Pastors

Ten Preachers Talk about Sermon Illustrations

Daniel W. Pawley

Knowing where to look for good sermon illustrations can make an important difference in your preaching. Ten well-known preachers share their resources.

Leadership Journal July 1, 1981

In this series: Improving Your Illustrations

One of the most difficult tasks of sermon preparation is finding appropriate illustrations. LEADERSHIP decided to ask several notable preachers how they have done it. Assistant editor Dan Pawley talked with fames Boice, Herschel Hobbs, Oswald Hoffmann, David Hubbard, Calvin Miller, Norman Vincent Peale, Paul Rees, Haddon Robinson, Paul Smith, and Charles Swindoll. Each suggested places to look for illustrations and gave examples of illustrations they’ve used in their sermons.

When Immanuel Kant sent a draft of his 750-page Critique of Pure Reason to a colleague for comments, the man read part or it and told Kant, “I’ll go mad if I try to finish reading this. You have included no illustrations.” Kant was sixty years old, and he feared he’d never finish the manuscript if he stopped to illustrate his points. Thus, he produced a cumbersome work, too windowless for even his philosopher friend.

“Windowless,” is the term Clarence E. MacCart-ney used in describing some ministers’ sermons. “In eastern Russia,” he noted, “one can see strange-looking houses. They are built like towers, solid, substantial, lofty, but without a window.” Sermons need windows so light can stream in and illumine the abstract interior. Haddon W. Robinson, president of Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, says, “Good pulpit communication moves back and forth from the abstract to the concrete. Each time the preacher states a deep, broad, general truth, the mind of the audience asks. Tor instance?’ That’s when you need an ‘abstraction lighter,’ a concrete example which applies the truth.” Concrete examples, however, are not always easy to find. David A. Hubbard, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, admits, “I have to confess that illustrations are hard for me when I’m thinking conceptually about theology. Often I will construct a tight sermon outline only to struggle with how to open a window that lets light and air into my sermon so it doesn’t sound too cerebral, too prepositional, too closely reasoned.”

Do sermon illustration books help? Most of the interviewed preachers reject this source for illustrations. Paul S. Rees, editor at large for World Vision International, claims, “Early in my ministry I wasted a lot of time with illustration books. I feel they were bland and not relevant to my life.” Hers-chel H. Hobbs, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention adds, “It’s not only that prepackaged illustrations are usually dead and out of date, but psychologically they lose their sense of immediacy. I have a hard time getting excited about sharing someone else’s illustration in my sermon.”

Even when you discover a good illustration in your own experience that is appropriate to your subject, there’s always the danger of overemphasizing it. Sermon illustrations should always serve the sermon, and it is a mistake to build a sermon around an attractive story. Haddon Robinson comments, “Every preacher knows the value of a good story: it gets attention, it’s concrete, people listen. But right there lies the danger. The tendency is to tell the story for its own sake and not for what it illustrates. An illustration is like a row of footlights that shed light on what is presented on the stage. If you turn the lights into the audience, they blind the people.”

Norman Vincent Peale, pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, once complained to baseball manager Branch Rickey, “Sometimes I feel I’m just not getting my message across to my people.” Rickey told him to be concerned, but not to “over push.” “Sometimes baseball players over push,” Rickey said, “and they mess up their easy flow. You have to be loose as ashes.” To Peale, the message was clear: don’t overload your sermon with gimmicks; let the message flow and make the stories supplementary.

If prepackaged illustrations are out, then where should preachers go for what they need?

Observe the Ordinary

“Sometimes nowhere,” says Oswald C. J. Hoff-mann, speaker for The Lutheran Hour radio broadcast. “The preacher needs to be a constant observer of ordinary things that happen around him.

“One night my wife and I were sitting outside, and our dog Mack stood barking at us. Suddenly my wife said, ‘The children must have been playing with Mack because he’s off his chain.’ But the do^ didn’t know it, and he would go only to the spo where the chain usually yanked him back. W( watched to see how long it would take him to realiz< he was free. After about ten minutes, he discoverec he was not held by the chain, and he boundec happily to us.

“It occurred to me right then that this was a pic ture of how people live: we live shackled by ou passions and prejudices and pride. The Lord died t’ set us free, but as long as we think we’re bound b chains, then we really are. When we realize freedor is ours by faith in Christ—the shackles have bee broken—then we are free indeed. The story brin^ to life a major point on which the whole sermon built: freedom in Christ.”

Be Sensitive to Nature

The Welsh preachers of the eighteenth and nin teenth centuries considered nature a good sour for illustrations. Something as simple as a stream water trickling from a stagnant pool suggested Welsh preachers the fact of original sin: humani contaminated at its very source through the fall Adam. The simple beauty of a sunrise suggests t person of the Holy Spirit to Paul Rees. “Beyond t shimmering line of white foam, a sheen of bi nished gold stretches until the blue sky dips touch the ocean. All the while the sun seems to saying, ‘Don’t look at me, look at the glories 1 revealing to you.’ So it is with the Holy Spirit as reveals and magnifies our Lord.”

Being sensitive to nature helps the preacher co his sermons with the sights and sensations of r life. Recently, as Norman Vincent Peale preacl-the funeral service of magazine publisher DeV Wallace, he carefully integrated an illustration fr nature into his sermon. “It is the end of March c the beginning of April, and this wind that we feel signifies the rebirth of the earth. I know what beautiful flowers are here in summer, even though the ground looks barren now. But there’s life underneath these barren twigs and leaves and grass. The sun will overcome the wind and cold and soon it will be spring. This is precisely what DeWitt Wallace believed about life. He was a Christian; he believed in the Bible; he accepted Jesus as his Lord and his Saviour. I want to tell you we are in the presence of immortality here.”

You don’t even have to experience nature firsthand to derive its benefits. David Hubbard immerses himself in the National Geographic. “Perhaps I’ll see an article about the Amazon River and use it to illustrate the river glorious, which is the peace and love of God.”

Read Widely

Reading is an invaluable source for illustrations. The list of books and publications mentioned is diverse. “But,” you might ask, “isn’t reading just another way of gathering prepackaged illustrations?” Paul Rees reminds us that “You don’t read just to cull stories. You read for enrichment, keeping an eye open for illustrations, but selecting them only as they become relevant to your experience and sermon topics.”

An illustration is like a row of footlights that shed light on what is presented on the stage.”

Biographies often lend themselves to good sermon illustrations. According to Rees, “People are usually interested in the lives of great people. But you have to remember two things: 1) The biographical character has to relate in some meaningful way to the life experience of your audience; 2) There needs to be a close, recognizable relationship be- tween what you’re pulling out of a person’s life, and the point you’re trying to make.” He uses an illustration from the life of John Wesley when preaching on the passage from Philippians, “You shine as lights in the world.” “Once Wesley was preaching in the open air when a gang of roughnecks threatened to break up the meeting. The gang was armed with brickbats, and just as they were about to throw them, Wesley’s face lit up with a radiant smile. One of the gang members shouted, ‘He ain’t a man, he ain’t a man,’ and they were all stunned and quiet. As Wesley walked through the crowd that evening, his face was still radiant, and one of the gang men bers said, ‘He is a man—a man like Jesus Christ.’

James Montgomery Boice, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, also believes in tr biographical illustration because “most people ai interested in history that directly connects with the lives. When a preacher reads a biography of Luthe for instance, he is sitting on illustrations that app to the Christian life in total.” In a sermon abo prayer, Boice wanted to counter the statement, “If be thy will,” a line he says Christians use when v don’t really believe anything is going to happen. ” the heat of the Reformation, Luther received wo that his friend Fredrick Marconius was dying. L ther wrote back, ‘I forbid you to die. This is my wi may my will be done; the Lord will never let r hear that you are dead because of the work of t Reformation.’ Marconius was too weak to hear speak, but eventually he did recover and outliv Luther by several years.” The possibilities of drawing illustrations from literature are endless. Paul Rees reads poetry; the metaphor and imagery of John Masefield’s The Everlasting Mercy inspired an illustration of the transformation of a person’s character by faith in Christ. The humor of Mark Twain has found its way into the sermons of Calvin Miller, pastor of Westside Baptist Church, Omaha, Nebraska.«•

In his reading, David Hubbard will occasionally pick up on a single word or phrase, something contemporary and eye catching, and will make an illustration out of it. Not long ago he stumbled on the word “Balkanization”—the division of a country, a party, a faction against another. He had been planning a sermon on the disintegration of Christian discipleship, and after the sermon was prepared he inserted this illustration: “Back in the nineteenth century the Balkan Peninsula was exploited. Country was set against country and this became part of the overture for World War I. The same kind of Balkanization is happening in Christian discipleship today. Some powerful Christian leader tries to rally us around family life; another rallies us around Christian piety; another, social action. Our wholeness is being compromised and divided by the power politics of Christian leadership. We’re being Balkanized.”

Use Science

In a sermon designed to get people to examine their priorities in life, Chuck Swindoll, pastor of First Evangelical Free Church, Fullerton, California, tapped into data from a scientific experiment he read about in Smithsonian. “A researcher built a cage to house 160 mice. All their needs were met: plenty of food and water and the right climate. He let the population increase, much more than normal, and in less than three years the mice population reached 2,200. At that point the colony began to disinte- grate. The adults formed groups of about twelve each; each mouse played a particular role, but there was no role for the healthy young mice, so they began to disrupt the society. The males who had once protected their territory withdrew. The females became aggressive and forced out the young. The young mice became self-indulgent, eating and sleeping. Later, courtship or mating ceased, and in five years all the mice died, even though there was plenty of food and water, no disease, and an ideal climate.

“Now the scientist who did this research suggested that overcrowding humanity in such an inescapable environment might have similar effects:

‘First, we would cease to reproduce our ideas, then our goals; finally, our values and priorities would be lost.’ But the church has to minister in a different way. We experience the same things, face the same societal problems, but we think differently, and we can’t use the world’s methods. Our priorities and values must come directly from the Word.”

James Boice notes that Spurgeon studied science constantly, “and in the nineteenth century far less scientific knowledge existed.” A good way to govern the use of science, Boice suggests, is to stay aware of science that is newsy as well. He tuned into news reports of the geological Plate Tectonics Theory, the theory of the constant change and movement of the earth’s crust. In a sermon about the will of God, Boice pointed out, “In some places continental plates rub against each other with very little friction, and adjustment takes place gradually. But occasionally the plates lock in place, pressure builds, and a wrenching adjustment causes one plate to leap ahead—producing an earthquake. That’s exactly what happens in some Christians’ lives: we lock ourselves against the will of God, the pressure builds, and eventually the abrupt dealing of God comes. But if we yield little by little, we’re gradually molded into the image of Christ.”

Boice and Hubbard issued strong warnings: make sure your facts are correct when you’re talking about science. If Hubbard cannot verify the accuracy of a scientific illustration, he will scrap it. Boice sometimes contacts experts in his congregation. Last Easter, for instance, part of his sermon probed different theories on death. The afternoon before he preached, he verified his illustrations with one of his parishioners, a nurse with knowledge on the subject, and he wound up reworking much of his sermon.

Discover Humor and Imagination

“When you tell a good story,” says Chuck Swin-doll, “immediately there is interest because your audience is asking, ‘What’s going to happen now?’ Humor adds an interesting twist, but slapstick, joke book humor is not good. Good humor exists in real-life stories and predictable situations.”

There was unanimous assent in suggesting the use of humor. Norman Vincent Peale said, “If there’s humor in a story, let the humor come out, but don’t force it.” Some caution also was expressed to be careful of stepping over the fine line that keeps a humorous illustration from fitting the dignity of its sermon topic.

