Freedom in Pennsylvania

When Schwenckfeld died in 1561, a number of small groups of his followers were located in south Germany around Strasbourg, in the Ulm-Augsburg area, and in Silesia.

By the close of the Thirty Years War in 1648, however, only the Silesian remnants remained. At the opening of the eighteenth century there were less than 1,500 persons left in Lower Silesia who adhered to the tradition.

In 1719 the Emperor of Austria established a Jesuit mission to bring these remaining Schwenckfelders into the Catholic Church. The mission was directed by two priests, Johann Milan and Carolus Regent, who immediately began to impose fines and imprisonments.

A deputation sent to Vienna to plea for their case could achieve nothing, so in 1726 over 500 persons fled Silesia, leaving their property and all the possesions they could not carry with them. They filled mangers and feed troughs before they left; it might be days before their absence was realized and the animals would be fed again.

Help from Zinzendorf

Some found refuge in the Saxon city of Görlitz; others went to the estate in Saxony of Count Nikolaus Ludwig van Zinzendorf who had already offered sanctuary to the Moravians. [The story of Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians appeared in the first issue of CHRISTIAN HISTORY.] Here the majority remained until 1734, when political pressures were brought to bear on the Count to withdraw his support.

The largest contingent of the Schwenckfelders (some 180 persons) left Saxony in April 1734, travelling down the Elbe and across to Holland. There they boarded a British vessel, the St. Andrew, and sailed for Pennsylvania where several of their co-believers had fled a few years earlier.

They arrived in Philadephia Harbor on September 22 and two days later, on 24 September 1734, held a thanksgiving service which they have celebrated annually ever since.

Although their religious thought owed its major thrust to the tradition of Schwenckfeld, there were wide differences among them in its interpretation. Some drew closer to the Moravian tradition, others to radical Pietist groups such as the Church of the Brethren, and yet others were attracted by the theosophical speculation of the influential German mystical writer Jacob Boehme (1575–1624).

Home in Pennsylvania

Unable to find a single section of land on which to settle, they found themselves spread throughout present-day Montgomery County, the two major groups establishing themselves in what would be called the Lower District, in the vicinity of Lansdale, and in the Upper District near Pennsburg.

Here they soon established prosperous religious and social communities. Later in the century, they built meeting houses and formed schools for educating their own children and those of others. Contact with their fellow-believers in Silesia was maintained for a time, but slowly ceased. In part this was caused by the decline of Schwenckfeldianism in Europe where the last Schwenckfelder died in 1826.

In eighteenth-century America the Schwenckfelder intellectual tradition remained strong. They continued to copy the books of their tradition, and under the leadership of George Weiss, Balthasar Hoffmann, and Christopher Schultz, they renewed their religious life. In 1762 they published a large compilation of hymns for their use, a great many of which were by Schwenckfelders.

All their leaders continued to write religious treatises and biblical exegesis. At the end of the eighteenth century they published the sermons of Erasmus Weichenhan, which they read weekly in their meetings. Early in the next century they undertook a program to publish the major works of their founder.

Preserving a Tradition

In 1884, the 150th anniversary of the Schwenckfelders’ safe arrival in America, Chester David Hartranft, a professor at Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut, and a descendant of the original 1734 emigrants, suggested that they undertake a critical edition of Schwenckfeld’s works. Along with this project they began a campaign to gather the books and manuscripts scattered among them and to collect major works related to the tradition in Europe.

The edition of Schwenckfeld’s works was entitled the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum and it was brought to a completion with the publication of its 19th volume in 1961, the 400th anniversary of Schwenckfeld’s death.

The leading academic figure in this project was Selina Gerhard Schultz, who began with the project in the early twentieth century as a secretary. She eventually became the editor-in-chief, and saw it through to its end. For her scholarly dedication and achievement she was honoured by the University of Tübingen with a doctorate.

Throughout the final 30 years of the Corpus project she and others were encouraged with the personal and financial support of Wayne C. Meschter, who had also taken a special interest in the library. In the early 1950s, when the library’s holdings outgrew the space available in a building provided through the Carnegie Foundation in 1913, Meschter directed the construction of a new library building to preserve the collection. The present Library collection is comprised of some 25,000 rare books and manuscripts, the earliest dating from the fifteenth century.

The present Schwenckfelder Church has five congregations in southeastern Pennsylvania and some 2,500 members.

History

Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig: From the Publisher

This is the kind of issue we love to do at Christian History—an issue about a figure whom you should know about, but who has been practically forgotten in the shuffle of Church history.

Caspar Schwenckfeld (yes, his name sounds strange) was a reformer who fell out of favor with the “mainstream” of the Reformation. He did not wish to found a Church or separate movement; he had no interest in having political muscle behind his doctrines. He wanted spiritual reform—in the inner Christian life. He believed in the purging of error from the Catholic Church, but was discouraged at the small influence Luther’s reform was having on personal morals and individual godliness. (Luther himself lamented the un-Christian lives of many of those who jumped on his reformation bandwagon: many were merely political Protestants.) Schwenckfeld was intensely concerned with the influence of theological ideas on personal practice—on the life of Faith.

Until this century, Schwenckfeld’s small group of followers did not claim to be a church. They simply called themselves confessors of the glory of Christ, after Schwenckfeld’s theological emphasis on a glorified Christ. They were a small group with a vital spirituality who had settled in Pennsylvania (part of the so-called “Pennsylvania Dutch” heritage) after being cruelly driven from Europe by intolerant Catholics and Protestants, both of whom rejected them as heretics. Thank God Count Zinzendorf offered refuge to the Schwenckfelders, and has left history a record of mercy, acceptance, and Christian love in a time when, tragically, intolerance among Christians was the order of the day.

1989 marks the 500th anniversary of Schwenckfeld’s birth in what was then Silesia, today part of Poland. There are only five Schwenckfelder Churches in existence today, all in a small area of Pennsylvania. They have been careful to learn, preserve, and keep alive their heritage.

As our neighbors, we can almost see the steeple of one of their churches from our offices in the Pennsylvania countryside (trees are in the way). We are glad to honor them and their heritage, on the half-millennium anniversary of Schwenckfeld’s birth, and delight in the opportunity to devote an issue to a subject “near to home,” for our friends.

Our special thanks to Dr. Peter C. Erb of Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada, scholar and writer, authority on Schwenckfeld, who was an invaluable resource person for this entire issue; to Dennis Moyer at the Schwenckfelder Library, who was very kind and helpful, and who guided us through their amazing collection of rare documents and pictures and let us see Schwenckfeld’s Bible up-close; to Reverend Jack Rothenberger, of the Central Schwenckfelder Church, Worcester, PA, for his assistance at many points in preparing this issue.

Pastors

LIVING OPTIONS FOR THE DYING

Beth Spring

With the widely documented “graying of America,” increasingly families wrestle with how to care for a terminally ill loved one. Pastors, who have long offered counsel and comfort to the sick and dying (and their families), find themselves asked questions such as:

How can we make Mom’s (or Dad’s) last days comfortable? How can we afford the staggering medical costs? Do we have an obligation to keep her at home? Mom’s in pain and wants to “go home.” What should we do?

Beth Spring, a contributing editor of Christianity Today and with Ed Larson the co-author of Euthanasia: Spiritual, Medical, and Legal Issues in Terminal Health Care, identifies the family’s options and the pros and cons of each from a financial, practical, and spiritual perspective.

Hewlett Robinson faced a dilemma. His father, William Paul, was dying of prostate cancer. The doctors told Hewlett they had done everything they could to treat his father. “How do you plan to provide for him after he is released?” they asked.

Hewlett was certain of the answer: he lived next door to his parents, and he and his wife were ready to care for his father at his home.

After several weeks, Hewlett, an only child, was having second thoughts. “I found I had taken on more than I had bargained for. I was at my wit’s end,” he recalls. He hired a nurse to come in three times a week. As the cancer spread and his father’s condition deteriorated, Hewlett changed the bedding three times each day and bathed his father. His wife prepared meals for both her in-laws. They felt obligated to have someone with him twenty-four hours a day. The task became exhausting.

Finally, a neighbor told them about an option they had not heard of before-inpatient care at a hospice. The family agreed to admit William Paul to Southwest Christian Hospice, near their home in the suburbs of Atlanta. “He resented it for a couple of days,” Hewlett remembers. But his father quickly began appreciating the care he received there.

It was completely different from being hospitalized. Instead of aggressive treatment against every physical ill that beset him, William Paul received comfort, “palliative care,” at the hospice. The nurses expertly turned, changed, and bathed him so his extreme sensitivity to touch did not bother him as much. They all knew the hospice would do nothing to prolong William Paul’s dying. He remained at the hospice for two months and two weeks before he died, but placing him there rather than keeping him at home “saved my life,” Hewlett Robinson says.

As the Robinson family learned, dying is a complicated business. Their experience touched all three of the main options facing families with a terminally ill loved one: hospitalization, home care, and hospice. Determining how to care for a dying family member is a difficult choice. Families who seek the counsel of clergy about their options need to understand the benefits and difficulties of each.

Hospital or home?

When a life-threatening medical emergency or a terminal illness first arises, hospitalization is the natural choice. Hospitals are accessible to practically every American, and they offer state-of-the-art technology and treatment. In the initial stages of a terminal situation, a family yearns to have doctors and nurses do all they can for a patient. In a hospital, with specialists on hand, no-holds-barred aggression against disease may include artificially providing food, water, and air to patients losing the capacity to eat, drink, or breathe on their own.

At a certain point, however, the patient or his family may sense that the hospital is no longer an appropriate place for a terminal patient. It is exceedingly expensive to remain in a hospital, and when a patient approaches death, high-tech treatments finally become irrelevant. When families reach this realization-or when patients are suddenly discharged-they often react with shock and disbelief.

JoHanna Turner, with Hospice of Northern Virginia, says, “People just can’t believe that someone who is dying can be discharged from the hospital. Surely, they think, if you’re sick enough to be dying, you’re sick enough to be in the hospital. But a person may be dying for two weeks, and during that time the hospital may be unable to do anything for him. As a society, we are unprepared to deal with this.”

The only alternative many families know is home care. (Nursing homes generally will not accept patients who have been diagnosed as terminally ill.) Usually, home-based care requires a full-time commitment by at least one family member.

Home-based care offers concentrated, individualized attention. It may provide a time of deepening relationships and tying up the loose ends of a lifetime. Home care is not always as difficult as it proved to be for the Robinsons. A well-known instance of terminal home care is recounted by Edith Schaeffer in her book Forever Music (Nelson, 1986). When her husband, Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer, was dying of cancer, the doctors asked her if she wanted him placed in intensive care, hooked up to life-support machinery. “Once a person is on machines, I would never pull the plug,” a doctor told Edith.

She considered carefully her husband’s perspective and their shared commitment to the Lord and to one another. Finally, she told them she would take her husband home, to a house he had asked her to buy near the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Ten days later, in a room filled with music and overlooking a garden, Francis Schaeffer died.

Hospice: a bridge

A bridge between hospital and home care is hospice care. Nurse Peggy Beckman, with Hospice of Northern Virginia, points out, “The need for hospice was identified when people saw what was happening to hospital patients when they became terminal or when doctors had decided that everything curative had been done. Many times they ended up very alone-not neglected, but by-passed. Hospice was a response to that. After someone has been given a prognosis that he or she is going to die, there is a lot left to be done.”

The contrast between a hospital physician’s saying “We’ve done all we can do” and a hospice nurse’s saying “There is a lot left to be done” illustrates how these two facets of the health-care system differ.

Both are, of course, appropriate for different types of patients. Hospice care is not nearly as accessible as hospitalization. There are only about 1,700 hospice programs in the United States today, according to the Virginia-based National Hospice Organization. Most of them are in or near large metropolitan areas.

But hospice care is considerably less expensive than a hospital stay-between 20 and 40 percent less. In the final weeks of life, one study showed those savings extend to 58 percent. Hospice care is covered by Medicare and by an increasing number of private insurers.

Hospice care holds out several promises to its patients. First, their personal wishes regarding treatment will be respected. If they have determined not to receive further chemotherapy, for example, no one will try to persuade them otherwise. Second, attention to the patient’s physical needs will concentrate on pain control, trying to prevent it from occurring rather than relieving it on demand. Emotional and spiritual support are available to assist patients in coming to terms with their illness. Patients are assured they will not die alone, and family and hospice staff wait with those who are near death. Up to one year of bereavement counseling is provided for family members after a death occurs.

Spiritual care

People involved in hospice care do not attempt to weigh a patient’s worth or determine when the patient has lived “too long”-both of which are characteristic of the right-to-die mindset.

“We joke about ‘God’s prognosis,’ because the patient we think is going to be with us for a couple weeks lives for a year, and the one we think has lots of time suddenly declines very fast,” says Jeanne Brenneis, a chaplain for Hospice of Northern Virginia. “No one knows when he or she is going to die, and that is one of the hardest and most frustrating things a patient and family have to deal with.” A sense of transition permeates a hospice, and attention to spiritual needs is central.

Southwest Christian Hospice, where William Paul Robinson spent his last days, is unique because it is fully funded by nearby Southwest Christian Church, a congregation affiliated with the independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. Minister Jim Dyer, who has served Southwest since 1956, started the hospice in 1984 after observing a Catholic home for terminally ill cancer patients. A cadre of sixty-five church volunteers visits patients, provides clerical support, and cleans the eight-bed facility.

Dyer explains the spiritual basis of their involvement: “As Christians, can we face death with dignity and loving comfort for each other? Our theme Scripture is ‘We sorrow not as others who have no hope’ (1 Thess. 4:13). We do sorrow; we’re not automatons. But our hope is in Christ.”

