If someone were to give a brief speech as to why you deserve a position of greater acclaim or responsibility or exposure, what would they say? The speaker would highlight the accomplishments of your ministry. And what are those?

What if he asked you in advance to write them out?

This week, a search committee assigned to find the successor to Dr. Morris Chapman who wears the interesting title of “President of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention,” gave its recommendation. Dr. Frank Page is their nominee, and will be made official at the annual meeting of our denomination a month from now in Orlando.

In their presentation on Frank Page, the committee hit the highlights of his ministry over these years, specifically from his last church, the First Baptist Church of Taylors, SC. The church runs about 2,300 on typical Sunday mornings, baptized 145 last year, and contributed some $6 mil of which 10% went to denominational missions. That sort of thing. They told of the two years he served as president of our denomination and of the missionary work dear to his heart.

Why did they do that? Why tell what he has recently done when the next assignment is completely unlike any aspect of that? Answer: it’s all we have to go on. The best indicator of future work is past production.

Everyone I know likes and respects Frank Page. We expect him to do well, and are blessed to have someone of his caliber in this slot for these days. But for our purposes here, I’m more interested in the way they assessed his ministry’s success by listing accomplishments.

What would they have said about you and me?

Would they list the attendance in my church as a sign of my success? The size of the offerings? The mission contributions? The denominational offices I have held? The books I have published? The buildings we’ve constructed? The mission teams we’ve sent out?

If so, a lot of us would have come up short. And yet–and this is the point I’d like to drive home–a lot of people who are having a successful Christ-honoring ministry will not have big numbers to post. (Incidentally, Frank Page would hasten to agree with that, for what that’s worth.)

The question before us, class, is: How do we go about assessing the success or failure of our ministries?

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(Or maybe we should say, “A Poem Out of Sorts.” I’m embarrassed to post this, but perhaps some pastor somewhere will connect with it.)

It’s Saturday night and sermon time–

When the brain starts to panic

And fears shift into overdrive.

I’ve worked on this message all week–

Labored over the text and yes I’ve

Checked the Hebrew and also the Greek.

You’d think by now I’ve have it down

To a system, a method, an art,

But here in my study, my brain has shut down.

It’s not that I don’t know what to do,

It’s certainly not a new spot to be in

When the calendar and the clock say a sermon is due.

I’ve got twenty-eight points and need just three;

Four directions and hardly a clue.

Dear Lord, I could use your simplicity.

What shall I do with all these notes?

Take them into the pulpit?

That would be a joke.

Maybe if I laid them aside

And went on to bed

My subconscious would organize

Everything God has said.

I’ve heard of preachers who can work all week

With hardly a thought of next Sunday morn,

Then stand and let it flow, organized and neat.

But that’s not me, Lord–O that it were!

To stand and proclaim with hardly a stir,

And know that I had delivered life’s elixir.

So, back to the study; back on my knees.

Here I am again, Lord; help me please.

Refresh my staleness with Thy heavenly breeze.

And then, Monday morning, I run across

The notes and recall how I tossed

And turned all night through

Worrying, “Lord, what should I do?”

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“If anyone is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God….” (John 7:17 NASB)

The big question in every decision for the Jesus-follower is always: “What does He want me to do?”

In fact, it may be the only question. Everything else is secondary and in a sense, irrelevant.

Google “decision-making” and you will come away with a garageful of rules, principles, and considerations: list all the options, decide on the outcomes you want, identify your own wishes, inventory your resources and abilities, consider the practicality of each option, the number of people to be affected by each, the timing of your decision, what your trusted advisors counsel, how this will affect your future, what it will cost, what you will wish you had done a year from now, a hundred years from now, a million years. The list is endless.

Years ago, Billy Graham and his team were trying to find a word to describe salvation but one without a lot of theological baggage. They chose “decision.” Their radio program became “The Hour of Decision” and their monthly magazine, “Decision.” The concept figured in all his messages: “I’m going to ask you to make a decision tonight….”

And it incurred the wrath of half the Calvinists in the country.

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Pastor, scan through these offerings and see if you find anything of use as illustrations for sermons. Or, just as good, perhaps they will spark an idea inside you.

UNREQUITED LOVE

In 1964, a hitchhiker was picked up on the highway and given a ride by an 18- year-old woman. They chatted, she dropped him off, and they each went on their way. Within minutes, the man decided that he was in love with her. I mean, seriously, head over heels, a real goner.

