The phrase heart of a pastor has lost much of its currency. You rarely find warmth and compassion and loyalty in seminar titles at pastor conferences; these days, leadership skills are in great demand.
But the phrase doesn’t intimidate Stu Weber, pastor of Good Shepherd Community Church, located on the eastern perimeter of Portland, Oregon. Then again, Weber is probably secure in his leadership ability. He was co-captain of his college football team, and an Army Airborne Ranger and Green Beret officer in Vietnam. He has the size of an NFL middle linebacker, the aplomb of Colin Powell, and the oversized heart of, well, a pastor.
After Wheaton College, Weber set off for the Vietnam War, from which almost 60,000 U.S. troops did not return. Vietnam forced the 24-year-old to stare into the abyss. While parachuting in Vietnam, he jumped out of a plane and landed on the canopy of his partner’s parachute. Plunging earthward, he struggled to push himself clear but couldn’t; his chute wouldn’t open because his partner’s was creating a vacuum. Weber’s chute never did open fully. He rode the top of his partner’s parachute to the earth.
“I ‘crashed’ hard,” Weber writes in Tender Warrior, “but the flowing adrenaline covered the pain, and we managed to remove the chutes, hide them in the bushes, and wait for the rest of the guys.”
The pain came from a separated sternum, which the doctors thought happened when he hit the ground. Then they speculated there must have been a prior weakness in the sternum to cause it to separate. Their preliminary diagnosis? Cancer.
“Sitting there in the hospital at Cam Ranh, lonely, scared, and homesick,” writes Weber, “I was forced again to think about death. My death.”
But Weber didn’t have cancer, and he was sent back to the front. Not long after, he was attached to a Special Forces A-team located in Vietnam’s central highlands. Outside the camp’s perimeter crawled an elite force of North Vietnamese.
“There in that muddy ditch,” writes Weber, “reeling from the fears and threats of imminent combat—I finally heard the wake-up call. I finally faced the real possibility that I would never go home. … [A] question burned its way to the surface of my mind. … What really matters?”
Weber lived to write about it, though not every man in his unit did. Months later, getting R&R with his wife and 16-month-old son in Hawaii, he decided what really mattered.
“Lord, if you choose to give me another twenty-five years,” he prayed, “I would like to invest them in my bride and kids and your Bride and kids.” Weber returned to Vietnam, resigned his commission, and then flew to the States to attend Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland.
1995 marked the end of that pledge.
Weber, now 50, and his wife, Linda, have raised three sons—Kent, Blake, and the only one still in college, Ryan. Nineteen years ago, Stu and Linda led a team to plant Good Shepherd Community Church. Weber has made good on his vow.
Which is why Leadership wanted to talk with him. At 50, what has helped him stay in the local church? What does it take to re-enlist, to recommit to local church ministry?
LIFE’S THIRD TRIMESTER
I arrived in Portland to see Weber the December day that winds of up to 100 MPH tore up the city. It was dark by the time I picked up a rental car and drove to the Pony Soldier Inn in Gresham, a small community on the far eastern side of Portland ten minutes from the church. Within minutes of arriving in my room, the phone rang.
“Welcome to the Northwest,” a voice boomed. “This is Stu. Sorry I wasn’t at the airport to greet you.”
“Not to worry,” I replied. “Nobody I’ve interviewed has ever met me at the airport. No one has ever called me, either.”
“That’s a shame,” he said. “It ought not to be that way.”
Then he gave me directions to the church. “Don’t expect to see a cathedral,” he said. “We’re simple folks out here.”
The next morning, with a wet fog squatting low over the foothills of the Cascades, I wound my way east out of Gresham until I ran out of city. The gray hid the white-tipped summit of Mount Hood, which on a sunny day looms over Good Shepherd’s backyard. Just when I was about to commit the unpardonable—ask for directions—I spotted the flashing yellow light that signaled the turnoff.
The church sits just off a highway that meanders eastward and upward toward Mount Hood. Across the road, rows of raspberry vines wrapped around poles stand at attention and in formation in a black field. Good Shepherd is surely no cathedral; it’s a two-story, rectangular gym building with several appendages. When I pulled into the parking lot, I could almost track its growth by looking at the number of additions. Weber affectionately calls the carpeted gym, which doubles as the sanctuary, the “Cave of Adullam.”