Still, there are no easy answers. Dyer met with a family one morning in which an elderly man wanted to refuse a pacemaker to keep his heart going. “He kept saying, ‘I’m tired. I want to die.’ I don’t know what their decision will be. He’s competent to make the decision himself. I’m going to be there to support them and pray with them. I don’t know the right answer. When my mom was dying, I didn’t want them to bring a resuscitator into the room. When her body could no longer sustain itself, I believe the Lord was calling her home. To keep her alive at that point would have robbed her of some dignity and some meaning in life.”

Because hospice care emphasizes spiritual concerns, and because it is not exclusively Christian, it has sometimes been associated in people’s minds with New Age spirituality. And in expressly nonsectarian programs, some staff members may be influenced by books and seminars theorizing on out-of-body experiences or communication with spirits. Pastors may want to contact the director of a particular hospice to ascertain the program’s orientation. In most cases, it will be amenable to a Christian world view.

Chaplain Brenneis, at Northern Virginia Hospice, has found that many terminal patients want to affirm a relationship with God. “I pray with people regularly, giving thanks for this day and for all the signs of God’s love in it. In my counseling, I try to nudge people to see that even in the despair of knowing that your life is ending, there are bright spots-very bright spots-relationships they’re not finished with, children and grandchildren, good things to enjoy. We try to help people be fully alive while they’re dying.”

In the case of William Paul Robinson, creative caring meant identifying activities he could continue to enjoy until his death. After he entered the hospice, his granddaughter, Ruth Henry, remembered how much he had enjoyed watching the cardinals and bluejays that visited her bird feeder. She noticed that each patient room at Southwest has a balcony, overlooking a wooded hill alive with birds. So, with hospice staff permission, Ruth put up bird feeders for all the patients to enjoy.

“Dad watched those birds and was amazed,” Hewlett Robinson recalls. “He thoroughly enjoyed them even when he was in his worst pain.”

Roberta Paige, a nurse who established the first hospice program in a U.S. hospital, believes the movement will grow among Christians as they recognize how compatible it is with biblical concepts. “In a manner of speaking, we are all dying,” she notes. “A good hospice team sees individuals who are dying. The emphasis is on the individual first and then the dying. It is a subtle but important difference.”

-Beth Spring

McLean, Virginia

For More Information:

National Hospice Organization, 1901 N. Fort Myer Drive, Suite 402, Arlington, VA 22209

Southwest Christian Hospice, 7225 Lester Road, Union City, GA 30291

Special Ministries for Caring Churches, Robert E. Korth, ed. (Standard, 1986)

Euthanasia: Spiritual, Medical, and Legal Issues in Terminal Health Care, Beth Spring and Ed Larson (Multnomah, 1988)

Hospice Resource Manual for Local Churches, John W. Abbott, ed. (Pilgrim, 1988)

- More from Beth Spring

Pastors

From The Editors

Marshall Shelley

Editors, like pastors, see a lot of mail. Much of it-news releases about Animal Awareness Day or brochures about cordless pulpit telephones-doesn’t demand much time.

But other items we linger over: submissions by our cartoonists (tough work, but somebody has to do it . . .), and letters from our readers. We read every word of feedback and tabulate every response on the Reader Survey (see page 139).

A couple of issues ago, the survey included an open-ended question: What has been the worst crisis you’ve had in your ministry? The responses were eye-opening. I began asking the same question as I visited pastors.

Responses fell into four categories:

1. Organizational crises, usually congregational conflict or decline in attendance, giving, or both. Wrote one pastor: “My worst crises are periods of discouragement when I don’t know if the church will survive. And when my own vision wanes.”

Another pointed out that such crises are caused by both external and internal factors: “I’m trying to work with proud, insensitive leaders while dealing with my own pride.”

2. Personal crises, usually health or family problems.

“My worst crisis? Whom to marry after my wife died. I saw my ministry being affected because I was unmarried. In thirty-plus years, I’d never considered this situation. How does a Christian leader, over 55, go about it? I was suddenly in a wholly different world.”

Other pastors struggled with cancer, divorce, the loss of a child, whether through death or rebellion. “It took years to reestablish a sense of competence in ministry,” said one.

3. Career crises, such as being forced to resign or, sometimes equally agonizing, trying to decide when it’s time to leave even in the absence of hostilities.

One pastor is facing a tough decision: “Because of our church’s financial situation, I must either take a pay cut and find part-time employment or else recommend to the board that we cut back our program. I want to do what’s best for the church, but what is that?”

Another pastor wrote: “Perhaps most difficult of all things I face is a feeling of a lack of accomplishment.” The loss of motivation, in some cases, reaches crisis proportions. “It doesn’t seem to matter whether I prepare well for my sermons or not. Nothing happens.”

4. Parishioner crises, such as discovering someone in the church family has AIDS, is being abused, or has committed suicide.

“I just learned that the son of a family in the congregation raped the daughter of another family in the congregation,” said one pastor. “What do I do?”

Another said, “We’ve had five church couples divorce in the past four years. Our congregation is reeling.”

These categories help us sense the scope of the challenges in a pastor’s life. As veteran minister Alan Redpath observed, “If you’re a Christian pastor, you’re always in a crisis-either in the middle of one, coming out of one, or going into one.”

Another seasoned Christian leader has said that “some great crunch is almost inevitable in every pastor’s life. It would have been very helpful to me if, early in my ministry, I had known that and understood the diversity of emotional, psychological, and spiritual catastrophes.”

Some of the articles in this issue offer strategies for handling specific crises. But I’ve been reflecting on the common elements in any crisis. What effect does crisis, of any sort, have on a minister and a congregation?

Interestingly, though crises are certainly not sought, they at times do bring positive results. On the personal level, two sources will illustrate.

The Psalmist: “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Ps. 119:71).

And Thomas a Kempis: “It is good that we at times endure opposition and that we are evilly and untruly judged when our actions and intentions are good. Often such experiences promote humility and protect us from vainglory. For then we seek God’s witness in the heart.”

On the congregational level, while crisis will probably always carry a negative connotation, it’s good to remember that crisis often precedes a positive, critical breakthrough. I appreciate the following reflection by Episcopal rector William Tully, writing in the Washington Post:

“Combat veterans, recalling their careers, sound a lot like pastors reflecting on theirs: Hours (or days) of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.

“In church life the equivalent boredom is institutional maintenance-keeping a decent building together, worrying about the budget, raising money for mission work, and hiring and caring for a staff. The equivalents of terror are those electrifying spiritual breakthroughs in worship or preaching or pastoral care of parishioners. When such a moment comes, you just plain thank God. And there is hardly a neighborhood in America that doesn’t have a community of worshipers waiting for those powerful moments.”

Crises can reorder our lives, purify our motivations, and remind us again of the essence of ministry: To live honorably before God and to invite others to do the same.

Pastors

Inside Church Fights

Marshall Shelley and Kevin Miller

An interview with Speed Leas

Speed Leas may be one of the world's foremost authorities on church conflict, but the first question people usually ask him is not, "What causes churches to fight?" Instead, the starter question is, "Is Speed your real name?"

Yes. Speed's grandfather was named for Joshua Speed, a farmer and acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln. Joshua Speed and Lincoln corresponded regularly, and they argued heatedly in their letters over the divisive issue of their day: slavery. Despite their deep differences, however, their letters display civility and a genuine respect for the other.

Joshua's namesake tries to bring that same spirit into his work as director of consulting for the Alban Institute, a nonprofit research and training group based in Washington, D.C. Each year he consults with dozens of churches experiencing deep conflict and tries to help them clarify the issues, make decisions, and resolve differences.

Speed was thrown into conflict early. After earning M.Div. and S.T.M. degrees from Yale, he became pastor of an all-black church in Watts, and a year later, the Watts Riots broke out. Speed spent time learning community organization from Saul Alinsky, but he soon found that Rules for Radicals didn't work in the local church. "The norms of the church don't allow for that kind of direct confrontation," he says.

Following seven years as director of the Center of Metropolitan Mission In-Service Training (motivating churches on poverty, racism, and other urban issues), the activist became a peacemaker. Extensive study in organizational management, change, and conflict led to the landmark book Church Fights (Westminster, 1973; with Paul Kittlaus). Soon he was a welcome guest in churches as a full-time consultant with the Institute for Advanced Pastoral Studies. In 1977, he joined the Alban Institute.

LEADERSHIP editors Marshall Shelley and Kevin Miller traveled to Speed's home in Northville, Michigan, west of Detroit, to ask him why churches fight and how they can make up.

Do all churches have conflict?

Yes, all churches have conflict; and no, not all churches have conflict. (Laughter) It depends on the way you define it.

A management-school definition might be: disagreement about values, goals, methods, or the facts of a given situation. That approach would say the essence of conflict is people struggling over appropriate values in an organization. Defined that way, not all churches have conflict. In most churches there's a lot of agreement about what our values are, what the purpose of the church is, how we're going to do things.

Most folks, however, don't define conflict that way. To them, conflict really means, "I feel bad," or, to be precise, "Somebody is causing me to feel bad."

Wouldn't they say, "We differ on this issue" rather than "You're making me feel bad," and find some issue to disagree on?

Often that's exactly what happens. In fact, in Western culture, you're not supposed to just feel bad. You're supposed to have a reason. That's why the reasons for some church fights seem ridiculous.

I worked with a congregation where the presenting issue was that the pastor came to work during the week wearing Levis. It seemed like a dress-code issue; tell the pastor not to wear Levis, and things will get better.

Well, that wasn't the issue at all. I met with three groups of members from this church, and all they talked about were the jeans and sloppy desk. Finally, when the fourth group mentioned the same things, I said, "This doesn't check for me. You're the fourth group that's told me this, so I know you're all talking about it. But I can't understand why there's so much energy around these kinds of issues. What else is going on here?"

Gradually the underlying issue came out: people were uncertain that the pastor really respected them, liked them, and cared for them. They felt bad; they identified Levis as a reason to fight.

So the real issue in many conflicts is feelings?

Frequently I'll be called to a congregation that claims to have a big conflict, but when I get there, I find everybody agrees with one another. The problem is that they're in a downtown situation. The people who used to be members have moved to the suburbs, and the church can't attract the people now in the community. They're dying, and it feels bad. They call it conflict because they say, "We don't know what to do. In meetings we spend a lot of time saying, 'Why don't we do this? Why don't we do that?' " And even though it's not a disagreement, it feels like one.

Similar discomfort arises after a long-tenure pastor leaves. The new pastor leads worship a little differently, runs meetings differently, calls on people differently. It doesn't feel right. And so people say, "We've got a conflict about the pastor." But when you really push them, "Do you want the pastor to be different than who he or she already is?" often they say, "I guess we don't. But how do we make it feel better?" They feel unhappy about the change, but they aren't really involved in conflict.

Books and seminars on conflict resolution invariably describe church conflict as normal, even beneficial. But it sure doesn't feel that way to anyone involved. How do you explain the gap between the theory that conflict is healthy and the reality that people quickly get sick of it?

Your question is wonderful, because it reveals the assumption that if something feels bad, it's not good. But are our feelings accurate indicators of reality? That's not my perception at all.

So yes, it feels lousy, and yes, it's good for you?

Exactly. Feelings may be indicators of something we need to change or do something about. But the feelings may be just a normal and natural part of adjustment or growth. I run every day, for example, and it doesn't feel good every day.

What do church people fight about? What are the leading issues?

I studied a large number of cases in which I've been involved. This research is somewhat skewed, because I looked only at situations where the pastor was involuntarily terminated.

About 28 percent of the time, there was significant value conflict, usually in one of four areas:

1. Social action. A congregation would disagree over a community-directed ministry, say a food-and-clothing center for farm workers.

2. Liturgy and how worship should be conducted. They'll fight over whether or not to pass the peace. (Laughter)

3. Theology, usually charismatic versus noncharismatic or conservative versus liberal.

4. The lifestyle of the pastor-not a moral problem of the pastor, but disagreement within the congregation about what's appropriate conduct for a pastor. It often centered on social drinking, dress, community groups to belong to, activities the pastor's spouse was involved in.

So values questions were the biggest source of conflict?

No, I wish I could say they were. It would be great if people fought about significant things. (Laughter)

The biggest single category-46 percent of the total cases-involved the pastor's interpersonal competence. And this 46 percent divided equally into two situations. In one (23 percent of the total), the clergy were withdrawn, apathetic, not taking initiative, not providing any kind of leadership. And the other 23 percent involved pastors who were contentious and authoritarian.

What about commonly expected skills, like preaching? Do churches often squabble about "We're not being fed?"

Rarely were traditional skills the fighting issues. Only 6 percent of the time was bad preaching one of the major causes for the involuntary termination.

Another 12 percent of the time, though, the issue was pastors' not doing their job, just plain not working. In one case, a pastor in the Southeast owned a gift shop in a local hotel, and he spent most of his time there. He would show up at worship services and read his sermons out of a published collection of sermons. In another case, a church board asked the pastor to establish a Bible study group, to organize a church directory, and other things, and the pastor just ignored their requests.

Finally, 9 percent of the time the pastor was physically or mentally ill, which I assumed because they were hospitalized within six months of the termination. Most of these were alcoholics who entered treatment programs.

The pastor certainly seems to be the focal point. But would that hold true in church fights where the pastor is not terminated?

My guess is that the numbers wouldn't be far different. Often the pastor's leadership becomes the central issue no matter what people are really fighting over. The pastor will be blamed for taking one side, for not taking a side, or for the fact that others are having conflict.

I worked with a church in the Midwest where everybody agreed that the pastor was competent and held the same values as people in the congregation. But the conflict didn't stop, and the people didn't know what else to do, so they fired the pastor.

It was completely unfair and wrong, because the conflict had to do with the Christian education department. The director of the department, a woman from one of the church's big families, wanted to do things differently than her committee did. The pastor didn't take a side on the issue, and he tried to be helpful, but he couldn't stop the fighting, so the church fired him. They couldn't fire the woman.

My guess is that in only 20 to 25 percent of church conflicts is the pastor not significantly threatened or in the middle of the conflict in some way.

What should pastors take away from the fact that 75 or 80 percent of all church conflicts involve them directly?

