In his eighteen years as pastor of Christ Our King Church in Bel Air, Maryland, Eugene Peterson has done a lot of thinking about successful pastoring: What is it? Who does it? How is it done?
The answers? Gene doesn’t know if there are hard and fast answers, but he agreed to talk about the problems in LEADERSHIP’s interview. In the process we get glimpses of his successes and failures, his frustrations, satisfactions, and, yes, the continuing struggles. In short, we get a picture of the way he does it.
Gene developed his approach to pastoring from scriptural study (his new book, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, John Knox, illustrates his method) and personal experience.
Publisher Harold Myra, Editor Terry Muck, and Assistant Editor Dan Pawley found Gene particularly enlightening, not only for his ministerial strategies, but also for the personal aspects of his life. He’s a man who reads mysteries, extracts theological insights from classic novels, runs marathons, and goes for long hikes in the woods with his wife.
You see yourself as a pastor, not an administrator. How did you develop that view of your pastoral role?
One of the worst years I ever had was in the early days of this church. Our building was finished, and I realized I wasn’t being a pastor. I was so locked in running the church programs I didn’t have time to be a pastor. So I went to the session one night to resign. “I’m not doing what I came here to do,” I said. “I’m unhappy, and I’m never at home.” The precipitating event was when one of my kids said, “You haven’t spent an evening at home for thirty-two days.” She had kept track! I was obsessive and compulsive about my administrative duties, and I didn’t see any way to get out of the pressures that were making me that way. So I just said, “I quit.”
How did they react to that?
They wanted to know what was wrong. “Well,” I said, “I’m out all the time, I’m doing all this administrative work, serving on all these committees, and running all these errands. I want to preach, I want to lead the worship, I want to spend time with people in their homes. That’s what I came here to do. I want to be your spiritual leader; I don’t want to run your church.” They thought for a moment and then said, “Let us run the church.” After we talked it through the rest of the evening I finally said, “Okay.”
I’ll never forget what happened because of that talk. Two weeks later the stewardship committee met, and I walked into the meeting uninvited. The chairman of the group looked at me and asked, “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust us?” I admitted, “I guess I don’t, but I’ll try.” I turned around, walked out, and haven’t been back since.
Although now I never go to committee meetings, it took a year or so to deprogram myself.
Don’t you have to be moderator of the session, though?
Yes, I do moderate the session. And I tell other committees that if they want me to come for a twenty-minute consultation on a specific problem I’ll be happy to do that. But I haven’t been to a committee meeting now, except in that capacity, for twelve years.
You’ve been in Christ Our King Church now for eighteen years, and for the last twelve, your elders have successfully run the church. To what do you attribute that?
I suppose the mutual trust. They don’t always do it the way I want them to, but when I decided I wasn’t going to run the church, I also had to decide that if they were going to run it, they would have to do it their way, not mine. They listen to my preaching, are part of the same spiritual community, and know the values being created and developed; so I trust them to run the church in the best way they know how. Sometimes I do get impatient, because it’s not the most efficient way to run a church; a lot of things don’t get done.
Why is that? Because they are volunteers?
Partly. Some of the leaders aren’t fully motivated. A congregation elects elders and deacons and sometimes chooses them for the wrong reasons. Some are only marginally interested in the life of the church, so they have neither the insight nor motivation to be productive. I can either give them the freedom to fail, or else step in and train people to be exactly what I want them to be. I’ve chosen to let them alone.
You’re saying your first priority has to be your pastoral ministry? And that some other good things such as making the administration of the church more efficient, must be left to others? There’s nothing you can do about it because your priority is your ministry?
That’s right.
Walk us through one of the inefficient things you allowed to happen, even though many leaders would see it as an administrative lapse.
I recall the case of a woman who was working in a voluntary capacity coordinating several closely related programs. When she started out, she was excited about it and did a good job. But as time went on, she dipped into other things and began doing her job indifferently. T was dealing with her as her pastor on family problems, and I felt it was important for me not to criticize her administration or ask her to resign. So I didn’t do anything.