Illustrations drawn from the imagination also grab and hold attention, but it’s hard to draw good illustrations from the imagination week after week. David Hubbard offers this clue: “I keep my eyes open all the time for events, situations, statements that my imagination can caricature into a creative illustration.” Paul Smith, pastor of The People’s Church, Toronto, Canada, stumbled onto one image-evoking statement by Helmut Thielicke:

“… the fact that the salt is there doesn’t mean everyone is going to turn into a Christian, any more than when you put salt into a bowl of soup the soup turns into salt.” Smith used his imagination to inject life into it: “In my illustration I have a kitchen table, a salt shaker, and a bowl of soup. I call the salt shaker ‘the ecclesiastical salt shaker,’ and I describe it as the church, which is a good thing. The soup represents the world, and the salt’s objective is to get into the soup. I imagine two grains of salt having a conversation, and one is exuberant about enjoying the fellowship. ‘We’re both the same size, same color, we like each other, we’ve got these walls of glass around us and it’s all kind of neat.’ Then the other grain says, ‘Yeah, but at some point, I think we’re supposed to be dumped into the soup.’ “

The more the illustration represents your life experience, the greater will be its impact.

According to David Hubbard the preacher has to use some degree of “impressionistic portraiture,” but it should be done within reason. “You don’t want to go so far that you smother your sermon,” he says. Oswald Hoffmann adds, “It’s like an ice cream sundae; you have to use chocolate sauce with discrimination. If the whole sundae becomes chocolate sauce, then the sauce loses its effect.”

Be Authentic

One of the biggest dangers with sermon illustrations is that they sometimes come across stilted or contrived, and don’t ring true with the preacher’s personality and experiences. “Every preacher enters into a kind of covenant relationship with his audience,” Haddon Robinson states. “In the covenant are unspoken agreements about sermon length, depth of scholarship, and authenticity of illustrations. Violating that covenant in any way can mean losing your listeners.”

“Authenticity” is the word these preachers stress when discussing illustrations. The more the illustration represents your life experience, the greater will be its impact.

Norman Vincent Peale brings this into focus with a sermon illustration in testimonial form, which he integrates into a message about rededication to Jesus. “Once the bottom just seemed to fall out of my life and ministry, and I became very discouraged. My wife and I decided to go to England to get away from it all. I was not thinking very positively, and kept telling her how badly things were going, how little I amounted to, and why did I ever get into this situation anyway. I filled her poor ears with so much misery. Finally, she sat me down on a bench and said, ‘Norman, I don’t know what to make of you. You’re my husband, but you’re also my pastor. I sit in the congregation and listen to you talk about faith, the power of the Holy Spirit, and what Jesus Christ can do in a human life. Are those merely words for you or do you really mean it?’ ‘Of course I believe it,’ I said.

” ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re not acting like it. You hold it as kind of an intellectual belief, but haven’t you really been converted?’ ‘Of course I was converted,’ I said. ‘Well, it sure has worn off/ she said. ‘Now I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to make you sit on this bench until you surrender your life, your church, your future, everything to Jesus Christ.’ Well, I did just as she said, and suddenly I began to feel warm all over. I jumped to my feet and said, ‘Wow, something has really happened to me. I feel excited!’ Then I wept out loud and said to my wife, ‘Tell you what. Let’s quit fooling around here. I want to get home and go to work.’ “

Illustrations authentically drawn from experience touch lives. “People relate most completely to what others have gone through,” Peale says. “When they see their own experiences of frustrations, sufferings, and joys against the background of the gospel, they are moved to action and commitment.” Had-don Robinson adds, “Good sermons happen when flint strikes steel—when the flint of a person’s experience strikes the steel of the Word of God. That’s when you get the spark.”

Find Your Own Way

Although the importance of good sermon illustrations was clearly emphasized, the conclusion was that there really aren’t a lot of hard-and-fast rules forcoming up with them. In fact, sticking rigidly to Si do-and-don’t code for sermon illustrations ma^ choke off the creation of good ones. “Somi preachers make illustrations their magnificen obsession,” one interviewee noted. “All that does i nag them to collect more and more and more. Robert Frost once compared creative writing to pla} ing tennis with the net down. “You know that rule exist, but you don’t necessarily have to use them. The same holds true for the art of illustrating sermons. Each preacher ultimately must find his or h< own way, accepting some suggestions, rejectir others. What does seem to be important is the cu tivation of a constantly perceptive mindset. Readir extensively, observing with a penetrating eye, kee ing track of personal experiences that happen those around you—all are necessary to produ creative and authentic illustrations.

As summarized by Haddon Robinson, “It’s the way you look at life that makes the difference.” “Some preachers make illustrations their magnificent obsessions”

—from a 17th Century prayer

My God, I love Thee. Not because I hope for heav’n thereby, Nor yet because who love Thee not must die eternally. Thou, 0 my Jesus, Thou didst me upon the cross embrace; For me didst bear the nails and spear, and manifold disgrace. Why, then why, 0 blessed Jesus Christ, should I not love Thee well? Not for the hope of winning heav’n, or of escaping hell; Not with the hope of gaining aught, not seeking a reward; But as Thyself hast loved me, 0 everloving Lord! E’en so I love Thee, And will love, and in Thy praise will sing; Solely because Thou art my God, And my Eternal King.

—Carl Rogers

I have found that the very feeling that has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element that would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets who have dared to express the unique in themselves.

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Your Preaching Is Unique

Warren W. Wiersbe

Preaching is not what we do; it’s what we are.

Source photos from Lightstock

In this series: Finding Your Preaching Voice

“It really doesn’t make sense!”

That statement was made to me by a pastor friend about a dozen years ago. We were lingering over our lunchtime coffee and discussing the Bible conference I was conducting in his church. I’d just commented that the church was having a strong influence on the students and staff of the nearby university.

“What doesn’t make sense?” I asked.

“Where you and I are serving,” he replied.

“That, you are going to have to explain.”

“Look, I’m really a country preacher with a minimum of academic training, yet I’m ministering to a university crowd. You write books, and you read more books in a month than I do in a year; yet your congregation is primarily blue-collar and nonprofessional. It doesn’t make sense.”

The subject then changed, but I have pondered his observation many times in the intervening years. I’ve concluded it’s a good thing God didn’t put me on his “Pastor Placement Committee” because I would have really messed things up. I’d never have sent rustic Amos to the affluent court of the king; I’d have given him a quiet country church somewhere. And I’d never have commissioned Saul of Tarsus, that “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” to be a missionary to the Gentiles; I’d have put him in charge of Jewish evangelism in Jerusalem.

All of which brings me to the point of this article: If God has called you to preach, then who you are, what you are, and where you are also must be a part of God’s plan. You do not preach in spite of this, but because of this.

Why is it, then, that so many preachers do not enjoy preaching? Why do some busy themselves in minor matters when they should be studying and meditating? Why do others creep out of the pulpit after delivering their sermon, overwhelmed with a sense of failure and guilt? Without pausing to take a poll, I think I can suggest an answer: they are preaching in spite of themselves instead of preaching because of themselves. They either leave themselves out of their preaching or fight themselves during their preparation and delivery; this leaves them without energy or enthusiasm for the task. Instead of thanking God for what they do have, they complain about what they don’t have; and this leaves them in no condition to herald the Word of God.

The recent Christianity Today/Gallup Poll showed that ministers believe preaching is the number one priority of their ministries, but it’s also the one thing they feel least capable of doing well. What causes this insecure attitude toward preaching?

For one thing, we’ve forgotten what preaching really is. Phillips Brooks said it best: Preaching is the communicating of divine truth through human personality. The divine truth never changes; the human personality constantly changes—and this is what makes the message new and unique. No two preachers can preach the same message because no two preachers are the same. In fact, no one preacher can preach the same message twice if he is living and growing at all. The human personality is a vital part of the preaching ministry.

Recently I made an intensive study of all the Greek verbs used in the New Testament to describe the communicating of the Word of God. The three most important words are: euangelizomai, “to tell the good news”; kerusso, “to proclaim like a herald”; and martureo, “to bear witness.” All three are important in our pulpit ministry. We’re telling the good news with the authority of a royal herald, but the message is a part of our lives. Unlike the herald, who only shouted what was given to him, we’re sharing what is personal and real to us. The messenger is a part of the message because the messenger is a witness.

God prepares the man who prepares the message. Somewhere, Martin Luther said that prayer, meditation, and temptation made a preacher. Prayer and meditation will give you a sermon, but only temptation—the daily experiences of life—can transform that sermon into a message. It’s the difference between the recipe and the meal.

I had an experience at a denominational conference that brought this truth home to me. During the session at which I was to speak, a very capable ladies trio sang. It was an up-tempo number, the message of which did not quite fit my theme; but, of course, they had no way of knowing exactly what I would preach about. However, I was glad my message did not immediately follow their number because I didn’t feel the congregation was prepared. Just before I spoke, a pastor in a wheelchair rolled to the center of the platform and gave a brief testimony about his ministry. Then he sang, to very simple accompaniment, “No One Ever Cared for Me like Jesus.” The effect was overwhelming. The man was not singing a song; he was ministering a Word from God. But he had paid a price to minister. In suffering, he became a part of the message.

The experiences we preachers go through are not accidents, they are appointments. They do not interrupt our studies, they are an essential part of our studies. Our personalities, our physical equipment, and even our handicaps are all part of the kind of ministry God wants us to have. He wants us to be witnesses as well as heralds. The apostles knew this: “For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). This was a part of Paul’s commission: “For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard” (Acts 22:15). Instead of minimizing or condemning what we are, we must use what we are to bear witness to Christ. It is this that makes the message our message and not the echo of another’s.

It’s easy to imitate these days. Not only do we have books of sermons, but we have radio and television ministries and cassettes by the thousands. One man models himself after Spurgeon, another after A. W. Tozer; and both congregations suffer.

Alexander Whyte of Edinburgh had an assistant who took the second service for the aging pastor. Whyte was a surgical preacher who ruthlessly dealt with man’s sin and then faithfully proclaimed God’s saving grace. But his assistant was a man of different temperament, who tried to move the gospel message out of the operating room into the banqueting hall. However, during one period of his ministry he tried Whyte’s approach, but not with Whyte’s success. The experiment stopped when Whyte said to him, “Preach your own message.” That counsel is needed today.

I am alarmed when I hear seminary students and younger pastors say, “My calling is to preach, not to pastor.” I am alarmed because I know it’s difficult to preach to people whom you do not know. As an itinerant Bible teacher, I know what it’s like to “hit a place and quit a place,” and I can assure you it is not easy. After thirty years of ministry, which included pastoring three churches, I’ve concluded it is much easier to preach to your own congregation week after week. You get to know them, and they get to know you. You’re not a visiting evangelical celebrity, but a part of the family. It is this identification with the people that gives power and relevance to your preaching.

Every profession has its occupational hazards, and in the ministry it is the passion to preach “great sermons.” Fant and Pinson, in 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, came to the startling conclusion that “Great preaching is relevant preaching.” By “relevant,” they mean preaching that meets the needs of the people in their times, preaching that shows the preacher cares and wants to help. If this be true, then there are thousands of “great sermons” preached each Lord’s Day, preached by men whose names will never be printed in homiletics books, but are written in the loving hearts of their people. Listen again to Phillips Brooks:

The notion of a great sermon, either constantly or occasionally haunting the preacher, is fatal. It hampers … the freedom of utterance. Many a true and helpful word which your people need, and which you ought to say to them, will seem unworthy of the dignity of your great discourse. … Never tolerate any idea of the dignity of a sermon which will keep you from saying anything in it which you ought to say, or which your people ought to hear.

Let me add another reason for insecure feelings about our preaching. In our desire to be humble servants of God, we have a tendency to suppress our personalities lest we should preach ourselves and not Christ. While it is good to heed Paul’s warning (“For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” II Corinthians 4:5), we must not misinterpret it and thereby attempt the impossible. Paul’s personality, and even some of his personal experiences, are written into the warp and woof of his Epistles; yet Jesus Christ is glorified from start to finish.