That it's normal. That if this year we're having a conflict in which I'm seen as one of the critical elements, it's not unusual.

Pastors will want to develop skills to deal well with conflict. But even more important than professional skills and resources is the pastor's faith life. The way you deal with conflict is a function of your theology. It's important to accept Christ's message about conflict: we don't have to be afraid; we can stand for what we believe; that standing, that struggle, is redemptive. Conflict becomes destructive and horrible when it's meaningless, when there is no reason to stand, when no one is being helped to grow and change and be different.

With that kind of faith perspective, we can ask, not "Do we avoid the conflict?" but rather "Is this an opportunity for redemptive action?" Ministry happens in a profound way in the midst of struggles.

What's the most important thing pastors should do when they smell conflict brewing?

Get good data. If people on the board are talking about others on the outside, you need some way to get data from those who are on the outside. You can't rely just on hearsay.

As an illustration, let's roleplay an incident that happened to a pastor we know, who was hit with a surprise attack. We're board members; you're the pastor.

Go ahead.

We're in a board meeting. "Pastor, I think the board should be aware of the fact that there are a number of people who are very upset about your counseling. They say that you don't help them and that, in fact, you counsel over your head."

As a pastor, I might say, "You know, I'm not aware of any dissatisfaction with my counseling. I'm surprised; in fact, my throat is clutching when you mention it. I thought I was doing a good job. I'd really like to know where I'm having problems and how I can improve on that. I know this is a sensitive issue, because the people I've counseled might not want their situations brought up. But how can I get information about what I've not done right so I can get the help I need? Would you all mind taking 15 or 20 minutes tonight to talk about how I can get accurate information that will help me improve? Counseling is one of the most important parts of my ministry."

Board member: "I don't think it would be fair for me to disclose people's names. I mean, that's their business. It's not ours as a church council."

"I agree with you . . ."

"But what does concern me is your performance, not giving people the help they need."

"Boy, it really concerns me too. I thought I was helping them. And you know, if I'm messing up, I want to improve. But I need to know what it is that I've done poorly. Now, I agree with you that those people may not want to talk to me. That may be embarrassing. Could we spend some time talking about how I might find that out?

"Let me try something: What if those people typed a letter, anonymously, to you or to me that I can read? Then I would agree to take that to a counseling professor at the seminary and ask him what kind of help I should get to do better at this. That's so important to my ministry, I just don't want to mess up."

We could feel the thermostat lowering as you talked. Walk us through what you were doing.

One, I'm affirming you for raising the concern. I want to say, in effect, "It is appropriate to raise questions about any aspect of my ministry. I want to hear it. I want you to know I want to hear it."

Two, I want to take seriously your perceptions. So I'm going to try to understand what you're really saying.

Three, I want to figure out a way to solve the problem, which means, first, I need to get the data. I'm not going to back off that. If the board member doesn't like my proposal about the anonymous letter, then we'll try something else. And if that antagonist won't give me good data, most boards will support me if I honestly ask for help, and he or she isn't willing to take an extra step to respond.

So regardless of how the conflict starts, you want to get good information. The next step?

As I get the data, I must do good analysis: "What are the objectives of the people in the midst of the conflict? What kind of language are they using? What kind of help do we need to deal with it?" (See "How Bad is the Conflict?")

Clouding the process, of course, are unwritten rules: "We're not supposed to have conflict. We're not supposed to tell the person with whom we have the difference what our difference is; we're supposed to agree with them publicly. We're always supposed to agree with the pastor." The rule about always agreeing with the pastor sounds good, but it sets up a conspiracy to tell half-truths to one another. People say, "We're getting along fine," when, in fact, they're sabotaging what's going on.

The other thing I want to do is to draw on my faith resources. In my daily prayer and meditation, I attend to what's happening to me spiritually as I go through this struggle. I may want to spend extra time with my faith mentors, getting their perspective. I wrote a paper once called "Being Pushed into Your Religious Dimensions," and I think conflict causes that. It makes you ask religious questions so I want to be aware of how I'm answering them.

What are some appropriate and inappropriate ways to answer the religious questions raised by conflict?

Inappropriate: "Those people are nothing but evil, and my job is to get rid of that evil." "I'm going to be ruined, my family will be ruined, I will not be able to survive economically, and our kids will be socially ruined in the community."

What are appropriate ways, theologically, to be responding? This is one of those cases where you read in the New Testament "Be not afraid," and you say, "Oh, yeah?" (Laughter)

But that's the issue: how can I not be afraid in this situation? How can I live with the distress? How can I affirm the right of that person to question? How is God speaking to me through this person?

What messages might God speak through an antagonist?

Take our illustration of the person with complaints about the counseling skills of the pastor. Maybe I need to hear something so I can improve. Or, perhaps that board member is crying for help. There may be an opportunity to minister to him, and he's testing to see if I care for him even when he is nasty.

My experience with God is that it's often through the painful times that new life takes place. I don't like it that way; I would much prefer a Disney movie. But there's something about a refiner's fire.

After you've gathered the data and analyzed it, what would you say publicly about the conflict? Would you say anything from the pulpit?

I wouldn't give the data on the conflict or analyze it from the pulpit. The pulpit is usually an inappropriate place to do that. Sunday morning is a time for us to celebrate God's mercy and to seek renewal.

But I would definitely communicate about it. Maybe send out a letter, maybe continue to do things as always. For example, if the minutes of the board meetings are always posted on the bulletin board, that may be best. You might say, "We're working through the issue of the pastor's counseling, and these are the steps being taken."

So first you communicate that there is discussion in progress?

No, the first thing to communicate is that nothing scares us to death. We can deal with it. The second thing is that there's a discussion in progress.

Do you need to talk about a time line: "We anticipate having a decision made by this date . . ."?

Yes, you should take all the normal steps in problem solving. In fact, the higher the level of conflict, the slower and more careful you ought to be in indicating "These are the steps; this is when input is asked for; this is who has authority to make the decision."

Ordinarily, though, Sunday morning is not a good time to do conflict management. Why? Because often the fight doesn't fit within the formal organization of the church. It isn't just in the Session or just in the Christian education department. Instead, the conflict may involve a small, informal cluster of people who have a bug in their ear about something. So what I want to do is let those who are concerned about the issue communicate with those who have authority to deal with it. I want to create an environment where they can talk with each other about the issues. If I talk to the whole church on Sunday morning, it's really this little group over here that I'm concerned about. The others get splattered, even though they don't really need to deal with it. Furthermore, I usually have to speak in such vague terms that the concerned group finds it easy to misunderstand it, and the rest wonder what's going on.

It's more productive to create a forum for the conversation that includes the people affected by the decision and the people making it.

So you wouldn't recommend special congregational meetings to deal with the problem?

Sometimes they're necessary to make a decision, but Lord have mercy if we're just getting together to talk about the problem. Congregational meetings are usually unsafe places for people to talk; they tend to distort people's views and cause people to polarize. It's usually better to start with small groups, listening to their concerns. But if small groups aren't possible, talking about the conflict in a church meeting is better than taking it underground: "We'll talk about this secretly; we can't talk about it openly."

How do you evaluate the outcome of a process like this? After a church fight, is it possible to use words like success and failure?

Every time I negotiate with a church vestry or council, somebody asks, "How often are you successful?" I say, "Whose side are you on?" (Laughter)

People usually want to define success by the issues: the pastor left, or the pastor stayed, or their theology was vindicated.

But regardless of the particular issues, I have clear, specific criteria for judging whether I've been a success, and I test them both at the end of the contract and a year or two later.

The first is, Were we able to identify the issues on which we needed to make decisions? I define conflict management as the art of decision making. Conflict comes when people are undecided. They haven't figured out their goals, or program, or structure, or kind of worship service, or whatever. So the first question is, "Did we agree on what decision had to be made?"

The second question must be, "Did we make that decision?"

Right. If they're still fighting when I leave, the consultation has been a failure.

The next question is, Did I reduce tension? As much as I talk about bad feelings being appropriate in a given situation, we don't want them to go on forever. If they do, we've got a troubled organization. I want to reduce tension and increase the sense of safety in the congregation.

The next question I ask myself is, Did I help people develop skills to manage conflict in the future? I have failed if they have to call a consultant a year later.

What if people leave the church? Does that help you determine success or failure?

It depends. A final question I have is, Did every group with a legitimate right to be heard receive a hearing? I have failed if I help one group take over or drive out another group.

It's not unusual for a pastor or a board to say, "We've got a problem with a minority group in our congregation. How do we get rid of them?" I can't accept that job, because it doesn't help us learn how to deal with differences.

But isn't there often disagreement about whether a group has a right to be heard?

Oh, yes. There are times when I agree with the majority that folks don't have a right to be heard. For example, I worked with a northeastern church where a significant number of people left the congregation and became pledging and voting members of another church. Now they were coming back to the church I was working with and trying to influence policy. So I set a ground rule: only those people who would move their membership from the other church and commit themselves to the future of this congregation could join the process.

What confused me was why nobody in the congregation was willing to say that. They seemed to think you ought to let anybody have a say, hoping, I suppose, that people would come back.

On the other side of the question, I worked with a large, southern congregation that had a basically conservative, noncharismatic membership. But it also had a large group of charismatic Christians who had a prayer and praise service midweek. The Old Guard was trying to keep these folks off boards and committees, and setting up votes that wouldn't allow those people to participate. I said, "Wait a minute. The conflict is between these two groups, so both groups have to be in the conflict."

Let us play devil's advocate. For an institution to have a healthy identity, isn't it essential to say, "This is who we are, and this is who we are not"?

Sure, that's making a decision. Some churches appropriately clarify their identity when they say, "If you're going to teach our children yoga in the Sunday school, you can't be a teacher here. This is not a Hindu congregation." Every church does that to some degree, setting boundaries for what fits and what doesn't.

But the key is that all the people have had an opportunity to influence that decision. I think a group's identity becomes stronger when it addresses differences and when it is challenged. The identity becomes weaker when leaders say, "We won't allow anybody to challenge us. We won't look at anything that's different." Discussion doesn't mean a minority viewpoint will win. It does mean we're going to help each viewpoint be expressed appropriately.

So as you look at your consultations last year, how many would meet your criteria for success?

A little more than 50 percent. Conflict management is in its early stages of development, and the issues we're dealing with are so big, so power laden, there's no guarantee of success. Most congregations that get into serious conflict-and especially those that are willing to bring in an outside consultant-are in it so bad that the odds are only a little better than 50 percent that it will get better. And only 20 percent of the time will people say, "Everything is fixed. We're in a new, hallelujah state."

So part of my job is to help people set realistic goals about what it means to manage conflict in a given situation. But I'm optimistic; if I thought there was no hope for resolution in a church conflict, I'd go into radio repair. I assume you can fix those. (Laughter)

Why are you in this ministry of conflict management? It has to give you a lot of heartburn. What keeps you going?

I want to help the church be a healthy institution, and I think this is one way I can do that. As a healthy model of how to live in community, the church will be able to help society-in fact, the whole world.

At another level, I've always struggled with conflict in my life. Conflict has been hard for me. I haven't understood it, and I haven't understood myself in the middle of it. So my work is partly a quest to understand what happens in me when I get in a conflict, so I can do better.

What do you like about the way you see pastors handling conflict?

Most pastors I see are dealing with conflict every day and doing it well. They've gotten a lot of good training in seminary about how to do active listening, how to respect people, how to genuinely care for them. They know they're in ministry to others and so do not act from a stance of "I'm out to win. I'm gonna fix you, you dummy!" I respect the way most clergy handle themselves in conflict situations.

I feel a little like a psychiatrist who sees a lot of people who are disturbed and anxious and frightened, but who knows everybody's not that way. Generally I see health in the church. I see churches growing. I see people being changed by the ministry of their churches. I am enthusiastic about clergy and congregations.

Pastors

LEADERSHIP BIBLIOGRAPHY

As a pastor for fifteen years and a Church Growth consultant with the Charles E. Fuller Evangelistic Association for the last ten, Carl George has witnessed and worked with pastors, parishioners, and churches in crisis. He recommends the following selections.

The Making of a Leader by J. Robert Clinton, Navpress, 1988

Clinton’s new book is the most significant application of leadership-development theory to Christian leaders yet written. His background as an electrical engineer and missionary equipped him well to enter his present post as assistant professor of leadership and extension at Fuller Theological Seminary. Clinton shows how crises in the developing leader’s life are to be understood as tests or checks to determine whether the leader has learned the spiritual lessons necessary to be admitted into the next phase of broadening spiritual authority and influence.

The Integrity Crisis by Warren W. Wiersbe, Oliver-Nelson, 1988

Stung by the media scandals of Pearlygate, Wiersbe, general director and Bible teacher on “Back to the Bible” radio ministry, offers a wise essay to help today’s churchmen and women regain their ethical balance. Drawing on the life of Nehemiah, but going far beyond a Bible exposition, Wiersbe offers his correctives to hastily conceived philosophies of life that lead eventually to disaster. This is good preaching and Bible study discussion material, more for preventing than recovering from crisis.

Resolving Church Conflicts by G. Douglas Lewis, Harper & Row, 1981

From his position as a pastoral educator and church consultant, Lewis has seen what happens in church crises. Crises are agonizing for some church people with a theology that forbids conflict as sub-Christian. Lewis summarizes theory and presents actual conflict cases. The two-page summation of principles and styles is worth the price of the book.

Church Fights by Speed Leas and Paul Kittlaus, Westminster, 1973

Writing with clarity, Leas and Kittlaus reduce five years of consultations into a process for understanding and dealing with church conflict. A flow chart suggests use of an outside referee (consultant) but includes options for those who decline such help. The authors prefer to approach conflict as an opportunity for growth rather than as an episode to regret. They give directions for gathering data, looking at interpersonal issues, understanding various outcomes, and even working a simulation game.

