Category Archives: Pastors

Pastor, your audience is always changing

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Al Maury pulled the old beat-up Volkswagen bus into the bank parking lot on Decatur Street and killed the engine.  As the six seminary students bailed out, he opened the rear door and took out a microphone-on-a-stand and flipped a switch, turning on the transmitter.  “McKeever, you’re preaching tonight!”

Oh my.  A baptism by fire. Thrown into the deep water without a life preserver.

We were preaching on the streets of New Orleans’ fabled French Quarter.

The very thought struck terror into my heart. And yet, I had volunteered for it.

The year was 1964 and I was a new student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  All first-year students were required to participate in one “field mission” ministry.  Each Tuesday, the student body gathered in Frost Chapel for a report and testimony time.  Choices for these ministries included helping start-up churches, hospital and nursing home ministry, the New Orleans Seamen’s Service, neighborhood mission centers, after-school tutoring, and such. Determined to rise above my fears of cold-turkey witnessing, I had chosen the scariest thing on the list.

Street preaching.

Yikes.

As the other seminarians took a handful of religious tracts and spread out to talk with people on the streets–a prospect fraught with its own brand of stage fright–Al Maury took me aside.

“Joe, listen to me closely.”

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How pastors can mistreat worshipers

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“….they treated the Lord’s offering with contempt” (I Samuel 2:17).

The first rule of worship leadership should probably be stated as Try Not To Get In Their Way.

When  people come to worship, if you cannot help them, at the very least try not to interfere with what they are doing.

The sons of Eli the High Priest were nothing but trouble. Hophni and Phinehas–who doesn’t love those names!– “were wicked men; they had no regard for the Lord or for the priests’ share of the sacrifices from the people” (I Samuel 2:12-13).

God literally calls them SOBs.  “Sons of Belial” is the Hebrew expression translated as “wicked men” or “corrupt.”

Scripture has not a single positive statement about these miscreants.

These men stand as warnings to every kingdom worker to tread softly and serve honorably.  We are stewards and not owners; servants, and not lords.  We should encourage worship and not place obstacles and burdens upon the worshipers.

We are to help people worship and not divert it into our own purposes.

The people can worship God without you, O thou shepherd of the Lord’s flock.

If we cannot help them do it better, we should back off and remove ourselves from the picture.

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Pastor, if you could go back to your earlier churches…

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If you’re a pastor, here’s an interesting game to play. And that’s all it can be, unfortunately–a game.

If you could go back to the churches you have served, what would you do differently?

Some people say, “If I could live my life over, I wouldn’t change a thing.” I hear that and think, “What? You never made a mistake? Never really blew it? Never did anything stupid?”

We all did, let’s face it. And surely, if we went back and knew what we know now, we would do many, many things differently.

Here’s my take on this subject.

The first church I served was a tiny congregation 25 miles north of Birmingham, Alabama. It was my first attempt at preaching and pastoring and I did poorly, I’m afraid. The good folks at Unity Baptist Church of Kimberly, Alabama, were patient with me for the 14 months I served them. At the end of that time, I resigned and for 6 months served as part-time associate pastor of Central Baptist Church in Tarrant, Alabama. We were living in Tarrant and I worked down the street from the church at the cast iron pipe plant as secretary to the production manager.

If I could do the 14 months over at Unity, the one thing I would do is seek out a mentor.

I would call up a pastor or two in Tarrant or Gardendale and ask if they would let me buy them a cup of coffee. As we sat across the table from each other, I would say, “I’m lost. I have to prepare three messages a week and don’t have a clue how to get started. Give me some advice.”

And, if the advice was something that worked for me, I would have asked if we could meet regularly for a while until I got this figured out.

The folks at Unity would have appreciated the effort and the congregations of subsequent churches would have benefited. As it was, by going alone, I took the far more arduous way to find out to make sermons and lead a congregation.

What would I do differently at Central Baptist of Tarrant City, Alabama, during my six months there? Very little, probably. My duties were to call on people who had visited our services and help Pastor Morris Freeman with anything he asked. For this, no money changed hands, but we received free use of the old parsonage, thus saving us rent.

The one thing I wish I had done was to take a layman with me visiting. It would have done me good, blessed the layman, and made a statement to the people we were calling on.

Both of those churches came in my pre-seminary years, 1962-64.

From 1965-67, while in seminary, I pastored 25 miles west of New Orleans. Paradis Baptist of Paradis, Louisiana was situated on Alligator Bayou. I took what I had managed to learn from Unity and Central and what I was trying to learn in seminary, and did some things right. The church almost tripled in the less-than-three-years we were there. (Note: That church relocated and is now West St. Charles Baptist in Boutte, LA.)