Matters became worse. I had many phone calls and listened to many complaints. I said, “I’d like to improve the situation, but I can’t promise anything.” I just waited with it and kept on being a pastor to her. I felt that to keep from compromising my position as pastor to her, I had to let the programs in a sense fail that year and suffer with poor administration. Now, many pastors wouldn’t have permitted that, and for their ministry styles it might have been correct for them to step in and administratively handle the situation. I’m not against that kind of efficiency by any means, but I need to know what I’m good at. I have to pay the price of being good at certain things and not be a jack-of-all-trades.
Are you saying it’s all right for pastors to sharply differ in how they run churches?
Definitely. I was Bill Wiseman’s associate pastor in White Plains, New York. He has personal integrity and is highly skilled in all areas of pastoral work. He did more than any other person to enable me to be a pastor, especially in the administrative and managerial aspects. He runs a tight ship; things like structure and efficiency are very important to him. However, our styles of ministry contrast markedly. He now has a church of 5,000 members in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he would go crazy running a church the way I do.
Later on, I realized my real gifts were not in administration; that what I really wanted to do was spend most of my time in personal ministry to my congregation.
Do you have any full-time staff?
No, we have a man who has been a pastor, and who works with us just on Sundays as a youth pastor. We also pay our choir director and organist; and we have a sexton who works about twelve to fifteen hours a week. There’s no paid secretarial staff-just volunteers.
Volunteer secretaries? How has that worked?
Wonderfully! The idea came to me while I was reading a Dorothy Sayers mystery. Peter Wimsey is out trying to solve a murder, and he’s having a difficult time getting information. Nobody will talk to him because he’s an outsider. So he searches for someone who would know the community, locates an elderly spinster, and hires her as a typist. Then he has her employ a typing pool, and these ten to fifteen people are his links to the community.
I thought, “That’s exactly what I need.” So I asked a woman who I thought was competent in these areas to be the church office coordinator. We found two people for each weekday to work from nine to two o’clock, and informed the congregation of the new office hours. We divided up the office work to specific days and defined the responsibilities for each person. We have to plan a little bit ahead; we can’t get things done immediately. But the plus part is that we really developed a lot of ministry. They do a lot of listening, they’re in touch with many people, and they tell me things that are going on. They are important to the running of the church.
Do these ideas make a difference in how your people view the church? Do they draw the community together?
Community to me means people who have to learn how to care for each other, and in one sense, an efficient organization mitigates against community, for it won’t tolerate you if you make mistakes.
This is not the situation in the church. We have inefficiency on our church office staff, but efficiency is not nearly as important as being patient with people and drawing them into a mutual sense of ministry. It’s the way we operate; everything doesn’t have to be “out today.” If work is planned well enough, there’s room for things to wait.
Sometimes I need people to just answer the phone or do telephoning for me. I’ll say, “Why don’t you call so-and-so? She’s lonely and bored; see if she can come in one day and help us.” Sometimes that’s just the thing needed to draw people back into a sense of ministry and community. They arrange for my home visitation from a list I give them. It’s important, and they know it’s important.
Tell us about your home visitation program.
I’ve never done visitation systematically. Sometimes I’ll read about somebody who goes through the whole church list in the year and sticks to a rigid schedule. I’ve never done that. I do home visitation on a sense of need, when I know there’s something special going on in someone’s life. Birth, death, loss of job, relocation, or trouble in the home are good indicators for me to visit. I go and talk with them, listen to their problems, find out where they’re at, and pray with them. That’s the advantage of pastoral work-it can respond to all the little nuances of community life and participate in them.
There’s a line in a poem about a dog going along the road with haphazard intent. Pastoral life is like that. There’s a sense of haphazardness to it, for me anyway, because I don’t want to get locked into systems where I have to say, “No, I’m too busy to do that; I can’t see you because I have this schedule.” But the haphazardess is not careless; there is purpose to it I like to keep the freedom where I can be responsive to what’s going on with my people.
