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Pastors

Ideas that Work

THE SPIRITUAL INVENTORY

by Donald L. Bubna

In my previous pastorate, Bill, a young believer who recently had joined the finance committee, made an appointment with me.

“Pastor,” he said, “I’m concerned about our church finances. If all our people were on welfare, yet tithed, we would have more than sufficient income to do all we need to do at the church. But here we are, a middle-class church with a modest budget, and we’re behind. There’s something wrong with the spiritual vitality of our people.”

Then he proposed an idea similar to one he’d learned in the insurance industry: “The reason my insurance business is doing three times the new business of the average agency is that every six months I do an insurance inventory with every client. We meet so we can be sure their coverage is up to date and I can tell them about some new forms of protection in the industry. I come prepared, knowing where their insurance has been, and I’m ready to help them.

“It seems to me,” he continued, “it would help to take regularly a spiritual inventory of our members. It will help them go on to maturity, and if they’re growing in faith and obedience, they’ll be generous with their tithes and offerings.”

The idea of a spiritual inventory clicked with me. For years I have been committed to accountability, and here was a tool to help me accomplish that-by lovingly and firmly helping people grow in Christ. So, with others on the staff, I developed what we called a “spiritual inventory call.” We all found it beneficial in monitoring the spiritual growth of the people in our areas of responsibility.

What is it?

The spiritual inventory call differs from a hospital call or friendship visit. It has a clear objective. The goal of such a discussion is to find out about a person’s spiritual life: where he has been, where he is now, and where he wants to go with the help of pastor and church.

Since each person and situation is different, we haven’t established rote questions for the inventory. There is a wide array of questions that will get people thinking about their spiritual lives. Here are some of the ones I use:

What’s one joy and one struggle you’re experiencing in your life or ministry?

How would you describe your walk with God this past year?

Where do you feel you would most like to grow as a Christian?

Could you give me a thumbnail sketch of your spiritual history?

How did you first come to believe?

In your devotional life, what’s one thing you’ve recently discovered?

How would you finish this sentence: I feel good about my walk with God when . . . ?

What have been some of the ups and downs of your spiritual life since you came to faith?

How has our church helped you in your spiritual development?

What do you need from me as a friend and fellow believer to go on to maturity in Christ Jesus?

At my former church, we as leaders made home visits to ask these hard but important questions. Such visits led to fruitful discussions not unlike one I had last month when I ran into a man with whom I had not talked for some time. I had heard, though, that he was struggling spiritually. So after we had talked through some of the safer topics, I asked, “Bob, how would you describe your walk with God this past year?”

He looked at me and sputtered a bit. But then he was honest: “Not very good.” He went on to say that he was struggling with his attitudes toward certain people in the church, and he detailed the complaints. I listened carefully, and finally I asked, “Are you saying, then, that you’re allowing these people to come between you and God?”

He guessed he was, though he didn’t want them to. “I’m asking you this only because I love you and your family,” I said, “and I am concerned about you. How can I help you with this issue in your life?” He asked for prayer, and we concluded on a positive note a conversation that helped invigorate his Christian walk.

How do you conclude?

The conclusion of a spiritual inventory is particularly important. I begin by summarizing what the person has told me. “I hear you saying that you have come this far as a Christian, and now you feel you need to . . .” I want to communicate that I have listened well and I care about what I’ve heard.

What I say next depends on what the people are ready for. If, for example, they feel they need to study the Bible more, I ask, “What are you going to do about this need? How can I help you?” I may be able to introduce them to the leader of a Bible-study group.

Sometimes the person is unsure what he needs. So then I say, “You sound as if you’re not sure where you need to go. How can I help you make that decision?” Some people ask for prayer, some for suggestions about how to grow.

Other people realize they need to discontinue a harmful habit. “This is a decision I can’t make for you; you must make it,” I tell them. “Will you send me a note in the next two weeks telling me what you have decided?”

And a few indicate early on, usually nonverbally, that I’m getting too personal and they’re not ready for such questions. They communicate, I love God, I’m a Christian, and that’s enough. If so, I back off; I go only as far as people will be glad for me to go. With such people, I briefly tell them where I want to grow as a Christian and then ask for their prayers. Often we will pray a short prayer for each other at that time.

Does anyone resent it?

Most people not only welcome the chance to talk about themselves but are thirsty for it. There are, however, some essential conditions for effectively taking a spiritual inventory.

First, in my preaching and leading I must model the kind of openness I’m asking from people. On elders’ retreats and with staff, I periodically share my own spiritual condition or devotional practices, and I encourage them to confront me if they see anything askew in my life. (I seek to conduct a spiritual inventory with each staff member annually.)

The second essential is that I establish a relationship with the person so there is something to build on.

Third, I try to make a soft approach. I don’t announce it as a “spiritual inventory.” Instead, I set up lunch appointments, or drop in at people’s homes, or talk with them in my office, as I have always done. The difference is that I intentionally focus the discussion on the person and his or her spiritual life: “John, I care about you, and as your pastor I’m interested in how you feel you’re growing as a Christian.”

Fourth, I try to come across as an encourager, not a judge. I often say, in effect, “I want to help you. I don’t want to-and can’t-make you do anything. But if you have determined to grow in Christ, I want to help you do that.”

When these servanthood attitudes are in place, what happens is a surprise of joy. One man in my former church, for example, had been a member for years, and over time we built a relationship of trust. During a spiritual inventory he admitted that he struggled with homosexual tendencies.

I first emphasized my acceptance of him as a person. I also, however, suggested a Bible memory program to help refocus some of his thinking about self-worth, temptation, and God’s power. He agreed, and we met regularly, though often informally, for me to check how his memorization was proceeding. “How is this helping? Where is this not helping?” I would ask. The man welcomed this discipline, and we saw significant growth and victory through it.

What’s the result?

Such conversations often take about an hour, but at my former church, the staff was unanimous about their value. We cut back the number of “regular” calls each month and aimed at making more spiritual inventory calls. As a result, we felt closer to people, people developed spiritually, and as Bill had originally predicted, churchwide giving patterns were affected.

I saw the fruit of spiritual inventories in the life of Joe Kong, who came to our former fellowship as a Cambodian refugee. He was bright and well educated but not a believer. In a matter of weeks he made a commitment to Christ, was baptized, and joined a Saturday morning prayer group. Joe was a recognized leader in the Cambodian community throughout Oregon. He immediately began to meet with local groups to communicate the gospel. He eventually planted half a dozen churches in the Pacific Northwest while maintaining his fellowship with our congregation.

During this time, we had several spiritual inventory visits. I began to hold him accountable to spend adequate time with his wife and five children. He did, and he continued to grow spiritually. Later he became an elder in the Salem (Oregon) Alliance Church and is now national director for Cambodian ministries for the denomination. He has planted a dozen more Cambodian congregations and now oversees thirty churches.

Shortly before my leaving Salem, he came to me and said, “Pastor, the way you developed me spiritually is how I’m developing leaders for the Cambodian churches. It is a biblical pattern, and it works.”

* * *

MORE IDEAS

Painless Recruiting of Sunday School Workers

Why are there never enough volunteers to work in the Sunday school? What makes people resist serving in this area?

Nearly every pastor has asked these questions. Ed M. Smith, minister of education at Del Norte Baptist Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, decided to search for the answers.

Smith began talking with members and discovered three key reasons.

1. People didn’t want to give up the fellowship they had in their adult Sunday school classes.

2. They feared they’d never get out of teaching or assisting.

3. They didn’t have training or experience with children and didn’t want to be thrown into a classroom without knowing what to do.

“We accepted the reasons as valid,” Smith says, “and not merely as lame excuses.” In response, the church developed a simple system of short, overlapping terms of service.

Workers are recruited for three-month terms; this takes away people’s fear they will never get out of the job and it keeps people in adult fellowship nine months of the year. In addition, each person starts his or her term of service during the last month of the predecessor’s term. During the month when both teachers are in the class, the “veteran” worker acquaints the newcomer with the children and class procedures and gradually turns over the teaching responsibilities. This gives each incoming teacher on-the-job training. It also minimizes the children’s discomfort of having a new teacher, since the familiar teacher is still in the classroom. And finally, the period of joint teaching lightens the load for both workers.

To keep the Sunday school running smoothly, some key leaders do serve full-year terms, but in general the system has made more people willing to try teaching, increased motivation, and prevented burn-out.

“The system has made it much easier for me to get volunteers,” Smith reports. “In one congregational appeal I got all the workers I needed for the year, which I’ve never had happen before.”

