The dreaded announcement arrives; another ministerial meeting has rolled around. You know you should put in an appearance. After all, it’s been a while. But excuses instantly come to mind: This has been a hectic week or I really need more time on my sermon. In the end you decide to go, but you sit through the meeting convinced you’re wasting your time. The agenda bores you, and you wouldn’t choose to spend time with these people otherwise.
If that’s your reaction to ministerial gatherings, you’re not alone. I know the feeling. But now I am part of two very different ministerial fellowships, and (dare I say it?) I actually enjoy them both.
First, I’m involved with that oft-decried group, the local ministerium, complete with officers, agendas, and committee work. I don’t always know everyone at the meetings, and the conversation occasionally turns superficial. Our only common bond is that we happen to be pastors in the same city.
I also belong to a more intimate group of five pastors who look to each other’s counsel for our personal lives and ministries. We selected each other because we hold similar theological perspectives and nearly identical visions for our churches. We live in different cities. Our informal group doesn’t worry about officers, agendas, or committees.
Each of these groups in its own way has provided me with a wealth of friendships, ideas, resources, personal care, and opportunities for extended ministry.
The Local Ministerium
The many pitfalls of municipal ministeriums account for their poor reputation. As a rule, they are poorly attended, and those who do participate often do not form a cross section of the churches in the community. The meetings are sometimes attended only for their symbolic value. Further, contact between pastors all too often acts as a breeding ground for one-upmanship. I’ve found, however, that these problems can be overcome-and should be for the greater benefit of us all.
I was not an easy convert to that conclusion. This is only the second city in which I have pastored, and I never attended a ministerial meeting in the first. When I moved to Visalia to pioneer a new congregation, however, I felt duty bound to attend. The meetings, uninteresting and sparsely attended, matched my expectations. But their dullness didn’t deter me; an hour and a half of boredom a month, I figured, was a reasonable price to pay for keeping the peace with other pastors. So I went regularly, and through that steady contact something happened I hadn’t planned: I started liking the pastors, and even the meetings themselves.
That seems to be a universally expressed sentiment in our fellowship. I regularly hear such superlatives as “most enjoyable” or “friendliest” as pastors describe our group. Almost all the major churches in this community are represented, bringing together a wide spectrum of theological dispositions.
Why does this association work when others fail? It succeeds because this group understands what a ministerial fellowship can do well and what it shouldn’t attempt at all.
Here are the needs I see our fellowship meeting:
 A place for relationships to begin. When asked why they participated in the Visalia Ministerial Fellowship, most of the pastors instantly said, “Friendships.” You can’t force people into friendships, but a ministerial fellowship can provide a place for friendships to begin.
Pastors’ needs for friendship vary. “I’m terribly lonely, and this group meets a real need for me,” one pastor admitted. Some pastors won’t allow themselves deep personal relationships in their own congregations, and the demands of ministry preclude time to build them elsewhere. The ministerium provides them with opportunities found nowhere else. Other pastors have their deep needs met elsewhere but still find simple friendships with other ministers a great asset to ministry. “It’s a pressure-relief valve,” says another pastor.
And what a witness it is when ministers meet each other in the community with familiarity and joy. I sometimes spot other ministers as I leave a restaurant. I’ll stop to exchange greetings and joke about something we’ve discussed before. It’s fun to watch the faces of the bystanders, surprised that pastors can be such good friends.
 A clearing-house for cooperation. Cooperation at a ministerial level can be tricky. Some pastors want to picket gay bars, others push to issue statements condemning the KKK, and still others want everyone involved in a hunger walk. Haggling over which issues should get the universal attention of the ministerium accentuates differences and, if any theological bias prevails, alienates others from participating.
While we do cooperate on such “safe” areas as helping finance a hospital chaplain, supporting the local rescue mission, and sponsoring four community worship services a year, we make sure those efforts represent all of us and not just a simple majority. For ideas with less universal appeal, the fellowship becomes a clearing-house for matching pastors with common concerns. Instead of debating what kind of evangelistic speaker would be best for Visalia, we let individual churches or other groups sponsor them and then invite members of the fellowship to get involved.