It’s fascinating the way you use literary allusions. Why should a pastor have time to read Dorothy Sayers? Isn’t that a waste? Shouldn’t you be deep into theology?
I read because I love to read. Novels are food for me. I need to be immersed in that kind of reality to keep my head straight and be in touch with things that are going on. Sometimes I read detective stories; they’re kind of a spiritual tonic for me. When I really feel clogged and sodden, when everything is complicated, when I can’t sort myself out, I’ll go off for two days and read detective novels. I have to do it on the sly-that is, I have to keep my work going. I’ll make the phone calls, see the people, make the visits, but then I race back to some corner and devour another story.
But, Gene, don’t you feel guilty?
Yes! But some time ago I finally became resolved to the fact that I’d never get over the feeling of guilt. My father was a butcher by trade, and when I was young, he would seldom permit me to just sit around. I always had to be doing something. When I’d be home reading a book, he would come into the room and say, “Gene, why aren’t you doing something!” So I grew up feeling guilty about reading a book.
Sometimes when I’m reading, my wife Jan will say, “But shouldn’t you visit so-and-so?” I kind of kiddingly say, “I’m really doing theological work.” One day I wrote an article about Rex Stout called “Wolfe in Sheep’s Clothing” in which I showed how Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were really a type of ministry-a theological underpinning in pastoral work. It was fanciful, but I worked out all the details and sent it to a Christian magazine with a note to the editor saying I hoped he’d take it seriously, because if he didn’t, all my credibility with my wife would go down the drain. Fortunately, he accepted it.
You mentioned that you also read novels. Which ones have been important to you in your role as a pastor?
First, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevski. You have to read that over and over. There’s a sense of the theology of destiny and of pastoral vocation in Father Zossima. Dostoevski’s perception of the human condition is essential reading for a pastor. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, for Americans especially, is in some ways perhaps the most important theological book ever written. It came at a key time in our history; it showed what we were missing by all of our sentimental optimism, everything-is-going-to-turn-out-okay attitudes. Faulkner articulates so well the sense of sin and redemption in, for instance, Light in August. Flannery O’Connor’s stories and novels are also very important. She was a great theologian. A book I think would be important for pastors is the collection of her letters called The Habit of Being. One of the things she says is that somebody reviewed one of her books and called her a hillbilly nihilist. She said, “I don’t mind the first word, but I’d rather they call me a hillbilly theologian.” She was very conscious of the Christian theology she presented through her work. Walker Percy is helpful for Christian pastors today. Percy has one of the most powerful senses of ministry as a novelist of anybody working, and he senses the desperate straits we’re in spiritually and morally. He’s a believing Christian and is able to present that reality in his novels The Movie-goer, Love in the Ruins, and The Last Gentleman.
Is it important for all pastors to read?
No. Others might get the same kind of satisfaction out of completely different activities. I think all pastors must have some way of recharging their batteries, but reading is not the only way to do it.
For example, some people run to recharge their batteries. I started running two years ago just to prove I could do it. But it wasn’t enough for me to just go out there and feel good-I wanted to win races. The first race I entered, a ten-mile race over in Delaware, I finished first and my sixteen-yearold son finished second. It was exhilarating.
Do you use literary allusions in your preaching?
I don’t, because my people aren’t reading these things. I don’t want to throw quotations at them that they’re not in touch with.
But if you’re reading a novel and you find this graphic illustration-isn’t it tempting to relate it to your people?
Yes, but I want to preach the Word of God. Scripture is the only text that’s important to me when I preach. I want my congregation to know what the Scriptures have to say about what they’re living through. I start my sermon on Tuesday, choose the Scripture, and all week long I’m in dialogue with that Scripture, not just personally, but communally.
When I stand in the pulpit on Sunday, I hope the people hear themselves being addressed in the sermon because I’ve listened to them; I’ve asked their questions, cried out their doubts, gone through their boredom.
