A friend wrote in his church newsletter that a series of books he’d just read changed the way he viewed ministry. His wife, he reported, said it changed him.
We were curious.
“What is this terrific series that has transformed your ministry? Is it Maxwell, or Anderson, or Schaller? Is it purpose-driven or tsunami-driven? What’s it about?”
“Mitford,” he replied, almost sheepishly. “It’s a small town in North Carolina, a quirky mountain village. The main characters are an Episcopal priest and his dog. The people are odd, and this pastor, he—just—loves ’em.” The Mitford series of novels, by Jan Karon, is a publishing phenomenon.
But this was so out-of-character for this aggressive, goal-oriented pastor. Once a manufacturer of bomber jets, he came to ministry later in life. In 12 years at his only pastorate, he has relocated the church to 20 acres out by the interstate, personally supervised construction of new facilities, hired staff, and watched his sweet neighborhood church triple in size, becoming a dynamic regional ministry.
Now he was talking fiction. Labradors. County fairs. Orange marmalade cakes.
“I couldn’t read these books fast enough,” he said. “I’ve fallen in love with pastoring all over again.”
We were fascinated, partly because we knew this man’s take-no-prisoners approach to ministry, and partly because we’ve heard from others lately who aren’t sure what it means to pastor in this new era.
Pastors are expected to be so many things. Premodern Paul said he was “all things to all men.” His postmodern counterparts find that list getting longer and longer. The pastor is at various times chaplain, cheerleader, coach, CEO, visionary, fundraiser, preacher, plumber, spiritual director, fellow struggler, disciplinarian, confidant, and urgent care coordinator.
The complexity of the task is compounded by the uncertainty of our times. How do we preach to emerging generations who hear languages we don’t speak? How do we minister in cultures we barely recognize? And should we do it all at Internet speed?
Searching for answers, at least one pastor journeyed to Mitford. But even Mitford has its underside. You see contrary elders and church politics, windfall and poverty, abuse and abandonment; the conflict of youth with age, and church secretaries with technology; disasters, romance, and gossip. (You’ll feel right at home.)
And through it all, Father Tim finds a way to shepherd his flock. He is sometimes gentle, sometimes stern, but always prayerful and mostly loving.
In mythical Mitford, you meet a pastor who loves pastoring. But would we find the same in Chicago? or Seattle? or Jackson?
We did. As we asked pastors how they handled the task in changing times, we found some moved up, some downsized, some reshaped their preaching. Most are reinventing themselves. And all we met still love whatever it is they do—that’s pastoring.
The editors
Shepherd
Pastural Ministry
E. Glenn Wagner
Weary of models and movements, I needed to go back to basics.
One pastor brought his staff to a conference. Not his associates—his long sheep-stick with a crook on one end. He got a lot of looks at first, but it made his point. “I am convicted that I have not been living, functioning, or walking as a shepherd,” he said, to a rumble of amens from the 4,000 pastors in attendance. “But that’s what we’re called to be.”
I hear the same thing from many pastors today who are tired of managing and marketing their churches. There is a hunger to return to our root identity.
One man I talked with recently was ready to quit after only three years in ministry. He had tried various models of leadership, but he recognized that he was called to love what God loves, the sheep. He wanted to do that again. He is not alone.
Unashamedly sheepish
Three years ago I returned to the pastorate after serving as vice president of Promise Keepers. My time with the men’s movement confirmed my commitment to ministry based on relationships.
Men gravitate to tasks rather than relationships. Most of the existing men’s ministries relied on programs. It’s not easy to establish a men’s group on relationships, but it’s through community that truth is built into men’s lives. Most churches don’t have a bona fide men’s ministry, because it takes a lot of work to break through to the first three or four guys. That can only be done by modeling it. The leader must develop relationships with a few guys based on the people rather than what they together will accomplish.
That modeling, called shepherding, has become foundational for my pastorate.
There’s something about the Middle Eastern tender of herds that still communicates safety and care, even to our twenty-first century listeners.
I think the need to model the shepherd is even greater today, because few people trust their leaders. Boomers responded to the need with growth principles based on corporate leadership. By and large, the CEO model removes the leader from those he leads.