Our friendship also allows us to cooperate in another area-meeting people’s needs. Privately we’ve discussed people who church-hop to cause trouble or take advantage of people’s generosity. I know of at least one case where a pastor recommended a couple to our congregation because he thought we would better fit what they were seeking.
 A forum for continuing education. We set aside a brief time each meeting for input to increase our pastoral effectiveness. We’ve had civic leaders tell us about public policy affecting church ministry, inspirational talks by some of our own ministers, and seminars on counseling or administration. We find many willing to share their expertise with us.
 A place of accountability. It’s easy to gossip about people or chuckle at their struggle when you don’t know them. So many communities are fragmented by rumors about churches and pastors that often have little basis in fact, and the factual gossip is rarely dealt with in love, if it is handled at all.
When I sit across a table from someone every month, I am more accountable in what I say about him or her elsewhere, what I believe about him from suspicious sources, and how I respond to him when he is hurting.
Our participation saves us from the deceit of isolation. As Vern Heidebrecht of Neighborhood Church said, “It shows me the work of God is much bigger than any church. If anyone is too depressed or too elated in his own efforts, this puts it in perspective.”
A More Intimate Fellowship
A group of five pastors from churches within a forty-mile radius of Visalia comprises my other fellowship. Because I pastor an independent congregation, this may be my substitute for a denomination. We have sought out each other because we share almost identical ministry objectives. That gives us an edge over pastors who gather just because they happen to lead nearby congregations with the same brand name.
Our relationship varies greatly from the local ministerium. This is raw fellowship. We gather with no agenda or plans-only two hours set aside every three to four weeks to open our lives and ministries to each other. Our meetings rotate from office to office, with the host pastor chairing each meeting. Our common theological orientation allows us to worship and pray together freely. We seek God’s presence not only for our own lives and congregations but for our part of California.
We also share together honestly, shattering the pastoral veneer that is so easy to hide behind. Weaknesses emerge as well as strengths, fears as well as joys. We’ve walked with each other through feelings of failure, inferiority, and ineffectiveness. Together we’ve battled desires to resign, the stress caused by overwork, and the painful comments made about us. We treasure the freedom to share one another’s blessings and joys, unmarred by the insincerity or envy so hard to avoid in broader fellowships.
We counsel each other, searching the Scriptures for its relevance in our lives. We look beyond success stories to encourage one another’s obedience to God, especially when the pathway proves rocky. We mull over ideas, issues, and ministry tactics.
Often these discoveries are made with unity, although at times we also discover differences we easily forget are there. Even this diversity, however, does not tear us apart, because we hold so much else in common. These are friendships of the deepest kind, where it is safe to be honest even when it accentuates our differences-a luxury ministeriums can’t risk without being exclusive or divisive.
Periodically we bring our wives along for a night out or a two-day trip to the coast. We have fun with each other, whether in prayer or a late-night game of Trivial Pursuit. Often it is the latter that helps us escape the pressing concerns of ministry enough to turn around the next day and view them with a fresh perspective.
Though I share much the same kind of relationship with leaders in the congregation and could easily have personal needs met there, I still treasure this time. It expands my focus beyond my own congregation and keeps me from being too ingrown.
What Makes a Successful Ministers’ Group
Even though these two groups differ greatly, their successes rest on the same platform. An effective pastoral fellowship is no accident; like a garden, it must be carefully cultivated. Without that kind of effort, it will not be fruitful; it will degenerate into a weed patch of gossip, suspicion, competition, and judgment.
Here are five factors I’ve found important to make a pastoral fellowship fulfilling instead of draining:
1. Common, realistic objectives. I am idealistic to a fault, but every now and then I find someone even more so, like the pastor frustrated because the local ministerium didn’t “spend time on their faces in prayer for God to send a revival to our city.” I’d love to pray that way with other pastors, but the common vision and prayer styles such a moment demands simply don’t exist there. I’m not sure we could even agree on what a revival would look like if it did come.