Don’t you sometimes use illustrations from literature?
Sure. I’ve just been reading Specimen Days by Walt Whitman, and I’m going to use the illustration of Whitman in the hospitals during the Civil War. He goes through this terrible carnage. As he enters a hospital ward, he sees amputated arms and legs piled up outside because nobody has time to dispose of them. But he goes into the wards and is cheerful and happy-not insensitive, but bringing in that sense of life and vitality. This is a great passage to teach pastors about pastoral visitation in hospitals.
You’ve said that preaching should be from the Word. What about the pastoral role in general? Does it come straight from the Word, or has time changed its criteria?
A hundred or so years ago, pastors had a clear sense of continuity with past traditions. You knew you were doing work that had integrity; your life had recognized value and wholeness. Today, that’s just not true; we’re fragmented into doing different things. On the other hand, in the pulpit you do have that sense of continuity. When I’m preaching I know I’m doing work that has continuity way back to Isaiah. I prepare sermons somewhat the way Augustine and Wesley prepared sermons. I’m working out of the same Scriptures, so I don’t feel third rate when I’m in the pulpit.
During the week, however, I do feel looked down upon-when I go to the hospital to visit, for example, I’m a barely-tolerated nuisance. They can talk about the healing-team business all they want to, but . . .
You don’t buy that?
Not the healing team. The doctor, nurse, and pastor are a part of the healing team, but they don’t look at you that way. I’m an amateur, they’re the experts. And, in a sense, that’s true. In the modern hospital it’s a different kind of healing center than anything the church has experienced, and we don’t fit there-we’re outsiders. Other factors contribute to this feeling of uselessness, too. When you have serious problems running your church, what do you do? You call up a company and have them send out somebody to show you how to run a duplicating machine, or you take a course in church management. And who teaches you? Somebody from the business community. All through the week it seems we’re intimidated by experts who are teaching us how to do our work-but they don’t know what our work is. They’re trying to make us respectable members of a kind of suborganization they’re running, and as a consequence, we develop a self-image that’s healthy only on Sunday. I think pastoral work should be done well, but I think it has to be done from the inside, from its own base. That base, of course, must be the Bible; that’s why I immerse myself in biblical materials. In my book The Five Smooth Stones I elaborate on this.
What does that title refer to?
Five Old Testament books-Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther-each of them is an instance of pastoral work. Song of Songs gives a model for directing prayer; Ruth is a story about visiting and counseling; Lamentations deals with grief and suffering; Ecclesiastes is an inquiry into values, the nay-saying sermon; and Esther is the story of community building. These aren’t the only areas of pastoral work, but they are five important resources that provide for my pastoral ministry a great sense of continuity with traditional biblical principles. Today’s pastor has to go back to similar scriptural truths. Nothing else will suffice. Modern success models can’t match the effectiveness and self-worth provided by Scripture.
So you’ve found your pastoral role model in Scripture?
In the process of this study, I found I really like being a pastor; that’s my vocation, pastoral work. Through the whole process, I discovered what God has called me to do and the gifts he had given me in order to do it. In my younger years, I often found myself doing things that were not my ministry. I finally learned to say, “No, I’m not going to do that anymore.” I say no often. I disappoint many people, mostly people in the community and in my denomination. They have expectations they want me to fulfill, and I don’t.
Let’s speak in terms of the outward signs of success. Assume for a moment you’ve been approached by the search committee of a large church. They don’t tempt you with traditional success lures such as a bigger salary or a bigger church-they appeal to your ministry values. Here’s an opportunity to minister to 3,000 people, when your present congregation is only 300. Look at all these people you could be touching. This isn’t necessarily the American success speech, but the ministry success speech. How do you respond?
That’s simple. If you speak to 5,000 people and are not speaking out of your own authenticity, your own place where God has put you, you won’t be any more effective as a servant of God. I don’t think the number of people who hear you speak means a whole lot. What’s important is that you do a good job wherever you are.
