All the permanent fruits and progress that result from our leadership are based on strong character.
—Maxie Dunnam
For several years our church has debated whether people should applaud after special music, especially in the 11:00 A.M. service. Ata board meeting, someone caught me off guard by raising that issue out of nowhere.
For some reason it struck a nerve, and when I responded, my voice quivered and my blood pressure rose. “For anybody to criticize people who are responding to their feelings in worship,” I snapped, “is as insensitive as anything I know.”
Everyone in the room was taken back by my obvious anger. I rarely lose control of my emotions.
Eventually I took the edge off the situation by stumbling into a humorous story: “Can Christians dance?” a man asked a preacher. “Some can,” the preacher replied, “and some can’t.”
I finally said, “If people want to applaud, I think we’re going to just have to accept that.”
Emotional outbursts at a board meeting can be the beginning of the end of a pastor’s ministry. That’s one effect character has on a pastor’s ministry. But of far greater importance are the permanent fruits and progress that result from our leadership based on character. Character gives authority. It makes a person an inspiring example for others and guides sound decisions. Character brings stability to one’s life and ministry.
Those are some of the reasons I’ve continued to work on my character as I lead the people of God. And here are some of the principles I’ve learned in my journey.
Ministry Handicaps Character
Although the average parishioner thinks being a pastor makes it easier to grow in character, we know otherwise. Vocational ministry can dry and stiffen the red, tacky earth of the human spirit for several reasons.
• Need for job security. During the racial upheaval in Mississippi in the 1950s and ’60s, I took a clear stand with the civil rights movement, which brought me into direct conflict with many in our church. At one point, the leaders held a special board meeting to confront the issue, with some deacons supporting and others opposing me.
After the meeting had gone on for some time, one opponent, who wielded substantial power in the church, asked, “Well now, what can we expect of you in the future?”
I replied, “You can expect me to be consistent with what I feel the gospel is calling me to do.”
That was an intimidating moment, a situation in which I could have easily compromised for the sake of job security or the church budget. As I learned then, the church is no refuge from temptation.
• Frequent moves. This is a reality of many pastors’ ministries. But when you move regularly, every two or three years, you can’t clarify troubling issues or work through recurring problems.
One pastor I know of had a terrible temper. Invariably, within a year or two of beginning a new ministry, he’d end up shouting at a member or a transient or a staff person. He was never dismissed for such behavior, but neither was he able to work on it: he just kept moving from church to church. It never happened often enough in one church for people to begin to challenge him on it.
• High expectations. A story is told about a woman who approached the great Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte, complimented him profusely, and said, “Oh, Dr. Whyte, if I could just be as saintly as you are!”
“Madam,” he replied. “If you could see into my heart, you would spit in my face.”
We may fear that if people discover who we really are, we’re finished, or at a minimum, our credibility and influence will wane. The human reflex is to hide, to put on a mask. Hypocrisy is the greatest temptation of religious professionals.
• Stereotyping. On the other hand, some people don’t want us to be real saints, those who by word and deed call people to more Christlike behavior. They want us to be merely nice, fulfilling our role with reasonable skill and efficiency. Under that expectation, it’s easy to become complacent. Instead of striving to become all that Christ calls us to be, we simply do what is expected of us: regular hospital calls, decent sermons, warm blessings at women’s groups. Ministry is certainly that much, but not only that much.
• Family pressures. Although family pressures aren’t unique to a minister’s family, they are exacerbated by the pressures of ministry.
After six months of married life, my wife and I hit a watershed. I cherished the image of the perfect pastor and the perfect pastor’s wife. Being an extremely insecure person, I put high performance demands on myself—and my wife. Growing up in my family, emotions and affection were not freely expressed. Jerry, on the other hand, came from an accepting and gracious, expressive and affectionate family.
One day Jerry let me know, rather forcefully, how angry she had become with all the expectations I had placed on her. I stalked out of the room, saying, “When you can discuss this like an adult, we’ll continue the conversation!”
Those were tough times we had to work through, and having to struggle with my identity as a pastor made it tougher.
Taking Advantage of the Pastorate
Although ministry has its hazardous side in terms of character growth, it also offers unique opportunities. One is the freedom to schedule our time. When I use my calendar wisely, I can make the following practices part of my regular routine.
• Examination of conscience. That’s what one tradition calls a nightly, intentional combing through the words, events, and deeds of the day to see where we have done well or fallen short. Some practice this daily; others periodically set aside a day for this exercise.
During this time, I ask myself three questions. First, Am I growing?
For instance, I want increasingly to practice tough love. The heart of my theology, and rightly so, has been grace, but in reaction to the rigid background in which I was raised, I tend to err on the side of love and acceptance. Sometimes I’m almost Pollyannish with people.
I’ve been realizing more clearly, though, that my love must also call people to holiness. Our culture is so tolerant that I’m not doing anybody a favor by downplaying obedience to Christ. So I want to grow in my ability to communicate to people that God is gracious but also calls us to something higher.
The second question I ask myself is Do I want to change? Am I self-satisfied, comfortable with the status quo? If I see that I have plateaued, I examine my motives and priorities.
It came to me recently that for over a year I had not personally participated in a growth group. For years this has been a priority for me, but for various reasons I had felt too busy to be involved recently. I even became a bit paranoid: What if someone questions me about my group? I soon found five couples to join Jerry and me in a weekly group.
Third, I ask. How deep is my desire for holiness? Some might think this superficial, but one way I discern my desire for holiness is by how I interact with people individually and in small groups. If I realize I’ve been doing most of the talking, or if I’ve been greeting most people after the service in a perfunctory way, waiting for someone “important” three or four places back in line, I know I’m losing my desire for holiness. One aspect of holiness is a loss of self-concern and an absorption in love and care of others. That demands total attention and is tested in everyday relationships.
• Do the good. Endless introspection is a potential pitfall for those who pursue growth. I have found that one safeguard is in Wesley’s phrase, “Do all the good you can, and do no harm.” Character results from both reflection and action. If we do Christ’s deeds, we become like Christ; we develop character.
I find tremendous benefit from doing acts of mercy apart from explicit pastoral responsibilities—although it’s my pastoral role that gives me entree into so many acts of mercy. For instance, I’ve helped our church construct Habitat for Humanity homes, pounding nails at the job site. I’ve joined some of our church’s mission teams to places like Costa Rica.
I don’t do that just as an example for others; it’s good for me—even though I keep thinking about the dozen things I should be doing more directly related to pastoral ministry!
The same idea underlies some of my scheduling policies. I have instructed my secretary that within the time I give to counseling each week, she should make appointments for anyone who asks—first come, first serve. I don’t want her to screen people so that the only ones who see me are leaders or people who can help the church (and thereby me). Some say I am failing to make the best use of my time, but I feel it is the best use of my soul.
• Forceful devotional reading. In the process of researching and writing a book called The Living Workbook of Prayer, I discovered I could read mountains of literature on prayer but not pray. Even reading a great writer like Oswald Chambers, unless I am intentional about application, little will change in the way I live.
So I decided to slant my workbook to “force” people to pray. I simply opened chapters with a brief discussion of the meaning or purpose of prayer, and then I asked the reader to practice prayer: e.g., to emphasize one aspect of prayer each day (intercession, praise, etc.). In other words, everything pointed to application.
