In a town that thrives on crises, M. Craig Barnes, pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., knows them too. In When God Interrupts (InterVarsity), he recounts how he discovered a lump on his throat—a cancerous tumor on his thyroid gland.
“Once the doctors found the metastasis,” he writes, “everything changed for me. For the first time in my life it occurred to me that I would not live forever. … it became so clear to me that God doesn’t need me. I need him.”
Whether writing about medical or pastoral crises, Barnes traces well their impact on the soul and how to receive God’s grace amid them.
A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. in church history), Barnes has also written Yearning (InterVarsity). Leadership editors Kevin Miller and Dave Goetz visited National Presbyterian Church to discuss with Barnes how a pastor can enjoy God’s grace even during ministry’s storms.
The conversation began in an unlikely place—discussing Leadership’s interview (spring 1997) with Eugene Peterson.
Craig Barnes: I have enormous regard for Eugene and his writings. He is absolutely right. But I just can’t make the “contemplative pastor” model of ministry work. And that breaks my heart.
Why doesn’t it work?
Craig Barnes: Pastoral ministry is like a vacuum that sucks me into becoming a manager. I try to hang on to the vision that my job is to be the shepherd, but it’s pulled out of my hands every day. Every morning I renew my commitment, and every night I go home feeling like I work for IBM.
What pulls you into becoming a manager?
Mostly issues that involve less than 10 percent of the people yet take 90 percent of my time. That means 90 percent of my people have no idea what I spend 90 percent of my time doing.
Last spring the hospitality committee put a little coffee stand in the narthex. The next day the head usher of twenty-five years quit in protest, saying this was a sacrilege to the church sanctuary. All the ushers quickly became upset.
Since a committee had put the coffee there, the session [board] had to decide on the issue, so they set up a task force that met for eight weeks to listen to the ushers and the hospitality committee.
One Sunday a bunch of the ushers decided not to show up to usher because we hadn’t brought back the head usher yet. So then the elders were ticked off at the ushers.
In the middle of that, I’m not talking about Jesus to anybody, I’m not making hospital calls, or shepherding people through grief. I’m trying to figure out whether we should serve coffee in the narthex, an absurd issue.
What does such a distraction do to your soul?
It’s like being nibbled to death by a duck. People on both sides become upset at you, particularly if you transcend the issue and talk about something spiritual. People don’t like a prophet. They want the pastor to say they’re right and the others are wrong.
Half the people want A; half the people want B. If you go with A, the B people don’t say, “Well, it was a good process. Thanks for the opportunity to make our case. We love the church.” They’re furious. So they spin the story, and rumors begin floating. Then the amazing thing is that people believe the rumors. I am powerless to make them recognize the rumors are not true.
Inside the Washington Beltway, only important people deal with important issues. So in the church, if the issue isn’t important, people inflate the value of it in order to feel important. I’m constantly saying, “This is not a big deal. You’ve got to calm down.” People don’t enjoy hearing that.
How do you reconcile what you thought pastoral ministry would be with what it is?
When people lay hands on your head in ordination and call you pastor, they lift you to God, saying, “Use this man or woman to tell us your Word.”
As a result, the pastor’s soul is a crucible in which God’s message to the people is formed. The Word is ground in with all the other stuff that enters the crucible: pastoral and administrative experiences, the fights and hurts you’ve had. All that gets melted together in your soul.
Something gets worked out in the pastor that is intensely spiritual. You become the crucible in which God’s business with your people gets refined. That is an “in the presence of God” kind of hazard.
In the Old Testament, ropes were put around the Levites’ ankles when they went into the Holy of Holies for a reason—you can get creamed by God in this process.
What is lost in the melting down?
Every time Jesus calls a disciple, he or she must leave something behind. The thing a pastor leaves behind is privacy. My soul is not my own any more, for I have been ordained. The minister’s soul becomes other people’s property, and there are days when I resent that.
One of our pastors is recently out of seminary, and she’s dismayed that her life isn’t her own any more. She feels vulnerable, and she’s tired of being the priest. Even the way our church services are set up—the congregation looking at the pastors up front throughout the worship service—she feels invaded by that. She wants her life back. She can’t have it, not if she’s going to follow this ordination.
