Mondays, for ministers, are like surprise birthday parties. You never know if you’ll get swamped by a wave of black balloons and needling reminders of how close you are to death, or if you’ll surf the sounds of celebration, exhilarated by heartfelt well-done’s.
On a particularly frigid mid-December Monday, I ventured into the fellowship hall to check for a misplaced box of Bible study literature. My eyes were arrested by a can’t-miss-it note attached by a wad of masking tape to the pulpit in the corner. Scrawled on yellow legal paper in characteristically Doug-esque fashion, the memo said, “What the h— is THIS doing here?!!!”
Hmm, I thought. A black-balloon Monday.
I reluctantly admit now, years after moving the pulpit, that there are better ways to effect change in church. Maybe if I had greased a few squeaky wheels first. Maybe if I had mentioned to some key influencers my plan to make room for the children’s puppet ministry, just maybe, if I had asked for their advice, someone might have actually suggested moving the 250-pound memorial to their last pastor.
Then again, maybe not.
Monument to stupidity
In every church there lurks at least one grace-challenged personality whose pin has already been pulled and who is just one poor pastoral judgment call away from an explosion. If not the pulpit, the drums. If not the drums, the Noah’s Ark wallpaper in the nursery, or …
The previous afternoon it had taken only 30 seconds for me inadvertently to pull Doug’s pin.
Doug: “Do you want me to help you move the pulpit back onto the platform?”
Me: “Hmm. Let me think about it.” The open stage area worked so well for the Christmas production. And the puppet team is performing again this Sunday …
Personally I liked not having that bulky barrier between me and the people. The pulpit was so tall (like the previous pastor) and I was so hidden (unlike the previous pastor) that I felt like a puppet show of my own, with my fuzzy little head sticking up over the top. I always felt like Elmo from Sesame Street. “Oooh,” he says, in his high-pitched puppet voice, “Elmo like theology! Ha ha ha.”
When I would step out from behind the pulpit-shaped “temple curtain,” when I would make whites-of-their-eyes contact with my listeners, and when I would tell an arm-wavingly heartfelt story without being glued to my notes that were fastened to that mountainous piece of furniture, good things happened. People responded.
With the pulpit: blah, blah, blah.
Without it: people connected.
“Nah,” I answered, thirty seconds later. “Let’s just leave it.”
“Okay. No problem,” replied Doug.
Oh, but it was a problem. A hand-finished, sacred, dark oak problem. A problem that had been hanging around in that church ever since the days when two feuding factions compromised with orange pew covers to go with the blue carpet.
Unchangeable forces
Some fights aren’t really fights until after months of diplomatic escalation. And then there’s Doug Windgate.
Having read something about going to show a brother his fault “just between the two of you,” I removed the note and drove immediately to Doug’s place. As I drove I convinced myself I was doing the right thing. I can stew about it for a week and work up an ulcer, or I can get this over with.
Up until now I had always enjoyed visiting “trailer number 43” (Doug’s words, not mine), the gray one with the bay window facing the front, second street past the clubhouse. I had been there a half dozen times before—friendly visits—to thank him for mowing the church lawn, or to follow up on one of his many hospital visits. Doug, a “committed 40-year veteran of chain smoking” (again, his words), suffered from lung disease.
The Windgate’s mobile home was similar to the one my family and I had lived in for four years before moving to this area and into a rented house. Connie’s artistic abilities and tasteful décor warmed the place and made you feel like nestling in for a good visit. Normally.
Today, though, as I walked up the steps, I wondered if I should even sit down. Not because I wanted to appear dominant, but for fear of needing to make a hasty exit. Doug’s temper was legendary. Should I have skipped the “one-on-one” visit and brought a couple of respected, physically fit elders with me?
I knocked and cleared my throat. From the look on Doug’s face, I knew that he knew why I was there. And why shouldn’t he? He had obviously left the note to provoke me. It had worked.
We stood there, awkwardly, exchanging forced smiles. Then I held up the note and said, “I’m guessing we need to talk. Can I come in?”
He swung the door open and gestured inside. As I passed through the door, Doug seemed even taller than his Ichabod Crane-like build suggested. He was at least four inches taller than me.
Even though he struggled for breath on humid days, I had seen him work around the church. He might wheeze for lack of oxygen, but this guy was strong. I bet he would become winded after only three or four good jabs, an uppercut and a left hook.
Once inside I noticed Connie to my left, sitting in the living room. That was good. She had a calming influence on those around her. Except when she and Doug were arguing. Doug paced between the living room and the kitchen. Not wishing to appear that I was there to attack, I simply held the note in my hand and waited for him to have the first word.