I have kept that application-driven perspective in my own devotional reading since. Instead of ending a reading by simply closing the book or marveling at the prose or the thought, I ask myself questions: What does this say about my emotions ? My speech ? My relationships? My family? My money?
• Turn your sermons on yourself. For example, one Sunday in Advent, I took four Christmas hymns, like “To Whom Jesus Comes” and “0 Come, 0 Come, Emmanuel,” and preached about Christ coming into our lives. One point was that he comes to those who have everything or think they have everything.
I used that point to examine my own life. I realized, for instance, that I’m someone who has everything, at least what we usually mean by “everything”: good health, financial security, career success. Also, I’ve been so busy with ministry at certain times that I’ve failed to communicate to my loved ones how important they are to me, how my ministry and my pastoral success mean little to me compared to their presence in my life. In fact, as a result of this sermon, I spent some time with my grown son trying to tell him just that.
Getting the Community Involved
One of our ministers does a great job at getting people involved in missions work. As a result of his commitment and example, many young couples from our church visit prisons or serve breakfast in shelters for the homeless. Their example, in turn, helps others take more seriously their discipleship.
Community is one of the greatest forces for building character, giving us models of obedience, holding us accountable, urging us to deal with things we would rather avoid, and supporting and loving us through tough times.
I’ve found my own growth in character to be inseparable from my relationships. Here, then, are various ways I integrate others into my life.
• Creating a congregation that will help. I’ve been the founding pastor of three congregations. I’ve discovered that each congregation develops its own personality, and in a new church that personality has a lot to do with the character of the pastor’s ministry. Although this is less true in an established church, the pastor can shape a church’s character by his character.
So one thing I regularly think about is what type of congregation I want to produce. What kind of community will help people, me included, grow? If I want to be a part of an unselfish, generous people, I can have some bearing on helping a congregation becoming unselfish and generous.
I want to be part of a community of people who care for one another. Consequently, more than anything else, I want people to know that I care about them. Even in a large congregation like the one I now serve, I try to institute ways to communicate that. My wife and I, for instance, have every person who joins the church in our home soon after they’ve joined.
I don’t mean I get to know all these people personally. It’s just one small way that I try to create the sense that we are a church who wants to be in relationship to one another. That, in the long run, helps create that kind of community. And that kind of community is one I need to grow in.
• Finding a close circle. The recovery movement has a lot to teach us about growing in character. And some of their main principles—honesty, confession, acknowledging dependence on God, living one day at a time—are best reinforced in small groups. I have found these principles useful in my own growth.
So I’ve been a part of peer groups: some have met weekly for twelve weeks; others have met until the group disbands of its own accord. I’ve found it difficult to meet with peers of different denominations: we’ve never been able to clarify our agenda, nor have we been able to be honest enough to make the group work. And to me, that’s the key: mutual honesty and accountability.
Often that type of relationship can be established with one other clergy person. One of my best friends in Memphis is an Episcopal priest. Although we disagree theologically in a lot of ways, I share with him some of my personal struggles.
• Public honesty. In order to foster the desire for community in the church and in myself, I find it helpful to share from the pulpit some of my struggles. For example, I might tell the story of losing my temper with the board. I know one minister who told his congregation how he broke his knuckle: he lost his temper with his wife and put his fist through a wall—right where a stud ran!
Openness about my discipleship encourages me to keep striving in Christ. When I tell the church of my failures or goals, I feel a social (and “holy”) pressure to not let people down. It also helps the congregation see that character growth requires patience and honesty.
Naturally, I’m discreet about what I share. And sometimes, we don’t have to say much for the congregation to get the point. I know one pastor whose daughter is recovering from chemical addiction. The congregation knows about the situation, but he doesn’t talk about it publicly. But he often will mention in sermons the pain of family problems; that’s enough for his congregation to know that he knows whereof he speaks.
• Paying attention to people. I need community because I need to see the example of others doing the work of Christ. It’s inspiring sometimes. But for me to be so helped, I’ve got to listen when people talk to me, and I’ve got to notice the good they do. Fortunately, in some cases it’s pretty obvious.
Pauline Holworth, a woman in our congregation, is clearly a spiritual giant. Early in life she linked up with Frank Laubach and began to teach literacy, especially the each-one, teach-one method. It’s been the most effective literacy tool in the world. She became his principle agent in the southeastern United States.
But rather than live on her laurels, now at age 85, she continues her sacrificial labors. Every Wednesday she visits Parchman Prison in Mississippi, one of the worst prisons in the country, about one hundred miles away. She teaches prisoners to read and write. She prays with and witnesses to them.
• Letting church leaders help. I’ve tried to build relationships with church leaders so that we can be open with one another. Apparently it’s worked, because recently our staff parish committee, which has oversight of the staff, met with me to express concern about my work style. They felt I had not been giving enough time to myself and my family.
They were right, and their concern prompted me to adjust my hectic schedule as soon as possible. I know that if I don’t make time for a Sabbath, my character will eventually be undermined by fatigue.
• Drawing upon the family. Early in my marriage, I was not willing to talk with my wife. Jerry, about my spiritual growth—frankly I was embarrassed by my lack of it. So I wouldn’t insist that she go with me to retreats. My rationale was. Well, that’s not for her.
But I was so insecure in my own spiritual growth, so concerned about my ministerial image, I couldn’t open myself to her. We finally became mature enough to realize that if we didn’t call upon one another for help, we were missing a tremendous resource.
Jerry now has given me significant feedback on several occasions. I mentioned earlier my becoming involved in a growth group. Jerry significantly contributed to that move. I had been urging people in our church to join growth groups while not being involved myself. In a noncensorious way, she advised me, “You can’t tell everyone else to be in groups and not be involved yourself. That’s going to cripple your integrity in the long run.”
Keeping at It
Growth takes effort and time. It diverts us from “pastoral duties.” We sometimes think, If parishioners are satisfied with their pastor being a nice guy and minding the shop, why not be content with that? Three reminders motivate me to stay at it.
• It builds credibility. I eventually left the church in which some of the leaders chided me for my involvement in civil rights issues. But a year after I left, I received a call from the man who was my chief critic. He was phoning me from 2,000 miles away because his son was in trouble, and the man wanted to talk. I was gratified that he saw in me more than someone who was “too involved in social issues.”
• It’s where ministry begins and ends. I’ve read about and experienced the latter in my own life:
When we start in ministry, we’re enthusiastic for God, and we want nothing more than to be sterling men and women of God.
Whether it’s due to our seminary training or ecclesiastical machinery or competition among pastors, early on we’re tempted to become increasingly preoccupied with success. We start climbing the ladder, looking for a bigger church, a bigger salary, and greater recognition.
Later in ministry, we realize how we’ve strayed. It’s not that we’ve ignored character completely, but we have not had the time or inclination to concern ourselves with it. In our forties and fifties, though, we return to putting emphasis on our relationship with God.
Whenever I get distracted from that, I remember my first love, and what will, in the end, be my last love.
• It’s what God is finally interested in. A young priest complained to Mother Theresa about all the demands being put upon him and how it was taking away from his ability to serve the poor, which was his life’s passion.