* * *

Thanksgiving Calendar

Thanksgiving can be a meaningful holiday for Christians, but too often it degenerates into little more than a reason to watch football and eat too much. Ted Schuldt, pastor of Ravenna Boulevard Presbyterian Church in Seattle felt the frustration. We all need help to lift our eyes from the meal to the Giver, he thought, just as we need help at Christmas to focus not on the gifts but on the Reason for the season.

Schuldt realized that Christians have long prepared themselves for a meaningful celebration of Christmas by using an Advent calendar with daily Scripture readings. Why can’t a similar calendar be used to prepare our hearts for Thanksgiving? he wondered.

So now, at the beginning of November, he distributes to each family in the congregation an 8/2 x 11 sheet showing the calendar for the month. Listed in the box for each day is a Scripture passage related to thankfulness. The church families take the calendars home and each day do two simple things: (1) read the Scripture for the day, and (2) write on the calendar one thing for which they thank God.

“My kids, ages 11, 8, and 4, enjoy saying what they’re thankful for and writing it on the calendar,” Schuldt says. “Usually they thank God for the other family members and their friends.”

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, parishioners bring the calendars to church, where they are received in a special “thank offering.” At Ravenna Boulevard, where attendance runs from 65 to 75, as many as 40 calendars may be turned in.

“People tell me they appreciate having a vehicle to help them be thankful regularly,” Schuldt reports. “They say, ‘Once we got down to doing it, we were glad we did.’ ”

* * *

Reaching New Parents and Newlyweds

When a baby is born within two miles of First United Brethren Church in Peoria, Illinois, the family gets a letter of congratulations and, within a few days, a visit. (Families who would prefer not to have a visit can indicate that by calling a phone number given in the letter.)

During the visit, the church’s lay director of the Cradle Roll describes the congregation’s ministries to families. In addition, she offers to leave a VCR and James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” video series for two weeks-free.

When the parents have finished viewing the series, Pastor Steve Barber stops by to pick up the equipment and to discuss the videos. Dobson’s message provides a sounding board for the parents’ religious beliefs and a natural introduction to the gospel.

“In the first 12 months of the ministry,” reports Barber, “we contacted about 100 families. Of those, 15 enrolled in the church’s Cradle Roll, and 13 others visited the church. Five new parents made a first-time commitment to Christ.” To keep up with requests for the tapes, First United Brethren has purchased a second set of tapes, and even so, they sometimes have people on a waiting list to get them.

-Reported in The United Brethren

A less-expensive variation of the idea was used to reach newlyweds when Richard Addison, Jr., was pastor of Bible Methodist Church in Findlay, Ohio. Each week a volunteer would send congratulatory letters to newly married couples in the surrounding area (names were secured through the newspaper). The letter offered a free book on building a Christian home (Heaven Help the Home, by Howard Hendricks) to anyone who returned the enclosed card. Ten percent of each week’s cards (3 of 30) were returned, and Addison or a lay leader visited each couple to deliver the book.

“One person wrote on the response card, ‘How nice of you to care. Thanks so much! We’re looking forward to the book,’ ” says Addison. “Another couple ran into some marital difficulties three or four months into their marriage, and because I had visited them, they came to me for counsel.” Addison, now pastor of College Grove Community Church in Montgomery, Alabama, is considering expanding the idea to reach not only newlyweds, but also new parents and the recently bereaved.

What’s Worked for You?

Each published account of a local church doing something in a fresh, effective way earns up to $35. Send your description of a helpful ministry, method, or approach to:

Ideas That Work

LEADERSHIP

465 Gundersen Drive

Carol Stream, IL 60188

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

THE BACK PAGE

Paul D. Robbins

In a new book titled Career Burnout, psychologists Ayala Pines and Elliot Aronson describe the work they are doing with professional groups suffering from high rates of burnout. One of these groups is dentists. Burnout among dentists? That caught my eye!

According to Pines and Aronson, while dentistry may seem like a relatively easy profession-respected, lucrative, autonomous-the experience of pouring in maximal effort for minimal appreciation, week after week, causes serious erosion of spirit.

Most patients enter the dental office in a high state of anxiety. They do not want to be there, a message they clearly communicate to the dentist. It never enters their minds that the dentist might need appreciation, respect, and approval. Since very few dentists collaborate with their peers, neither patients nor peers are in a good position to express meaningful appreciation; there is no one nearby who has the expertise to say, “Wow, what a wonderful job you did capping that molar!”

Pines and Aronson go on to say that professionals who experience their work as a “calling” are especially vulnerable to burnout. Common symptoms include feelings that emotional resources have been depleted. The zest is gone; there is nothing left to give. Daily life consists of “toos”-too many pressures, too many conflicts, too many demands, too few acknowledgments, too few rewards.

More serious symptoms are feelings of despair and failure-the painful realization that one’s efforts have not made the world a better place, the needy have not been helped, the problems have not been solved, and “the called one” has been consumed.

Many times during the last twenty years, I have heard parish pastors, with great anguish of spirit, express feelings like those described above. I’ve listened as they tried futilely to reconcile the immensity of their ministry task, the life-and-death nature of their responsibility, with the meagerness of their resources and the apathetic responses of their people.

The greatest pain of all was expressed when they tried to reconcile their intense, personal call to ministry to the hollow, drained persons they had become.

Their cry sounded like the prayer of the fourth-century church father Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, who prayed: “I am spent, O my Christ, Breath of my life. Perpetual stress and surge, in league together, make long, oh long, this life, this business of living. Grappling with foes within and foes without, my soul hath lost its beauty, blurred your image.”

What does one say to a burned-out pastor who has been investing maximal effort for minimal response?

Where does the pastor find the wherewithal to persevere with meager resources in apathetic situations?

Ironically, Saint Gregory’s prayer of despair may contain some answers. Admitting a blurred image of Christ may be the first step toward renewed emotional and spiritual vitality. Implicit in the call of Christ is the understanding that the service rendered is service unto him. It is service that only he can fully understand, appreciate, evaluate, and reward.

To expect this kind of response from others suggests only a distorted understanding of Christ’s call, a blurred image. Though the need for appreciation from others is most desirable, pastoral ministry can’t be compared to dentistry. Pastors don’t solve the problems of people; they can’t fix things. At best, all a pastor can do is try to lead people to the One who can solve problems. But if the pastor’s image of Christ is blurred, not only will the pastor lose his way, but the people will also wander in darkness.

Ten years ago, Richard Foster, in his book Celebration of Discipline, put together a brief comparison of the characteristics of service that is focused more upon ourselves and service that is focused more upon Christ. In paraphrased form, it becomes a self-help test worth taking. Why not measure your clarity of vision against his conclusions?

Self-focused service is concerned with impressive gains. It enjoys serving when the service is titanic or growing in that direction. Christ-focused service doesn’t distinguish between small and large. It indiscriminately welcomes all opportunities to serve.

Self-focused service requires external reward, appreciation, and applause. Christ-focused service rests content in hiddenness. The divine nod of approval is sufficient.

Self-focused service is highly concerned about results. It becomes disillusioned when results fall below expectations. Christ-focused service is free of the need to calculate results; it delights only in service.

Self-focused service is affected by feelings. Christ-focused service ministers simply and faithfully because there is a need. The service disciplines the feelings.

Self-focused service insists on meeting the need; it demands the opportunity to help. Christ-focused service listens with tenderness and patience. It can serve by waiting in silence.

This list offers a way to begin refocusing our blurred image of Christ in the midst of ministry.

Paul D. Robbins is executive vice-president of Christianity Today, Inc.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

TYPE B SPIRITUALITY

Steven D. Felker

I am a Type B. My clothes lie scattered around the hamper. I forget to make the bed (I’m often the last one out of it). My cars need to be washed. My office looks like it has been nuked.

Psychologists tell us a Type A personality is ambitious, aggressive, organized, impatient, and highly disciplined. A Type B is easygoing, noncompetitive, relaxed, and at peace with his surroundings. Virginia Price, in Psychology Today, summed up the relationship between the two: “Lots of Type A’s think of Type B’s as slovenly failures.”

Guess what? Lots of us Type B’s feel like slovenly failures. We know the “shoulds” of a disciplined Christian life, but we can’t seem to maintain them.

As a Type B and a pastor, I often wonder: Can I have a vibrant spiritual life? Or do I have to become a Type A? In other words, does spiritual maturity depend upon my getting dirty socks into, not near, the hamper? Does sanctification mean a disciplined, daily, devotional regimen?

