Pastors

Growing Edge

Lyle Schaller wrote in The Change Agent: “Anyone seriously interested in planned social change would be well advised to recognize two facts of life. First, despite the claims of many, relatively little is known about how to achieve predictable change. Second, much of what is known will not work.”

That was 27 years ago. He’s still at it—quixotically tilting the windmill of change, and obviously enjoying it, too, in his latest book, Discontinuity and Hope: Radical Change and the Path to the Future (Abingdon, 1999).

Society, history, and church life have changed, not in a predictable, orderly, continuous way, but in rapid, disconcerting, discontinuous ways—more like a quantum leap than a logical next step.

That’s the discontinuity from the title. The church leader averse to change will see this discontinuity as a tidal wave crashing over the church and long for the good old days of simplicity and predictability.

Schaller, on the other hand, experienced enough to be a crusty curmudgeon of yesteryear, instead grabs his surfboard, yells to the rest of us “surf’s up!” and paddles out for the ride of his life on the mammoth wave of change. His knowledge of the wave is encyclopedic, his relish for it contagious, and his analysis optimistic. That’s the hope.

Shall we Schaller?

In a style absolutely characteristic of himself, Schaller writes a book of meticulous, long lists, with branching sublists, and sublists of the sublists. Maybe the book should be delivered poster-style as an elaborate outline—a tree on its side, with limbs and branches, each with bulleted points like clusters of fruit.

One could never accuse Schaller of not being thorough. Where many experts could devise six, eight, even ten characteristics of some phenomenon, Schaller would consider himself an underachiever with any fewer than 44. This causes a labored read, at times clogging the flow of ideas rather than enhancing it. This is not an elegant work to read avidly; rather, it’s a practical, insightful work to read systematically. It’s more a resource work than a piece of literature.

But it should be read!

What’s in those lists?

Schaller argues that “while there was considerable continuity in American Christianity between 1800 and 1960, the past four decades of Christianity in America have been marked by an unprecedented degree of discontinuity.” He cites churches’ current openness to divorced and remarried clergy, the way television has influenced worship, the erosion of longstanding institutional loyalties, and competition among the churches. Then Schaller provides a list of seven secular phenomena that are affecting churches, such things as regions becoming more significant than neighborhoods, and large-scale operations eclipsing small-scale. Next come 18 consequences of a new generation taking over, followed by seven stealth discontinuities that may have been overlooked.

Schaller concludes by looking at change through the eyes of various constituencies, such as ministers, parishioners, denominations, and seminaries. By the time you finish the book, you are swimming in a sea of changing tides, and, depending on how you view change, either as exhilarated as Schaller is or as stressed as I am.

Schaller nuggets

My great delight in Schaller comes from the little nuggets he scatters like birdseed. I remain amazed at how he gathers such an abundant supply of facts and figures, ideas and analyses. He is always worth reading. Here’s just a minor store of the good seed Schaller dispenses:

  • On church cooperation: “Intercongregational cooperation in member-oriented ministries and programs (worship, teaching, evangelism, spiritual formation, etc.) is not compatible with numerical growth” (p. 41).
  • On the churches most at risk: “Congregations near the top of the endangered ecclesiastical species list are the churches averaging 85 to 200 at worship” (p. 66).
  • On how to advertise better: Use a consumer-oriented approach that “usually begins with a question in big bold type … (such as) ‘Need help raising your children?'” (p. 90).
  • On people groupings: “The greater the degree of heterogeneity in the larger group, the more likely that individuals will seek to be part of a relatively homogeneous subgroup that serves as a comfortable stability zone.” (p. 95).
  • On becoming adult: ” … in 1940, 60 percent of employed adolescents worked in traditional workplaces alongside adults who taught them both work and social skills. … By 1980 that proportion had dropped to 14 percent” (p. 124).
  • On memorial services: “By 2005 the number of people who come to the church for the memorial service may be a tiny fraction of those who watch it via the Internet or on their home television screen” (p. 158).
  • On which churches will have “an edge” in this increasingly competitive ecclesiastical environment: clearly those churches that proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ with certainty” (p. 190).
  • On how much land to buy for a church: “About three times what the most optimistic person on the committee recommended” (p. 125).

In the introduction, Schaller gives potential readers of his book a list of six choices in dealing with discontinuity: (1) to dispute Schaller’s facts, (2) to redefine the consequences, (3) to grow gloomy over it, (4) to see discontinuity as a sign of hope and reconfigure ministry to match it (obviously Schaller’s recommendation), (5) to buy and not read this book, and (6) to merely borrow a copy (which Schaller discourages, for some reason).

I could add a seventh choice: to read only this review and not the book. But that would be a shame, for going more than a year or so without a new Schaller book makes one’s ministry rather listless.

—James D. Berkley is a LEADERSHIP contributing editor and senior associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church 1717 Bellevue Way NE Bellevue WA 98004 jberkley@fpcbellevue.org

The New Tongues

Schaller on interpreting the language of therapy.

By far the most significant consequence in denominational circles of the emergence of the therapeutic society has been the change in the frame of reference and the language. An increasing array of divisive issues, ranging from world missions to abortion to ethnic separation to gender to evangelism to ministries with teenagers to the pedagogical approach of theological schools, are being discussed in therapeutic language rather than New Testament language. Scripture, doctrine, and tradition provide the frame of reference and the language for one side in these discussions, while the other side approaches the issue with a therapeutic frame of reference and language.

If one side presented their arguments in Russian and the other in Portuguese, that would make it easier to recognize (a) the existence of a problem in communication and (b) why the general public tends to ignore the whole debate.

The tendency for many congregations to become bilingual as some leaders rely on the therapeutic language while others prefer the New Testament language is one more reason why it is more difficult to be a parish pastor today than it was in the 1950s (pp. 154-155).

—Lyle Schaller in Discontinuity and Hope

• AquaChurch: Essential Leadership Arts for Piloting Your Church into Today’s Fluid Culture by Leonard Sweet (Group, 1999)

Big Idea: In the sequel to Soul Tsunami, Sweet takes to the high seas to school church leaders in the skills necessary to survive and thrive. Moving from modernity to postmodernism launches the contemporary church on a sea of uncharted waters. Sailing metaphors offer navigational “arts” to chart the course. Sweet says focus on Christ, center in Scripture, take risks, cast vision, commit to teamwork, and communicate.

Some of his “arts” are less obvious. Leaders must learn to understand tradition, use music wisely, remember the importance of rest, and develop prayerful intuition. One great contribution is his case for using the Internet in advancing the church. The exercises with each chapter are also helpful.

Quote: “Postmodern spirituality, as well as intellectual and artistic endeavors, must come to terms with popular culture. To a culture where ‘any place can be a church, any song a prayer, and any person a priest’ (as one Gen-Xer put it), popular culture becomes even more important as spirituality is self-assembled” (p. 80).

Best Chapter: “Scanning the Horizon” makes the case for the necessity of change. Comprehensive and compelling, I was hooked for the rest of the book!

Buy If: you need skills for postmodern ministry and a better view of the vital role of the Internet in church life.

• High Expectations: The Remarkable Secret for Keeping People in Your Church by Thom S. Rainer (Broadman & Holman, 1999)

Big Idea: People will live up to your expectations of them. Rainer gives a traditional view of church growth, but with a twist. Conventional wisdom says increase the flow of people from the culture into the church. Rainer says grow by closing the back door. He relies on solid research, not theories or programs that work in but a few churches. Bottom line: require more from new members and be intentional about it. The higher the expectation, the more likely they are to stay.

This book offers a fresh take on old strategies: track visitors, begin a new members’ class, develop a strong Sunday school, stay true to your mission. Rainer interviewed many church leaders to prove that demanding churches are more effective. I intend to share this widely among my staff and lay leadership.

Best Chapter: “Lessons from the High Expectation Church” gives 14 insights on moving to greater effectiveness. Rainer sums up his survey of 287 churches by reporting the commonalities in their preaching, teaching, evangelism, and assimilation.

Quote: “The typical church in America today has ‘dumbed down’ the meaning of membership to a point where membership means nothing. The phrase ‘inactive members’ is often used as if it were taken from the pages of Scripture. But in reality the only inactive members we see in the history of the New Testament fellowship are Ananias and Sapphira as they are carried out feet first (see Acts 5:1-11)” (p. 49).

Buy If: your church—especially your Sunday school team—needs help reaching and keeping people.

• Ancient-Future Faith: Lessons from the Early Church for a Postmodern World by Robert Webber (Baker, 1999)

Big Idea: If Sweet’s vehicle to postmodern insight is a ship, Webber’s is a time machine. With an obvious love for writings of the church fathers, Webber weaves the ideals of classical Christianity with postmodern thought. The radical, countercultural faith of the early church is relevant to our age. Webber’s comparison covers Christ, the Church, worship, spirituality, missions and authority. The book is not without the potential for controversy. His thoughts on the authority of Scripture require careful reading. Consider thoughtfully even if you cannot agree with them all. Webber’s convictions about the parallels between ancient and future practices of the faith are worth consideration.

Best Chapter: “A Classical/Postmodern Mission” traces key concepts of both education and evangelism throughout history and applies them to our postmodern culture.

Quote: “In postmodern Christianity the authority of the Bible will be restored, not by more rational arguments, but by returning it to its rightful place in the development of the entire spectrum of Christian thought in the first six centuries of the church and by learning to read it canonically once again.”

Buy If: you enjoy thinking “outside the lines.”

—Ross Lokken Calvary Baptist Church 736 West Islay Street Santa Barbara CA 93101 calvary@silcom.com

To order books reviewed in LEADERSHIP, call 1-800-266-5766, dept. 1250.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Foundations Glorious Foolishness

Mark Labberton

Every preacher knows the moment. The music has faded, the congregation is seated and becoming still, the text has been read, the prayer finished, and the amen uttered. Then, for a brief moment, the preacher in silence looks into the faces of the congregation, as they return the gaze. The avalanche of words, which will tumble from pulpit to pew, has yet to begin.

In that sacred, compressed, expectant, momentary silence are many things, and not least this hope: that what is about to occur, especially if the sermon is a good one, will be foolishness from start to finish.

This is what I mean.

The fool’s foundation

Good preaching is foolishness (1 Cor. 1:21) first because of its conviction that God exists. The preacher’s foolish passion describes and depicts that before we human beings dance or weep, construct or deconstruct, self-actualize or empower, will or suffer, God is.

Little could be more audacious in a postmodern world than to assume, as the biblical preacher must, that the universe is not empty and meaningless, that reality is not our own making, that we are not free agents of self-will, and that our language does not constitute the universe.

Without such conviction, and even more, without such divine reality behind it, the preacher should never enter the pulpit. For unless God is, the preacher—well, forget the preacher.

The biblical premise for reality is named in Scripture’s fourth word: “In the beginning God … ” Change that fourth word to biochemistry, to power, to language, to culture, to spirituality, to economics, to sexuality, to intentions, to feelings, or simply eliminate God entirely, and there would be no word to speak to anyone, for there would be no world. In humble confidence, the biblical preacher shatters that pre-sermon silence with a pronouncement of Good News, the Word by which all those present live, move, and have their being.

