What started this for me was a fascination with the fourth of Jesus’ seven parables found in Matthew 13. As I often do when faced with a 7 or 8 hour drive from my hometown in north Alabama back to New Orleans, I picked a scripture that intrigued me and thought of it from every angle.

This may be the most neglected parable from all those taught by Jesus, methinks.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. (Matthew 13:33)

I had been working on a message–now posted on my blog–on how Christians hide themselves inside their church buildings when the Lord wants us permeating the community with the gospel. This parable seemed a natural.

The way I was interpreting it was with an emphasis on “a woman took and hid” the leaven in the dough. She had some leaven and wondered where to hide it. “I know,” she thought. “I’ll hide it in this dough.” But a few hours later or the next morning, the world knew where she had put it. The power of the leaven to affect everything around it changed the dough and thus gave the presence of the leaven away.

That speaks to Christians wanting to remain secret disciples of Jesus, I was thinking. A quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer has stuck with me for decades and works here: Secret discipleship is a contradiction in terms. For either the secrecy will kill the discipleship or the discipleship will kill the secrecy.

Then, I called a friend on my cell phone (yep, I was on the interstate and making a cell phone call; sorry for the bad example!). Mike knows his Greek. I wanted to know what the Greek New Testament could contribute to my understanding of that fourth parable.

He called me back. “The word in the Greek is ‘hid,’ all right,” he said. “But the commentary I checked said we should not make too much of the fact that she hid the leaven. She just put it inside the dough. The emphasis is not on her hiding it but on the way the leaven influences everything it touches.”

Well, all right, I thought, reluctantly. I had thought I was on to something with the emphasis on the “hid” word.

Then, next morning, with my office next door to the church library, I started pulling out commentaries.

Not a good thing.

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Churches build these great ministries and put on outstanding programs, then fail in one critical area: they hide them inside the walls of their buildings.

Then a leper came to Him, and on his knees, begged Him: “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Yet he went out and began to proclaim it widely and to spread the news, with the result that Jesus could no longer enter a town openly. But He was out in deserted places, and they would come to Him from everywhere. (Mark 1:40-45)

I’m always struck by the incongruities–the oddities–in people’s behavior, particularly in biblical stories. Consider these unexpected aspects of our Lord’s encounter with the leper:

–The leper felt free to come to Jesus. The law specifically forbade that (Leviticus 13:45-46). Lepers were to shy away from others and to call out “unclean,” lest they be accidentally touched and therefore unclean.

–Jesus reached out and touched him. Our wonderful Lord did the unthinkable and touched the untouchable. As always, He was driven by compassion.

–Then, after the man was healed, the Lord told him to keep it to himself. These were the early days of the Lord’s ministry and the last thing He needed was crowds mobbing Him as a cult hero.

–The man disobeyed Jesus and told everyone he met. We can hardly blame him. I’ve sometimes felt half-seriously that the only unfair command our Lord ever gave was telling this fellow to keep the news to himself. Like he could! And like no one would notice.

Those are four strange aspects to this wonderful little story. But they suggest an even greater oddity about the Lord’s people today: Jesus told that man to be quiet, but he went out and told everyone he met. He tells us to tell the world and we go home and sit down.

We keep the most wonderful news in the world to ourselves.

Something bad wrong with that.

Even the finest Christian workers in today’s churches have a tendency to clam up rather than share their faith with the outside world. We love the Lord, we’ve been saved, we are grateful for His grace and power and mercy, and we love to worship Him and sing and talk about Him.

To one another.

What we are not doing is telling the world.

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(Note from Joe: this is a variation on the same subject as our recent article “What the Godly Elderly Can Expect.” As with most pastors, I’m just trying to find the most effective way of getting the message across.)

…the time of my departure is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. In the future, there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the Righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved his appearing. (II Timothy 4:6-8)

I wish you could have known Ed Logan. The Saturday morning that will forever stand out in my mind, he got up early and left Mary Ellen asleep while he drove across town to Shoneys. The Gideons were having their monthly meeting to plan for more Bibles to be handed out in local schools. When Ed got home, he told Mary Ellen, “I didn’t take any money with me, and those pancakes sure smelled good.” She made him pancakes and they sat there and visited while he ate.

“I’m going over and plow Mr. Everett’s garden,” Ed told Mary Ellen. Everett Beasley lives a couple of blocks from our church. I imagine the two men were similar in age, but Mr. Beasley had numerous medical problems. Ed cranked up his tiller and went to work in the back yard.

