A cheap shot in sports is when you catch your opponent off guard and give him an illegal hit that hurts him badly. The referee usually flags you for it and the crowd boos. Even your own fans are embarrassed that you would stoop to such.

Preachers do it all the time.

Not all preachers, but some of us make a practice of finding a weak spot in our targeted sinner, one undefended, in his most vulnerable area, and letting him have it.

We had a case in point this weekend: Super Bowl Sunday.

A friend on Facebook messaged me privately about his intended sermon. He was going to let the congregation have it that day about their addiction to sports, football in particular. He was upset and wanted to accuse his people of a form of idolatry.

I did not accuse him of hitting below the belt–the very essense of a cheap shot–but I could have. (We might say I avoided a cheap shot myself by not doing that.) Instead, I suggested an alternative approach.

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“Nothing can keep the Lord from saving, whether by the many or by the few.” (I Samuel 14:6)

It doesn’t matter to the Lord whether He saves by the many or the few.

Now, you could make an argument that that is not pure scripture since the line was uttered by Jonathan, son of King Saul, and not by a prophet or some inspired writer. But you would be fighting a losing battle on that, since it’s a truth found all through scripture from beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation.

God has His crowds, to be sure. In Heaven, the guest list–the family reunion, choose your metaphor–seems endless. “…a great multitude which no one could number” was standing before the throne praising the Lord (Revelation 7:9). That was sure some crowd Moses led out of Egypt, whether a few hundred thousand or 2 million as some say. Either way, God knows how to work the big numbers.

However, being God, He does not need big numbers. He does not call off anything (so far as we know) because only a handful of nobodies showed up.

In fact, God told Gideon he had too many soldiers in his army. Defeat the Midianites with that crowd, He said, and your people will take credit for the victory. So, the Lord had him whittle the assault team down to a manageable 300. (Judges 7)

God loves small things. Ordinary people. Insignificant gifts and undramatic acts.

It does not matter to the Lord whether He saves–and works and transforms and wins the victory–by a few people or by a crowd. It’s all through Scripture.

The only problem is you don’t believe it. And something inside me resists it, too.

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As far as I know, no college or seminary has a course in how preachers are to deal with search committees. It’s a skill you acquire by trial and error. Mostly trial, I can hear someone say.

Recently, on this website, we’ve been addressing this subject. (There are, scattered throughout the nearly 2,000 articles on this blog, occasional writings on pastors and search committees.) Last week we talked about what the search committee looks for when they show up in your congregation on Sunday and then, prompted by a pastor’s wife, what the pastor is looking at when visiting that church “in view of a call.”

Another friend mentioned something we’ve never addressed: What about a beginning preacher–not necessary a youngster–who is about to become a pastor? He finds himself sitting across from that search committee for the first time with a hundred questions eating at him. How does a beginning preacher deal with a search committee?

Since the world has changed in the nearly half-century when I sat in that boat, I asked my friend (David) to jot down specific questions. (Did he ever! He sent an even dozen. He’s serious about this!)

So, here, in the order in which David posed the questions, are my responses–such as they are–regarding a beginning pastor squaring off against a search committee. (Athletic, competitive terminology tongue-in-cheek.)

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Each denomination has its own approach to pastor-finding. Most Protestant churches will have variations of the way we Southern Baptists go about replacing preachers.

The church selects and commissions a small group of its finest as the Pastor Search Committee. Their job, in brief, is to sift through the resumes and letters of recommendations coming their way in order to find a few good men (in our denomination, pastors are almost always male) and prayerfully whittle the number down to the one they present to the congregation as “God’s man.”

Now, you’re a pastor. You’ve been serving the Middlesize Baptist Church in Smalltown, USA, and mostly loving it. You’ve been there several years, your wife is settled in, your kids are well-established with friends and activities, and the church seems reasonably satisfied with you. You have no reason to want to leave. But something happens.

A phone call informs you that the pastor search team from Bigtown is interested in you as a possible pastor since Doctor Reverend Powers retired. At their request, you send your resume, they follow up your references, and phone calls are exchanged back and forth. The committee visits your services several times, and last Thursday night, they met with you and your wife.

Today, the phone call from the chairman informs you the committee wishes to invite you to Bigtown. If you agree, one Sunday soon, you are to preach in their pulpit, after which the congregation will vote on you becoming their next shepherd. The salary, which you are just now learning, is only slightly more than what you’re making now. But that’s no matter.