During the past twenty years, I have been immersed in studying the lives and ministries of the famous preachers of the past. Most of these men ministered during the Victorian Era in Great Britain, a time when the pulpits were filled with superstars. If there’s one thing I learned from these men it is this: God has his own ways of training and preparing his servants, but he wants all of them to be themselves. God has put variety into the universe, and he has put variety into the church.

If your personality doesn’t shine through your preaching, you’re only a robot. You could be replaced by a cassette player and perhaps nobody would know the difference. Do not confuse the art and the science of preaching. Homiletics is the science of preaching, and it has basic laws and principles that every preacher ought to study and practice. Once you’ve learned how to obey these principles, then you can adapt them, modify them, and tailor them to your own personality.

In my conference ministry, I often share the plat form with gifted men whose preaching leaves me saying to myself, “What’s the use? I’ll never learn how to preach like that!” Then the Lord has to remind me he never called me “to preach like that.” He called me to preach the way I preach! The science of preaching is one thing; the art of preaching—style, delivery, approach, and all those other almost indefinable ingredients that make up one’s personality—is something else. One preacher uses humor and hits the target; another attempts it and shoots himself.

The essence of what I am saying is this: You must know yourself, accept yourself, be yourself, and develop yourself—your best self—if preaching is to be an exciting experience in your ministry. Never imitate another preacher, but learn from him everything you can. Never complain about yourself or your circumstances, but find out why God made things that way and use what he has given you in a positive way. What you think are obstacles may turn out to be opportunities. Stay long enough in one church to discover who you are, what kind of ministry God has given you, and how he plans to train you for ministries yet to come. After all, he is always preparing us for what he already has prepared for us—if we let him.

I learned very early in my ministry that I was not an evangelist. Although I’ve seen people come to Christ through my ministry, I’ve always felt I was a failure when it came to evangelism. One of the few benefits of growing older is a better perspective on life. Now I’m learning that my teaching and writing ministries have enabled others to lead people to Christ, so my labors have not been in vain. But I’ve had my hours of discouragement and the feeling of failure that always accompanies discouragement.

God gives us the spiritual gifts he wants us to have; he puts us in the places where he wants us to serve; and he gives the blessings he wants us to enjoy. I am convinced of this, but this conviction is not an excuse for laziness or for barrenness of ministry. Knowing I am God’s man in God’s place of ministry has encouraged me to study harder and do my best work. When the harvests were lean, the assurance that God put me there helped to keep me going. When the battles raged and the storms blew, my secure refuge was “God put me here and I will stay here until he tells me to go.” How often I’ve remembered Dr. V. Raymond Edman’s counsel: “It is always too soon to quit!”

It has been my experience that the young preacher in his first church and the middle-aged preacher (in perhaps his third or fourth church) are the most susceptible to discouragement. This is not difficult to understand. The young seminarian marches bravely into his first church with high ideals, only to face the steamroller of reality and the furnace of criticism. He waves his banners bravely for a year or so, then takes them down quietly and makes plans to move. The middle-aged minister has seen his ideals attacked many times, but now he realizes that time is short and he might not attain to the top thirty of David’s mighty men.

God help the preacher who abandons his ideals! But, at the same time. God pity the preacher who is so idealistic he fails to be realistic. A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned. There is a difference.

Self-evaluation is a difficult and dangerous thing. Sometimes we’re so close to our ministry we fail to see it. One of my students once asked me, “Why can’t I see any spiritual growth in my life? Everybody else tells me they can see it!” I reminded him that at Pentecost no man could see the flame over his own head, but he could see what was burning over his brother’s head. A word from the Scottish preacher George Morrison has buoyed me up in many a storm: “Men who do their best always do more though they be haunted by the sense of failure. Be good and true, be patient; be undaunted. Leave your usefulness for God to estimate. He will see to it that you do not live in vain.”

Be realistic as you assess your work. Avoid comparisons like the plague. I read enough religious publications and hear enough conversations to know that such comparisons are the chief indoor sport of preachers, but I try not to take them too seriously. “When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise” (II Corinthians 10:12). Whoever introduced the idea of competition into the ministry certainly assisted the enemy in his attack against the church. Although we are in conflict against those who preach a false gospel, we are not in competition with any who preach the true gospel. We are only in competition with ourselves. By the grace of God, we ought to be better preachers and pastors today than we were a year ago.

If we are to be better pastors and preachers, we must be better persons; and this means discipline and hard work. The “giants” I’ve lived with these many years were all hard workers. Campbell Morgan was in his study at six o’clock in the morning. His successor, John Henry Jowett, was also up early and into the books. “Enter your study at an appointed hour,” Jowett said in his lectures to the Yale divinity students in 1911–1912, “and let that hour be as early as the earliest of your businessmen goes to his warehouse or his office.” Spurgeon worked hard and had to take winter holidays to regain his strength. Obviously, we gain nothing by imperiling our health, but we lose much by pampering ourselves, and that is the greater danger.

If God has called you, then he has given you what you need to do the job. You may not have all that others have, or all you wish you had, but you have what God wants you to have. Accept it, be faithful to use it, and in due time God will give you more. Give yourself time to discover and develop your gifts. Accept nothing as a handicap. Turn it over to God and let him make a useful tool out of it. After all, that’s what he did with Paul’s thorn in the flesh.

Often I receive letters and telephone calls from anxious chairmen of pulpit committees, all of whom want me to suggest a pastor for their churches. “What kind of a pastor do you need right now?” I always ask, and the reply usually comes back, “Oh, a man who is about forty years old, a good preacher, evangelical.…” If I don’t interrupt them, they usually go on to describe a combination of Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, Mother Teresa, and The Lone Ranger.

“Forgive me,” I usually say when they take a breath, “but that’s not what I had in mind. What kind of ministry does your church need just now— evangelism, missions, administration, teaching, or what? After all, very few men can do everything.”

The long silence that follows tells me that Brother Chairman and his committee have not really studied their church to determine its present and future needs. How, then, can they ever hope to find the right pastor to meet those needs?

Preaching is not what we do; it’s what we are. When God wants to make a preacher, he has to make the person, because the work we do cannot be isolated from the life we live. God prepares the person for the work and the work for the person and, if we permit him, he brings them together in his providence. Knowing we are God’s person, in God’s place of choosing, to accomplish God’s special work ought to be sufficient encouragement for us to weather the storm and do our very best. God knows us better than we know ourselves. He’d never put us into a ministry where he could not build us and use us.

Warren W. Wiersbe is an author, conference speaker, and associate Bible teacher on the “Back to the Bible” broadcast.

Pastors

LEADERSHIP BIBLIOGRAPHY

Paul Borthwick

The preaching of the gospel and the act of worship are two of the principal functions of the church. To be effective, the pastor or leader must be familiar with both the purpose and the techniques of preaching and worship. The following books offer many insights and practical suggestions on these two subjects.

Abbey, Merrill R. Communication in Pulpit and Parish. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980. An explanation of the communication process and how to best use it in communicating the gospel.

Anderson, Ray S., ed. Theological Foundations for Ministry. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978. A presentation of the theological basis for ministry issues, including preaching and worship.

Baumann, J. Daniel. An Introduction to Contemporary Preaching. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972. A study of how to use communication and the truth of the Scriptures to bring about change in the lives of people.

Blackwood, Andrew W. The Fine Art of Preaching. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976. A book in the style of his earlier work, The Fine Art of Public Worship.

Brooks, Phillips. Lectures on Preaching. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978. Lectures by this famous preacher concerning the elements of preaching, the sermon, the listener, and the compelling nature of preaching.

Crum, Milton. Manual on Preaching: A New Process of Sermon Development. Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1977. A training manual on sermon preparation with specific helps at relating the message to the needs of the congregation.

Daane, James. Preaching With Confidence. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980. Inspiring reading for preachers on the power of the pulpit.

Dodd, C. H. The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980. A study of the growth and development of preaching in the early church.

Engel, James F. Contemporary Christian Communications: Its Theory and Practice. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979. A study of all the aspects of communications. The most helpful chapters for the preacher are “Motivating Conversation” and “Motivating Spiritual Growth.”

Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Excellent meditations for personal and corporate worship.

Hoon, Paul W. The Integrity of Worship. Nashville: Abingdon, 1977. An attempt to temper experimentation in worship by providing the theological framework. Highly recommended.

Kaiser, Walter C. The Old Testament in Contemporary Preaching. Grand Rapids; Baker Book House, 1973. A guide on how to use the Old Testament as an asset in preaching. Focuses on the themes of the Promise, the Law, history, the prophets, and the wisdom literature.

Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. Preaching and Preachers. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972. An inspirational work on the nature, preparation, and delivery of sermons. An excellent chapter on the preparation of the preacher.

McLaughlin, Raymond W. The Ethics of Persuasive Preaching. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978. An address of the ethical question a preacher faces: “Should I be influencing the thoughts and behavior of others?”

Massey, James Earl. Designing the Sermon. Nashville: Abingdon, 1980. Speaks on order and movement in preaching. How to give flow to sermons and to know where you’re going.

O’Day, Rey, and Powers, Edward A. Theatre of the Spirit: A Worship Handbook. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1980. A worship handbook designed to assist worship leaders in coordinating the meaning of worship with tradition and innovation.

Perry, Lloyd M., and Strubhar, John R. Evangelistic Preaching. Chicago: Moody Press, 1979. The book provides a step-by-step guide to pulpit evangelism.

Rayburn, Robert G. O Come Let Us Worship. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980. A handbook for ministers on corporate worship in the evangelical church, including a history of worship and suggestions for preparing the order of services. Good section on hymnody.

Sangster, W. E. The Craft of the Sermon. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House 1972. An instructional book on the construction and preparation of a sermon from start to finish.

Skinner, Craig. The Teaching Ministry of the Pulpit. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979. A blend of history, theology, and psychology to arrive at a teaching emphasis in the approach to preaching.

Von Allmen, Jean-Jacques. Preaching and Congregations. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1962. A concise work on the nature and preparation of sermons. Excellent chapter on “The Sermon in Worship.”

White, James F. Christian Worship in Transition. Nashville: Abingdon, 1976. A confrontation of basic issues faced in worship, including the relationship of the sacraments, culture, and individualism to the worship experience.

White, James F. New Forms of Worship. Nashville: Abingdon, 1971. A definition of Christian worship with applications for all the ingredients of worship, including the role of the preacher.

Wiersbe, Warren, Listening to the Giants. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979. A collection of great sermons with short biographies of each preacher.

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

A Message from the Publisher: July 01, 1981

Harold L. Myra

The journal you hold in your hands recently was given an honor unusual for a periodical in its first year. On May 22, the Evangelical Press Association named it Periodical of the Year. Members of the journalism faculty at the University of Mississippi, judges of the competition, commented, “The Magazine of the Year has a short publishing record, but it has had amazing success. Clearly, it has filled a need in the church market as an uncommonly purposeful, well-edited journal. LEADERSHIP’s articles illuminate what must be normal church problems, and they propose sensible answers with a minimum of preachiness. The writing is commendably concrete.” LEADERSHIP was consistently rated “excellent” in every category. Judges’ comments included: “Crisp, focused advice . . . a lively interview . . . vivid . . . original idea, well executed . . . appealing.”

Philip Yancey, a member of the EPA board, wrote in his congratulatory letter to Terry Muck, “It’s by far the earliest any magazine has gotten such an honor from EPA, and you can be justly proud. I sat in board meetings where we reviewed the decisions of the judges, and everyone was in accord completely that LEADERSHIP deserved this kind of outstanding recognition. It has set a standard for other journals of its category and has enlivened the climate of EPA publications.”

Very special congratulations go to founding editor Paul Robbins, who before LEADERSHIP’S launch date traveled the country for months to learn the questions church leaders were asking, and then worked through six-day weeks for months at a stretch to get the first issues into print. With his own pastoral experience, Rob was able to hone in precisely on genuine needs and find active pastors and writers who could speak to them. His vision, tenacity, and readiness to work through four and five extensive rewrites on articles made possible the kind of quality the judges cite.