“Well,” he began, defensively, “I, um, probably shouldn’t have said what I did in that note, but I was just, well, upset. I mean, that pulpit has been part of that church for quite a few years now, and I just can’t seem to worship without that thing up there.”
I kept waiting. I hadn’t really prepared any specific response. I was just silently praying that the Holy Spirit would “give me utterance.”
Since I still didn’t speak, Doug added, “And well, I just think it would be better if the pulpit were back where it belongs.” He spoke those last three words more loudly, with a little space between them.
My first line of attack was to sell him on the reasons—good reasons—why I had decided to leave the pulpit where he had found it: better eye contact, less sleepy people, more room for the kids and their puppet ministry. As I was speaking, I was also thinking, I should have thought out loud yesterday, so he could have heard my reasons for leaving it in the fellowship hall.
Doug wasn’t buying.
After five minutes of hearing him repeat the “I want it back” argument, my patience began sliding down the slippery slope of pastoral pugnacity.
“Doug,” I said, startling myself with how strained my voice sounded, “do you know what that pulpit is made of?” I didn’t give him time to respond. “Wood. That’s all it is. And if you are telling me that a piece of wood is coming between you and God, then it seems to me that you have placed a higher value on that piece of wood than you have placed in the God who created it. And you know what they call that?”
I realized by this time that he had been slowly retreating from me and that I had been slowly following him into the kitchen.
“Idolatry! That’s what—”
By this time I was trying not to shout, because that’s never very becoming of a compassionate pastor, so I felt my voice growing hoarse as I shouted in a whisper. Doug backed all the way up against his kitchen table, bumping into it, knocking over a couple of pill bottles and a small jar of instant coffee.
“And if you’ve got a problem with an attitude of worship—if you come to church each week trying to find a reason to be upset, instead of coming with a heart that’s prepared to hear God speak—then I’d say you have some explaining to do. Not to me, but to Him.” I pointed to the ceiling. Doug’s eyes glanced quickly up at the ceiling and back down again.
Doug looked wary, as though he thought I might blow a gasket and start throwing punches.
Gentlemen, to your corners
Looking back, I can see how Doug might have thought I was overreacting. After all, it seems silly for a feisty little pastor to attack someone over something as silly as a pulpit. But at the time, that was my point exactly: “Why was he making such a big deal out of something as silly as a pulpit?” I had heard about those power-hungry pastors who always had to have their own way. In retrospect I can see how Doug might have felt that I fit neatly into that category.
Meanwhile, back at the mobile home …
I didn’t have to say, “Don’t hold back, Doug, tell me how you really feel,” because I had set the stage for a more-than-frank disclosure of his true beliefs. In the verbal machine-gun barrage that followed, I discovered seven important facts:
- The previous pastor had loved that pulpit.
- The pulpit had been custom ordered to fit the previous pastor and his pulpit-pounding personality.
- The previous pastor had always let Doug do whatever he wanted in the way of building repairs.
- Doug had never reported to anyone but the previous pastor.
- The previous pastor had never worried about budget or how much those church repairs would cost.
- The previous pastor had just approved the work, found the money to pay for it, and Doug had done it.
- The previous pastor had helped Doug feel respected and valued.
My conclusion: This discussion was not just about the pulpit.
In two minutes it was clear where Doug stood on the issue of the pulpit and the new pastor. It was also clear that I had no intention of changing my mind about the placement of the pulpit. Connie sat, silent, through the entire conversation. Doug had no intention of changing his mind about how he felt about worship, as long as that pulpit stayed in the fellowship hall. The strangest part of the discussion came when I got myself so worked up that I actually began to tear up.
“I feel sorry for you, Doug,” I choked out, “because you are missing out on such freedom in worship. When you get the symbols of worship confused with the real thing, it robs you of the joy you can experience when you are in God’s presence.”
His face softened a little. “I’m sorry, Pastor,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to make you this upset.” Doug sounded genuinely sympathetic. I thought perhaps my tears of concern over his spiritual well being had broken through the crust around his hardened heart. He quickly added, “But that’s the way I feel about it.”
“Okay,” I sighed. I didn’t know what else to say. “I’ll see you.”
I backed up the four feet from the kitchen to the door, opened it myself, forced a quick, pained smile at Connie, and shut the door behind me.
It was a long walk across the front porch, down the wooden steps, along the narrow sidewalk, across the slush puddle near the curb, and into my car. I started the car and sat for a moment, rubbing my hands, which were shaking more from the encounter than from the freezing weather.
Summer, seven years later
While driving home from the church office late one evening I passed a car that looked familiar. I pulled into the driveway and my wife was standing there. I asked her, “Wasn’t that the Windgates?”
