A hundred things I tell young pastors (1-20)

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(The first twenty, given in order only as they occur to me.)

1) In all the world there are only three Christians who love change; none of them are in your church.

2) When you speak before an unfamiliar group, be careful what you say because you never know who is listening to you. You’ll start to tell a story about some guy in your former church and his mama is sitting right in front of you.

3) There will never be a time in your life when you know all the Bible and have your questions all answered; if you cannot serve Him with some gaps in your knowledge and preach without knowing everything, you’re going to have a hard time.

4) Your church members should submit to your leadership, but you’re not the one to tell them that.

5) The best way to get people to submit to your leadership is for you to humble yourself and serve them the way the Lord did the disciples (John 13); they will trust someone who loves them that much.

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The brave and courageous leader of the Lord’s church

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“Be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:6,7,9,18).

The pastor of a church with which I’m familiar is something of a bully, according to some members I know. So, the other day, seeing him talking rudely to two women and watching them leaving in tears, a deacon in that church did a brave thing.

He went to see the pastor.

After hearing out the preacher on what had occurred, this courageous clayman told the pastor he was in the wrong, that he had been out of line, and asked him to apologize to the women.

The last I heard, the pastor has not apologized. From what I gather, no one expects that he will.  He built a reputation as one who will get his way above all, and to back down to anyone is not in his nature.

Such a bully has no business in the ministry.

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How God’s children can have a nice quarrel

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“The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition….” (Second Timothy 2:24ff.)

Just because we are not to be quarrelsome doesn’t mean we can’t have a good old-fashioned argument.

We just can’t have a “good old-fashioned knock-down fight.”

No one must be hurt in the process.

We can have differences of opinions, and conflicts of convictions. Since the church is composed of partially developed, not-yet-finished specimens of God’s grace–people like you and me–we’re going to have differences. That is a given, a fact of life.

If my wife and I, we who love each other most of the time and have lived together as husband and wife for going-on 52 years, if we have differences of opinions and occasionally outright arguments, it figures that rank strangers would.

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The Kingdom of God is a party.

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“And Jesus answered and spoke to them again in parables, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding feast for his son….'” (Matthew 22:1-2).

Tony Campolo told a story–then developed it into a book–that has lodged itself in my brain and will not let me alone.

I’d like to do all I can to plant it in yours too.

Oddly enough, at the beginning of the book, Tony says he took an author’s license to shape the story just a tad. “It did not happen in just the way I am going to tell it to you.”  I found that interesting.  (Think I’ve met my soulmate! lol)

He says, “The names and the setting are made up and dialogue is a bit contrived, but the story is essentially what happened to me about four years ago.”

For reasons I cannot quite put my finger on, before recording the story here, I thought pastors would find his admission/confession interesting.  Can I be forgiven for thinking most of us would have tweaked that story, then sent it on its way without ever telling anyone it did not happen exactly as we told it, but that we had prettied it up?

Tony Campolo–surely you know this man! If not, google him. He’s so worth knowing!–was speaking in Hawaii, and for a resident of the Philadelphia area as he is, that means he wakes up at 3 am ready for breakfast.  So, he was out in Honolulu looking for a diner where he could get some bacon and eggs. (Note: I once bought him just such a breakfast in a diner in Black Mountain, NC, and we swapped stories for two hours. A delightful memory.)

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The streams which make up my tears

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“Thou dost give them to drink of the river of Thy delights” (Psalm 36:8).

My friend read something I’d written and wept.  I asked what had prompted that. She replied, “It was just the Lord. They were good tears.”

That’s all she said.

I know the feeling.

Any tears I shed come in one of three situations.  I’m traveling down the highway talking to the Lord or going over a sermon and become so carried away with the joy of the Lord that the tears flow.

I’m on my knees with my face buried in a couch cushion, sometimes saying nothing, and I tear up.

Or, I’m at this laptop tapping out insights from God’s word and His promises and am overwhelmed by His goodness. (Such as at this moment.)

