There’s something about us preachers. Maybe it’s in the DNA. It’s one more indication of our fallen nature, as though we need more of those. Here’s what we do.

In order to make myself look good, in order to impress you with my situation, in order to show you what a great job I’ve done at this church, I put someone else down.

The first time I saw it to know its true character, a preacher acquaintance had gone to pastor a downtown church in a huge city. He was always a let’s-think-outside-the-box type, before anyone had ever thought to put it that way. He was an innovator, a motivator, a let’s-get-‘er-done type. And that’s what he did at that church.

Within a year, he had that church packed to the rafters with people he had attracted by his unorthodox ways, captivating preaching, and bright personality. He was baptizing a thousand people a year when no one else on the planet was doing that. And he led that church to relocate, to get out of the concrete jungle where they owned no parking and to erect a great campus on the interstate where they would be visible to the world. He was a natural born fund-raiser and inspired his people to contribute millions of dollars–not one or two, but many millions–to pay for that vast acreage and the spacious state-of-the-art buildings. Everything he did was the biggest, the best, the brightest.

Most of us were understandably in awe of him.

When the invitations to speak in other places began to pour in, opportunities to tell the story of his church and how God had used him there, he saw this as an open door to help other pastors and churches to reach their communities. That’s when most of the pastors of my generation learned about him. And it is fair to say that along with most everyone else who ever heard him, we sat in awe of his preaching and fell in love with his personality. He became a genuine star.

“When I arrived,” he would tell his audiences, “that church was dead, dead, dead. There might have been 300 souls sitting in that cavern of a building, all of them waiting for the undertaker. They had not done anything for years.”

Prior to his coming, the previous pastors had been status-quo types who could not see the vast opportunity God had placed before them. He didn’t use the actual word, but we all knew those guys had been real losers.

He went on, “One day I asked the treasurer, ‘What is this $60,000 doing in a savings account?’ He said, ‘It’s for a rainy day.’ I told him, ‘Good lord, man! It’s been raining for years!!'”

We all laughed. Great fun, good entertainment for the preacher crowd, sharp put-downs for the sightless leadership many of us in the audience were saddled with in our churches. It felt good to see someone go in to a dead church, weed out the do-nothings, and establish a mighty work of faith.

One day something occurred to me. With the nation-wide publicity this preacher brother is getting for the phenomenal work God has done through him in that city, with the acclaim that comes through resurrecting a dead church and building one that is attacking the very gates of hell, with all of us bowing before this preacher in our best “we’re not worthy” manner, I wonder.

I wonder about his predecessor. Who is the pastor who served that church before him, back when it was “dead, dead, dead.” And how is he feeling along about now? Is he still pastoring, or I found myself hoping, was he in his grave so he doesn’t have to listen to this?

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My friend John was a flockless shepherd, a pastor lacking a congregation. It’s an awkward place in life for a preacher to find himself. Like being a lover without a sweetheart, a physician with no one to help, a teacher with no pupils.

“I have to preach,” he said to me. “Preaching is everything to me! Preaching is my passion.”

I said, “That’s not good, John. Preaching was never meant to be your passion. Jesus Christ is supposed to be your passion.”

Give John credit; he heard that. “Wow,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a bucket of ice water. Thank you for bringing me back to reality.”

Personally, I’m not sure the Lord calls anyone to preach, as the expression goes. He calls us into His service to do whatever He commands. That may indeed be to preach the gospel in pastoring or evangelism, but as with my situation, often the specifics change. After 42 years of pulpit ministry, I moved into administration and the pastoral care of pastors. I still preach, but irregularly and in churches everywhere. Yet, I’m still in the ministry, still wearing the uniform, still heeding the Master’s commands.

We’re supposed to love the Lord our God supremely, first of all and most of all. Everything else comes next. Including a deep love for His church.

Now, just as my friend John focused too intently on preaching and possibly put it ahead of his loyalty to Christ, some do that with the church.

I was listening on my car radio to Wallace, another pastor friend, who was making an evangelistic appeal. He said something like, “If you are lost, if you are seeking direction in life, you are carrying guilt over a life of rebellion and neglect, you want to find new meaning and forgiveness and purpose in life, my friend, you need a new relationship….” At this point, I knew what was coming. He would tell the listeners about Jesus Christ and salvation.

But I was wrong.

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If we define leadership as “influencing others toward a certain goal,” then the field is as wide as the universe and about as diverse and varied as the people in it.

New books on leadership come off the press at an alarming rate. Whatever else that indicates, it surely means people are trying to learn how to accomplish the assignments life has handed them. Pastors, if anyone on the planet, are called to be leaders. Pastors–and by that I mean all ministers, not just the preacher–stand out in front of small or large clusters of the Lord’s people saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21)

Let’s admit the obvious here: no one can read all those books, not and have a life. Don’t even try. But from time to time, I encourage pastors to check a book out of the public (or church) library on this subject and read it. As with every other kind of book, he should read some of it to decide if he wants to read a lot of it. There’s no point in wasting his time. Every book on leadership can teach something, even if it’s how not to lead.