So the cry is not for leadership; the cry now is for authenticity, and Generation X is singing that song louder than anyone else.
I know how to do complex budgets and strategic planning; and we do all of that at Calvary, but it’s not the basis of our ministry. This was a large church when I arrived, and they were accustomed to church growth methods. I found a receptive audience, however, when I started talking about the shepherd’s heart. I warned the leaders here that this kind of pastoring is messy. It means involvement in people’s lives. It means pain when sheep are disobedient. It means guarding them from wolf attack and weeping when some are devoured. It means being as concerned about the one as the ninety-nine.
For pastoral staff, shepherding means spending more time with the people who are on the fringes of the church community. I have a pastor friend who reserves one day each week for meeting with people who are not leaders in the church. He contacts them from a random list of church members. He knows he can’t pastor everyone individually, but he can have a personal acquaintance with many of his congregation. Shepherding means the pastor does not invest himself only in the leaders, the elders, and the good givers.
At Calvary our pastoral staff regularly has meals with new members, with people from other staffers’ ministries, with all ages. We work at building relationships among the pastoral staff, support staff, and elders. Every year we study about shepherds and sheep, and we covenant together to serve in the same humble way as the herdsmen. We want to smell like sheep, because we spend time with the sheep.
The congregation is beginning to understand that they have the same responsibility. We are all undershepherds to the Chief Shepherd. He tells us today what he told Peter, “Tend my sheep.”
E. Glenn Wagner, pastor of Calvary Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the author of Escape from Church, Inc.(Zondervan, 1999). He will be a speaker at the National Pastors Convention in San Diego in February. www.NationalPastorsConvention.com
Parson
Deliberate Downsizing
Why I gave up a big church.
Terry Swicegood
Last year I resigned as senior minister of one of the largest and most prominent Presbyterian churches in the country. I was not forced out of office. I did not abscond with church funds. I did not run off with the secretary. I quit because I was miserable.
From the time I was first ordained, I aspired to lead a large church. After pastoring successively larger congregations, I arrived at my dream church. I found out quickly it wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as it appeared from a distance.
The church had 3,700 members. It’s impossible even over a long ministry to know 3,700 people intimately. I longed for pastoral relationships, but I spent most of my time keeping the wheels of the organization greased. I was required to be astute politician, motivational speaker, discerning psychotherapist, visionary leader, and institutional fund raiser, with rarely a full day off.
The pastor in that demanding Eastern seaboard setting is like a circus juggler who runs up and down the line keeping 25 plates spinning on poles. Just as he gets a few plates spinning at one end, the plates at the far end begin to wobble. Even if he has done his best, the audience will feel that he isn’t a good juggler if he lets a plate crash.
In a large church very few members really know the pastor’s heart. They form their opinions based on sermons, what the pastor writes in the newsletter, and how they are greeted at the door. Many of those opinions are light years away from reality.
For me, one of the most important aspects of ministry is to be known, loved, and respected by the congregation as I desire to know, love, and respect them. That is difficult to pull off in a crowd.
I resigned without a clue as to what I would do next. It was the hardest and scariest thing I’ve ever done. But finally, my future turned on this question: “What brings me more security—holding this job or honoring my soul?”
Listening to the mockingbird
A few weeks after my resignation, I was contacted by a church of 500 members in central Mississippi. Within four months, I received a call to be their pastor. I have been here more than a year now, and I am rediscovering what it means to pastor.
In my new church, I have the opportunity to know a few people in a deep way, rather than know many people in a shallow way. I get to teach a Bible study once a week, something I had been unable to do for years. In every death in the congregation, every birth, every illness, I am involved.
I have to confess I do miss some things about big church: I miss the wonderful music. I miss the abundant financial resources. And I have to say I miss being a real player in the city. My ego still is adjusting to the downsizing.
But my soul is at peace. I am where I need to be. I am doing the things for which I entered the ministry—listening, preaching, teaching, caring.
Not long ago I visited with a young man in our congregation. He is permanently confined to a wheelchair because of a wasting disease. He spends much of his day at the window looking out at the six bird feeders in his backyard. He watches as birds come and go. Bird watching is deeply meaningful to him as his life has become diminished.