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Why I’m angry at some preachers

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You’ve heard them, I’m sure. Some well-intentioned but thoughtless man of God will stand before a gathering of the Lord’s people and in urging us to evangelize our communities will overstate the case.

“Jesus told us to become fishers of men! He did not tell us to be keepers of the aquarium!”

And, almost invariably, the statement will be met with a chorus of ‘amen’s.’

The only problem with that is it is not so.

In fact, it’s totally wrong.

Jesus did not send His disciples just to reach lost sheep–He certainly did that–but commanded that we are to “feed my sheep.” In John 20, He gave that command to Simon Peter three times.

In Acts 20:28, Paul tells the pastors of Ephesus that they are to “shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.”

And here’s another one, the one that set me off this morning.

In trying to motivate church members to get into the community with the gospel, the WIBT preacher* will say, “The Bible in no places commands the people of the world to come to church. It does, however, command us to go into all the world with the gospel.” (*Well-intentioned but thoughtless)

That’s so true, it’s almost totally true. But it’s missing something critical.

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The best kind of learning is do-it-yourself

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From time to time, as I’m sketching at a church or school, the question arises: “So, have you had training for this?” Or, maybe, “Are you self-taught?”

I don’t answer what I’m thinking.

What I say is usually a variation of, “I’ve had some formal training. But mostly, I’ve just worked at it. And I’m still trying to figure out how to draw better.”

But what I think is, “So, you think my stuff looks so amateurish I could not possibly have learned this from anyone?”

Can you imagine someone saying to Picasso, another artist of some renown (!), “Did you take training for this?” Or to Pavarotti or to Frank Lloyd Wright?

When my friend Mary Baronowski Smith was young, she made herself learn to sight-read a hymnal so she could play anything she wished on the piano. Even though she was taking lessons, this skill was self-taught.

She says, “My brother Lenny grew tired of my playing the same tunes over and over. To this day, he does not like the piano because he had to endure all those lessons my sister Myra and I were learning by playing them endlessly.”

“Anyway, one day Lenny came in and handed me a piece of sheet music. ‘Play this for me.’ I said, ‘How does it go? Hum it for me.’”

“He said this would never do, that I needed to learn how to sight read. So I got the Baptist hymnal down and decided I would teach myself.”

“I turned to page one–‘Holy, Holy, Holy’–and started in learning how to play it. It was hard. But gradually I got the hang of it. Then I went to the second one, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” Eventually, I was able to play everything in the hymnal.”

She was 9 or 10 years old.

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12 changes a pastor should consider for his mental health

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“…that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).

Like everyone else on the planet, we preachers get in ruts.  That’s not all bad, because sometimes we need to put it on automatic and not to have to make critical decisions about mundane things.  The morning ritual of showering and dressing, the drive to the office, and such should not require our undivided attention.

But from time to time, we need some variety. Our outlook needs refreshing. Our output needs sharpening. Our spirits need an uplift.  Our days could use a new perspective.

Here are some quick fix-its for the pastor’s mental health….

1. The pastor should sometimes vary his schedule.

And yes, this may include the routine things: shower at night, take a different route to the office, eat something different for breakfast.

2. The pastor should cross denominational lines and meet ministers outside his usual circle.  This assumes the pastor is already well-acquainted with those in his own denominational group.

The church down the street or across town has just welcomed a new minister.  Call and see if you can take him to lunch, or at least just drop by to say hello. Try nothing heavy here; just make a friendly visit. See if the Lord has something for you and that minister in the relationship. Some of the finest friendships a pastor can ever have are with colleagues doing the same work for Christ but in different settings.

3. He should attend a conference where he knows none of the speakers.

The first time I did this, I drove 500 miles for the experience.  I had seen the conference advertised in a national Christian weekly.  That was decades ago, but it remains fresh in my memory for a hundred reasons.

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The cure for the common sermon

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“Now when they heard the preaching of Peter and John, they were marveling and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.”  (A free paraphrase of Acts 4:13)

Hey, pastor, next Sunday let’s hit one out of the park.

Let’s preach a sermon that will thrill your own soul, knock the dozing member out of his lethargy and onto his feet, and bless the hearts of your sweetest, finest people.  Let’s have a sermon that will stun your critics, please your mama, gladden the heart of God, and grab the undivided attention of the unsaved.

Let’s put an end to the common sermon.

You know what a common sermon is, I’m sure.

It’s uninspired in its conception, boring in its plan, and dull in its delivery.  In preparing it, you have to force yourself to stay awake.  When you preach it, the congregation takes a holiday. When it’s over, you wonder if you shouldn’t find some other line of work.

When common sermons follow common sermons like wave after wave upon the beach, the preacher is probably in a rut.  And you know what a rut is–a grave with the ends knocked out.