I hate suburbia; I detest it. I don’t like the architecture, the homes, or the culture. Many times I’ve said, “Lord, why am I here?” My congregation doesn’t share any of my interest in literature. We’re not at the same place. But this is where I am. If you feel one of your goals or ministries is to build a spiritual community, then that’s where it needs to be built. I’ve accepted this as my place for as long as I’m supposed to be here. That could be for the rest of my ministry or it could be until next year.
What would trigger a change?
That’s difficult to say. Several times I’ve been at the place where I felt I was ready to leave. I just wasn’t working well and was not fulfilled. Each time I’ve said, “I’m going to make sure this isn’t a normal restlessness,” and I’ve plunged back in and come out okay. Let me illustrate:
The last couple of years I’ve felt as though I’ve been losing momentum. I quit doing many things I used to be enthusiastic about. I felt my life becoming more inward. My deepest interest is in spiritual direction, and since our community contains many psychiatrists and counselors, I quit counseling so I could spend more time alone in study and prayer. But then I found large gaps had begun to form in my congregation’s life. I had underestimated the community needs, and I really wasn’t providing community leadership. I felt my people deserved more from their pastor than they were getting. I thought maybe I belonged in a church with a staff that could be assigned the tasks of parish programs, and I could study more and maintain a ministry of personal spiritual direction and of preaching.
I talked with a friend about this for three clays. He listened thoughtfully and then said, “I don’t think you need to leave, you just need somebody to be a director of parish life.” The minute he said that, I thought of Judy. She’s a woman of about thirty-five who came to me last spring saying she was in a transitional stage, wondering where the next challenge was for her. She had organized programs for the community, done a superb job administering them, and now was relatively idle. When I asked her if she would be director of parish life, a big grin came on her face. She said, “Let me tell you a story.” Her husband was an elder, and two years ago was in the session meeting when I shared this problem about my leadership. After that meeting Don had come home and said, “You know what Gene needs? He needs you.” It took me two years to recognize that. And now Judy is at the place in her life where she is ready to assume this role of parish director. She needs to be in ministry and is filling some of the gap left by my withdrawal. I’m free to study more and be more sensitive to spontaneous needs within the congregation. In a sense, I had gone through a period of failure to discover grace.
What is your evaluation of the church growth movement?
It’s said to a lot of pastors, “You don’t have to go along the rest of your life in a rut. You can do it differently and you can do it better.” It has excited and awakened many pastors and given them some tools to work with. It’s been a positive adrenalin boost to many churches. The worst thing about it is that the whole process and all the formulas are very easily distorted, and by a flick of the wrist it can turn into something very bad. There are people doing it really well, yet others do a poor imitation. The fact is that some ministries are not meant to exist in a burgeoning place. There are ministries meant to be small, in small places, with a few people. Growth, certainly, but not always in terms of quantity.
Is your church growing in numbers?
Slowly. My pastoral goals are to deepen and nurture spiritual growth in people, and to build a Christian community-not collect crowds.
Could it grow faster?
Well, it could. If I did certain things we could double our membership. We could organize houseto-house visitation, advertise, bring in special speakers, create programs for the community that would tune in to some of their felt needs, or develop an entertainment-centered musical program. We could do all of those-but we’d destroy our church.
Why would that destroy it? Why don’t you get 350 new people you can preach to on Sunday?
Because I’d have to quit doing what I need to do-pray, read, prepare for worship, visit, give spiritual direction to people, develop leadership in the congregation. I have to work within the limits of my abilities while I continue maturing in them.
Aren’t you neglecting the unchurched people of your community?
We’re not the only church in Bel Air, and I’m not the only pastor. Few places in America are unchurched. Am I going to trust the Holy Spirit to do his work through other churches in my community, or am I going to think that if we don’t do it, it’s not going to get done?