What is happening in your life that is being worked out at National Presbyterian?
My besetting sin is to think if I try just a little harder I can get this right.
I don’t have to succeed as a pastor; I just have to be convinced I’m loved by the Father.
Well, that’s also Washington’s problem: People here think they just need to try harder and they can make the thing work. Washington is a great town because you don’t have to be a blue blood. You can come here from anywhere and make something of yourself as long as you’re willing to work hard. But that is also why this is a dangerous town. It is easy to get confused about who the Savior is.
So it’s no accident I keep talking about God’s grace, which is all about God’s initiative, not ours. You can’t make grace happen. The lie our people hear all week long is “If you hustle, you can make it happen.”
But the real question isn’t “How hard are you working?” but “How well are you receiving?”
How have you “hustled” to make things happen?
While in college, I dropped out for a while and wandered around and eventually wound up working the midnight shift at a gas station in New York. One day a bum said to me, “You and I have a lot in common”—he saw my life as dead-end as his. The lights came on for me, and since then I’ve hustled hard to make sure I’d never end up back at the gas station.
In all the hustling, what is it you fear? Poverty? Insignificance?
I fear I won’t be necessary, that the world can get by fine without me.
When I was 16, my mom left my dad. As a result, my dad lost the church he was pastoring, and then he took off. He had preached many sermons on the Christian home, so this failure was impossible for him to live with. To this day, my brother and I haven’t seen my father. We don’t know whether he’s dead or alive.
My older brother, Gary, dropped out of college to help me finish school. We lived in New York, and the following Christmas he and I decided to visit our mom in Dallas. We didn’t have any money, so we set out hitchhiking. We were on Highway 81 by the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia when a huge blizzard hit.
It was getting dark, and anyone driving down that interstate and seeing two big guys with backpacks standing beside the road was not about to pick us up. After a while even the cars stopped coming. (We learned later the police had closed the highway.)
My father had been big on Bible memorization and would constantly quiz us at the dinner table. He would say a Scripture reference and point to one of us. If we didn’t have the verse, we were excused from the table. The verses never meant much to me, but I liked eating dinner, so I memorized them.
Well, on a snowy night what are a couple of teenage boys trying to keep themselves warm and together going to do? They’re going to get competitive. So that night in the blizzard standing along the interstate, we went through all the sports stats we could think of; then we started quizzing each other on memory verses like Dad used to do. We even used Dad’s voice.
My brother stuck out his finger and said, “Isaiah 43.” I found myself responding, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you … since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you.”
Suddenly that verse was full of meaning. On this dark night of my life, the heavenly Father affirmed his love, and I sensed I was going to be okay.
Eventually a state trooper picked us up and took us to an all-night diner. We spent the night there, and then a trucker took us to Dallas.
Today, though, the negative side of my drive for achievement is the fear of not wanting to end up as this disposable kid on the side of the highway. When you’re 16 and your dad has disappeared, your mother lives in another part of the country, and you’re on your own, you feel disposable. If your parents can get by fine without you, why does anybody else need you?
How does that fear influence your ministry?
When you’re convinced of God’s love, you’re not as frightened, and when you’re not frightened, you take more risks.
What’s the worst that can happen? I could lose my job. But I didn’t have a job before. Maybe I could lose my family. Well, I’ve even been there. The worst may be that I am all alone on the side of a highway in the middle of a blizzard and nobody cares if I live or die. Well, I’ve been there, too, and even there I found the love of God.
Henri Nouwen compared our fear of failure to walking on a balance beam, but then you realize it’s only two inches from the floor. Falling off isn’t so bad.
If you have that attitude, you can dance on that beam because it’s the fear we won’t perform well that prevents us from tackling things we would love to do.
When I came to National Presbyterian, I was way too young to be its pastor. I was here for about thirty minutes when I realized I was in over my head. I had two options: I could say, “I’d better not screw this up,” or I could say, “The love of God let me come, so enjoy it. If it doesn’t work, God won’t love me any less. I have already found his love at the bottom, so I know I’ll find his love at any other level.”