From Weber’s phone call at the hotel to the time I left Good Shepherd early the next afternoon, I felt as if I were one of Weber’s men from his Special Forces unit. Not five minutes after I walked into his office, Weber casually informed me that he was on a cabbage soup diet and said, “I’ve lost ten pounds since Sunday.” He was excited that today his diet allowed him six ounces of steak. Then he handed me a 12-page sabbatical report that just the night before he had given to his elders.
“Dave, I trust you with this,” he said. “This is personal.”
Three days prior to our interview, Weber had returned to work from a two-and-half month sabbatical, which capped his 25-year vow. The report is an outline of how he and his wife, Linda, “might finish well by stewarding our health and ministry opportunities most strategically.” It is a proposed vision statement for Weber’s new, 25-year vow, for what he calls the “third trimester of life.”
FLESHING IT OUT
“I believe with all my heart that the only thing Jesus is doing on this earth is building his church. He’s willing to condescend from time to time to the parachurch, which he’s had to do the last 150 years because of the state of affairs on the globe.”
A few minutes into the interview, Weber is leaning forward, his jaw set. He is off and running.
“I believe those five, little, monosyllabic words of Christ—’I will build my church’—changed the course of human history. Those five, little monosyllabic words are the dream of the Father.”
The church, for Weber, is not some ethereal organization.
“The church is the physical, visible glory of God,” said Weber. “It’s on the corner. You can see it—not the building, but the people and the way they live authentically. The first symptom of sin is separation; the first symptom of salvation is reconciliation.”
“Yet in ministry,” I countered, “relationships are the very things that cause us to lose the fire in the belly.”
Weber’s voice rose: “That’s because most of us pastors were taught to be careful of church relationships. We were told people will sting us. That’s straight out of the pit of hell. My best friends are in this church.”
Two of his close friends are staff pastors who make up Weber’s accountability group. It formed by chance. In the latter eighties, after the scandals of public church leaders, Weber jumped on the bandwagon of accountability. The staff of Good Shepherd tossed their names in a hat and pulled out the names of their accountability partners. Weber asked the staff to spend a portion of every Monday morning with their pick.
“I assumed that in the drawing,” Weber said, “I would get the names of a couple of the guys on staff who were like me.”
He didn’t. He drew the names of the counselor and administrator. “I can’t counsel my way out of a paper bag,” Weber said. “And I don’t know a detail when I see one.” For a long time, Monday morning meetings were awkward: “We circled like dogs on a sidewalk. We thought, This is accountability? This is authenticity?”
Then one of them took a risk; he simply relayed the temptations he faced on a recent trip. “When he told us that,” Weber said, “we said, ‘You, too?’ Our group began to reflect what I’d been preaching for years: We have no assets apart from God, and we have no liabilities that aren’t common to man.”
In this group, Weber holds no special privileges. Growing up, Weber developed a temper, which blossomed in high school and college. “And then I went in the military,” Weber said, “which doesn’t do a lot to curb your temper and develop relational skills.”
Early in his ministry, he stopped playing church-league basketball altogether; his temper kept flaring, embarrassing himself and the church. A decade passed. “I hadn’t had a flash of temper for years,” Weber said. “I thought, The Lord has been good. I’m actually growing.”
Then his oldest son made the high school varsity basketball squad. “I began living my life again through my son.” Weber terrorized the referees. On one occasion, seated in the second row, Weber wound up on the floor level, with no recollection of how he got there. He received nasty letters from church members, who, he says now, “were absolutely right on.”
But then he got another note: “Stu, I know your heart. I know that’s not you. I know that you want to live for Christ and his reputation. And I know that’s not happened at these ballgames. If it would be helpful to you, I’d come to the games with you and sit beside you.” It was from one of his accountability partners.
“Steve saved my life,” Weber said. “It was an invitation, a gracious extension of truth. He assumed the best and believed in me.
“If pastors don’t have deep, authentic relationships inside the church, we can’t flesh out the theology of the church, which is the whole point of being alive.”
Which is also the only reason Weber says he can stay a pastor.
PLAYING VARSITY
Sports and war—a conversation with Weber is peppered with analogies and metaphors of competition and combat. In his office, along with pictures of his family, hang two pictures that partly reveal who he is. One is a collage of photos and sayings of Vince Lombardi. The other is a painting by Lee Teter titled “Reflections.” It is commonly referred to as “The Wall,” a portrait of a veteran in civilian clothes staring into the Vietnam Memorial and seeing in it a ghostly reflection of his dead comrades.