The problem was that he had no way to contact her. She was gone. But he never forgot her.

Thirty-one years later, he came across her name in the newspaper in the obituary of her mother. So he sent her 5 dozen roses–alongwith all the letters he had written her over 31 years.

Thirty-one years of letters.

The police found in his house stacks of Christmas cards and boxes of birthday prsents for every one of those 31 years. Of course, by now she was 48 years old.

I said the police found them, because the woman had him arrested for misdemeanor harassment after he kept hounding her.

That’s the thing about love…

a) you love someone and they may not know it. Think of Charlie Brown and the little red-headed girl.

b) you love someone and they do not want it. So the love is not returned.

c) you love someone and they are not worthy.

“God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We weren’t worthy, were we?

“We love Him because He first loved us” (I John 4:19). We return His love when we turn to Christ in salvation.

WHO IS THE GREATEST?

The radio preacher I was listening to told his audience that the greatest orator in the ancient world was Cicero. The second was Julius Caesar. And coming in third was Apollos.

My question is: who decided this? And how did he know?

Since no one living has heard either of them, we honestly have no basis for comparison. And yet, here we have them ranked in order of effectiveness in oratory.

The man of God put this forth as fact, but I think we can agree that he was not the scholar who made this determination. But somebody did.

My problem is pastors who pontificate on matters they have no right or business or background for doing so. He did not cite an authority but laid that line before his audience as accepted fact.

Standing at the pulpit with the eyes of hundreds of people upon you presents a huge temptation for any minister. It can be a heady experience. One has to keep his wits about him and pray constantly for the Lord to “set a guard upon my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips” (Psalm 141:3).

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How many churches have stopped growing in this country, in your denomination, of your church-type, in your county or parish or town? It depends on who you ask.

Go on line and you’ll soon have statistics coming out your ears on this subject.

In our denomination–the Southern Baptist Convention–the most significant number, one that seems to have held steady for over three decades, is that some 70 percent of our churches are either in decline or have plateaued.

Plateau. Funny word to use for a church. One wonders how that came to be. Why didn’t they say “mesa,” “plain,” “delta” (ask anyone who lives in the Mississippi Delta–flat, flat, flat!), or even “flatline.”

Of course, in the emergency room, to “flatline” is to be dead. No one (to my knowledge) is saying a non-growing church is dead, just that some things are not right.

Healthy churches grow. Non-growing churches are not healthy, at least in some significant ways.

If it’s true that 7 out of 10 pastors in our family of churches lead congregations either in decline or in stagnation, this is a situation that ought to be addressed.

To my knowledge, everyone is addressing it. Everyone has an opinion.

My single contribution to this discussion is directed toward the shepherd of a stagnant flock: “If your church has plateaued, make sure you haven’t.”

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Now comes word that this generation’s most beloved historian, Stephen Ambrose, made up stuff.

In the April 26, 2010, issue of The New Yorker,” writer Richard Rayner faults Ambrose for making claims that were not so and inventing conversations that never took place.

Evidently, if the sources Rayner quotes are accurate, he can back up what he says. Ambrose, who died in 2002, is not around to defend himself.

Those who love history, and I’m one, and those who love America, I’m among those also, tend to have numerous books on their shelves by Stephen Ambrose, fpr many years professor of history at the University of New Orleans. He directed the Eisenhower Center on the UNO campus. Out of that came the idea of the D-Day Museum which morphed into the National World War II Museum, rapidly becoming one of this area’s greatest draws for tourists.

The interstate between Slidell and the Mississippi Gulf Coast is the Stephen Ambrose Highway. He had a home at Diamondhead, MS.

Clearly, he was highly respected and well-loved around here.

I’ve heard Ambrose tell how he came to write the definitive biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He told the story again and again. Quoting from the New Yorker article:

“I was a Civil War historian, and in 1964 I got a telephone call from General Eisenhower, who asked if I would be interested in writing his biography.” That was taken from a 1994 C-Span interview. Later he said, “I thought I had flown to the moon.”

According to Ambrose’s account, Ike had read his biography of Lincoln’s chief of staff, Henry Wager Halleck, and decided he would do a good job on his story.