You and the family begin making arrangements to be in Bigtown that weekend. You secure a pulpit replacement for that Sunday, you tell one or two of your leaders what you’re up to (pledging them to silence!), and you get serious about praying.

The decision you and that church are about to make is critical. Since one road leads to another and there’s no returning to this spot to start over, you want to act cautiously and to seek God’s will in every detail.

When you get to Bigtown Church, here’s what to look for.

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My wife and I were being shown around town by two ladies who were members of their church’s committee assigned to locate and sign-up the next pastor for that congregation. I will never forget something Jane said from the front seat where she was driving.

“I told our committee, ‘I want us to bring in a handsome pastor, someone who will look good behind our pulpit.'”

Had she slapped me, the blow would not have hurt more.

That shallow assessment of what they needed in the next pastor turned out to be rather symbolic of where most of the committee stood.

How does that old line go: “Too late smart, too soon dead.”

Most search committees, I want to assert with no evidence at all other than my own convictions, do not take that superficial an approach to their task. Most of them–at least in their own minds and hearts–really do want to find the person God has chosen for their church.

Just as long as God’s person is a male, between the ages of 35 and 50, with a doctor’s degree from somewhere official-sounding, and with a beautiful wife by his side who clearly adores him.

Sorry for the little cynicism there. I’m really not disparaging what they do. Most committees, once they find “the” person, even if it’s not what they originally set out for, are willing to change their requirements and go for it. That’s why sometimes a committee will bring in a 27-year-old as pastor and sometimes a 70-year-old. Sometimes they decide this preacher is so fine the absence of a doctorate is not that big a deal. And once in a while, all requirements are jettisoned and they really do go “outside the box.”

All that being said, there is one huge reminder which needs to be passed along to pastors now at the point in their ministry where they are courting search committees.

Here is what the pastor search committee is looking for when they visit your church.

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Nothing stresses a pastor like conflicts occurring on his staff. A secretary in the office, the minister of music, the organist, the head custodian–each of them was brought to the leadership team for good reason. Now, here they are threatening the unity of the church–not to say its mission and ministry–by a conflict with another team member.

In my four-plus decades pastoring six churches, I’ve seen the following (and plenty more, too, let me add) up close and personal….

–a senior staff member addicted to prescription drugs

–staffers using the computer for online porn.

–associate ministers who were protective of their turf, who resented anyone–including the pastor!–intruding to tell them what to do.

–Staffers who wanted to be left alone to do their work and not be asked to cooperate with anyone else

–Staffers who were angry at me about something and shared that little bit of gossip to laypeople in the church before telling me.

–Lazy staff members.

–Ministers who delighted in smutty stories and had flirty ways.

Wow. I’m imagining someone reading this and wondering if I ever worked with a single godly servant of the Lord! Of course I did. The great majority of them were sincere, hard-working, sweet-spirited men and women with servant hearts. And even these above were not bums. Most had endearing qualities about them and had served well in previous churches, according to the recommendations we received on them.

If you add to these the ministers I’ve known not in my church but in others nearby, we could add adultery, homosexuality, embezzlement, and a host of other conditions to this list.

Any one of these could wreak great damage to a congregation once it gets out that the minister (or one of the ministers) is engaging in such a practice.

Here is my offering today on how to solve a great majority of these conflicts either before they occur or at least before they are allowed to wreck a good church.

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An epidemic is sweeping our land in the form of church dissension over the smallest of issues.

The pastor wants to begin living by the constitution rather than the whims of a few self-appointed decision-makers. They are up in arms; who does he think he is, a dictator? That’s their role.

A Sunday School teacher refuses to cooperate with her church’s leadership. She and her little class have been together all these centuries; they certainly do not need to change. Everyone is upset at the high-handed way of the education minister.

The pianist has served that church forty years and now “owns” that little corner of the sanctuary. She has been faithful–let’s give her that–but now, at the hint that the pastor might be wanting to replace her with someone actually qualified, her family and extended circle of friends rise up in arms.

An influential member of the congregation gets upset with the pastor for unknown reasons and lets it be known he wants the man replaced and will not take ‘no’ for an answer. Since he employs half the church, people are afraid to buck him.

Congregations watch in stunned silence as their beloved church tries to self-destruct when a few angry members threaten to bring the whole house down.

What’s a pastor to do?

There is an answer, and this is it.