When the congregation faces the preacher in that momentary silence, they long to know whether their lives truly matter. Bad preaching leaves the impression that the answer is “yes” because the preacher makes it so. Foolish preaching affirms that the answer is “yes” because God has made us so.

We come to worship as human meaning makers. As the preacher and the congregation carry on their daily lives, we discover and craft explanations. We assemble perceptions and construct paradigms. This meaning making is primary, and distinctly human work.

But the anxious longing in our world is whether human meaning is all we have. Is life just us? Contemporary western culture declares that human meaning making is and can be only about us. For, the argument goes, whoever and whatever we are as human beings, that’s all we’ve got.

If preaching can only be about us, the congregation instinctively knows it would be better served by silence than by speech. What we long for, however, is the assurance that somewhere there is much more beyond our meaning making. We know what we make of our lives. The question is whether there is something or Someone who makes anything of us.

What better definition of bad preaching is there than “preaching that occurs when all that is present are human words framing human perceptions.” Foolish preaching, on the other hand, occurs when what is primarily present is the Word, albeit embodied in human language. Such biblical preaching operates under the foolish assertion that human meaning making is never original but only derivative, and that when it occurs wisely it actually reflects God’s signature before it ever bears our own.

So when the preacher dares to speak into the lives of those whose hearts are full or breaking, whose spirits are lifted or dashed, whose minds are at peace or in turmoil, what matters most is the reality of God who sees, knows, and loves them. Foolish preaching speaks because God is.

If revelation is revelation, then the sermon need not die a death of a thousand qualifications

Foolish, fruiful listening

Good preaching is foolishness second because of its conviction that God speaks. The biblical preacher’s first and primary work then must be to listen to God.

Scripture portrays God as the grand orator, whose very being desires self-revelation, whose majesty and imagination speak creation into existence, whose power and creativity are borne through the visible testimony of the natural world, whose love and commitment are proclaimed in the promises of the Covenant, whose mercy and longing are heard in the Exodus, whose perseverance and care are witnessed in the wilderness, whose redeeming love is heard in the law and the prophets.

As significant as all this has been, God speaks most clearly in and through the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, now present in the Holy Spirit. Here is the one Word the world must hear and by it be saved. To this one true, saving Word, all Scripture, by the power of the Spirit, speaks its witness. No wonder the preacher must first listen.

Bad preaching is mere talk without the fruitfulness of such listening. This explains why preaching never ultimately rises or falls based on technique per se, whatever its elegance and sophistication or its awkwardness and naivete. A crude sign may be harder to read, but what matters is whether it reliably points towards a true destination. The foolish preacher who listens will still, at best, be only a crude sign. What matters is the reality, the Word, to and by which the preacher testifies.

The foolish preacher speaks only because first God is and because God first speaks. Preachers are messengers of the Word Who is from beyond them, Who has been spoken to them, and Who they now pray will speak through them. The wonder of such preaching is that God shows up and actually does speak, even as God has spoken.

Saying all this does not promote the indefensible position that the preacher is merely an empty vessel through which the Word and Spirit are poured out to the congregation. That would be not only historically and culturally blind, but also contradictory to the approach of an incarnational God.

It is the particularities of the preacher that embody the incarnate proclamation so that equally particular people can hear, understand, and embody that Word.

The multi-layered worlds in which preachers and congregations live their lives are always, always, always intrinsic to the pastor’s hearing and proclamation, just as they must be to the hearing and speech of the congregation as well. The Word made flesh speaks into these realities, but in doing so does not become their captive.

Through a semi-clear window

Good preaching is foolishness third because of its conviction that God can be known, if through a glass darkly.

Both preacher and sermon must be shaped by two inextricable realities: revelation makes knowing God possible, but revelation means such knowing of God will be partial. The preacher therefore seeks to share all that can be known about God while acknowledging that God cannot be known wholly nor purely.

The foolish preacher exhibits passionate but humble confidence, boldness mixed with understatement, assurance tinged with agnosticism.

The overly fundamentalist implies or states that the glass is utterly transparent. The overly liberal implies or states that the glass is utterly opaque. The apostle Paul affirms neither is the nature of the case. He says instead, “God can be known. And, God can be known only through a glass darkly now, in contrast to when we will see and know him face to face.” This means that the foolish preacher dares to “preach it!” in the confidence that God exists, speaks, and can be known in Jesus Christ.

If revelation is revelation, then the sermon need not die a death of a thousand qualifications. Revelation has done its work, and therefore, it is possible to see and to know in part what we could not otherwise even have guessed! This delivers the preacher from being merely politic about the life of faith or the nature of God’s love. These are not imaginings but realities revealed!

They are put in the take-home basket of our lives each week and on them pastor and congregation are to be fed and sustained. This Good News has been tested, tried, and found to be the Bread of Life here and there, now and then.

Alongside this, the foolishness of biblical preaching points to God, not to human doctrine as the final touchstone. While the glass makes it possible to make passionate affirmations about the God it reveals, the preacher is nevertheless alert to and not surprised by the darkness of the glass.

Fool’s gold

Good preaching is foolishness fourth because of its conviction that God speaks through preachers. The biblical warrant for this conviction is that God has consistently voiced the Word through human beings whose hearts, minds, souls, and strength are agents of such communication. Scripture is replete with such examples.

In fact, one way some have defined Scripture is God preaching through those witnesses.

Few Sundays pass in which I do not find myself struck dumb by the momentary silence before the sermon. As I look into the faces before me, I am stunned by the foolishness of what I am about to do—again!

All that we have been doing in worship has been shaped by previous moments like this, and what we have now come to hope for is the foolishness of the Gospel. In the foolish trust that because God is, because God speaks, because it is possible to know God, and because God can use preaching, I will stand to preach.

Mark Labberton is pastor of First Presbyterian Church 2407 Dana St. Berkeley CA 94704 MarkL@fpcberkeley.org

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Unsolved Mysteries

Richard P. Hansen

Carl Sandburg captured well the human condition: “There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.”

That’s a paradox. Seemingly contradictory statements that are nonetheless true. Recently paradox has become more important in preaching.

A new worship attender came to see me. A believer, she vulnerably shared some of the mud in which she was currently mired. Then she blurted out: “I got so frustrated at the church I used to attend. Everything was five easy steps! I need to hear something more than pat answers.”

I am finding more and more people recognize that a steady diet of “how to” preaching has left them spiritually anemic.

What’s the alternative?

For those who aren’t helped by “three easy steps,” a better alternative is to preach the power of paradox.

Paradox is the wild territory within which most ministers live and work. We see unseen things. We conquer by yielding. We find rest under a yoke. We reign by serving. We are made great by becoming small. We are exalted when we are humble. We become wise by being fools for Christ’s sake. We are made free by becoming bondservants. We gain strength when we are weak. We triumph through defeat. We find victory by glorying in our infirmities. We live by dying.

With the passage of time, most preachers clear land, build a homestead, and try to tame this paradoxical wilderness.

We are told that we’re vendors in a spiritual street market clogged with competitors. People pause only a moment before strolling on to the next booth, so we’ve got to grab them with snappy “How to … ” titles. People are looking for answers to make a difference in their lives … yesterday. So we preachers must hit felt needs quickly, cut to the chase, offer “spiritual principles” and “practical handles” that plug directly into people’s pragmatic expectations.

Is any attention still being paid to Baron Von Hugel’s observation: “The deeper we get into reality, the more numerous will be the questions we cannot answer”?

Addressing the person who asks, “How will Christianity improve my life?” C.S. Lewis replies: “Frankly, I find it hard to sympathize with this state of mind. One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.

“Foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christianity is not a patent medicine. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.”

Raising questions that might not have easy answers—leaving the security of the homestead to venture deeper into life’s wilderness, beyond the sight lines of reason into the mystery of God—would seem to be the kiss of death to attracting customers.

What preacher in his or her right mind would raise thorny questions when people already have too many burrs under their saddles?

And yet, when pat answers no longer satisfy, paradox, paradoxically, can reach the depths of the soul.

What to do with paradox?

C.S. Lewis goes on to distinguish two kinds of readers. One reader receives from books, while a second does things with books. Of the second reader’s misguided motives, Lewis writes: “We are so busy doing things with the work that we give it too little chance to work on us. Thus increasingly we meet only ourselves.”

When pat answers no longer satisfy, paradox, paradoxically, can reach the depths of the soul

This is the contemporary preacher’s temptation. We are so busy doing things with Scripture (especially things that address the need of the moment) that Scripture has little chance to do its work in us. We come to Scripture faithfully and genuinely, yet increasingly meet not God, but only satisfy our current want.

What about the truths of Scripture that do not come in easily digestible spoon-size bites? What about truths that need to be gnawed on? We find it hard to do things with paradox. Yet paradox is often a window into the deeper mystery of God.

Enlightenment rationalism was no friend of paradox, but postmodern appetite for mystery is insatiable. People pound away at computer terminals all day, visit their aroma therapist to unwind on the way home, and then read The Celestine Prophecy by candlelight.

Do we realize that we Christians sit atop the motherlode of all mystery? A God who is Wholly Other yet graciously reveals Himself to human beings in Jesus Christ is the unsurpassed mystery of the universe!

How are we inviting contemporary people to touch this Mystery, even as we present God as the answer to their felt needs?

Exploring the wild territories of paradox helps us see God less as our personalized AAA map for life (with hazards highlighted), and more as the purpose of the journey.

Tramping through these regions, I’ve identified three distinct types of biblical paradox that open doors to the mystery of God.

Paradox reframes the issue

Ever notice Jesus’ preaching does not have the point by point “fill in the blanks” directness so popular today? Jesus was often intentionally paradoxical.

His open-ended sermons sent listeners away scratching their heads, with dangling loose ends for them to tie together. (How long would most modern preachers last if our key leaders regularly asked, as Jesus’ disciples did, “Tell us, what were you trying to say this morning?”)

Jesus’ use of paradox shakes us by the shoulders to see familiar things from a fresh perspective. This type of paradox, like a good picture frame, doesn’t call attention to itself, but focuses attention on the magnificence of the painting.

When Jesus says “Those who save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for my sake will save them,” our attention is quickly drawn away from the paradox per se, because it reframes all that we have ever thought about hedging our bets, playing it safe, being conservative—in short, “saving” our lives.

We look through this new window where losing becomes saving. What “saving” behaviors might be hindering my spiritual growth? What do I need to lose for Jesus’ sake?

Such use of paradox prods us to ask questions of ourselves. It reveals and yet hides, asserts yet invites reflection.

“The last shall be first, and the first last” not only asserts a truth, but prompts me to ask: am I thinking and acting in ways that make me “first” or “last?”

If we try too hard to explain it, such paradox loses its heuristic value. Snappy applications (“Go home this week and … “) are insufficient when dealing with Jesus’ use of paradox, which is transforming largely because it works below the waterline.

Framing paradox can be preached effectively through story—not story illustrations hung like coathangers on a deductive outline, but a story comprising the bulk of the sermon. Narrative sermons move preaching away from analysis to experience.

Stories draw us in. We suspend judgment and are more open to change. We move from detached observers to involved participant. The story creates a role for us and we try it on for size.

