Monthly Archives: July 2024

Pastoring with the personal touch

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“I just called to say I love you…” –Stevie Wonder

My journal for the 1990s records something I never want to forget.

We were trying to line up 15 freezers of homemade ice cream for a church fellowship the following Sunday evening.  My assistant always had trouble getting enough freezers because he tried to do it by making a promotion from the pulpit.   A general appeal like that makes it far too easy for people to ignore.

The most effective way is to ask people individually and personally.

In order to make that point with my assistant, I took on the task myself.  I made the phone calls.  In the process, I ended up making a huge discovery.  Or possibly a re-discovery.

Here is the Journal notation from a couple of days later, awkward syntax and all.

This week, as I’ve called church members to line up 15 ice cream freezers for the fellowship August 15, was struck by how many pastoring conversations resulted.  People told me of coming surgeries, coming marriages, even a divorce.  I prayed with lots of people.  And came away from the phone with this odd exhilaration from having rendered pastoral ministry.  And so, today, Thursday, I’m making a few more calls and having the same experience, and have decided to take the church directory printout and just start calling church members, particularly those I’ve not talked to lately.

I’d say, “Hi Bob…this is Brother Joe…. As you know I’ve been gone so much this summer (the church had given me a six weeks sabbatical) and I’ve been so out of touch, I was just wondering how things are with you?”  And I let them talk.  I gave this maybe 90 minutes tonight and have struck the mother lode.  Such response. And such a strong inner feeling that this is it!

I recall my friend and mentor James Richardson saying once, “Isn’t the telephone wonderful?”  meaning it’s not necessary to always be running by to see someone.  Just call them.

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Seven laws of service in the kingdom

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A disciple is not above his teacher or a slave above his master (Luke 6:24). 

I am among you as one who serves (Luke 22:27). 

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, Rudy and Rose traveled to New Orleans to help.  Unable to find a place to plug in, Rudy walked into the kitchen of Williams Boulevard Baptist Church and volunteered.  That church was strategically situated next to the Highway Patrol headquarters which was hosting hundreds of troopers from the nation, as they protected the darkened city. The church had become a hotel for the troopers and the women of the congregation were serving three meals a day.  They welcomed Rudy and assigned him to the garbage detail.

Not exactly what he had in mind.

Rudy had been pastoring a church in southern Canada.  When he saw the suffering of our people on television–entire neighborhoods flooded, thousands homeless, people being rescued off rooftops–he resigned his church, sold his gun collection to fund the move, and he and Rose came to help.

Now, he ends up emptying garbage cans.  By his own admission, Rudy was developing an attitude problem.

One day he was lifting a large bag of garbage into the dumpster.  The kitchen workers had been told not to put liquid garbage into the bags, but evidently they didn’t get the message. Suddenly, as Rudy was hoisting it up, the bag ripped and all kinds of kitchen leftovers poured down over him–gumbo, red beans and rice, gravy, grease, whatever.  

Drenched in garbage from head to foot, Rudy stood there crying like a baby.

“That’s when the Lord broke me,” he said later.  “I told the Lord, ‘If you just want me to empty garbage cans for Jesus, I’ll do it.’”  

That was a Thursday.  That Saturday night late, a minister from that church woke him up.  “Rudy, our pastor is sick. They tell me you are a preacher.  Can you preach for us tomorrow morning?”

In time, Rudy became pastor of one of our churches.  He turned the little congregation into a center for training teams to go into the devastated areas sharing the love of Christ with those whose lives had been upended.

The Lord gave Rudy and Rose French an unforgettable ministry to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  But it began with his “baptism of garbage.”  

You will be a servant.

You have no choice if you are to follow the Lord Jesus.

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How God’s people undercut their best efforts and fail Christ

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“Welcome the stranger within your gates. For you were foreigners in Egypt.” — The thrust of Leviticus 19 (see verses 10, 18, and 33-34)

This is one of the greatest frustrations and painful aspects of pastoring.  You try to do well–to prepare sermons blessed of God, to lead your team to present effective ministries, to build powerful worship services, to develop disciples, and reach those in darkness–and then your best people fail to do the smallest thing.  In so doing, they end up negating a thousand good things they do.

They fail to think of the outsider.  They look right past the newcomer.  They give no thought to the first-timer.

My blog from Monday, March 22, 1999—

“I made a number of visits tonight.  Left notes at three homes (no one there) and visited with Carol and Bob Coleman.  They’ve been visiting our church several weeks.  She said, “We love it.  Great music, etc etc–but only three people have greeted us!”

“Three!  Our people think they are friendly but in truth they are friendly to each other.  Bob told me he had volunteered to help Clyde with cooking the wild game supper at church.  Was brusquely turned aside with ‘We already have enough help.’  Then Bob came on to the dinner and brought a friend.  One hour later, they were back.  Said not a soul spoke to them.  So disappointing.”