A great deal of arrogance develops out of the feeling that when we have something good going, we have to triple it so everybody gets in on it. Many different ministries take place in the community and in the world, and it’s bad faith on my part to assume the Holy Spirit isn’t just as active in them as in my ministry.
Some people would probably say at this point, “All right, you’ve been in your church for eighteen years; yet you obviously have very little sensitivity for the need of evangelism. If every church acted like yours, how would the world be evangelized?”
My answer is that the Lord has many other people. I have to learn how to use my gifts. I’m not an evangelist, I’m a pastor. Some people in my congregation are evangelists and do a good job. I’m not much good to them; I don’t know how to direct them. Another pastor would be able to do a better job with them. I believe evangelism is an essential work, but that doesn’t mean I should make it the entire focus of my church. My gifts lie in other areas.
Many pastors want to focus their ministries, but when they try, pressures from various groups in the church who want other things keep them from it. They become reactors to their church environment.
That’s true, and the pressures are real. I don’t think anybody can do it alone. It helps to have colleagues who are experiencing the same things, friends you can share with.
Do you have a close group of colleagues?
I meet with a group of twelve pastors of various denominations every Tuesday from 11:30 to 2:00 for prayer and Bible study. Since we all use a lectionary, we preach from the same passage. Our discussion relates to our pulpit ministries-we exegete the passage, discuss it, and suggest ways we might preach from it. We’re all committed to preaching, so we don’t talk about church programs, problems, or how to run the church. When someone is going through personal difficulty, we scrap the agenda and deal just with that. But we don’t let anything else intrude.
How does this sharing of ideas affect your preaching?
It gives it depth. It insists on a certain discipline and gives it priority; you can’t put preaching off until Saturday. I’ve had rare weeks when all the sermon preparation I did was in that weekly meeting. Everything fell apart that week, with deaths and other crises, but I was able to stand in the pulpit and have a respectable sermon.
A while ago you pointed out that preaching is in some ways much more difficult now than it was a century or two ago. What has changed to produce this effect?
Preaching a hundred years ago was a kind of literate and sophisticated conversation between pastor and people. The people knew the Bible as well as the pastor did, and they all shared the same culture. Today most people are biblically illiterate; they enter the Sunday morning service unsettled, not with maturity and wholeness, but ripped apart by all kinds of things. The Sunday morning congregation is a hospital, and you just can’t do the same things done years ago.
You know it’s a hospital because you’ve been involved with people, you’ve seen trauma and pain first-hand during the week?
Yes, you know-the alcoholic, the adulterer, the family whose kid just ran away from home. It’s all sitting right in front of you. Saturday nights I go to the church, walk through the sanctuary for an hour, and think ahead to Sunday morning and the diversity and chaos represented. It can be discouraging. It’s something that Alexander Whyte, one of the great preachers of the last century, didn’t have to face. He stood in the pulpit and his sermon was a conversation with the people who were well versed in Scripture and who read the same books. He made his people read books. He took them into Pilgrim’s Progress, William Law, Saint Theresa, Dante. He was their schoolmaster as well as their minister.
The people I preach to watch television, listen to the radio, take night courses, and go to special seminars for their work. They’re just bombarded. They don’t need me to say, “You must read this book.” I need to say, “Let’s worship God,” and then lead them into Scripture and make that a privileged time in their lives. But on the other hand, there’s an electricity in preaching; you’re suddenly breaking into the humdrum, technological, rat-race world, and you have something really fresh, a new dimension to share. That’s exciting.
What counsel would you give to pastors who are in struggling situations, or who are in small churches, and are judging themselves as failures?
That’s tough to answer. I’m convinced many pastors are actually doing a really good job.
But they don’t necessarily believe they are?
They don’t know it-that they are preaching and counseling and leading well. They don’t expect to be perfect, but they’re doing a good job. I guess it goes back to the other themes we’ve talked about. A person has to be content to do what he is good at and offer it constantly to the Lord. If you keep trying to do what you’re not good at, you’re bound to fail. Nobody from the outside knows what the work of a pastor is, so they keep asking us to do things-things we’re not good at-and then we end up feeling guilty for not doing a good job.