Lately, I have come to realize that what the Lord was doing in instructing His disciples over His three-year ministry was training leaders. He may have called them sheep, but He most certainly was not training them to be followers of anyone except Himself.

Scripture uses all kinds of metaphors and terminology to convey the idea that we are to be leaders of people in this world, for Jesus’ sake. God told the Old Testament Jews that if they would obey Him, He would place them on top and not the bottom, He would make them the head and not the tail, and they would be the lenders and not borrowers. (Deuteronomy 28:13)

What could be clearer than that?

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I called the orthodontist’s office yesterday morning. After spending two hours the day before in his chair getting a root canal and having him fiddle with my bridge, I thought I was all set. But I was having a little trouble and felt he ought to know about it. The receptionist said, “The doctor does not see patients today. He is in the office, though.” She paused a moment and said, “Let me check.” Half a minute later, she was back. “Can you come now?” I could and I did.

It was the first time I had seen this strange phenomenon. The orthodontist’s waiting room was completely empty, yet all his office staff was present, busy throughout the various rooms. I said to one of his assistants, “So, what are you doing today?” “Restocking,” she answered. “And cleaning.”

In a lull, I asked the doctor, “So, what do you do on Wednesdays?” He said, “Paperwork. We clean the place and restock. Make sure we have all the supplies we will be needing.” Then he said, “I try to go home early.” Since he and his wife have two sons under the age of four, this sounded good.

My dentist–I keep lots of medical people employed: a dentist, an orthodontist, an internist, an ear-nose-and-throat doctor, and an ophthalmologist–takes Fridays off every week. His wife who is his receptionist and business manager says, “That’s his day for continuing education.”

Let’s call it ‘restocking’.

I’ve pastored a number of physicians over the years, and can recall hearing them complain about the schedules they keep and the lack of time to keep up with the latest developments in their field. One said, “The medical magazines pile up on my desk, but I don’t have time to read them.”

Not good. We need our doctors to be current with the developments in their specialty.

It takes time to restock. Planned, unhurried, peaceful time.

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Integrity is simply doing the right thing. It’s being true to what you know to be right. It’s not sinning against your own conscience.

The word ‘integrity’ comes from ‘integer,’ meaning ‘a whole number.’ The person with integrity is a whole human being, not divided or splintered by conflicting actions and beliefs.

Egil ‘Bud’ Krogh served in the Nixon White House in a number of capacities, but notably as the head of a group called “The Plumbers,” created to stop the leaks of information from within the administration. He was not part of the group that broke into the Democratic National Committee’s offices in 1972 in the infamous Watergate Break-in, but he was caught up in the matter when he lied to the Justice Department. Later, he confessed his wrong-doing and was sentenced to six months in prison. Recently, Krogh has written a book about the pressures of working in high profile political positions, under the title “Integrity.”

Krogh advises those who serve high political figures that before giving a recommendation to the boss, they should ask themselves two questions: is this right? and, what will be the consequences of it?

It’s not just in politics where the pressure to say what the boss wants to hear is so strong. In any high level business or religious enterprise, underlings find the temptations to please their bosses so overpowering they frequently find themselves in danger of compromising their convictions, and losing their souls, so to speak.

Recently, a veteran minister told a group of us of an occasion when he had been “bought and paid for” by strong church members. A powerful deacon in one church gave him monetary gifts and made sure that he received a new suit from a fashionable shop from time to time. Then, when the minister found himself crossways with that layman over some church issue, he was reluctant to oppose him. He had compromised himself by taking those presents.

“You cannot be a prophet to people from whom you take a profit,” the minister advised his younger colleagues. “It’s best to say ‘no’ to large, expensive gifts, particularly if you think they come with strings attached.”

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Warren Wiersbe says, “He who has the reputation of rising early may sleep til noon.”

The difference in reputation and character is that the latter is what you really are; reputation is what people think you are. If you have to choose, go for character every time.

But reputation is important, make no mistake. Ask any business owner.

No matter what great service a business produces, if its reputation in the community is not a good one, the enterprise goes under. That’s why companies go to such extremes to build positive reputations. They buy expensive media ads and have customers–or actors pretending to be such–tell of their great experience with this company. They pay big money to have their name on the stadium where football or baseball is played. They contribute to charity, but never secretly; they need the publicity. They’re trying to build a good reputation.

When Houston’s Enron Corporation went sour a few years back, one of the first things to happen was that the company’s name was removed from the Astro’s baseball stadium. The team could not afford for their image to be tied with a corrupt and bankrupt corporation.

Bible students will recall that even the Lord values His reputation.

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A pastor I know put in over 40 years of ministry. On the day of his retirement, the church celebrated in a big way and gave him a new automobile and many expressions of their thanks. A few days later, he announced he was leaving his wife. He divorced her, moved to another state and married a lady who had been his secretary. His abandoned wife was left in the town where they had served so many years to face the world and deal with the broken hearts and disappointed friends.

Anyone who spends Saturday afternoons watching football games has seen this happen. A team starts strong, moving the ball, scoring points, intimidating the opposition and impressing the fans. But after a quarter or two, they begin to fizzle. Either their first team grew tired or the reserves were unprepared or the other team figured out how to counter them. They lose the game which they had started so well.