Joan Nickerson, veteran art director of Campus Life, did an outstanding job of switching gears to thoroughly research various formats and then produce the unique layouts of LEADERSHIP. Laurie Powell, administrative assistant, dug in from the beginning to handle a thousand details and, as a former English teacher, became our resident expert on style as copy editor. Thanks also to Nellie Strehl, who during those first issues handled the production details so capably, and to Dan Pawley, assistant editor.

It’s a great joy to be able to cite the initiating staff for their uncommon dedication and skill, and to see how the newer staff members are developing an even more effective product.

But journalism awards aren’t the bottom line. You, the reader, show by your enthusiasm whether LEADERSHIP is hitting the mark or not. In that category, we have truly been amazed by the response. Our latest press run is 70,000-far exceeding our initial projections.

* * *

Since this is a practical journal, I want to share an idea that has proven extremely practical to me over the years. It’s for those of us who face desks piled high with papers, who daily wonder what in the world we should start on next. It’s a device for guilt-free “procrastination.”

Ever wish you could just scoop all the papers off your desk and into a bottomless pit? Ever have projects you know you can’t work on immediately, but you can’t stash away because you might forget them? Faced with these problems some years ago, I set up a very simple system: hanging folders in my desk, one for each workday of the week, one for each month. Any time I come to a nagging project I can’t handle quickly, I ask myself, “How long can I put this off? A day? A week? A month, or two, or four?” I drop it into the folder farthest into the future. Ah, no guilt! I’ll get to it when I pull, say, the July folder. It’s amazing how many times July comes and I can then toss it into August or September. The trick on this is to daily pull the day’s folder and process the contents.

Such a “tickler file” is good only for things you can’t handle immediately. 4 The old adage, “Try to handle each piece of paper just once,” still applies. I have a tall stack on my desk, and I try to force myself to take items one by one and do whatever’s necessary. Try not to let the tickler file become an excuse for true procrastination-shuffling papers instead of taking action.

* * *

Let me move to something far more practical than tickler files. Is prayer practical? I wonder if we really think so. I read in Oswald Chambers’ Daily Thoughts for Disciples this statement: “We take for granted that prayer is preparation for work, whereas prayer is the work . . . intercessory prayer is God’s chosen way of working. … “

I asked myself, “Do I really believe prayer is the most powerful force available to me? If so, why don’t I pray more?” My actions show my true beliefs. If I genuinely believe prayer moves the hand of God, and brings me into his perspective toward everything and everyone around me, then what kind of priority ought I to place on it?

What is the first obligation of a spiritual leader? Daily I’m becoming more convinced that it is prayer. Our clever solutions can backfire, our massive efforts-though all done in his name- become hollow memorials if we are prayerless.

We all have so much more to do than we have time to do it. But Jesus faced the same problem. He spent much time in prayer, and-yes-some things didn’t get done. But all that his Father assigned him he accomplished.

Prayer puts everything into focus, especially our daily tasks. Shortly after reaching these conclusions, I read Eugene Peterson’s articles “The Unbusy Pastor” (p. 70). It resonated with the same message.

Want a spiritual and practical lift? Read Gene’s article. Read Helmut Thielicke’s “Talking About God or With God?” in our Summer, 1980 issue. Get a copy of Chambers’ Daily Thoughts for Disciples and brood on it. Through prayer, we really can change the world, but in the ways the Holy Spirit will put into our minds.

Harold L. Myra President, Christianity Today, Inc.

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

The Unbusy Pastor

Eugene H. Peterson

The word busy is the symptom not of commitment but of betrayal.

Over the coming weeks, we are highlighting Leadership Journal's Top 40, the best articles of the journal's 36-year history. We will be presenting them in chronological order. Today we present #38, from 1981, written by the pastor of a small church in Bel Air, Maryland, Eugene Peterson, the first of many he would write for the journal.

The one piece of mail certain to go unread into my wastebasket is the one addressed "to the busy pastor." Not that the phrase doesn't describe me at times, but I refuse to give my attention to someone who encourages what is worst in me.

I'm not arguing the accuracy of the adjective; I am, though, contesting the way in which it is used to flatter and express sympathy. "The poor pastor," we say. "So devoted to his flock; the work is endless and he sacrifices himself so unstintingly." But the word busy is the symptom not of commitment but of betrayal. It is not devotion but defection. The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife, or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront. Hilary of Tours diagnosed pastoral busyness as "irreligiosa solicitudo pro Deo," a blasphemous anxiety to do God's work for him.

I (and most pastors, I believe) become busy for two reasons; both reasons are ignoble.

I am busy because I am vain. I want to appear important. Significant. What better way than to be busy? The incredible hours, the crowded schedule, and the heavy demands on my time are proof to myself-and to all who will notice-that I am important If I go into a doctor's office and find there's no one waiting, and see through a half-open door the doctor reading a book, I wonder if he's any good. A good doctor will have people lined up waiting to see him; a good doctor will not have time to read a book, even if it's a very good book. Although I grumble about waiting my turn in a busy doctor's office, I am also impressed with his importance.

Such experiences affect me. I live in a society in which crowded schedules and harassed conditions are evidence of importance. I want to be important, so I develop a crowded schedule and harassed conditions. When others notice, they acknowledge my significance and my vanity is fed. The busier I am, the more important I am.

The other reason I become busy is that I am lazy. I indolently let other people decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself. I let people who do not understand the work of the pastor write the agenda for my day's work because I am too slipshod to write it myself. But these people don't know what a pastor is supposed to do. The pastor is a shadow figure in their minds, a marginal person vaguely connected with matters of God and good will. Anything remotely religious or somehow well-intentioned can be properly assigned to the pastor.

Because these assignments to pastoral service are made sincerely, I lazily go along with them. It takes effort to refuse, and there's always the danger that the refusal will be interpreted as a rebuff, a betrayal of religion and a calloused disregard for people in need.

It was a favorite theme of C. S. Lewis that only lazy people work overhard. By lazily abdicating the essential work of deciding and directing, establishing values and setting goals, other people do it for us; then we find ourselves frantically, at the last minute, trying to satisfy a half dozen different demands on our time, none of which is essential to our vocation, to stave off the disaster of disappointing someone.

But if I vainly crowd my day with conspicuous activity, or let others fill my day with imperious demands, I don't have time to do my proper work, the work to which I have been called, the work of pastor. How can I lead people into the quiet place beside the still waters if I am in perpetual motion? How can I convincingly persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to constantly juggle my schedule to make everything fit into place?

If I'm not busy making my mark in the world and not busy doing what everyone expects me to do, what do I do? What is my proper work? What does it mean to be a pastor? If I had no personal needs to be fulfilled, what would I do? If no one asked me to do anything, what would I do? Three things.

I want to be a pastor who prays. I want to cultivate and deepen my relationship with God. I want all life to be intimate–sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously–with the God who made, directs, and loves me. And I want to waken others to the nature and centrality of prayer. I want to be a person in this community to whom others can come without hesitation, without wondering if it is appropriate, to get direction in prayer and praying. I want to do the original work of being in deepening conversation with the God who reveals himself to me and addresses me by name. I don't want to dispense mimeographed hand-outs that describe God's business; I want to report and witness out of my own experience. I don't want to live as a parasite on the first-hand spiritual life of others, but to be personally involved with all my senses, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.

I can be active and pray; I can work and pray; but I cannot be busy and pray. I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted, or dispersed.

I know it takes time to develop a life of prayer: set-aside, disciplined, deliberate time. It isn't accomplished on the run, nor by offering prayers from a pulpit or at a hospital bedside. I know I can't be busy and pray at the same time. I can be active and pray; I can work and pray; but I cannot be busy and pray. I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted, or dispersed. In order to pray, I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; more attention to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self.

I want to be a pastor who preaches. I want to speak the word of God that is Scripture in the language and rhythms of the people I live with. I want to know the Scriptures thoroughly, personally, intimately; and then be able to say them again to the people around me. I am given an honored and protected time each week to do that. The pulpit is a great gift, and I want to use it well.

I have no interest in "delivering sermons," challenging people to face the needs of the day; or in giving bright, inspirational messages. With the help provided by scholars and editors, I can prepare a fairly respectable sermon of that sort in a couple of hours or so each week, a sermon that will pass muster with most congregations. They might not think it the greatest sermon, but they would accept it.

But what I want to do can't be done that way. I need a drenching in Scripture; I require an immersion in biblical studies. I need reflective hours over the pages of Scripture as well as personal struggles with the meaning of Scripture. That takes time, far more time than it takes to prepare a sermon.

I want the people who come to worship in my congregation each Sunday to hear the Word of God preached in such a way that they hear its distinctive note of authority as God's Word, and to know that their own lives are being addressed on their home territory. A sound outline and snappy illustrations don't make that happen.

This kind of preaching is a creative act that requires quietness and solitude, concentration and intensity. "All speech that moves men," contends R. E. C. Browne, "was minted when some man's mind was poised and still." I can't do that when I'm busy; there's too much happening. When I am busy I can prepare and deliver clever, well-outlined, readily understood sermons; when I am busy I can be a fairly creditable cheerleader, rallying people to the cause of righteousness, quite often to the satisfaction, even the praise, of my congregation. But I can't preach when I am a busy pastor.

I want to be a pastor who listens. A lot of people approach me through the week to tell me what is going on in their lives. I want to have the energy and time to really listen to them so when they are through, they know at least one other person has some inkling of what they're feeling and thinking.

Listening is in short supply in the world today; people aren't used to being listened to. I know how easy it is to avoid the tough, intense work of listening by being busy (letting the hospital patient know there are ten more persons I have to see). Have to? But I'm not indispensable to any of them, and I am here with this one. Too much of pastoral visitation is punching the clock, assuring people we're on the job, being busy, earning our pay.

Pastoral listening requires unhurried leisure, even if it's for only five minutes. Leisure is a quality of spirit, not a quantity of time. Only in that ambience of leisure do persons know they are listened to with absolute seriousness, treated with dignity and importance. Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to people. The question I put to myself is not "How many people have you spoken to about Christ this week?" but "How many people have you listened to in Christ this week?" The number of persons listened to must necessarily be less than the number spoken to. Listening to a story always takes more time than delivering a message, so I must discard my compulsion to count, to compile the statistics that will justify my existence.

Leisure is a quality of spirit, not a quantity of time. Only in that ambience of leisure do persons know they are listened to with absolute seriousness.

I can't listen if I am busy. When my schedule is tight and crowded, I'm not free to listen: I have to keep my next appointment; I have to get to the next meeting. But if I provide margins to my day, there is ample time to listen.

"Yes, but how?" The appointment calendar is the tool with which to get unbusy. The appointment calendar is a gift of the Holy Ghost (unlisted by St. Paul, but a gift nonetheless) that provides the pastor with the means to get time and acquire leisure for praying, preaching, and listening instead of just doing. It is more effective than a protective secretary; it is less expensive than a retreat house. It is the one thing everyone in our society accepts without cavil as authoritative. The authority once given to

Scripture is now ascribed to the appointment calendar. The dogma of verbal inerrancy has not been discarded, only re-assigned.

When I appeal to my appointment calendar I am beyond criticism. If someone approaches me and asks me to pronounce the invocation at an event and I say, "I don't think I should do that; I was planning to use that time to pray," the response will be, "Well, I'm sure you can find another time of the day to do that." But if I say, "My appointment calendar will not permit it," no further questions are asked. If someone asks me to attend a committee meeting and I say, "I was thinking of taking my wife out to dinner that night; I haven't listened to her very carefully for several days," the response will be, "But you are very much needed at this meeting; couldn't you arrange another evening with your wife?" But if I say, "The appointment calendar will not permit it," there is no further discussion.

The trick, of course, is to get to the calendar before anyone else does. Mark out the times for prayer, for reading, for leisure, for quietness, for emptiness, for silence and solitude, out of which, and only out of which, creative work-creative prayer, creative preaching, creative listening-can issue.

