Tactic for pastoral success: Start with a big mistake

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In his book, Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them, John Ortberg makes a confession. You get the impression that it was not easy in coming.

Here it is in his own words:

The church where I work videotapes most of the services, so I have hundreds of messages on tape. Only one of them gets shown repeatedly.

This video is a clip from the beginning of one of our services. A high school worship dance team had just brought the house down to get things started, and I was supposed to transition us into some high-energy worship by reading Psalm 150.

This was a last-second decision, so I had to read it cold, but with great passion: “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!” The psalm consists of one command after another to praise, working its way through each instrument of the orchestra.

My voice is building in a steady crescendo; by the end of the psalm I practically shout the final line, only mispronouncing one word slightly:

“Let everything that has breasts, praise the Lord.”

Ortberg tells what happened next.

A moment of silence. The same thought passes through four thousand brains: Did he just say what I think he did? In church? Is this some exciting new translation I can get at the bookstore?

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The biggest problem pastors and teachers face. Maybe.

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Try this sometime. You have an image in mind of a person you have thought up. Now, find someone with some art ability and describe your creation to the point that they sketch him/her exactly as you envision them.

Good luck with that.

It’s almost impossible.

And yet, this process goes on all the time.  Here’s the way it works….

A friend contacts me. “Will you illustrate my book?”  I hem and haw, give non-answers (“Well, tell me what you have in mind.” “What exactly do you need?” “When do you need it?” “How many drawings will it be?”), and look for ways–true confession coming up here!–to get out of doing it.

Tackling such an assignment is guaranteed to age you prematurely, and constitute an exercise in frustration.

I explained to an author recently while we were in the process of going back and forth with her descriptions and my attempts to capture them on paper, like a bad tennis match, “It’s this way with every writer who asks someone to illustrate her book. She begins thinking it’s going to be simple. ‘Just draw me a warrior holding a sword.’ Then, she looks at his sketch and wants him just a little taller. Next time, could you put a scowl on his face and not make him look so nice.  And could we change his clothes? And put armor on him.  Brown hair. Green eyes. Oh, and he’s wearing a cape.”

Multiply that times the number of characters the writer wants drawn and you see in a heartbeat the difficulty.

Sometimes when I’m sketching people at a public event–Tuesday, I’ll be sketching seniors at a church event 100 miles south of here, then speaking to them and sharing their luncheon–invariably, someone will say, “You could get a job working for the police.”

Nope. Not in a zillion years. I tell the speaker, “It’s hard enough looking at the person I’m trying to draw. But imagine when all you have to go on is someone’s memory and trying to get that on paper. No thank you.”

I do admire those who can pull that off. I’m just not one of them.

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If I were a deacon just starting out

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Those who serve well as deacons obtain for themselves a high standing and great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus (I Timothy 3:13). 

If I were a newly ordained deacon, I would be eager to learn my craft, to honor my Lord, and to serve my church.  So, here are some of the things I would do:

–I would stay on my knees, asking the Father to purify me, to grow me and make my motives holy, and give me a heart to serve.  I would ask Him to teach me and to send godly people into my life to instruct me in this new avenue of ministry which He has opened up.

–I would read Luke 17:7-10 again and again until it became part of my DNA.  I would resolve never to seek appreciation or expect honors.  Deacons are servants. But, while I would not seek honors, I would be quick to express appreciation to others around me.  That is no contradiction, as it’s found all through Scripture.

–I would seek out the godliest, most effective deacons now serving our church and latch onto them.  I would pick their brains, and ask if I could work with them until I learned all they could teach me. I would accompany them on their visits and take notes (when I returned home) of all they said.

–I would read the scriptural passages about deacons again and again.  The primary two are found in I Timothy 3 and Acts 6.  Then, I would study the four gospels for every reference to servants and find what they are to do, how they are to behave, the attitude they are to project, and so forth.

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The amazing power of a life-altering crisis

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“No chastening for the moment seems enjoyable, but painful. But afterwards, to those who have been trained by it,  it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).

In the middle of the pain, no one enjoys the experience. Only in looking back–at some distant day–do you see how God used it. You lost a job, experienced the death of a loved one, went bankrupt, were falsely accused, had a near-death illness, and now at a great distance, you see what the Heavenly Father did with this in your life.  You are not the same person you were previously.

Life is understood only in looking backward, the saying goes. But it must be lived going forward.