I don’t have to succeed as a pastor. I don’t even have to succeed as a father and husband, which is much more important to me than being a pastor. I just have to be convinced I’m loved by the Father. If I know that, I’m free to enjoy being a husband and a dad and a pastor.
When have you found that freedom—not to have to succeed?
I was here for less than two weeks when I was invited to a special meeting of the trustees, a secret meeting. That sounded interesting—”a secret meeting of the trustees.”
At the meeting, they had all these architectural drawings for a new wing for the church. A whole building program was lined out.
No one on the search committee knew about this, so this was all news to me. I interrupted the presentation by the architect, “Who in the congregation knows about this?”
“Well, nobody. Nobody knows about this,” they said.
I said, “Do you really think it’s a good idea to keep a building program a secret?”
“We thought if we took it to the people they’d want this long process and input on how we developed it, and it would really slow up the process.”
I said, “Yes, but if they’re going to pay for it, they should probably know. … ” but I got swept up into this building program.
We sprang it on the congregation, an enormous mistake, and the whole thing was a huge failure. We got a year into it, and we had enough money to go ahead, but the congregation was divided over it. So I called a special meeting of the session and said, “I think moving ahead is a really bad idea.”
A huge relief spread across the elders. Everyone said, “I thought I was the only one who felt this. I was trying to be loyal.”
The pastor’s soul is a crucible in which God’s message to the people is formed.
So I had to go in front of the congregation and say, “We can push ahead, but I don’t think we’re ready for this. I think we should drop the program, and I want to apologize to you for not recognizing this sooner and for creating a lot of anxiety.”
That was one of my darkest moments here. I had failed.
The Lord has transformed it, though. The congregation is delighted that “Our pastor recognized a mistake when he saw one and had the guts to stand in front of people and say ‘I blew it.’ “
In your book, you write eloquently about finding you had cancer. What effect did that have on your spiritual life?
The cancer was diagnosed nine days after I was called to come be the pastor here. Then, six months after I was here, the cancer spread into my chest, and we found it was particularly aggressive. Usually thyroid cancer is pretty treatable, but in a slim minority of the cases, it goes wild. That’s what had happened to me.
The timing was hard to figure out. “God, what are you doing? Right at the beginning of this ministry?”
We decided to be open about it with the congregation—not to exploit it but not to keep it a secret. That set a tone for the ministry—I’m not coming in as the powerful fix-it man; I’m the wounded healer. I would not have chosen that model, that’s for sure. So the cancer had that benefit. Communities of faith create pastors, and this one is continuing to create me.
What’s the prognosis for you? How do you minister when your future is uncertain?
The cancer has responded well to the radiation, and at the last check-up, we couldn’t even find it. I’ve been given a blessed gift of healing.
But for a while, I didn’t know if it was going to go that way, and I was forced to deal with the issues of necessity one more time. I wanted so much to be needed, to be necessary to my family, to be necessary to this church. During my radiation, I realized, The fact is, I’m really not needed. This church will find another pastor. They’ll miss me for a while, but they’ll find another pastor who’s going to do a good job, maybe even a better job.
My family will grieve and miss me—my death will be a scar on their lives—but they, too, will get on with their lives at some point. I can be gone. Only the Savior is necessary.
How did that realization affect the way you minister?
It was as if the Spirit of God said, “You are too important to be necessary. You deserve to be loved.”
We can’t love things that are necessary. Love is a choice, and things that are necessary you have no choice about. It’s as if God has said, “I don’t have to love you. I chose to love you.”
That is a message I constantly try to give the parishioners here in Washington. They’re knocking themselves out to be necessary, but they’re just settling for that. What they really yearn for is to be loved. They’re not going to be able to receive fully God’s love until they give up the need to be necessary.
When you preach, how do you ensure the struggles of your soul come out redemptively?
A sermon is redeeming if it is, in fact, the Word of God. In seminary we were cautioned not to beat on a few hobby horses. We do need to preach from all the Bible, but as we mature in ministry, we realize we can’t do a good job on the whole gospel. We haven’t been called to that.
