The time God spoke to me. Clearly, amazingly.

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I have a very simple reason for believing in the living God.  And it has nothing to do with all the philosophical things people come up with. Nothing to do with science or the universe.  It’s personal.

He spoke to me.  Simply, clearly.

The year was 1989.  Margaret and I were being harassed by a number of people determined to get us out of their church.  I’d been pastor of this church for three years and it was flourishing.  We were reaching people for Jesus and running ahead of the budget and finally–I had thought–the Lord had shown the naysayers that He was in charge.

Some people do not care about God though. And they keep being put in leadership places in church.  So, here’s what happened.

Margaret and I would sit on the screened-in back porch and discuss matters.  We had a little agreement that we could say anything out there we pleased, but we would not bring it in the house.  And I was about to read Scripture.

For reasons I do not remember, I was about to read Psalm 67.

And God spoke.

“No.  Read Psalm 66.”

That’s what He said.

Now, I could not have told you the difference.  These were not familiar scriptures.

So, I read Psalm 66.  And got down to the middle of that psalm and could not believe what I was reading.  It was describing what had been happening to us.

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How I overcame my fear of public speaking and learned to love it

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Good title, right?

Now a confession. It’s a misnomer.

I was never afraid to stand in front of a group and speak. Not ever. In fact, quite the opposite.

As a fourth grader in our little West Virginia schoolhouse, teacher Margaret Meadows would periodically invite class members who had read an interesting story to stand and share it. I recall Violet Garten (love that name!) was so good at it. But when she called on me (I’m the guy frantically waving my hand) and I walked to the front of the class, I broke the rules.

I did not relate a story I had read somewhere.

I made one up on the spot.

That is serious something or other, I don’t know what. Was it a love for being the center of attention? Self-confidence on steroids? Not given to introspection, I’ve never tried to answer that, but I am confident that little snapshot reveals a world of insight on who I later became. Positive and negative.

In high school, one of the requirements for presidents of local chapters of the FFA (Future Farmers of America) was the ability to address an audience of our members for a full 30 minutes.  As president, I don’t recall actually doing that, but addressing audiences 30 minutes at a clip would end up describing my life. I’m a Southern Baptist preacher, you understand. The Lord called me into the ministry in April of 1961, so you do the math.

When friends tell me they hate public speaking with a dread, that they would rather take a whipping than stand in front of a group and speak about anything, I’m speechless and cannot begin to identify.  So, I did something.

I asked my Facebook friends who dislike public speaking to tell us why.

Most of the responses boiled down to variations on one theme: fear.   They feared forgetting their speech in the middle of their presentation, being rejected by the audience, boring them, and outright failure.

Several dreaded the attention being on themselves.  One or two said they are intimidated by crowds. More than one feared tripping while ascending the steps to the podium.

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What I miss most about pastoring

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Not one thing.

As much as I loved pastoring, I do not miss it.

That might need a tiny bit of explaining.

I’ve not pastored since 2004, when I became the area-wide “director of missions” for the SBC churches in metro New  Orleans, a Southern Baptist position similar to the Methodist District Superintendent or some minor bishop (but, as we tell our Catholic friends, “bishop minus the authority and funny hat”).  After 5 years, I retired to a ministry of itinerant preaching, writing, cartooning/sketching, and honey-doing.

I do not miss pastoring, even though I put in 42 years serving six churches and by all reports, did a fair job of it.

I do not miss the stress.

I do not miss the constant demands placed on a pastor and the sleepless nights that result.

I do not miss the relentless return of the Sabbath with its requirement for several new sermons and fresh presentations at every level.

I do not miss deacons meetings and monthly church business sessions.

I don’t miss hospital visitation, even though I still do that occasionally.

I  don’t miss weddings or funerals, even though I still get asked once in a while.

I don’t miss the administrative details, the long staff meetings, the occasional interstaff bickering and competition, or  the endless impossible-to-meet expectations placed on me by a few high octane  members (but mostly by myself).

But I did love pastoring.  As a new seminary grad in the summer of 1967, I had to get straight with the Lord whether I was to pastor churches or teach history in college (this was the original plan) and be a bi-vo pastor of small churches.  While on my knees in a hotel room in San Antonio, my wife asleep nearby, I heard from the Lord in no uncertain terms: I was to pastor churches.

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Our strong leader is first of all, a servant

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

I did not know the man who was texting me.  He had been dismissed from his second church in a row, and was beside himself with grief and frustration.

“Joe, I have to lead,” he said.  “God made me a leader.”

I did not have time to be gentle with him.  So, I laid it on the line.

“No, He made you a servant.”

I never heard back from him.

Please understand that I am pro-pastor. Always and forever. Anyone who reads my stuff and knows me will agree that I honor the pastor.  God made me a pastor at the age of 22, and I’ve been one ever since.

