I entered pastoral ministry in a time of great transition for the institutional church (the early sixties).
In the eyes of many, the church had reached a low. “Relevance” was the buzz word, and the church, as well as preachers in general, were said to be irrelevant, perhaps obsolete. As a result, a heavy percentage of my seminary classmates were headed for missions, parachurch works, the chaplaincy, and a new discipline called counseling. Only a few of us really believed there could be a future in the pastorate.
My recollections are probably faulty, but as a new pastor, it seemed that every week someone from some new organization blew into town with a new program to sell me.
The opening pitch rarely varied: the church was dying, pastors were desperate, and here is a program (anointed by God) to save it all. Somewhere in the country (usually California) was a church that had adapted the program and was now growing by the “thousands” (count ’em).
I always found myself feeling guilty and a bit faithless as I would counter: “But that’s in California” or “he’s a different kind of leader” or “you don’t know our people (or me).”
If it wasn’t an organizational representative, it was one of my own people who had just returned from some church or conference saying, “You won’t believe what God is doing there” or “You’ve got to attend their … ” or “You’ve got to start this … “
I always tried to be nice in response, to show genuine interest and excitement, but sometimes it was difficult.
Over the span of my pastoral years, I have seen a lot of trends, emphases, and calls to reengineer the church: church renewal, body life, personal evangelism, the charismatic gifts, Sunday school conventions, the Jesus movement, contemporary music (drums in the sanctuary?), church growth, the overhead projector and the “pastor-teacher,” spiritual gift inventories, the pro-life movement, discipleship, concerts of prayer, cell groups, home-schooling, drama/dance, high liturgy, and country and western worship.
I’ve discovered a cluster of “knee-driven” principles to assist in making strategic ministry choices.
Some of them have flared for a moment and then gone; others have taken a solid position in our perspectives of ministry. But each, when it appeared, was just the latest in a series of solutions for the church’s ills.
When I began public ministry, the slogan was “release the laity”; today it’s “be seeker-sensitive.” Back then we wanted to recover the “great hymnody of the church”; today we seem to make them up as we go along. Yesterday we talked about changing the world; today it seems as if we’d just like to change ourselves. As they say about the weather, if you don’t like what’s here now, wait 15 minutes.
As a much younger man, I found myself bewildered as I listened to all the claims.
Thus, it was an important moment for me when I turned one day to an older, wiser man and said, “I find my head spinning trying to determine which of these approaches to lock on to. How do I choose? I can’t do them all.”
His answer has never left me: “Only on your knees will you and your leaders find the answer. There is a way for you and your church; but don’t let anyone get between you and God as you seek out what it is.”
It was simple but absolutely profound. I have tried to follow that advice ever since.
Today that advice is more important than ever. We abound with ministry strategies, techniques, resources, and talent I could never have imagined 38 years ago. How wonderful! But how bewildering and potentially dangerous. It takes a perceptive person to find the substance.
More than a few young pastors (myself included) have gone to seminars that promised big stuff, come home with enthusiasm, expecting that something close to a reformation will break out in their town. A year later some are in the process of leaving their ministries, heartbroken, rejected, defeated. Casualties of heart can be high.
Others, more fortunate, prepare to try something else. What worked in California, in Georgia, in Colorado (random examples), did not work in “my” community.
“Only on your knees,” my friend said. The knees are the starting point. But from that starting point, I’ve discovered a cluster of “knee-driven” ministry principles that assist one in making good decisions about where to go and how to make strategic ministry choices. These principles are really gifts, which I didn’t fully appreciate when I was a younger man. Only in retrospect do I see their value, and I have come to understand them as part of God’s kindness, the way He responded when I went to my knees.
Value the habitual over the novel The first of these ministry principles came from my seminary professors. At the time I went to graduate school, my seminary was relatively young and struggling, barely surviving. Its professors had little more to offer than solid teaching and themselves as persons. They invested in young men and women, visiting in our homes (hovels?) when invited and asking us to theirs. In the context of their family lives and academic lives, they modeled stability, character, academic craftsmanship and spiritual vitality. They let us know them.