She responded, “Your vocation is not to serve the poor. Your vocation is to love Jesus.”
My vocation is not, ultimately, to serve the church. My vocation is to love Jesus. That’s what I want, with all my heart. Character emerges out of such a heart.
Becoming Fit for Ministry
Our bodies have rhythms, and these must be honored in order to maintain fitness for ministry.
—Donald McCullough
One Memorial Day I had intended to go for a run along the beach about noon, but by late morning I had developed a backache. Probably just stress, I thought. So instead of exercising, I lay down for a nap. Twenty minutes later I was writhing and whimpering like a dog that had just had its hindquarters squashed along the highway. Some demon of torture was flaying my insides with a dull, ragged-edged knife.
A green blur of medical efficiency quickly discovered the cause of my anguish: a kidney stone, wearing hobnail boots, was kicking the bejabbers out of my ureter. Certain words, such as “kidney stone,” are devoid of all meaning until you experience them. Some readers of this account will understand; the rest should immediately drop to their knees and thank God for blessed ignorance.
That afternoon I was not a spiritual man. I wish I could report that I praised God for doctors and hospitals, that I prayed for other sufferers around me, that I took comfort in the communion of saints, that I felt the peace that passes all understanding. But the closest thing to a “depth experience” came when they wheeled me into the emergency room and my morning breakfast rocketed up from my depths onto a waiting nurse. Great entrance, I thought, I just hope she isn’t a member of my church.
My body was broken, and thus I was broken. A part of me felt compelled to be upbeat and spiritual about the whole affair, but frankly, the pain was too great to get very spiritual. I discovered afresh that day a key element in biblical theology: by God’s design, our physical and spiritual lives cannot be separated; what happens to the one affects the other.
God has so structured things that creation moves with certain rhythms: night and day, seed time and harvest, life and death. Our bodies, too, have rhythms, and these must be honored in order to maintain fitness for ministry.
Francis Gary Powers, the pilot who was shot down over the Soviet Union spying for the United States, later became a traffic helicopter pilot in Los Angeles. In 1977 he and his partner were reporting on large canyon fires. Absorbed in this task, they failed to pay attention to their fuel gauge. The helicopter crashed just two miles from the airport, taking the lives of both men.
It’s easy to get preoccupied with immediate responsibilities to the neglect of crucially important matters. It can cost not only productivity in ministry but our very lives. Certain rhythms we dare not disregard.
Work and Play
Pastoral work can be tiring; some days opening junk mail seems too much to bear. Every job has its problems, of course, but for the most part, being a pastor provides a deeply satisfying way to make a living. To do things that matter, to serve the Lord and other people, to have flexibility and variety in scheduling—these are a few of the reasons why most of us wouldn’t want to do anything else. Thus our work itself can be an important source of bodily health.
Consider the alternative. A Gallup Report published in 1984, Religion in America, cited a Johns Hopkins study that revealed a 1 percent increase in unemployment “is accompanied by an increase of 37,000 deaths—including 27,000 fatal cardiovascular cases, 650 murders, and 920 suicides—plus 4,000 additional admissions to state mental hospitals and 3,300 more criminals sentenced to prison.” Not to work can be deadly.
But work must be regularly balanced with plenty of play. This isn’t easy. Work—especially when it’s satisfying—dons the regal robes of Importance and tyrannizes everything else. Play seems too small a thing to approach the throne with a request for time. In 1973 the average American enjoyed 26.2 hours of leisure each week; by 1987 the hours shrank to 16.6. Work will consume all it can get.
Perhaps this is why God commanded at least one day of play out of seven. It takes the hard edge of a commandment to cut back the ever-expanding encroachments of work. A divine suggestion wouldn’t have stood a chance. As it is, the commandment barely gets a hearing.
I know: the Bible calls for a Sabbath rest, not a Sabbath play. But what is rest? I don’t think it comes with doing nothing. Winston Churchill, in a marvelous essay about the pleasures of painting, put it this way:
“Change is the master key. A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it, just in the same way as he can wear out the elbows of his coat. There is, however, this difference between the living cells of the brain and inanimate articles: one cannot mend the frayed elbows of a coat by rubbing the sleeves or shoulders, but the tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened, not merely by rest but by using other parts.
“It is not enough merely to switch off the lights that play upon the main and ordinary field of interest; a new field of interest must be illuminated. It is no use saying to the tired ‘mental muscles’—if one may coin such an expression—’I will give you a good rest,’ ‘I will go for a long walk,’ or ‘I will lie down and think nothing.’ The mind keeps busy just the same. If it has been weighing and measuring, it goes on weighing and measuring. If it has been worrying, it goes on worrying. It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new stars become the lord of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.”
I suggest we think of Sabbath rest as a time of God-ordained play. Play has two elements—freedom and delight. We play when, freed from the necessity of work, we do something for the sheer joy of it.
The center of Christian play is worship. What is praise but delight in God? Having been set free by grace, we enjoy the presence of God, playing as children with a Father in a holy game of love. With worship at the heart of play and play at the heart of worship, all play is lifted in importance. We may not demean this gift. To build a model train layout or fly a glider or scuba dive—to do these things for no other reason than pure delight—is to do something holy, something that witnesses to the Sabbath rest we have in Christ.
Play can be corrupted by turning it into work, by turning it into a means rather than enjoying it as an end. As a runner, I know the temptation to ruin this most childlike sport through an excessive focus on competition; getting better and better times, or running farther and farther, becomes more important than the joy of running itself. This “play,” then, becomes a disguised form of work. The authenticity of play can always be judged by standards of freedom and delight. Here’s the test: Does play bring out the child in me?
Put in my hand the rudder of a responsive boat, with a stiff wind in the sails and a bit of water breaking over the bow—it may not be heaven, but it’s mighty close. My daughter often goes with me, and she knows the ritual on the way to the boat: we put ’60s rock ‘n’ roll on the car stereo, roll down all the windows, and sing as loudly as possible, happily serenading other motorists on the freeway. By the time I get to the boat, I’m a little boy again. Nothing else matters. We laugh; we wave at other sailors and yell at motor-boaters; we eat plenty of junk food; I always philosophize about poetry in the soul of true sailors and other nonsense. I play, in other words, and it’s something I desperately need to balance my work as a busy pastor.
Fast and Feast
Another important rhythm has to do with the fuel we feed our bodies to keep going. Food, like other good gifts from God, must be utilized wisely and kept in its proper place.
The biblical pattern of eating swung between the fast and the feast. Fasting, the abstinence of food, was a sign of repentance and utter dependence on God. Feasting, no less a spiritual discipline, was a sign of the goodness of God. Though most of the Israelites’ meals were no doubt simple fare, they knew both seasons of abstinence and the festivals of indulgence (the three most significant being Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Booths).
This rhythm is also important today to maintain fitness for ministry. I view my own pattern of eating as falling along a continuum: At one end, the occasional fast (for me, this has always been a spiritual discipline, though there is evidence suggesting the health benefits of occasionally cleansing our bodies through abstinence); at the other end, the feasts in which I happily indulge myself with gratitude for the wonder of taste and the joy of good food. In between, I strive to be on the fast side of the continuum.
