I had just gotten off the phone with a man on the church board. He had called to warn me that my leading antagonist, also a member of the board, was going to confront me that evening at the board meeting. He was going to recommend the board reverse its previous decisions affirming the direction and mission of the church.
Without warning, my blood pressure went through the roof and I yelled, “I don’t believe this is happening. This means war!” My secretary came running into my office and asked what was going on. I told her, “We’re about to have the battle of this church’s life at tonight’s board meeting.”
Over the next few minutes, I turned into an infantry commander as I stormed through the office barking out orders to the staff. I wanted to gather damaging information about this board member, and I knew exactly where he was most vulnerable—his giving record. I asked the financial secretary to give me a printout of the man’s contributions over the past two years. The report reinforced my suspicions: this wealthy individual had given only $300 to the church during that time. I planned to take that report to the meeting, throw it on the table at the appropriate time, and say, “Gentlemen, do we want to hear more criticism and vitriol from someone who has invested so little in our church?”
If that didn’t put him in his place, nothing would.
Fortunately, I didn’t carry through with my plan, even though it seemed like the right tactic to silence my opposition for good. Now I’m a little embarrassed about it.
One of my favorite features in magazines and newspapers is the “Where Are They Now?” type of segment that focuses on the lives of well-known people from a then-and-now perspective. It’s interesting to discover the direction someone’s life has taken since he or she was in the public eye. I find value in that kind of reflection in my own life as well, especially as it relates to events that were significant in some way. Writing this book gave me a then-and-now look at my life since I left the church I described in the opening chapter. I can now see from this side of the conflict that God used my experience to deepen me—as a pastor and as a person.
Most of the lessons I’ve learned are woven into the previous pages of this book, but as I reflect on years of journal writing, I realize that through ministry conflict, God has helped me discover what kind of good he brings out of pain.
Hurt that refines
When I was in seminary I heard a speaker make a statement that at the time I scarcely believed. Quoting A. W. Tozer, the speaker said, “God cannot use a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.” Around the same time I read a similar observation by Alan Redpath: “When God wants to do an impossible task, he takes an impossible person and crushes him.”
Could that possibly be true? I wondered. Does God ever bring hurt to our lives—even for the purpose of refining us or increasing our usefulness?
Many years and many hurts later, I’ve come to learn that there are lessons in life that can only be learned through God’s curriculum of pain. That’s part of what Jesus was getting at in John 15:2 when he told his disciples that “every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”
For example, pain has taught me to be more empathetic with people who are in need. At a pastor/spouse retreat, I remember hearing a friend tell of the difficulties he had experienced in his church that past year. He talked of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and harsh accusations that had erupted in the church. Several key leadership families had left, and he and his wife were feeling whipped and beaten.
I wasn’t prepared for the rush of emotion that came over me. Suddenly I could feel the pain he felt as though it were my own. I had felt that pain only a year and a half earlier. When he finished, I embraced him and his wife. Several others joined the circle, and our prayers for them issued from hearts knit together by our mutual experiences of pain.
Another way God has used pain in my life is to make me more relaxed and patient with people. My ideas and desires for the church are no longer so important that they have to be accepted right away, if at all. I acknowledge now that God may use someone else’s idea to accomplish his work in our church. I’ve also learned to concede the fact that people don’t always perform as I’d like. I realize that healthy relationships are more important than merely getting the job done. Even as I write this, these lessons seem so obvious, so basic to pastoral work. But they were murder to learn.
Not long ago I was working with our elder board to hire a new staff member. I felt the process was not moving along as quickly as I thought it should. A couple of elders had not completed their assigned tasks as scheduled, and because of this we couldn’t make any final decisions. A few years ago I might have gotten angry or impatient. Now I said, “What’s more important than getting this new position finalized is what’s going on in your lives. Obviously there are some things happening there that God is using to revise our schedule for this decision. Let’s relax and follow God’s lead in this issue.”
I wasn’t excusing someone’s inattention or irresponsibility. I had, however, learned to be more sensitive to someone else’s life—the struggles that may have affected his work.
All in the waiting
I remember my first roller coaster ride as a kid. It happened at a later age for me than it did for most of my friends. Even my younger brother had ridden a roller coaster before I had. But I was cautious, even fearful. Finally, with the urging of my older brother and my father—and feeling embarrassed that my younger brother had taken the plunge first—I screwed up enough courage and allowed my dad to take me on the coaster.