I found an article on mockingbirds and was so impressed by it I took it by my friend’s house and read it to him. It was titled, “How Does the Mockingbird Know What to Sing Next?”
We sat together for a long time—something I never could have afforded in my bustling large-church ministry—and I pondered some of the deeper mysteries of life: how the mockingbird chooses from its repertoire of 180 songs, why this young man is stricken with an awful disease, and why my ministry turned out so different from what I had expected.
We watched the birds, we shared communion, and I was glad to be a pastor once again.
Terry Swicegood is pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Jackson, Mississippi.
Crisis Manager
Inheriting the Pulpit of a Legend
We would survive the shock, if I could lead people who still call me “baby.”
Cheryl Sanders
I was putting the finishing touches on a manuscript dealing with the life and leadership of the man who had been my pastor for most of my life, Dr. Samuel G. Hines, when the phone rang.
Dr. Hines was dead. Amid my shock and grief, a question immediately arose: What would I preach on Sunday?
I knew even bigger questions were coming: What would happen to the church? And what role would I play?
I grew up at Third Street Church of God in Washington D.C. My maternal grandparents became members here shortly after migrating from North Carolina in the 1920s. My parents married here in the 1950s. I was born into this church, came to faith and was baptized here. As a youth, I was active in almost every organization. And after completing a doctorate in theology at Harvard, I had returned to Washington to take a teaching position at Howard University, and I returned to Third Street as associate pastor.
Now, I knew, I would be called on to lead my church family through this trauma. I didn’t know where my service would ultimately lead.
Prepared for the crisis
Dr. Hines had a storied ministry. After 25 years, Third Street was his church. And it was my church, too, but in a much different way. Dr. Hines had welcomed me to the staff and had given me responsibility for leadership development and Christian education. But on some level, I was still the child who had grown up there.
Some still referred to themselves as “aunt” and reminded me that they knew me when I was in diapers years earlier. Gaining acceptance as their minister would not be easy. I wondered if my previous experience would be enough.
while in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had served two years as interim pastor of First Church of God in Boston after the pastor and some members left to start another church. My ministry there was one of crisis management. That church wanted someone to stabilize the situation. Their pressing need was righting the ship rather than plotting a course. And they were willing to follow because I was willing to lead.
“We don’t know if you can do this, but we want to give you a chance,” one member told me.
Together we gathered our strength, picked up the pieces, and rebuilt the church’s confidence. After two years, I had learned much about ministry; the church was ready to call a new pastor, and I had proven myself in troubled times.
This is not a test
I was already scheduled to preach for Dr. Hines that Sunday. As his associate, I sometimes filled the pulpit in his absence. He was to have minor surgery.
“He was in recovery,” the caller told me. “He suffered a massive heart attack and never regained consciousness.”
I stared at the phone. I knew at once that I must go to the hospital to console his grieving family; but it would fall to me, too, to console a grieving congregation, and again, to pick up the pieces.
While we waited for the church to convene a pulpit committee, I shared leadership responsibilities with another associate and the chairman of the church council. I handled the pulpit and they chaired the meetings. The lessons I learned in Boston were life-saving. We focused on the immediate issue—coping with the loss of a beloved and revered leader—and decided that long-range plans could wait. I discovered in the process that I must not make too many assumptions. While it was true that I had grown up at Third Street, there were many things I didn’t know from a pastor’s point of view.
After the committee was elected and had met for several months, they asked if I would agree to be presented to the congregation as the candidate for senior pastor. I was surprised, but I agreed. I also wondered how this would sit with those who still called me by my childhood nickname.
The vote was not quite unanimous, but overwhelmingly positive. The church extended to me a call to a full-time pastorate with a three-year contract. The confidence the congregation vested in me during those traumatic months has supported my new role as senior pastor. In the years since, we have expanded our transportation and food ministries, purchased property, and developed plans to expand our sanctuary and make the facilities accessible for the disabled.
I have moved more slowly than an incoming pastor without family ties might have in the area of vision. Many in the congregation were concerned that Dr. Hines’s focus on urban outreach and reconciliation should continue. I have sought to honor my predecessor by honoring his vision. After all, I was a stakeholder here before I was a pastor. Now people are beginning to ask, “What is your vision?” They seem ready to hear it and ready to support me in movement toward that vision.
