What Kind of Risk Is It?

Security is the mother of danger and the grandmother of destruction.
Thomas Fuller1

Ignoring risk can be fatal.

Misunderstanding the risks of ministry, if not fatal, at least leads to ineptitude and failure. Misunderstanding, in this case, means treating all risks as if they were the same, a mistake that greatly increases the chances of disaster. So first we must identify the nature of the risk in question.

A primary resource, of course, is Scripture. Although the Bible never uses the word risk, story after story tells of risks taken, risks that end in flaming disasters or inspiring victories. Principles emerge from these stories.

Fred Craddock, professor of preaching and New Testament at Candler School of Theology, tells of a sermon he preached early in his ministry based on Luke 15, the story of the shepherd and the sheep. Craddock says he used to preach the sermon as if the shepherd left the ninety and nine in the safety of the fold and went out to search for the one lost sheep. After many years of telling this story with that presupposition, he discovered, to his embarrassment, that the text doesn’t say that at all. The ninety-nine were left not in the safety of the fold but in the wilderness.

“That is far more descriptive of our heavenly Father,” says Craddock. “Only God, exhibiting his risky, careless love, would leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness to look for the one who is lost.”2 The principle: Risks taken with the goal of presenting the gospel to those who have not heard are high-priority risks indeed.

Look for risk in the New Testament and you find it. In fact, you find many different kinds of risk. Eventually categories emerge that help us develop other principles for making decisions in risky church situations.

The four general categories of problems the early church faced are ones we face today: theological, institutional, interpersonal, and personal. Although these categories are not mutually exclusive, they do make convenient hooks on which to hang different kinds of risks and the way we treat them.

Theological Risks

The most important category involves decisions that deal with fundamental theological truth. Perhaps the prime New Testament example is the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. Some people had been teaching young Christians that circumcision was necessary for salvation. Other teachers, including Paul and Barnabas, realized this was a fundamental theological error — one that could not be tolerated no matter what fallout resulted from the confrontation.

At the meeting of apostles and elders to consider the question, Paul and Barnabas put their previous ministry on the line as evidence they were right. Had the council determined the other teachers were correct, Paul and Barnabas’s future as teachers would have been shaky indeed.

We now know the council decided in favor of their theology and sent Paul and Barnabas to deliver a letter outlining the decision to the confused churches. Having stood for this theology, the church leaders now faced the risk that the young churches teaching this error would reject the edict and break away. Since the Christian church was young and vulnerable, the prospect of losing any new groups was frightening. Yet the theological principle at stake — the universality of the gospel — was so crucial that the risk had to be taken, regardless of the potential fallout.

In this case, the risk paid off. The one church we read about, the young Gentile congregation in Antioch, accepted the teaching with enthusiasm and remained healthy. Possibly there was some backlash not included in the text — perhaps a few members fell away — but the essential integrity of the body of Christ was insured.

Institutional Risks

Though the most important risks are theological, two-thirds of the risks a local church leader takes have little to do with theology. In fact, according to our survey, a full one-third of the risks a pastor takes fall into a category we call institutional. Just keeping the institutional church together and smoothly functioning makes up a considerable part of the local church leader’s task.

Many institutional issues faced the New Testament church. In Acts 6 we find the dramatic growth and increasing ethnic diversity of the young church creating institutional problems. The Grecian Jews complained that their widows were being shortchanged in the daily distribution of food in favor of the widows of the Aramaic-speaking Christians.

The Twelve realized that administering this benevolence was an important practical issue but in a different category from the task of preaching the Word. They met and decided that “it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.” So they asked the church to select seven wise and spiritual men to be assigned the task of dividing up the food fairly.

The whole church was pleased with the solution. An unfair and potentially divisive situation was confronted directly, and the risk of schism was avoided simply by delegating the problem to a group of people with the gifts to solve such problems.

The institutional issue was not ignored, nor was it allowed to deflect the church from its primary mission of spreading the Good News.

Interpersonal Risks

A third category involves interpersonal disagreement among church members. Because human nature is universal, many New Testament examples of interpersonal conflict could just as easily have been written last week as two thousand years ago. For example, 1 Corinthians 6 warns believers against taking a dispute with another believer before secular judges, certainly a continuing concern in our litigious society.

Equally familiar is the human nature displayed in Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant. In the story, a king was calling in outstanding debts from his servants. One servant owed a huge sum and was unable to pay. The king was going to sell the servant and his family into slavery to recoup some of his losses. The servant begged for rescission of the obligation. The king felt sorry for him and forgave the debt.

The parable has a bittersweet ending, however. The servant also had some outstanding debts. And when he faced one of his debtors, a fellow servant who couldn’t pay, the forgiven servant refused to forgive.

When the king heard about this hardness of heart, he threw the servant in jail and berated him: “You wicked servant. I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”

The king was well within his legal rights to demand the debt. Since his kingdom didn’t depend on recovery of the money, however, he was also well within his rights to cancel the debt.

The root issue here was an interpersonal one — how the first servant related to the second servant.

Personal Risks

Some risks that church leaders take can only be described as personal — involving their call to ministry or personal relationships. Sometimes a relationship problem is based on theological, institutional, or interpersonal concerns. Sometimes, however, the crisis is essentially personal in nature. Personal crises take several forms.

The call to ministry. The call has changed somewhat since New Testament times. In Acts 1, for example, Matthias was added to the eleven apostles as a result of drawing lots. Although many young people today “put out a fleece” to decide whether to go into the ministry, few flip a coin to make the decision. We take a more “professional” approach.

In addition, after a pastor has been in a church for a year, or five, or ten, sometimes his or her ministry gifts no longer match those required by the congregation. The risky question: Should I stay or leave?

Personal growth or stagnation. Pastors also face decisions regarding their personal spiritual growth. I suspect the apostle Paul would have died a thousand deaths in a denominational desk job. The “great lion of God” seemed to thrive on the missionary tasks God set before him. Paul decided how to use his gifts by listening to God, not weighing the opportunities elsewhere. The question: How can I use my gifts to the kingdom’s greatest advantage?

Personal conflicts. In cases of personal conflict with members of the congregation, the burden usually falls on the church leader to resolve the problem. And rightly so.

In some cases, however, this is simply not possible. Occasionally, the pastor’s spiritual batteries are too low to turn the other cheek or go the extra mile. Sometimes the situation has deteriorated beyond what two people, however well-intentioned, can patch up. In those cases, the best resource is the elders, who can help provide the outside objectivity needed.

Sometimes the conflict is with a staff member. Paul and Barnabas had barely gotten into their first missionary journey when they had a “sharp disagreement about whether to take Mark along with them” (Acts 15:36ff.). They resolved the conflict by dividing their energies, Barnabas taking Mark with him, and Paul finding a new associate missionary in Silas. Apparently the arrangement worked very well.

When to Take a Risk?

Not every situation, of course, calls for risky action. Some call for maintenance, some for compromise, others for careful and premeditated ignoring. Yet more serious situations develop from a pastor failing to take action than from acting too hastily.

How to know when to rush in where angels fear to tread? The first step is to identify what kind of problem you’re dealing with. Attempting to handle an interpersonal problem as if it were an institutional issue only compounds the problem. Similarly, a theological misunderstanding must be dealt with much differently than a personal crisis.

In the next four chapters we will discuss the four kinds of risk in more detail, outlining specifically the approach to be taken in each.

Thomas Fuller, The Virtuous Lady. Quoted in Sydney Roberts, Thomas Fuller: A Seventeenth Century Worthy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953).

Fred Craddock audio cassette, “Preaching as Storytelling” Workshop, Preaching Today 23 (June, 1985).