Preventing a Church Split by Gene Edwards and Tom Brandon, Christian Books, 1987

One of four books by Edwards on the problem of schism, this title belongs on every pastor’s shelf as surely as Band-Aids belong in the medicine cabinet. Edwards, who pastored and served as an itinerant evangelist, now leads conferences focusing on a deeper spiritual life. His book is a well-illustrated and powerful plea for calling people to a life committed to Christ as the most important way to avoid schism.

An attorney, Tom Brandon, contributes a section on conflict and resolution. He offers advice on prevention, and contrasts how leaders sometimes conduct themselves in a church fight with both supernatural and carnal responses.

Crisis Counseling by H. Norman Wright, Here’s Life, 1985

Wright is well-known for his teaching at Biola University and Talbot Seminary, and his extensive consulting practice and pastoral-training ministry. Starting with biblical principles, he explores crisis intervention, depression, suicide, death, divorce, childhood and adolescence crisis, transition, stress, making referrals, and using Scriptures and prayer in counseling. In the appendixes, Wright addresses legal obligations of counselors and gives a useful crisis-assessment summary.

The Minister as Crisis Counselor (Revised) by David K. Switzer, Abingdon, 1988

This widely read text for ministerial training by a professor of pastoral theology has been updated to include more gender-inclusive language and greater attention to the use of the telephone in crisis intervention. Switzer covers types of crises, general intervention processes, family crisis, grief crisis, divorce crisis, and the suicidal crisis.

Pastors

PEOPLE IN PRINT

Help to Keep From Falling

Perils of Power: Immorality in the Ministry by Richard Exley, Honor Books, $9.95

Reviewed by Dave Wilkinson, pastor, Moorpark (California) Presbyterian Church

Immorality in the ministry. We’ve read the stories and felt the embarrassment.

Richard Exley, pastor of Christian Chapel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, writes: “I will never forget the moment I learned of the Jimmy Swaggart tragedy. A squall of disoriented emotions swept over me-disbelief, shame, anger, grief.”

To be honest, I was not as pained as Exley by the fall of some of the televangelists. Perhaps, in a sinfully smug, mainline church way, I had never expected anything more. But I am pained by the downfall of some of my own friends-from whom I had come to expect a lot more. I read Exley’s book to try to understand this epidemic. I was not disappointed.

Exley’s thesis: “All sexual sin is not rooted in lust-at least not initially. When a local-church pastor commits adultery, it is usually with someone with whom he has developed a relationship. It is good gone awry. What began as legitimate ministry-a shared project, or a giving of comfort-becomes an emotional bonding, which ultimately leads to an illicit affair.” He quotes Carlfred Broderick, who writes in Couples: “With a little help from rationalization, the sympathy leads smoothly into tenderness, the tenderness to the need for privacy, the privacy to physical consolation, and consolation straight to bed.”

Exley identifies two types of men who are especially vulnerable to sexual temptation. (There are no women pastors in his book.)

The first is the man for whom “ministry hasn’t really lived up to his expectations. It seems he is never free from criticism, at least not for long. Things aren’t so good at home, either. He wishes he and his wife were closer. He wishes she were more sensitive to his needs. A little appreciation wouldn’t hurt, either.”

The second is the minister who achieves his goals and finds them empty. At the height of their careers, “they have probably achieved more ‘success’ than they ever dreamed possible, and with it more frustration. The minister may be thinking that this isn’t how he is supposed to feel. Where’s the fulfillment, the satisfaction? Who is there to share his achievements? He is probably not intimate with his wife, and his children are strangers.”

Many ministers, Exley writes, “labor a lifetime believing that if they can just reach their goals they will finally feel accepted, worthy. Not true! There is not enough success in the world to quiet the discordant voices within. Self-esteem is not the by-product of achievement, but the natural consequence of a healthy relationship with one’s parents, peers, and, of course, God. It is a matter of who you are in Christ, not what you have done.”

It’s these complex roots of immorality that lead Exley to call for a period away from ministry for pastors who succumb. He carefully distinguishes between suspension for punishment and suspension for restoration.

“When the infidelity comes to light, we want to assume the best; we want to believe that it was something that happened only once, in a moment of weakness. Unfortunately, that is usually not the case. Instead, we often discover that it has been a tragic pattern for a number of months, perhaps even years. Frequently, it has involved several women.” Exley notes “the desperate need the minister has for a period of time away from the ministry where he can deal with the destructive habits of a lifetime. Even when a minister confesses and repents, it is still in his best interests to require him to cease ministering for a time in order to rearrange his priorities and reestablish his family relationships.

“Adultery is seldom just ‘sexual sin,’ and while it is definitely a spiritual problem, it is more than just a ‘spiritual problem.’ It involves a number of factors including, but not limited to, the way we relate to our spouse, our own self-image and sexual identity, our lifestyle, our work habits, and even the way we do ministry. These are issues which simply cannot be dealt with in a few days away, nor can they be adequately addressed while the minister is still involved full time in the ministry. The pressures of ministry are simply too great, the temptation to return to the familiar routine too compelling-a routine which contributed significantly to the problem in the first place.”

I contacted Exley by phone and asked about the rapid return of Jimmy Swaggart to the pulpit. He expressed deep apprehension about Swaggart’s future-citing both the lack of time and perspective for restoration to take place and the possible “spirit of rebellion” that led Swaggart to renounce the jurisdiction of the Assemblies of God. Time and distance, he stated again, are essential. While he does not agree with those who say that a minister who sins should never be restored to a place of prominence, he stresses that restoration, while complete, must come in stages. “Let him show that he is faithful in a few things before he is made ruler over many things,” he said.

To make such a time of restoration possible-and even to encourage fallen pastors to confess in private if they are not publicly found out-Exley calls for denominations to set aside funds “not only to underwrite the cost of counseling,” but also “to provide living expenses for the minister’s family while he is undergoing treatment.”

Exley’s wide-ranging prescription is rooted in the belief that “the fatal flaw is not to be found in the man alone but in the whole body of Christ.” He calls for a change in the way success in ministry is measured: from numbers to character. “God has predestined us not to success but to Christlikeness.”

Exley admits that he also struggles with measuring success. He writes, “Any time I start to feel smug about the size of ‘my’ church or the books ‘I’ have published, God reminds me of our covenant. ‘Richard, if you couldn’t build your self-worth on the size of your congregation when it numbered 100, you can’t do it now that it numbers more than 1,000.’ “

At times Perils of Power serves as Fatal Attraction for pastors. In several real-life examples, Exley points out how succumbing to the “tender trap” is a great way for a pastor to undermine and even destroy everything he has loved and tried to build.

But the point is not for pastors to be scared stiff. It is for pastors to be loved straight.

Controlling the Uncontrollable

Counseling for Problems of Self-Control by Richard P. Walters, Word, $12.95

Reviewed by Gary L. Gulbranson, pastor, Glen Ellyn (Illinois) Bible Church

Nearly two thousand years ago, the apostle Paul wrote: “That which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). Paul described a common problem people present to pastors and Christian counselors: a struggle with self-control. They drink too much. They eat too much. They shoplift. They smoke, gamble, gossip, explode in anger, lust, lie, and live beyond their means. And like the apostle, they cry out for help.

Richard Walters wants people to know that self-control is possible though admittedly not easy. “There is no quick fix for lack of self-control,” he writes. “The disorders are often complex and deeply embedded in the person’s life-style and . . . the disordered person . . . may resist counseling.”

Walters draws his insight from years of experience as a therapist in private practice, as a counseling minister in a local church, and as a staff psychologist in a Christian psychiatric hospital.

Disorders of self-control arise when people become so enmeshed in self-centered behavior that they begin to destroy themselves and those around them. The task of the Christian counselor, Walters says, is to help the person identify the cause of the problem, manage the problem behavior, and eventually, through the healing power of God’s truth and presence, overcome the problem.

To illustrate this process, Walters weaves the story of Bram and Glenda Wilnock throughout the book. In the beginning, Bram is given to periodic explosions of anger directed against his family. We look on as a pastor takes the Wilnocks from a rocky beginning to the point where Bram can say, at the end of the book, “Now that I know I’m not in this by myself [having learned to trust God and Glenda], I can fix the little things as they come along instead of letting them build up till I bust. It’s sure a lot better!”

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 describes the principles and processes that apply to problems of self-control. At the heart of this section is a counseling sequence derived from Isaiah 6:10. The counselor helps the struggling person manage the crisis, see relationships that model health, hear truth about self and living, understand the disorder, turn toward health, be healed, and grow in Christian maturity.

Part 1 closes with two chapters of particular interest: “What to Do When Counseling Is Not Wanted” and “What to Do When Friends and Family Interfere.”

In part 2, Walters expands on a list of root causes of self-control: sinful human nature, physiological influences, emotional deficits, wounds from the past, and discrepancies in belief systems. He leads the reader through several step-by-step case studies, recording dialogue between pastor and counselee to show principles in action.

In the case of an impulsive spender named Eric, for example, Walters shows the pastor probing for the roots of his habit. The pastor has just said God brings good things into his life and makes it larger, not smaller, and Eric replies, ” ‘Maybe that’s easier for you . . . because you’re a preacher.’

“Pastor: ‘Try it this way-I’m a preacher because it works, but it wasn’t always easy, and it’s not always easy now. To start, I had to trust, and to do that I had to overcome some suspicions.’

“Eric: ‘Yeah?’

“Pastor: ‘I had been turned off to God by some people I saw.’

“Eric: ‘Like you said, “I can understand that.” ‘

“Pastor: ‘You’ve had some bad experiences.’

“Eric: ‘I had a Sunday school teacher cuss me out in class when I was a little kid. I’ve never forgotten that.’

“Pastor: ‘Of course you haven’t. What does it mean, now?’

“Eric: ‘I’m pretty skeptical. Not about God-I believe in him-but I don’t want him turning me into some kind of a loony-tune like that teacher, or into a monk or a missionary or something.’

“Pastor: ‘You don’t want your life to be wasted. You want your life to be enjoyable, to go to good places. And you figure that if you gave up some control to God he would hold you hostage, just lock you up.’

“Eric: ‘That’s it. I don’t trust him.’ “

At the end of the dialogue, Walters concludes, “Eric realized that his impulsive spending was his expression of rebellion against a God who would stifle him. The pastor was different-challenging Eric’s assumptions and behavior, but affirming his personhood. Through this, Eric learned and believed the paradox that Jehovah God, who created us to be free, restores and expands our freedom when we give him control of our lives.”

Part 3 moves beyond the scope of self-control problems to a discussion of Christian maturity, which is the goal of all Christian counseling and is reached when the struggling person is able to put the control of his or her life in God’s hands.

Richard Walters has not written a theological or philosophical treatise but a theologically sound, philosophically ordered, and intensely practical manual. I have read the book twice and reached for it a dozen times already as an aid in my counseling work.

A Powerful Look at a Powerless Church

The Naked Church by Wayne Jacobsen, Harvest House, $6.95

Reviewed by John Duckworth, senior editor, church resources, David C. Cook Publishing Co., Elgin, Illinois

For months Wayne Jacobsen had been thinking disturbing thoughts. He’d been comparing the explosive church of Acts with the weak-kneed churches he saw around him. A pastor himself, he knew all too well that few Christians were even trying to compare the two, much less trying to make them match.

He tried to chase away the disturbing thoughts by plunging deeper into pastoral busyness. It didn’t work.

“When I looked for whys I kept coming to the same conclusion: Our application of contemporary Christianity was inadequate,” he writes. “When I looked at how church ministry operated, I saw how high a priority it places on safety and routine. … It placates the lukewarm and cools the zealous. It has not led us to the fullness of Jesus’ life but rather lured us away.

” ‘That’s it!’ I said aloud. ‘I’m going to find a Christianity as powerful as the one I have read about in Acts, no matter what!’ “

Jacobsen’s quest led him to pastor a less traditional fellowship. But he quickly learned that organizational charts weren’t the problem. “Church structures were only the branches and leaves of the problems I struggled with, now I saw the roots-the appetites within. My idealism was tested by a challenge to personal change. My obedience lay not in changing other people but in my own surrender to the will of God.”

That is the essence of The Naked Church: a call to individual revival that would turn the Western church upside down.

The Naked Church has not been greeted warmly in all quarters. “I’ve gotten reactions on both sides,” Jacobsen told me recently. “Some say, ‘You let the church off too easy.’ Others are hostile, saying I ‘maligned sacred things.’ One pastor called me ‘an embittered old so-and-so.’ “

That’s an odd reaction, since Jacobsen’s tone is humble and hopeful, not bitter. His commitment to the church seems stronger than ever as he co-pastors The Savior’s Community, an interdenominational fellowship in Visalia, California, where he says the book’s prescription for change “describes our vision. But we’re not doing it flawlessly.”

At least half of The Naked Church is devoted to solutions, pairing chapters about church-wide problems with personal answers. It is a book that approaches church renewal by saying, “Let it begin with me.”

Jacobsen’s emphasis on evidential feelings and his assertion that signs and wonders are to be expected today won’t set well with all readers. But fewer would argue with his call for a return to simplicity in church life. Instead of the busyness, professionalism, and protocol that have complicated so many churches-and pastors’ lives-he urges simple intimacy with God, which comes through the stepping stones of submission, humility, perseverance, grace, worship, Bible study, and fellowship. “Knowing God personally is not too difficult for anyone who wants it. We ourselves can do so little to build intimacy, for God himself is too good at it. We can only allow ourselves to be distracted from it.”

He urges risk taking: “The best training ground for moving in God’s power is not in the sanctuary but in the street.” And he always yearns to replace the bogus with the real.

Leaders need intimacy and accountability to be genuine, writes Jacobsen. They must be mature followers of Jesus, not just those who have completed academic training.

The author admits that he, too, has been intoxicated by the thrill of running a complex mini-empire. But he also knows the limits of programming. “Many people are being torn apart by our institutional objectives,” he writes, “and altogether too much ministry to the individual has been lost because we have been too busy baby-sitting the machine.”