Especially when left open-ended, as many of Jesus’ stories were, narrative sermons offer the opportunity for listeners to put themselves in the story and create their “own” ending. Rather than sitting back to evaluate the preacher’s truth, listeners discover truth for themselves.

In a sermon addressing the paradox of faith and works, I created a sermon-length story about a woman on a hijacked airplane who must decide whether to identify herself as a Christian when passengers are told all non-Christians are free to leave. Tension builds as the terrorists move toward her seat, forcing each passenger into a bizarre rite of denial by spitting on a picture of Jesus before being allowed to exit to safety.

In her mind, the debate continues—how much action/effort/commitment does faith demand?—until the hijacker finally arrives to shove the saliva-pocked face of Jesus in front of her and bark, “What about you?”

Quietly, I asked the congregation, “What about me? What about you?” and sat down. Each was forced to confront the cost of faith and add his own ending.

Paradox that harmonizes

Consider a tuning fork. It delivers a true pitch by two tines vibrating together. Muffle either side, even a little, and the note disappears. Neither tine individually produces the sweet, pure note. Only when both tines vibrate is the correct pitch heard.

Like a tuning fork, harmonious paradoxes declare their truth when two sides of the paradox vibrate in unison. This requires care and honesty. Unlike the tuning fork, which is forged by highly controlled mechanical processes, the paradoxes of Scripture must be forged by the words of highly subjective preachers. Yet despite our biases toward one tine or the other, neither side of the paradox should be muffled, even a little.

Paradox beckons us into Mystery, and offers a wholesome reminder that God is infinitely greater than our ideas about God

The paradox of divine sovereignty/human responsibility offers an excellent example of finely tuned tension. Is my salvation God’s election, or my free response to the gospel message? Does God’s choice of me negate my choice of God? Can two choices (mine and God’s) exist without one inevitably determining the other?

Job and his friends do not face the sovereignty/responsibility tension as an abstract theological debate, but as a painful flesh-and-blood dilemma. Job has lost everything. Who is responsible: Job or God? How can Job accept that God is both all-powerful and perfectly good? Is God transcendently aloof from Job’s pain or somehow personally involved?

Job keeps both tines vibrating: God is both transcendently all-powerful and personally involved. In fact, refusing to mute one tine is what allows Job to argue with God. Who could argue with the impassive God of the Deists?

Ultimately Job realizes no simple solution is possible. The paradox opens the door to a mysterious and unsearchable God. “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 41:3).

Yet living in this paradox has clarified for Job whether his faith is in God, or in what he knows about God. In the end, it is significant that Job cries out, not “I understand” but “I repent” (Job 41:6).

Something similar happened to a woman in our church who tragically lost her middle-aged husband. She began the grief process questioning many of the timeless truths she thought she knew about God. Over time, these questions were not so much answered as shown to be side issues.

Like Job, she realized that her faith could ultimately rest only in God, not in understanding God. Mystery reveals, even as it obscures. She came to know God better when she acquiesced to God’s mystery.

Something similar happened to Job. At the end of his wrestling with God, Job admits God is unfathomable but also (paradoxically) indicates that he now knows God better than he did before: “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (Job 41:5).

Intellectual debate or Job-like personal circumstances can devastate believers who have never explored the wilderness beyond easy, five-step answers. Regular exposure to paradox challenges Christians early on to exchange faith about God for faith in God, a God who is trustworthy even if often inscrutable.

What a relief to realize that both tines of the tuning fork are necessary for the admittedly elusive note of truth to be heard!

The two-headed monster on Sesame Street uses exactly this strategy to teach children phonetic pronunciations. One head of the monster says “C … “; the other, ” … AR.” Each head pronounces its syllable with ever-shortening time intervals until the two sounds meld together into a new word: “C … … AR,” “C … AR,” “CAR!”

Sermons using this method follow an inductive path: first showing the inadequacy of either side of the paradox by itself, then heralding the new note they create when held in tension with each other.

For example, in a sermon on God being perfectly just yet also perfectly loving, I bounced listeners’ attention back and forth between the two sides of Mr. Beaver’s description of Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia: “he isn’t safe … but he’s good.”

Like “C … AR,” judgment and love melded together by the end of the sermon in a way people may not have heard in the beginning.

Paradox that’s two-handled

While the tension of the harmonious paradox draws opposites together to complement one another, a third type of paradox, the “two-handled paradox,” consistently pushes the poles apart.

G.K. Chesterton saw that orthodoxy must exalt extremes: “It has kept them side by side like two strong colors, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colors which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray.”

I often watched my grandfather dig post holes on his farm with an old-fashioned auger. Turning the giant corkscrew, the farmer needed both strength and balance to push on one handle while pulling on the other. Under his practiced hands, every push/pull half turn caused the auger to bite deeper into the hard Nebraska soil.

Nothing is more useless than a one-handled auger! Maximum effect is achieved when you position your hands at the very ends of the handles. Slide your hands toward the middle, and the auger becomes proportionately less effective.

Likewise, we do ourselves no favor by whittling down opposing extremes of a two-handled paradox—for example, God’s transcendence and immanence, separate from the world yet actively engaged in the world. The transcendent but uninvolved clock- maker God of the eighteenth-century Deists, and the New Ager’s immanent, pantheistic God swallowed up within the natural world, both grasp only one handle.

Christian history’s greatest heresies whittled down the handles of paradox: God not fully three or completely one, Jesus Christ not fully divine or completely human. In both the Trinity and Incarnation, theology’s danger has forever been the coalescence of opposites into a dirty gray.

How might the black and white of the two-handled paradox be proclaimed in all its stark clarity, leading us with awe and silence into the presence of the divine mystery? Both sides of the paradox must be maintained in all their contrary distinctiveness. No pink must intrude into the crisp red on white of St. George’s cross.

Different facets of one side of the paradox are counterbalanced by opposing facets of the other side.

Each pull on one handle is balanced by a push on the other. The shifting back and forth adds movement and retains interest.

One approach I have used is a “Paul Harvey” strategy. The first half of the sermon argues only one side of the paradox. Astute listeners begin to wonder: “This isn’t right. What about the other side?” Then “the rest of the story” presents the opposite in equal detail.

I have also used imaginary characters to represent opposite handles of a paradox, taking on different personas for contrary positions.

For instance, in one sermon I played two roles endorsing the opposing views “Jesus is human” and “Jesus is God.” The two characters began their conversation side by side, then I gradually took steps apart as it became increasingly apparent that, for the whole truth to be heard, each position must maintain its distinctive identity.

As I presented evidence for each viewpoint, they gradually separated until I was shuttling 15 feet back and forth across the chancel as I played each role.

Bigger than we imagine

In a pragmatic age, persistent in finding the quickest route to whatever works, we preachers find little to do with paradox. And yet, like unusual stones found in the bottom of a prospector’s pan, we keep discovering biblical paradoxes, rolling them over in our palms, pondering their secrets.

Paradox beckons us into Mystery, and offers a wholesome reminder that God is infinitely greater than our ideas about God.

Richard P. Hansen is pastor of First Presbyterian Church 215 N. Locust Visalia CA 93291

Types of Paradox

Reframing Harmonious Two-Handled
Visual
Symbol		 Picture frame: “reframes”
reality as we look at it		 Tuning fork: both tines vibrating
together create a new note		 Auger: performs best when
hands are far apart on
opposite handles
Characteristic
Tension		 Startles us, but ultimately
dissolves		 Pushes polarities together Keeps polarities apart
Representative
Examples		 Faith vs. works
Judge vs. judge not
(e.g. Mt. 13:24ff)
Great reversals
(e.g. Mk. 9:35; Mt. 20:1-16,
25:29)		 Eternal Life: present possession
vs. future inheritance
Predestination vs. free will		 Jesus: God yet human
God: transcendent yet
immanent
God: three yet one
Humanity: sinful yet in
God’s image
Opens the
door to:		 Mysteries of life in God’s
kingdom		 Mysteries of relationships:
God’s actions and purposes		 Mysteries of Being:
God’s and ours
Strategies for
preaching		 Narratives/stories
Playfulness
Let listeners connect the dots		 Unravel “double binds”
Back and forth vibration
(“C … AR”)		 Emphasize contrasts
between opposite sides
Risks to Avoid trying too hard to make
listeners “get it”		 Emphasizing one pole over
the other upsets their
delicate balance		 Allowing black and white
to coalesce into “dirty gray”

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Conversations

Behind the Curtain

Subj: Leadership cartoon Date: 99-10-19 16:24:28 EDT From: rsuggs56@yahoo.com (Rob Suggs) To: kmiller@ChristianityToday.com (Kevin Miller)

Try to pretend I haven’t forsaken cartooning for as long as it took Jacob to earn a wife. Be casual. Don’t make any sudden moves. I’ll try not to go skittering back into the forest. This took courage on my part, a life-or-death grappling with my fear of rejection. For five long years I labored over this caption, fine-tuning it, straining for months on a single adverbial clause. It had to be perfect; it had to be no less than the greatest LEADERSHIP cartoon ever published.

I spent months closeted away, with my wife leaving a cup of water and a single slice of diet bread by the door. I missed my child’s bar mitzvah (okay, I made that part up). Demons raged over my tormented soul as I fought delirium. Only The Caption mattered. The Caption. The Caption.

Day, night, seasons—these things had no meaning for me. Like Michelangelo, like Edison, like Bob Tilton before me, I had to do what no man dared do before. Now I have emerged. Here is my … my masterpiece. The single gag I was placed on this earth to create.

What do you think? Does this sound like LEADERSHIP material? [Caption seen on this page was attached.]

Take your time. I’m almost certain not to do anything drastic should rejection rear its ugly head.

From: Kevin Miller To: Rob Suggs

I’ve forwarded your cartoon idea to Marshall Shelley, who’s now handling those responsibilities.

From: Rob Suggs To: Kevin Miller

I sit awaiting the verdict of the Master of Ministerial Merriment. I stare at the starry sky. I hear each tick of the clock, an existential self-contained unit of time, dividing the moments leading to personal exhilaration and cosmic oneness—or to despair, to the annihilation of hope itself. Whatever happens, please feel no personal responsibility.

Bleakly, Rob

From: Marshall Shelley To: Rob Suggs

I couldn’t tell from your e-mail, but I assume you’re willing to draw the cartoon as well as write the caption. If so, send it; we’ll consider it. Glad you’re back in the game.

From: Rob Suggs To: Marshall Shelley

Marshall, my very good FRIEND. Let me say this. I’m not going to cry. No, I’m … wait a minute. Sorry. I said I wasn’t going to do this. (Sniff. Throat-clear.)

Thank you. Yes, I will draw it as well, with the last of my waning strength. I’m now only the remains of a once chubby and lively man, having given my life to the writing of that caption. At 73 pounds, between intravenous feedings, I summoned the strength to write the words. Soon I’ll be in physical therapy to gain the strength to actually draw the cartoon. And I have to show the nurses I can be trusted with a sharp pencil, but I’m sure that will be okay. They’re even talking about wheeling me out into the fresh air this weekend!

It will be a fine cartoon, I promise. My style is very exciting now, since I have no control at all of my drawing hand.

By the way, I’m enclosing my right ear as an attachment.

