Monday, August 29, 2005

Satisfaction

Yesterday I baptized the third child of a couple I married 12 years ago. It's one of the most gratifying rewards of staying in one church for a long time. I hope within the next year or two to marry a couple who were both born while I have been here. What a privilege -- to see young people grow up under your ministry, get married, and begin a Christian family -- knowing only one pastor all their lives. It's one of the intangibles of a long-term pastorate.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Sunday morning

Different pastors bring different gifts to their callings -- some excel at counseling, others at administration, and still others at relational ministries. For me, everything revolves around the Sunday morning service. Not just the sermon but the service. I love to worship with my people. I enjoy preaching, but I see preaching as one (significant) part of worship.

I am not a great preacher -- I have neither the time nor the temperament -- but I think I'm a good preacher, and I work hard at it. Indeed, I have found that when pastors do reasonably well in their "public" ministries (preaching, funerals, weddings, hospital visitation), congregations often overlook a lot of their other weaknesses!

So I manuscript my sermons and then come in on Saturday nights and early Sunday mornings to go over the sermon enough times that it becomes a part of me. I don't try to memorize it, but I do want to know it well enough that I don't have to be constantly looking down at my notes.

I also believe that worship deserves the best of our efforts. Our service has a theme (an attribute of God based on the sermon text), and the music complements that theme (God is holy, creative, gracious, etc.). And I and our musicians work hard to do our best. I have often said that we don't have to be the best at what we do, but we ought to do the best that we can. Someone else may do it better, but we need to do the best that WE can, to the honor of Christ, in leading our people in worship. "Slipshod" or "careless" have no place on Sunday morning.

One final note: I prefer not to take Mondays off. I use Mondays to clean up all the loose ends from Sunday and also to take a preliminary look at next Sunday's text so I can be meditating on it through the week.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Finishing Well

I am preaching through Isaiah and have arrived at the historical section in chapters 36-39. In one of the saddest commentaries on his life, Hezekiah concludes -- reacting to the news that because of his prideful act the Babylonians will defeat Judah -- (39:8): At least "there will be peace and security in my lifetime."

So, I preached on "Finishing Well." How sad that so many live exemplary lives (as Hezekiah had done) only to be undone in their closing years by some act of foolishness. He was on guard against Assyrian power but was done in by Babylonian flattery.

I often reflect on Paul's words to the Corinthians: "...I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." (1 Cor. 9:27) Paul was obsessed with finishing well -- and it was a healthy obsession! And apparently he succeeded. As he writes in 2 Tim. 4:7, "I have fought the good faith, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith."

If I could choose my own epitaph it would be simply, "He Finished Well."

Friday, August 19, 2005

Simplicity

Someone has said, "Simplicity is truth's most becoming garb," and the older I get the more I appreciate that insight.

When I arrived at my first church, fresh from a wonderful and (for me) eye-opening and enlarging experience at seminary, I couldn't wait to pass on all the "good stuff" that I had just received. So my poor congregation had to sit through a maze of theology and apologetics and who-knows-what-else that I dumped out on them each week.

I was so offended when one of our members -- a well-education person I had previously thought -- came up to me one Sunday after church and said (very kindly), "Pastor, we just need something to get us through the week." Now, however, I take it as a badge of honor when one of the children engages me in conversation about the sermon after the service. Or when a parent confides in me that her eight-year old really enjoys my messages.

"Simple" doesn't mean "dumbed down" or inane. Indeed, the simpler my sermons become they harder they are to produce! I work very hard to take complex and sophisticated concepts and word them in a way people can grasp and respond to. These are not "children's sermons" by any means.

By the way, I really don't believe in special sermons for children. The ones I've seen usually only serve to bring the service to a halt and draw the congregation's attention to the cute giggling children, while the pastor pulls out some object lesson that (according to most developmental psychologists) is beyond the grasp of most of his listeners! Young children have a hard time sorting out the "object" from the "lesson!" A good sermon, carefully crafted, should speak to the whole family of believers, not just the adults with post grad degrees! (At the very least, it should provide an opportunity for parents to talk with their children at Sunday dinner.)

I was humbled some years ago when, after the service, a member handed me a slip of paper with this quotation from Ecclesiastes 12:10 in the Living Bible: "For the Preacher was not only a wise man, but a good teacher; he not only taught what he knew to the people, but he taught them in an interesting manner." That's true simplicity.