It doesn’t work that way for everyone, Hebrews 12:11 is implying. For some, the trials are fatal.  It just depends.  To those who have been trained by it surely means “the people who have learned to give their woes to the Lord for His purposes.”

We can wallow in our defeat, be chained in despair by our sorrows and troubles, or we can rise above them by putting our trust in the Savior and finding His purposes.

In her book Character, Gail Sheehan tells of the lengthy rehabilitation Senator Bob Dole endured after his World War II injuries. German machine gunfire had hit him in the upper back and right arm. Medics gave him the largest possible dose of morphine, then wrote “M” (for morphine) on his forehead with his own blood, so no one who found him would give him a second, fatal dose.   Dole went through multiple surgeries and experienced recurring blood clots, life-threatening infections, and long periods of recuperation and therapy.

An interviewer once asked Senator Dole, “How did this delay your career plans?”

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What pastor search committees fear most

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“Why did you fear? Where is your faith?” (Mark 4:40)

“For we walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

You should read my mail.

Well, maybe you shouldn’t.  You would come away disgusted with the notion that our churches operate in faith, trust God supremely, and always want to do the honorable thing.  Some do; many do not.

A young minister I know is well-trained and very capable, he is called of God and has a heart for ministry.  Some church is going to love having him as pastor.  If they ever decide to call him.

Search committees are deathly afraid of him.

Time and again committees invite him to visit their church, interview him, and then, because of factors known only to them, pass him over in favor of safer candidates.

I found it necessary to tell the hurting brother, “By now you know the typical pastor search committee operates out of fear.”

Fear that….

–they will make the wrong choice.

–the congregation will reject their recommendation.

–some influential church members will scoff at their choice

–they will be seen to be extremists of one kind or the other: Calvinists or Arminians, liberal or fundamental, right-wing nut or social activist, independent or too dependent.

–that in calling someone “different,” they will be seen as doing something unusual, strange, or “by faith.”

Or possibly, they operate out of the fear that they shall be seen as operating out of fear.

Where is your faith?

In selecting and commissioning their committee, leaders of the congregation should instruct them that…

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Okay, you are weak. So, what’s the problem?

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“He helps us in our weakness….” (Romans 8:26)

I can still hear that fellow praying.  He said, “O Lord, I am so weak.  I am so pitiful, Lord.  How you can ever use a nothing like me is beyond me, Lord. I’m so ignorant, so fearful, such a sinner.”

I soon grew tired of his praying and all I was doing was listening.  I wondered how the Lord felt about it.

I think I know.

Our Heavenly Father takes it in stride.  He who created us knew from the beginning who we were. Nothing about us surprises Him.

He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust (Psalm 103:14).

It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps (Jeremiah 10:23).

The wonder is why you and I keep getting surprised by our weaknesses!

May I suggest you quit groveling in your self-pity, friend.  Okay, you have these weaknesses, these areas that throw you for a loop.  The Father knows this. He does not cast you away when it turns out you have a defect.  In fact, He took all this into His planning from the beginning.

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When God’s people do not live in His Word, many things happen. All of them bad.

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“But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

The Lord never intended for His Word to collect dust on a table in your back bedroom.

Brave men and women of the past paid for your right to own a Bible in your own language with their very lives.

What are you doing about that?

Christians who own numerous Bibles which they rarely open are thumbing their noses at the saints of old who paid the ultimate price.

This hard-won treasure lies buried under the dust and detritus of your life.

The Lord’s plan calls for His people to live and breathe His word, to read it and receive it inwardly and to think about it regularly and practice it. He intended it to become part of the very marrow of their bones.

Digest it. Assimilate it. Live it. And meditate upon it continually.

He even told people to “Eat this book.”

Several times in Scripture, God told His faithful prophet to consume the scroll containing His words.  (Check out Jeremiah 15:16; Ezekiel 2:3; 3:1-3; Revelation 10:9)

The idea was to get His Word inside them, to digest it as surely as one takes in meat and vegetables for nourishment and sustenance, and to grow thereby.

Job said, “I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12).  Our Lord Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (that’s Matthew 4:4, where He was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3).

The image of taking in food and having it become part of your being is a perfect metaphor for God’s children assimilating His Word into our lives.

Man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Moses said it, Jesus quoted it, and no one has improved on that statement since.

Sadly, too few Christians are living that truth today.