The Type A defines a vibrant devotional life in terms of chapters read, verses memorized, journal pages written, and minutes (or hours) spent in prayer, preferably before dawn. Without belittling these practices, I ask myself if this is a complete definition. I don’t think so.

Spiritual vibrancy is not something you do; it is something you are. Time with God is crucial for spiritual health, but vibrancy is based on how we live, not simply on acts we perform every morning.

Devotions for the disheveled

I find diversity is the key. Type B’s are the consummate generalists. We do everything okay but don’t excel at anything. Often our temptation is to concentrate on one style of devotional life, and when we can’t make that glow, give up altogether and castigate ourselves for spiritual immaturity.

In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster explains, “The disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.” Isn’t that the essence of devotional life? Aren’t we seeking to be in the presence of God and changed by that encounter? Foster lists twelve broad disciplines; within them are a multitude of ways to encounter God, from prayer to service, fasting to solitude. The key for Type B’s is to find ways of building the relationship with God that work for now. When they get old, find a new means, or return to one you haven’t used in a year.

What do I do? Several things. Southwestern Kansas is beautiful, rugged country, and I find walking in solitude tremendously renewing. I’m also moved by music. Many hymns (“Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” “God of Our Fathers,” “O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee”) and many contemporary Christian songs are simply prayers set to music. When I don’t have a prayer, I use someone else’s!

I also read widely. Currently I’m using a volume of topical Scripture passages and reading, bit by bit, Berkhof’s Systematic Theology. The key is keeping after it. Consistency is best, but when you fail consistency, replace it with diversity. Again, the goal is not Scripture reading and prayer; the goal is a closer walk with God.

Am I growing?

I’m sure some of you are thinking you have never read such a lengthy justification for laziness. I’ve wrestled long and hard with that (to the point that this article is two weeks overdue). As best I can tell, it’s not laziness. I seriously evaluate my life before God by checking four key areas:

1. My time with God. It may not be a predawn appointment with the Greek New Testament, but whatever my current mode, am I keeping after it? If it’s slipping, I reassert myself or develop a new method.

2. My ministry performance. I look at the aspect of ministry that gives me the hardest time, be it preaching, visitation, or evangelism. Usually, that will be first to go when my walk with God meanders.

3. My marriage. Marriage is a spiritual union. If I were to chart the ups and downs of our marriage and the diligence of my walk with God, the parallels would be uncanny!

4. My besetting sins. When I find myself entertaining lustful thoughts or swearing a blue streak in my brain, I realize my walk with God is suffering.

We Type B’s can have a full and satisfying spiritual life. It isn’t measured by chapters read or the calluses on our knees. It’s based simply on our relationship with the Lord, which we can develop by means as diverse as our personalities. As long as we put ourselves into his presence, we can be confident we will slowly, arduously, and lovingly be conformed to the image of Christ.

-Steven D. Felker

First Baptist Church

Hanston, Kansas

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

THE DANGER OF SPIRTUAL VITALITY

Bill Hybels

Recently someone asked me, “How can pastors stay spiritually vital?”

I said, “I don’t worry about that.”

He looked surprised, even shocked. “To me, there’s an issue even bigger than staying spiritually vital,” I explained. “The important thing is to stay spiritually authentic.”

There’s a difference. Usually when I hear people talk about staying spiritually vital, they’re talking about staying pumped, being spiritually up, feeling strong, keeping the glow. But that’s only part of the spiritual life. To expect to be spiritually high all the time is like expecting to romance your wife every evening. It just isn’t realistic.

In the Christian life, there’s an ebb and flow. Sometimes you feel exalted and glorious; other times you feel weighed down or simply quiet. Some days you feel despairing; other days resilient and joyful. The strong, vital times come, too, but they’re not the constant.

The rub comes when we expect to be buoyant constantly. And as pastors we may get that message from others. We’ve all known churches where each week had to be a grand and glorious spiritual experience, higher and stronger than the last.

But then comes a day when, to be truthful, we’re spiritually wrung out. There’s not a drop of vitality in us. At that moment we are greatly tempted: Will we be honest about it, or will we mask it because we’re supposed to be “spiritually vital”?

Being honest, being true to our actual spiritual condition, is what I mean by being spiritually authentic. It’s not easy.

I plead with my staff: “It’s okay sometimes to let people know you’re struggling, that you feel dry, that your prayer life or your family life isn’t what you want it to be. Be honest. If you’re down, admit it. If you’re flying high, it’s okay to tell them that, too. Just be spiritually authentic, for when you’re authentic, you’ll grow-and so will your people.”

One time when I was preaching on heaven, I had to admit, “The first thing I did this morning was pray a prayer of confession, because I wasn’t proud of the way my mind has been working these past few days. I have been too worldly recently; I have been too caught up in the here and now. I get so tired of having a guilty conscience. I get so tired of saying things I have to apologize for. I get so tired of lashing out at people and then trying to make up for it later on. I get so tired of sinning.”

By letting people know I needed forgiveness as much or more than they did, I could then point to an aspect of heaven that appeals to me greatly: “But the Bible says a day is coming when you’re in heaven and there’s no more remorse, no more regret, no more stained consciences.” No, I may not have come across as the paragon of spiritual vitality in that sermon. But I hope I came across as spiritually authentic.

Why?

Sometimes in my more honest moments I think, I’ve given probably a thousand messages at this church, but I’ll bet my best people couldn’t give you the titles to three of them. Then I think, But, man, their lives have been radically altered, and preaching is at least fractionally involved. What’s happening?

I’ve come to believe that a major benefit of preaching (and ministry) is indirect-what people pick up as they watch us and listen to us over time. And when we’re honest about our struggles and admit our failures, people see that Christianity can fit with the ups and downs of their lives. I rejoice on those occasions when someone will come to me and say, “You know, Bill, I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re a real person just like me. Thank you for shooting straight with me about occasional mistakes you make in raising your children. Thank you for telling us you had a problem controlling your temper in a volatile discussion. It just reminds me that if there’s grace to cover your mistakes, there’s probably grace to cover mine.”

When I hear that, I’m reminded that I don’t always have to be spiritually “vital.” But I do have to be authentic enough to admit when I’m not.

-Bill Hybels

Willow Creek Community Church

South Barrington, Illinois

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

EFFECTIVE INVITATIONS

Larry K. Weeden

Six fresh ways to awaken people to commitment.

The walk-the-aisle invitation-the idea stirs up images of old-fashioned, Southern tent meetings with repentant sinners walking the sawdust trail on hot, summer nights. The images look sepia tinted, photographs from a bygone-era.

In a day when faith is considered private and “the hard sell” produces a backlash, does a call to stand and walk forward have any appeal? Is such an invitation still effective?

These questions are often raised by pastors who want to have an evangelistic impact-and who recognize the legitimacy of calling people publicly to commitment or rededication-yet who sense resistance to the traditional invitation.

How are preachers calling for commitment in a day when Sony Walkman is preferred to Billy Sunday? After talking with a number of preachers, I discovered pastors feel the traditional invitation still has a place, but increasingly it is being augmented by contemporary forms.

Here are six innovative approaches pastors have found effective.

Meet at the Piano

Mike Cocoris, pastor of Church of the Open Door in Glendora, California, asks people at the end of a service silently to make a commitment where they sit. He may have them raise their hands, but then he always says, “If you’ve trusted Christ today, I’ve written a letter for you, telling you how to grow spiritually, and I want you to have a copy. After the service, please stop by the piano and pick up your letter from the person wearing the badge.”

People respond well to this approach, he says, because in the after-service milling of people, their trip to the front does not stand out. In addition, they like the idea of receiving something written by the person they’ve just been listening to.

The person distributing the letters has been trained to engage in conversation, discuss the decision that’s been made, and get a name and address. If the seeker gives his or her name, someone from the church will call soon after.

The letter is “full of warm fuzzies,” Cocoris says, building on the idea that God wants to have a relationship with the person. The letter also gives the name and phone number of a staff person who can be contacted for help.

“It’s important for pastors to write their own handouts, if possible, especially the cover letter,” Cocoris says. “The personal touch is what gets people to respond.”

Read the Bulletin

At the Old Cutler Presbyterian Church in Miami Florida, an invitation to follow Christ, complete with model prayer, is printed on the back of the bulletin every Sunday. Below it is a model prayer for Christians who want to rededicate themselves to the Lord. And finally, below that is an invitation to meet confidentially with an elder after the service in the “Quiet Room.” These prayers and the offer of the Quiet Room are often pointed out by a pastor at the end of a service.