“Yes, you just missed them. I talked with them for almost an hour. Doug never got out of the car, though. He’s awfully weak. But you’ll never guess what they came over to talk about.”
“Oh, I’ll bet I can.”
“Yeah?”
“The pulpit.”
She looked shocked. “Yes! But how … ?”
“He doesn’t have long to live, does he?”
She shook her head no. “Six months, max.”
I let out a long sigh. “He’s preparing to die. People tie up loose ends before they die.”
“That’s exactly what he’s doing. Doug came to ‘make peace with his pastor.’ He said that he wanted things to be ‘square’ between you two. I knew what you would say, so I assured him that you had forgiven him a long time ago.”
“Thanks, honey. You did good.”
“He told me to tell you that, and I quote, ‘You’ve been a good pastor to me,’ and ‘You were right about the pulpit.'”
Doug didn’t last six months. He lasted three.
He and Connie hadn’t attended our church for over seven years, beginning soon after my icy December confrontation. But Connie asked if I would speak at Doug’s funeral. The “other pastor” from the church they had been attending would officiate, but she wanted me to say a few words.
As I sat listening to familiar Scripture passages and an obituary I knew well, I thought back to some of the more recent events that had culminated in Doug’s eleventh-hour reconciliation. I remembered the times I had visited Doug in the hospital, a 45-minute drive from our town. I thought about the visits to their home, praying for Connie who had developed an unknown and untreatable illness. At the time she had thought she was dying. So had we. I remembered seeing her in the grocery store a few months later, receiving a warm hug and the exciting news that she was completely back to health.
I recalled speaking with the peace officer who had asked me if there was somewhere Connie could go for a few days while Doug “cooled off.” She had stayed in our house that night, and we had gotten her to her daughter’s home the next day.
I remembered the 2:30 A.M. phone call from a sheriff’s deputy. “She said to call you and that you could explain to me why she’s acting the way she is,” he said. She was hoping I would tell the officer that she was completely lucid, that she was exceptionally spiritually perceptive, and that she should be allowed to preach an apocalyptic turn-or-burn message to the rest of her mobile home park neighbors because the Lord was coming back—tomorrow.
Instead I told him that she had probably taken herself off her medication and that it might be a good idea to get her to the psych unit so they could get her regulated again. She got back on the phone and called me “sneaky” (among other things). But she was quick to forgive.
I wondered silently why my wife and I had gone to so much trouble to demonstrate God’s love to this couple, long after Doug had broken all ties to our church. The answer came instantly: Because I love them. That, and the fact that with each new crisis they called me instead of the pastor of their new church.
Despite his stubborn streak and her chemical imbalance, there was something genuinely loveable about Doug and Connie. Maybe it was their willingness to pitch in and help, he with carpentry and yard work, she by playing the piano. Maybe it was his humble admission that he was “just a smelly old alcoholic, bound for hell, redeemed from the gutter and given a new life in Christ.”
Maybe—and this was a hard one to admit—just maybe I saw a little of myself in Doug. We both loved Christ, and we both wanted to serve him as best we could, even though we were both far from perfect.
And we were both stubborn; he too stubborn to back down from the pulpit issue, and I too stubborn to back away from being his shepherd. Sure, there were times when I thought, Why don’t you call your new pastor?
But he kept calling. And I kept answering.
My thoughts were interrupted as the pastor asked, “Is there anyone else who would like to say a word?” Connie looked at me, expectantly.
I stood and said some honest things about Doug. And people laughed, out loud, when I mentioned that it was no surprise that Doug could be, well, “persistent” with some of his opinions.
Then I told them that through the years I had gotten to know Doug pretty well, and that I was absolutely confident that this guy was enjoying his new life in heaven. No doubt about it. This was a guy who knew about redemption. He knew about sin, repentance, grace, and God’s unfathomable forgiveness. And he knew, without a doubt, that he was going to heaven not because he was sinless, but because of the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, who took his place on the cross.
Connie smiled. Several people said, “Amen,” and I sat down.
As the last song was played, I sat there with my hand over my mouth, looking somber from the nose up but suppressing a grin. Funny pictures sometimes pop into a minister’s head at funerals. I saw the two of us, Doug the penitent drunk and me the petulant pulpit-mover, two sorry sinners saved by grace, and over the course of seven years brought back into a right relationship by God’s mysterious—and stubborn—ministry of reconciliation.
I heard Doug’s voice echoing in my head, “You’ve been a good pastor to me.”
Clark Cothern pastors Living Water Community Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click for reprint information onLeadership Journal.