We do pray together-for each other’s needs and in more general ways for our city-but we must be careful that a certain style of prayer does not act as a pruning shear to ministerial fellowship, cutting off those to whom it would be uncomfortable.
Our fellowship holds one objective above all others: to provide a place for pastors to become friends. That’s important, even though it means I fellowship with some pastors with whom I differ on theology. Knowing them, however, and opening relationships of mutual respect can only be helpful.
My group of five pastors also needs common, realistic objectives, though they differ from those of the local ministerial fellowship. We all agree on our overall purpose: to hear together what God is saying to his church and to help each other be more effective. But shooting for unity on the smaller objectives, we don’t always hit the mark.
One retreat proved to be a real fiasco. The five of us showed up with five different expectations. One came out of a spiritual drought and wanted to pray and share the entire time. Another hadn’t been away with his wife in years and just wanted to enjoy her company. Others wanted to play on the beach, and still others wanted all of the above. As you might imagine, that retreat was rough sailing. We learned again the importance of having common objectives that can be realistically fulfilled by the group.
2. A personal vision. When the group objectives are clear, pastors are free to find their own stake in the group. How can the group best equip me to extend God’s kingdom? How will it aid my church to be linked with others in the area?
I had to think through why I participated, other than for “symbolic unity.” Symbolism without substance is fruitless. And ministeriums make poor symbols anyway, because no one is even looking at them.
So I’ve clarified my objectives: to open lines of communication with other pastors and churches, to build friendships, and to learn to cooperate on joint efforts. When these objectives are met, I can do more in this community.
My intimate pastors’ group, too, flounders when any one of us loses his personal reason for coming. The conversation so easily degenerates into weightless cordiality unless everyone has heartfelt reasons for being there.
3. Committed participation. The demands of a busy schedule often lay waste to even the best intentions, but no ministers’ fellowship can be effective if people don’t participate regularly. How can I know the bulk of ministers in this community if the bulk of them don’t come? Nothing dooms a group faster than haphazard participation. We understand this within the church, but unfortunately we pastors imitate the problem in our associations outside our churches.
I attend every ministerial meeting unless I’m sick, out of town, or attending to an emergency-a real emergency. That’s what it takes to make a ministers’ group of any substance. I’ve noticed those who come regularly never gripe about the group because they are working to make it better. Complainers, I’ve found, are the sporadic attenders.
Participation means more than attendance; it demands involvement. If I go, sit alone, and join in conversation only to appear cordial, I will find the fellowship ineffective. Even as a pastor, I need to be reminded to share the burdens of others and not just look out for myself.
The intimate group demands even greater commitment, even as it offers perhaps greater rewards. Were we not sold out to each other, we could not meet effectively-and probably would not anyway. Any absent body or wandering attention makes itself glaringly apparent in this smaller group.
4. Openness. Pastors of perfect churches who have nothing to learn from anyone else needn’t bother to attend ministerial meetings. They’ll waste their time and everyone else’s. Superiority is an insurmountable barrier to fellowship. Roy King, pastor of First Christian Church in Visalia, related a telling comment made to him by a minister in Texas: “Don’t you know that everything you do is blasphemous to me? It is impossible for us to have fellowship.”
Openness is needed on two fronts. First we need to be open about our own life and ministry: “I want to understand and appreciate others, but I also bear my Lutheran background without apology.” That kind of security is rare but so essential to good fellowship.
Second, we need to be open to others. Ernie Kumpe, pastor of First Assembly here, put it best: “We have to receive people for what they are and where they are. We can only proceed if we acknowledge them as peers and not look down on them because they believe differently.”
Some pastors can’t get past that, especially when they feel someone’s theology is too skewed to be called the gospel. I too have struggled with how wide to make the fold, but that doesn’t mean I can’t build a relationship with those I can’t agree with, at least as a peer in the same profession, with the hope that the future may bring change.