“This approach grew out of our unusual circumstances,” says Paul Rose, the senior associate pastor. “Miami is an extremely transient community; we have an 80 percent turnover every four to five years. That’s led to a philosophy we have to live by: ‘If we don’t reach ’em soon, we don’t reach ’em.’ We feel a special urgency to put the gospel before our people by every means possible and as often as possible.”

As simple as this method of invitation seems, it’s been a help to numerous parishioners. “When people apply for membership in the church,” he says, “we ask them to give a brief testimony about how they came to the Lord. And we’ve often heard them refer to those prayers in the bulletin as important steps in their movement toward God.”

Lift Your Eyes

In our television age, people expect things to start and finish at the stated times, and this thinking extends into their expectations of church services. If a service runs late, the congregation will grow restless. Thus, concern for ending on time might tempt pastors to forgo offering an invitation even if they feel led to give one.

When evangelist John Guest is running short of time yet feels impelled to call his audience to commitment, he will request that people bow their heads, and then he’ll ask those who want to follow Christ to open their eyes, lift their heads, and make eye contact with him. “That way,” explains Clare DeGraaf, president of Guest’s evangelistic team, “people who look up know he has seen their commitment, which helps to confirm it in their lives.” Guest invites those who made eye contact with him to go to another room to receive discipleship literature.

More people respond to these eye-contact invitations than to a standard altar call, DeGraaf says, particularly in church traditions, such as Guest’s own Episcopal background, where the standard altar call is simply unknown. In those settings, eye contact provides a nonthreatening yet effective means of calling people to Christ.

For example, DeGraaf first saw this invitational method used in, “of all places, a funeral service in a Christian Reformed church, where we normally never have altar calls. This pastor, from another denomination, was sensitive to that fact but knew the deceased had been evangelistically minded and felt led to offer an invitation, so he used the eye-contact approach. Several people responded with what proved to be lasting commitments.”

Time to Get Ready

While the call to commitment usually comes at the end of a sermon, several preachers have found it effective to tell listeners what’s coming at the beginning of the message. The idea is to not surprise people and to give them time to think about the decision they’ll be asked to make later.

Says evangelist Leighton Ford, “At the beginning of the sermon, I may say something like this: ‘Tonight at the end of my talk, I am going to ask you to do something about what I say, to express your decision. I am going to ask you to get up and come and stand here at the front. This is an outward expression of an inward decision.’ ” Then he explains clearly what their coming forward will signify.

A pastor on the East Coast used a similar approach: “Whenever I’m planning to have people respond publicly, I tell them, ‘In about thirty minutes, I’m going to ask you to do something unusual. I’ll be asking you to make a decision based on the information in today’s sermon. At the end of the service, I’ll invite you to come and kneel on the steps of the platform as a sign of God’s working in your life.’ “

His reason? “I want people to get ready, and this takes a lot of the shock, the fear, and the worry out of the experience. I explain what I want them to do as if they’ve never seen an altar call before.”

In his experience, people do respond. “They think about what they must do throughout the sermon,” he says, “and when they come forward, they mean business.”

Eat, Drink, and Make Your Mark

Working to evangelize affluent or better-educated people, many leaders have found it helpful to offer nonthreatening ways for them to respond to an invitation. Clare DeGraaf, who is also an active member of his local Christian Business Men’s Committee, describes the bimonthly luncheons of his CBMC group: “We invite non-Christian friends and business associates to be our guests. Then we have a speaker, usually another business person, give a testimony about what the Christian faith means to him. He then explains the plan of salvation and invites people to pray silently with him a prayer of commitment.

“When the speaker is finished,” DeGraaf continues, “we ask everyone to fill out a registration card recording his or her attendance. But we also ask that those who seriously prayed the prayer of commitment put an X in a box in the corner of the card. This causes them to make their decision known to others-us-but avoids any fear of public embarrassment.”

Response cards also facilitate follow-up by providing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of those who made a commitment. In DeGraaf’s CBMC group, that follow-up is done by teams of two within twenty-four hours of the luncheon.

“Business people have always been hard to evangelize,” DeGraaf says, “and it’s even harder to get them to respond to a traditional altar call. But we’ve seen this approach produce steady results.”

The same basic method has been used successfully by churches such as Church of the Savior in Wayne, Pennsylvania. “We wanted to adapt evangelism to the culture and expectations of the surrounding community,” says Bill Hogan, the founding pastor. “This is an affluent area on Philadelphia’s Main Line, and we knew people here are used to a nice meal and quality programs, yet they need the gospel just as anyone else does.

“Our strategy was to have church members host a lunch or dinner in their homes. There a speaker-a local business person, myself, or a guest speaker such as a professional athlete-would give a brief testimony and offer an invitation to follow Christ.” The plan has worked well in reaching business leaders and professionals, according to Hogan.

Stand Where You Are

At New Life Community Church of the Nazarene in Pismo Beach, California, Pastor Larry Pitcher often has people stand in response to an invitation. The approach still demands a visible action, but standing is less threatening than having to walk to the front of a full auditorium.

In addition, Pitcher sometimes follows this invitation by asking others in the same pew to gather around and pray for the people standing.

“I first did this on an Easter Sunday when I was preaching on ‘Standing Up for Jesus’ and wanted to challenge the congregation,” Pitcher says. “I got a good response, so since then I’ve used the approach at other times.” For example, on one occasion he was teaching about baptism and asked people to stand to indicate their desire to be baptized that night. Fifty-eight people stood. “We had water everywhere that night,” he adds with a chuckle.

God uses many different means to call people to himself. Just how many seems limited only by the creativity and openness of each congregation. As Mike Cocoris says, “There are a lot of different kinds of fish out there, and we need different kinds of bait to reach them.”

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

The Minister as Maestro

Fred Smith

The pastor is more conductor of an orchestra than CEO of a business.

Lately I've noticed in Christian leadership material an increasing emphasis on the pastor as chief executive officer, similar to the head of a corporation. I see a danger in this model.

One pastor recently wrote me, "Would Jesus be a CEO?"

I wonder. The church is not a business corporation and should not be managed as one. Most corporations are for profit; churches are not. The corporation manufactures and distributes products; the healthy church deals in relationships. Since the central aims of the corporation and the church are not the same, pastors taking on the role of CEO can develop a metallic, mechanical quality in their ministry. An effective executive with integrity can lead a religious organization but not necessarily pastor a church.

Any time pastors become too oriented to figures, they are failing to recognize that the Scriptures do not express Christian maturity and effectiveness in figures. Figures are the language of business, though not always the subject. Figures often make us competitive. Many Monday-morning pastors' conferences lack spiritual vitality because the talk centers too much on figures.

One soap company can take another's customers. That's the way the competitive system works. When one car company takes another's customers, the marketing executives are praised. Churches, however, aren't instructed in Scripture to proselytize one another's members but rather to grow by conversions, renewal, and new life. These come through warm relationships and spiritual power, not mathematics.

Business has legal restrictions on "collusion," but there is no scriptural limitation on pastoral cooperation.

The great pastors I have known are natural shepherds. The church leader needs a pastoring heart and can't be a "hard-nosed" executive, hiring and firing, for the church just doesn't work that way. Most church work is done by volunteers.

True, the church needs effective leadership, and the pastor can use many of the tools of good management, but a church that too closely patterns itself after successful business may have a short-term gain but a long-term loss.

Any useful model must focus on what a pastor does. And the pastor's primary responsibility is to lead people in reaching a lost world, developing maturity, and functioning in spiritual fellowship-not simply to run an efficient organization. I'd like to suggest that we exchange the CEO model for one I feel more clearly defines the role of pastor.

A New Model: Conductor

Let me offer a new model: the symphony conductor. As a corporate executive, I studied the methods of conductor George Szell of the Cleveland Symphony, with great profit. Now that I'm in contact with so many pastors, I see the conductor's role more nearly approximates the pastor's.

The conductor, like a pastor, is involved with culture, with art, with the emotional nuances-the "soft" facts of life such as love, faith, and relationships. The "hard" facts-budgets, authority, constraints, facility maintenance-require attention, but over the long term, the soft facts dominate, just as water eventually controls the rocks and the riverbank. So, too, a spiritual leader must be a person interested more in the soft facts than the hard.