That’s where they found Ed Logan. Dead of a heart attack.

That’s the way to go out. In the saddle, with your boots on. In the harness. Hard at work. In the trenches. Choose your metaphor.

The Apostle Paul had been given a gift. He knew his departure was eminent. “I am already being poured out as a drink offering,” he said. “The time for my departure is close.”

So, he reported in. He filed his final report, announcing for anyone interested that his work was done and he had finished the assignment given him by the Lord on that Damascan Road.

They tell me that the trapeze artist and tightrope walker are most vulnerable when taking their last step or two to safety. They’ve been out there above the circus ring, defying death, thrilling the audience. Now, their routine has ended, the crowd is applauding, they’ve done well. If they are not careful, they’ll let their guard down. That final step to safety is critical.

Ty Cobb was one of the great baseball players ever. Over a 22-year-career with the Detroit Tigers he set records that still stand. But he may have been the orneriest, the surliest, the rudest player ever. He lived the last years of his life in a small town in Georgia. Someone told me recently that a few weeks or months before his death, Cobb gave his life to Jesus Christ and was saved.

He sent a message to his teammates. “Tell them I got into the Kingdom in the bottom of the ninth.” Then he said, “I sure wish I’d come in at the top of the first.”

My question for you today is: What inning is it for you? If life is thought of in terms of a baseball game, what inning are you in?

The answer is: There’s no way to know.

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This is for pastors and other church leaders in particular.

When Jim went to his church as the new pastor, he told me, “They have a bad history. Every two years they run the preacher off.” He paused and said, “Let’s see if we can change that.”

He didn’t. Two years later, in spite of the wonderful growth the church was experiencing, a little group informed him that his work there was done and it would be better if he left.

I served one church where a small group of leaders–some elected and some not–met from time to time to make important decisions for the church. The poor pastor had little or no say. When I, the new preacher, suggested that this is the type of thing a congregation needs to know about and make the decision, the spokesman said, “We don’t like to upset the congregation about these things.”

These days, since I’m in a different church almost every Sunday, I see all kinds of arrangements in congregations. In one, the pastor seemed to be an appendage and was considered irrelevant by the lay leadership. In another, he was the good old boy expected to not make waves.

Since my ministry in a church (as the guest preacher) is usually confined to preaching a sermon and extending the public invitation, I try to find out certain things before the service begins:

–what is the congregation expecting from me today?

–are they responsive during the sermon? If they are, I see that as a great compliment to the pastor. No congregation suddenly begins listening and responding to a sermon when a new dynamic (ahem!) guest preacher arrives. If they are listening to me well, I decide they listen well to their pastor too.

–are the people responsive during the invitation? Do they get up and come to the altar area to pray without coaxing from the preacher? If so, that’s a great sign.

–are the people glad to be alive, to be in church, to be with each other? Or are they just enduring this hour.

I do not usually ask anyone about these issues, but just observe. I’m trying to get the temperature of the congregation.

I’m trying to assess the culture of this particular church.

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She still laughs about it, even though it happened a half century ago.

Gail had arrived in Columbus, Mississippi, to be interviewed for the position of Baptist director of college ministry. She would be the BSU director for the local campus of Mississippi State College for Women, or MSCW, now called Mississippi University for Women, or MUW. Since the position was paid by the First Baptist Church, the pastor, Dr. S. R. Woodson, was interviewing her and would be her primary supervisor.

After the interview, the pastor wanted to show Gail the nice building on College Street, some half-dozen blocks away.

The question was how to get her there without him, the preacher, sharing the automobile with her. A man alone in a car with a woman not his wife was unthinkable.

“I walked the entire six blocks,” Gail laughs. “With him driving his car alongside to make sure I was safe.”

Changing times? You bet. These days, almost every pastor I know would have said, “Come on and get in, and I’ll run you over there,” and not given it a second thought.

Changing standards? That’s another question altogether.

We’ve all heard Billy Graham say he decided early on in his ministry he would never be in a room alone with a woman not his wife, mother, daughter, or sister.

What about meeting a woman for coffee? Having lunch with a woman in a very public restaurant? Anything wrong with that?

Ah. Good question. One we’ve been discussing lately.

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“What If?” is a series of best-selling books put together by Robert Cowley, in which historians look at some key event in history and try to imagine what if it had not happened that way.

What if Pontius Pilate had spared Jesus?

