The greatest baggage a pastor carries to a new ministry assignment is ready-made programs.
—Richard C. Halverson
After my first pastorate, 1944-1947, in Coalinga, California, I never intended to pastor again; I didn’t think I was good enough material. So I worked with small groups as an associate minister for eight years and then joined International Christian Leadership for three years. After the Lord led me to Fourth Presbyterian Church, I realized I didn’t have a ready-made ministry program. In fact, I was so out of touch I didn’t even know what programs other churches were using or what programs were available.
Now, after twenty-one years at Fourth, I look back on that “problem” as one of the greatest assets I took to the church.
The greatest baggage a pastor carries to a new ministry assignment is ready-made programs. He is programmed to think he should try out this program as soon as he’s finished trying out that program. He’s buried in an avalanche of “how-to’s.” He continually compares program ideas with his colleagues. Consequently, ministries never become indigenous.
To make a ministry indigenous requires a more inductive approach.
Keep Things Simple
In those early days at Fourth, God taught me two things: First, treat the Sunday morning congregation the same way you’d treat a small group of people meeting in your living room. Second, fully implement the commandment Christ gave: “Love one another as I have loved you, and you will demonstrate to the world that you are my disciples.”
I was captured by a simple little statement in Mark: Jesus chose twelve and ordained them to be with him. Suddenly the word with became a big word, one of the biggest in the New Testament, because implicit within it is koinonia prayer and support. That word convinced me to have a ministry of being with people. I didn’t worry about what I was going to do with them; I didn’t need an agenda. Jesus began a movement that would be universal and that would last forever, and yet he spent most of his time with twelve people.
I’m not saying the most effective church structure is one composed of small groups; I’m saying that the right attitude about and approach to ministry is more effective than a lot of canned expertise.
For example, I have a regular Wednesday breakfast with some lay leaders. I learned long ago that if I came to the breakfast burning with a message I had prepared in my study, it would invariably fall like a lead balloon. Afterward the guys would say, “Halverson, it just wasn’t the same this morning.” It took me time to understand there is a chemistry about each group that generates its own agenda. I believe it comes from the Holy Spirit in our midst. That doesn’t mean I should neglect preparation, but it does mean that I have to prepare with a high degree of awareness and execute with a high degree of sensitivity. Even when a congregation or group is silent, something is still transmitted to the speaker.
Avoid the Canned Approach
We had a Gordon-Conwell student who recently interned at Fourth Presbyterian. I advised him, “John, you have learned many things at Gordon-Conwell, and before that you gained some valuable experience working with the Navigators. As you go to your first pastorate, you’ll be tempted to bring to that new situation all of the ideas, plans, and programs that you picked up in your training, and you won’t be patient enough to discover what is already there. Take the time to become part of what is there, and then these things you have learned will find proper adaptation and application; they’ll become indigenous to that situation. You can grow a dandelion in just a few hours, but it takes seven years to raise an orchid.”
I have real problems with the humanistic assumption that we can find the “right way” or the “best way” to do everything, and that if we find it, we’ll get the desired results. When I went to Fourth Presbyterian in 1956, I had come out of eleven years of small-group ministry. I thought I was a small-group expert. I wasn’t, but that’s the way we operate in this culture; when you’ve done something a few years you become an expert.
The man who led me to Christ was my first pastor, and he taught me how to handle ideas. He taught me to treat ideas like good seeds and showed me how to plant them in the soil of a heart or mind and let them grow. I have a bias against “canned” or ready-made, mass-distributed church programming. My style is to plant a seed, water it, and watch it grow.
We begin every worship service with a little greeting that reminds the people of the importance of their contribution to what is about to happen. The greeting is: “There is something to be captured in this moment that we can never give or receive at any other time or in any other situation. Let’s be alive to what Christ wants us to do here and now.”
I began to visualize myself standing in the pulpit on Sunday morning and talking to a group of people who have been literally inundated all week long with words. Now I want them to listen to my words. I suppose that’s what originally challenged me years ago to treat my congregation like a small group of people in my living room. When you invite a few people to your home for an evening, you don’t line them up in rows and lecture them unless you’re an absolute bore. Although the task of host or small-group leader may require you to focus the thinking or the discussion of the group, the objective is to get them involved in the process, to get them to participate.
On Sunday mornings, I try different things. One time I’ll say, “Here’s what Jesus said … now do you hear that? Do you hear it?”
If the congregation just sits there, I’ll persist, “Do we hear it?” I’ll begin to get a response. “What did he say?” I’ll wait until somebody says it out loud from the congregation. I don’t see any point in throwing words out at people if they are not listening and responding to them.
Identify Your Core Philosophy
I see the ideal organizational structure for a church in a model of concentric circles. I don’t like to diagram church organization on a vertical plane.
The scriptural model might start with John, who was called “the beloved.” At the Last Supper, he laid his head on Jesus’ chest; somehow, the intimate relationship John had with Jesus, the first circle, so to speak, was not a problem to the others. In the second circle were Peter, James, and John; Jesus took them to the Mount of Transfiguration and to the Garden of Gethsemane. Somehow Peter, James, and John had a relationship with Jesus that was not enjoyed by the nine but was accepted by them, even though the disciples were a normal group of human beings and prone to peer-group jealousy.