Recently I was brought back to the analogy of pastor as conductor when I heard an interview on PBS with two first-chair players of the New York Philharmonic. The interviewer asked, "What makes the orchestra respect a conductor?"

"Number one," they replied, "he must have a reverence for the composer. Second, he must have intimate knowledge of the score." Those two characteristics apply directly to pastors.

Reverence for the Composer

For the church, there is only one composer: God. Symphony conductors can choose among many, but Christians ultimately have only one. As the conductor must hold the composer in utmost respect, so the pastor must constantly radiate the awe of God.

This awe for the composer is necessary before a pastor can fully understand his score, the Bible.

Recently conductor Gerard Schwarz was criticizing some young musicians who were trying to play one or two pieces of Mozart without having learned the whole repertoire. He said, "Mozart can't be known in one or two pieces."

If a pastor weakens in devotion and awe toward God, correctly interpreting the Scripture is impossible. This reverence isn't something picked up in a seminary class. It is the core of the pastor's being, an inseparable and authentic oneness. Yet this relationship is constantly at risk, for as pastors get pressured, one of the first things to go, they tell me, is their prayer and study life. They are in danger of not being God's person but rather functioning as a church person.

Knowledge of the Score

An intimate knowledge of the score is the second prerequisite for a great conductor. Intimate knowledge gives one the understanding of what the composer is saying. This requires a gift for understanding and an ability to get others to understand it.

The greatest enemy of intimately understanding the score is a separate agenda of one's own. For example, I was listening to an Easter sermon by a leader who interpreted Easter as the new beginning of his movement and the ultimate resurrection of his cause. This is not the story of Easter but was extrapolated onto the story, destroying its meaning.

Intimate knowledge requires not only a natural gift but also diligence. On a coast-to-coast flight, I sat next to the conductor of a major symphony, and during the entire time he studied one score. I realized that no conductor is endowed with a knowledge of the music; he must arrive at it by hard work.

But our knowledge of the score is not simply an end in itself. Earlier this year I gave the dedication message for a new church in Oklahoma. Afterward, a woman came to me, held my hand, and said with deep emotion, "You can't know what this has meant to me." She had brought to that meeting a problem that had been solved by something she heard. She choked up and turned and walked away, giving me one of the great compliments I think any speaker can get. Our intimate knowledge of the scriptural score must be related to people's needs.

The orchestra conductor has one advantage in that he has professional critics who tell him how well he has done. This is a two-edged sword, but pastors also need those who will tell them what their interpretation of the score has meant to them. This reflection helps pastors continually interpret better.

At a seminar for pastors, I was speaking on communication, and one participant said to me, "I explain the general principles of Scripture, but I don't do the hard thinking of then applying them one, two, three, like I should. In the future, I'm going to do that." He had decided to become more intimate with the score as it relates to his people.

Superior Conducting Ability

Other musicians have related, in print or interview, three qualities of a superior conductor that I see also apply to a good pastor.

First, the conductor must set a meaningful beat-not just a rhythmic beat but an interpretive beat. A skilled conductor sets a beat that tells the orchestra what he expects in terms of rhythm, volume, intensity, and interpretation. A church needs that same direction from its pastor.

The other day I talked with a California business executive who's active in a new church that meets in a school. I asked, "Who is your church trying to reach?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

As we talked, it became clear that the church hadn't done its homework in identifying the needs of the community or the methods most appropriate to reach that neighborhood. This key lay leader didn't know how the church planned to staff or locate or build. His church needs a clear beat from its pastor.

On the other hand, I have spoken in a church in the East that offers a ministry specifically for young families with children, and they're coming. People know exactly what that church's emphasis is. That minister sets a clear beat they can follow.

The second thing the musicians said was, "Great conductors make you play better than you can; when you get through, you're surprised at how well you played." This is the reason the same orchestra sounds different under different conductors.

When Leonard Bernstein conducts, some of the orchestra members memorize their scores so they can watch him. Why? They love Bernstein's ability to let them see him enjoy their music. They know he is a great musician who doesn't enjoy mediocre music. If he is to enjoy it, they have to make it superior. But when they see his enjoyment, it lifts them and brings out their best.

Like Bernstein, the fine pastor will let the people know when they are doing well. He demands much of them, and when they come through, he lets them share his enjoyment. That's when the best comes out of people.

In Tennessee I once met with a small group in a school with a young pastor in his first assignment. Almost immediately I knew it would be a great church because that pastor was a great leader. His enjoyment of his people's ministry to one another and to the community was obvious.

I've known pastors to take churches with low self-esteem, perhaps as a result of a split or a plant closing, and lead them to accomplish something in community service, missions, or evangelism that they never knew they had in them. God has implanted so many gifts and abilities in every congregation, but it takes a good conductor/pastor to coax them out.

The third trait given by the orchestra members was this: A great conductor anticipates and avoids mistakes even before a player makes them. Toscanini, for example, was so sensitive to individual players in the orchestra that he could keep mistakes from happening.

How did he do it? He realized a feeling precedes a fact-"a mule balks in his head before he balks with his feet." And people are the same; their acts follow their feelings. Therefore, if a conductor understands the feelings of the orchestra, any hesitance or lack of concentration can be headed off before it becomes a mistake. That was Toscanini's brilliance.

Don't let me mislead you into thinking this is a mysterious quality. It isn't. Before my father was a pastor, he was a blacksmith, and he had this ability. He'd say to me, "Fred, you're laying up for a licking." He could see my tendency was leading toward a punishable offense, and he wanted me to straighten up before he had to apply discipline. He was interpreting my attitude before it became an offensive action.

Pastors also can develop this kind of anticipation. They watch for the feelings that precede the fact. Discontent starts showing up in attitudes. Poor relationships don't happen all of a sudden. Often a conversation can shed light on that feeling before it becomes a troublesome behavior.

Ability to Build the Orchestra

A great orchestra is the result of a great conductor. The conductor must have a clear vision of what type orchestra he wants, a realistic evaluation of what kind he can have, and a strong sense of how soon it's possible. It involves knowing the members of the orchestra-what they are capable of performing-and then moving them through their "comfort zones" to the place they ought to be.

Stretching is a gradual process, and a conductor cannot plan beyond the musicians' abilities, but he must plan up to their possibilities.

Another part of building an orchestra is supplementing the current players with others of better and different talents. The place to start is with the first-chair players.

Every orchestra, no matter how small, has a first-chair player for each section-the oligarchy. The strength of any organization depends largely on the strength of its oligarchy. Jesus had Peter, James, and John. It's interesting how these men's qualities worked in synergy. Peter was aggressive-do it now. James was works oriented-get it done right. John's strength was love- let's stay together. Put those three together and you've got a good little team. Organizational theory says that to amplify your power through an organization, you choose superior-quality people to be closest to you.

Choral conductor Robert Shaw understands this principle. He loves working with amateurs because, he said, "You can light their eyes when they sing well." But he sprinkles throughout his outstanding chorale a few professional and semiprofessional singers. He knows the value of employing the skills of the gifted.

All this applies to the pastor who needs to fill the church's "first chairs." Such key leaders must be picked with three traits in mind: First, they need the requisite technical skills, the talent-they've got to be good at what they do. Second, they must fit into the harmony of the organization-they can't always play solo. And third, they've got to be able to follow the leader's direction.

A pastor once told me, "An outstanding young staff member leads one of our departments. He is exceptionally good at what he does, but he will not play on the team. What should I do with him?"

"What would you do," I asked, "if you were leading an orchestra and the drummer decided he'd beat the drum whenever he liked and as loud as he wanted? First you'd determine if musicianship were his problem. But if it were character rather than musicianship, you'd remove him. So first, I'd talk seriously to your staffer. Second, if talking didn't take care of it, I'd release him." He saw the comparison.

Most disloyalty is based in character. A first chair has to feel responsible to play in the orchestra, not dominate it, and to be the right example for those in his section.

Conductors of integrity don't pick their principal players for political reasons or for personal security. A conductor can't say, "He's awful on the French horn, but at least I can count on him to support me." That makes for sick music. Instead, the conductor challenges the best person to occupy the chair.

Good players must be given a way up. I was in one of the fastest growing churches in our country and asked the pastor, "What's your secret?"

He said, "Name me another big church where the chairman of the board is 34 years old."

"What do you mean?"

"Here," he explained, "we give young people opportunity. In most big churches, you're 60 years old before you get halfway up the ladder. The people in this church are upwardly mobile in everything they do, and they want to move up spiritually, just as they do in their social and business worlds. We're utilizing these people on the move."