In a “common sermon,” the outline is often uninspired and may look something like this: 1) The Power, 2) The Point, and 3) the Product.  Or, perhaps 1) The Application, 2) the Attraction, and 3) the Adoration. The introduction, the message, the conclusion. You use old, tired stories and expect no one to learn anything worthwhile.  You’re just going through the motions.

Bo-ring.  But then, you knew that.

Pity those poor church members who dutifully copy down sermon outlines with the mistaken notion that this is a spiritual exercise with eternal benefit. They have nothing more when they finish than when they started.

Throw that sermon away, pastor. (Or perhaps, file it away and come back to it a few months from now to see if anything in it is salvageable.)

If it doesn’t excite you the preacher, if it doesn’t convict you or inspire you or motivate you, it’s a safe bet the sermon is not going to touch anyone in your audience.

Junk it and go back to the drawing board.

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Sloppiness in ministry is not allowed

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“Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men, knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord–you serve the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23).

That night, sometime along about 3 or 4 am, unable to sleep, I did something I rarely do: went into the den and turned on the television. After channel-surfing a bit, I ended up watching one of those true-crime re-enactments.

Law enforcement investigators had painstakingly built their case against this fellow in Jacksonville, Florida, who reported his wife missing on a trip to Miami.

The man told investigators they had checked into a Miami hotel and he went to a fast-food place for take-out. Police were able to check that out.  He had indeed bought a sandwich and fries at that restaurant, they found, but only one order.  Nothing for his wife.

His credit card showed he had stopped at a convenience store on his trip south.  Police searched until they found the store’s video of him at the cash register.  They wondered where was the wife? On a long trip, wouldn’t she have gone into the rest room and perhaps bought a drink? Even though the man had testified that his wife had accompanied him on the trip, she was not in the video.

Next, police scanned through hours of video from an interstate toll booth.  Eventually, when they spotted his car, the photograph shows no one in the passenger’s seat.  The man is alone.  So, in the interview room, they asked, “Where does your wife sit when you are driving?” He answered, “In the passenger’s seat.”  “Does she ever sit in the back or lie down back there?”  “No. Never.”

He was a dead duck.

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The worst possible advice for young ministers

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“Let no one despise your youth; instead, you should be an example to the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity…” (I Timothy 4:12)

People love to give advice to young adults just entering the ministry.  I’m sure they think they’re helping.

I was a senior in college when the Lord fingered me for the ministry.  When my coal miner Dad got the news, even though his experience with church leadership was minimal, he had advice for his number three son. “Start off pastoring small churches.  That way you learn how to do it before moving on to the bigger places.”

As if I had a choice.

Unity Baptist in Kimberly, Alabama, ran 35 on a good Sunday.  I pastored it in the slivers of time available when not working at a cast iron pipe plant and trying to be husband and father. They paid me $10 a week; my tithe was $12.  I stayed 14 months.  I did them no harm and they did me a lot of good.

When in seminary, the Paradis Baptist Church of the bayou community of Paradis, Louisiana, checked me out as a possible pastor, the fact that I had (ahem) pastoral experience tilting the scales.  That church ran 40, but we lived in the apartment in the back of the educational building and more or less pastored full-time, if you don’t count the four days a week spent at seminary, 25 miles to the east.

My third church ran 140 in attendance when we arrived, and the fourth one over 500.  I was off and running.  (smiley-face here)

Not all advice young ministers get is as basic and solid as what my dad offered.  Some of what follows I heard personally, and some was volunteered by friends. And all of what follows, I repeat, is terrible advice.

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It’s the little things about pastoring that drive ministers to early graves.

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…there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches (2 Corinthians 11:28).

Pastoring God’s people can be exhausting.

Even when you do your best to serve God by ministering to His people, some are not going to give you the benefit of the doubt on anything nor forgive you for not living up to their impossible expectations.

You didn’t do it their way, weren’t there when they called, didn’t jump at their bark. They don’t like the way you comb your hair, your wife did not speak to them in the grocery, your children are just too perfect.

Such members are the exceptions, true. I say that to those who wonder why we overlook the 98 percent of healthy members and focus on the two percent who drive us batty.  It’s the two percent of drivers who are the crazies on the highways and ruin the experience for everyone else.  It’s the two percent of society who require us to maintain a standing police force to protect the citizenry.  Rat poison, they say, is 98 percent corn meal.  But that two percent will kill you.

I confess it as unworthy of a child of God that I remember these difficult moments with God’s headstrong people more than the precious times with the saints.  Perhaps it’s because the strained connections and harsh words feed into my own insecurities.  Or maybe it’s because there are so many more of the blessed times.

Even so, here are two instances from my pastoring journal that stand out…

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