They know that this is my home. I baptized my husband and children into the membership, and now a fourth generation of my family is serving here.
In times of crisis and upheaval, a pastor needs to embody calm dependence upon Christ. That is the calling I embrace.
Cheryl Sanders is senior pastor of Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C., and professor of ethics at Howard University.
Spiritual Director
Guiding the Self-Serve Church
I couldn’t pastor everybody. How would I help members help themselves?
Michael Foss
The pastor, a converted Jew, posed the question: “If you had to choose between right thinking and right living, which would you choose?”
He raised the issue after telling a group of us pastors about his family, most of whom died in the holocaust. He talked about our tradition—how right thinking we are, what great theology we have—and how silent we were as the Nazis killed millions of Jews. He contrasted Protestant Christians of the time with Jehovah’s Witnesses who stood two by two on street corners in Berlin, denounced Hitler’s regime, and were arrested and taken away. “Right thinking?” he asked, “or right living?”
Odd as it seems, that was a turning point in my ministry. It confirmed what God had been pointing out to me for several months. I needed to change the way I pastor.
A great gulf fixed
George Barna, George Gallup, and others have documented the huge inconsistencies between what American Christians say they believe and what they do. I have seen it in my own congregation, a growing church in the Minneapolis suburbs. They needed a faith that affected life in every aspect, from sanctuary to boardroom to bedroom.
To be honest, I didn’t see that. I was hearing them say, “Can you give me some tools to take my faith into my workplace, to my family, where I play softball?” My people were confused about what Christians do.
And they were confused about what pastors do. There may have been a time when the expectations of pastors were clear, with emphasis on preaching and chaplaincy. But today a pastor cannot be with his people every minute, know the intimate details of their lives, and anticipate their every spiritual need.
And, frankly, he shouldn’t.
When I read Paul’s letters, it is intriguing how much spiritual direction is given and how little pastoral care is provided. The presumption, it seems to me, is that if the community of faith is growing in relationship with Jesus Christ, the community of faith will begin to provide the kind of pastoral care that’s necessary. The pastor’s job then is to equip the congregation to continue to grow, and to correct them so they’re growing in a direction that’s healthy.
The way I had been doing ministry was inadequate. My work was reactive. I suffered from the “busies.” I was so mired in the minutiae of ministry that I couldn’t get above it to provide visionary leadership. The congregation needed to learn to minister to each other.
I needed to become a spiritual director.
Clearer expectations
I told my wife of my conviction.
“It’s risky,” I confessed, considering aloud how to break this to the church. We had been here less than three years at the time, and the look in her eyes told me she didn’t want to move again. “I’m absolutely certain this is what God is calling me to do, but I don’t know if Prince of Peace will follow. I need you to pray with me and affirm it.”
She agreed. We prayed for several weeks, and I felt compelled to proceed. I went to the board.
“I believe we as leaders first have to practice our faith, and that means we grow together,” I said. I was increasingly convinced that we must embody whatever role God was calling us to before attempting to lead the congregation there.
Then I met with the staff. “If you want to be part of this team, you must be committed to mutual spiritual growth.”
Finally we took it to the congregation and started preaching it. I was blunt. “There is no way that in a church of 9,500 members that five pastors can be present for every spiritual event in your lives. You will have a crisis, and we will do everything we can to equip you to face it.
“You are being honed by God to share your gifts. That means being in relationship with those inside the church and outside the church, developing a network of care, committing to your own growth, and calling others to spiritual growth.”
We developed the “six marks of discipleship” and we’re posting them everywhere. We made laminated cards the size of a driver’s license and gave one to every member. We started teaching on the spiritual disciplines in sermons and classes. And we lift them up again and again.
We decided to teach people to exercise the muscles we call faith and to do it regularly. The marks may seem like a checklist, but faith won’t grow if it’s not exercised; and it won’t be exercised if it’s not on our “to do” list. By changing the way we live, we are more likely to change the way we think. Theology will follow practice.