That church, you will want to know, had a reputation from the previous decade as strong on evangelism and soul-winning.  In fact, when I had asked the congregation to do something heroic and go the extra mile–more than once, our people opened their home to mothers from Third World countries bringing critically ill infants to our Children’s Hospital in New Orleans–they always responded well.  So, they were not uncaring.

They were not uncaring.

They were unthinking.

They were preoccupied with their own plans, their own families, themselves.  They were thinking about everything in the world other than the strangers and newcomers who needed some slight indication that they are welcome and wanted in this place.

It’s scary being a newcomer or first-timer.

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Write a book, change the world!

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This will be written for the generation to come, that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord.  Psalm 102:18

A friend said, “Pastors who write books are on ego trips.”  I begged to differ for a lot of reasons.  For one thing, I’ve just finished my eighth and am now working on the ninth book!

In my opinion…

In one sense, people who write books are paragons of faith. They have no proof anyone will ever read what they write or if they will recoup the investment of their time and money.  And yet, they write on.

Aren’t we thankful for people who write books!

After all…

When you write a book–any kind of book!–you give away a piece of yourself.  You have spent countless hours secreted away laboring over a pad with a pen or typing away on the laptop.  If you’re like me, you have wept and fussed, stopped to look something up, asked your spouse if this is the right word, and sent up periodic prayers that this would work and make a difference in someone’s life. You have abandoned the project for a time, returned to it when something was burning inside you and just had to come out, and eventually you decided “that’s enough” and sent it out to the world.

When people hold the book in their hands, they’re holding a piece of you.

When you write a book, you touch parts of the world you will never travel to, people you will never see, and make a difference you will not learn of in this lifetime.  This is a faith venture of the first sort.

When they hold the book in their hands, they touch the fruit of your life.

When you write a book, you touch the future.  Perhaps your book will live forever and never be out of print–does C. S. Lewis in Heaven see this and smile?–or someone will come across your book a century from now in some obscure storage and read it as a lark and find themselves being blessed.  Either way, fruit massive or miniscule, you are sending your witness into the future.

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From Psalm 103:3-5, a great way to pray

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Forget not all His benefits.

So urged the Psalmist, King David, to all of us.

And exactly what are those benefits?  The “sweet singer of Israel” names five….

–He pardons all your iniquities.

–He heals all your diseases.

–He redeems your life from the pit.

–He crowns you with favor and compassion.

–He satisfies your years with good things.

That’s quite a load! Our Lord in Heaven pardons us, heals us, redeems us, crowns us, and satisfies us.

He has certainly done that for me.  When He saved me, He pardoned me as a result of Calvary. Furthermore, since I’ve been saved I’ve continued to need pardoning, and He  does that also.  His salvation is wonderful and ongoing, and it’s all because of what He did for us at Calvary.

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No independent churches, no self-sufficient Christians

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“I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the increase” (I Corinthians 3:6). 

“Even in Thessalonica you sent aid once and again for my necessities” (Philippians 4:16). 

I have no patience with signs in front of church buildings that read “Independent (whatever) Church.” There is no such thing as an independent church. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ and we need each other.

Some more than others.

The believer or the church that believes he/she/it is independent and has no need of all those others is going against everything Scripture teaches and contradicting what they see happening all around them every day.

Every church depends on the power company for the lights and a/c, on the water works for water in the building, on the sewerage department, on the streets department and on the guy who cuts the grass and the lady who cleans the toilets. They depend on the Bible, on the Holy Spirit, on those who brought the Gospel to them, and they depend on each other to be faithful. The pastor depends on the congregation to attend and serve and give and pray.  Everyone depends on the preacher to lead well.

An independent Christian is a contradiction in terms.  An oxymoron.

There is no such animal.

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God promises to make His people youthful. What that looks like.

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…so that your youth is renewed like the eagle (Psalm 103:5).

…they will be full of sap and very green (Psalm 92:14).

Eternal, lasting youth.  Sound good to you?

This is better than anything cosmetic surgery can offer.  This is a real makeover.

We are not talking about a second childhood or any such silly thing. We are talking about the Holy Spirit doing a new thing in an old vessel, the living God rejuvenating a veteran servant, the God of creation renewing His child and doing something fresh in him or her.  Making you youthful.

And no, the image of recapping an old tire does not fit here.  Or, plastering a toupee on a bald head.  Or padding a bra.  Or going in for cosmetic surgery.  None of these images fits what the living God wants to do, intends to do, has promised to do in the life of His elderly faithful.

