one final attempt at reconciliation. I saw in retrospect that I had not been right in thinking I could leave the church without at least trying to deal with that broken relationship and the pain I was feeling.

Really Saying Good-Bye

Christmas time and the final six weeks before our departure marked a closing and significant state in our leave-taking. Becky and I began to be struck by the last-time quality of events: helping the men of the church put up the huge Christmas tree in the sanctuary for the last time; listening to the choir singing “Silent Night” for the last time; attending the annual Christmas Craft Workshop with our family for the last time. The last times became emotional reminders not that we were going someplace new and exciting but that we were leaving a dear and beloved community of friends.

Entering the new year seemed to signal permission for the beginning of good-byes. People who had hardly spoken of our leaving since our announcement in late September had clearly given thought to it and were ready now to say what they wanted to say.

We, in turn, were able to respond-less often now with our rehearsed lines and more often with a depth of feeling we did not have in September.

Those practiced lines had served us well in the beginning, but over the months had become self-protective barriers to honest communication.

We could have been at a farewell party every weekend evening of that last month. As an extrovert, my inclination was to squeeze in as many events as possible. Becky wisely suggested that we think of our children’s place in all this: the children deserved to have their memories of our final month be more than a succession of baby sitters.

So we put a limit on our social engagements. Those whose invitations we declined seemed to understand. We found that breakfasts and lunches with special friends could be substituted for more formal evening events. By the time we left, we felt as if we’d had some time with nearly all those with whom we wanted personal conversation.

A dynamic in Becky’s relationship with one of our good friends became symbolic of one issue we faced in our final weeks. “You know, I’m not going to say good-bye,” our friend said emphatically several times.

Becky, however, felt that spoken and acknowledged good-byes are vital. In some of our previous departures, she’d learned that when a proper goodbye isn’t said, relationships are left dangling.

Even though we hoped to see these and other friends in the congregation again, and were making plans to do so, we were leaving the kind of daily relationships we’d had. We could not have that kind of relationship again, and it was important to us, especially for the sake of the children, who were so fond of these friends, to acknowledge the fact.

Becky felt strongly enough about it that she phoned the friend. “I want you to say good-bye when the time comes,” she concluded.

“Yes, that all makes sense,” her friend replied. “But it’s still going to be very hard.” Then over the next several conversations, half joking and half seriously, she would say, “You know, I’m not going to say good-bye.”

The last week arrived. Friends came by to help

pack and provide meals. We shed more tears than we had in all our eight years there. I preached a final sermon that allowed me to say “Thank you” and “I love you” appropriately.

At a reception following the worship service, the congregation had an opportunity to respond formally and informally. We were overwhelmed by their expression of gratitude. Likewise, Becky was given a chance to say things publicly that only she could say.

Kind tributes were given by different members of the congregation with whom I had worked over the years. The last tribute was to Becky and was given by the friend who vowed not to say good-bye.

“Well, -Becky,” she began, “You told me proper good-byes are important, so here I am to wish you farewell, not only for myself but also for the whole congregation.” She continued with a tribute to ‘ Becky’s teaching in the church school, her contribution to the worship committee, and for her role mother and wife.

She concluded by saying, “Your church family thanks you for sharing your husband, your children, , and yourself with us. God bless you and . . . goodbye.”

The hugs and the tears were long and genuine. The last good-byes as we left town were painful, to be sure, but full of a quiet joy as well.

Seeing How Much We Care

We should ever be reminded that each of us is dispensable, that successors will always do things differently and often better than us. But it is no false pride to remind ourselves of how important we are to the people of our congregations, nor is it unprofessional to remind ourselves of how important they are to us.

This is what good-byes are all about. Becky and I and the congregation found that a longer good-bye allowed us to see more clearly how deeply we cared for one another. It was a grace-filled time.

Edwin Friedman, in his book Generation to Generation, writes, “Where the terminal period in our relationship with a congregation can be treated as an opportunity for emotional growth, rather than as a painful period to be shortened or avoided, the long-range benefits, for both the congregation and for ourselves, are numerous and fundamental.” Amen.

We will return to church service again in a couple of years. And after that there may be another farewell or two. Given the nature of calling committees and the like, I may not have the privilege of being a lame duck for four months again. But whether it be one month or four, I will never again be interested in a quick good-bye.

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.