A Word-centered ministry

If I have a passion in the ministry, it is to preach the Word. It's the only source of authority that I have. I can say all sorts of clever, "relevant" things, but if I'm not declaring God's Word to people I'm no different from any other social commentator or motivational speaker.

So I found it encouraging the other day when a number of us from church were attending an out-of-town family wedding conducted by another pastor. During the wedding, the officiant gave a very down-to-earth talk to the couple on the realities of marriage. But here was the source of my encouragement: one of my members came up to me during the dinner and said, "That was a very practical talk, and it was all probably true, but he made no effort to tie what he was saying to Scripture."

To be sure, Scripture was read in the service, but it was almost an ornament -- there for effect but of little real use. Ironically, another friend told me recently of going to a Unitarian wedding where the "scripture reading" was from "The Velveteen Rabbit." While we would never consider replacing Scripture, we don't seem to mind ignoring it!

And while I'm on this rant, another pet peeve: Churches that loudly proclaim their belief in the Bible but rarely read much of it in a worship service! I've been in services where the only Scripture read was a verse or two by the pastor before his sermon. "Devote yourself to the public reading of scripture," wrote Paul to Timothy (1 Timothy 4:13).

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Are we having fun yet?

Ministry is serious business. We're dealing with life and death issues and, more significantly, with eternal issues. That's why I don't care for the sort of whimsical pulpit style that seems to me unbecoming of a pastor.

But while we take our work seriously, we don't have to take OURSELVES seriously!

A sense of humor (appropriately expressed!) can go a long way toward dissolving tensions in meetings and relationships. If a member knows that I can laugh at myself (never at someone else's expense), she's much less likely to take offense at something I say or do. My people and I laugh a lot together -- and that makes it easier to cry together when we need to.

Someone has said that God must have a sense of humor -- after all, he created the giraffe! So if God can smile, shouldn't his pastors?

(By the way, there's a huge difference between humor and sarcasm. One is life-giving, the other deadly.)

Friday, August 12, 2005

Relax!

A panicked wife called and had to see me as soon as possible. I'd been working off and on with this couple for quite a while -- lots of complicated issues that I won't try to describe. After talking with her, I had an excellent sense of what was happening and called the husband to talk things over with him. When the two of us got together, I had the feeling that these were two completely different relationships! The two of them saw the situation from almost directly opposite viewpoints. And I was confused!

Years ago, I would have been the panicky one! "How do I 'fix' this?" But I've learned over the years that when I feel confused about a relational issue, I need to step back and take the pressure off myself. This is not my problem -- it's the couple's problem.

As it turns out, by the time the three of us could get together, the two of them had had a long talk together and had resolved many of the issues on their own. It was a good reminder that while I can help people on their journey, they're the ones who really have to do the heavy lifting in the relationship. The pastor who makes other people's problems HIS problem is going to be crushed under the load. My problem is to help my people get through the predicaments of their lives not take them upon me.

By the way, the distinction between a problem -- an issue that has a "solution" -- and a predicament -- a tangle of issues for which there is no one or simple solution -- is a helpful one to maintain. Too often pastors offer "solutions" for predicaments and are frustrated when they don't "work." Predicaments have no solutions. One simply (or not so simply!) works through them toward a resolution.

Friday, August 05, 2005

Competence

I have always maintained that pastors may not feel "qualified" or "capable" of fulfilling the pastoral role, but we can be (by the gifts and power of the Spirit) "competent" to do so. So, for me, overconfidence has never been an issue, though pride has! And there's a huge difference between the two. (And, of course, we will always be more competent in some areas than in others. Wisdom comes in understanding that a great leader has great weaknesses as well as great strengths.)

This issue of competence was brought home to me recently while helping a married couple work through some problems in their marriage. They were in a virtual panic over an issue that had arisen between them. Years ago I might have shared in that panic -- or at least been somewhat bewildered by their situation. But over the course of 30 years of ministry, I've been through this many times, and I felt quite competent to deal with it (I suppose much like a physician who has done a procedure enough times that it becomes second nature). And I believe that my own sense of competence contributed to helping the couple relax and understand that this wasn't the end of their world. In fact, it was -- as I thought it would be -- the beginning of a new and positive phase in their relationship together.

One of the benefits of a long-term pastorate is really getting to know your people and being able to cut through a lot of peripheral issues because of the relationship you've developed with them over the years. Had this couple gone to an anonymous counselor, I suspect it would have taken a lot longer for the three of them to work through the issues. (I'll return to this theme sometime in the future, because I'm convinced that this lack of anonymity between pastor and members is sometimes very helpful and sometimes not!)