Recently I read an article describing a threat to great orchestras. It was the conductor who had become a celebrity and began to itinerate rather than be a resident conductor. It takes a conductor dedicated to his orchestra, not to his own reputation, to build an orchestra that plays great music. I occasionally see pastors who are inclined to spend too much time away from their churches becoming conference or denominational celebrities. Meanwhile their churches are not becoming what they could be. This is always a temptation.

On the other hand, just yesterday I had lunch with a gifted young leader who is beginning to receive national recognition. Yet I knew he was sincere when he said, "Fred, I want to avoid this Christian celebrity syndrome. I just want to do my job, the one I'm called to do."

Selecting a Repertoire

The successful conductor knows how to balance the repertoire so the orchestra is challenged to do its best but also so the audience will enjoy the concerts.

Some conductors have failed because they wanted to force their taste on the audience without bringing them along. The audience must leave a concert thinking, I enjoyed that-there was something special in it for me. Getting that mix is important; all major segments of the audience must be taken into consideration.

In selecting repertoire, any knowledgeable conductor starts with his responsibility to the audience. The pastor has a like responsibility. The pastor's primary role is to help the congregation, not himself. It's wise to start with the people's needs, not the staff's tastes.

I'm not saying a repertoire should only coddle listeners. Some audiences need broadening. The expert conductor does this by introducing some selections the audience doesn't already know but might find interesting.

One of the Dallas radio stations has just done Wagner's Ring cycle as instrumental music-an Opera without the words-and it received tremendous response. People hadn't heard it before outside its operatic setting. It stretched the audience.

Likewise, many congregations need some stretching. A constant diet of only evangelism or social action or discipleship does not feed the whole person. When one kind of sermon is preached Sunday after Sunday, a church becomes narrow-more like a parachurch society than a church.

A good repertoire educates people and feeds their desire for tradition while establishing broader boundaries. A good conductor-or pastor-tailors the repertoire for growth and appreciation.

Operating within Financial Limitations

The conductor must operate within set financial realities. Some symphony conductors have been forced out because they spent more money than was in the budget. Even the best knowledge of music cannot save the conductor with no regard for elementary financial constraints.

Pastors operate under financial constraints, too, but the picture is muddied by an often-misused word: faith. Faith should not be used to conjure up financial strength a church doesn't have. Certainly, "The Lord will provide" what he wants to provide, but not necessarily what we want him to provide. A pastor can get trapped into a "faith position" that has little to do with faith and a lot to do with foolishness. Normally we need some reason to believe a budget will be better this year than last.

I resent the rash of "emergency" solicitations from various organizations that tell me if I don't give, the Lord's work is going under immediately. In the first place, I don't believe it. In the second, if that is true, then they have done a poor job of leadership.

In Dallas, for example, because of the difficult economic climate, businesses are finding budget growth difficult. Survival has become a worthy goal for many enterprises.

A preacher who pushes through an unrealistic budget or fails to stay within budget abuses rather than uses faith.

Looking to the Future

A great conductor also has a mind geared toward the constant development of future patrons and players. To put this mindset in business terms, wise leaders expand the market rather than just divide what now exists.

Recently I was speaking to a booksellers' convention and challenged them to expand the market rather than divide it. For example, we know that most bookstore customers are women. What a difference it would make if men became the customers that women are! That's the challenge of genuine growth.

Stock brokers have encouraged small investors to enter the market, and so the market has expanded.

Once I was a director of a company making eyeglasses when it was unusual for anyone to have more than one pair. Then they found a way to bring fashion to eyewear, and now people purchase several pairs.

Market expansion is a necessity in the symphony business-and in the church. Remember how Leonard Bernstein got on television on Saturday mornings to present youth programs, explaining the use of the instruments? He enlarged the market. Now symphonies show up in malls and parks and school auditoriums to build their potential audience.

One of the sad churches I know is one where the pastor has lost his appeal to young people, and so the church is fast becoming an old folks' home. The obituary column will decrease any audience that isn't expanding.

One of the big changes in churches in the last couple of decades is that more parents are following children to church rather than children following parents. These days, parents are so happy to have kids who will go to church that they'll accommodate themselves to what the children want. I hear all the time: "Our kids love it here with all their school friends; that's why we're at this church."

Pastors who are thriving have, like Bernstein, invested themselves in opening new markets for the message of the church. They're saying to themselves, How can we touch people who never hear us now?

I know of two churches that hold additional services on Saturday evening for those who cannot attend on Sunday. This is expanding the market. Many singles groups are meeting in restaurants and theaters to reach those who would be uncomfortable in church. This is taking the music to the mall.

Directing the Rehearsal

Rehearsal, for any orchestra, is terribly important. You can't have an excellent orchestra without adequate rehearsal time.

To me, any time the pastor meets with staff or lay leaders, it corresponds to the rehearsal. The quality of these meetings in large part determines the caliber of ministry in the church. Here are three aspects of good rehearsals that apply equally well to leadership meetings:

First, a rehearsal is best when the orchestra practices specifically. A good orchestra doesn't practice pieces; it concentrates on the next concert. The well-prepared conductor works them through the pieces the group will need to know immediately.

During the Second World War, when vast numbers of people needed quick training in technical fields, we found one basic truth: People learn only what they're going to use immediately. When we were teaching women to weld for the first time, we had to impart just one part of the skill at a time and let them use it right then.

After speaking for forty years, I'm still amazed that people pick up from a speech only what applies to a current situation. Teachers listen for things they can teach; preachers listen for what they will preach; lay people listen for things they can use on Monday.

A second necessity for a good rehearsal is a time limit. That puts urgency into what we do. It also cuts down on the tendency to spend too much time on minor details.

Once I joined the board of a Christian organization that customarily held two-day meetings simply because the officers didn't prepare for a shorter one. We cut the meetings to half a day-and got better attendance and more done.

Finally, rehearsals should maintain an environment of responsibility and dignity, giving a sense that what we're doing is worthwhile. People want to be involved in something that's important. Leadership meetings are the place to reinforce that. This is not the place to air personal feelings about the shortcomings of the audience.

Likewise, these sessions ought to be more than simple business meetings with a brief Scripture reading and a perfunctory prayer serving as spiritual bookends. The leader's job is to provide a sense of the grandeur of the task and the presence of God.

Peter Drucker, perhaps the best thinker on organizational behavior, once said to a group of ministers, "Remember, the task is the reward."

I've never heard it said better-for ministers or maestros.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

WHAT I LEARNED FROM MORDECAI HAM

Mark Coppenger

Ever since I heard TV’s Jim Rockford call a mobster’s henchman a “pet squirrel,” I’ve had a hard time shaking the expression. Headed to seminary, I wondered whether I might one day become some congregation’s pet squirrel. Now, four years into my first pastorate, the threat still seems genuine.

Throughout seminary, in books, and from conferences to conversations, I’ve been cautioned to go easy-that boldness and bluntness are imprudent, or immoral. There’s always pressure to lighten up.

If darling Missy wants to marry a thrice-divorced avowed bisexual, then the pastor should comply, since to turn his back on their union would mean that he “isn’t loving” and “couldn’t minister to them later.” The furor raised if he doesn’t would underscore the maxims that “You have to be careful not to get too far out in front of your troops, or they’ll mistake you for the enemy and start shooting” and “You can’t lead them if you no longer work there.” You know the words.

Which brings me to Mordecai Ham.

I’d always heard of him as the preacher to whose invitation Billy Graham walked the aisle. I figured him to be a rawboned, disheveled original-what with a name like Mordecai-whose only claim to fame was Graham’s response to his preaching. But what did I know?

Rugged revivalist

In the midst of my study of Arkansas Baptist revivals, I found that Ham had captured the imagination of two of our state’s major cities in 1933. He was conventional and sleek in appearance and gifted in communicating to professionals. Under his preaching during the first fifty years of this century, hundreds of thousands made fresh commitments to Christ.

But a pet squirrel he was not. The accounts of Ham’s boldness remind me that I represent a shocking Lord, and woe to me if I restrict myself to the salons of diplomacy.

When Ham emerged as an evangelist from Kentucky at the turn of the century, he had a background in business and the study of law. From the start, his approach was zealous and blunt. He disdained the common practice of passing the afternoons swapping yarns with the local saints at revival sites. Instead, he insisted that he be taken to the worst sinners in the community.