I’m no expert on nutrition, but through reading and listening to others more knowledgeable, I’ve come to some convictions about a healthy diet:
• I try to have a diet low in fat (a major factor in increasing the risk of heart disease and also the last calories in the body to be digested) and high in vegetables, fruits, and grains.
• Cutting down on fat, I eat more fish and chicken than beef. I’m not a purist; sometimes I simply must have a juicy hamburger or a sausage pizza (I like to think pizza is one of the major food groups). But I’m trying to lower substantially my intake of red meats.
• I go easy on desserts, certainly not forsaking them entirely, but most days of the week limiting myself to low-fat items like ginger snaps or graham crackers.
• I generally have a glass of wine with my dinner. In an era when alcoholism rages at epidemic proportions, a good case can be made for abstinence. But it may also be important to witness to the biblical principle of moderation. I am persuaded by a good deal of medical evidence that a daily glass of wine helps keep the arteries elastic and cleansed of plaque. (The French, for example, consume significantly more wine than Americans and have a much lower incidence of heart disease; some scientists see a positive relationship between these two facts.)
• I try to eat in moderate proportions and almost never eat between meals.
• I drink lots of water. During my kidney stone ordeal, the doctor told me I needed fifteen glasses a day. I don’t always achieve that, but I try. Not only does water prevent dehydration, it cleanses the system. In cold and flu season, I’m especially careful to drink as much as possible.
• I take both a multiple vitamin and vitamin C. Doctors say this is unnecessary if one eats balanced meals, but I can’t be sure I do every day. As a precaution, therefore, I take these supplements. I also believe in the benefits of extra vitamin C. I’m fully aware of the scientific disagreement concerning this, but since the body sloughs off what it doesn’t use of this vitamin, I’ve decided it can’t hurt. Besides, though it may be nothing but a placebo, I nevertheless feel it helps.
So much for my usual eating patterns. With no guilt at all, I occasionally move over to the feast side of the continuum. The great banquet, after all, was Jesus’ central image of the coming kingdom of God. A well-prepared meal, offered up in love and savored in gratitude, is a great gift, a foretaste of the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Robert Farrar Capon, perhaps with some exaggeration, has commented on our current fear of eating: “Food these days is often identified as the enemy. Butter, salt, sugar, eggs are all out to get you. And yet at our best we know better. Butter is … well, butter: it glorifies almost everything it touches. Salt is the sovereign perfecter of all flavors. Eggs are, pure and simple, one of the wonders of the world. And if you put them all together, you get not sudden death but hollandaise—which in its own way is not one bit less a marvel than the Gothic arch, the computer chip, or a Bach fugue. Food, like all the other triumphs of human nature, is evidence of civilization—of that priestly gift by which we lift the whole work into the exchanges of the Ultimate City, which even God himself longs to see it become” (Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 1989).
Well, Capon’s enthusiasm may have overstated the case a bit, but he has a point. While we ought to eat simply and sensibly, spending most of the time on the fast side of the continuum, once in a while we not only may but ought to move over toward the feast side. This is the biblical rhythm, after all. One of my friends eats sparingly all week long, but on the weekends lets herself eat anything she wants. Another never eats dessert, except on Thursday evening, and then anything goes. The details will vary according to individual nutritional needs and tastes, but what should be the same for all is a rhythm.
Rest and Exercise
With the exception of an occasional run up a flight of hospital stairs because of slow elevators, pastoring is a sedentary lifestyle. We sit at desks, sit in counseling sessions, sit in committee meetings, and sit in living rooms. Except for the half-hour we stand in the pulpit, most of our job happens sitting down.
The importance of an exercise program, therefore, cannot be overestimated. It is widely agreed that our bodies stay healthier with regular exercise. Charles Spurgeon once said, “Our hearts like muzzled drums are beating funeral marches to thegrave.” Yes, but as we periodically increase the speed of our heartbeat, we slow down the march. Aerobic exercise (activity that steps up the heartbeat) strengthens our cardiovascular system, thereby decreasing the chances of heart disease and often increasing our overall physical well-being.
The point of exercise is not to become a hunk in the pulpit. About a year ago an elder in my congregation insisted that I visit his health club. I had been having minor calf pain, which had interfered with my running for a few weeks. He thought this was the answer.
Eventually I ran out of excuses and met him there on a Saturday morning. The place was no “fun family fitness center”; it was filled with hardcore, serious weightlifters (the first person I met was “Iron Mike,” who had the biggest tattoo-covered arm I’ve ever seen). The owner of the gym put me through the paces, demonstrating more pieces of equipment than could have been found in a medieval torture chamber. The next morning I was so sore I couldn’t lift my hands for the benediction. I decided not to become a preaching Arnold Schwarzenegger. I have no idea why God created some muscles, but I know I don’t need every one of mine to be bulging.
What I do need, however, is cardiovascular exercise. So for the last eighteen years I’ve been a runner. I began with a modest one mile jog, soon increasing that to two miles. Four years after starting, we moved to Edinburgh for my Ph.D. work, and the Scottish countryside provided a wonderful diversion from Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I experimented with increasing my mileage; before long I was running seven miles every day, even in the winter. I felt pretty virtuous, but my knees began to hurt. So after a couple of years, I cut back to every other day and found my body felt much better. For the last ten years I have run six miles on Monday, Wednesday, Friday (sometimes), and Saturday.
Not only has this exercise kept my body in good condition, it has done at least as much for my emotions and spirit. I would run even if there were no physical benefits, for it makes me feel better. It’s a great change of pace, a great release of tension, a great way to daydream and free my mind for creative thoughts. Sometimes I think it’s my most productive part of the day; sermon outlines often fall into place, articles take shape, and programmatic ideas well up from subconscious depths. All of this is a by-product, the natural result of exercise.
Researchers have demonstrated that during vigorous exercise our bodies create endorphins (chemicals similar to morphine), which are produced in the brain and pituitary gland. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital took blood samples from volunteers before and after exercise, and they discovered that after two months of workouts the subjects’ endorphin levels were up 145 percent following an hour of exercise. Endorphins apparently block pain signals to the brain and stimulate the parts of the brain associated with elation and pleasure.
Not everyone can run, of course. For some, running ranks only slightly higher than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Other ways of increasing cardiovascular activity include brisk walking, swimming, bicycling, hiking, tennis—any activity that gets the heart ticking faster and forces deeper breathing will pay significant health dividends.
Here are a few suggestions for beginning an exercise program:
• Before beginning a new regimen, get a physical examination from your family doctor. Make sure everything works well and will not be harmed by stress.
• Start slowly. Many people begin exercising with a burst of enthusiasm and soon burn out. Take your time. My cardiovascular capacity increased more rapidly than my muscles and tendons could take. A wise doctor slowed me down, told me to take my time increasing my speed and distance, and it made all the difference.
• Be realistic. You don’t need to run the Boston Marathon next year. Twenty minutes of aerobic exercise three days a week is enough for most people. According to statistical evidence, the health benefits beyond that are minimal.
Exercise is important for good health. But too much physical activity can be harmful. Our bodies need the rhythm of exercise and rest; they need a period of recovery from the strain of exertion. Vigorous workouts cause small injuries to muscles and tendons and joints, and it takes about forty-eight hours for these to heal. I find it best, therefore, to schedule time for rest.