That is the title of the chapter by Carlos M. N. Eire, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. The subtitle reads, “Christianity without the Crucifixion.”

Eire imagines Pontius Pilate heeding the warning of his wife whose sleep had been disturbed that night by thoughts of “that righteous man.” Her message to the governor said, “Have nothing to do with him.”

So, he asks, what if Pilate had done the right thing and resisted the religious leaders and the rabble who were crying for Jesus to be executed and had released Him?

On one page, underneath a 13th century painting of Pilate with the Jewish leaders is the caption: “The Decision That Made a Religion.”

Eire asks, “What if Jesus hadn’t been nailed to a cross at Pilate’s orders? What if he had lived a long, long life? Or even just ten more years? Or one? What if his person and message had been interpreted differently, as they surely would have been?”

The answers could easily go all over the map, as Eire acknowledges. He says, “To speculate on what might have happened if anything at all had been different in the story of Jesus and his followers is to sail in an infinite ocean of possibilities.”

In other words, your guess is as good as his.

One thing is sure: If no crucifixion, no resurrection. And without either a cross or an empty tomb, we have nothing but an inspiring story of a wonderful man who lived an exemplary life. In other words, we’re in big trouble.

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Fear is a constant companion with many a minister.

The problem is most do not recognize it as fear. The monster takes many disguises, and can even show up as our closest friend.

The pastor who refuses to preach on a touchy subject because someone in his congregation is engaged in it is not acting from compassion or discretion. It’s good old-fashioned fear.

The pastor who refuses to train his people in faithful stewardship principles or shrinks from preaching on money because he hates being accused of money-grabbing is motivated, not by wise caution but by fear.

The pastor who will not stand up to a deacon bully, who cow-tows to a matron with a controlling passion, who keeps catering to unreasonable demands from the congregation because he does not like to “cause waves,” that pastor is living in fear and undermining his own ministry.

Nothing about fear pleases God. No ministry that finds its source in fear of people is of God. No powerful sermon, no sacrificial gift, no pastoral ministry, no church program rooted in fear of someone or some group has the blessings of Heaven.

Fear hath torment, according to I John 4:18.

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Sooner or later, every pastor has it happen. He’s in the middle of a sermon, all is going well, he’s on top of his game, the Lord is near, the people are listening well. And then, bam!

An interruption. A disruption. (He will feel like it’s a “corruption.” The trick, however, is not to turn it into a PRO-duction. Okay, enough of that.)

Something happens in the service the pastor was not prepared for. It throws him. For a moment, he is stunned into silence.

What he says/does next and how he does it could end up being far more important than anything he was saying in the sermon.

The people sitting in front of the pastor are of two minds: like him, they had their train of thought disrupted by whatever happened, and they are watching to see how he handles things.

These interruptions–surprises, disruptions, snafus, foulups–are generally of two types: 1) those involving matters within the congregation, and 2) those which pertain primarily to the preacher himself.

The pastoral team can make preparations for dealing with the first kind. By setting up a first aid team or training the ushers for emergencies, you’re set for handling most crises.

Someone in the pew has a health crisis. In the middle of your sermon, you notice a commotion on the right side of the auditorium. People are hurrying to attend to the victim. What to do? Because you have a first aid team on site, the pastor calmly tells the congregation that well-trained people are taking care of matters. He asks for quietness and prayer while they do their job. A musician will play softly and the pastor will walk back to check on matters. The EMS people arrive and the victim is taken to the hospital. The pastor will lead in prayer for the person, and then make a determination whether the service is ended or to go forward.

An intruder invades the worship service and creates a commotion with his loud rants. The ushers go into action and whisk the person into the foyer where he is dealt with in an appropriate manner.

A bride faints in the middle of the wedding. The wedding director is ready. Someone carries the bride into the church parlor, where she is laid on a couch or the carpet. The wedding director breaks open a vial of smelling salts, and she is given nourishment (a glass of juice or something). After a 10 minute break, the wedding resumes. All is well.

I’ve had all these things happen and more. And, we survived them.

Our concern here, however, is with the second type of abrupt surprises–those directly involving the preacher. He’s using powerpoint when it fails. He is relying heavily on his notes when he realizes the last pages are not to be found. Someone he was counting on to do something necessary to his sermon has dropped the ball.

The pastor is announcing some event or program when a staffer interrupts to say his information is wrong and to correct him. The staff member is correct. The pastor now stands corrected.

What he does next tells volumes about the pastor’s character.

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