I asked Weber to describe what “The Wall” meant to him, and he quoted from Shakespeare’s Henry V. King Henry, before the historic battle of Agincourt, speaks to his troops: “For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.”
“For those of us veterans who returned from Vietnam,” Weber said, “there is a camaraderie with those who did not return that no one, not even ourselves, can fully understand. We veterans, who feel the betrayal of both our leaders and our people, share an unspoken bond.”
The name of one of Weber’s football teammates from Wheaton College appears on the second panel of the Vietnam Memorial. “Jim stepped on a land mine in July of ’65,” Weber said, “and it was announced in chapel in August of ’65. We were just starting football season again. The fall before, Jim had been with us in practice; now he was dead.” Weber admitted that in recent years Vietnam has been occupying more of his thoughts. One reason is the Clinton presidency and the controversy regarding his role in the war: “Clinton winning the presidency hit me like a closed fist in my solar plexus.”
This mental return to Vietnam, at least partly, has helped him stay true to his calling as pastor. It points him to true north, even when he toys with heading another direction. Bob Buford’s recent book “Halftime,” which challenges success-oriented business leaders to rethink their second half of life in terms of significance, has helped to underscore the tension.
“Most of us who went into the ministry did so because of its significance,” Weber said. “But now that we’re older, our peers can pay for their children’s college tuition, but we can’t pay for ours. We chose ministry for its significance, but through the years have grown disillusioned with the realities of living with sinful human beings.”
Weber has felt the frustration of living on a pastor’s salary. He and Linda barely afforded basketball shoes for their oldest son, Kent, who during his senior year made all-conference. Weber described to me a mental picture of Kent, in a basketball jersey and Keds tennis shoes, standing next to his teammates wearing $150 Nikes. “His brothers still tease him,” said Weber, “because he wore ‘speed stars’ while everybody else had expensive shoes—and he was the MVP.”
Weber’s theology of significance has been severely put to the test. One church offered him a salary that would have tripled his and an interest-free loan for a new house. He has also received offers from a college and several seminaries. In moments like this, Weber said, it’s hard not to shift from significance to success.
“We begin to talk about `multiplying our ministries,'” said Weber, a Promise Keeper and Family Life Conference speaker and best-selling author. “I know; I’ve talked this way. People have told me, ‘Why waste your time in the church? Your stewardship must be larger than the church.'”
Weber seemed furious: “That is a lie. Nothing and no one is larger than the local church. I’m not saying a pastor should never switch to the parachurch, but why would I want to make the varsity squad and then turn in my jersey to play junior varsity?”
I interrupted: “Perhaps some, deep down, really think pastoring is JV.”
“That’s wrong,” Weber replied. Then he reverted to a war analogy: “Soldiers are people under orders who do or die for principle. So are pastors. I can’t leave until I’ve been released from my duty post. A soldier is not released because of exhaustion or disillusionment. We pastors always need to ask, ‘Has the Commander-in-Chief released me from this assignment?’-“
In the army, Weber said, for every one infantryman on the front lines, there are seven support personnel. “When I decided to be a soldier,” he said, “I thought, If I’m going to be a soldier, why not go all the way? Why not be an Airborne Ranger? So if you’re going to be a Christian worker, why not be a pastor? Pastors are the Airborne Rangers of the ministry.”
TREE CLIMBING
Weber doesn’t seem to waffle on much. But inside this warrior is a tender heart, which ministry has wounded.
Good Shepherd Community Church started out of a Bible study. When it began to grow, the church moved to a high school for four years and then to its present location. Then it exploded in growth, and the elders proposed to buy another piece of property. The congregation balked; a few questioned Weber’s motives: “Pastor is just trying to build a big church.”
The elders backed off from the proposal. Weber was clearly disappointed but accepted it, deciding not to draw a line in the sand.
“When our church hits these tunnels,” he said, “it’s important that we hang onto each other’s ankles. Otherwise, the poisonous gases in the tunnels will kill us.”
I asked Weber how he handles defeat.
“You have to remember what the hill is that you want to take. The hill is the union of God’s people, which is enjoyed by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A building is merely the means to an end to facilitate that.”
When Weber feels beat up, he looks for his “Ranger buddy,” a term from his newest book, Locking Arms. While in U.S. Army Ranger school, Weber learned the Ranger “theme”: “You go out together, you stick together, you work as a unit, and you come in together. If you don’t come in together, don’t bother to come in!”