Men always want their wives to say why they’re crying. I quit that long ago when Margaret had no answer. “I just am. I’m a woman and sometimes we cry.”  Basically, that was no answer, but it was all I was going to get.

Being a man, I want to know why I cry.

And I think I know.

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Some pastors to watch out for

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“Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision….” (Philippians 3:2).

You’re on your church’s pastor search committee? Good for you. It’s a difficult task, one that can make or break your church for a long time to come. But this can be one of the finest services you render for the Lord and His church.

At first, you step tentatively into those pastor-searching waters, testing to see if they are acidic (scary, dangerous), too deep (you’re in over your head) or turbulent (requiring skills you do not have).

Then, you go forward.

In your search for the next pastor of the Lord’s people, there are ten thousand things for you to know and remember, to watch out for and to stay away from.  What follows below is just one of the prohibitions, a summation of some pastor-types you and your committee will want to be wary of.

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The people I drew this weekend

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“And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father” (Colossians 3:17).

She said she was 90 years old. Clearly, she was a fiesty little lady, quick to speak up and tell you what was on her mind.

As I began sketching her likeness, making idle conversation and attempting to keep her focus in my direction, I said, “Have you ever been drawn before?”

She said, “WHAT? Have I ever been drunk?”

I laughed and said, “Drawn. Has anyone ever sketched you before?”

They hadn’t.

A moment later, I said, “Have you ever been drunk?”

She said, “Mind your own business.”

I was spending the weekend at the First Baptist Church of Yazoo City, Mississippi. When the pastor resigned recently for health issues, a longtime friend in that congregation urged the associate pastor to invite me up one Sunday.  And, because I frequently do senior events, they scheduled a Saturday night dinner for the older adults where I would sketch and speak.

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The abrasive Christian

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“The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth…” (Second Timothy 2:24-25)

This week, in Lynne Olson’s “Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941”), I found this interesting depiction of Harold Ickes, a member of FDR’s cabinet during the Second World War:

“According to T. H. Watkins, Ickes’ biographer, ‘a world without something in it to make him angry would have been incomprehensible to him.’ A disgrunted Republican senator who had been the target of one of Ickes’ verbal assaults called him ‘a common scold puffed up by high office.’ To one cabinet colleague, Ickes was ‘Washington’s tough guy.’ To another, he was the ‘president’s attack dog.'”

Olsen tells how an assistant secretary of state once refused to shake hands with Mr. Ickes and described him in his diary as “fundamentally, a louse.”

Having such an irritating person in high government office is one thing; having them in church leadership is quite another.

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How to preach to rich people

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“My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism” (James 2:1).

“Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries….” (James 5:1)

Believe it or don’t, but how to preach to the upper crust among us is an issue for some.

At the age of 30, this son of an Alabama coal miner and farmer (same guy) went from pastoring small neighborhood churches to the staff of the largest congregation in the state.  Suddenly, the laity I was working with were executives of large companies, politicians in state government, and sons and daughters of old money.

It was a heady feeling, like I was in way over my head.

I recall sending dad a note. “Last night, I went visiting for the church with the vice-president of the Mississippi Power and Light Company and the treasurer of South Central Bell.”

If he had a response, I don’t recall. I suspect he smiled and thought little of it.

I was impressed; dad not so much.

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Where the pastor’s wife can find a buddy

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Recently when we posted our article “We owe the pastor’s wife a great debt of love,” among the responses that flowed in were a couple from women married to ministers who said, “We live a long way from the nearest church of our denomination. So, there is no one nearby for me to meet with.”

I replied, “Go outside your group. Once you get past the surface differences, you’d be surprised how much you and the other wives have in common.”

It occurs to me today how difficult that might be for some.

If, for instance, you are married to a Pentecostal preacher and the only other churches in your town are Episcopalian and Methodist, you could easily feel that the differences in your situations are so vast that this would not work.

Give it a try. Maybe you’re right. But what if you’re wrong and those spouses could turn out to be your best friends.

Let me tell you a story. I’ve told it on these pages before, but it fits here.

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