The author is careful, however, not to urge readers to stage coups in their churches. Toward the end of the book he writes, “The solution I’ve given has been personal. This is not to say I don’t think the structures should be changed, for they harm many sincere believers as well as alienate many nonbelievers. It’s just that few who read this book will have the power to change structures.”

He included that statement, he told me, “to keep people from becoming agitators.” He’s seen some lay people try to remake their churches with divisive results.

Had Jacobsen written the book specifically for pastors, he says now, “I would have offered more institutional possibilities.” But for both pastors and lay people, the core of the problem is still personal. We need “the intimacy with God that says I’m going to follow him wherever he leads.”

The Naked Church offers food for thought and prayer, not success stories. Jacobsen knows that the goal of truly knowing God will make us hungry, as it has him.

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

Child Sexual Abuse: A Handbook for Clergy and Church Members by Lee W. Carlson, Judson, $6.95

Child sexual abuse deeply disturbs the lives of many church families. Urgent but not alarmist, this little book aims to help the church recognize the problem and do something constructive.

Carlson, family and resource minister for American Baptist Churches, focuses on the unique role of the church. He believes the church should keep in mind its particular contribution as an agent of repentance, forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation.

Besides the theological and ethical dimensions-including an argument for discretionary confidentiality-he briefly explains the causes and signs of abuse, the situation of the various people involved, and what to do after reporting. An annotated bibliography guides the reader to specialized resources.

Youth and Missions: Expanding Your Students’ World View by Paul Borthwick, Victor, $6.95

Paul Borthwick wants to put myopic, self-satisfied youth groups out of business. He may succeed.

Borthwick’s tactic? Expand the students’ world view by example, by exposure, and by experience. He argues convincingly that this vital task rests not only with the youth ministry but with the entire congregation and with missionaries, too.

In short, Borthwick, minister of missions at Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts, has written a concise and motivating book, bursting with practical suggestions on how to get youth involved in the worldwide mission of Jesus Christ.

Advertising Your Church Services: Using the Media to Reach Your Community by C. Norman Noble, Standard, $7.95

“Make no mistake. It is not the message that needs help; it’s the messenger and the audience,” says C. Norman Noble, a market consultant.

Eschewing crass commercialism that treats Jesus Christ “as if he were a commodity to be bought or sold,” Noble shows how the church can intelligently present itself in any medium, especially the newspaper. From creating a budget to proofreading, Noble lays out the how-to’s of advertising. Along the way he includes dozens of creative ads his Seattle church has used with good results-and gives license to steal.

Recruiting, Training, and Developing Volunteer Adult Workers by John Hendee, Standard, $9.95

Recruiting, training, and developing workers. What fun! No, but the vitality of the local church rests upon it. That, at least, is the considered opinion of John Hendee, pastor of administration at the Central Christian Church of Mesa, Arizona. So in this primer, he seeks to turn the burdensome into the potentially manageable and rewarding.

He breaks down the complex task of adult ministry into its components. The three participles in the title, for instance, are each given a chapter, and are preceded by chapters on purpose and programming. The last chapter includes a tool especially useful for the disorganized: a “Ministry/Project Planner,” a series of sheets that helps planners attend to the multitude of details involved in any event.

Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John B. Kruis, Baker, $6.95

Kruis directs the Biblical Counseling Center in Jenison, Michigan. He believes that “the Scriptures are ideally suited for any and every counseling situation.” Thus, he supplies scriptural quotes on such topics as bitterness and brooding, homosexuality and hate, sex life, and substance abuse.

One caution: the chief weakness of any such book is the temptation to use passages out of context. Heeding that caution, the book can be used with profit. In addition, the book could be the starting point for many a topical sermon.

Counseling for Substance Abuse and Addiction by Stephen Van Cleave, Walter Byrd, and Kathy Revell, Word, $12.95

Counseling and Self-Esteem by David E. Carlson, Word, $12.95

For the nonspecialist who wants counsel on how to counsel, these books (volumes 12 and 13 in the Resources for Christian Counseling series edited by Gary R. Collins) offer realistic advice and intelligently combine biblical theology with psychological insights.

Van Cleave, Byrd, and Revell, all actively working with drug rehabilitation programs, explain the many-layered causes and effects of drug abuse. They offer loving, tough, step-by-step suggestions for healing. Eight appendices demystify technical and slang drug jargon and suggest other resources for the addicted.

David Carlson, visiting professor of psychology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, presents a “psycho-theology” of self-esteem, in which he makes ample room for the doctrine of total depravity. Most of his book, however, teaches pastors and other counselors how to build self-esteem in others. He advocates a “sensory method,” which teaches people to hear, see, and perceive themselves without distortion, and to become aware of how they physically act out self-esteem.

Reviewed by Mark Galli, pastor,

Grace Presbyterian Church

Sacramento, California

Pastors

THE COFFER CRUNCH

Jim Smith, Lloyd Sturtz, Art Gay, Bob Rhoden

What happens to ministry when money is in short supply?

October 19, 1987, will forever be remembered as Black Monday in the financial world. The Dow plunged, like an out-of-control airplane, a record-scorching 508 points. In seven hours, investors lost some $500 billion in equity values. Smaller brokerages were forced out of business. Traders were let go. And now, more than a year later, according to reports, smaller investors still have not regained confidence in Wall Street.

What happens when a local church experiences a similar financial downturn? What exactly does ministry mean when a church faces a fiscal crisis, whether moderate or severe, and what’s the pastor’s responsibility?

LEADERSHIP posed those questions to four pastors who have experienced money crunches of varying kinds. As an introduction to their discussion of the underlying issues, here is each pastor’s account of how his church found itself in a hole.

Aborted Bequest

Jim Smith

Elim Baptist Church

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Late in 1983, a former parishioner at Elim approached my predecessor to say: “My family has deep roots in this church. And now that I’m beginning to think about retirement, I’d like to build the church a new building-whatever it costs-provided you furnish it.”

Plans began, I came to the church, and by July of 1987, the building’s roof and walls were completed. The inside, though, had a long way to go.

Then the donor suffered a major financial reversal and informed me, “I have to cap the gift.”

That left our urban-neighborhood congregation, attendance around 300, with signed contracts and debts totaling almost $700,000. Without any clue it was going to happen, we inherited a debt three times our annual budget. If the work stopped, we could be sued for breach of contract. We weren’t sure there would be enough money for any staff. We came within days of the project being shut down.

The One Two Punch

Lloyd Sturtz

Chippewa United Methodist Church

Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania

My former church, Grace United Methodist in Franklin, Pennsylvania, had grown to an attendance of 450 on Sunday morning, which was more than our sanctuary could handle, and we began thinking about building. At that time, a member told me, “I’m expecting a major legal settlement shortly, and I’d like to give half a million dollars toward a new building,”

We had some money set aside, and with that gift promised, we bought property and began site preparations. When the foundations were laid and walls were going up, the major donor called me at home. “I’m about to receive the check,” the person said, “but I’ve made a decision. I’m not going to give you the money up front. I’m going to put it in my will, and you’ll get it when I die.” This donor was only 35 years old.

That left us with roughly $600,000 indebtedness, which would have created a cash-flow problem but still have been manageable.

However, six months later we learned that Joy Manufacturing-the largest employer in Franklin- was laying off half its management staff. In the next nine months, community unemployment hit 25 percent. We lost three hundred of our eight hundred members as they moved to find work. And most of these people were active leaders and liberal givers.

The church hadn’t experienced financial difficulty before, but now we had to decide each month which bills we’d pay. We wrestled with which ministries would go, and eventually we had to drop our Christian day school.

Changing Demographics

Slump

Art Gay

South Park Church

Park Ridge, Illinois

Our situation isn’t as dramatic as some of the others’, but it’s current. South Park Church is about 50 years old, and without faith promises or pledges, it has always paid its bills and been able to expand its ministries.

But the game has changed. Many of the church’s long-time “angels” are now being called home or retiring to Arizona. In our urban/suburban Chicago area, many of the younger families can’t afford to live here unless they have two incomes. And the younger people we do keep aren’t accustomed to tithing. They like to give to projects-like co-sponsoring an Indian church in Chicago-but they don’t get as excited about ongoing operations..

As a consequence, we’re currently in a cash flow crisis and $100,000 behind budget. We can’t afford to replace one pastor who left, so we’ve had to cut back ministry to young singles, which is a growing area for us. As we build our budgets for next year, we’re looking at no raises-and probably cutbacks-in staff salaries and ministry programs.

Though we’re a church with no debts, we have few resources. The county just approved our plan to put up a two-story educational building, which we need because we have many young families with children. But the people causing the expansion can’t pay for it. We have one year to start building, but we’re several months into the year and have no fund drives going because of our current situation. So the building may not happen.

Botched Building

Bob Rhoden

West End Assembly of God

Richmond, Virginia

In the late seventies, when attendance at two morning services reached about five hundred, we decided we needed more space. We designed a simple, multipurpose building. Our philosophy was that you don’t borrow, and we thought we’d spend $250,000 on a payas-you-go basis.

Meanwhile, three problems developed in the congregation. One was theological; we had to deal with the “name it, claim it” issue. A second problem was governmental; we were changing from a congregational to a more presybyterian polity, and that created a power struggle. And the third problem was economic. We discovered we had a crowd but not a church. There was no common vision, and people were not excited about giving.

We decided to proceed with the building anyway. As we got into it, though, costs soared to $400,000, and so in midstream we had to switch from pay-as-you-go to borrowing. Before, we had taught “It’s God’s principle that we not borrow,” and now we were asking people to take a loan. That created a loss of confidence in me and the other leaders.

Meanwhile, the county charged us $150,000 for drainage work we hadn’t anticipated, and the building ended up costing $980,000.

When the building was completed, there wasn’t enough parking, and the air-conditioning didn’t work on opening day, a hot September Sunday, so we had the doors open. Plus, the building flooded on one side, so sometimes members had to mop.

Soon, we didn’t want to answer the telephone because of contractors. We borrowed $500,000 on the first mortgage and tried, unsuccessfully, to raise the rest of the money. We had to take bonds for an additional $205,000.

People stopped coming to church to find out what God was doing in people’s lives; they came to find out how much we owed. At one meeting, three people demanded we put the church into receivership. Another night, a church meeting to discuss the problem nearly turned into a brawl. One man challenged another, “You want to step outside and settle it?”

Leadership: Whew! You and your churches have been through the wringer. Yet you’re here talking about it, alive and well. What happened?

Bob Rhoden: First, we held a “Day of Victory” on Easter of 1980, in which we tried to raise $50,000. We received $17,000, which represents a lot of sacrificial giving, but all we could think was, We came in $33,000 short of our goal.

We learned something through that: never look to a onetime event as a way to restore the damage from a long process. It took time to get into the mess, and it will take time to get back out. You have to say, “God, we trust the process that’s going on here.”

After a lot of thought, I stood with the other leaders one Sunday morning and said, “We have made a lot of mistakes. We have blown it royally.” We didn’t try to blame anybody else. We said, “We ask you as a congregation to forgive us for what we’ve done wrong. We don’t have all the answers to this, but if together we can find an answer, we’ll go on.”

It was gut wrenching to stand before five or six hundred people and say, “I’ve blown it.” But the people recognized it was sincere, not a manipulative move, and they came forward, wept with us, and told us they forgave us. That didn’t solve all our problems, but it changed some attitudes.

Jim Smith: Keeping relationships strong is critical. I had to ask, “How can we keep from fighting ourselves, from attacking segments of the church, from scapegoating?” It’s natural for people to wonder whether someone could have seen this coming.

But as we talked and prayed through our feelings, we were able to do the practical things we needed to do. We began a faith promise program and obtained a line of credit from the bank, and the people responded generously. The budget jumped 30 percent in one year, but we’ve gradually moved from a full-blown crisis into a cash-flow crunch. We aren’t able to support a full-time associate, and there’s austerity, but we’re making it now.

Lloyd Sturtz: We had to make some tough decisions through agony and prayer. It wasn’t easy closing down our Christian school, and we lost a family over it. But from those decisions and courageous giving by the members-tithing of their severance pay!-the church has gradually climbed into the black.

Art Gay: The only solution to our situation has been to redefine ministry success. It isn’t based on noses or nickels; it’s based on being faithful with what we have. Whether or not we build a building or have as much staff as we need, ministry will continue.

If I don’t get a raise, I remind myself that raises are not a given; they’re a privilege. Joanne and I are ready to take the lead in this. Going backward in compensation is not failure. What hurts, though, is when people move to other churches with great numbers and finances and then view us as unsuccessful. We have to keep saying, There’s another standard by which we want to be measured: faithfulness.

Smith: When a crisis hits, the minister has to take the lead. We made some cuts, and so in three years my salary has gone backward. But that doesn’t bother me; I’m not a martyr. It’s just that if you’re going to ask people to sacrifice, you have to cinch down, too. Some of our dear people mortgaged their homes to make sure we didn’t lose the ranch. Together we made the decisions and paid the price. And as a result, we had a deeper sense of ownership and of God’s desires to use the building in ministry.

Rhoden: What helped turn us around happened after that time of repentance before the congregation. My associate and I were brainstorming one day, and we concluded: “We’re in such a mess, we’ll never solve all of it. We ought to go help somebody else.” We recommended the church send twenty people to the Dominican Republic to build a church. The twenty paid their own airfare, and the church raised $12,000 to help with the project. The group built not one but two churches, and suddenly we began to develop an identity.

Our attendance dropped to about 350, but internally we rounded the corner. From that point on, five different people gave us large gifts. They said, “We want to give this out of conviction, not because we feel any pressure.” When we gave up worrying about ourselves and started helping others, the whole situation changed.

Leadership: Looking back, do you think you could have forecast your various crises? If so, what would you have done differently?

Smith: In our case, no. Who would have guessed a multi-millionaire would struggle with finances?