I find that when these central needs are met, there is plenty of time for everything else. And there is much else. For the pastor is not, and should not be, exempt from the hundred menial tasks, the trivial errands, the necessary duties, or the administrative humdrum. These also are pastoral ministry. But the only way I have found to accomplish them without resentment and without anxiety is to first take care of the priorities. If there is no time to nurture these essentials, I become a busy pastor, harassed and anxious, a whining, compulsive Martha instead of a contemplative Mary.

A number of years ago I was a very busy pastor and had some back trouble which required therapy. I went for one hour sessions three times a week. No one minded that I wasn't available for those three hours. Everything still got done. Because the three hours had the authority of an appointment calendar behind them; they were sacrosanct.

On the analogy of that experience, I venture to prescribe appointments for myself to take care of the needs not only of my body, but also of my mind and emotions, my spirit and imagination. One week, in addition to daily half-hour conferences with St. Paul, my calendar reserved a two-hour block of time with Fyodor Dostoevsky. My spirit needed that as much as my body ten years ago needed the physical therapist. If nobody is going to prescribe it for me, I will prescribe it for myself.

In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, there is a violent, turbulent scene in which a whaleboat scuds across a frothing ocean in pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick. The sailors are laboring fiercely, every muscle taut, all attention and energy concentrated on the task. The cosmic conflict between good and evil is joined: chaotic sea and demonic sea monster versus the morally outraged man, Captain Ahab. In this boat there is one man who does nothing. He doesn't hold an oar; he doesn't perspire; he doesn't shout. He is languid in the crash and the cursing. This man is the harpooner, quiet and poised, waiting. And then this sentence: "To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil."

Melville's sentence is a text to set alongside the psalmist's "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10), and alongside Isaiah's "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength" (Is. 30:15).

Pastors know there is something radically wrong with the world. We are also engaged in doing something about it. The stimulus of conscience, the memory of ancient outrage, the challenge of biblical command involve us in the anarchic sea which is the world. The white whale, symbol of evil, and the crippled captain, personification of violated righteousness, are joined in battle. History is a novel of spiritual conflict. In such a world noise is inevitable and immense energy is expended. But if there is no harpooner in the boat, there will be no proper finish to the chase. Or if the harpooner is exhausted, having abandoned his assignment and become an oarsman, he will not be ready and accurate when it is time to throw his javelin.

Somehow it always seems more compelling to assume the work of the oarsman, laboring mightily in a moral cause, throwing our energy into a fray we know has immortal consequences. And it always seems more dramatic to take on the outrage of a Captain Ahab, obsessed with a vision of vengeance and retaliation, brooding over the ancient injury done by the Enemy. There is, though, other important work to do. Someone must throw the dart. Some must be harpooners.

The metaphors Jesus used for the life of ministry are frequently images of the single, the small, and the quiet, which have effects far in excess of their appearance: salt, leaven, seed. Our culture publicizes the opposite emphasis: the big, the multitudinous, the noisy. It is, then, a strategic necessity that pastors deliberately ally themselves with the quiet, poised harpooners, and not leap, frenzied, to the oars. There is far more need that we develop the skills of the harpooner than the muscles of the oarsman. It is far more biblical to learn quietness and attentiveness before God than to be overtaken by what John Oman named the twin perils of ministry, "flurry and worry," for flurry dissipates energy and worry constipates it.

Years ago I noticed, as all pastors must notice, that when a pastor left a neighboring congregation, the congregational life carried on very well, thank you. A guest preacher was assigned to conduct Sunday worship, and nearby pastors took care of the funerals, weddings, and crisis counseling. A congregation would go for months, sometimes as long as a year or two, without a regular pastor. And I thought, "All these things I am so busy doing-they aren't being done in that pastorless congregation and nobody seems to mind." I asked myself, "What if I, without leaving, quit doing them right now? Would anybody mind?" I did, and they don't.

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

WHAT DOES FORGIVENESS MEAN?

Helmut Thielicke

Erich Maria Remarque (author of All Quiet On The Western Front) once told the following story: During the confusion of an infantry attack, a soldier plunged into an out-of-the-way shell hole. There he found a wounded enemy. The sight of the man with his fatal wound moved him so, that he gave him a swallow from his canteen. Through this bit of human kindness, a certain brotherly bond immediately sprang up between them The bond became deeper as they tried to chat a bit. The dying man obviously wanted to talk about his wife and children on whom his last thoughts centered. He pointed to his shirt pocket. Understanding this gesture correctly, the German soldier extracted a wallet from it and took out a few family pictures. The gaze of the wounded man wandered over them with sadness and infinite love. The German soldier was deeply touched at that; minutes ago he would have stabbed the enemy with his bayonet; minutes ago all of his battle instincts were unleashed, as was natural in an attack. And now one of the enemy lies before him- and is no longer an enemy; he is simply a man, a father and a husband, one who loves and is loved, one who defended his home, and who now must bid farewell to everything he holds dear. All at once the German soldier is confronted by that other man in a completely different way. It suddenly becomes clear to him that the friend/foe relationship is by no means the only one, but that behind it, or above it, there is an immediacy to the other person-who lives, as I do, in a house amid loved ones, and who, as I do, has his joys and cares.

What happened in that shell hole? Did the German soldier suddenly remind himself of his duty to love his fellow man, fight back the ferocity of his battle instinct, and force himself to a gesture of human kindness? No, something quite different occurred. Instead of his having to struggle to change his own feelings, the other person was changed for him, and for that reason-and that reason only-he then changed his own way of reacting. For that reason, and that reason only, could he love the other person.

It is the same way with loving your enemy. What this act really involves can be seen best in the person of Jesus himself. How is it possible for him, the Holy One, to love the woman who was a sinner, and to pray in the presence of his executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)? Could it be that his heart remained completely unperturbed by any hostile reaction to the scandal of the deceiver and adulterer, the cruelty of his tormentors, and the corruption and cowardice of Pontius Pilate? Certainly all of this must have moved him too, otherwise he would not be a human being like us. He, however, saw these hostile people not only within the coordinate system of good and evil, he saw them not only in the friend/ foe relationship, but at the same time he saw them as the lost children of his Father, created for a far different fate. He sorrowed over them because they had lost their origin and their destiny. He saw in them the original divine design, to which they had been unfaithful. His all-knowing and loving eyes penetrated the outer grime and saw them as they really were.

Loving our enemies, then, does not mean that we are supposed to love the dirt in which the pearl is buried; rather it means that we love the pearl which lies in the dust. Since the people who encountered Jesus found that he uncovered this level, and they therefore did not stand before him as criminals but as the lost and sought and mourned children of God, they were changed by those eyes. Under that gaze their original destiny revived; it was loved into being, as it were. Therefore they went away changed. God does not love us because we are by nature lovable. But we become lovable because he loves us.

-Helmut Thielicke

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Redemptive Love: The Key To Church Discipline

Donald L. Bubna

The biblical confrontation of delinquent parishioners aims at restoring them to fellowship.

Debbie was a young woman in our congregation who had the knack of touching lives. One day she shared with me something which was troubling her in the life of a mutual friend, a fellow believer in our church.

Reviewing biblical principles together, we agreed certain logical steps of confrontation should be followed. Debbie hesitated, then said reluctantly, “I know biblically that’s right, but it seems so hard.”

Debbie’s orthodoxy is sound and so is her heart, but her response to church discipline is typical of many in the church.

The exercise of discipline in the body of Christ is too often unpracticed. More often than not the exceptions are legalistic groups where discipline is applied rigidly to codes of dress and other externals. These surface problems are not of great or lasting concern.

But, what should the church do with a person indulging in delinquent behavior? Or when we are faced with violations of honesty, morality, or integrity-issues to which the Bible clearly speaks? What about the person who is showing an unusual amount of interest in someone other than a spouse? Or one whose business ethics are frequently questioned? Or the person who is flirtatious? Or one who stretches the truth? Or the young couple who seem to have no control over their child or their finances? How do we help these people?

Rather than caring enough to confront, we tend to allow much error to go on and on. Only if a scandal breaks out or pressure breaks up a marriage do we begin to express concern. Usually, this is too late.

God calls us to a better way. I was convicted to do some hard thinking about discipline when a parishioner asked me about my views on the subject. My response to him was immediate: “I don’t think we deal with 50 percent of the discipline cases we should deal with in this church.”

“But that’s 50 percent more than what anybody else we know is doing,” he replied.

Although this answer was probably an overstatement, it was an indicator of a severe deficiency.

These, then, are the principles I share with fellow Christian workers when we discuss discipline. My convictions on the subject and the sharing of experiences from my pastorate are not meant to imply any expertise. Rather, as a pilgrim and a learner who deeply cares for the church, I am calling us to loving action.

Why Discipline?

Paul told the Galatians that if a person is caught in any trespass or sin, those who are spiritual ought to restore him (6:1). Discipline in the church is always to be redemptive in nature. Its aim is not to show that we are right and others are wrong. A child is corrected to save him from delinquency and to help him grow into maturity. The Galatians text sees the person caught in sin as the victim of a trap of the evil one. The call for the church is to “rescue the perishing.”

Take, for example, the case Debbie came to discuss with me. Her friends had a teen-age daughter, Ann, who worked in a store after school. Several times she had to work into the evening and was brought home by the store’s owner, who was also in our fellowship. An open note sent to Ann by this man thanked her for listening to his long tales of mistreatment as a child and lack of appreciation as an adult. He emphasized the significance of Ann’s sympathetic ear, since no one else, even his wife, seemed to understand. Ann’s alarmed parents shared this with Debbie, who brought it to me.

It worked out naturally for me to have a visit with the parents. The father told me his first reaction was “to paste the guy good!”-not an abnormal response for a protective father, but hardly a redemptive act.

Since Ann’s parents were acquainted with the store owner and were mature Christians, we decided they should confront him directly. After the father’s initial reaction, I felt he took a balanced view of the situation and realized his action was to be redemptive rather than vindictive. We agreed the store owner was probably caught in some kind of an emotional trap, or at least did not have things in perspective. Such an encounter might well keep him from going off the deep end.

Neglecting a confrontation, on the other hand, might contribute to our brother’s downfall and even indirectly cause serious injury to another less fortunate “Ann” in his future.

The Web of Relationships

The church is a family; we are brothers and sisters. We cannot choose our siblings, for it is the Spirit’s work to bring them to new birth and to place them in the family. When we are family, we belong to one another.

A family implies responsibility and accountability. I do things for my two earthly brothers sometimes only because they are my brothers. And at times I take risks with them for the same reason.

As a church family we are equally responsible and accountable to one another. Effective discipline takes place in the context of these relationships. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6).

Several years ago our church was involved in a building program, never an easy time in the life of a local congregation. One day the moderator of our board requested that the two of us go to lunch, and that I stop by this office before we ate. Richard, a capable executive and good friend, came right to the point: “I know you have a mind for details, Don, and this building program is not the easiest thing we have ever done. But you’re driving our building chairman up the wall with your ceaseless probing of every detail.”

That hurt. I thought the questions I had asked were necessary. I’d seen some mistakes, and thought I’d caught them just in time to prevent serious building errors. Richard kept boring in. “Don, you have to back off and give this man room.” He was right, of course.

As I left Richard that day, I felt much chastised. But I also felt something else. Richard had taken a great risk in confronting me, and therefore I knew he cared about me very deeply. I was feeling that love. The close friendship between Richard and me gave him credibility when he approached me honestly about a delicate matter.

Are our churches healthy enough to deal with discipline? Or are we like the father who sees his primary responsibility as a provider of food, shelter, and clothing, rather than as someone the rest of the family can relate to?

If a parent or sibling in the family communicates with another family member only to correct, that guarantees little positive response. The church elder as well, when seen only from a distance serving communion or interviewing for membership, has built little basis for reproof when it is needed. If he never visits or invites others into his home, he will not be heard as clearly as the elder who has become a true brother.