“If the apostle Paul couldn’t do it alone,” Weber said, “I can’t. What New Testament names like Silas and Timothy and Fortunatus and Epaphroditus all have in common is a friendship with the apostle.” Weber’s “Ranger buddies” are his accountability group.
He also “climbs a tree,” another phrase from Locking Arms, which he borrowed from “The Hobbit.” “Climbing a tree” simply means getting away to gain perspective. “You’ve got to check the horizon,” Weber said, “and your back trail to look where you’ve come from and forward to where you’re headed.”
Weber, a Packer fan, recounted a celebrated story of Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. During their domination in the sixties, the Packers lost a game by a huge score. The next day Lombardi called a team meeting and essentially said, “Guys, we didn’t block; we didn’t tackle. So we’re going back to basics.” Lombardi held up the ball: “Gentlemen, this is a football.”
For Weber, that means holding up a Bible: “What is the church? Where are we going? Heaven. What is heaven about? Authentic relationships.” Weber often climbs a tree by escaping to the hills near Mount Hood with a copy of C. Norman Krause’s “The Community of the Spirit.” But after a day or two, he’s ready to come down the mountain. “I love the mountains, the woods, and the snow,” he said, “but I was not made to be alone.”
But even a Ranger buddy and a long climb up a tall tree cannot overcome the plain truth: Ministry is hard. “If I had a dollar for every time I wanted to quit, I probably could afford to. But that’s also true of working for IBM.” At this point, Weber quoted C.S. Lewis about commitment in marriage and then rephrased it for pastors. “The pastor who is most Christlike,” he said, “is not the one who is most gloriously fulfilled in every moment of his ministry but the one whose ministry has in it unbelievable elements of crucifixion.”
THE GOOD FIGHT
The next twenty-five years will not be like the last twenty-five. Weber knows that.
“I couldn’t start a church at 50 as I did at 30,” Weber said. “At 30, all I had was energy. Now I’ve got to get smarter. That’s why I wrote the sabbatical report.”
The first weekend of his sabbatical, he and Linda attended a football game Friday night, went to the mall Saturday afternoon, had a leisurely dinner that evening, and then worshiped at a different church the next morning. “I actually read the Sunday paper,” Weber said.
“During the weekend Linda kept tugging on my arm and saying, ‘It is so cool just to be regular with my husband.’ We had the most wonderful vacation—what everybody else calls a ‘weekend.'”
Weber confessed that through the years, he has flirted with workaholism. “You can build a church around type-A’s,” he admitted. He grew up in a coal-mining community in central Washington that cultivated in him a blue-collar work ethic. “What I have done wrong,” he said, “is not to take consistent time off. I haven’t managed to take off even one day a week.”
Which is one commitment in his new, twenty-five year vow.
Another is to focus on what he does well. “The genius of community is that everybody’s critical to the team no matter what his or her role,” he said.
That is the theology Weber wants to flesh out in life’s second half. He has asked the church elders to help him balance his load at Good Shepherd with opportunities outside the church. Though nothing has been finalized, one of Weber’s requests is to hand off more of the preaching. Weber is not stingy about pulpit time.
“You can’t have plurality and unity without visibility,” he said.
During my visit at Good Shepherd, he spent at least twenty minutes walking me around the facility, introducing me to other staff members. The last moments of my time there were spent in a Good Shepherd staff meeting. It was lunchtime, and everybody was opening up sack lunches, except, of course, Weber. He had cabbage soup. This was his first staff meeting since his sabbatical, and Weber looked as restless as a Belgian horse that has been standing too long in the harness. His sabbatical was over; it was time again to be a pastor.
“Dave,” he said, “tell the staff what you thought of our worship place.”
I equivocated. “I’m surprised how it can hold so many people.”
I knew what he was asking. He wanted me to confirm that it, indeed, looked like the Cave of Adullam, that it needed renovation. Another of Weber’s commitments is to help lead the church in evangelism, which he hopes will include expanded facilities.
At the end of his twelve-page sabbatical report, Weber wrote, “Having evaluated these last twenty-five years of ministry, I want to live intentionally! Pro-active. Not re-active. I want to live in the spirit of 1 Timothy 4:7-16: do not neglect the gift that is in you … pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching . fight the good fight of faith, guard what has been entrusted to you.”
Onward Christian soldier.
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David Goetz is senior associate editor of Leadership.
1996 Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP Journal