However, many of us have a problem.

In churches across our land tyrants can be found who call themselves pastors and demand to be obeyed. Such men should be dealt with by courageous men and women in the pews. Otherwise, they will corrupt the gospel, destroy the church, wound the weak, and drive away many who need Christ.

In the Kingdom of God, leaders are required to be servants.

If you serve well, in time He might let you be a pastor/shepherd.  But the serving comes first.

You arrive as the new pastor of the church.  The congregation, however, is not ready to follow you for one simple reason:  They do not know you.  They need to learn you can be trusted.  And the way to show them this is by serving them.

Many a pastor misses this, and if he learns it at all, not before he has made many a bone-headed mistake and left a lot of good people bleeding in his wake.

We lead by serving.

We do not lead by dominating.

That’s it.

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The 5 most frustrating things pastors do

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Pastors are called of God and assigned some of the most difficult work in the universe.  For the most part they labor well and long and you never hear a complaint out of them. They are my heroes.

Most of them.

The typical pastor in our denomination serves a church running 100 or fewer in attendance, which tells you the offerings are inadequate to provide much of a living for him. In some cases he holds down a second job or his wife works. Or both. Most amazing of all, he manages to live on what they pay him.

I believe in these guys. They are my brothers and my admiration of them knows no bounds.

Most of them.

But there are times when some of these ministers do the most self-defeating things. Not all of them, thankfully. But enough to warrant our addressing the issue as a caution to the rest of the Lord’s stable of shepherds.

Here is my personal list of the 5 most frustrating things pastors do.

FIRST: It’s frustrating to see preachers cut corners on sermon preparation.

What is bizarre about this is that the Sunday sermon is 50 percent of their job, as far as most of the congregation is concerned.

I grant you that in the more liturgical churches that isn’t so, with the ministers’ homilies often appearing as 5 minute reflections thrown together just before he entered the sanctuary.

But in the world I live in, the only time 90 percent of the congregation sees the pastor is on Sunday morning. If he does poorly there, he has just about sealed his fate with the membership as a whole.

And yet.

From the scant attention given the Sunday sermon by many ministers, from the small study time allotted to its preparation, and from the haphazard delivery of this message during the morning worship service, one would think neither the members nor the minister puts much of a value on the sermon.

It is the single most important thing the pastor does. If he is smart, if he values his ministry, and if he wants to go on receiving a paycheck to provide for his family, he will give great importance to planning that message.

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Jesus was a liberal

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Be careful of those categories, Christian. Take the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” for instance.

Liberal is a bad, bad word these days, in politics as well as in religion in this country. But it has a noble tradition and needs to be salvaged. Conservative is the “in” word, at least in the portion of the world where I live. But the news about it is not all positive.

The scripture can throw some light on the matter of liberals and conservatives:

On another sabbath, He went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus (Luke 6:6-11).

There is no place in the work of the Lord for cowards and wimps. To follow the Lord Jesus means to take risks, to stay focused, to confront evildoers–no matter how highly placed–and to bless people, no matter the personal cost.

Sometimes in the Scriptures, I am struck by how the Lord’s most blistering messages were directed toward the religious. I’m religious. That tells me I must be very careful. There is something about religion that enslaves the very people it claims to liberate. It burdens down, wears away, and blinds the eyes.

We religious people must always be on our guard lest our faith turn us into professional nay-sayers, the kind of people who put doctrine ahead of obedience to the Lord, our convictions ahead of compassion, our way ahead of the Lord’s way.

I remember the first time I became aware that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were theological conservatives. I’m a theological conservative. It pained me to realize the most blistering sermon of Jesus–that would be Matthew 23–was directed toward the Pharisees.

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Getting ready for our final exam

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“Pastor, my aunt Bernice would like you to visit her this week. There’s something she wants to talk with you about.”

I knew this young deacon’s Aunt Bernice. She was up in years and sickly, and while not a member of our church, she was related to quite a number. I figured with her years and health, she wanted to talk with the minister about getting read to see the Lord.

She did, but not in the way I had expected.

The next afternoon, as we sat in the living room of her small shotgun house, she said, “Pastor, I know I’m saved. I have no doubt about that. I remember being saved. But there’s something else bothering me.”

“Pastor, I haven’t done right by the church.”

She continued, “As a young adult, I got away from the church and quit going. I raised my son without the church and really came to regret it. And now I’m old and can’t even go. But if you’d let me, I’d like to put my membership in and become a member. I’ll pray for you all and send an offering from my monthly check.”

I assured her we would be honored to receive her, and took care of that the next Sunday.

I never forgot her statement—“I haven’t done right by the church”—and have had occasion over the years since to tell her story, then ask my hearers, “Have you done right by the Lord’s church?”

A man in our congregation was dying. On one occasion as I visited in his home, he asked to speak to me privately. I felt it coming: he wanted to confess something that was bothering him before he went to meet the Savior.