Perhaps the greatest lesson was their insistence that I be faithful to the routines of life and ministry before I ever tried all of this “world-changing” stuff that is so seductive to the young, ambitious spirit. In other words, do the right things before you attempt the big things.
The routines (the right things) are the bread and butter of congregational life. Being dependable, seeking excellence, caring for the hurting, being loyal to the biblical lifestyle, exalting Christ, developing people. They did it, those seminary professors, and the message was clear that we should do it too.
Learn your history Knowing the history of the Christian movement is a ballast to any ministry in periods of cultural turbulence and change (like now). History offers the fact that just about everything has been tried before in one way or another. History reveals both the possibilities and the potholes.
I invested much of my youthful energies in seeking to be an effective preacher, so I was tempted to compute my success in terms of how many people might be attracted to my preaching. But in the reading of history, for example, I learned that something more than preaching would validate the effectiveness of my ministry.
George Whitefield could easily have claimed a much larger number of responses to his preaching than could John Wesley. But soon after both men were dead, it was clear that Wesley’s work would impact future generations far more than Whitefield’s. The reason? Wesley organized his followers into classes (a form of small groups); Whitefield never did. I came to understand that preaching without the reinforcement of deep community isn’t really worth all that much.
Fly in formation Somewhere along the line I learned to “fly in formation” with a select collection of authors. Paul Tournier taught me about people. Elton Trueblood gave me a love for ideas and the life of the mind. A.W. Tozer elevated my concept of God and worship. Stanley Jones became my inspiration for evangelism and the Kingdom. John Stott taught me the power and dignity of preaching and a hunger for biblical scholarship that had the “streets” of the real world in mind. And dear Henri Nouwen revealed to me the disciplines of the interior life. In the books of these authors, I found a point of stability that protected me from running too quickly to the claims of instant success that came from other quarters.
Preaching without the reinforcement of deep community isn’t really worth all that much.
As the years have passed, I have broadened the bandwidth of my reading and discovered that the God of all truth has salted creation with insights in all sorts of places.
For example, Matthew Arnold’s great ode to his father, a poem called “Rugby Chapel,” is a great commentary on leadership:
If in the paths of this world,
stones may have wounded thy feet, toil and dejection have wounded thy spirit,
of that we saw nothing.
To us thou wast cheerful, helpful, and firm.
In a time when leaders are tempted to “dumb down” their conduct and simply be like anyone else, Arnold’s characterization of his father brought a lot of courage to me.
Heroes dead and alive Like anyone else, I needed some godly heroes, and 19th-century Charles Simeon of Cambridge filled part of the bill. Serving for more than 50 years in an English parish, Simeon became my model pastor. More than a century ago, he understood (and practiced) leadership development, small group ministries, the theology of community, student evangelism, and church administration.
I have rarely faced a significant issue in ministry that Simeon did not face. And his experiences have saved me more than once from making a fool of myself.
Simeon’s biographer Hugh Evans Hopkins is candid in describing his eccentricities: “There is no doubt that Charles Simeon was his own worst enemy, when it came to establishing close friendships.” At the time I read this I was seriously questioning my own ability to be a good friend to others, and I caught this sentence and what followed with keen interest. “(Simeon’s) angular and sometimes arrogant personality, against which he battled all this life long, more than anything else stood in the way. Though highly sensitive himself, it was a long time before he learned sensitivity to the feelings of others.” I grew, lots, from that simple insight.
In addition to heroes of the past, I have always had a man in my life whom I consider a mentor or spiritual father. Actually, there have been several. But the one who is most important lives 2,000 miles away, and our contact is, at best, sporadic. But when it occurs (by phone, letter, or personal visit), it’s always intense and powerfully energizing.