Complicating the situation is that when I came as pastor, in July of ’35, the oars already were in the water, the boat was wet, and the rowers were sweating. I tried discreetly to ask some questions: “Do I have any latitude in this building project? Is there any elbow room to talk about the nature of the gift or how it’s applied?”

The response: “Realistically, not at this point.”

Leadership: If you had been able to influence the initial stages, what would you have done?

Smith: Set a dear definition of the size of the gift. The gift was open-ended, which was the way the donor preferred it, and the donor and building committee acted in good faith. But without a set amount, all we could do was say, “Here’s what we would like to see in the building. Do you think this is okay?” And the response would be, “That seems reasonable.” But when the crisis hit, we didn’t even know the exact extent of our indebtedness.

Sturtz: We could have been more realistic if we had watched the economic downturn everywhere else in the country. It didn’t hit the Franklin area until two years after other areas. We had a two-year reprieve, but we just didn’t pay attention.

We Christians tend to say, “We live by faith; God’s going to take care of us.” That’s true, but we’d better look closely at what the business community is doing if we’re planning new construction.

Rhoden: If I could go back, I’d gather people in the real estate, development, and construction businesses. As a pastor, I haven’t been trained as a contractor or real estate agent. In a recent building program we just completed, we did gather such a group, and that team kept us on track.

A second thing I’d do is make sure the congregation owned the vision. In our first building program, we talked about “We’re gonna pay for this as we go,” and they all stood and applauded. But they just didn’t give.

Leadership: The applause meant, “They are going to pay for it, not I.”

Rhoden: Exactly. There has to be some criteria by which you can determine whether people are ready to take the next step. For instance, in this current project, we said, “Before we take step one, we’re going to pay for the land, which will cost half a million dollars.” The money came in for that, and then we knew the people were behind the project.

Third, I’d set a realistic goal for the cost of the building and stick to it.

Leadership: What happens in a congregation when money is tight? What symptoms do you notice?

Gay: Embarrassment, surprise, self-doubt, anger, acrimony at meetings. In the past, our congregation felt there was nothing we couldn’t do. To find out we can’t do some things we’d really like to do is earth shaking. People want to distance themselves from that.

One of the roles of pastoral leadership is to identify the mood of the congregation and describe their feelings. That’s part of shepherding, of helping people through the grief process.

Leadership: So your counsel would be to talk about the crisis directly?

Gay: Yes, from the pulpit. In my case, I was given the assignment; “Now, Pastor, we’re in trouble Get out there and preach those stewardship sermons.” (Laughter) Seriously, the leaders said, “It’s your responsibility to articulate the vision of the church, and we’re in a critical situation.” So I talked about our position clearly and directly. The bottom line was, “Realistically, when we begin a new fiscal year, the church will be at this financial position, and the congregation will determine the level of ministry. And that’s okay. God hasn’t left us, and I have no intention of leaving unless you know something I don’t.” (Laughter)

I went on to say, “My sense of success isn’t attached to money; it’s attached to faithfulness.” That was important for people to hear, because people expect that when giving goes down, pastors yearn to leave. And the fear of desertion is a strong emotion. So I want to articulate the church’s vision, communicate the people’s feelings about the crisis, but then say, “However this comes out, we’ll still be here ministering together.”

Smith: Something I’d add about communicating publicly during a crisis is to wait until you have the facts. The Sunday in July after I found out we had a problem, I didn’t say anything. By the end of the summer, I had an idea of our debt. By early September our leadership was working on a strategy. Not until October could I write a newsletter article for the congregation with full details.

Leadership: What did you say in that article?

Smith: I affirmed the generosity of the benefactor and the diligence of the building committee. Then I said we’d received word that the generous gift would have to be capped, and this meant it would cost over $600,000 to complete the project. I admitted I’d felt anger, fear, and the temptation to blame others. But now, I said, I’m ready to move to the next stage: finding the Lord’s solution. Finally, I strongly urged people to attend a Sunday meeting where the financial realities would be explained in detail.

Rhoden: To me, the timing of when you say something publicly is important. If I stand up and speak during the announcements, it’s heard on one level. But if what I say is part of the sermon, it has a higher value. So I spoke about the crisis right before I preached. I’d say, “I’m going to talk to you for just a few moments as family.” Why take the lowest part of the service to say what is important?

Leadership: Your approach also places whatever you say in a spiritual context.

Rhoden: Right. It says, “We’re not talking about mere business, folks. We’re talking about the kingdom.” We elevate what we say by when and how we say it.

But I also think it’s important to resist the temptation to let the crisis enter all your preaching. I really felt a tension: Am I going to preach out of this pressure I’m feeling, or am I going to preach out of God’s anointing?

Sturtz: In retrospect, I would change the way I described the problem. I said repeatedly from the pulpit, “We don’t have a financial problem; we have a spiritual problem. If our people were as spiritually committed as they ought to be, we could easily do this.” I’d never say that again. That was a disaster.

Leadership: Because you accused people of lack of commitment?

Sturtz: Because it wasn’t altogether honest; we did have a financial problem. The leaders kept coming to me and saying, “You’ve got to tell them we need more money to pay our bills.”

I’d say, “That’s not what we need. We need more commitment. If our members would tithe, we could pay our bills.”

And they’d say to me, “Lloyd, you’re an idealist. The reality is we’re facing $10,000 in bills this month that we haven’t been able to pay.”

Leadership: So if the situation presented itself now, how would you talk about it?

Sturtz: I would be honest enough now, I think, to say, “Unless we come up with this amount of money, we’re not going to be able to meet the budget.” Then I would say, “I believe we will be able to pay this bill if the spiritual issue of commitment to give is taken care of.” I’d put the spiritual and financial together.

Rhoden: I made the mistake of talking about our financial problem every week. It would have been better to pick the first Sunday of the month and say, “I want to give you a report on how we did last month.” That way, people get a feeling there’s some relief. But if you talk about a corporate problem every week, you fatigue people, and soon the corporate problem overshadows personal needs, and ministry deteriorates.

Leadership: Besides the public presentations, what other aspects of ministry do you need to emphasize during a crisis?

Smith: I tried to anticipate people’s reactions and questions. “How did this happen? Is it anybody’s fault? Could there be some mistake?” The congregation seemed to experience denial and all the other stages of grief. In addition, people began to ask broader questions: “Where do we go from here? Does this building really represent us, or is it just one guy’s dream?”

As a result, I invested an enormous amount of time in answering phone calls, initiating conversations, and saying, “No, the way you heard it isn’t exactly the way it was.” There were so many stories going around, and I had to make sure the straight story was being heard.

Gay: I haven’t changed my time allocation. Crises of church discipline consume many days or weeks or months, but during a financial crisis, if I’m going to carry on the rest of ministry, I can’t focus just on that. Probably if you’d ask my financial chairman or board chairman, they might say “Art should be more concerned.” But deep down they have the attitude, and it’s been articulated to me, “You spend the time in the Word and head the ministry team. Share with us the other concerns, but we don’t want you bleeding off your energies toward this. Ministry has to go on. Otherwise we’ll have nothing here.”

Sturtz: I had to spend extra time deciding what kind of ministry we could afford. I looked at the bottom line and knew we were going to have to divest ourselves of some programs. I had to go to the church and say, “If the church is going to survive, we have to continue our youth program and our children’s program. Sunday school, worship, prayer, and Bible study have to continue. But we can do away with the concert series and the special speakers. And the school will have to go.”

It takes time and discussion and prayer to make that kind of decision, to honestly interpret the congregation’s willingness to support a program.

Smith: I had to monitor where my people were. Some lay people gave an immense amount of time and expertise to handle the problem, and I got concerned they might burn out. Other people seemed not even in touch with what was going on, and so I’d say, “Wouldn’t you like to get involved, in prayer and in offering constructive alternatives So I spent time either calming people down or waking them up.

Rhoden: I found myself doing a lot of damage control, trying to deal with people’s feelings. Someone would call and say, “I’m upset about the way this has been handled,” and I’d get drawn into that.

Some ugly things were said about “supporting his vision,” and I had to work through those.

Sturtz: You hear some amazing stories. For example, “Lloyd’s building a monument to himself.”

Leadership: How do you deal with a charge like that?

Sturtz: Smile and say, “Boy, if you ever get the chance to build a monument for yourself, I hope you get to go through what I’m going through.” (Laughter)

Leadership: What are the temptations for a pastor in the midst of a financial crisis?

Gay: To cut and run, to sell used cars.

Rhoden: Oh, yes. I saw what the situation was doing to my family, and I thought, I don’t need this. Let somebody else deal with it. But that would have been reacting rather than responding.

Sturtz: Another temptation is to let anger build. When that member decided to put the gift in a will, I felt angry and frustrated. I thought we had been shafted.

Rhoden: It’s a temptation during crisis to become a fixer rather than a builder. As a pastor, you’re the builder; you’re responsible for the long haul. But when a money crunch comes, you want to put a Band-Aid on the situation.

Looking back at our “Day of Victory,” I realize I was trying to fix the problem in a hurry. If I could do it over, I would say, “Folks, we owe a lot of money. We’re not going to fix this in one Sunday. It’s going to take a process, and we’re going to build over time until we come out of this.”

Another example of “fixing” things is that we stopped putting out a weekly bulletin. People came one Sunday, and there was no bulletin. I had to explain, “There wasn’t enough money for it.” I would never do that again. That creates such a strong negative statement, and we were saving something like $13. But in a crisis, all you can think of is solving a problem rather than making the best decision for the long haul.

Smith: I know what you’re saying, but at times you’re forced to apply some Band-Aids. With only a few days’ warning, we had to draft a lean budget for the bank to examine before it would extend a line of credit. It had zeros for certain staff people. We had warned them that might happen, but we didn’t have time to give them official notice. Later, one associate resigned and then de-resigned in the midst of this. When you have situations like that, you have to do a lot of extra mustard plastering. I had to major in seventeen-minute conversations, which usually began, “Pastor, I’ve got a concern.”

Is that putting on Band-Aids? It’s not just damage control; it’s ministry.

Sturtz: I faced another temptation because I felt guilty. If I had not been interested in reaching the community, in helping the church grow, we would never have needed the building. I wondered, Are you sure you heard the Lord correctly when he said to build? I felt so guilty about it that finally I went to a psychologist friend and said, “I’m dying inside. Something’s wrong with me. Talk to me.” We talked for hours, and I finally realized I wouldn’t do anything differently were I doing it over again. I’d want the money in the bank before I turned a spade of dirt, but I believe in people. I believe they want the church to grow and to do the ministry of the Lord.

But it took me a while to get there. There were times when I considered buying a $2 million keyman insurance policy and doing away with myself to get the church out of its crisis. I know I could never have gone through with my intentions. But there were times I contemplated that, because I hurt so much for the congregation and felt so guilty.

Leadership: Now that you have some distance from that situation, do you think accepting blame was a realistic assessment? Did the congregation hold you responsible?

Sturtz: No the congregation never blamed me.

Leadership: Even if a pastor has no responsibility for the crisis, how much is the pastor responsible for getting the church out of it?

Gay: You want an honest answer? Inside the gut of every pastor is the feeling that if he’s good at what he does, there will be enough resources to carry on the work of the church. It’s based on the old saying, “If you do God’s work in God’s way, you’ll never lack God’s supply.” But what happens is that when you don’t see God’s supply, you think you must not be doing God’s work in God’s way. Yet I see people ministering in the middle of Chicago and in South India who do God’s business in God’s way and yet have no resources, financially speaking.

My responsibility as a pastor is to nurture a climate in which people can free their resources to support God’s work. I do that primarily through teaching the Word of God so that conviction- internal motivation by the Holy Spirit-takes place, rather than external motivation.

Sturtz: In the United Methodist Church we’re ordained to “Word, Order, and Sacrament.” We stress the Word and the sacraments, but the responsibility for order, administration, also comes to the pastor. So when something goes wrong, for whatever reason, it’s the old Harry Truman statement: “The buck stops here.”

Leadership: During the money crunch, what gave you hope?

Sturtz: In the midst of the crisis, friends and colleagues would come by. Some would drive a couple of hundred miles just to say, “We want to take you to lunch; we want to pray with you.” And that made it possible for me to put my arm around people in the congregation and pray with them.

Rhoden: Adversity has a way of bringing out optimism in some people. Both of my parents were killed when I was two; a drunk ran over them. I don’t have any brothers and sisters, and my grandmother brought me up in below-poverty-line conditions. But she always told me, “God loves you and will be with you. Don’t measure who you are as a person by your outward circumstances.” I’ve never forgotten that. During the worst of our situation, something inside didn’t have time to give them of ficial notice. Later, one associate resigned and then de-resigned in the midst of this. When you have situations like that, you have to do a lot of extra mustard plastering. I had to major in seventeen-minute conversations, which usually began, “Pastor, I’ve got a concern.”

Is that putting on Band-Aids? It’s not just damage control; it’s ministry.

Leadership: Now that you have some distance from that situation, do you think accepting blame was a realistic assessment? Did the congregation hold you responsible?

Sturtz: No the congregation never blamed me.

Leadership: Even if a pastor has no responsibility for the crisis, how much is the pastor responsible for getting the church out of it?

Leadership: During the money crunch, what gave you hope?

Rhoden: Adversity has a way of bringing out optimism in some people. Both of my parents were killed when I was two; a drunk ran over them. I don’t have any brothers and sisters, and my grandmother brought me up in below-poverty-line conditions. But she always told me, “God loves you and will be with you. Don’t measure who you are as a person by your outward circumstances.” I’ve never forgotten that. During the worst of our situation, something inside said, God is sovereign. It’s bad, and I don’t know if it’ll ever get better, but I think it will, and I’m gonna keep on going.

Gay: I ask myself, What is this self-pity that says I have to have funding at a certain level or feedback that I’m successful? Maybe good theology does result in good psychology after all.

Leadership: What do you wish you’d known going into the crisis that you know now?