—The artist formerly known as Rob Suggs

Subj: The White Bird Flies at Midnight To: Marshall Shelley

Hope you caught the coded subject title. You never know when the CIA is reading your e-mail. Don’t make eye contact. Just listen. The White Bird flew by next-day air—singing a TOON. Nests in Carol Stream early morning. If anyone asks, this conversation never happened, got that? Now walk away. Slowly.

—The Inkman

“I first crossed paths with today’s special guest speaker when I happened upon his domain, www.brother-neds-nuggets.com. I noticed how many common ministry links he shared with my page, www.pastor-melvin-friend-of-the-broken-hearted.com. I hyper-linked his site, he hyper-linked mine, and we’re chums forever!”

To: Rob Suggs From: Marshall Shelley

Sorry, Rob. It doesn’t quite work. I’m afraid we’re not able to publish it.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

The Church Bizarre

Dane Aaker

Even though I was raised in a pastor’s family and went to seminary to train for the ministry, I had no idea what I was in for when I became a senior pastor 13 years ago.

I entered the ministry believing God was going to use me to change the world. Soon I discovered how hard it is just to change the wallpaper in the nursery. I’m still glad God called me to be a pastor, but to keep your equilibrium and enthusiasm in ministry, I offer four reality checks.

Overwhelmed? You’re normal

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed; pastoring is not the same as running a business. On top of the standard problems that come with running any organization, consider the added pressures a pastor faces:

The confusion of revolving hats. In ministry, you constantly have to switch from acting as chief executive officer to acting as a chaplain. One moment you’re an authority figure enforcing church policies, and the next moment you’re a counselor offering prayer and comfort. Sometimes you have to wear both hats with one individual.

During my third year of ministry, one board member was the wife of the church’s former pastor. He was retired, but they were both very involved. The church was in conflict at the time and headed for a split. Lily (not her real name) announced during a board meeting that her husband, the esteemed former pastor, thought it was time for me to leave.

“If he were in your position, he would resign,” she said.

The next day I found myself driving to the hospital to pray for this man and his wife before he went into surgery. Here I was, praying for God to have mercy on the very person who thought I should resign as his pastor! The ministry is full of such paradoxes; loving and leading are inextricably mixed together.

The stress of working with a board. Despite the current talk about the importance of team ministry and how rewarding it is to share decision-making with lay people, I still don’t skip off to board meetings singing “Zip-a-Dee Do-Dah.”

Bill Hybels compares this type of group effort to serving in the military: “I’ve read books about the phenomenal leadership exploits of military commanders such as Napoleon, De Gaulle, Eisenhower, and Patton. Not to minimize their capabilities or the courage that it takes to charge a hill in a time of battle, but I’ve read those stories, and I’ve wondered what it would be like for those leaders to have to work with deacons before they charged up a hill. I wonder how well those leaders would do if they had to subject their plans to a vote involving the very people they’re going to lead up the hill before they lead them.”

It’s tough to get every major decision approved by a group of opinionated lay people. You may have ten years of experience at your church, and yet one person who joined the church a year ago may cast the deciding vote to scuttle your goals. And I have to work through only one board; some pastors have to pass ideas through multiple boards and committees. My sympathies!

The shock of the unexpected. Standard procedures often don’t apply to “real world” ministry. For example, what manual covers these true situations?

  • During testimony time, a lay person takes the microphone, puts his arm around you, and vehemently declares, “I want you all to know, our pastor is not a queer. He’s not a queer! He’s not a queer!”
  • A drunk homeless man wanders up to the front of the sanctuary during Sunday morning worship, then turns around to direct the congregation in singing “Let the Walls Fall Down.”
  • You perform a wedding ceremony, but you accidentally sign the marriage license using your academic title instead of your religious title. When the license is returned to you, you call a relative of the couple to let her know there’s been a mistake but you’ll correct the license and mail it ASAP. She tells you the couple has already split up, and that you should just throw the license away.

One of the frustrating things about being a pastor is never knowing for sure whether people are growing

Bizarre problems pop up with maddening regularity in the ministry.

I often go to sleep thinking, Am I the only sane person here? Am I sane?

Again, as Hybels explains, “The redeeming and rebuilding of human lives is exceedingly more complex and difficult than building widgets or delivering predictable services. Every life in a church requires a custom mold. You don’t stop the line at a factory every time a product comes down. In church work, when you’re dealing with individual, custom-made lives, you stop the line for every life.”

The elusive bottom line. The bottom line in business is dollars and cents. The bottom line in ministry is faith. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” So, naturally, if we want to please God as pastors, our people should be growing in faith.

But it’s not so easy to know whether people’s faith in God is increasing or decreasing. How do you tell if your church is helping people draw closer to God? If they smile? If they clap? If they close their eyes? If they tithe? If they take notes during your sermon?

One of the frustrations of pastoring is never knowing for sure whether people are growing. Yet, as with most areas in ministry, we must trust God for those things we cannot know.

Pedestals are precarious

Don’t get too comfortable when you’re on top of someone’s popularity list; descent is imminent. As Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church, puts it: “One minute you’re a hero; the next minute you’re a zero.”

When the Flatteries (a fictitious name for a very real breed of churchgoer) came to our church, they showered me with encouragement: “We love you, Pastor. You’re so much better than our old pastor.” (New recruits, take note: Never take comfort in being wonderfully compared to all those Horrible Previous Pastors [HPP]. Instead think, Red alert! Red alert! Your turn as an HPP is coming.)

After a year, the Flatteries weren’t so fond of me. The warm-fuzzy distribution center quickly retooled into a faultfinding factory. The Flatteries didn’t like how I served Communion. They took offense at the way people dressed and wanted me to enforce a dress code to make church more respectable.

Their rallying cry was “the holiness of God.” I was lowering the standard, and they felt their calling was to save the church from becoming the next center of Baal worship. Their parting gift to me was A. W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy.

As a pastor you are bombarded with demoralizing criticism and intoxicating praise. Work to stay grounded.

Keep the Big Picture focused

Many people in the church operate like special-interest groups; they have one passion that consumes all their time and, in some cases, their tithe. They view the church—and the pastor—as a vehicle to promote their cause.

A pro-life advocate pressures you to get people in your church to serve as phone counselors. A prison-ministry volunteer wants you to get people to visit lonely inmates. Someone else wants you at a city council meeting to voice your support for Bible clubs on high-school campuses.

All are admirable causes, but it’s impossible for a pastor to give full attention to every good cause while managing his own church’s ministries.

As a pastor, you have to get used to disappointing people. Some may accuse you of not fulfilling your biblical duty, and some may even leave the church because you wouldn’t champion their cause.

The constant pressure I face to involve my church in worthy Christian enterprises reinforces my own feelings of inadequacy. Am I doing everything God wants me to do? Am I letting him down when I don’t get behind all these great ministries?

The truth is, God’s will is for you to accept your limitations, stay true to the overall mission of your congregation, and keep doing what’s best for your whole flock.

God is at work

Just when I’m convinced that I’m not the right pastor for my church, God reminds me that he has a reason for keeping me here.

God’s latest reminder came when I took my car to a local repair shop. Doug, the owner, started coming to church about a year ago. I was thrilled to gain a new member—and a Christian mechanic to boot.

I described my car’s symptoms and handed my keys to Doug, but I could tell something other than carburetors was on his mind. Before I knew it, he was wiping away tears with his grease-stained hands.

“I want you to know how much last Sunday’s service meant to me,” he said. “I’ve been going through a lot lately, and my life hasn’t been right with God. I just want to thank you for that service. I will never be the same again.”

His words soaked into me like water on parched earth. It had been a long time since anyone had gone beyond polite compliments to indicate that I had influenced his life.

God may not use us to change the world in the ways we dreamed in seminary, but he can (and will) use us to draw people closer to himself. And that’s well worth the heartaches and craziness of ministry.

Dane Aaker is pastor of Colton First Baptist Church P.O. Box 787 Colton CA 92324-0800

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Reflections on the Journal 1980-2000

Paul Robbins

The January 1980 launch of LEADERSHIP brings back vivid memories. Even though we felt we had done our research homework to create a useful pastoral resource, there were no guarantees of success.

In fact, one highly respected, nationally known Christian leader told me in plain language, “Robbie, the last thing pastors have time to do these days is read another magazine!” He was right, of course, but, with the help of a lot of great contributors, we worked to create more than “another magazine.”

Twenty years later, our readers continue to affirm the value of the original concept—that the journal must be (1) pro pastor, (2) practical, (3) people centered, and (4) fun.

What am I thinking about now? Well, a few days ago, I found myself unusually moved when reading that, somewhere in Sarajevo, Bosnia, a war-wracked place, a baby had been born that raised the global population to 6 billion. That’s twice as many people as were alive in 1960. As I pondered this, I realized my pastoral instincts were on alert in two different, opposite ways.

First, I had a sense of being overwhelmed, a sensation common to pastors. Twice as many people, even if most of them live in some distant land, far from my parish, boggles my attempts at comprehension. Does this mean twice as much pain, twice as many hungry children, twice as much pollution, twice as much sin, twice as many unsolvable problems?

On a personal, pastoral level, does this mean twice as much responsibility, twice as much travail, twice as much work?

The Master’s mandate doesn’t say or imply that we must work more, or harder, but rather pray more

But then I found myself thinking even more about a second sensation. Doesn’t this mean twice as much opportunity? Twice as much outreach! Could it be, at this moment in time, that I’m privileged beyond belief as compared to pastor/mentors of 30 years ago, godly persons who had half the ministry opportunities I now have?

In The Message, Eugene Peterson translates Luke 10:1-2 this way: “Later the Master selected seventy and sent them ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he intended to go. He gave them this charge: ‘What a huge harvest! And how few the harvest hands. So on your knees, ask the God of the Harvest to send harvest hands.'”

In light of the Sarajevo birth, would it be appropriate to ask, “Has a huge harvest become a twice-as-big harvest?” Does the Master’s mandate require a twice-as-big response?

I suspect so, and there’s every reason to believe that this harvest is remarkably ripe.

Recently I read Emerging Trends, a newsletter published by Princeton Religion Research Center (affiliated with Gallup International), which stated that “a remarkable two in three teens (67%) say they feel the need in their lives to experience spiritual growth.” An interesting statistic in the midst of an unprecedented amount of teenage violence, like the tragedy at Columbine High School.

It goes on to report that “an even higher percentage (82%) of adults, 18 and older, express the desire to experience spiritual growth in their lives … a sharp increase over 1994 when the percentage was 58%”—fascinating, in light of all the talk about today’s moral deterioration.

What might all this mean?

First, in my opinion, there has never been a time in church history when the call to pastor was more relevant and more necessary. Pastors remain the spiritual vanguard for the Kingdom of God. There is no higher calling.

Second, as Luke 10 states, the harvest hands are few, and in many areas the number is shrinking. “Make disciples of all nations” has never been a more urgent challenge.

Third, the Master’s mandate doesn’t say or imply that we must work more, or harder, but rather pray more—perhaps twice as much—that the Lord of the harvest will raise up harvest hands.

This is a mandate pastors should grasp better than anyone else, a mandate we must embrace. Pastors fervently praying for more pastors. Pastors seeking out potential pastors, engaging potential pastors, encouraging potential pastors, discipling potential pastors, assisting potential pastors. Think of the exponential possibilities!