To be sure, there was some hesitance in the early stages. That is normal. But resistance helped us clarify our language. And some people who wanted to continue a codependent relationship with their clergy were forced to look elsewhere. But once the congregation got it, they moved faster than I ever imagined. The results are pretty amazing.
Guiding Lite
I realized the effects of my new role when a member of a particular small group had a crisis. He didn’t call the pastoral staff, he called his small group. That happens often now. I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt when I’m not on the scene for a ministry crisis; but as a spiritual director, I have had to give up my need to be needed. I’m helping others to need and to call on each other.
And I’ve had to give up having all the answers. Spiritual direction is about coming alongside another—not taking over their journey. In the course of living, the disciple encounters questions and the director points to where answers may be found. That’s equipping.
I’m also more accountable to others. I ask staff members, “Is God far or near?” They ask me, “How’s your prayer life? What did you get from your Bible reading?”
My move to spiritual director has elevated what I do as pastor. In the world in which we live, the spiritual is so often denigrated for the material and the institutional. This provides strong affirmation for the pastoral office by saying that the spiritual work we do is the most vital. And in a world with growing spiritual hunger, it is our best opportunity to guide people to life-changing faith.
Michael Foss is pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Burnsville, Minnesota. He is the author of Power Surge: Six Marks of Discipleship for a Changing Church (Fortress Press, 2000).
Missionary
Senior Pastor 3.0
I could grow old with my generation or I could reinvent myself to reach the next (and the next).
Sam Williams
I was born in 1943. I began pastoring in 1965. During my lifetime the church in America slipped from cultural majority to waning influence in a religious plurality.
Some of my peers have adapted. The rest have overseen the decline of their ministries. Whether one likes the shifts in our society is irrelevant. Understanding them and fitting ministry to them is necessary to remain effective.
I pastored three churches. The first was a traditional church of the builder generation. The next church—mostly boomers—transitioned from traditional to blended worship. The most recent was an emerging postmodern/Gen-X ministry. Ironically, the older I got, the younger my congregations became. This is because I decided to become a missionary to my culture rather than grow old with my generation.
Ministry just got messier
The catalyst for this decision came midway through my second pastorate. My wife and I received what we believed to be a call to missions. After doors didn’t open to overseas ministry, we realized God was calling us to become missionaries right here.
That would require of us the same kinds of significant changes foreign missionaries make to communicate the gospel to the lost. They learn a new language and culture. This contextualization of ministry is not to make the message more palatable, but more understandable. Missionaries cross whatever barriers are necessary. They don’t require the lost to become like them in order to be saved.
This mindset has touched every aspect of my ministry:
- My preaching style has gone through three phases, from a rather loud “three points and a poem,” to a conversational “topical exegesis,” to a relational story-telling style. All are biblical styles and each has been effective in its time and place. I would rather have not changed. It’s hard enough to learn how to preach once. Three times is cruel and unusual punishment. I wouldn’t have done it for anybody but Jesus, and the people for whom he died.
- Evangelism is different today. The pre-evangelized, biblically literate unsaved of my early ministry, like the God-fearers at Pentecost, only needed to hear what to do. Seekers in our present culture, like the pluralists at Mars Hill, require more time and “reasoning,” Paul’s method of evangelism. The evangelistic message never changes, but I have found that my evangelistic effectiveness is related to my understanding of the people. Those with whom I share today are at a very different place from people 35 years ago.
- The organization of the church changed from a hierarchical structure in which a few made decisions for many, to a flat structure in which the “freedom to decide” accompanies the “responsibility to do” ministry. Leadership of staff changed from command and control to a highly relational team model. Leaders are motivated more by doing what is meaningful than by doing their duty.
- Discipleship has shifted from taking everyone through an identical process of classes and workbooks to the dynamic experience of uniquely and personally building spiritual truth into people’s lives. It’s harder, messier, and difficult to measure; but, it’s more effective in a culture that needs relationship more than certificates.
America has become a mission field in my lifetime. I decided to become a missionary in my own culture. And that’s one decision I would never change.
Sam Williams recently retired as pastor of Bay Marin Community Church in San Rafael, California. He is now a consultant living in Boulder, Colorado.
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