I had a wonderful conversation with Senate chaplain Dick Halverson before he died. “I’ve known some of the best preachers in the world,” he said, “and the very best had only three sermons in them.” He wasn’t saying that cynically.
Everyone has certain life themes.
Exactly. We write new sermons, but they’re really another approach at the same issue. We find our life has been taken over by a few themes. It isn’t just in our preaching; it is in our spirituality. We exist to talk about these two or three things, and we will do it for the rest of our life. These spiritual proclamations, these three sermons, have also called us, and we have to respond.
Besides grace, what are your themes?
I talk constantly about what it means to live with a God I don’t understand. What does it mean to be handed a sovereign God who doesn’t fully explain himself, but who is creating and shaping us into something wonderful?
Obviously running through all this is the theme of gratitude. Frequently in benedictions I tell people the thing that will make them most distinctive this week is when they live with gratitude.
You can either try to achieve a life or you can receive a life. One makes you upset that it’s not good enough, and the other makes you grateful for what you’ve been given.
What signals to you that you’re not living in grace and gratitude?
Control issues. The more I fall into the business of running the church and making sure it’s going just right, that is an indicator I haven’t been hanging around the Savior enough. Instead I’m trying to be the Savior.
The further you get from God the more you are tempted to be God. If I start acting like God, it means I have drifted and had better climb back up in his lap.
You can either try to achieve a life or you can receive a life.
Another sign is my degree of anger. The church will inevitably hurt the pastor. It happens every week of every pastor’s life, and so you have to figure out what to do with that. I have to find someone to talk with about the part of my anger that is righteous and appropriate, and to confess the part that’s inappropriate.
Sometimes I’m angry at myself. The church didn’t hurt me; I just screwed up. Forgiving myself can be tougher than forgiving parishioners.
After a soul-draining experience, how do you transition to the next demand in ministry?
It’s particularly difficult for those of us who are introverts. The introvert tends to feel things deeply and is comfortable working internally. If you come from the hospital where someone you love dearly has just died and then walk into a trustees’ meeting, the trustees need you present in that conversation because programs are on the line. It’s not an unimportant meeting, but your heart is still in pieces.
I have found that I need to tell the truth. Early on I would try to suck it up and be the consummate professional who can move from one thing to another. But I would keep drifting back to the internal world of my grief. People can sense that, and they may misinterpret it as a lack of interest. So if I’m having a hard time, I share what has happened and pray with the trustees before we get into the business.
How have you found spiritual nourishment from the people you serve?
One day I was way behind schedule, and as the day went on I felt more and more uptight. It was my turn to take Communion to the nursing home, so I grabbed my portable Communion set and went sailing off. I prayed on the way there, “God, help me get through this in a hurry so I can get back to an important meeting.”
So I’m sitting in the room with Lucille Lens, who is in her nineties and has outlived her whole family and most of her friends. She’s nearly blind, can’t hear well, and shakes tremendously. I say how great it is to see her again. I mumble the words of the institution thinking she can hardly hear anyway. I give her the cup, and she’s shaking so much she spills it all over me. One more thing that just isn’t working, I think.
I put everything away, tidy up, pat her on the back, say something about God’s blessing on her life—and then she starts praying. “Thank you, God,” she says, “for being so good to me. Thank you for always loving me. Thank you for . … “
I am speechless. The wind is taken out of me. The day just melts away; I don’t care about it any more. I have just been ministered to by this saint who has nothing—nothing!—yet is so thankful.
Here I have everything: Health. A future ahead of me. Family, friends, a ministry. But I am not grateful. All I ask for is more. I want more time. I want more success. I’m addicted to more, but she who has nothing is grateful.
Pastors are invited into these powerful, teachable moments. You learn what it means to be a saint. What old saints hunger for is a pristine glimpse of Jesus. They don’t worry about the differences between Paul and Peter on some issue. They’re not in knots about whether there were two angels or one at the tomb. They don’t even talk about being Christian, frankly. They just talk about Jesus.
Although I’m not an old saint, I’m starting to understand that. I’m inheriting their passion for a glimpse of Jesus. Nothing else satisfies.
1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