Hopefully, I’ll still be around when LEADERSHIP reaches its 25th anniversary. Wouldn’t it be great to gather around our pages once again and celebrate the answers to your prayers and mine about the twice-as-many harvest hands in the ripe fields of ministry opportunity? Together, let’s pray.

Paul Robbins is chief operating officer of Christianity Today International. 465 Gundersen Dr. Carol Stream IL 60188

“The tough part of preaching is to get people past you to God, and God past you to the people.”

—Haddon Robinson, 1980

“An overbearing desire to be successful inhibits attainment of true community and true success.”

—Eugene Peterson, 1981

“My father used to say there are two problems that face the older preacher: repetition and digression.”

—Gardner Taylor, 1981

“Spiritual formation takes place when you let your insecurity lead you closer to the Lord.”

—Henri Nouwen, 1982

“Sometimes I pray, ‘Lord, if you want to embarrass me—if my looking foolish would bring glory to yourself, just do it.'”

—Bill Hybels, 1985

Leadership voices

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Ministry Staff

Kenna Sapp

I was new to the church and so was my position. For the first time in its 14-year history, this 3,000-member congregation had called someone to concentrate on adult programing.

At first, it seemed that they needed not a minister but a “fairy godmother.”

During the interview process, I discovered there was no consensus on my responsibilities. The senior pastor wanted me to develop small groups. The personnel committee and church administrator wanted me to guide adult education and to strengthen existing ministries while also developing new programs. The congregation was looking for someone, anyone, to develop ministries they felt had been neglected.

As I began to meet the members, one-by-one they would say, “You know what we really need around here is ______,” filling the blank with a new ministry. They wanted ministries to couples and parents, men and women, support groups, leisure activities, you name it. Everyone had his own idea of what the church needed most, but few offered to help. Even with a magic wand, I could not implement all that.

Knowing I couldn’t do it all, I labeled a file folder “wish list.” Each time someone advocated a new ministry, I filed the person’s name, the date, and the idea. Tracking their interests helped me.

Over the next six months, I noticed a pattern. Several women independently expressed the same desire: a day designed to minister to women. One persistent lady pushed me. “Kenna, what’s it going to take to get this off the ground?”

“We need a chairperson,” I replied. “Will you promise to pray about this need?” She paused. I thought that would end the discussion. I was wrong.

Two weeks later she called me back. “I feel so strongly about this,” she said, “that I’ll chair the event!”

“Great!” I said, looking into my folder. “I have a list of six ladies we can pull together for a task force to explore the idea further.”

That was in September. By January we were hosting our first women’s conference for 350. Five years later we had more than 800 attenders and 200 volunteers!

What’s God saying to them?

For years I’ve attended seminars on mobilizing the laity to do ministry. What I’ve found is that we professionals rarely put theory into practice. We recruit lay people to maintain our ministries rather than waiting on God to birth his ideas into his people.

As leaders we are to prepare and equip God’s people for the works of service that God has planned, according to Ephesians 2:10 and 4:11-12. Preparing happens in many ways:

Talk about their wish lists

I engage people in discussions about their ideas. By moderating brainstorming sessions, I help them think creatively and find common ground for nurturing similar ideas.

As a leader, I think of myself as a matchmaker. Helping people connect with one another is particularly important in congregations with multiple worship services where people don’t know one another.

Frequent, casual, one-on-one conversations are also great opportunities to establish expectations for lay-initiated ministry. I administer small doses over a long period of time!

Talk about needs, not programs

When asking for help from laity, it’s better to discuss ministry needs than the merits of programs. For instance, I ask people to assist a short-term task force to “find ways to minister to the needs of young parents.” I don’t ask them to start a specific program. This leaves room for many ministries to spring forth from one need. It also says that, as a minister, I value their input and really consider them part of the team.

Equipping, on the other hand, comes primarily through preaching and teaching.

Teach the church

Periodic preaching on the church as the body of Christ is vital for grounding lay ministry in Scripture. We regularly instruct the congregation on the biblical design for ministry: staff are to be equippers and the members to be workers.

Our church also has two courses that teach the importance of lay ministry. One is the new members class. The other is a study of spiritual gifts and gift-based ministry. I’ve found that people often want to be involved in ministry, but they’re intimidated because they don’t think they’re qualified. When members discover their spiritual gifts, they find they have something to contribute.

Teach the staff

One of our secretaries told me she thought I was “a good delegater.” I think she meant lazy. After she took these classes, she realized I was being intentional about involving laity because of what the Bible said. Both sides, staff and laity, need to understand their roles.

These patterns of preaching and teaching must be perpetual. A church can’t have a seasonal emphasis on lay ministry and expect to develop a thriving base. Leaders must create a constant climate where lay ministry is cultivated and celebrated.

Make the matches

Sometimes new ministries are slow to start because the people who would be passionate about them are mismatched to a maintenance ministry. That’s why it’s important to give people permission to say no. Freed from a ministry misfit, they will be more likely to develop the ministries for which they are truly gifted.

Yes, it usually takes longer for lay-initiated ministries to develop, but they are more effective and easier to perpetuate.

Learning to wait

If I had walked into this church and said, “I think we need to start a women’s conference,” we would have had the same 30 ladies who attend everything else show up on a Saturday morning for coffee, donuts, and a devotional talk. I don’t discount such groups, but it does show the contrast between a “me-size” idea in my time and a “God-size” idea in his time!

Not every new idea will come to fruition as quickly as our women’s conference. Our church tried for several years to start a support group for people caring for their aged parents. A few people showed up, but the efforts fizzled out.

We were puzzled because we knew many members could benefit from such a group. We either had the wrong leader, the wrong agenda, or the wrong time.

Sometimes we have a God idea, but we haven’t waited on God’s timing. We need to help people realize that a present failure may simply mean wait.

Several months ago the caregivers support group finally took off. What made the difference? God called together the right people for the right purpose in the right season.

The ministry of the wish list isn’t magic, but it is mystical. The mystery is how wonderfully God works through his church when the people are willing to work and the ministers are willing to wait.

—Kenna Sapp is minister of adult discipleship at Christ United Methodist Church 6101 Grelot Road Mobile AL 36609

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

The Great Delivery Debate

Jerry Andrews, Paul Atwater, and Rich Knight

3 preachers duke it out over the age-old question, “Manuscript, notes, or nothing?”

Church sermon text from New Testament on wooden pulpit with stained glass window in background

Performing Without a Net

Why I practice the discipline of paper-free preaching Jerry Andrews

No manuscript. No outline. No notes. These guidelines have made me a better preacher.

I wasn't always a paperless preacher. In seminary, I was trained to prepare manuscripts, conditioned to believe that writing out my sermon would help me think more clearly.

My first pastorate shook me. It was a rural church in western Pennsylvania; most of the people were farmers. Fresh out of school, I was eager to share the fruit of my two master's degrees. Within six months, it became painfully obvious that the congregation didn't care for my polished, scholarly manuscripts. I failed to connect.

I consciously began reducing my manuscript to an outline, my outline to a page of notes, my page of notes to a three-by-five card, and my three-by-five card to nothing. The process took nine months, but once I was manuscript-free, it was much easier to engage my people.

Today, I still believe paperless preaching is the best way to nurture that weekly conversation between the preacher, the congregation, and their God. Here's why.

I want to preach, not read.

The pulpit is made for preaching; the lectern for reading. When I am in the pulpit, I need to preach, not read. Preaching is urgent. It is God's Word spoken to my congregation. I want to look people in the eye and change their hearts by reforming their minds. That's less likely to happen if I'm reading to them.

Certainly, an argument can be made for writing out a manuscript and then memorizing it, but I don't know many preachers who can actually do that. What they typically do is write out a manuscript that helps them think through their sermon more clearly. By the time they step into the pulpit, they've abandoned the manuscript because they've now mastered the material. The difference between that approach and mine is that they spend extra time writing a manuscript. I don't.

I want to learn, not cram.

Preparing a manuscript eats up a lot of time that could be better spent prayerfully interacting with the subject. The words of my seminary professor are not lost on me: "One hour in preparation for every minute of preaching." Usually this is considered impractical because it is often understood as "one hour this week for every minute this Sunday." If so, it is poor counsel.

Better to understand it as "much learning before some teaching," or "much knowing before any proclamation." If I have not read, reflected upon, and wrestled with the holiness of God for at least 20 hours, I am not ready to proclaim it publicly for 20 minutes. But I need not do it all the previous week.

Studying only in the week prior to preaching is like cramming, and cramming is the surest way to misspend lots of learning time with the least long-term results. Next week I'll have forgotten what I crammed for this week and be in the same predicament each week for the remainder of my ministry.

However, if I spend those hours reading and reflecting, I'll be in a stronger position each week cumulatively for the long haul. Just as important, if I try to learn most of my subject in just one week, I have no time to test it, relate it, apply it, enjoy it, only enough time to uncritically repeat it out loud. My congregation deserves better.

With the scriptural text as your outline, you become necessarily more dependent on it.

Note-taking is overrated.

If I can't remember what I earlier thought I knew well enough to declare, then I am unprepared. Period. No notes can save me from that. If I know what I am preaching, then I do not need notes.

People ask me if I find myself forgetting points or rambling into tangents as I preach without notes. The answer, of course, is yes.

At my first church, the congregation thrived on the idea that I would deliver a certain number of points, clearly identifiable. They especially liked it if the points rhymed or featured alliteration.

One time I said, "I've got three points," finished my first point, and had no idea what the second one was. So I swallowed my pride and said I couldn't remember number two and went on to the third point, thinking I'd eventually recall the second. But it never came. I'm still waiting for that second point to resurface.

Rambling is also a danger, but it's manageable. An important safeguard is spiritual discipline—learning to keep my ego in check, so that I don't feel obligated to regularly tell folks what I know so that they can know that I know it. What I know is not the point of the sermon. The point of the sermon is to direct people to Christ.

Staying focused on that is no more difficult while delivering a sermon extemporaneously than it is while preparing a manuscript. A manuscript is not a protection from tangents.

My outline is Scripture.

In one sense, I do have notes in front of me: I have the open Scriptures. If I'm preaching on blind Bartimaeus, I'm open to the passage. That is my outline. I'm going to work through the passage. I'm going to retell the story. I'm going to draw every meaningful conclusion from it that I can, sharing those that are most timely or most significant for my congregation.

With the scriptural text as your outline, you become necessarily more dependent on it. Think of the symbolism of a pastor holding a Bible while preaching versus a pastor shuffling pages of a manuscript.

A manuscript says all the hard work was done in the study, and now it's time to recite the fruits of it. More powerful is to have only the Bible there as a visible reminder that this is where the message comes from.

I want to grow spiritually.

A wonderful side benefit of paper-free preaching is that it keeps me growing. When you step into the pulpit without the aid of a manuscript or notes, you immediately become more dependent on the Spirit of God.

There are times when I do not follow the no-paper-in-the-pulpit model. When I'm preaching or teaching outside my pulpit, I sometimes use notes. If I have only one crack at that audience, and I'm preaching a brand-new sermon, I will often have a three-by-five card of notes in front of me.