Up and Down
According to pollster Lou Harris, 86 percent of Americans are chronically stressed out. That number, no doubt, includes pastors. In fact, if pastors alone were surveyed, the percentage might be even higher. Think about it: we must preach truth in love, boldly enough to get through the defenses of our hearers and graciously enough to keep from getting run out of town; we must take a telephone call from someone threatening suicide, just as we’re leaving the office to speak to a denominational gathering; we must find the patience to speak (once more!) to a terribly needy and insecure person; we must lead a congregation that often demands more than we have to give, and yet cope with our own personal and family problems. An air traffic controller at O’Hare airport cannot have more stress!
Not all stress is bad. The only ones who have absolutely no stress live in coffins. Hans Selye, the father of stress research, said, “No one can live without experiencing some degree of stress. You may think that only serious disease or intensive physical or mental injury can cause stress. This is false. Crossing a busy intersection, exposure to a draft, or even sheer joy are enough to activate the body’s stress mechanism to some extent. Stress is not even necessarily bad for you; it is also the spice of life, for any emotion, any activity, causes stress.”
But stress is healthy only if short-lived. Bodily systems activate, for example, for the challenge of playing a championship softball game, but after the third out in the bottom of the ninth inning, the excitement has passed. Stress becomes dangerous over a long period of time, when the body stays up and doesn’t come down.
What makes sustained stress dangerous is the continued presence of adrenalin. Our bodies produce this hormone to prepare us for emergency situations, to enable the fight-or-flight response. Adrenalin helps activate heart muscles, sends glucose to the muscles, raises blood pressure, and increases the heart rate. But too much adrenalin causes damage.
Archibald Hart, dean of the graduate school of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, has written a helpful book on the subject of stress: Adrenalin & Stress (Word, 1991). He points out that a chronic increased flow of adrenalin produces serious consequences, including:
- An increase in the production of blood cholesterol,
- A narrowing of the capillaries and other blood vessels that can shut down the blood supply to the heart,
- A decrease in the body’s ability to remove cholesterol,
- An increase in the blood’s tendency to clot,
- An increase in the depositing of plaque on the walls of the arteries.
“The adrenalin keeps the system moving at a high speed,” writes Hart, “and deterioration occurs at a faster rate. We actually age faster.” In other words, stress can kill.
Hart suggests ways in which we can manage the adrenalin level in our system and thus control the effects of stress. Here are a few things I have learned from him.
1. Plan to be down. After high adrenalin arousal, it’s important to let ourselves fall into a state of low arousal. Unfortunately, this doesn’t feel very good. Actually, it can feel like the bottom of the bird cage. When adrenalin drops, we feel low until our bodies reach a new state of equilibrium. “Blue Monday” has a biological cause!
I used to keep myself active on Sunday afternoons. Perhaps I was afraid of the crash, or perhaps I thought it would be too unspiritual to be depressed after experiencing the Lord’s blessing. After preaching in three worship services, I would take a brief nap and then hustle off to the tennis court or some other activity. But I heard Hart, in a workshop for pastors, tell how he plans for periods of depression after speaking engagements. When he speaks out of town, he asks to be taken to the airport a few hours early, finds a quiet corner in the terminal, and lets the depression break over him like waves. By allowing this to happen, he said, his system more quickly gets back to normal.
So I tried it. I no longer struggle to keep my emotions from falling into the pit. (One Sunday after lunch I said to my family, “Excuse me, I’m going to the bedroom to feel lousy.”) By Sunday evening I have almost no positive feelings left; I feel lonely, useless, disinterested in everything, a failure. This is not fun. But I discovered something interesting: the low periods pass more quickly. On Mondays I usually feel great, ready to charge forward into another week. (Before, when I held off the depression, it would hit more fiercely about Wednesday.)
After periods of stress, plan for a necessary drop in emotions. Depression is not always an enemy; it may be an ebb and flow essential for good health.
2. Enjoy the pause that refreshes. Hart writes: “Of all the techniques available for counteracting stress and reducing the symptoms of distress, deliberate relaxation represents the most well-developed and thoroughly researched.… Not only is it the cheapest healing force we know of, it is probably the most effective. Believe me, relaxation is a powerful tool.” Periods of intentional relaxation—daily and weekly—can help reduce the negative effects of stress in our lives.
Hart mentions several well-known techniques: stretching and relaxation of muscles, deep breathing, reminding oneself that God still sits on the throne. One of his suggestions, though, was new to me: hand warming. Adrenalin causes the blood to flow to the vital organs; this leaves the extremities colder than usual. You can actually warm your hands—and thereby reverse the flow of blood and ease the stress—by imagining them in hot water, say, or resting on the warm sand at the beach.
When I first heard this, I thought to myself. Sure. But biofeed-back on my own body proved it. The temperature of my hands rose as I visualized (and tried to feel) them in hot water. I discovered I have more control over my bodily systems than I thought!
The point is, plan for relaxation; schedule it into each day and week. On Fridays I write my sermons. At about ten o’clock, I go for a little walk around the church campus. I breathe deeply, thank God for my congregation, stretch and relax my muscles. The rest of the morning goes much better.
3. Sleep it off. When adrenalin is up, sleep diminishes. But with increased sleep, the body more easily recovers from the effects of elevated adrenalin. Sleep is a primary way to heal the damage caused by stress.
Hart’s research on sleep stunned me: “It is my belief that for good stress-disease prevention, the average adult needs between eight and ten hours of sleep each night, with some going as high as eleven hours. Some individual differences (such as age, lifestyle, and physical health) will vary the actual amount needed, but an average of nine hours seems to offer the best protection, according to my clinical experience. Under conditions of high stress, the apparent need for sleep may diminish, and extra sleep should be provided as soon as the stress period is over. If the stress demand continues, then extra ‘rest’ time should be provided even if sleep is not possible. I am convinced that most of us could improve our physical and emotional health dramatically if we just slept or rested a little longer than we usually do in our highly driven culture.”
I do not get as much sleep as Hart recommends, but I do plan for more sleep during seasons of stress. I’ve never been able to sleep late; I’m always up with the earliest bird. So when I need more sleep, I try to minimize evening meetings and go to bed earlier. It helps. When I have both high-level stress and inadequate sleep, I get more frazzled, more easily irritated. The sleep seems to restore energies deep within.
Laughter and Tears
For many years Reader’s Digest has had a section titled, “Laughter Is the Best Medicine.” Whether it’s the best depends upon your ailment, I suppose, but it’s certainly a good medicine for much of what ails us.
Laughter puts things in perspective: humor springs from the incongruities and ironies that afflict our humanity. Ben Patterson tells the apocryphal story of Bill Russell, the legendary center for the Boston Celtics: “If it isn’t true, it ought to be. According to the story, he was in the midst of an intense basketball game when, as he ran down court, he burst out laughing. The laughter grew until he had to stop playing and just lean over, his hands on his knees, and guffaw.
“Coach Red Auerbach called time out and screamed for his seemingly mad center to come over to the sideline. ‘What on earth are you laughing about?’ demanded Auerbach. ‘You could lose the game for us, you know!’