Disciplers of men are tuned into the web of relationships in their fellowship. A weakening of this web produces a distress signal in the caring church and initiates action. If we reach out early, our later efforts in times of serious trouble will be more meaningful. If, however, we allow someone to grow distant from our fellowship without trying to find out why, there is little basis for later confrontation or healing.

Biblical Guidelines

“When all else fails, read the directions,” we often say. The words of Jesus (Matthew 18:15-17) give us clear directions on the procedure of church discipline. Too often, leadership within the local body, charged with the responsibility of discipline in the church, either is unfamiliar with these instructions, or treats them as irrelevant.

“If your brother sins, go and reprove him in private.

This calls for an open fellowship where people can honestly talk to one another about differences, shortcomings, sins. When I sense there is sin, it is a loving act for me to take action. Every marriage counselor knows that where wrongs have taken place in a relationship and no communication follows, that marriage is on the road to failure.

But the reproval should be private. The person who feels offended may have misunderstood. This is the time to gather information and to learn. It is not the time to gossip, an act which brings injury to the church family. In a healthy church, this first step of private reproval will be common practice.

John’s attitude toward Roger has been affected by his irritation over Roger’s habitual absences from board meetings, as well as a seeming laxness in corporate prayer ministries. It’s time for John to take the matter to the Father in prayer; then, if a valid concern persists (not borne solely out of his personal irritation), to gently face Roger. He might learn that Roger’s time and energy have been drained by family or business pressures. The confrontation will enhance John’s understanding of Roger; it also should enlarge Roger’s sense of accountability and bring into focus the need to balance his priorities. If both men’s attitudes are correct, brotherhood will thrive.

When we are approached by a fellow member of the body of Christ about any matter,the Matthew passage says we have the responsibility to listen: “If he listens, you have won your brother.”

When I’m confronted, my first tendency is to inwardly say, “Here we go again!” This is quickly followed by a raising of my defense mechanisms. I immediately want to justify my actions. Learning to listen stretches us. One of the things that has helped me is disciplining myself to listen so carefully that I can summarize to the person what he has said. I ask him to correct my summary so he knows I have really listened.

By this process I have learned a great deal. My attempts to listen to reproof have been good for my character, an aid in my development, and a bridge-builder in our church’s web of relationships.

Just recently, in a staff gathering where I was feeling very pressed and harried, a matter arose which irritated me. Wishing to dispose of it in a hurry, I responded quickly and firmly.

Later, a fellow staff member came to me and said, “Don, I’m not sure you understood just how you handled that.” He then role-played my actions. I immediately could see my over-reaction. This reproof brought direction to me, strengthened the relationship with the staff member who cared enough to confront, and allowed me to mend the fence with the person I have offended.

“If he does not listen to you, take one or more witnesses.”

If the first step does not bring the needed response in private, it is time to move into a group process where three or four people are involved.

The new people are not there to substantiate our prejudices, but to bring new objectivity as God gives them spiritual insights. Again, the emphasis is on listening. God wants us to take great effort to understand what is being communicated. The risk is greater now, and it always must be remembered that the motivation is redemption. Although moving into the group process is scary, it does improve the attention level.

The winning of a brother is not apt to be a simple one-time contact; it will most likely be a series of contacts. Restoration takes nurturing.

Some years ago, a close friend and recognized leader in our church became involved in a relationship that seemed unhealthy. Mary was an empathetic person whose official church responsibility brought her into frequent contact with Tom. It appeared Tom and Mary were seeing each other outside their official responsibilities.

When I approached Mary, she admitted it, defending the friendship as a needed ministry to Tom, who was then experiencing some physical and emotional testings.

When the first confrontation brought no changes, I went again. Mary kindly informed me that I misjudged the situation. She would be cautious, but I should not be concerned. I felt she was not listening. At this point, I found it necessary to involve some other church leaders. This time, both Mary and Tom listened and help was brought to their families.

Martin, an older brother with extraordinary biblical insight, frequently lapsed into behavior which I considered less mature than his knowledge. My attempts to help him through some family problems always resulted in his placing blame on his wife. Ultimately, the marriage failed, and Martin decided that a significant amount of the responsibility for that failure rested on me.

His private confrontations with me did not satisfy him, and he called several elders to meet with us. This time, I was the recipient of a visit from an offended brother. These group meetings gave me a new insight on listening, as both of us received corrective instruction.

“And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. “

Now, we must remember that in Jesus’ time, there was not a structured local church. The organism did not yet have the form it would take in the book of Acts and the Epistles. This aids us in understanding the importance of the principle of communicating a situation requiring discipline to the larger body.

I am not certain that there is one way to “tell it to the church.” Scripture seems ambiguous about this part of the procedure; when this happens, I am convinced we are allowed cultural flexibility in carrying out principles.

Thus, in our church, we use our full elder board. Two or three cases reach this level each year. When our elders deal with discipline cases, we report it in our bulletin along with other agenda items. Names are used only in the extreme cases of excommunication.

Several years ago our church was hit with an epidemic of divorces. Several were among leaders or other prominent families. All of us were concerned, and some of our older members were upset at “what our church was coming to.” After consultation, several elders and I agreed it was important that a statement be made to the church regarding our position toward the discipline process.

Near the close of a Sunday morning service, I asked the people to prayerfully listen to a statement of concern. I placed the statement in the context of the trouble that marriage and the family unit were experiencing in today’s society. I informed them regretfully of what we all already knew: that our church was not untouched by these tragedies, and that some of our families were in crucial struggles at that very moment.

I told the people that our elders were concerned and were working with two hands extended: one of mercy and grace toward healing, and the other of the unchanging standard of God’s Word, which stood for the sanctity and permanency of the home. I reminded them that we believed the marriage vows were for life.

I then called the church to love these people, to pray for them, and to abstain from judgment; and to pray for the elders who were making difficult decisions as God’s leaders in our local body. I committed us as a church to more effectively teach scriptural admonitions for husbands and wives.

The statement met with a favorable response, gave direction to the church, and instilled further confidence in the people toward their church leadership.

“If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer.”

An outcast. This means that you treat the person as a nonbeliever, because he is not walking as a believer. It means to keep loving him as Jesus loved the publicans and sinners. It means to reach out to him in witness, but not to relate to him as a member of the body of Christ. Like all evangelistic outreach, the goal is to bring a soul to Christ and back into the functioning body.

In twenty-five years as a pastor, I have participated in the step of excommunication only three times. This is an extremely heavy responsibility. But Jesus says in this passage, “Where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am in their midst,” and this action which the church must take-loving discipline-is agreed upon in heaven (Matthew 18:18-19).

Some years ago Dick and his wife started attending our church about the time we were developing a newly-married couples group. Dick, a student at a nearby Christian college, announced to the church that God had called him to preach the gospel. People admired his dedication. His sincerity seemed evident to many by his frequent testimonies. Some folks concluded that this exceptionally spiritual young man should be groomed for leadership within the young marrieds’ group.

Fortunately, Dick never rose to leadership, for God provided sufficient checks in the hearts of more mature people not to immediately place this young man in a leadership position.

Shortly, a relationship developed between Dick and his wife and another young couple, and they began to spend time together Their lessening involvement in our fellowship should have been a warning to us. After not too many months, Dick announced that he was divorcing his wife to marry the woman from the other couple.

One of our pastors continued to reach out to Dick, but wasn’t heard. Finally, several brothers went to confront Dick. He refused to listen to these men as well, stating flatly, “God told me my first wife would never be compatible in the ministry, and that I needed this kind of wife. God told me to do this.”

The matter was now brought to the entire board of elders who, having taken the prior steps, prayerfully decided to remove Dick from fellowship, and communicate this to the whole church by way of a bulletin announcement.

A letter was written to Dick expressing our concern, our understanding of what he had done (based on our understanding of Scripture), our love, and the responsibility we accepted in the necessary action of dismissing him from our fellowship.

Within a few months, Dick, now remarried, moved to a distant state where he thought he could start a church in a small community. We felt it our obligation to write the ministers of that community about the action we had taken. This was done in hope of restoring Dick to fellowship.

There were young couples in our church at this time who were watching to see what the church would do about Dick. They were not “out to get” him. Their question was: “Does the church really believe what it says about the permanency of the home, about purity, about the sanctity of marriage; or are these just things you say from the pulpit?” The courage to act was well received, and their confidence in the church was strengthened.

Five years later, Dick visited Salem, and he left word that he now felt our church had done the right thing. He had finally recognized his error.

Some time ago, I dealt with a man in our church who had deep guilt problems, which dated back to childhood when a Sunday school teacher had involved him in a homosexual relationship. His boyhood church was not far away; I knew its history and lack of vitality. This unresolved problem, which the church had been too timid to face, had hurt the life of many members, and had dried up the church.

On more than one occasion, lately, we’ve been called on to face the homosexual issue. It’s not surprising that some of the people ensnared in this trap desire to be under the umbrella of the church, accepted and recognized in their sin.

Such was the case of Geoffrey. His wife and family continued to attend our fellowship while his participation lessened. Seeking dissolution of the marriage, Geoffrey confessed he was a practicing homosexual with someone in a nearby town.

The church gave the wife loving support. An elder and a friend of Geoffrey’s made special trips to extend compassionate warning to him. Refusing the counsel of these and other brothers, Geoffrey persisted in his new lifestyle. When there was no softening on his part, and no repentance of his spirit, we inevitably had to take the painful action of dismissing him from fellowship, with the hope of restoration.

The New Testament makes it clear that the exercise of church discipline is for those “who are spiritual” (Galatians 6:1), and that discipline is to be carried out in a spirit of “meekness,” realizing our own vulnerability. Every incident of serious discipline is an awesome reminder to me of my own weakness.

I want to treat men and women the way I’d want to be treated when needing reproof: I would desire the absence of harshness or condemnation, and a preeminence of the very spirit of Christ, who, as our living high priest, would put his arm around us saying, “I know, I understand, I once also lived as a man.”

Where this is true, there will always be the extending of forgiveness up to “seventy times seven,” and the very character of Jesus Christ will be the marks of his body, the church.

Debbie is right. Church discipline is hard. It requires courage-a tough kind of love. It is biblical; it is right. Do we believe this truth enough to act?

Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Book Briefs: June 26, 1981

The Reconsecration Of Art

Walking on Water, by Madeleine L’Engle (Harold Shaw, 1980, 198pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Mel Lorentzen, associate director, Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Madeleine L’Engle’s “reflections on faith and art” (the subtitle of Walking on Water) are not abstruse metaphysical probings into the cloud of unknowing. Nor are they saccharine reminiscences of a pilgrimage toward sainthood. Rather, they are stringent personal and professional efforts to reconsecrate the artifices of art by an act of faith. Like François Mauriac and Flannery O’Connor before her, she dares to be believer and writer at the same time, with all of the private tensions and public misunderstandings that go along with that.

Readers familiar with L’Engle’s diverse works (poems, novels, plays, essays, fantasies, and always stories) will find here in satisfying abundance her laconic wisdom, real-life anecdotes, candid self-revelations, and respect for mystery. Those who have heard her say some of these things in conference lectures will be glad to have them in print at last for repeated reference.

Heresy hunters of all sorts, from fundamentalists to feminists, may think to bag their limit in these 200 pages; but they need to bear in mind Edmund Fuller’s dictum that we do not look to the artist for orthodoxy. L’Engle is not to be judged as a systematic theologian, nor a scriptural exegete, but rather as a brilliant and gifted Christian woman working to relate belief and behavior amid everyday practicalities. Her dogmatic points of reference are essentially and unabashedly Episcopalian, but her strongest sympathies lean toward Catholics and evangelicals (whom she finds, as did O’Connor, to be closer to each other than they think).

By whatever standard, her personal commitment to the risen Christ as Lord and Savior is never in question, and hers is a faith forged in many fiery testings.