No one gets credit on the scoreboard for having started well. It’s how you finish that tells the story.

The fun thing about pulling in an Old Testament story–particularly one from II Chronicles–is that so few people are familiar with them. To many, they’re hearing these tales for the first time. The account of King Asa is a perfect illustration for our point. It begins in II Chronicles chapter 14.

Asa reigned over the Southern Kingdom of Judah for a total of 41 years. In introducing him, the writer says rather ominously, “The land was undisturbed for ten years during his days.” (14:2) He started right.

From the first, Asa earned the approval of the Lord by tearing down the pagan altars, fortifying his cities, and building up the military. He spoke words of faith and trust and seemed to have been a good man. He was humble. When he heard a good sermon, he obeyed it. In chapter 15, the prophet Azariah preached to the king and the nation about faithfulness. At the end, Asa responded to the altar call. “When Asa heard these words and the prophecy which Azariah spoke, he took courage and removed the abominable idols…and restored the altar of the Lord….”

Asa led the people to make a great sacrifice to the Lord and led them into a covenant of obedience to God. He put his wicked grandmother out of business, removing her from the exalted position of queen mother due to her idolatry.

For the first 35 years of Asa’s reign, things went well. The enemies left the little nation alone and Asa was like a father to his people.

Then things went downhill.

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Whether you are the pastor of the church, a teacher in a classroom, the coach of a team, or the CEO of the company, you are responsible for the attitude in your organization. You control the thermostat, you establish the atmosphere.

In the home, it’s the mom who does this better than anyone else. At church, the pastor is the mom.

By “mood” or “atmosphere,” we’re not talking about a flimsy, shallow, upbeat rah-rah pep talk which well-meaning but foolish would-be leaders sometimes attempt. Team members see through that in a heartbeat.

In the days and weeks before the Enron scandal broke and the giant company was discovered to be insolvent and its leadership arrested, CEO Kenneth Lay is reported to have been pumping up the employees with great words on what great shape the company was in financially. He urged them to buy more stock in the company. At the same time, according to the reports (this is not something I know personally), he was divesting himself of his stock.

As with everything else in life, great words without corresponding actions fall to the ground without achieving anything of significance. Empty words undermine the work being done and destroy the morale of the team.

The Bible says of the Prophet Samuel, that the Lord was with him and “let none of his words fall to the ground.” (I Samuel 3:19)

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As a young minister, I was eager to learn how to present the gospel to people in one-on-one conversations and enrolled in every program I could find that promised to teach such skills. One in particular, I recall because of a tactic of introducing the presentation that smacked of manipulation.

They sent us out in teams of three, assigned to “take a poll” from door to door in a certain neighborhood. The form asked such questions as, “Which of these religious leaders do you know more about–Mohammed, Christ, or Krishna,” and “What would you say is the biggest problem in the world today?” We knocked on doors, introduced ourselves, said we were doing a community survey, asked our questions, and wrote down what they said. Not that it mattered. The simple fact is we did not care how they answered the questions. All of the business about conducting a survey was just a lead-in to get to the point where we could ask, “In your opinion, how does a person get to Heaven?”

The plan called for the person to give a wrong answer, which we usually got. Anyone who has been around very long knows that the great majority of humans believes that being good, or at least more good than bad, is the ticket that opens Heaven’s doors.

When they gave the wrong answer, we would ask for the privilege of taking a few minutes of their time to show them what the Bible says on this subject. That was actually why we came, and this is usually where the party at the door said “No, I don’t think so,” and sent us on our way.

That Saturday afternoon, before we left the church for our assignment, the leader took questions from his nervous pupils. Someone said, “What do we say if they ask us point blank what we’re doing out here?” The leader said, “Tell them you’re out sharing Jesus Christ with people. Be transparent. We have nothing to hide.”

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Nothing undermines the loyalty of your team members so much as them watching you lie to outsiders. They know better; they know you are stretching the truth or creating it from whole cloth, and to the extent you do that, you shrink in their eyes.

To our everlasting shame, perhaps no body of people on the planet plays fast and loose with the facts like preachers. You would think that we who deal with the Gospel Truth, whose Savior called Himself “The Truth,” and who have as one of our basic tenets “Thou shalt not lie,” that we of all people would hold to the facts as no one else. But it is not so.

In a conversation with a group of pastors about this, the stories flew, as each one thought of examples he had seen.

One said, “You get these flyers from preachers who want to come to your church. ‘One of America’s greatest evangelists!’ it says. ‘Pastor of some of the largest churches of our time.’ And yet, you know the churches he has pastored and there’s no way.”

Another said, “And some of them report the hundreds of decisions that were made in their recent meetings. Why, Billy Graham would be hard-pressed to match those numbers. And if you check with the pastors where they held those meetings, they can’t find all those converts.”

“I had a preacher tell me that he actually did not know how many people attended his church on Sunday morning. He said they engaged in a bit of creative counting. He said it for a joke, but he was serious.”

“I heard a staff member of one church say that when they counted the crowd on Sunday, they added 10 percent in the chance they had missed someone.”

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