Smith: I would like to have known it was going to happen, to have a few months’ lead time to soften the impact. But when I look back, I realize the Lord was preparing us spiritually for some of this, tuning us to be responsive to him.

Gay: That crisis is part of life. If I presume to be an undershepherd, why should my experience be different than the Chief Shepherd’s, whose life was a series of crises? I expect the current crisis to pass at some point if God so wills. And I expect another period of crisis to occur entirely beyond my ability to imagine it. Life is like that.

Sturtz: I would like to have grasped going in what my colleagues reaffirmed for me: You are not in control, Lloyd, but God is, and you can trust him.

Maybe I also needed to know the faithfulness of the congregation. Had I looked at what they had done previously, I could have seen they weren’t going to desert me.

Rhoden: It’s important to keep in mind that crisis is not all there is. That’s hard to do when you’re in the middle of one.

Gay: Right; crisis is not where we dwell. It’s a great privilege to be part of the fellowship I serve.

In preparation for our discussion today, I tried to recall past difficulties, and though we’ve had some, I had trouble remembering the details. The painful situations are overshadowed by recollections of ministry. Maybe I have the spiritual gift of amnesia. (Laughter)

Leadership: Are there any benefits from a time of shortage?

Gay: After the acrimony of the business meeting a few weeks ago, people began to come to prayer time. Our prayer meetings have been better than they’ve been in the last ten years, because people realize prayer’s the only answer. I’ve been praying to the Lord for years, “Do whatever you need to do to get people to pray.” If it’s taken this situation to bring it about, then I accept what’s happening. Crisis causes people to be the most spiritual they’ve ever been.

In my own life, each of the crises through which our church has gone has made me dig deeply into the only thing I have, and that’s my call from the Holy Spirit. When I was a kid, 7 or 8 years old in LaSalle Street Church in Chicago, I committed myself to serve in the pastorate. In every crisis I’ve dug deeply on that, and I’ve found that call to lead a church to be substantial and secure.

- More from Jim Smith, Lloyd Sturtz, Art Gay, Bob Rhoden

Pastors

When We Don’t Get No Respect

Doug Jackson

What an appropriate response to those who belittle the work of the ministry?

The question caught me off guard. "Do you work?"

I studied my next-door neighbor's features carefully. No, he wasn't joking. He just wanted to know.

I had been in my church for about six weeks when my neighbor threw that uppercut to my ego. I'd told him about my pastorate. I'd even talked about my faith in Jesus Christ and invited him to church. And yet just a few weeks later, he flung that insulting question at me without the hint of a smile.

With what dignity I could manage, I reminded him I was the pastor of the First Baptist Church. Oh, he remembered that, he said. But he sold real estate, and he was just looking for a few good men to consolidate his network "I'm sure your weekly message must take a lot of work," he offered, "but surely not so much that you couldn't move a little property on the side."

I never again tried to talk with him about spiritual things; in fact, I could barely find the self-respect to talk to him about the weather.

A few months later, a troubled church member sat in my office talking about his frustration at being in his mid-thirties and still scratching out a living as a day laborer. "What do you think you will do if you ever leave the ministry?" he suddenly asked. "Will you get a regular job, or what?" I didn't reply to his unintended insult, but inside I was angry.

Why does it seem that respect is so hard to come by in the ministry? With the general disrespect of our secular society for professional "holy men" compounded by the sexual vagaries of some famous evangelists, all of us feel, from time to time, like Moses, the tame raven who represents religion in George Orwell's Animal Farm:

Moses, who was Mr. Jones's special pet, was a spy and a tale bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but many of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain.

There may be some very secure pastors who never worry about respect-gospel gladiators who clank around in armor-plated psyches and dare the world to turn thumbs down. I lack that hard shell. My self-respect is vulnerable to a disrespectful society. In the face of society's scorn, I sometimes nurse my wounded pride and ponder a career selling timeshare condos.

After seven years in ministry I'm still seeking a final answer to the problem of respect. But a few changes of attitude and action have helped me learn to respect my work and to begin to teach others to respect it as well.

Respecting Yourself

The first thing I've learned is that ultimately respect must come from within, from my own understanding of the importance of the work God has called me to do. No esteem anyone else can give me can take the place of self-respect.

I find it easy to make the mistake of seeking self-respect from others rather than from within.

A few years back, a commercial for laundry soap proposed an interesting solution to an especially nasty stain: Shout it out! I notice pastors sometimes attempting to find security in a similar way: we try to drown out our inward insecurity with outward noise. Psychologist Wayne Oates calls it "overshouting the doubt."

Perhaps our most common method of overshouting the inward doubt is by collecting testimonials to our greatness. Of course, everyone needs reassurance now and then. I've learned not to reject sincere expressions of appreciation; a simple "thank you" when someone compliments a sermon seems more sincere to me than falsely modest protests. But it is important not to become addicted to praise. If I'm not careful, I can find myself baiting the hooks of praise and trading my calling as a fisher of men for one as a fisher of compliments.

It's a pitfall I try to, but don't always, avoid. Like the wicked queen of "Snow White," I'm tempted to linger before sycophantic mirrors who chant, "You are the fairest of them all." But I've discovered the respect that comes only from others' praise doesn't last. In fact, it promotes only more insecurity: like the wicked queen, those who become too dependent upon it often end up spreading poison apples around to ruin the reputations of others who threaten them.

My response to critics gives me another clue when I'm not working at self-respect from within. For a time, I felt compelled to talk back to anyone who besmirched the dignity of the ministry. I wrote angry letters to the local religion editor after she slandered "raving fundamentalist preachers." I shouted at the television set when I saw unflattering portrayals of pastors. I rehearsed my grievances against religion's critics to my bewildered wife.

But the more I talked, the angrier I became. The doubt was too loud to overshout. In the end, I discovered I was really working to convince myself, not my detractors.

Ministry, and not debate, is the key to self-respect. The best way to respect the ministry is to minister. Every time I hear another fallen-preacher joke or see a sit-com parson portrayed as an inept hypocrite, I seek an opportunity to meet needs in the name of Christ. I sit awhile in the hospital beside someone who is a mass of pain and surgical tubing; I hold a blue-veined hand in a dreary nursing home; I get out of bed at 2:00 A.M. to settle a dish-cracking battle between troubled newlyweds. I minister for a while and learn to respect my ministry.

For me, the ultimate source for self-respect is offering the gospel to those who've never received it. That's become my cure-all for professional anxiety. I don't win all of those to whom I witness; indeed, I win only a fraction of them. But I always return from outreach with renewed respect for the way I spend my life.

I have learned that the search for respect will end in failure as long as it remains a matter of "overshouting the doubt." The real answer lies in developing an inner respect for the work to which God has called me.

Genuine Respectability

A second thing I've learned about respect is that you can't expect it unless you deserve it.

I got a speeding ticket not long ago. My wife encouraged me to fight it. After all, she pointed out, I had the right to be heard in court, and having the violation on my record could increase our insurance premiums. So why not take on the system?

"Because," I replied, "I'm guilty."

A similar dynamic operates in our search for respect. At times, I haven't deserved respect. It's no wonder I couldn't command it.

When I first became a pastor, I soon realized my schedule was largely at my discretion. In a small church with no other staff, not even a secretary, no one really knew how early I came or left, or what I did while I was there. Frustration over conflicts I was having with church members added further incentive to avoid my responsibilities. I found the snooze button on my alarm an incredibly easy target on a cold morning.

John W. Drakeford, in his book Psychology in Search of a Soul, cites the results of a survey of pastors who'd left the ministry. One of the chief factors turned out to be what Drakeford calls the "temptation to indolence." A pastor is self-employed, punches no time clock, and isn't paid by the piece. Consequently, some pastors find themselves falling into the habit of looking busy while accomplishing very little. That frustration, Drakeford found, eventually drove them from the ministry.

I can sometimes fool my church members about my activity-or lack of it. But I cannot fool myself. If I know that despite the number of meetings I attended or charts I produced I have actually put in a week of short, empty hours, I don't have the nerve to demand respect from those around me.

My answer has been to develop a workman-like attitude toward my calling. I try to keep regular hours. I get out of bed in the morning and go to the office, just like those people with "regular jobs." Of course, my schedule is not so easy to control as some people's; what begins at 9:00 A.M. may finally fade out somewhere in the weary blur of midnight, and I have to make up the rest some other time. Still, the effort to be stable in my work habits earns greater regard from those around me.

I also insist on good sermon preparation. I've sworn off the "Saturday Night Special," a snub-nosed homily cheaply manufactured from an old volume of Spurgeon. I try to study hard and according to a regular pattern. I try not to prevent the Spirit from overriding my plan, but I never expect him to override my lack of one.

Most important, I take my product seriously. When I entered the full-time ministry, I had no regular, daily time of prayer and Bible reading. But, like a vegetarian butcher or a pacifist Marine, that's an awkward position. I can't recommend to my parishioners what I'm not practicing myself. I now attempt to discipline myself to a regular regimen of Bible reading, prayer, and Scripture memory.

In short, I can't get respect for my ministry unless I've put forth effort that deserves respect.

Expect Respect

Not long ago, I attended a conference for pastors and youth workers. As our car pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a lot of people were sitting in their cars, wondering what to do. One of the men with us was a retired Marine major. He jumped right out of the car and began looking for the room where the session would be held. That caused an interesting response: all the rest of us got out and followed him. He acted like he expected to be followed, and we trailed along.

This is a third lesson I've learned about respect: you get respect when you act like you expect it. Of course, if it were that easy, we'd all be respected. It isn't. Misconceptions hinder us from expecting respect.

One that has troubled me is a false concept of humility. Somewhere along the line, some well-meaning soul had convinced me that Christian humility removed any expectation of respect. The humble Christian, I believed, knows he has nothing of his own of which to be proud. So how can he insist on respect?

That misconception troubled me for years. My first step in learning to expect respect was to tear false humility from my mind and replace it with true humility. I came to see that real humility is not so much a denial of gifts as it is a recognition of them. And recognizing that they've come from Someone other than myself.

This definition places the emphasis on the word gift. "What do you have," asks Paul, "that you did not receive?"

A preacher who acknowledges his gifts is like the person who operates a bulldozer. The bulldozer jockey sits atop a clanking mass of machinery capable of altering entire landscapes. The operator does not confuse the machine's abilities with his own; he would never attempt, by himself, to move the hulking mounds of earth that lie before him. But just because the machine's strength isn't his own doesn't mean he neglects or abuses the machine. Instead, he carefully protects it and would never allow anyone to vandalize it.

Similarly, ministers employ gifts God has invested in them. They know the gifts aren't their own, yet they also realize that, if they are to do the job God has given them, those gifts must be developed and cared for.

And they insist that others don't vandalize those gifts. People vandalize the ministry subtly. They usually don't spray-paint obscenities across our sides but punch small holes into our working parts-minute damage that can eventually destroy us. When I see vandals at work, I try to stop them.

For example, I take a dim view of jokes about my ministry-jokes like, "What do you do the other six days of the week?" I suppose it would demonstrate a certain amount of security to brush off such remarks. But I care too much for the ministry to ignore them.

Early in my ministry I discovered a way to stop that kind of joke: don't laugh. No punishment known to humanity can compare with the embarrassment of having a joke fail. If this seems rude, pause to consider how rude it is to make fun of someone else's work.

Another way I show I expect respect is to let God define my calling, and then stick to that definition. Many times we feel that we must minister in every way other people tell us to, that our vocation has no definite shape other than to respond to that which others ask of us. Our congregations, taking their cues from our uncertainty, may assume the reason our ministries have no central focus is that they have no relevance to the age in which we live. The church becomes in their minds a quaint social throwback on the order of the horse-drawn carriages in Central Park, surviving only to adorn the real activities of society. No wonder we find our schedules burdened with trivia, and our worship services more concerned with advertisements for the Girl Scout cookie sale and the scrap-paper drive than with preaching the gospel!

I try to keep a narrow focus to my ministry: the eternal work of curing souls. True, I pay a price for this. Some people have left our church to find one that would support the community blood drive or announce the Lions Club car wash. Still, people eventually get the idea that our church is an independent entity with goals and purposes of its own. If popularity is the goal, my method may be a failure; judged, however, in terms of respect, it's a success.

The Semantics of Respect

A fourth lesson I've learned is that we can teach people to respect the ministry by the words we use when we talk to them about it.

In Victorian England, tables and chairs did not have legs; they had limbs. Women had neither, since no one dared refer to any part of their anatomy south of the Adam's apple. Such word games seem silly to us now. Parts of a chair by any other names don't tempt us to break commandments. And clearly the Victorians, to judge by the lives of their writers and artists, were quite familiar with the female of the species, whether or not they had names for all her body parts.

Christians can play similar word games. A woman once berated me for saying I was "hired" to do the work of ministry. She gave me a 20-minute lecture on the evils of trying to serve God and mammon.

I'm well aware of the dangers of a hireling ministry. But I'm also aware of the dangers of a professional religious elite who refuse to soil their hands with anything so mundane as common toil. If we make workplace words too dirty for the ministry, we run the risk of making productive labor an obscenity in the ministry as well.

I have added a few terms to my vocabulary. I practice saying them daily, not in front of a mirror but in front of church members. All of them are short and fit easily into common conversation. I begin with the word work, as in "No, I cannot go fishing tomorrow. I have to work." How about job? "I'm glad you liked the sermon. I tried to do a good job on it." Add to the list words like hard and tired, as in "I've worked hard today, and I'm tired."

My congregation consists primarily of blue-collar laborers. Because I describe my ministry using the words they use to describe their own work, they've gained a new appreciation for what I do when I'm out of the pulpit. Not all of them understand work that has primarily to do with study and mental exertion, but they all know that their pastor "works" and seem to regard his activities as his "job," and it seems to help all of us. I don't defend my work to them; I don't think I need to. I simply describe it to them in terms they recognize.

And it helps them to respect the work God has asked me to do.