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A football player’s head is not in the game and he’s just going through the motion. The narrator says he is phoning it in.

The stage actor has said those lines precisely 568 times before audiences and an untold number in rehearsal and in front of his bathroom mirror. He has to really work at his craft, lest he “phone it in.”

The teacher has gone over those lessons each year for the last two decades. She could do it blind-folded while making a grocery list. If she’s not careful, she’ll “phone it in.”

Our Lord warned of religious people using “vain repetitions” in their prayers. Putting the mind in neutral and the mouth spouting out those words and phrases we’ve all learned, as though the Lord hears and answers based on sheer volume. Phoning it in.

You’re a retired pastor and travel a good bit. You get invited to guest-supply in various pulpits and speak to congregations that have never heard any of your best stuff. By the third year of this, you’ve boiled your preaching down to a solid one dozen messages. You’re having more fun than you’ve had in a lifetime of ministry.

And no deacons meetings to attend, no church business conferences to moderate, no angry church members to deal with. You preach, accept a check from your host, pray the Lord’s blessings on him and his ministry, and go back home. Next week, another drive to another church to deliver a similar sermon.

Question du jour: How does a minister keep from robotically and mindlessly mouthing the same platitudes over and over in a sermon he has preached ten, twenty, fifty times?

It’s Sunday morning, three a.m., and that’s my challenge for later this morning. Fortunately, I know the answer. (What, you ask, are you doing up at this hour of the morning? Answer: I’m a preacher and I’m delivering a sermon in a few hours. That’s what I’m doing up at 3 a.m.)

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“You shall love (the stranger) as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).

As a retired pastor who preaches in a different church almost every Sunday, a fun thing I get to do is study the church bulletins (or handouts or worship guides) which everyone receives on entering the building. You can learn a great deal about a church’s priorities and personality in five minutes of perusing that sheet.

As an outsider–that is, not a member or regular here–I get to see how first-timers read that material and feel something of the same thing they feel. I become the ultimate mystery shopper for churches. That is not to say that I pass along all my (ahem) insights and conclusions to pastors. Truth be told, most leaders do not welcome judgments from visitors on what they are doing and how they can do it better. So, unless asked, I keep it to myself. And put it in my blog. (smiley face goes here)

Now, in all fairness, most churches are eager to receive newcomers and want them to feel at home and even consider joining. And the worship bulletins reflect that with announcements of after-benediction receptions to meet the pastors, the occasional luncheon for newcomers to learn about the church and get their questions answered, and free materials in the foyer.

Now, surely all the other churches want first-timers to like them and consider joining. No church willingly turns its nose up at newcomers, at least none that I know of. But that is the effect of our misbehavior.

Here are ten ways churches signal newcomers they are not wanted.

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Now, I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world… They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. (John 17:11,16-17)

A half-century ago, Theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote a book titled “How the Church Can Minister to the World Without Losing Itself.”

It’s worth buying just for the title.

That’s the challenge. God’s people are sent to be in the world but not of it, to relate to the world without loving it, to bring the gospel to the world without succumbing to its enticements.

And yet, many of us love the culture where we find ourselves. Is this wrong?

Adrian Rogers used to say, “We are like a fellow in a boat. As long as the boat is in the water, he’s fine. But as soon as the water gets in the boat, he’s in trouble.”

At what point does the culture threaten to swamp our lifeboats? I’m a football fan, and love cheering on the New Orleans Saints. Am I succumbing to the world?

Seminarians discuss these matters in classrooms. They study books in which philosophers and theologians bring up the ramifications of engaging culture. Eventually, the young minister develops a set of principles for future ministry. In time, he graduates and goes forth to pastor a church with real people.

Suddenly, all bets are off.

In the urban setting where his seminary was located, the culture was one thing. In rural redneck America where he has gone to pastor, it’s something else entirely.

One of his classmates has started an innovative church in the artsy section of Chicago where the culture is unlike anything he has ever known.

A classmate is now serving a mission in smalltown Ohio, a community dominated by labor unions and factory life. The highpoint of the social season, he says, is the tractor pull at the local arena.

Another friend has been appointed missionary to the bush country of West Africa where the culture is pagan, primitive, and powerful.

Lastly, a colleague has taken a county seat ministry in the heart of the Bible Belt, where four churches stand on the corners of the major intersection and every community leader belongs to one of them.

Nothing to it, right? Just “preach the gospel, servant of God.”

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