“I’d walk in to interview him, and his eyes would lock on mine and I would be there for three hours and they never left my eyes. I was teaching at Johns Hopkins and going up two days a week to Gettysburg to work with him in his office.”

The only trouble is it wasn’t that way at all.

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(This is a reprint of an article I wrote for Leadership magazine several years ago, maybe 2001. It was later picked up and included in “The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching,” edited by Haddon Robinson and Craig Larson, published by Zondervan, 2005. In conversations with pastor friends, I’ve learned that many never saw the article and some have asked where they could get a copy. Please feel free to copy and pass along to other servants of the Lord.)

I had been preaching for more than two decades, and I should have been at the top of my game. The church I served ran up to 1,500 on Sunday mornings, and the live telecast of our services covered a fair portion of several states. Most of my colleagues thought I had it made, and if invitations to speak in other churches were any sign, they thought I could preach.

But I didn’t think that.

My confidence was taking a beating as some of the leaders let me know repeatedly that my pulpit work was not up to their standards. Previous pastors carried the reputation of pulpit masters, something I never claimed for myself. To make matters worse, we had numerous vacancies on staff and my sermon preparation was suffering because of a heavy load of pastoral ministry. But you do what you have to do. Most days, my goal was to keep my head above water. Every day without drowning became a good day.

That’s when I got serious about praying for my preaching. Each night I walked a four-mile route through my neighborhood and talked to the Father. My petitions dealt with the usual stuff–family needs, people I was concerned about, and the church. Gradually, one prayer began to recur in my nightly pleadings.

“Lord,” I prayed, “make me a preacher.” Asking this felt so right I never paused to analyze it. I prayed it again and again, over and over, for weeks.

I was in my fifth pastorate. I owned a couple of seminary degrees. I had read the classics on preaching and attended my share of sermon workshops. I was a veteran. But here I was in my mid-forties, crying out to heaven for help: “Lord, make me a preacher.”

I knew if my preaching improved, if the congregation felt better about the sermons, everything else would benefit. I knew that the sermon is a pastor’s most effective contribution to the spiritual lives of his members. To do well there would ease the pressure in other areas. So I prayed.

Then one night, God answered.

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“What’s the worst thing about being a pastor?” she asked. “What is your worst nightmare?”

She and I were Facebooking back and forth about the ministry when she threw this one in my direction.

She gave me her own ideas. “People writing nasty letters complaining? giving you advice? criticizing what you wear?”

I laughed and thought, “Oh, if it were that simple. No one enjoys getting anonymous mail trying to undermine your confidence in whatever you’re doing, but sooner or later most of us find ways of dealing with that.”

“It’s worse than that,” I typed. Then I paused to reflect.

Hers was such a simple question, one would think I had a stock answer which had been delivered again and again. But I don’t remember ever being asked it before.

Now, I have been asked plenty of times variations of “What’s the best thing about pastoring?” My answer to that is not far different from the response most other pastors would give: the sense of serving God, the joy of making a difference in people’s lives for Jesus’ sake, that sort of thing.

You knock yourself out during the week counseling the troubled, ministering in hospitals, visiting in their homes, conducting funerals and weddings, all while you are working on the sermons for Sunday, meeting with staff members planning upcoming events, and handling a thousand administrative details. Then, you stand at the pulpit twice on the Lord’s Day and give your best. And you see doubters begin believing, the fearful becoming courageous, the lost getting up and coming home to the Father, people saying God has led them to join with your flock, and broken homes restored –it doesn’t get any better than that.

You are in your glory.

Worst nightmare? Thankfully, I don’t have those. But I suppose my friend was asking for the scariest scenarios, the most frightening circumstance for a pastor. I have an opinion on that.

Here’s my response.

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No one enjoys second-guessing himself, what Warren Wiersbe calls “doing an autopsy on oneself.”

It’s possible to work ourselves into the psych ward or even an early grave by analyzing every single thing we do and questioning the motive behind every word.

No one is advocating that.

And yet, there is much to be said for looking back at what we did and learning from our mistakes and failures and omissions.

That’s what this is all about.

It’s best done in solitary. (The worst thing we preachers do is ask our wives, “How did I do?” Poor woman. She’s in a no-win situation. Leave her out of it.)

A recording of our preaching helps. (But we have to promise to stay awake during the playback.)