Obviously, then, these reflections are not typical writers’ conference bromides about plot techniques and market tips. Yet, by precept and example, she does disclose much about the craft as well as the art of writing. Her most important contribution, probably, to writers and nonwriters alike, is her insight that both faith and art are inseparable from life as experienced in human relationships. Thus, the book can serve Everyman as a spiritual vade mecum for walking on water and other assorted miracles.

No Creed, But Which Bible?

Baptists and the Bible, by L. Russ Bush and Tom J. Nettles (Moody, 1980, 456 pp., $11.95), is reviewed by Larry L. Walker, professor of Old Testament, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, Memphis, Tennessee.

Two young scholars on the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary have provided a useful historical survey of a timely subject, Baptists and the Bible. They state their purpose (p. 16) as “an attempt to investigate the Baptist doctrine of Scripture in a systematic, historical fashion.” All Baptists caught up in the current debate over Scripture will find in this study a treasure trove of data about the history of this basic issue in Baptist life.

Russ Bush teaches philosophy of religion, and Tom Nettles teaches church history; this combination provided a balance and depth needed to write a book of this nature. The authors have worked hard to clarify and delineate the history of this controversy among Baptists, and they have achieved an irenic, yet perceptive, survey.

Generally, the authors follow a chronological sequence in their survey, but within this overall pattern various thematic treatments are presented.

As much as possible, the various Baptists covered are allowed to speak for themselves. We hear not only the viewpoint of conservative Baptists such as Charles Spurgeon and B. H. Carroll, but Harry Emerson Fosdick and Walter Rauschenbush, who also state their case, as well as those who changed their views on Scripture (Toy). We hear from missionaries (William Carey, Adoniram Judson), and professors (A. H. Strong, A. T. Robertson, E. Y. Mullins). We hear from the past (John Gill, Benjamin Keach, John Bunyan. Roger Williams), but unfortunately, contemporary Baptists (Billy Graham, Harold Lindsell) are mostly excluded. Carl Henry is briefly referred to a couple of times, and a few references to other contemporary Baptist thinkers may appear; but Baptists currently in debate generally are not mentioned, although the issues are.

Any questions about past Baptists and the Bible should be greatly clarified by this study. For example, fundamentalist B. H. Carroll, founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, made it absolutely certain where he stood on the Bible’s authority by using language no one could misunderstand. (Before his conversion in 1865, he was an outspoken infidel.)

In the last chapter, the authors summarize their findings, restate the historic Baptist view, and consider issues surrounding the implications of this view. The discussion is contemporary but consciously drawn from precedents in Baptist life. Terms such as “infallible” and “inerrant” are carefully reviewed in Baptist history and related to current discussion.

This should be required reading for every Baptist, and should prove to be of great significance to other Christians as well. It is written in a format and style that make it useful as a textbook, as well as for general reading. It is nicely illustrated with a section-by-section bibliography

Azuza Street Revisited

Azusa Street: The Roots of Modern-day Pentecost, by Frank Bartleman (Logos, 1980, xxvi and 184 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Mark Noll, associate professor of history, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Frank Bartleman (1871–1935) was an independent evangelist who witnessed the extraordinary events of 1905–6 that launched the modern Pentecostal movement. He was an active participant in the early revival at the mission at 312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles, from which Pentecostal teachings have gone out to at least 50 million Christians worldwide. By 1907 Bartleman had become a traveling evangelist, spreading the message of complete surrender to the Holy Spirit throughout the United States and beyond. He wrote this book as a personal reminiscence in 1925 under the title How “Pentecost” Came to Los Angeles—How It Was in the Beginning. Vinson Synan presents it here with an informative and useful introduction.

The book contains revealing glimpses of many early Pentecostal leaders, including the black evangelist William J. Seymour, who in 1906 brought the message of baptism in the Spirit with speaking in tongues to Los Angeles. It notes connections between the Welsh revival of 1904–5 and the “Latter Rain” outpouring in California. It provides a revealing account of the rapid spread of the Pentecostal message. And it illustrates the cooperation of blacks and whites in the early revival, when “the ‘color line’ was washed away in the blood” (p. 54). It also provides perhaps more on Bartleman himself than is strictly necessary. That he was a fervent servant of God is evident, but also that he was censorious (especially toward holiness believers who rejected Pentecostalism), shiftless, and greatly absorbed in his own spirituality.

Many Pentecostals and charismatics will find this book an inspiration. Other Christians, who take different approaches to the work of the Holy Spirit, will not agree with Bartleman’s interpretations of the events he witnessed, but will still find the book a valuable historical record.

Warning Signs Flashing

The Mortal Danger, by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (Harper & Row, 1980, 71 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by T. M. Moore, president, National Institute of Biblical Studies, Pompano Beach, Florida.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has been variously regarded by Americans and other Westerners since his exile and subsequent decision to reside in the United States. Malcolm Muggeridge has called him the most brilliant mind of the twentieth century. Gerald Ford refused him an audience. And, at least since his Harvard speech, Western journalists have turned from their former adoration to chiding.

But through it all, one message from Solzhenitsyn has remained clear: the Soviet Union is a dangerous and destructive military/political force, and the West must be shaken to its senses before it is consumed. The Mortal Danger is a concise and compelling statement of this theme. It should be of particular interest to evangelicals because of the significance the author attaches to the spiritual renewal currently in process under the shadow of the Kremlin.

Solzhenitsyn sees Communism as a plague infecting his beloved Russia. He insists on a clear distinction between the Soviet Union on the one hand, and Russia on the other. He maintains that due to an inherent and radical hatred of humanity, the Soviet Union is in the process of destroying Russia, even as it will all civilization if it is not checked.

Westerners have been kept largely unaware of this tragic situation due to their dependence upon misinformed or sympathetic Western journalists and scholars. He implores the reader to avail himself of publications (such as the “Herald of the Russian Christian Movement”) more qualified to describe the situation as it really is.

Communism’s fiercest venom has been exerted toward Christianity and all other groups favoring a national and spiritual rebirth of peace. The Western press distorts or ignores facts concerning persecutions; instead, it urges the increase of aid to the Communist regime, which it sees as the only force able to maintain stability in a land threatened by insidious nationalistic and religious interest groups.

This book opens up a new perspective for evangelicals vis à vis the Soviet threat. Solzhenitsyn maintains that Communism will only be stopped by force from without or decomposition from within. The former course is unthinkable. Westerners must, therefore, undertake to encourage and support movements that can effectively end Communist domination in Russia. Our responsibility as Western Christians—in the light of the staggering persecution vented against our brethren in the Soviet Union, and their determination to triumph through it—must begin receiving more attention and action from evangelical leaders.

The Roots Of Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925, by George M. Marsden (Oxford, 1980, 252pp., $19.95), is reviewed by Thomas A. Askew, chairman and professor of history, Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts.

For at least two reasons, George M. Marsden’s expertly researched and soundly written book is of timely significance.

First, it will become the definitive resource used by secular scholars and journalists to understand today’s variegated evangelicalism and resurgent fundamentalism. Second, Marsden’s account will serve as a touchstone for thoughtful Christians of every stripe who seek to unravel the complex transition from nineteenth-century evangelicalism to twentieth-century fundamentalism.

Based on ten years of research in voluminous sources, Fundamentalism and American Culture reflects no dominant interpretive thesis. Rather, Marsden argues that fundamentalism is a diverse and complex movement, and any attempt to delineate it too narrowly will distort its variety and richness. To merge such divergent streams into an intelligible whole, the book divides into four sections.

Part I analyzes the American evangelical world around 1870, with sketches of Henry Ward Beecher, Jonathan Blanchard, and Dwight L. Moody as representative leaders. Part II, the meatiest part of the book, treats the rise of millenarianism (especially dispensational premillennialism), the holiness and victorious life movements, the Baptist and Presbyterian conservatives, and the development of four parties, or styles, within emergent fundamentalism. Helpful vignettes are provided on W. B. Riley, William Jennings Bryan, and J. Gresham Machen.

Part III covers the years 1917–25, which saw the fundamentalist controversy run full course among the Presbyterians, Northern Baptists, and others. Part IV, entitled “Interpretations,” is alone worth the price of the book. Here Marsden presents four insightful essays on fundamentalism as an American phenomenon in its social, political, and intellectual aspects. The linkage between fundamentalism and conservative politics is thoroughly explored.

It is impossible in a brief review to explicate the book’s many accomplishments. Particularly useful is Marsden’s inquiry into the relationship between Scottish common sense philosophy, Baconian inductive science, and fundamentalist theory and thought. Also, the author breaks new ground by interpreting the impact of World War I on fundamentalist political viewpoints. The end notes and bibliography constitute an instructive review of the literature on fundamentalism. Combining tough-minded analysis with an irenic and appreciative spirit, this tour de force is must reading for anyone who seeks to understand the period and issues examined.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Prayer. Tracing the development of the Jesus prayer is Prayer of the Heart (Ave Maria), by George H. Maloney. It is a well-written guide to contemplative prayer designed to help time-pressured moderns rediscover the hesychastic tradition with its stress on inner space. A Diary of Prayer (Westminster), by J. Barrie Shepherd, is a collection of 31 meditations on the parables of Jesus in blank verse. They read very nicely.

Honest Prayer (Westminster), by Elsie Gibson, perceptively answers nine difficult questions about prayer, such as, Is it right to pray for things? and, Does prayer change anything? The Prayer that Heals (Ave Maria), by Francis MacNutt, is a moving book that reopens the question of Christ’s present-day healing ministry. It is designed to produce a “gentle revolution” within families, showing how prayer can effect true healing. The Experience of Praying (Paulist), by Sean Caulfield, is a thematic look at what it means to pray, rather than an analysis of the science of prayer. Thus, prayer is related to such things as work, watchfulness, and solitude.

Colleen Townsend Evans’s sensitive Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread (Doubleday-Galilee) eschews an I-me-my approach and includes a lengthy section on the imperative to share as part of prayer. A basic primer of prayer is Pray: God Is Listening (Zondervan), by Richard W. DeHaan. This would be an excellent introductory book to give to high school students. Bidding Prayers (Franciscan Herald), composed by the Dominican Community at Huissen (Netherlands), consists of 109 blank verse prayers on theological topics, such as grace, heaven, and hope. They are profoundly spiritual.

The Illustrated Family Prayer Book (Seabury), edited by Tony Jasper, should delight anyone. Prayers are drawn from such diverse sources as Augustine, Thomas à Kempis, and E. B. Browning, and illustrated with strikingly beautiful pictures. It is for the whole family to enjoy and use.

Growing Toward Retirement

Three of my friends who happened to be pastors got into a discussion, about retirement. Tom, who was 29, briefly and bluntly blurted out his position: “I don’t have to give a single thought to retirement until I’m 65—maybe even 70—because of new laws. Man, my retirement is a long way off.”

Dick, who was 55, said, “Oh, I think about retirement occasionally, but I’ve got lots of time. I have so much to do in First Church—it’s a large congregation. I’ll just keep on going as long as the good Lord lets me.”

Then there was Harry, 64. He commented, “I’ve certainly been doing a great deal of planning in the last six months because I never thought much about retirement before. I have always thought I had nothing to consider. Now I’m changing my mind. I do, of course, want to retire when I am 65; I have put in 39 good years for the Lord Jesus Christ and his church. I want and need a change of pace. Maybe I can find part-time pastoral work.”

Which one of the three is right? The answer is that there is no one right answer. Many things must be considered. As a starter, here are a half-dozen things to consider concerning retirement.

1. Do not wait too long to retire; in other words, stop on time. I know several pastors who waited too long.

Sam, who waited to complete 40 years in one congregation, is now 70, in poor physical condition, and he has difficulty seeing and hearing.

Pete served a congregation whose constitution required that he retire after the age of 70 unless he received a one-year-term call by vote of the congregation. He received the call for several years, but when he lost the last time, he was greatly disappointed.