When in Doubt, Minister

All of these ideas have proven to have some value for me. But they contain not even the slightest amount of magic. Even with these principles in practice, I haven't seen a change in everyone's regard for my calling, nor have I always felt self-respect.

For me, the best answer to disrespect for the ministry remains: when in doubt, minister. Whether or not people give us the appreciation we think we deserve, ultimately our calling comes down to a choice to give ourselves in service for God no matter what the cost.

In a letter to his brother, Mark Twain once described his work as "a 'call' to literature of a low order-i.e., humorous." Said Twain, "It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit."

Whatever the world thinks of what I'm called to do, whether people regard it as a high calling or low, it remains my calling. I have invested my life in it for God's sake.

Even in the midst of my deepest doubts, when the noise of a disrespectful world drowns out the reassurances of others, I know the Father has called me.

He respects me. It is for him that I minister.

- More from Doug Jackson

Pastors

AFTER A SUICIDE

Randy Christian

What is the best way to serve those left behind?

Cottonbro Studio / Pexels

Perhaps this hasn't happened to you, but it has certainly happened to others.

The secretary hands you a note. Emergency, it says. Call home.

Your throat is dry as you punch the buttons on the phone in your office. When your spouse answers after a single ring, the hello seems scared, forlorn, raw from crying.

Two minutes later you hang up the phone. Your hand is trembling. Your throat feels swollen. All you can do is stare at the wall. You've just learned that your son, age 17, has been killed in a car accident.

A mistake, you think at first. I saw him just a few hours ago. He can't be dead.

You feel dizzy as you tell the others that you have to leave. You offer no explanations, and quizzical looks follow you as you hurry out. It is all you can do to get into your car, turn the key, and drive home.

Somewhere in your numbness, guilt and anger flash. I shouldn't have let him drive. His friends shouldn't have asked him to come. He shouldn't have gone. God shouldn't have let it happen!

By the time you reach the hospital, you have felt more emotions than you ever thought possible, from guilt to helplessness to rage to grief. And there is the numbness, a feeling that makes you feel dead yourself-but does not stop the pain.

In the hospital chapel, you ask questions of a doctor and a policeman: "Was … was it quick? How did it happen?"

Though you didn't think it possible, you're thrown into deeper darkness by their answers. The police officer says quietly, "Your son drove his car into a concrete abutment. He left a note with a friend. It was suicide."

You sit, disbelieving, as it slowly sinks in. Your son didn't just die; he decided to die. It is the ultimate rejection: For some reason he felt it was better not to live than to live with you.

Finally the tears come. You sob with guilt for allowing your son's death to happen, even though you don't know how you could have prevented it. You feel guilty on his behalf, somehow, for this self-murder.

During the sleepless night that follows, your sense of rejection sours into bitterness. How could he have done this to me? Your grief turns to shame as you think of explaining this to relatives, friends, the congregation. As this shame takes hold, you begin to feel a loneliness so intense you doubt anyone could penetrate it.

This exercise in imagination only hints at the emotional whirlpool that swirls around those bereaved by suicide. The grief felt by someone who has lost a loved one to suicide is usually more terrible than most of us can imagine.

When suicide strikes, the survivors often find that few friends are able or willing to help. Often a pastor is called to the suicide scene, home, or hospital to comfort the survivors.

When I first faced suicide bereavement, I was a police chaplain, called to assist a family whose son had shot himself in the head with a shotgun. I had no idea what to do, what to say, or what in the long run would be healthy for the family.

Since then I've had opportunities to serve many families who were bereaved by suicide. Those experiences, along with the insights of others I've worked with in this ministry, have helped me train pastors, police officers, police chaplains, and counselors. I've found that we can have a tremendous ministry to those left behind by suicide, even in the midst of their shock and sorrow.

Being honest with painful facts

The first and perhaps most important insight I've gained is the need to be honest. This starts with speaking plainly to the survivors, saying "suicide" instead of euphemisms like "the unfortunate incident."

This isn't easy. The awkwardness of grief tempts us to hide from the truth. Those bereaved by suicide are tempted to avoid the painful fact that a loved one took his or her life. But hiding from that fact only makes it harder to recover from the grief.

Clara tried to hide. When she was a young woman, her husband died in a tragic "accident." She lived in a small town where everyone knew she and Jim had been having marital problems and that Jim had been deeply depressed.

Clara suspected Jim's death was suicide when the police explained the circumstances. She heard the cruel gossip of those who picked up rumors concerning the coroner's findings. She knew that many in town were saying Jim had killed himself-and that the coroner, an old family friend, was trying to ease Clara's pain by ruling it an accidental death. In fact, the rumors were true.

Years later, when her son was old enough to question his father's death, Clara was forced to face the reality: Jim had committed suicide. The shock and shame were too much for her; admitting the years of deception and accepting the suicide of her husband nearly crippled her emotionally. Clara's friends had done her no favor by helping her hide from the truth.

No one is comfortable with the reality of suicide. No one should expect to be comfortable talking about it or even thinking about it. But I've found that grieving can't be completed, and healing can't come, if dishonesty takes over.

Honesty, of course, doesn't mean emotional brutality or insensitivity. The facts can be faced gently and lovingly. We don't have to pretend we aren't afraid, awkward, or hurting. In fact, when we show these feelings, we assure the bereaved that it's all right for them to feel and express these emotions.

Accepting "outrageous" feelings

We must not short-circuit survivors' feelings, no matter how objectionable. Hearing and accepting feelings is an important part of this ministry, but it can be tough-as it was when I went to see Mark's family.

Mark had shot himself. Now his family was so intensely angry at him that some members actually wished he were alive again just so they could kill him!

My first reaction was to try to calm them down. "You don't really mean that, do you?" I asked.

The answer from Mark's sister was cold and clear: "You bet I do!" As I looked into the eyes of that suffering woman, I knew she was serious.

But somehow when she voiced these feelings, she was released from their power. Eventually she was able to let go of her hate and to deal with the loss she felt. Had I successfully stifled her comment, this might not have happened.

I learned a valuable lesson: Everyone has a right-even a need-to feel and express such feelings. Mark's sister could no more stop her rage than I could stop a cloud from passing over my head. She needed to face that rage, and when she did, she eventually was able to control it.

We need to be ready to hear and accept a wide range of emotions. Some survivors feel intense anger and hatred; others experience remorse or guilt. Still others may feel a sense of relief or even peace and happiness.

The question is not whether people should have these feelings. The feelings are there. The question is this: What feelings are there, and what is the healthiest way to express them?

When I feel survivors' emotions are too extreme or not deep enough, I force myself to listen, to hear out people without cutting them short. This frees people to experience grief in their own way and sets an example for other family members. It says, "I'm open to listening to any feelings you might have, and you need to do the same for each other."

Leaving judgment to a higher court

I remember John, who seemed to be handling his mother's suicide as well as could be expected. But every night he would wake up, tormented by the thought his mother was in hell because of what she had done.

Had God condemned her for killing herself? Theologians have long debated the question of a suicide's eternal destination, but I could find no justification for John's fear in Scripture. I encouraged him to trust God, the only one who could judge his mother. John began to do so. As he did, his focus changed from what his mother had done to what God had done for both of them.

Leaving judgment to God is especially important for church leaders, who are often seen by the bereaved as God's bodily representatives. By refusing to pass judgment on the one who committed suicide-even when the bereaved want such a judgment-we encourage the survivors to leave judgment in God's hands.

This does not mean offering false hope. Many grieving relatives have approached me, asking of a loved one, "Is she with God?"

Hard as it is, the only right answer for me is, "I don't know."

Judgment is no more my right when I want to pardon than when I want to condemn. My role is to remind the bereaved that God is the only rightful Judge, and that the basis of his judgment is our relationship with Christ.

Replacing rejection with acceptance

Life may be filled with rejections-an unkind word, failure to listen, walking out in the middle of a conversation-but none compares with the rejection felt by many survivors. To them the person who committed suicide has said, "I don't want to be around you-ever."

A friend, a police chaplain, was able to help in such a case. He met with a young woman whose husband had killed himself while arguing with her. Just before the husband pulled the trigger of his revolver, he shouted, "I'll show you!"

The young wife was devastated. She felt that her husband, who a few years earlier had committed himself to spending his life with her, had chosen to end his life to get out of that commitment. She had been rejected in such a final and horrible way that she believed she was the most worthless person alive.

My friend sat with her for hours. He called her the next day. He stopped in to see her occasionally after that. By his words and actions he was saying, "God accepts you." Had he not been there, she might not have believed this message.

Offering this type of acceptance can be time-consuming, and the bereaved can become too dependent on the helping person's presence. To avoid these problems, the primary helper can, without breaking contact with the person, introduce others who also will care. This shows the bereaved that others also accept her.

Remembering the power of presence

The temptation is to think we must have exactly the right words for the bereaved. It helps to realize the value of simply being there.

On one of the first suicide calls I received, I was asked to sit with the family members in their dining room while the police and coroner worked on the other side of the house to examine the scene and remove the body. It was a small house; we could hear virtually every word, every sound.

I asked family members whether they would prefer to leave the house while the coroner finished his work. They declined and sat silently. For ten minutes I tried to start conversations that might have some meaning to the survivors, but in vain. So I asked whether it would be all right if I just sat with them. They agreed.

For more than an hour and a half, we sat. Occasionally someone would shift his or her weight, and our eyes would meet as if we were all having some kind of visual conference. I have never been more uncomfortable than I was in that dining room, but I felt the family needed someone.

When the coroner and police had gone, I stayed for another hour. By the time I left, I doubt if we had spoken for even fifteen minutes.

The next day I was asked to conduct the funeral because the family had no church home. During the months that followed, I had sporadic contact with them. All that time I felt defeated. I don't have what they need, I thought. If only someone else had been available to them.

Nearly a year after the suicide, a friend mentioned seeing one of the family members. "I don't know what you did," he told me, "but they sure are grateful to you."

All I had done was commit myself to being with them. Had I continued my drive toward conversation that day, I don't believe the result would have been so positive. Those family members needed someone who would simply be with them and hurt with them. Now I purposely allow a period of silence at such times; survivors usually comment on that when they talk to me later.

The amount of time spent "being there" depends on the helper's schedule, of course. I've found that one to three hours in the beginning is usually sufficient-and needed-to show the family I care. During that time I don't leave family members alone unless they ask me to. I know they don't want me there forever, but they want to sense I'm committed to them.

Pointing to forgiveness

When I spend time with survivors, I find that two kinds of forgiveness may be needed. The first involves the survivor who hungers to be forgiven, who feels somehow responsible for the suicide. "If only I had watched him more closely," this person mourns. "If only I had been more loving, or let her see her boyfriend, or … "

Sometimes the "if onlys" have enough legitimacy to cause great pain. For example, Janet's family knew she was considering suicide. They kept watch, driving past her home every fifteen minutes or so to check on her. On one of those drive-bys, they saw her car running in the driveway and investigated. There was Janet, sitting in the car with the windows rolled up-except where a vacuum hose from the exhaust pipe was pouring fumes through a back window.

They had arrived early enough; Janet was not injured. Removing the hose, they moved the young woman into her house and discussed what to do. Should they call the police or take Janet to the emergency room? Janet assured them she would not try anything else that night; she only wanted to get some sleep. Finally the family took Janet's car keys and the vacuum hose and left.

But Janet had a duplicate set of keys and another hose. The next morning, neighbors found her in the car. Dead.

The members of Janet's family knew they had made a bad decision. They kept bringing this up when I met with them, and it would have been dishonest of me to deny it. But I could show them that they could be forgiven for their error.

My first step was to show that I could forgive them. They needed to see in my actions that Christ was willing to forgive them, too. Then they needed to understand how to forgive themselves. Over the next several months I kept reassuring them that forgiveness was available; in time they accepted it.

Theological discourses are not the cure for people like those in Janet's family. But a simple sharing of Christ's love for us and his willingness to forgive our sins is always appropriate. I try to explain the concrete, practical side of forgiveness. "I know you don't feel forgiven right now," I might say, "and you probably shouldn't expect to. Forgiveness is more of an action than a feeling. It's deciding not to make a person pay for what he or she has done. That's what God does for us in Christ-not making us pay for our sin. If God forgives you, then you can forgive yourself, too."

When a survivor feels unforgiven, it may help to explain that he feels angry with himself for not preventing the suicide. The anger is rooted in hurt, and he will probably feel angry with himself as long as he feels the hurt. But he doesn't have to act on the anger by refusing to accept forgiveness.

"Think about what you're doing to yourself," I might say. "You don't have to keep punishing yourself, constantly reminding yourself of what you did, depriving yourself of the help you could be getting from others. You can decide, step by step, to accept God's forgiveness, forgive yourself, learn from your mistake, and maybe help someone else." Once this is accomplished, the survivor is free to move ahead in the grieving process.

A second kind of forgiveness is the ability to forgive the person who committed suicide.

This was the case with a boy named Jack. Only 13 years old, he had experienced the ultimate rejection from his father, who had killed himself. He needed help to forgive the father who had left him.

No matter how many explanations Jack heard about his father's mental state, no matter how many times he was told about the pressures his father had felt, it didn't help. Jack couldn't change his anger and resentment.

The first step in helping Jack was to let him see others forgiving his father-not condoning the man's action, but showing a willingness to forgive. Then it was important to help Jack see that refusing to forgive was not hurting his father, it was hurting himself.

It took a long time for Jack to accept his father's imperfection, but eventually the boy was able to forgive and proceed with his grief.

When the next call comes

There are no sure-fire formulas for helping those left behind by suicide. There may be times when we feel out of our league and need to refer. But that need not keep us from answering the next call from a stunned survivor.

Standing with those who have experienced the pain of suicide is a special opportunity to serve. As helpers, we become special to the survivors because we are there. To them we represent God, and they usually take seriously our ambassadorship. That does not require perfect performance on our part. It does give us a chance to model the compassion and forgiveness offered by the One who sent us.

- More from Randy Christian