He will make you JOYFUL.  Joy, in fact, is a big deal with God.  In the words of C. S. Lewis, joy is the business of Heaven.  Psalm 16:11 assures that “in Thy presence there is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.”

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Never-ending: The struggle to remain humble

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Humble yourself. 

I know precious little about humility. However, I do know two important things about the subject:  a) Humility is a most attractive feature in high achievers and b) God requires it in all of His people.

Scripture is filled with teachings, examples, violations, commands, and encouragements regarding humility. Even our Lord Jesus Christ was humble and became our example. (Try these passages for starters: Matthew 11:29; John 13:14-15; Philippians 2:5-8.)

Scripture tells believers to put on humility (Colossians 3:12), to be clothed with humility (I Peter 5:5), and to walk with humility (Ephesians 4:1-2).

The Lord wants His children to be humble so much that He has given us seven aids to accomplish this and thereafter, to keep us that way.

1. Common sense.  Perspective. 

Look around at the billions of people. You’re just one of them. Look above at the zillions of stars. You’re sitting on one small planet circling one humble star. They’ve been around for eons, while you have only a few more years of life here. If that doesn’t humble you, you’re not paying attention.  (See Psalm 8)

2. The Holy Spirit. Power. 

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, humility…. (Galatians 5:22-23).

3. Our family. Intimates. 

I heard the wife of a well-known preacher say on television once–and probably shocking her audience–“I tell my husband, ‘Don’t start that big shot thing with me. I saw you in your shorts this morning.’”  (My wife thought the woman spoke out of turn, that she should not have said that publicly.)

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Something the new pastor is going to be needing from you

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The new pastor looks out at the congregation.  He’s acting confident and looks the part. The search committee did a good job from all appearances.  The pastor speaks well and seems to know what he’s doing.

But wait….

Has someone removed the pulpit from the platform?  And is that a rowboat the preacher is standing in?  What is going on here? Am I in the right church?  Have we entered the twilight zone?

I know of a pastor who did that on his first Sunday. (And not everyone received it well.)

Is the new pastor not wearing a suit? Oh my, is he wearing jeans and sneakers?  Does he have a long beard? It makes him look like an old Civil War veteran! Whatever is our church coming to? What was the search committee thinking to bring in such a person to pastor our great church?

Sound familiar?

Was the new pastor right in introducing some changes immediately? I don’t know.  It depends on a hundred things.  Suffice it to say, most times the new pastor gets it right.  However….

Sometimes new pastors goof up. They get off on the wrong foot. Sometimes they misspeak.  Or they call an important person by the wrong name. New pastors have been known to introduce change abruptly when a more thoughtful thing would have been to prepare the congregation and transition slowly.

In every case, beginning pastors need one huge thing from the congregation.

They need space. 

They need time.  They need slack.  Some room. They need a lot of understanding.

New pastors need time to adjust, to learn you, to make connections, to find the path, to hear the heartbeat of the congregation, to learn the history of the church, to decide what God wants, to receive the vision from Heaven, and to make a few mistakes.

How’s that?  New pastors make mistakes?

Yes. The new pastor needs time and room–the freedom, actually–to make a few mistakes.

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Plans for my funeral. Yep, here is my program.

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We were gathered around the bed where my wife of 52 years lay. We had signed the papers to unplug her from life support.  Everyone was in tears.  She would take her last breath the next morning.

After a time, I said to my family, “Now listen. One of these days it will be Grandpa lying here. And I don’t want all this crying.”  Granddaughter Abby said, “Why not?”  I said, “Well, good night, I’ll be 98 years old and I will have preached the previous Sunday! What’s to cry about?” They all laughed.

I say a lot of things just to get a laugh.  It goes back to childhood so it’s who I am, I suppose.  But this one is dead on.  I want to live a long time and stay active serving the Lord and loving the special people around me.  Ideally, the only people attending my funeral will be friends of my grandchildren since I will have outlived all my contemporaries. (Note: The first time I wrote the above was 8 years ago.  I’m now 84 and going strong, thank the Lord!)

I may or may not do that.

My times are in God’s hands.  I know that and I’m good with it.

I go to a lot of funerals.  Yesterday, in fact, I went to two.  For the first I occupied a pew and at the second I was the officiator.

From time to time I give thought to my own memorial service.  And in planning it–if that’s what I’m doing here–I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking I deserve a service befitting the King of England or something.  I’ll not be needing twelve preachers and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Simple is good.  And brief is not bad.

Here are my thoughts on the subject…

During the visitation time when people are entering the sanctuary to greet one another and speak to my family, the screens could be showing some of my cartoons through the years. Laughter is great–joy made audible!–and I’d love some at my service. (A favorite quote: Joy is the flag flown from the castle of your heart to show the King is in residence.)  I’m all in for joy.

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