“It took Russell a few moments to regain his composure and explain, ‘Well you see, it suddenly hit me—here I am running around in my underwear in front of thousands of people, trying to throw a little ball through a hoop, and I’m getting paid to do it!’ “
Every now and then a similar thing happens to me on Sunday mornings. Here I am, I think to myself, all dressed up in my fancy pulpit robe, sounding so sure of myself, speaking in God’s name—and I’m really nothing but a scared little kid who can barely keep his act together from day to day. It’s enough to make me laugh, when I think about it.
Laughter isn’t simply good for the spirit, it’s good for the body. In 1964 Norman Cousins, long-time editor of Saturday Review, was diagnosed as having a serious collagen disease; his bodily tissues were literally coming apart, and he was told he wouldn’t live long. He didn’t believe doctors had a right to say when someone was going to die, so he started treating himself.
A significant part of his program called for laughter. He wondered whether positive emotions would create a healthier chemical balance in his body. So he watched old Candid Camera and Marx brothers films. It worked. He said, “I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.” Cousins, not incidentally, lived and went on to become a senior lecturer at the UCLA School of Medicine.
Laughter may be more important for health than we realize. It certainly helps me. I once had a presbytery executive who would occasionally telephone me: “Don, this pastor dies, meets St. Peter at the Golden Gate.…” We would laugh together, and then he would say, “That’s all, goodbye.” He was a wise pastor to pastors! We have a telephone prayer chain at our church; call in your concern, and it’s conveyed through the congregation. Perhaps we should also have a joke chain: call in your good ones, and pass them around for mutual well-being.
But we need more than laughter. To maintain fitness for ministry we must also know the joy of tears. The ability to cry is a blessing from God we dare not neglect. Unfortunately, many of us—particularly males—have lost it through disuse. Our North American culture discourages men from crying; tears, we have been conditioned to believe, are a sign of weakness (“Be a big boy, Johnny, and stop crying”).
A study conducted by a psychiatric nurse at Marquette University indicates that women cry five times as much as men. This study of 128 men and women demonstrates a close link between regular crying and good health (which may be one reason women, on the average, live longer than men).
I’m trying to learn from women. For many, many years I didn’t shed a single tear. I wasn’t consciously holding back; my plumbing just didn’t seem to work. But one day a flash flood hit. During a time of great stress, a tightness gathered in my chest, a pressure increased until I thought I would explode. Instead, to my complete astonishment, torrents of tears burst from undammed ducts. I let it rip: I moaned and groaned, beat my fist on the desk, and made a first-class mess of my shirt.
It felt great. It was as though a storm had passed through me, leaving a peaceful calm. A marvelous tranquility settled on my spirit. And then I wondered why I had allowed this gift to fall into such disrepair. The ability to cry, so far as I know, was granted only to humans—humans made in the image of the God who became flesh in Jesus, a man who cried. I had learned the verse in Sunday school, the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” If the one who revealed not only true God but true humanity cried, why should I be afraid of tears?
I’m still not good at it. Three or four times a year, I have a mild session of weeping; only about once a year do I cut loose with a wailing, Kleenex-demolishing session. But I’m getting better, and I have found it an important part of keeping fit for ministry.
Work and play, fast and feast, rest and exercise, up and down, laughter and tears: these are important rhythms for the health of body, mind, emotions, spirit—and ministry.
Time for Things That Matter
Determining God’s call usually involves a prosaic wrestling with who we are and where we are placed.
—Donald McCullough
“It is finished.”
According to John, these were the last words of Jesus. But what exactly was finished?
He was but a young man with many years of ministry ahead of him. He had been preaching for only three years and had little to show for it: the last of his followers had fled in fear; the kingdom of Rome seemed in no way threatened by the kingdom of God; recovery of sight hadn’t yet come to many of the blind; captives were still doing time; liberty had not yet come to the underside of society.
Nothing much was finished, except that which God had called Jesus to do. “I glorified you on earth,” Jesus prayed, “by finishing the work that you gave me to do.”
It must have been tempting for him to try to do more, to try to, well, save the world. A few more years and who knows? Perhaps thousands more could be exposed to the kingdom’s message; at least hundreds more could be touched by its healing power.
If he were like most of us, he would have let Peter go through with his rescue attempt—anything to get back to ministry, to continue the work. To the end though, he refused to take responsibility for everything—to do what really mattered. For that reason, he did save the world.
Every pastor must ask. What am I called to do? Where should I invest my time and energies ? What should I seek as a goal? Here are some principles I keep in mind as I seek to answer these questions.
Hearing God in Person and Place
Sometimes I wish God would use the telephone. I imagine an angelic voice saying, “Is this Don McCullough? Please stand by. God would like a word with you.” And then a voice, sounding like eternity and filled with wisdom and authority and love would say, “Don, I want you to lead your congregation in a four million dollar capital fund campaign.” No uncertainty, no ambivalence.
And on my part, there would be single-minded obedience—or so I imagine. Actually, I would probably wonder if it had really been God on the line, and I would equivocate in my response as thoroughly as when I read a clear word of Scripture. But it’s hard not wishing for such clear, concrete guidance.
Determining God’s call usually involves a more prosaic wrestling with two factors: We come to understand what God wants us to do by evaluating who we are and where we are placed.
We begin with self-evaluation—an honest assessment of our gifts and interests and joys and discomforts—because the commissioning God is none other than the creator God. The God who sends has already equipped us. True, God sometimes surprises, using apparently unlikely candidates as instruments of his will. But for the most part, we may rationally evaluate our natural talents and inclinations, and this will be the first (probably most important) step toward discovering God’s will for our lives.
For me to pray about becoming a denominational executive, say, would indicate less spirituality than stupidity. Committee meetings remind me of vaccination shots: necessary at times, but tolerable only in moderation. Denominational executives go from one meeting to the next like drunks hitting every bar in town, and for the most part, they remain sober and, more importantly, productive for the kingdom. And that only increases my incomprehension at how they manage to get through each day. I praise God for those so constituted; I know I’m not made that way, and there’s no sense keeping this one on my prayer list.
Here’s my general rule: unless struck by lightning, I assume that what God wants of me will be consistent with how he created me. So I pay attention to my desires and gifts.
This evaluation, however, must be balanced with the demands of our circumstances. We don’t always enjoy a perfect match between who we are and where we minister. God sometimes calls us to places that need our gifts but don’t yet realize it, and thus we offer ministries that aren’t fully received or appreciated.
So we make adjustments: one pastor attends more committee meetings than she likes because she also gets to preach; another, to maintain church peace, never misses a women’s association meeting, though there may be a hundred other things he feels more suited to doing; another still drives a school bus to help make ends meet because he feels called to a rural congregation.
Still, if too many compromises must be made, if there is too great a conflict between gifts and congregational needs, a change may be necessary. Normally, though, a sense of God’s will usually emerges in the intersection between who I am and where I am.
Keeping Your Eyes on the Distant Star
Peter Drucker says efficiency is doing the thing right, but effectiveness is doing the right thing. Effective pastors do the right thing by obeying God’s call. But this differs, in most instances, from the pressing thing. The “tyranny of the urgent” always distracts from the most important; shooting at rabbits only scares away the stag. So today must be planned so that we move closer to achieving God’s will for us.