One hid in a field, but Ham tracked him to a corn shock. The old fellow, a notorious infidel, anxiously asked the revivalist his intentions. Ham said that he was going to ask God to kill him. When the man protested, Ham observed that that shouldn’t bother him since he didn’t believe in God. But if there were one, then death would be appropriate for one who’d poisoned his family’s spiritual prospects.

The lost man begged Ham not to pray that, so Ham relented and volunteered to pray instead for his salvation. At the final meeting in that town, Ham baptized the man and his family.

Talk about buttonholing! But God honored it. And I feel not the least superior to Ham for my more refined tendencies.

Hostility to Ham

Delicacy consistently gave way to urgency in Ham’s approach. He was fond of saying that God didn’t get battleship material from rose gardens, that God’s true servants had to be put through the fire. And he was no stranger to fire. His life was threatened, and his reputation was under constant attack. Modernists called him a moron. The liquor interest sent court stenographers to his meetings in an attempt to catch him in an ill-chosen phrase. People almost tarred and feathered him in San Benito, Texas, in 1918, but the mayor called for nearby troops to intervene. On another day, a hog and ram were skinned for a mock funeral in honor of Mordecai and his song leader, William Ramsey.

Let’s be fair. Ham did go out of his way to provoke the liquor crowd. He’d load a banner-decorated trolley with kids, run this “gospel car” past saloons, and have his folks sing, “If you only loved your children more, you wouldn’t drink your rum.”

With the demise of trolleys, he organized “gospel parades,” with signs, singers, and up to two thousand cars. Several times he rented an old, horse-drawn hearse and prominently displayed a skeleton in it. As the hearse passed a tavern and the patrons emerged for a look, a hidden announcer broadcast, “Boys, once I had a big time too, but look where I am now. You’ll be joining me soon; better get right with God.”

Caustic Christianity

In a typical series of meetings, sometimes lasting for months at one site, Ham defined sin, named the spiritual foes, showed Jesus’ trial to be a legal travesty, explored the afterlife, exalted faith and renewal, condemned the age, analyzed our predicament, shamed the slack, explained deliverance, demanded discipleship, and offered the love of God.

One Texan was so struck by the fact that God could and would save him, even though he’d killed four men, that he jumped to his feet during a 1910 sermon and shouted, “Saved! Saved! Saved!” Jack Scofield, the musician for that revival, was so taken by this joyful declaration that he penned the popular hymn by that title the next afternoon.

Ham didn’t shrink from caustic expression. He spoke of “modernistic rot” and marveled that “a man who could talk so much like an ass” should express surprise that Balaam’s ass talked like a man. He castigated lodge “worship” and warned that members would find only a “silent god” in their hour of spiritual need. He scolded folks for wanting the minister to say nice things at loved ones’ funerals, even if he had to lie.

Current wisdom holds that this talk is counterproductive. This may be true, but Ham’s record offers evidence of astounding productivity. To the critics who claimed that he used a sledgehammer to pound church members, Ham retorted that every time he knocked a “halfway Christian” out of the doorway, he got a sinner in. These halfway folks, he explained, “hold onto the church with one hand while they play with the toys of this world with the other.” In one sense, Ham had no use for these folks. But in a deeper sense, he devoted his life to their correction.

A stimulant, not a model

I asked my seminary preaching prof if he had ever heard Ham. Yes, he had, down in Texas. He said it was a sweaty performance with handkerchief in full use.

I’m not particularly troubled by this, for though I do not myself match the style, it seems to me that impassioned speech and gesture are appropriate for life-or-death matters. I recall the bluegrass performances of Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe and their bands. The incongruity of flying fingers and deadpan faces was fun to watch. But it seems to me there’s also an incongruity in the studious delivery of soul-upheaving words. Ham had no place for such incongruity in the pulpit.

Ham was a pastor for a time at Oklahoma City’s First Baptist Church, but he’s not exactly a pastor’s model. It’s one thing to blaze prophetically through a town and another to abide for years as Christ’s vicar, from hospital bedside to pulpit to marriage retreat.

But the gap is not so great as many suppose. And a pastor without a fair measure of Ham’s candor and flame is no model of Christ for his people.

When Disney rereleased Song of the South in the seventies, I went to the theater in happy anticipation of the pleasure I’d found when I first saw it. But bless the old film’s heart, it didn’t age well. I winced at the racial stereotypes and Anglo arrogance woven into the Uncle Remus story.

Well, some of Ham’s material is also pretty embarrassing today. Three weeks into his 1933 Little Rock meeting, he spun out a conspiracy theory involving international collusion of string pullers and banking interests intent upon the demoralization and subsequent overthrow of governments and institutions tolerant to Christianity. And his response to the presidential candidacy of Roman Catholic Al Smith was ill-tempered and careless.

To me, Ham is not so much a hero as a stimulant and, from time to time, an indictment. Perhaps it’s better to savor than to imitate him. But in his model of single-minded zeal, I find a strong antidote to the temptation to become innocuous and even gratifying to a world unseemly to God. It’s clear that God blessed his ministry. And it’s equally clear that we can learn from it.

-Mark Coppenger

First Baptist Church

El Dorado, Arkansas

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

The Mind Alive

Earl Palmer

Reading can stimulate growth, but only if we find the time, the right material, and a way to remember it.

Human head as a set of puzzles on the wooden background

I remember my senior-class dinner at Princeton Seminary. The speaker was George Buttrick, pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He challenged our class of future pastors in two directions.

First, he urged us to be with the people, to be listeners in the marketplace in order to understand what people are thinking and feeling. His second counsel seemed to contradict the first: "When you are at Coney Island, don't tell the people of the concessions on the boardwalk, about which they know; tell them of the mystery of the sea, about which they do not know."

He went on: "Don't read only what your people are reading. Read what your people are not reading."

Buttrick was impressing upon us the importance of having a mind that is alive. As well as: being physically well and spiritually committed, we need to be intellectually growing if we're to be effective Christians in the world. We need to learn the mystery of the sea if we're to explain that mystery to others or understand it ourselves.

There are various ways to keep our minds alive, but I think Buttrick was right to emphasize reading. The desire to read raises three questions, however. First, how can I find time to read about the mystery of the sea when I have so many important responsibilities among the concessions? Second, when I've found the time, what should I read? Third, if I do read, how do I remember what I read? Let me reflect on my experiences with these three problems.

The Gift of Time

Each of us has been given the gift of time and the privilege of organizing it. None of us has more time than any other.

This gift has its snares, of course, especially to those who aren't self-starters or who allow the hours of the week to become a jumble of low-quality segments. This means the first challenge confronting the person who wants to study and read seriously is to have a clear philosophy of the week.

For my life as a pastor, the key to having quality time for my family, for spiritual formation, for reading, for ministry to people, for writing, and for recreation is to have a rhythm in each week. This means first of all that I think primarily in terms of seven-day periods rather than years, months, or days. It is no mistake that the seven-day week is the most basic biblical yardstick for life measurement. "Six days thou shalt work, and one day thou shalt rest": thus is a rhythmic week ordered in the Fourth Commandment.

My goal, then, is to divide each week into a rhythm of work, rest, worship, and play: of work with people and work alone; of worship with the community of faith and worship alone; of discussion and reflection. I can take in stride high-intensity demands if there is also built into my life the opportunity for an easing up of demand. It's also true that I'm able to enjoy rest if time allotted to rest follows real work. I'm talking about a rhythm that includes fast/slow, many/few, rich/lean, exterior/interior.

I divide my week into two major parts: In the first part I place Sunday morning through Wednesday evening, which are for the large-group meetings and worship services, counseling, small-group study meetings and teaching sessions, and administration and staff obligations. Thursday and Friday are days for study, reflection, writing, and reading. Friday evening through Saturday evening is family recreation time-a time for total change of pace.

My study goal each week is to complete by Thursday noon the sermon for the coming Sunday. When this is achieved, Thursday afternoon and Friday are available for long-term study for future sermons, and also for reading and writing. I find that if the immediate teaching and preaching preparation is not completed by Thursday, that unfinished task threatens Friday and Saturday.

My week is intense at the beginning and eases toward the end. Both halves are of a better quality, it seems to me, when there is such a rhythm.

Choosing What to Read

Having scheduled the time and made it rhythmic, however we choose the segments, now the question is: What shall I read? The rhythm principle applies here, too. I want to read intensively and also extensively; light and heavy; prose and poetry; theologically and geologically.