Thankfully, though, I usually do have more than one crack at my own congregation. And over time I hope to take them deeper into the conversation with God. Paperless preaching is the best way to do this.

If, after abandoning your notes, you forget a major point, and find yourself standing red-faced before your congregation, just smile and tell them you forgot it. They'll understand. Then begin to monitor their appreciation of the fact that you are talking to them, not at them, above them, or past them.

The test of your success will not be next Sunday's sermon or next month's; it will be a lifetime of excellent preaching.

With the scriptural text as your outline, you become necessarily more dependent on it.

Jerry Andrews is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Preaching without notes is still pretty rare.

Our survey shows 90% of preachers take their sermons to the pulpit in some written form:

Guilt-free Delivery

Manuscript 26%
Detailed outline 38%
Skeleton outline 26%
No notes of any kind 5%
Other 4%

—Leadership Survey, March 1999

Note-worthy Sermons

Why my delivery is better with notes. Paul Atwater

My seminary training left me with one dominant conviction: real preachers don't use notes.

My classmates and I scoffed at the notion of preachers from the Jonathan Edwards era reading their manuscripts. We aimed at being free from the confines of the pulpit, free to gesture, and free to establish unbroken eye-contact with the audience. For us it would be "note-less or bust."

During my final year of seminary, however, one professor, Dr. Jim Means, bucked the "no notes" mentality by giving us a half-hour lesson on using notes when necessary. That lesson has proven to be extremely valuable.

He predicted that many of us would struggle with finding the time to preach without notes. And he was right. Our multiple pastoral responsibilities often turn weekly sermon preparation into a game of "Beat the Clock."

Fifteen years later, I freely confess that I regularly preach from notes. And I believe it has made me a better preacher.

Once in a while I throw out the notes just to prove I can still fly solo, but the benefits of using notes usually win out. Here are four benefits I've realized.

Richer vocabulary, fewer cliches

Sometimes our toughest critics are right. My change to using extensive notes began when my wife handed me a list detailing my favorite expressions, over-used adjectives and the New England slang that I lapse into when speaking without notes.

Listening to a few message tapes proved her right. My wife wasn't the only one who noticed. The bass player in our church band noticed how I frequently used the phrase "truth be told" when emphasizing a key point.

A few Sundays later, the band surprised me with a prelude in my honor entitled "Truth Be Told." We all laughed over that, but I knew I needed to root out this distracting habit.

Writing my way out of this and other cliches was the best way to fix the problem. Today, I find that the more I work at writing, the more likely I am to choose stronger verbs and a richer vocabulary.

Freedom of expression

Well-written notes allow me greater freedom of expression. They eliminate the panic caused by disappearing thoughts, and replace it with greater confidence and ability to deliver the concept I planned.

But make no mistake; there is an art to preaching from notes. If you only use notes when you cannot remember the next point, you're in trouble, and using notes won't salvage your sermon.

The discipline of using notes allows me to find a balance between freedom of expression and word-for-word accuracy.

My notes tell me when to read quotes or transitional sentences as I stand behind the pulpit, and when I can walk away from the pulpit for a needed change of pace, or to establish greater eye-contact while using an illustration.

Since the key to preaching with notes successfully is using them to stay ahead, I glance at my notes while summarizing the points already made, so that I can at the same time prepare myself for what logically comes next.

Better organization

Preaching from notes fosters organized sermons, which in turn helps listeners take notes. Notes also help me use just the right word to explain my point or eliminate my tendency toward poorly-chosen ad-lib expressions or illustrations.

Of course, you must choose what kind of notes you find helpful. One pastor I worked for reduced his weekly research down to three or four sentences on the back of a Sunday bulletin and then turned those sentences into an expository masterpiece of logic and textual clarity, aided by illustrations from his own life.

Another leading preacher operates from a hand-written manuscript, delivered with such clarity that listeners are seldom aware of his notes.

My comfort zone lies between those two. I write my introduction, transitions and conclusion in full sentences, while outlining major movements and sub-points.

Smoother transitions, crisper points

Using notes helps me know when I've made a point effectively and can move on. Bill Hybels refers to well-made points that run on too long as "dieseling."

This habit was exemplified by a beloved pastor with whom I once served, who prided himself in his ability to preach note-free. Unfortunately, his disdain for preaching with notes often left him wandering through sermons, frequently repeating himself.

Preaching with notes allows me to preach conversationally, without being repetitive. Writing out transitional sentences, word for word, helps the message flow coherently from one point to the next.

Finally, well-typed notes allow me to quickly recap main points without relying on cute memory techniques.

Is there an area where your preaching needs work? A mentor once challenged me with these words, "You will only preach as well as you write."

Try writing your way to growth. And take your notes with you.

Paul Atwater is pastor of North River Community Church in Pembroke, Massachusetts.

The Write Stuff

My switch to manuscripts made me a better preacher. Rich Knight

''Our last pastor was considered one of the best preachers in all of Maine," a parishioner at my new church told me. Great. Now my predecessor had reached legend status.

I was nervous enough about the move. After all, I was "from away" as they say here in Maine. I feared that this Pennsylvania native wouldn't be accepted in small-town New England. I tried to tell myself that Maine has never been a hotbed of great preaching, but still, I wondered if I would measure up.

Six months into the new pastorate my wife made a comment that took me off guard: "You know, you're a much better preacher here than you were in Pennsylvania."

Beth has always been my biggest supporter and toughest critic, so I take her feedback seriously. I pressed her to describe the difference. Was it that I had been using all my best illustrations? Was it my choice of sermon topics? Or the newfound energy I felt in a larger sanctuary and a new pulpit?

"It's your delivery," she replied flatly. "Your delivery's much better here."

What was I doing differently here than in my previous 13 years of ministry? I had begun to write out my sermons word for word, and I started carrying my manuscript to the pulpit.

Why I Mac

It all started with the purchase of a computer.

Before moving to Maine, I had preached from notes. Sometimes these notes consisted of outlines with a few verses, thoughts, or illustrations listed under each point. Other times my notes were more detailed, with a few key sentences written out. I never wrote illustrations, and sometimes I would just trust myself to come up with a good ending for the sermon when it came time to wrap up.

The difficulty with this approach is that you have to be at your best all the time. C.S. Lewis made this same point about pastoral prayers. He lobbied for pastors to write out their prayers, trusting that the Holy Spirit would inspire the written prayer during the time of preparation.

Having the computer encourages writing manuscripts. I like typing much more than scribbling on a legal pad, so I don't mind writing sermons word for word. I choose my words more carefully. With the computer I can review the manuscript quickly, looking for phrases that could be made stronger and clearer. It's easy to edit.

Since switching to a manuscript approach, I've had to be careful to avoid term paper language. It's important to write like we talk. Since my normal speaking style is casual and even a bit folksy, I try to write my sermons the same way. This means avoiding words like "moreover," "whereas," and "indeed."

I might have written "In conclusion, one clearly sees" in term papers, but I don't use that in conversation, so I don't say it in the pulpit. Listening to a sermon of mine on tape is a great way to do a language check. Am I using words and phrases I would not normally use if I were sitting around our living room talking with a few friends?

Write it, but don't read it

Preaching from a manuscript has improved my delivery because my work before entering the pulpit forces me to become more familiar with my material. By the time I preach, I have written the manuscript, laid it out in an easy-to-see format, marked it, and memorized large chunks of it.

Of course, it's important to deliver illustrations well, especially personal stories. It looks bad when the preacher says, "I was shopping at the mall this past week," and then looks at the notes to find out what happened next.

I write out my illustrations word for word. Even when I get material from a book or magazine, I retype it into my manuscript. This way I can make word changes if necessary. Little things make a story clear and powerful. Retyping helps me see the details that bring them to life.

Writing out sermon illustrations also helps me practice telling the story. We've all had a story go flat because we didn't tell it well. Or we messed up the punch line. Writing out an illustration helps me set it up and tell it right.

My preaching professor at Princeton, Tom Long, said, "Memorize your sermons a chunk at a time." An illustration is a chunk. A reference to complementary Scripture is a chunk. Introductions and conclusions are chunks. So are transitions. Memorizing these chunks is critical to effective delivery.

This does not take as much time as I feared it would, because, while writing, I have reviewed the sermon on screen a number of times before it's printed.

With my manuscript in a user-friendly style, I can get comfortable with it in about two hours. I preach through the manuscript several times, usually twice on Saturday night and twice on Sunday morning. Then, manuscript in hand, I'm ready to communicate to my congregation what God has prepared me to say.

On a recent Sunday afternoon over lunch, Beth said, "Your sermon was great today. I was a little worried because when I read it on the computer last night it didn't seem that good. But the way you said it, the way you made your points, brought it alive. It was very moving."

A user-friendly manuscript and a bit of practice. These preaching habits give us the tools to look people in the eye and share the Good News.

Rich Knight is senior pastor of First Parish Congregational Church in York, Maine.

Here's how to make your pulpit papers user-friendly.

The most important discovery I've made about manuscript preaching is having a manuscript that is easy to read. Standing in the pulpit, you need a document that is simple to follow and helpful in finding your place on the page when you look down.

Here are some techniques I use:

Build a Better Manuscript

  • Double space everything.
  • Make type large enough to read easily, at least 12 points.
  • Start every sentence at the left margin.

    You won't have to search the middle of a paragraph to find the next sentence.
  • Use italics to highlight a poem, hymn verse, or Scripture text.
  • Use bold print for key words and sentences.
  • Use bold print and double underline for main points and illustration titles.
  • Place a hand-drawn star or asterisk in the left column of the page next to key sentences, main points, and the "punch-lines" to illustrations.
  • [Bracket illustrations in the left column so you can find your place when you finish telling the story.]

—RBK

Pastors

Deliver us from Evil

Brett Lawrence

The people were seated, and Pastor Dennis Rogers was at the pulpit.

“Let us pray,” he said.

then chaos.

A bomb shattered the silence of Sunday prayer. The explosion ripped through the heart of a sanctuary and its worshipers.

The bomb, which investigators discovered had been left outside the building near a central air-conditioning unit, tore a 10-by-15 foot hole in the sanctuary wall adjacent to the church’s youth-seating section. Of the 35 people injured that morning, more than 20 were teenagers.

When Rogers reflects on that Memorial Day weekend in 1998, he realizes it could have been much worse.

Now, more than a year and a half later, the veteran of more than 20 years of ministry says the congregation at First Assembly of God in Danville, Illinois, is stronger than it has ever been.

Rogers knows people should feel safe in God’s house. But he, like many pastors, struggles with how to protect those who attend his church while remaining an open, welcoming community where people can come freely to find Christ.

“We want to provide a secure worship environment for our staff, our members, and our guests,” says Ron Aguiar, director of safety and security at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, a congregation of about 17,000. “Because it’s a church, I have to balance how I do it. I cannot put magnetometers on the front doors and use metal detectors.

“We’re seeking the lost—you want the people that the police are after to come in. Essentially, when I work with our police department, they’ll say, ‘Hey man, these guys are undesirable.’ I say, ‘Hey man, this is where they need to be.’ And so there’s a delicate balance that you have to achieve.”