At the heart of openness is trust. It must be built into any ministers’ fellowship for it to be effective.
5. Humor. I doubt any ministers’ group can long survive without humor. Stiff meetings and stiff relationships will kill a group. There are too many life-and-death matters in this profession as it is. Times with others can be enriching without being heavy and sober. If I’m too pious to have fun, I’m probably too wrapped up in my own efforts. Laughter is the fruit of camaraderie. Humor sets us at ease; it helps us not take ourselves too seriously.
Fellowship among pastors can be a valuable asset not only for the kingdom of God but for our personal ministries as well. If that kind of fellowship isn’t already available, just remember that every fellowship needs an instigator, someone who gets tired of dull meetings and champions a new purpose for the group until it becomes fruitful for all.
Wayne Jacobsen is pastor of The Savior’s Community, Visalia, California.
WHY MINISTERS NEED EACH OTHER
The wife of a local minister and long-time friend has been hospitalized with a serious illness. His mother just died, and his father, unable to live alone, seems destined for a nursing home. His brother is severely handicapped and in constant need of care. His daughter suffers from an undiagnosed illness serious enough for the family to spend Christmas at the Mayo Clinic. He, like Job, is going through a period of testing.
In northern Missouri another brother in ministry is nearing retirement. Since he has spent all his married life in a parsonage, he is concerned about where he and his wife will live when he can no longer preach. He thinks their savings will enable them to buy a small house trailer, but he is not sure. His worries may seem insignificant to the congregation-perhaps even unspiritual-but they are very real to him.
Last October a fellow minister in the midst of a midlife crisis divorced his wife. Some months later, he and his estranged wife were remarried, and now he is trying to pick up the pieces and start all over again. He is a bruised reed that is about to break, smoking flax about to go out.
Recently I received a phone call from a long-time friend whose ministry is under fire. The by-laws of his church require a simple majority vote of the congregation for him to stay. He felt he needed at least a 75-percent vote of affirmation to feel positive about remaining. The actual tally fell somewhere in between. While others in that church may fall to sleep quickly after the evening news, this man will lie awake and ponder why.
Not long ago I visited a minister in Illinois who for thirty-seven years had faithfully served the same church-an ethnic congregation in which he conducted services in his native language as well as English. Earlier, he had turned down many opportunities to move. Now he felt the need to move, but his age and the needs of churches made the move highly unlikely. His discouragement was palpable, yet he told me even his closest friends appear to care little about his personal Gethsemane.
On the surface it seems our needs are as diverse as we are. Our problems run the gamut from the physical and financial to the emotional and spiritual. These difficulties are compounded by the fact that we are a misunderstood minority, which society as a whole has no way of relating to or understanding in an adequate way. As Kermit the Frog said, “It’s not easy being green.”
How can we ease the pains of one another in ministry? With love.
This answer may seem simplistic when we hear of the minister whose wife is critically ill, or whose son has just been expelled from college, or whose car is about to be repossessed. I have a growing conviction, however, that the small, loving act is always on target.
Once, during a traumatic episode in my life, an encouraging call came from Vancouver, Washington. A minister there had promised his aunt he would call me, and he did. At the time he phoned, however, his aunt had been dead for over ten years. I will always be convinced the Holy Spirit prompted him to honor his promise at that time of particular need in my life.
Consequently, I make a lot of phone calls. When I hear a fellow minister has a problem, I give him that same kind of call I received in my hour of need. Some casual acquaintances have become the closest of friends when I simply recognized their need to be loved.
I remember raising one friend out of the doldrums with a little humor. When I heard he had been fired, I said, “Praise the Lord! You were lucky you didn’t have to chew off your leg to get out of a trap like that.” I see him now several times a year, and each time we chuckle about chewing off a leg. He is happier now in a new ministry than ever before and just turned down an opportunity to move. What he needed most was love.
Don’t we all. Ministry harbors hurts sometimes only God and another minister can fully understand.
-Boyce Mouton
Christian Church
Carl Junction, Missouri
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