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How to spot a non-leader a mile off

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“So Moses arose with Joshua his servant, and Moses went up to the mountain of God” (Exodus 24:13). 

Always referred to as the servant of Moses, Joshua was used to taking orders but not giving them.

That’s why, when the day arrived for Moses to announce that his earthly work was finished and God was recalling him and that Joshua would have to carry on (“Get these people into the Promised Land!”), he, Joshua, must have panicked.

For four decades Joshua has been warming the bench; now, he’s being sent into the game as the clock ticks down and everything is on the line.

What would he do without a supervisor, someone telling him what to do and how to do it, someone to whom he could report, a veteran who would grade him and pat him on the head when he did good or chew him out when his work fell short?

Throughout his life, as far as we can tell Joshua had never taken the initiative in anything, but had obeyed as he was instructed.  In Exodus 17:9, the first mention of Joshua in Scripture, he leads a rag-tag army of ex-slaves against the Amalekites. However, on a distant hill, Moses was overseeing everything and giving guidance.

No one wants to follow a non-leader.  Readers will want to check out the final chapters of Deuteronomy and the early chapters of Joshua and count the number of times Moses, God, and the Israelites urged this surprised newly chosen leader to “be strong and of good courage.” (Okay, I’ll tell you:  Deuteronomy 31:6,7,23 and Joshua 1:6,7,9,18.  That’s fairly impressive!)

A leader must be strong to forge a path and take the heat and must be of good courage to endure the problems, headaches, and backstabbings.

It goes with the territory. As the saying goes, it’s why they pay the leader the big bucks.

Non-leaders are a sure recipe for defeat.

Imagine this….

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This is a first for this blog. (Reposted. From Dr. Glenn McDonald’s “Reflections.”)

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(Each weekday Dr.  Glenn McDonald of Indiana posts a message he calls “Reflections.”  It’s always thought-provoking and so worth reading.  But this one hit me hardest.  This is as good as we could ask for.)  

Shaken

On November 1, 1755, the citizens of Lisbon, Portugal were crowded into churches. They were celebrating All Saints Day.

At 9:40 am the world as they knew it came to an end.

Somewhere offshore there was a sudden lurch at the intersection of two massive tectonic plates. What followed was one of the most intense earthquakes in recorded history, estimated at 9.0 on the Richter Scale.

For seven terrifying minutes, the city shook.

Fissures as wide as 15 feet opened up in the central squares. By comparison, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, estimated at 7.8 on the Richter Scale, lasted only half a minute.

Before the citizens of Lisbon could even make sense of what was happening, the first aftershock – almost as strong as the initial quake – rocked the city. Another aftershock came two hours later. But the real horror happened along the shoreline.

The waters of the Atlantic Ocean receded dramatically from the city’s harbor, then returned as a tsunami – a 50-foot-high wall of water. Within the space of an hour, some 60,000 people had died. Virtually every building of the nation’s historic capital had been reduced to rubble. Fires burned unchecked for days.

For all the suffering experienced by those in Lisbon, the most lasting damage happened in the minds and hearts of Europe’s intellectuals.

After this disaster, how could any thinking person seriously believe that the world was ruled by a powerful and benevolent God? Weren’t the citizens of Lisbon the very picture of innocent, faithful people – doing the right thing at the right place at the right time – on All Saints Day, no less? Why would God allow such a catastrophe?

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Pastor, you’ve been scheduled to preach on a big program. My advice: Find out whom you follow.

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After the death of comic genius Robin Williams, someone was reminiscing about the time he preceded Bob Hope on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.

For some reason, Bob Hope was late arriving at the studio that night. So, instead of Robin Williams following him, which had been the plan, Williams went on stage first and did his hilarious knock-em-dead routine.  People were beside themselves with laughter.

The great Bob Hope arrived and had to follow that.

Robin Williams said, “I don’t think he was angry, but he was not pleased.”

As Bob Hope walked out onto the stage and settled into the chair, Johnny Carson said, “Robin Williams. Isn’t he funny?”  Hope said, “Yeah. He’s wild. But you know, Johnny, it’s great to be back here with you.”

“Let’s talk about me.” I smile at that. Even the great Bob Hope could not handle this situation.

No clear-thinking person would voluntarily follow Robin Williams on the program.

Sometimes we preachers find ourselves scheduled to speak on a big program.  Woe to the one who has to follow the most popular preacher in the land.

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