Few people understand the struggle to find that balance like Al Meredith, pastor of Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Meredith leads a congregation that lost its sense of security last September when a gunman barged into a Wednesday night youth rally and gunned down 14 people, killing seven.

“You can’t protect,” says Meredith. “There is no safe place in the universe except the center of God’s will. You can make your church a fortress; you can put armed guards at every door; you can set metal detectors at every door and waste the kingdom’s resources. But it’s trusting in horses and chariots.

“I guess it’s a matter of where you draw the line, what degree you take. You go to reasonable measures.”

Violence comes to church

What constitutes reasonable measures? It’s a subject of considerable debate among church leaders.

Jeff Hanna, pastor of Galion First United Methodist Church in Ohio and the author of Safe and Secure: The Alban Guide to Protecting Your Congregation, says, “Very few people across the country are dealing with this issue. I started looking for things that had been written and couldn’t find anything.”

Hanna, a former police officer, has been in demand as a church security consultant since the Wedgwood incident.

Statistics addressing the number of crimes perpetrated against churches are hard to find.

“There is no repository or database of information for church crime,” Aguiar says. “Everything is mishmash. If there’s a burglary, when the police get it they don’t say ‘church crime,’ they say ‘burglary.’ “

Though news of the Wedgwood shooting was beamed across America, several other disturbing church crimes have gone unreported by the national media and unnoticed by most of the Christian community.

In mid-October, two Hispanic men were killed in the parking lot of Faith United Methodist Church in Southaven, Tennessee, while attending a Sunday evening youth service at The House of Praise, a Hispanic congregation that has used building space on the property for the past year.

Last July, a small group leader at First Church of God in Sidney, Ohio, was shot and killed in his home by a member of the congregation who had associations with a satanic cult.

Last March, a pastor’s sermon was interrupted at New St. John Fellowship Baptist Church in Gonzales, Louisiana, when a gunman kicked open the sanctuary doors and fired two gunshots into the ceiling. He proceeded to kill his wife, 2-year-old son, and another congregant, while wounding four others.

And in September 1998, Pastor Andrew Lofton of Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Church was talking to a group of Bible-study participants following the Wednesday evening service when he was shot and killed by a choir member.

What to defend against?

Hanna says incidents such as the Wedgwood shooting should be seen as “aberrations.”

“I’m more concerned about day-to-day things,” he says, “people breaking into my church and taking my sound system, people getting assaulted in the parking lot. I don’t think we’re going to see a huge, rapid increase of church violence.”

Aguiar and Rogers don’t see it that way.

The most important security device at any location in America is a cell phone.

—Chester Quarles

“I think the church fails to realize this is spiritual warfare,” says Aguiar, whose on-campus security concerns include a 9,000-seat sanctuary, 773,000 square feet of building space and more than 100 acres of property. “To me, it’s going to get worse, not better.”

Rogers says the fear of God that was once the cornerstone of American society is now gone.

“Heretofore, there was a holy reverence for the house of God. That is gone in this country,” he says. “So rather than thinking these are isolated incidents, I believe they’re going to increase.”

The security challenge

Believing the worst is yet to come doesn’t mean Rogers and his church have significantly changed their long-term approach to security.

Prior to the 1998 bombing, the church installed nighttime security lights and asked ushers to periodically patrol the parking lot. A year and a half later, the lights are still there and ushers continue to keep an eye on things, but Rogers says the church has no intention of turning itself into Fort Knox.

“We did clean all of the shrubbery away from the perimeter of the building,” he says. “Many churches in the area did that.”

The church also changed its locks, replacing old keys with ones that cannot be duplicated.

“We discussed putting in a video security system,” he says. “We discussed having a guard full-time. But we came to the conclusion that if there is a person who is determined to set a bomb or shoot a gun, there is not a lot you can do to stop it.”

Meredith, still reeling from the massacre at his church, believes it is impractical and unreasonable to implement wide-sweeping security changes at his church.

Before the shooting at Wedgwood, Meredith says his church’s security measures were relatively simple and included screening procedures and background checks on nursery, children’s and youth workers and a policy that requires two adults in each nursery classroom. The church also has an electronic security system to protect the building when it’s unoccupied.

Those measures have remained in place since the shooting, but Meredith says introducing a new round of security procedures is unlikely.

“I don’t foresee it becoming a fortress with police cars in the parking lot and screening every weird-looking person who comes in,” he says, “because frankly, there are a whole lot of believers who are weird looking. To me what the undershepherd does is protect the flock from the attacks of the wicked one.

“I know that just sounds unbelievably idealistic and smugly spiritual, and I don’t want to come across that way. But I cannot imagine the early church hiring private police to protect them in the catacombs or from Rome or anywhere else the prince of darkness seeks to bring destruction.”

Doctrine of internal security

Bob Welch, associate professor of church administration at Fort Worth’s Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, also has taken cues from the early church to develop his security philosophy. But his interpretation of the apostles’ approach reflects a different understanding than Meredith’s.

He says the church in the Book of Acts had a keen understanding of the importance of providing first-century Christians with a sense of security.

“They met in homes; they went into caves. In Rome, what are the catacombs?” he wonders rhetorically. “If they were going to get caught and were martyred, they at least made an attempt to be safe, even going so far as to use some secret signs like the fish.

“Knowing that we are now in a culture that can be quite anti-Christian and is becoming more hostile, I think there’s a valid reason for us to think about that. If it means trying to supply internal security, I think God expects us as rational people to do that.”

Welch’s opinion isn’t just a personally held opinion. It’s also included in his curriculum at Southwestern, which counted five of the 14 Wedgwood victims among its students and alumni.

“We have, for a long time, taught security issues—lighting, internal security,” says Welch, a 22-year veteran of the United States Navy. But he expects more of an emphasis on the issue in the wake of the crosstown shooting, noting that most of the current teaching is included in the administration classes.

“It’s much easier to make an example in class when you have something across the neighborhood instead of across the state,” he says.

While Meredith and Welch allow the New Testament to guide their security efforts, Aguiar looks to the Old Testament, pointing to Nehemiah 4:9—”But we prayed to God, and because of them we set up a guard against them day and night”—as an example of the way congregations ought to respond to potential problems.

And though some pastors would bristle at Southeast Christian Church’s approach to security—there’s video surveillance, a guard on duty around the clock, a police car parked at the building throughout the day, armed guards to escort ushers after the offering is collected and uniformed officers who direct traffic and patrol the parking lot before, during, and after services—Hanna points to the church as the paradigm for church security in the 21st century.

A proactive defense

Improving security, Hanna believes, starts with changing the mindset of a church’s leaders. That can begin with the formation of a church security team.

“Everybody needs to look at their parking lot lights,” says Chester Quarles, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Mississippi. Quarles is a certified protection professional who has designed training and crisis plans for missionaries and worked with leaders at Wycliffe Translators to examine their security procedures.

“Walk the darkest places and recesses of the church, daytime and nighttime. Make sure doors and locks and frames are secure.”

Team members also should review police reports from the past few years to examine how other area churches have been violated, adds Quarles.

In addition, churches should meet with officials from local law enforcement agencies to ask for help. The church should start by showing police the building and asking for suggestions on how to make it safer. Ask for recommendations about getting the offering to the bank safely.

“You’d be surprised,” says Aguiar, “how much free stuff they can advise you to do.”

Another critical component of effective church security is communication. “The most important security device at any location in America is a cell phone,” says Quarles. “The welcome committee at the front or back of the church needs the 911 connection.”

Educating ushers or a security team is important, too. “Churches need to be training ushers and leaders to wear a different set of glasses, to see things through a different set of eyes,” Hanna says, “They should be walking hallways, looking for potential problems. We want them to do more than hand out bulletins and take the offering.”

If a church has multiple entrances, both Hanna and Quarles suggest locking the doors that aren’t being used during office hours and service times.

Though most security experts admit these procedures won’t ensure a church’s safety, they’ll go a long way toward deterring crime and minimizing the damage if something does go wrong.

“The bottom line,” says Hanna, “is you do the very best you can and leave the rest in God’s hands.”

Brett Lawrence is an editor at the Sun Newspapers in Naperville, Illinois, and a former youth pastor.

Groups: Come and go in groups. Encourage choirs, women’s groups, and those coming to evening meetings to practice safety in numbers.

Lighting: Improve lighting levels inside and out. Dark parking lots not only cause injury, they invite crime.

Phones: Every church needs a 911 connection. Place emergency phones strategically throughout the building. Having wireless phones available is a plus.

Money: Secure the offering-counting room with metal doors and security locks. The tally should be done discreetly by a team of people.

Locks: Change locks periodically. Decide who will have access to what. Give keys only to those who have responsibilities in specific areas of the church.

Doors: Lock doors that aren’t used during office hours and service times.

Buzzers: Install electromagnetic locks on weekday entrance doors to keep office staff safe. Visitors can identify themselves by intercom before the door is unlocked.

Reasonable Precautions

Seven tips for keeping your church secure.

—Adapted from Safe and Secure: The Alban Guide to Protecting Your Congregation by Jeff Hanna (The Alban Institute, 1998) 800-486-1318.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors

Planning Your Service with Visitors in Mind

An interview with Andy Stanley

Invite them into “the kitchen.”

Business Team Partnership Greeting Handshake Concept

If ever anyone was destined to lead a big church, it is Andy Stanley. The son of Charles Stanley, Andy grew up with firsthand exposure to his dad's ministry at First Baptist Church of Atlanta.

Early on, it was clear that the younger Stanley had inherited a gift for communicating. After graduating from Dallas Seminary, he served as youth pastor at First Baptist for 10 years and had regular opportunities in the pulpit.

In 1995, Stanley and a handful of others launched North Point Community Church. Unable to find a permanent meeting place for three years, the church met every other Sunday evening at different locations. When the 1996 Olympics came to town, the church couldn't meet for nine weeks because its usual gathering spots were booked. Still, the church grew. In September 1998, North Point's 1,500 attenders moved into an impressive, 110,000-square foot building in Alpharetta, a growing suburb north of Atlanta.

Today, more than 5,000 people attend North Point's two Sunday morning services and another 2,000-plus singles meet on Tuesday nights. Editors Marshall Shelley and Edward Gilbreath visited North Point to ask Stanley, 41, about preaching to contemporary audiences comprised of both skittish seekers and mature believers.

A casual observer might assume North Point is rather homogeneous. Is it?

From time to time people will say about us, "Everybody's white. Everybody's young." Our church reflects our location.

We aim at two distinct groups: (1) mature believers who are concerned about evangelism, and (2) people who grew up in church but drifted away. We have a lot of people who left the church after high school and during college. Now they're getting married, or they're in their twenties and life is empty, and they're giving church another try.

How conscious are you of the diverse personal situations represented among your listeners on Sunday morning?

I'm very aware. I'm a relational person. When a member introduces me to a visitor and then whispers to me, "You know, he's not a believer" or "This is the guy I've been trying to get here," I find myself preaching with them in mind.

How specifically do you address that person?

I'm not preaching at them, but I feel like I'm sitting at the table with them. It's an invigorating thing for me because I'm partnering with our members in reaching that particular person. They may have spent four or five months trying to get this person here, and what they're saying is, "Andy, here he is. You'd better deliver."