The core group around Jesus was the twelve; then there were the 70 around the twelve, and the 120 around the 70, and out beyond that the 500. The church should be the same.
This is how I approach pastoral care. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:25, “That the members should have the same care for one another” (NKJV). A true Christian community is not something you organize. Now, I’m not saying you should never have a specific program, but the more spontaneous the caring is, the better it is. My mind keeps coming back to the Sunday morning service, which I believe is the pastor’s greatest opportunity for real caring.
For years the back page of our bulletin has been called “The Family Altar” and is devoted to congregational needs: the sick, the shut-ins, the students, and four or five “Families of the Week.” During our service we have a period of time called the “Praise and Prayers of the People.” This is followed by a period of silence in which we urge our people to pray for one another. Then we ask them to touch someone near them. I personally step down from the pulpit and walk into the congregation and touch various people. Other pastors do the same. Then we pray for the people on the back page. These simple gestures encourage an environment of caring.
Model Supportive Relationships
We encourage small groups, but we don’t try to organize them. It’s common for people to come to me and say, “We’d like to start a small group. Will you meet with us?” I usually do, and in the first session I show them how to study the Bible inductively and encourage them to make the group experience more that just a straight Bible study. Every small group has the potential to become a support church.
Within our church, this dynamic is modeled for our small groups by the steering committee of the small groups. I meet as often as I can with all of our steering committees. The other pastors do the same. We try to model supportive relationships. Sometimes we fail, but that’s good for us.
Twenty-one years ago we started with the “flock system,” whereby each lay leader was responsible for a certain number of members. That responsibility was clearly defined. For example, they were to meet with each member at least once a year, maintain contact at least twice a year, and so forth. It never worked. One reason was the nature of community life in metropolitan Washington. Some of the members said, “We don’t like to be thought of as sheep.” That was the final blow that killed the flock idea. More seriously, the sense of regimentation didn’t seem to set very well.
So we tried other programs. We have tried fellowship committees and other forms of congregational care. Right now we have a Ministry of Concern office. We were fortunate to secure the services of Pat Brown, a lovely woman from South Carolina with a beautiful southern accent. She obviously likes people and cares for them, and they in turn immediately respond to her. She creatively handles all kinds of situations.
For example, if a family is being evicted, they call her. If somebody can’t pay a hospital bill, she acts as a liaison with the deacon board. She’s developed what she calls a “Going Forth” ministry. This is a group of people who make themselves available to help others wherever she sends them. She has also organized what she calls “Family Connection,” an event-centered ministry of fellowship that encourages entire families to do things together. For example, Family Connection will be going to this month’s home game of the Redskins. During the summer they attended an outdoor concert at Wolftrap, and soon they will be chartering a train to spend a day together at Harper’s Ferry.
This kind of fellowship brings together young and old, married and single. Pat’s office tries to be especially sensitive to the need of singles who want contact with married couples, and to young people who want contact with older persons.
The point is that in all of these things we are less than perfect, but we are going to come back tomorrow and try harder.
Read the Culture
When I first came to Fourth, I did a lot of conventional visitation nearly every afternoon in the week. Little by little I discovered that suburban culture doesn’t allow for effective pastoral calls.
In the first place, it’s almost impossible to find the family together. Second, the suburban housewife tends to be very busy, and she usually doesn’t see any particular value in sitting down with the pastor and visiting for thirty minutes. Third, when children are present, a pastoral call can be looked upon as a family intrusion. I’ve had the experience of calling on families where they tried to accommodate me with one eye while watching television with the other.
In place of home visitation, we have assigned each of our pastors the responsibility of a certain number of members to contact by phone four times a year. That kind of contact has been very satisfying to me. I’ll take a couple of hours on a regular basis, sit at the phone, call a family and say, “Hi, this is Dick Halverson. I’m just calling to find out if you have any special needs I ought to be praying about today.”
We recently revived a term used a great deal when I was in seminary: care of souls. I hadn’t heard that term for years. Dr. Bonnell, who was in the vanguard of pastoral counseling, taught a course by that name which was required for seniors. His objective was to make us as sensitive as possible to the needs of the believer and to the many different means we could use to meet those needs. However, the emphasis was always on the person’s needs, not on the method to meet those needs.
Learn to Listen
When I began my ministry, I had taken a required course in counseling at Princeton and had read the one or two books available on this subject. I really wasn’t well prepared to face the problems that came my way. So I had to learn counseling by listening to people. Let’s face it, there is no substitute for being with people and trying to understand them and empathize with their needs.
For example, I was counseling a church member who was a closet homosexual. In our sessions I could sense he was getting close to admitting his problem. Instinctively I knew that if there was anything in my facial expression, anything at all that would indicate shock or change in attitude when he admitted his problem, I’d lose him. I so well remember how I prepared myself for the moment he shared who he was.