This man whom I love (I shall leave his name mercifully anonymous lest he be deluged with calls) has always been there for me (and for countless others). He has been there for my peak moments of ministry achievement, and my deepest valleys of disappointment and humiliation. I have made few major decisions without his counsel.
My wife, Gail, is also on this list. Gail is my opposite in temperament, and she has saved me from a thousand silly decisions with her sharp questions, her intuitive instincts, and her insistence on key life-loyalties. When I married her 38 years ago, a close friend admonished me, “She is God’s gift to you. Don’t squelch her giftedness; listen to her wisdom; honor her judgment.” It was incredibly good advice. I fear that without it, I would have done the opposite.
Gifts of friends and foes Then there has been the influence of friends. One category is a small group of men (in and out of the so-called ministry) who are simply good friends. These are friends with whom I share experiences of life, who provide healthy perspective, prayer, laughter, and tears. I have not always had such friends (see my comments on Simeon), and it was in such times, when I’d isolated myself, that I had my greatest troubles and did stupid things.
The other category of friends have been ministry-oriented. We have worked together, and our ongoing day-to-day dialogue has been marked with candor and creativity. With them I learned the value of the consultative ministry life.
An extension of this has been those boards with which a pastor works. No one ever taught me about the role of boards, and I fear that my earliest impression was that such groups were an obstacle course, more adversity than assistance. I changed that attitude and, in so doing, generally found the boards to which I was accountable were quite able to help me discern and negotiate the changes and opportunities out there.
With a tad of reluctance, I find myself having to credit my critics with a lot of help over the years. To be frank, more than a few people simply have not liked me. Their varying observations of me: shallow, “liberal,” slick, arrogant, ambitious, or uncaring (there are likely one or two who would include all of these on their lists). Some of them believe I should not be in ministry at all.
Had I blown off my critics and not listened to their voices, I would have missed the kernel of truth that lived in their harsh assessments. Had I ignored them, I would have probably fallen into the very traps they think I’ve fallen into. There are things I’ve not done, bandwagons I’ve not jumped on because of these people. And in most cases I’m glad. Though it’s taken time, I’ve become grateful for them.
One of my critics, who later became a close friend, followed me out the door of one board meeting after I had allowed my feelings to show when I’d gotten a “no” in response to one of my “world-changing” ideas.
“You need to know,” he said, “that your performance in there was not very classy. Moments like that will make this board increasingly reluctant to tell you what you need to hear, and that will insure that you lose credibility with the congregation down the line.”
How’s that for a rebuke?
Ground it all in Scripture A love for the Bible has been an increasingly important ministry principle. You’d think I’d have figured this one out eons ago. I have virtually memorized Philippians 1, Ephesians 3, Acts 20 (Paul’s conversation with the elders of Ephesus), and 2 Corinthians 4. They have been the keel under my more visible life. Biblical personalities such as Joseph, Isaiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, John the Baptizer, and Paul have been my illuminators. They have taught me how to preservere, how to rebound from failure, how to handle defeat, and how to keep an eye on the mission God has given.
One wonders if they might roll their eyes if they saw all the brochures arriving on most pastors’ desks inviting them to some exotic place to acquire new ministry knowledge. Would they, in exasperation, say, “Oh, puh-leeze!” when they heard of one more book on leadership? Would they understand a person’s ambivalence who says, “All this stuff is good, but somewhere along the line I’ve got to stay at home and do it.”
As I look into the future and assess all the prognostications of the experts, I am once again bewildered by all that lies ahead. The futurists, the demographers, the marketing people offer more information than I can adequately handle. I love reading it and talking about it. I even love, on those occasions when I’m invited, to contribute to it. But there is always the possibility of overload.
It doesn’t seem much different today than it was 38 years ago when I asked an older man how to sort through all those choices.
“Only on your knees,” he said. And his advice to me then is just as good today.
Gordon MacDonald (Box 319 Belmont, NH 03220) after pastoring 38 years is an author and speaker and is a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum in Washington D.C.
Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