My father kept assuring me that everything would be okay. His last words were, “If it gets too scary, just tuck your head under my arm, and I’ll hang on to you.” From the moment the roller coaster crested the first hill until we rolled to a stop, my head was buried in his armpit. I knew that my dad would never intentionally try to hurt me or put me at risk. If he said I’d be safe, I’d be safe. That didn’t take the fear out of the ride for me, but it did allow me to stay close to him during the ride. In a similar way, the pain of being forced out of a church led me to trust God in a way that I had never done before. Although I had no understanding of what God was doing or why, I discovered that he could be trusted completely to bring me through the ordeal. I believed and would discover again that God had not been caught off guard. He wasn’t wringing his hands and wondering, What am I going to do with Preston now? Pain was part of God’s curriculum for my life, and I needed to learn to trust him through it.
I don’t know what prompted me to trust God. The trust was just there. Perhaps it was the deposit of years of Bible study, preaching, and teaching. What I knew in my head was now being called into service. During the first few days after my resignation, I recalled God’s curriculum for Moses’ life. According to Exodus 2, Moses ended up at the well in Midian, where he sat down, probably with his face buried in his hands, feeling like a failure. He would remain in the desert of Midian for the next forty years, tending the flock of sheep owned by his father-in-law, Jethro. Moses was there because he had killed the Egyptian. But rather than blaming God or carping at him for not preventing his situation, Moses waited and hoped and trusted. Moses trusted that somehow God was still in control and hoped that someday he would again call Moses to serve him.
That trust was well placed, for eventually God remembered his covenant with his people and went looking for Moses on the far side of the desert near Horeb. The moving story of how God appeared to Moses from the flames of a burning bush and called him once again to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt is familiar. But hidden in the great truth of God’s faithfulness is the lesson of Moses’ faith in God that enabled him to stay the course for forty years in the wilderness while he waited for God.
Trusting God allowed me to relax in terms of what I was to do next in ministry. I felt little compulsion to follow my natural instinct to begin networking to find a new ministry and source of income. However, God gave me a strong sense of certainty that he would provide for us in another way. The next few weeks after my resignation, I was amazed at the number of unsolicited phone calls and letters I received from friends and acquaintances. All offered prayer, and many gave suggestions or proffered assistance with making contacts for a ministry position. God had reassured us that, like Moses, we were not forgotten.
I learned anew that God’s responsibility is to meet our every need, while our responsibility is to trust him. That’s not to say that the way God provides will be the same in every situation. Trusting God may have led someone else to begin making phone calls and writing letters. In our case it was just the opposite. I would have preferred to take some action, but God said, “Wait and trust, and watch what I will do.”
No one is blameless
In marriage counseling I often find it necessary to play the role of judge or mediator in disputes between husband and wife. I point out to couples that they both bear responsibility for their problems. Often it’s hard for a couple to hear that, but until they do there isn’t much hope for getting the marriage back on track.
The same was true for me. In the months that followed my resignation, I began to recognize the role I had played in the debacle. It was easy to lay everything at the doorstep of my opposition—to blame the failures of the board or the silence of the staff or the lack of support from the congregation. But it didn’t help me work through the pain. It wasn’t until a friend made the offhanded comment “I guess by now you’ve figured out what you did wrong in all of this, too” that I began to look inward.
I thought about his casual remark for the rest of our lunch hour. I knew I had to think about what my role had been in the mess.
The Holy Spirit began to bring to mind several areas where I had failed; the few families who had engineered my departure weren’t alone in their failures. I had a few of my own.
For example, God showed me that I had not done all I could to care for one of the antagonistic families when their son went through a serious accident. I hadn’t handled a budget crisis well. I shouldn’t have been so quick to express my opinions about issues that were largely inconsequential. My list of failures continued to grow as the Holy Spirit worked in my heart. None of the mistakes on the list were grave in themselves. But taken together, they began to tell a story I could not deny—I had contributed to the situation. I had to come to terms with those failures. Acknowledgment and confession allowed me to experience God’s forgiveness, which in turn set me free to begin the process of forgiving others.
Deeper compassion
Suffering has a way of helping us deepen our compassion for others who suffer. Jesus is the only person who ever lived who didn’t need to grow in his ability to be compassionate to those in need. To him it came naturally and in full measure. That has not been so in my life.
I have become more sensitive to others who are hurting. When someone tells me of pain and hurt in her life, I often find my eyes filling with tears. Narrating a story of someone’s brokenness in a sermon can also bring tears to my eyes.