Investing time in things that matter, therefore, requires that we keep the vision. Yehudi Menuhin, the great violinist, said, “To play great music you must keep your eyes on a distant star.” Accomplishing a great work for Christ requires a similar focus: eyes must be lifted above a thousand and one distractions to the shining goal of what God wants us to do. Otherwise the constant pounding of pressing demands shatters ministry into unrelated bits and pieces of well-meaning ineffectiveness.
In the fall of 1940, the German Luftwaffe rained terror on the city of London, sending an average of 200 planes per raid for fifty-seven consecutive nights. During the days, Winston Churchill, dressed in suit and derby and champing his ever-present cigar, could be seen picking his way through the devastation, encouraging the Londoners he met.
Victory eventually came for Great Britain, of course, and when it did, Churchill was asked what he had done during the interminable nights of the London bombing. He said he had gone to his bomb shelter below Piccadilly Circus and there, with a desk lamp illuminating a map of Europe, had planned the invasion of Germany. Even in the midst of chaos, with victory only a distant star in the dark night, he never lost sight of the vision.
As I consider what God has called me to do, I realize I cannot grow spiritually without certain devotional disciplines. So I begin each day with prayer (along with a mug of coffee!), and because I want to get through the Bible at least once a year, I read two chapters in the Old Testament and two in the New. I must do these things each day if I’m going to fulfill my vision of a growing relationship with God. In a similar way I plan each week (well, most weeks) to set aside time for my family and friends, and even some time for myself.
Likewise, I order my ministry. A few years ago I had one of those “Aha!” experiences that can dramatically influence one’s life. I was reading Peter Drucker’s book. The Effective Executive, and came across this: “The effective executive focuses on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: ‘What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?’ “
Suddenly the lights went on for me. I realized I have things to contribute to the church that no one else has, and if I don’t contribute what I’m called to contribute, no one else is likely to. Given these facts, I asked myself, What can I contribute?
I had to come back to the twin consideration of who I am and where I am. Soon it became clear that what I could contribute to my church were four things: (1) communicate the gospel as effectively as I’m able through preaching, teaching, and writing; (2) develop an effective leadership team; (3) articulate a vision for the congregation; (4) create an open, positive atmosphere in which a diverse community can flourish.
With these goals in mind, I plan my activities for each week. I set aside time for study in order to have something worthwhile to communicate (for goal one). I meet with the members of my staff and discuss issues with key elders (for goal two). I plan to repeat certain themes in sermons and committee meetings and private conversations (for goals three and four).
I try not to get distracted from these goals. Because I do not feel called to do much pastoral care, I do little counseling and visitation. I’m blessed with others on staff who do these things and do them better than I. But I do some pastoral care, at least in part to fulfill my first goal, because communicators of the gospel must stay in touch with people’s needs.
Abraham Lincoln was our greatest President. He kept our nation together through its worst crisis. This was a remarkable feat of leadership. Any modern leader—pastors included—would do well to study carefully his life.
One characteristic of Lincoln was his ability to hold tenaciously the long-range goal of keeping the Union together; he never became distracted from this vision. Everything—no matter how significant—had to be subordinated to the primary goal of preserving the Union.
Even slavery. As much as he opposed the institution of human bondage, Lincoln delayed freeing the slaves in order to retain the loyalty of the slave states that supported the Union cause, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland especially. As a result, Lincoln incurred the fierce wrath of the northern abolitionists.
Still, in a letter to Horace Greeley, he wrote, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union.… If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.… I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty: and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.”
This stance opened Lincoln to criticism from both sides, but he knew his calling and subordinated everything to that goal.
Staying with the Band
Lincoln would not budge from his goal of keeping the Union together, but was open to changing his ideas about how that ought to be achieved. He once signed an order, under severe political pressure, to transfer certain regiments from one field of battle to another. But Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton refused to carry it out.
“Lincoln is a damn fool for ever signing the order,” Stanton snorted.
The remark was passed on to Lincoln, who responded, “If Stanton said I’m a damn fool, then I must be one. He is nearly always right in military matters. I’ll step over and find out what his reasoning is.”
In contrast, Albert Speer, the brilliant architect of Hitler’s wretched Reich, said in his memoirs that he failed because once he made a commitment to Hitler, he never let himself look twice at that commitment. He never examined it, never questioned it.
Wise pastors will occasionally take a second look at their visions, review their goals. I recently became convinced that our church ought to help establish a new church development not far from us. The presbytery, our local denominational governing body, was behind it, and we had the resources and people to make it happen. I discussed it several times with my pastoral staff, but each time the response was underwhelming.
Not easily deflected in my desires, I pressed on, taking the issue to the session, the governing board of the church. I presented the idea, using my best rhetorical gifts and reasoning powers; I sought to convince minds and touch hearts. The response was as animated as a brick wall. The elders expressed no actual opposition but a blankness—nothing.
About three o’clock the next morning, after restless hours of turning my bed sheets into a chaotic mess, I realized what had happened: the leaders were on overload, unable to add another project to an already long list of worthy endeavors. We had just taken the first steps toward establishing an Hispanic congregation; we had recently decided to submit an offer on an adjacent piece of property. Their minds were too full to concentrate on anything else for the time being. I needed to give up. If you’re going to lead the parade, you have to stay with the band.
Overcoming Indiscipline
Some days I feel like a pinball bounced from one problem to the next. I assume God is in control (I am a Calvinist!), but sometimes I wonder: I’m tossed around by telephone callers, people who stop by, upset staff members, and elders with bright ideas that won’t wait. It’s tempting to go with the flow, to let myself be carried along by the current of urgent demands. The phrase organized pastor sounds like an oxymoron, only a wistful hope at best.
But severe disorganization, like an out-of-control disease, can kill effective ministry. Wherever it rears its frenzied head, we usually find lack of discipline, the failure to take control of our lives and to use time responsibly.
This particular form of sloth, and it often results from a cowardice that reveals itself in an unwillingness to say no, a fear of being unpopular, and a constant flight from discomfort. Discipline demands standing firm, taking the risk of being misunderstood, and staying at something, despite boredom and pain, until it is finished.
William Barclay said that Samuel Taylor Coleridge “is the supreme tragedy of indiscipline. Never did so great a mind produce so little. He left Cambridge University to join the army; he left the army because he could not rub down a horse; he returned to Oxford and left without a degree. He began a paper called The Watchman which lived for ten issues and then died. It has been said of him: ‘He lost himself in visions of work to be done, that always remained to be done. Coleridge had every poetic gift but one—the gift of sustained and concentrated effort.’ In his head and in his mind he had all kinds of books.… But the books were never composed outside Coleridge’s mind, because he would not face the discipline of sitting down to write them out. No one ever reached any eminence, and no one having reached it ever maintained it, without discipline.”
Seizing Our Calendars
How can we cultivate the discipline of organization? By seizing our calendars.
One day it occurred to me: even though many, many people have ideas about how I ought to use my time, I alone bear responsibility for it. One day I will stand before the Judge, and I will not be able to plea, “Well, she said I should.… And he told me to.…” No, “I” will answer for my stewardship of time. When this dawned on me, I determined to be as thoughtful and as disciplined as possible in my daily schedule.