I made a few major mistakes in counseling, mostly when I failed to spiritually prepare for my task or allowed outside pressure and personal frustrations to desensitize me to the situation.
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but early in my ministry at Fourth, a couple—she was Japanese, he was Jewish—came to me for help. Their marriage was in terrible shape; I spent hours with them. It seemed at some point in every session the young man would rise and start pacing back and forth. Then he would start talking, getting louder and louder until he worked up into a frenzy.
One Sunday morning right after church they asked to see me, and as soon as he was in my office he began his little act, thoroughly embarrassing and intimidating his wife. He ended his performance by saying, “You know, if it weren’t for my wife, I’d take my life.” By then I was fed up with him, and in anger I said, “Well, you sure aren’t much use to her now.”
Monday morning I found he had attempted to take his life. I went to the hospital and the first thing he said was, “Mr. Halverson, you told me to do it.”
I had failed him—both of them, because I stopped listening and allowed myself to become insensitive to the real problem. Even to this day I rarely give what might be considered direct advice.
Handle Criticism Firmly
The plant-and-watch-it-grow philosophy doesn’t preclude conflict. Recently, a family whose fifteen-year-old boy was in trouble with the law made some critical comments about me. His father called me by phone, leveling me about my personal failures and the failure of our church. It wasn’t all true, but there was enough truth in it to make it hurt.
Even more devastating was a letter I received from one of our former elders who is now separated from his wife—two pages of very nasty notes about the church’s failure.
I had to face conflict head-on. In the case of the former elder, I called him as quickly as I could after receiving the letter. He didn’t want to talk, but I persevered. I let him say everything on the telephone he had already said in the letter. Then I apologized: “I’m sorry. I’ll accept this criticism for myself personally, and I’ll apologize for the church.” Since then, I’ve been talking to him by phone on a regular basis, and we are going to get together in two weeks.
In the case of the father and son, I went first to our director of youth ministry. The night after I talked to the father, the director went to their home and spent a couple of hours talking with them.
I prefer to handle criticism quickly, directly, and sensitively. But the emotional trauma that conflict creates deep in my soul is not as quickly handled. There’s a story about a frog that fell into a pothole. Regardless of what his frog friends tried to do, they couldn’t help him out of his dilemma. Finally, in desperation they left him to his destiny. The next day they found him bouncing around town as lively as ever. So one frog went up to him and said, “What happened? We thought you couldn’t get out of that hole.” He replied, “I couldn’t, but a truck came along and I had to.”
I don’t know any other answer to jumping out of the pothole of conflict despair than “you just have to.” Many times I would love to run away, ignore the situation, or try to justify it, but Christ has given us very specific instructions in Matthew 5:24. If you know you have offended a brother, you must go to him; if he has offended you, you must go to him. We have to do it!
The ancient image of the pastor being the shepherd with the long crook on one arm and a cuddly little lamb in the other is only one perspective. The other is the shepherd who must look disease right in the eye and come up with a cure or a recommendation for a cure no matter how painful it might be. Cancer can’t be treated with a skin salve.
Evaluate the Right Thing
The word success troubles me. The implication pervading the Christian church equates bigness with success, and I think that’s absolutely wrong. Most criteria for success have their roots in materialism: congregation size, budget size, building size. These aren’t bad in themselves, but they are not criteria for success.
I’m very concerned about people who pastor small churches, for there is an unspoken assumption in our culture that if one is really doing a good job he’ll eventually become pastor of a large church.
Size is not the criterion for success.
Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship recently told me he had hired someone to travel the country and evaluate their ministry. I asked Chuck what criteria he used in the evaluation. Not one item on his list was statistical. Every one had to do with values: What was the spiritual climate of a group of Christian brothers in a prison? Were they studying the Bible? Did they have the spirit of reaching out to others? These are some of the criteria for successful ministry.
Be Free to Fail
I’m always amazed by the grace of God. Paul Tournier, the Swiss physician, points out that some parents are extremely authoritarian and others are extremely permissive, but most parents are somewhere in the middle. Then he says that regardless of the parental style, if one’s children turn out all right, it’s by the grace of God. I like that—a grace that allows me to fail.
I think one of the greatest freedoms any pastor has is the freedom to fail. Again and again, in my private life and in my public ministry, I’ve had the pressures build until I think I can’t stand it any more. When I stop long enough to take a spiritual inventory, I discover that I’ve failed many times in the past, and it’s likely that I will fail again. How liberating!
This past Tuesday morning I awakened about four o’clock after some kind of dream about which I couldn’t remember a thing except that I had failed. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t relax. I felt like my skin was crawling right off my body. I finally slipped out of bed onto my knees and began to pray. As I talked to my Father, I again eventually realized that my failure does not constitute God’s failure. It was so liberating to say, “Lord, when I fail, I know your grace will be there to cover the bases.”
Obviously, we can’t presume on God’s grace or use his goodness as an excuse for negligence, but likewise, we don’t need to fear failure. Failure is a part of the forging process. Failure is God’s way of consuming the dross so the gold may remain.
Copyright © 1997