But doesn’t every pastor have to be an administrator, even if that’s not his gift?
Every pastor has to make sure administration gets done. If you can’t see to it that it does get done, you’re in trouble. Pastoring in the twentieth century requires two things: One, to be a pastor, and two, to run a church. They aren’t the same thing. Every seminary ought to take their pastoral students and say, “Look, God has called you to be a pastor, and we want to teach you how to be pastors. But the fact is that when you go out to get a job, chances are they’re not going to hire just a pastor, they’re going to hire somebody to run the church. Now, we’ll show you how to run a church, and if you master what we’re telling you, you can probably do it in ten to twelve hours a week. That’s the price you’re going to pay to be in the position of pastor.”
What are some of the things you do to pay that price?
I return telephone calls promptly. I answer my mail quickly. I put out a weekly newsletter. I think that’s essential. When the parish newsletter comes out once a week, the people sense you’re on top of things; they see their names and what’s going on. It’s good public relations.
Couldn’t you do this with the Sunday bulletin?
No, because too many people would miss it.
Every week our one-page newsletter assures the congregation everything is under control. If you want to keep your job, people have to believe the church is running okay.
How does a pastor develop communication with his congregation?
I’m not quite sure how it’s taken place with me. Leveling with your elders is important. Many times during my ministry I told my elders how I felt, what I was going through, my sense of ministry, what was important to me, and what I felt I wasn’t doing well. Twelve years ago I quit, because I just didn’t think I could meet the expectations I set up for myself. I assumed they had the same expectations, but I was wrong. They didn’t want me to burn out.
What else can a pastor do?
Periodically confer with the leadership of your church and say what is really on your mind. They have a right to the kind of pastor they feel they need. Maybe the combination isn’t right. I think there has to be that sense of expendability. I’ve been surprised at how responsive the people in my congregation have been when I’ve shared these things.
How does that communication begin? Who can pastors talk to? There certainly isn’t time in a board meeting.
I haven’t solved that problem, but for the most part, I think it’s spontaneous. Several times in my ministry when I felt things weren’t going well, I’ve selected people from the congregation and asked if they would meet with me three or four times. “I’m not quite sure what is going on with me,” I’ve said, “but I’m concerned about the ministry of the church. I want to be the best pastor I can, and I’m confused. Would you let me talk to you?” I’ve made these groups small, five or six people who are in leadership positions, and they are always people who are in touch with the congregation. Sometimes I just need to share my concerns. But sometimes these people have given me solid direction, too.
A number of churches have a group that meets monthly to be a sounding board for the pastor, to really hear his concerns, and perhaps to be an ombudsman for him. How would you feel about setting up such a group?
I’d feel good about that!
In your weekly meeting with your local ministers, what are the biggest problems you hear?
Family and marital problems. I’d say these are the most painful things in terms of pastoral crisis. Another one, which doesn’t have the same sense of acuteness, is the feeling of inadequacy. When pastors don’t have large congregations or don’t receive affirmation from their people, it’s very difficult for them to provide creative spiritual leadership. In fact, considering the little affirmation many receive, I marvel that it’s done at all. One of the key ministries of lay persons is affirmation of their leaders.
Can you recall times when affirmation boosted your sense of worth?
Yes, although a lot of those things are subtle and small, and they just accumulate. I’ve been teaching at a Roman Catholic seminary. I’ve done this for two years, and I’m still a little uneasy. I’m in a foreign territory, so I’m never sure I’m doing a good job. Last week I conducted a class and I didn’t do a very good job. I just didn’t teach very well. I spent most of the period letting the class talk about how they were feeling about Scripture instead of giving them content. I have one student, a nun, who has a Ph.D. She is very sharp and knows more about the subject than I do. I’m afraid she feels she’s not getting her money’s worth. However, she called me up two days after the class and said, “I just want to tell you your class is the best thing that’s ever happened to me here. It’s nice to see this subject matter not just as academic symbols on the chalkboard, but as part of my personal development as a Christian.” That really boosted me; the one person I felt T was letting down told me something was happening to her spiritually. That was great affirmation. I could go for a long time on that.