My first intensive reading challenge is the main book of my life, the Bible. This means having access to the original-language texts and major translations of the Bible now available. It means a working library of historical background and technical books: books by J. Jeremias and F. F. Bruce on New Testament history; by Bruce Metzger on the New Testament text; theological dictionaries of the Old and New Testaments; the Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew lexicon; and so on. I purchase exegetical and theological commentaries on a book-by-book basis.

To keep myself intellectually involved in theological dialogue, I have pursued two reading goals. First, selected heavyweight theological books, for which I've found two ways in: through the front door or by the window-that is, from the first page onward or through its topical, biblical reference index. Both are valid entrances. Often I find that the window route has coaxed me into reading the whole book.

A second way to keep engaged with current theological discussion is through journals and magazines. I read one set of journals faithfully: Christianity Today, Christian Century, Sojourners, Wittenburg Door, Radix, Theology Today. There's another set of scholarly journals I try to catch up on each time I visit a seminary library.

Another kind of reading has also been rewarding. There are several authors with whom I have developed a special sort of friendship (they do not know me, but I know them). I am trying to read all they have written. They aren't masters of my mind, because I don't always agree with what they write; they're more like companions who especially challenge me and encourage my pilgrimage as a Christian. They are my mentors. I feel I understand how they think and how they approach the serious questions. I not only read these writers, but I also reread them-the real test of a book.

Still other books I need because they open up implications of faith I must pursue. I'm thinking of books on the world family, economics, politics, and psychology; books that demonstrate communication skills; books on the arts and music; books on Christian apologetics.

Each of us also has special interests, and our reading should accompany us into these. Since my college days as a political science student, for example, I have been vitally interested in political issues, so I subscribe to Foreign Affairs and The Christian Science Monitor.

How to Remember

Now comes the tough third question: How can I ever keep track of what I read and remember what needs to be remembered?

For me the answer begins with the way I see the study task of my ministry. Is the pastor a collector, an assembler of the conclusions of others, or is the pastor a scholar who studies toward the goal of creative contribution?

The second model is the harder but by far the more rewarding. All my reading is a vital part of the total research task that goes into a sermon or a teaching assignment. My goal as a teacher and preacher is to present the results of original hard work on the text. Since this is so, holding on to the discoveries from reading is essential.

My method is not complicated. I have found that to remember what I've read, I must read carefully and, therefore, slowly. I take notes in the book or on a separate page, or I make coded marks in the margins of the book. I don't skim or speed-read important books. At the ends of chapters, I ask myself to recount from memory the major arguments of the chapter.

When I've found an unusually impressive book, I offer a small-group seminar on it. This is another way to study a book creatively, as well as to see it through the eyes of other people.

A book is a friend, and it is best remembered when we have respect for it. When I quote from authors in a sermon, my approach is to quote few but long. This means allowing the quotation to speak from its own setting; it means reading enough so the author is really heard and not used simply to focus on what I'm saying. This approach involves more work for me homiletically in establishing the context for the quotation, but it also has the benefit of encouraging listeners to read that author for themselves.

Describing the Mystery of the Sea

As a pastor, I stand in a long and good tradition of learning and of concern for truth. Books have their unique part to play in this lifelong obedience to truth. Electronic media, TV, and films play an increasingly influential part in human communication, but when it comes to the image building of that greatest of all collectors of dreams and ideas-the human mind-there is still nothing to match a book read aloud.

In The Silver Chair, C. S. Lewis described Jill's encounter with the lion Aslan: "The voice was not like a man's. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way." No TV set is able to capture the vast features of that golden lion quite so wonderfully as the human imagination set in motion by the words of a book.

The Book and books make it possible for us to describe the mystery of the sea.

Adapted by permission of InterVarsity Press from The 24-Hour Christian, c 1987 by Earl Palmer

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

LEADERSHIP BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robert Boyd Munger

Spiritual vitality describes Bob Munger, and these are some of the books that fed his faith. Now chaplain to the faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary, he has spent over half a century in ministry and sending others into the ministry. His booklet My Heart, Christ’s Home has become a devotional classic.

Knowing God by J. I. Packer, InterVarsity, 1973

This book provides an excellent introduction to the biblical truth needed to anchor a vital faith. It approaches theology from the aspect of knowing God, not just knowing about God.

I find it good devotional reading, but it has also been particularly good as a book to recommend to students ready to take on a deeper understanding of faith. They have rated it well.

Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, Moody, 1984

This one’s a classic for a reason. I find it so practical. Obviously Bunyan had suffered spiritually and personally, and he was able to shed light on all kinds of problems.

One example is the dungeon in which Pilgrim finds himself beaten by doubts and hopelessness. I’ve been there! But both of us have the key: trust. I return to this book time and again.

Basic Christianity by John R. W. Stott, Eerdmans, 1957

I never fail to be helped by anything Stott writes, and this early book is one of his best. It gave me such a rational, biblical orientation to the knowledge of Christ. I have often given away this book to people seeking answers.

Other books by Stott, such as The Cross of Christ (Intervarsity, 1986) and The Sermon on the Mount (Intervarsity, 1987), are also gems. In one field after another, Stott feeds me with his insight.

The Christbook by Frederick Dale Brunner, Word, 1987

I worked through this commentary on the first twelve chapters of Matthew a few pages at a time for nearly six months. It is a rich book-detailed, full of the wonder and power and proper glory of Jesus Christ. Brunner brings a full range of theology from Augustine to the present. Had this Christocentric book been available earlier in my ministry, I would have preached out of it often.

Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, Macmillan, 1982

What list could be complete without Lewis? Although Mere Christianity and his other writings have greatly influenced me, right after World War II I was intrigued by how in Screwtape Letters Lewis handled the subject of Satan with such biblical insight and human sensitivity. This book opened to me the wealth of material available from this masterful composer of the English language.

Confession: The Road to Forgiveness by Andrew Murray Whitaker, 1983

Over the years, I keep discovering books by Andrew Murray that speak to my heart. This one about Psalm 51 tells of joy after confession. This isn’t a superficial book. He speaks of complete brokenness that sees sin as God does. But he also writes of forgiveness so complete that it’s as though the sin never happened. His insights help me keep faith lively in spite of my shortcomings.

The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, Harper & Row, 1978

I like to teach from this book because it takes me beyond where I am. As I learn from Foster, he helps me use what I am learning. He covers the broad field of devotional life in this deepest, widest, and best-written guide of our time.

The Word Became Flesh by E. Stanley Jones, Abingdon, 1979

In 1954 in Meramon, South India, I sat under palm branches in a dry creekbed with fifty thousand others hearing E. Stanley Jones preach. Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, was there but a little wary of Jones’s reputation. But he told me, “I had to climb down off my judgmental throne when every morning I realized he was reading his Bible from 4:30 to 6:30.”

This is one of the best available devotional books. His grasp of the subject and its application challenges me to get up and do something.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

LIFE-SHAPING BOOKS

Earl Palmer

If I were to choose the most influential books in my intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage, after the Bible, my list would look like this:

Blaise Pascal, Pensees. Here is the sheer thrill of a mind alive to the relevance of Jesus Christ.

John Calvin, Institutes. His impressive grasp of the large outline of the gospel’s meaning makes Calvin exciting.

Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans. As fresh and electric today as in the sixteenth century.

Karl Barth. Begin with Dogmatics in Outline. I deeply appreciate his boldness and serious intention to hear and obey the biblical text. He is the theologian’s theologian.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Begin with Cost of Discipleship. He called out to me to decide once and for all about what matters most in my life.

C. S. Lewis. Begin with The Chronicles of Narnia. I owe so much to C. S. Lewis, especially the wonderful mixture of the surprise and goodness of God.

G. K. Chesterton. Begin with The Everlasting Man and Orthodoxy. I love his humor and ability to stir up my imagination.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. How can anyone miss out on the adventures of Frodo and Sam Gamgee?

Helmut Thielicke. Begin with How the World Began. I learned about clearness in preaching from Thielicke.

Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. These Russian writers have stirred me emotionally and spiritually more than all other novelists.

T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Robert Frost. These poets have given me a deep respect for words.

Mark Twain and Robert Benchley for their rich humor and insight into personality.

Paul Tournier for his psychological wisdom and evenhandedness. Try to find his book Secrets.

The greatest novel I ever read is either Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov, both by Dostoyevsky. The most impressive recent novels are Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

The most helpful book about the Christian faith has been Karl Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline.

The most persuasive case for the Christian life was C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters.

The most impressive biographies have been Karl Barth, by Eberhard Busch, and William Borden, by Mrs. Howard Taylor.

-Earl Palmer

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

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