Is your sermon the pivotal event in the service?

Not necessarily. I often tell our people, "The sermon starts in the parking lot. You are the introduction." In other words, if our members haven't created a positive impression and if they haven't been won in our worship, by the time I get up there, our visitors have pretty much determined if they're going to listen or not.

Most people come to church for the first time trying not to like it. They want three excuses why they don't have to go back. So we do what we can to disarm that. I tell my pastor friends, "You don't introduce your sermons; your folks do. And if they're not trained on how to do that, then you have a problem."

Does this "outsider focus" reflect your personality?

I'm very involved in relational evangelism. I know what I want the experience to be like when my friends finally show up. So we'll go to just about any length to tear down all the walls and to say, "If you're going to be offended, we want you to be offended by only one thing: the gospel." After all, that's supposed to be somewhat offensive to a sinner.

But we don't want anyone to be offended by something that happened in the parking lot, or by some off-the-cuff remark about a social issue. For instance, we don't allow groups to pass out voter guides, and we discourage bumper stickers. We chase people out of the parking lots all the time who are trying to put Christian stuff on people's windshields.

This is about partnering to win souls.

What's the overall strategy at North Point?

Our church is built around three kinds of environments:

  • The foyer environment, where people are made to feel welcome as a guest.
  • The living-room environment, where they're treated like a friend.
  • And the kitchen environment, where they're made to feel like family.

Everything we do hangs on one of those hooks, or we just don't do it. The goal is to move people from the foyer to the living room to the kitchen.

Our worship service is a "foyer event." We expect guests. I instruct our people: "When you have guests in your home, there are certain things you don't do, certain things you don't talk about. You don't abandon your belief system when you have guests, but as a gracious host, you know certain subjects are best left for family or maybe for friends."

Do you avoid "kitchen issues" on Sunday mornings?

When I am forced by the text—which I think has to rule in preaching—to talk about "family issues," then I say to our guests, "If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, this next part is going to sound awfully strange to you. In fact, what I'm about to say may be one of the reasons you don't go to church."

I don't avoid topics, but I let them know that I know how this might strike them. This gives them permission to say, "Okay, they at least understand. Maybe we aren't on the same page in terms of what we believe, but at least they know we're not on the same page."

I don't pull punches, but I qualify a lot of things, because from the world's perspective, we Christians believe some strange stuff. Sometimes preachers are not sensitive to that, and so people are afraid to bring their friends to church because they feel like they have to sit real close and explain, "Here's what he meant," or they're thinking, I hope he doesn't talk about that today.

Our goal is to move people from the foyer to the living room to the kitchen

In a sense, then, you are providing a service to assist members in their evangelizing.

We put it this way: "We want to partner with you in the evangelism process. You do what you do best; we'll do what we do best. We can present the message with color, humor, music, video, all the bells and whistles. But your relationship is the most important part."

We summarize our whole evangelism strategy as "invest and invite." You invest in a life of an unbeliever, and when they're ready, you invite them to a "foyer" event. And in that environment they're going to be presented with the gospel in a relevant way. But then it's back on you as the inviter to pursue that relationship.

How do you keep this vision before the congregation?

Every once in a while I mention in a sermon that this church isn't for everyone: "We don't want any more people who are just coming to take notes and buy tapes and go home and do nothing." We've tried to position ourselves for people who want to reach people—and for the people they are in the process of reaching.

How do you encourage community in a large-church setting where most poeple don't know one another?

In every message, I try to celebrate community. We encourage and equip people to pursue three vital relationships: intimacy with God, community with insiders, and influence with outsiders. That's our strategy.

But community is not going to happen on Sunday morning in a church this size, and we don't even try to make it happen there.

Sunday morning is a foyer event; it's only one part of our overall strategy. Which means preaching is only one part of our overall strategy, but it's an important part.

What I'm doing on Sunday morning is gathering in all the potential people who one day can experience community. I bait them through teaching and stories and through presenting our strategy over and over until they're willing to take the next step.

One observer said, "What makes pastors of large churches successful is their ability to project the illusion of intimacy."

I agree with that, but the word illusion hits me as negative because it implies insincerity. Some of the more successful large-church pastors are able to create a sense of intimacy with their congregation because they have a sincere transparency. They preach from their weakness. And when somebody preaches from their weakness, you feel like you know them, like you have something in common. Of course, that's not a genuine relational intimacy, but there's a clear connection.

I say to pastors all the time, "The advantage of preaching from your weaknesses is you never run out of material." And it's true. I have the same struggles everybody else does. I think the ability of a pastor to be able to share those things is related to his personal security. Typically, the preachers I've gotten to know who are very guarded in their preaching are that way off the platform as well.

Lots of planning goes into your services—music, multimedia, and sermons all work together. So how do you plan your preaching?

We start with Easter. That's the beginning of the preaching calendar year because that's when the most people come for the first time. So we ask ourselves, "What new series can we announce on Easter that's most likely to bring an Easter visitor back?"

That's likely to be topical. But we also need to balance topical themes with more directly Bible-oriented material. So we do a Bible-book series usually toward the end of the year as we head back into Easter.

We think of it in terms of a maturity cycle. It's not perfect. People pop in and out, but you have to start somewhere. So far it's worked.

How much input from other goes into your sermons?

I meet every Tuesday with a worship planning team, and I rely heavily on them for topics.

That's not the model I was brought up with. I was raised with the "go to the mountain, and God gives you the message" model. There's a place for that, and there have been times when I've gone in and said, "I feel like I need to talk about this regardless of what you guys say." But for the most part, I rely on their input about topics and how long I need to talk about a certain topic.

When there's a consensus from six other mature Christians who have a good sense of what's needed in the life of our church, that's helpful.

Where do you get the "hook" for your sermons?

I always think in terms of relationships, because that's where all the tension is. Take, for instance, the topic of money. What's the tension with money? It's a relationship. Everything goes back to some sort of relationship, either between you and God, or you and another person. With money, you may resist giving away your money because you fear God may not take care of you.

You can take any topic and pinpoint where the tension is and how it affects a person relationally. And when you start talking about that, most of your audience will connect.

The advantage of preaching from your weaknesses is you never run out of material

Conventional wisdom would say that money is a "kitchen topic"; you don't talk about that in the foyer. How did you preach such a delicate subject to the spectrum of people in your congregation?

We knew money would be a sensitive subject for unchurched people. It's one of the smokescreens they throw up. "I don't want to go to church. All they want is money." So we had to disarm that mentality.

First, we handed out envelopes to everybody in the congregation. Most people assumed the point was, "Put money in the envelope." But these were sealed envelopes.

I preached the sermon on the idea that everything in heaven and earth belongs to God. The point being that we're simply to be stewards of what He's put on loan to us.

Then I said, "We're going to do stewardship practice. So, I want you to open your envelope." And they opened their envelopes to find. … money! We handed out $37,000 in fives, tens and twenties.

Suddenly, all the tension was gone. It was, "They gave me money!" Now they couldn't be mad at me anymore as the pastor. What can you say if we give you money?

Also in the envelope was a little green card that said: "I'm going to invest in God's kingdom by. … " Their assignment was to take the money and invest it in God's kingdom outside this church. They couldn't give it back to us. We asked them to turn in their cards and write on them, "Here's how I invested it in God's kingdom." This was stewardship practice. They got to practice on us.

We got thousands of the cards back. I'd estimate the $37,000 became a half-million dollars because of what people added and gave to a kingdom cause. And the stories are remarkable. Now, every Sunday, I get up and read a letter from a member about how $5 became $500.

So, the issue isn't so much the topic as the way the topic is presented.

There's no topic we can't talk about. We just have to take into consideration what the immediate negatives are. How do we disarm people? How do we do it in an authentic way?

The great communication issue for a pastor is NOT just about what I want them to know and what do I want them to do. That's the summary. The question that great communicators answer is, "Why do you need to know this?"

Most of the time, the Bible answers the question why. I can talk to a lost person about anything if I will spend my time studying and answering the question "Why would God say such a ridiculous thing as that?"

Most times, the answer is, "Because He's a good God and He loves you, and He wants what's best for you. You don't have to do it, but He's not just up there making stuff up."

The heavier the topic, the clearer I have to be on the why behind the what.

We hear about the shorter attention spans of the contemporary audiences, that this A.D.D. generation can't handle more than 15 or 20 minutes of preaching. Yet you typically preach for more than a half-hour.

My dad preaches an hour, and they can't get everybody in fast enough. The attention span thing is a myth.

We've all listened to communicators, and, number one, we couldn't believe the time went by that fast and, number two, we wish they wouldn't stop because they're great communicators. It has nothing to do with attention span. It has to do with the environment, the type of chair you're sitting on, what happened before, what your expectations are, the interest, the content, the visuals, the pace.

We have to be as clear as MUD—memorable, understandable, and do-able. Can they remember something? Do they understand it? Can they do it?

Most of the time that means the preacher should just make one point, communicate one thing well.

What do you assume is familiar or unfamiliar to your audience?

I'm married, I have three young children, and I'm extremely busy. And that's pretty much my target audience—people who are busy and trying to be good parents and have too many things to do.

You usually use a visual aid in your preaching. Do today's audiences need props?

I want to communicate at every level. There are auditory learners and visual learners. There are people who learn by talking. There are multiple levels, and I want maximum impact. So whether it's props or songs or illustrations or humor, I want to do whatever it takes to get the message across.

We're about to start a series called "Character Under Construction." We're going to turn the whole campus into a construction site—not just the stage, but everything. We're putting trailers and porta-johns outside. All of our hosting people are going to wear hard hats and tool belts to reinforce the idea that we are God's construction sites. The entire church will be a visual aid.

How much of your effort to preach today's listeners is a matter of style as opposed to content?

In general, it's the style we use that gets people's attention. The method is what draws the crowd. The joke around here is we'd have a bigger problem if we changed our music than if we changed our doctrine. We can change our doctrine, and a few people would get upset and leave. But if we changed the music, we'd split the church. So, the method of communication takes precedence over content in terms of audience appeal. I don't think that's a good thing, but it would be hard to argue that that's not the case.

So just presenting the truth is not enough to connect with contemporary audiences.

I talk to pastors sometimes who rationalize their church's lack of growth by saying, "I'm just preaching the truth. If they don't like it, that's too bad." But we're supposed to be a little more proactive than that. That would be like a salesman saying, "Well, you know, I made a few calls, but they just don't want to buy my product." That guy wouldn't keep his job very long.

Preaching today should be less about defending the truth and more about applying the truth.

For ages, preachers have struggled to walk the fine line between wholeness ("God loves you just the way you are") and holiness ("but he loves you too much to leave you that way"). How do you balance those two themes in a seeker-sensitive setting?

That was the brilliance of Jesus' ministry: he didn't try to balance those two extremes. He took them both and brought them together. That's the task we have as the body of Christ. We should reflect that paradox. We shouldn't try to find where we are on a continuum. We need to go to both ends, both extremes, and say, "You are fully accepted, but compared to the standard, you have a long way to go."

There's always the temptation in preaching to compromise at one end because you might lose somebody, or to make this sin worse than it actually is compared to other sins. But that's our challenge as preachers of the gospel.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

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