That said, I’ll get to the point of this article.

What I hate most about my preaching is the tendency to intrude too much into the sermon.

I hate realizing that in a sermon I was trying to co-star with Jesus when the Holy Spirit called me to be a member of the supporting cast.

I did it yesterday.

At a funeral of a dear friend who was a longtime deacon in a former pastorate, I filled the message time with too much of me.

Now, I adore his family and, if I’m any judge, the feeling is mutual. So, feeling at home and among friends, I shared their grief at our loved one’s death and rejoiced in their confidence that he is with the Lord.

Instead of delivering a formal message that had been well thought out in advance, I shared memories of my friend and insights from Scripture that say so much about death and eternal life.

Nothing of this was wrong or out of place. If there is one thing I believe strongly, it’s in the integrity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His assurances for life eternal.

But the sermon was just “too much Joe.”

I can hear my voice now. “Let me share this verse with you that means so much to me. Honestly, I’ve never heard another preacher use it.” Then, trying to be cutesy, I said, “Psalm 17:15 is my own discovery. In the future, when you read it, think of it as ‘Joe’s verse.'”

Where did that come from? Groan.

I talked about my dad and his death and how our family copes with missing him.

That was unnecessary. It wasn’t offensive to them, but in retrospect seems to have been out of place.

I made a couple of half-hearted attempts at humor. Now, no one is against healthy laughter in a funeral service and I hope that when one is held in my honor, there will be plenty of it. But the preacher doesn’t need to try to force the humor. Let it come naturally.

My prayer today has been that the fifty or sixty in the congregation did not notice the ever-present reference to I, me, and mine. And, if they did, that they did not mind, or have forgotten it altogether.

It might even be that I’m the only person at that funeral who was bothered by that aspect of the message. I certainly hope so.

No preacher wants to be a distraction. We all want our messages to point people to the Savior and strengthen their faith in the promises of God.

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My pastor, Mike Miller, tells of the time he was about to go into a church business meeting where the natives were restless. The inmates were about to riot. Members of the flock were ready to fleece the shepherd.

And a lot of metaphors like that.

It was going to be bad.

Five minutes before the meeting, Mike picked up the phone and called his former pastor in Texas for a word of counsel. As he tells it, Mike was loaded for bear that night and ready to wage war.

His pastor heard him out, then said, “Mike, I want you to go in there and stand before those people and tell them how much you love them.”

Mike said, “But you don’t understand.” And he went through the situation again.

The pastor said, “Mike, stand before them and tell them how much you love them.”

As Mike stammered, the pastor said, “Let me lead us in prayer.” He prayed that Mike would stand before those people and tell them how much he loved them.

A minute later, Mike walked into the sanctuary, looked out at his congregation, and began, “Folks, regardless what happens tonight, I want you to know that I love you very much.”

Nothing happened. Nada. Zip.

The meeting was uneventful, no one had a contrary word, and they got out on time.

Mike Miller believes in the concept of mentoring.

Today, at the start of the masters’ level seminary class Dr. Loretta Rivers and I team-teach, I spent a good half-hour or more trying to convince the 22 students on the importance of putting themselves into a mentoring relationship. At the conclusion, Dr. Rivers said, “I’d like to ask a question. How many of you have a mentor?”

Over half the class raised their hands.

I was stunned. Not what I had expected.

In planning this lesson and delivering it, I had fallen into a time-worn trap of teachers and pastors through the ages: projected my own experience onto the audience. I assumed they were as reluctant as I would have been to put themselves in a mentoring relationship.

They’re not. They’re wiser than I ever was.

Mentoring is all through Scripture. Elijah mentored Elisha. The Lord Jesus mentored the 12 apostles. Barnabas mentored Saul. After he became Paul and took the lead in the relationship, the two friends split and mentored others: Paul took Silas and Timothy; Barnabas took John Mark.

According to Wikipedia, in Greek mythology Mentor was an old teacher asked by Odysseus to look after his son Telemachus while he, Odysseus, went off to the Trojan War. The old gentleman contributed his name to the process whereby an older, more experienced person guides and shapes a younger one.

The nomenclature varies and is probably irrelevant: mentor and mentee, teacher and pupil, master and apprentice, senior and junior. One is the role model, the other the imitator or learner.

Sure wish I’d had one early in my ministry….

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