While preaching a series on the life of David, I discovered this same process had occurred in David’s life as a result of his broken relationship with his son Absalom. In Leap Over a Wall, Eugene Peterson writes, “The worst rejection of his life precipitated the most wonderful love—love for Absalom.” Through the pain of estrangement from Absalom, David “recovered his extraordinary capacity to love.”1
David’s newfound compassion must have startled everyone. Who expected him to respond to Absalom’s coup by mustering the troops and sending them into battle with the warning to his commanders that they were not to kill Absalom? David cautioned them, “Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake” (2 Sam. 18:5).
Was this an irrationally sentimental command? Or was it the result of God’s extraordinary work in that man’s heart, giving him a greater capacity for compassion? The Scripture leaves little doubt that the king’s lament for his fallen son Absalom was an authentic expression of compassion, learned through the pain of his son’s rebellion. Listen to David’s lament: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam. 18:33).
Richard DeHaan tells the story of a man who was listening to others share their favorite Scripture passage with the congregation. Most of the verses spoke of salvation, assurance, or God’s provision. Finally, an elderly man stood up to take his turn. He said that his favorite words in the Bible were “It came to pass.” He explained, “When sickness strikes, it encourages me to know that it will pass. When I find myself in trouble, I know it won’t last forever. I’ll soon be able to say, ‘It came to pass.’ “
Although this man had inferred a different meaning from those words than the writers of Scripture intended, he saw in them an important truth that is found in the Bible: no matter how unending a trial may seem or how intense the pain we experience, the day will come when it will no longer be a burden or a source of distress. In fact, it will seem like nothing in the light of eternity. Second Corinthians 4:17 speaks of our “light and momentary troubles … achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
Years after the most intense pain of my ministry, I can now look back and say with the apostle Paul that I was “struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Cor. 4:9-10).
A couple of years ago a particular family started attending our church. The wife told me, “We’re here to recover from the battles my husband has had with fellow missionaries.” I listened to the couple’s stories of conflict with the co-workers they thought were their friends. The couple felt misunderstood and hurt. They needed a place to heal from their wounds.
I must admit their presence in the church caught me off guard. Not long after that conversation, an executive from their mission headquarters called me, asking, “Would your church be willing to work with us to develop a plan to help this family recover?”
The memory of how one church had cared for me and my family after my being forced out of a church several years earlier came rushing back. I am still in the pastorate because of the compassion of that church. Its pastor, although he knew of our situation, didn’t publicly welcome us or rush us to get involved. He gave us anonymity. I needed that. I needed emotional space from the pounding our family had taken. He didn’t even ask me to tell him what happened.
Within a short time after our family began attending the church, several small groups invited us to join. It was a gracious, low-key way for people in the church to let us know they cared. I explained to the small group leaders that Suzanne and I weren’t ready for that level of intimacy. Two leaders said they would check back with me periodically. They offered to take the initiative. I appreciated that, for I didn’t have much initiative left in me.
After several months I began to want to serve again. One Sunday I mentioned this to the pastor, and the next Wednesday the associate pastor called and asked if I wanted to substitute-teach for an adult Bible class on Sunday morning. I did.
Then, not long after that, a church elder, whom I had known before coming to the church, invited me to lunch. He surprised me by asking if I would consider joining the staff at the church as an associate pastor. Exactly thirty days after that lunch, I sat in a staff meeting as pastor of adult ministries. I had been frank with the senior pastor, saying, “I’m interested in the position, but I don’t see myself as an associate pastor long-term.”
“Whether it’s six months or six years,” the pastor said, “my goal is to see God bring you back into ministry.”
I spent two years on staff at that church, and when I left, I prayed that God would give me the chance to do for someone what that church did for me.
When the hurting missionary family arrived at our church, I had my chance. That family joined our church and the husband ended up coming on staff for a year. When he left, he said, “Thank you for letting me experience what healthy relationships can be like.”
The church, which has so much potential for inflicting pain on a pastor and his family, also has great potential for being an instrument of healing, for restoring vision for ministry. If nothing else, the suffering I’ve experienced at the hands of churches has forced me to think of others. The character forged from conflict, in the end, isn’t about handling better my pain; it’s about taking on the suffering of others.
Gary Preston is pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Boulder, Colorado. He has written for Leadership and Discipleship Journal. Gary and his wife, Suzanne, enjoy a Colorado outdoor lifestyle along with their two teenage sons, Nate and Tim.
Eugene H. Peterson, Leap Over a Wall (New York; HarperCollins, 1998).
Copyright © 1998 Gary D. Preston