I was right.

“Pastor,” he said, “when I was a much younger man, I did some experimentation in my personal life that I’m ashamed of.”

He told the story, then said, “I’ve asked the Lord to forgive me, but it still troubles me. I don’t want to go into eternity with that on the record. Can you help me?”

Have you ever had one of those times when you felt the nearness of the Lord so heavily you could almost reach out and touch Him? That moment was just so.

I said, “My dear brother, the Lord has forgiven you for that sin and all the others. Jesus Christ paid for your sins with His blood.”

He looked at me and said nothing. So I added something I had never said in my entire life to that point.

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To have success in ministry, start by making a mistake

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In his book Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them, John Ortberg makes a confession. You get the impression that it was not easy in coming.

Here it is in his own words:

The church where I work videotapes most of the services, so I have hundreds of messages on tape. Only one of them gets shown repeatedly.

This video is a clip from the beginning of one of our services. A high school worship dance team had just brought the house down to get things started, and I was supposed to transition us into some high-energy worship by reading Psalm 150.

This was a last-second decision, so I had to read it cold, but with great passion: “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!” The psalm consists of one command after another to praise, working its way through each instrument of the orchestra.

My voice is building in a steady crescendo; by the end of the psalm I practically shout the final line, only mispronouncing one word slightly:

“Let everything that has breasts, praise the Lord.”

Ortberg tells what happened next.

A moment of silence. The same thought passes through four thousand brains: Did he just say what I think he did? In church? Is this some exciting new translation I can get at the bookstore?

Then, everybody in the place just lost it. They laughed so hard for so long, I couldn’t say a thing. It was zygomatic. I finally just walked off the stage, and we went on with the next part of the service.

I have been teaching at that church for eight years. Of all the passages I have exegeted and all the messages I have preached, that is the one moment that gets replayed before conferences and workshops. Over and over.

That moment forever endeared Pastor John Ortberg to his congregation.

In fact, the power of that moment was so strong, it would have been worthwhile for him to have planned the flub.

I sometimes say to friends, “If you ever find yourself sitting among two or more preachers and want to get something started, ask them about their most embarrassing moments. Every preacher has had a dozen. And some are pretty hilarious.”

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The two times a pastor is most vulnerable

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“Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you” (2 Timothy 1:14).

We’re all vulnerable.  Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall (I Corinthians 10:12).  The brother who gave us that reminder was himself constantly being knocked down, but getting back up.  If anyone knew the subject of vulnerability, Paul did (see 2 Corinthians 4:8-10).

After telling young Pastor Timothy of a coming time when people would not stand for sound doctrine and strong preaching, but would “turn away their ears from the truth and will prefer myths,” Paul said, “But as for you, be sober in all things (that is, clear-thinking), endure hardship (expect it, and plan to get through it), do the work of an evangelist (keep telling Heaven’s good news), and fulfill your ministry (do not let any critic pull you off course).”  (With my interjections, that’s 2 Timothy 4:5).

I find it amazing and truly heart-warming how such reminders to a minister twenty centuries ago fit us so perfectly today.  That’s one more reason, out of ten thousand, why you and I live in this Word. There is nothing like it anywhere.

Now, returning to our subject of the minister’s vulnerability….

The minister is most vulnerable at two times: in the few minutes before the morning service begins and in the half hour after it ends.

A wise minister will take steps to guard himself in order to give his best to the Lord and the people.  (Proverbs 4:23 “Guard your heart.”  Acts 20:28 “Be on guard for yourself and for all the flock….”)

A caring membership will protect the pastor at the same time for the same reasons.

FIRST: In the few minutes before the worship service where he is to preach, the pastor is vulnerable.

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On your burned biscuits, add a little grace

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“Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person” (Colossians 4:6).

My friend Chet Griffin passed this on to me. My notes do not indicate whether he was the speaker, or this was something he was forwarding.

“When I was a kid, my mom liked to make breakfast for dinner every now and then. I remember one night in particular when she had had a long hard day at work, then did the breakfast thing for us.  Dad and I were seated at the table when she brought in plates of scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and some extremely burnt biscuits.”

“This was so unlike my mom.”

“I sat there waiting to see if Dad noticed or would say anything.  Yet, all he did was to reach for his biscuits, smile at my mom, and ask how my day went at school.  I don’t recall what I told him, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jelly on that biscuit and eat every bite!

“Later, I heard Mom apologize to Dad for burning the biscuits.  I’ll never forget what he said.

“‘Honey, I love burned biscuits.’

“That night when I went in to kiss Daddy good night, I asked him if he really liked his biscuits burned.  He wrapped me in his arms and said, ‘Your mama put in a hard day at work today and she’s real tired.’

“‘Besides,’ he said, ‘a little burnt biscuit never hurt anyone.’”

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