Paul, who should have retired several years earlier when poor health overtook him, did not want to retire until a certain birthday.

Nelson said he would “continue as long as the Lord gives me strength.” This is surely a pious phrase that seems pure gold, but it is open to question.

2. Various people should be consulted right along. Except in independent congregations, you should consult the proper executive of your church denomination, according to your confidence in him. I was helped greatly by my own synod president, who secured a part-time position for me upon my retirement. He was my bishop in the best sense, and I have thanked him. You should also discuss the matter with your board’s pastoral relations committee.

3. What will you live on? How will you live? How are you fixed financially for retirement? No matter how trusting in the Lord you are, you must make financial plans.

Think of Christian stewardship. Some retired pastors have even higher income after retirement than before because of pension, social security, and part-time work.

Think of life insurance. It may be best to drop your term insurance because you already have had the protection. Payments on whole life policies will be less each year because of dividends. Such policies may be changed to paid-up insurance or extended insurance good for a certain period. It may be best to surrender whole life insurance and invest the proceeds.

Since medical costs usually represent a large portion of retirement costs, sign up for both parts of Medicare three months before age 65. You should bridge the gaps in Medicare coverage through supplementary insurance or your church’s pension fund.

4. Where should you live in retirement? If you do not own a home, are you going to buy a house or a condominium, or will you rent a house or an apartment? Increasing numbers of ministers own their own homes. If you go on living in the same place, the question arises of your relationship to the congregation from which you have retired—often as pastor emeritus without remuneration. You want to have the best of relationships with the new, younger pastor, and you should do nothing in that congregation without consulting him. Of course, if you have a part-time position in the congregation as, for example, visitation pastor, you will know what to do.

Some ministers have retired to warmer climates or to places where they have formerly lived and served, or even to their birthplaces. But be warned in advance that no one of these plans is necessarily the best solution.

5. Plan what you are going to do with your time when you retire. Most pastors have hobbies. The range is wide, from mechanical interests to research in history, philosophy, and theology. Some pastors and their wives travel extensively in retirement.

Many want to do part-time work, either in the church or elsewhere. Some denominational executives recommend that retirees find part-time work. There are other retirees who do not want to do anything—even to preach an occasional sermon. One pastor emphasized that while he had never been asked to preach after retiring, he really did not want to preach. For one thing, he was in poor health. Certainly those who wish to be free of all responsibilities should not be criticized. They have given themselves in full-time service for the Lord Jesus Christ and if they want no further responsibilities, they are entitled to that privilege.

6. Consider the wide opportunities open to you in retirement. It is best to keep your contacts with coworkers in the church by attending local pastoral meetings as in the past, annual meetings and national denominational meetings that may be of interest, especially if they are nearby. It is unfortunate that some retired ministers drop out of everything.

It is also good to keep up contacts with secular, educational, and cultural activities. For example, when I retired I moved to Buffalo, New York, where I have had several part-time positions as visitation pastor, supply preacher, and interim pastor. In Buffalo, there is a full range of activities. My wife and I attend many events, especially those in which we have had a long-time interest.

Finally, keep up your contacts with ministers, lay people, relatives, and friends, both those who are already retired and those who are not retired, in order to get well-rounded viewpoints. Read books, magazines, and newspapers, including columns on retirement. Be a volunteer in various organizations. You can serve in many different ways in your community. If you conducted Christian services in hospitals or nursing homes before retirement, continue to do so. Think of leisure, tours, trips, and visits.

Maybe, in retirement, you can do even more than you did before.

HOWARD A. KUHNLE1Mr. Kuhnle serves part-time as visitation pastor for Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Buffalo, New York. He also preaches often in area churches and is currently interim pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Seneca, New York.

Refiner’s Fire: Bob Dylan: Driven Home

Born into a family of Jewish shopkeepers in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941, Robert Allen Zimmerman was destined through his music to play an important role in the course of American history. While Robert Zimmerman is not a household word, his professional name, Bob Dylan, surely is. To review Dylan’s poetry/music chronologically is to follow his generation’s reaction against shallow materialism and its desperate race to discover joy. It is also to chart one man’s quest for meaning in life.

Dylan grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, a small, iron-mining town, in a period when individualism was subordinated to “the group.” Early influences on his thought were the Old Testament’s concern for the oppressed, John Steinbeck’s novels, and the songs of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, “folk singers” whose message songs denounced American materialism and dramatized the plight of the poor—the inequitable distribution of abundant national resources. Dylan left Hibbing in 1959 to attend the University of Minnesota. Apparently it was not a happy time, and more and more he began to write poems and to sing. Shortly before Christmas 1960, 21-year-old Dylan fled the Midwest and “like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Charles A. Lindbergh, young Minnesotans of an earlier era, Dylan was off to seek a place in the pantheon of American heroes.”

He went to New York City, and in Greenwich Village developed a style lacking the polish and calculation of such big-name folk performers as Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio. Robert Shelton, a New York Times music editor, first heard him in September 1961 at a Greenwich Village club and predicted he would become “America’s greatest troubadour if he doesn’t explode.” In the beginning, he often sang traditional folk songs, but two early compositions offered powerful suggestions of what was to come: the moving “Death of Emmett Till,” an anguished denunciation of a racial murder in Mississippi in 1955, and an antinuclear statement, “I Will Not Go Underground.” He was perfectly armed for the times in which he found himself.

A Brown University student expressed it well in the December 1965 New York Times Magazine: “We’re concerned with things like the threat of nuclear war, the civil-rights movement, and the spreading blight of dishonesty, conformism and hypocrisy in the U.S.… and Bob Dylan is the only American writer dealing with these subjects in a way that makes sense to us.”

Sounding like an inspired Jeremiah, Dylan early on pointed at man’s inhumanity to man and the disrespect Americans held for God’s creation. In perhaps his most famous and most recorded song, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Dylan cried out against racial prejudice, war, and hatred. He continued an antinuclear theme on the same album, The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, with the remarkable song about nuclear disaster and human suffering: “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

In 1963 Dylan also made his major concert debut at New York’s Town Hall. America’s mood was clearly changing and questions were being raised that demanded and deserved answers. And Dylan was leading the way.

In early 1964, Dylan presented adynamic album, The Times They Are A-Changin’, containing some of his best and most biting criticism. The title cut from that album captured the youth mood precisely, and his satirical justification of war (“With God on Our Side”) anticipated the rise of the antiwar movement over Vietnam in a concise review of American history. This was an intense follow-up to his “Masters of War,” in which he denounced war profiteers who made money at the cost of young men’s lives. The lyrics conclude: “Even Jesus would never forgive what you do.” Judgments and punishment would follow, for “All the money you made / Will never buy back your soul.”

Without aspiring to lead, Dylan was in the vanguard of a developing counterculture. By the time we, his contemporaries, were discovering the politics of protest, he was moving musically and lyrically beyond us in new directions. Musically, he turned in 1965 to electric rock and roll, an abrupt change that almost single-handedly gave birth to “folk rock.” Lyrically, his work grappled with tough concepts like guilt and freedom. He still attacked the power structure in song-poems like “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Maggie’s Farm,” and “Like A Rolling Stone,” but he spoke less to public issues, voicing instead a growing individual, private agony. Also to the fore came a developing preoccupation with religious imagery and themes.

In “Gates of Eden” (1965), Dylan contrasts life as it was meant to be (“There are no sins inside the Gates of Eden”) to the world as he saw it (“Sick … hungry … tired … torn”). In “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” he preached, castigating a shallow society’s games: “Human gods make everything from toy guns that spark / To flesh colored Christs that glow in the dark / Not much is really sacred.” Or, again in 1965, in retelling the Abraham-Isaac story, Abraham questions God, who replies: “You can do what you want, Abe, but / The next time you see me coming you’d better run.” Dylan’s theme rings clear and true: only through obedience to God can man achieve peace.

A July 1966 motorcycle accident removed Dylan from the public eye for 18 months. That accident came just after President Lyndon Johnson’s manipulation of the U.S. Senate to secure the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, upon which he legitimized the great build-up of American forces in Vietnam. The number of American soldiers in Vietnam escalated into the hundreds of thousands, and the monetary cost shot up to $20 billion by 1967. American cities were aflame, and American colleges were beginning to explode in protest of the war.

When he surfaced again, it was as a Dylan with a heightened sense of his Jewishness. It was also a Dylan who repudiated drugs, a staple of the counterculture he had helped spawn. In 1968, returning to simple guitar and softer music, Dylan released his John Wesley Harding album. What is surprising in it is evidence of a profound reading of the New Testament, especially in “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest,” clearly patterned after the parables of Jesus. He describes man’s search for wealth and his sensual lust, which bring only death; Frankie Lee denies that eternity exists. But Dylan moralizes: “Don’t go mistaking Paradise for that home across the road.” He was again accused of selling out, of abandoning his role as public conscience. But in retrospect, he can again be viewed as leading his generation.

In the middle and late sixties, Dylan was beginning to write that man is ultimately accountable for his sin—free to choose to obey or disobey God’s divine directive—that man will be judged. In 1971, in a powerful poem-song “Sign on the Cross,” it is evident that his religious pilgrimage has progressed. He is now haunted by and grappling with the meaning of Jesus Christ. In 1970 he had written the beautiful, exceptional modern psalm, “Father of Night.” But clearly in “Sign on the Cross” he has a different concern. He says the sign on Jesus’ cross can never be forgotten: He suggests that man cannot escape that symbol and what it means.

Jewish author Stephen Pickering described Dylan in 1974–5 as “a post-Holocaust Jewish voice, searching for and rediscovering the manifestations of God.… [His] poetry centers upon God, upon Heaven … upon the … Jewish Messianic tradition. His sense of impending apocalypse (the dialectical struggle between darkness and light) burns into the … heart. In his moral anger … Bob Dylan is a Jewish voice aware of the struggle which can tear apart the heart: what one ought to do as opposed to what one wants to do.”

Pickering’s analysis was perceptive, and in 1979 rumors of Dylan’s conversion to Christianity swept through rock publications. There had been others earlier, but this was Dylan, who had scaled the pinnacle of the rock world. “Surely not.” said the veterans of the 1960s movement. “That’s Pat Boone’s style, not Dylan’s.”

But the answer was simple and affirmative in late 1979 with the release of his album Slow Train Coming. “Jesus Rock” music flooded the market in the late 1970s, much of it rightly characterized as trite. But Slow Train was not trite: it was the “old” Bob Dylan once again focusing his remarkable talents on the decadence of America’s materialistic culture in prophetic fashion. But as critic Sharon Gallagher put it. “Now there’s a framework and direction for that anger with a new element of hope.”

It is not just that Dylan has come out of his experiences changed; that comes through clearly in his lyrics. This album is also exceptional in terms of its musical quality. One secular reviewer said, “I don’t know what’s happened to Dylan or what it means, but it’s good.” In 1980, he issued another overtly Christian album. Saved, which was favorably reviewed in both secular and Christian publications. Even the reviewer in Rolling Slone, while criticizing the lyrics, argued that Saved displayed the energy of the “old” Dylan.

There are cynics—I have heard them. Christians and non-Christians—who argue that Dylan’s conversion is based on the dollar sign, that he is simply cashing in on the trendy evangelical movement in America. Such an analysis seems to me unsatisfactory; Dylan’s concern for justice has been consistent throughout his career. Christianity is simply a logical extension of his long-term themes. In most cases, Charles Colson’s for example, ethics follow conversion; in Dylan’s life it was just the reverse.

Time, of course, may tell. But Dylan, whose work is even now finding its rightful place in anthologies of modern American poetry, has a ready-made audience—those of us who grew up with him and listened as he articulated the problems and inequities of our society; those of us who for the first time really felt the wrongness of racial prejudice, of nuclear war, of material decadence through his writing. How will we respond to the “new” Bob Dylan?

CHARLES J. BUSSEY1Dr. Bussey is associate professor of history at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.

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