1. Plan week-long segments. The cycle of seven days is not only a biblical pattern, it is a practical reality for most pastors. We tend to live from Sunday to Sunday (from Judgment Day to Judgment Day!), with a number of consequent deadlines between. It makes sense, therefore, to think in week-long segments.
There are several good organizers on the market. For many years I have used the Daytimer system. In my binder I keep a year’s worth of month-at-a-glance pages for noting upcoming events. At the beginning of each month, I insert the day-at-a-glance pages for that month. (In addition to these calendars, I also keep in my binder sermon notes, records of honoraria received, lists of elders and deacons, making it an all-purpose workbook. If I ever lost it, I’d be in a deep pile of trouble!)
On Friday I review the upcoming week, writing in each day’s activities on the day-at-a-glance pages. I consider my long-range goals, and I block in activities that will help me reach them, trying to be detailed about the things I intend to do each day (e.g., instead of writing “Study,” I write, “Read 20 pages of Barth, CD—IV/1, and get caught up on back issues of Christianity Today). At the bottom of each day’s page, I list telephone calls that need to be made.
In general, I do administration at the beginning of my week and study and sermon preparation at the end. On Mondays I write correspondence (rarely, if ever, have I had mail that couldn’t wait until the next Monday for a reply), and I spend a good deal of time on the telephone (talking with committee chairpersons, recruiting, lighting fires under slow movers, and putting out the fires of the agitated).
Tuesday mornings are set aside for exegeting my upcoming sermon text, and the afternoon is devoted to staff meetings and preparing the order of worship. I try to keep Wednesday flexible, often writing for publication or preparing for teaching. By Thursday I’m working on my sermon, giving much of the day to brainstorm-ing and outlining. On Friday mornings I write my sermon; all telephone calls are held, and staff members know they dare not interrupt except for serious emergencies. I clean off my desk that afternoon and make sure the following week is planned.
Throughout the week, I schedule periodic counseling appointments, usually in late afternoons, which not only reserves my mornings for study but also seems to be most convenient for people who work.
2. Do first things first. Andrew Carnegie was once hired as a management consultant. He said, “I’ll make one suggestion, and you send me a check for what you think it’s worth. Write down what you have to do on a piece of paper in order of priority, and complete the first item before you go to the second.” The businessman to whom he offered this advice eventually sent him a check for $10,000.
In the words of Peter Drucker, “Effective executives do first things first, and they do one thing at a time.… There was Mozart, of course. He could, it seems, work on several compositions at the same time, all of them masterpieces. But he is the only known exception. The other prolific composers of the first rank—Bach, for instance, Handel, or Haydn, or Verdi—composed one work at a time. They did not begin the next until they had finished the preceding one, or until they had stopped work on it for the time being and put it away in the drawer. Executives can hardly assume that they are ‘executive Mozarts.’ “
This sounds so simple, so obvious. But when the first thing on your list is to call an elder angry about last Sunday’s sermon or confront a staff member who has been letting things fall through the cracks or form an outline for a text that seems dull—well, doing first things first isn’t easy. Procrastination comes to the rescue with all sorts of excuses; boredom cries out for relief; other things suddenly become much more urgent.
I’ve noticed how much needs my attention Friday mornings when I should be writing my sermon: my pencils need sharpening {all of them), my desk drawers need cleaning, my plastic plant needs watering. Eventually, though, as the morning starts slipping away, I must force myself to do what needs to be done whether I feel like it or not.
Actually, a comfort comes in focusing on one thing at a time. If we always have our eyes set on the distant horizon, we’ll despair of making any progress. When we see nothing but the vision of doubling the size of our church or building a great staff or writing a book, we can easily end each day overwhelmed with all we didn’t accomplish, with all the distance still left to travel.
Well-known commentator Eric Sevareid said that the best lesson he ever learned was the principle of the next mile: “During World War II, I and several others had to parachute from a crippled Army transport plane into mountainous jungle on the Burma/India border. It was several weeks before an armed relief expedition could reach us, and then we began a painful, plodding march out to civilized India. We were faced with a 140-mile trek, over mountains in August heat and monsoon rains. In the first hour of the march I rammed a boot nail deep into one foot; by evening I had bleeding blisters the size of fifty-cent pieces on both feet. Could I hobble 140 miles? Could the others, some in worse shape than I, complete such a distance? We were convinced we could not. But we could hobble to that ridge, we could make the next friendly village for the night. And that, of course, was all we had to do.…”
3. Plan for interruptions. At the end of a tiring day, I sometimes comment to my family, “If it weren’t for people, ministry would be a breeze!” But ministry involves people, and people guarantee interruptions. Along with death and taxes, interruptions are a certainty, no matter how forcefully the calendar is seized, no matter how many secretaries stand guard.
Two things have helped me cope with this. First, in my study of the Gospels, I discovered how much of Jesus’ ministry happened because of interruptions. His miracles and teaching often took place in response to unscheduled pleas for help and questions. He couldn’t even take a vacation without finding a crowd waiting for him when he arrived! I began to realize that if Jesus did kingdom business this way, I needed to get used to interruptions. If the Lord himself wasn’t too important to be sidetracked by the unexpected, who was I to resent it?
So do we just give up and let ourselves be dominated by the loudest voices and most demanding people? No, we keep trying to be good stewards of our calendars, but we expect the inevitable.
The second thing that helped me deal with intrusions in my day was learning how to schedule them on my calendar. I know they will happen, I expect good things in ministry to result from them, and so I now make room for them. I try never to plan a day too tightly; I keep my to-do list manageable enough so that when Mrs. Smith calls and “really must” see me, well, she can.
4. Never accept new responsibilities without prayer and reflection. Refusing a request for time can be difficult for at least two reasons: it feels good to be wanted, and it feels bad to disappoint others. For me, this has too often meant saying yes to things for which I had neither time nor inclination. Then, as pressures mounted, a slight bitterness would seep into my ministry—not much, but enough to foul the sweet joy of service.
In recent years I have adopted a rule: I never say yes or no at the time I’m asked to do something. I take at least twenty-four hours to pray and think about it. I generally say something like, “So far as I can see, my calendar looks clear, but I want to pray about it. I want to make sure this would be a good use of my gifts. I will call you in a day or two to inform you of my decision.”
During this time of prayer and reflection, I ask myself several questions: Is this something for which I have gifts? Does this fit the vision for ministry God has given me? Am I being unduly influenced by the honor of being asked or the prestige of the occasion? Would saying yes to this mean saying no to something more important?
Gordon MacDonald makes a helpful distinction between the driven and the called. Driven people strive to do as much as possible, and they often accomplish a great deal, though at significant cost to themselves and others. Called people, on the other hand, do what the Father sets before them.
From God’s call comes perseverance. A sense of call enabled Raymond Lull, the first missionary to the Arabs, to labor his entire lifetime with only one convert. A driven man would have demanded more results, more “success.”
And from God’s call comes peace. John Donne prayed, “Keep us. Lord, so awake in the duties of our callings that we may sleep in your peace and wake in your glory.” Staying at the duties of our callings, and not taking on the burden of saving the world, keeps us in the peace that passes all understanding.
Finding time for things that matter, then, means first and foremost discovering God’s call, and his peace.
Copyright © 1992 by Christianity Today