How do you find ways of getting your own affirmation without being dependent on the compliments of others?
I think it has to do with discovering my need for spiritual nurture and making sure I get it. Prayer is very important for me-I can’t function without it.
How does your prayer life work?
In the mornings I spend a couple of hours alone with the Lord. I get up at 6:00 and put a pot of coffee on. Very often I do nothing except pray the Psalms-I’ve always loved them. They’ve been the church’s prayerbook for a long time. There’s an old kind of a monastic nostalgia in me; in some of the monasteries all they did was pray the Psalms. I also read the New Testament, and then after an hour and a half or so I sometimes read something else or write. If I start writing, I often write for a couple of hours.
Mondays are important. For the first few years of my ministry I never took a day off. There were too many “important” things to do. Now my wife and I leave the house and go hiking in the woods for the whole day, regardless of the weather. We pack a lunch and take our binoculars for bird watching. We’ve been doing that every Monday for twelve years. It’s important for both of us because it’s a completely different environment and something we both enjoy doing. In the morning it’s a quiet time when we can just be ourselves as well as get in touch with ourselves. At lunch we talk, and then often keep on for the rest of the afternoon.
What role has your wife played in your ministry?
A very prominent and strong one, for it’s been a shared ministry. She’s a marvelous entertainer, and we have people in our home often. She’s a master at making people feel at home, and she’s good about caring for them. She’s really helped create a sense of community in our church.
I told you that when we arrived, one of our goals was to develop spiritual community. I thought it would be pretty easy: we’d get these people in our home, pray together, sing some hymns, and we’d have it. Well, it just didn’t happen. Sometimes we felt we were making progress, but it never really happened. Then a young woman in our congregation died of cancer. She was thirty-one years old and had six children. About a month after she died, the father was discharged from his job and then lost his house. We took those kids into our home. Suddenly things started happening. Food would appear on our doorstep; people would call up and take the kids out and entertain them. It was almost as if we came to a place of critical mass. Then it just exploded, and we suddenly had community in the congregation. It didn’t fizzle out either. The hospitality increased and people took an interest in each other. It seemed almost like a miracle, and it took just one incident to trigger it. All our earlier attempts to create community now bore fruit because of the meeting of a need that wasn’t part of our strategy.
How can other churches develop community?
It’s very difficult to get, and there’s not much community in our country. Most of our relationships with each other are based on needs, on roles imposed on us.
There’s no shortcut to true community. We’re immersed in a transactional society where we trade things off, exchange things, and consume things. To get to the point where we’re open and vulnerable enough to just be with people is not all that easy. But the thing that is prominent in my mind now is that at our church we did everything we could think of to develop community, and it didn’t develop. We did one thing that wasn’t part of the strategy, and success, if you want to call it that, came.
An overweening, or overbearing, desire to be successful, it seems to me, inhibits attainment of true community and true success. It prevents us from doing things that are risky, that we can fail at.
Does a long pastorate help in developing community?
It’s certainly not the secret formula that ensures success. There are a lot of dangers in a long pastorate.
Such as?
You do what meets the congregation’s expectations so you can develop a comfortable society where you’re all nice to each other. Or you do good work and the people come to respect you, and then it’s easy to quit growing and bask in those past accomplishments. There’s also the very real danger of becoming too important to people-your goal is to develop in them a sense of maturity, independence, first-handedness with God.
The other side of the coin is how do you develop community except in a long-term situation? It took about five years before that first incident happened for our church. Only in the last six or seven years have I really felt community is starting to take place.
I can now sense that I’m pastor of a community of people, not just a collection of neighbors.
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