You are the pastor. Next Sunday and for a few days the first of the week, you are turning over your pulpit to a visiting minister. He’s either a full-time vocational evangelist or a pastor of a church somewhere or a retired minister. You do this for a lot of reasons, the main one probably being that the church expects it of you.

These meetings go by names such as revivals, spiritual renewals, awakenings, Bible studies, and such. As the pastor with a number of years and several churches “under your belt,” so to speak, you have heard all kinds of visiting preachers and experienced the good/the bad/and the ugly of these meetings. You know about what to expect, you feel, and by now, you have learned to choose your guest preacher carefully. They’re not all as responsible as they ought to be and some are more concerned with the large numbers of CAO they can report afterwards (“converts, attendance, offerings”).

These days, I’m that guest preacher. I see you sweating, pastor. I remember how you feel.

I pastored six churches over a period of 42 years. I know the pastor’s heart, his hopes, and his fears.

As the pastor, you want to have great expectations for this meeting. However, having been disappointed so many times in the past, you are afraid to elevate the hopes and expectations of your people–and yourself–too high. Those lows at the end of disappointing meetings can be mighty deep. Explaining to the deacons why the church invested several thousand dollars into a meeting which accomplished so little is no fun.

That’s the reason for this letter. I’d like to put some things on the table here. Let’s see if we are talking the same language, pastor.

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Sometimes pastors lament that the most important lessons of the ministry were not taught in seminary. The only workable answer to that is: it’s impossible to teach them all in classrooms; most are learned on the field and nowhere else.

My friends Trace and Missy are finding this out.

In their first pastorate after seminary, they are having to learn the hard way how to pace themselves, how to find and protect time for themselves, how to protect their home life from the intrusion of church members, and how to be friends with everyone without letting a few take over their lives.

No one can cover all this stuff in a book. The lessons are too numerous, the personalities too varied, and no two situations are alike.

Missy sent me a note telling me the latest situation that has arisen. “It’s so silly, we’ll probably laugh at this one day,” she said. But she’s not laughing at the moment. No one can laugh at pain when it’s hammering at your door 24/7. Only after it has departed and you realized how powerless it was and how pointless its threats are you able to smile.

On Wednesday nights in Trace’s church, the youth would like to meet in the sanctuary in order to have access to the multi-faceted hi-tech sound system. The adults, who normally meet there, don’t need it for their simple Bible study and prayer time. So, at the request of the youth minister, Pastor Trace did the reasonable thing and made the call.

And that’s when the fur began to fly.

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Got a few minutes for a couple of stories?

The only thing I love better than hearing a good one is to be the guy telling it! That’s a rather unflattering admission, I fear, but completely accurate.

The first is a story from my son, of the time last Saturday when he stopped to help a woman who had a flat tire and almost killed her in the process. It’s almost funny–but not quite–and makes a good point that in helping people we must be careful not to do them harm.

The other story comes from a non-pastor friend who decided to insert himself into a conversation at a nearby table in the restaurant where he was having lunch.

Knowing how, as Robert Frost said, one road leads to another (meaning: one story makes me think of another), I will probably end up dropping in another tale or two before this is concluded.

Anyway, here’s what happened to my son Neil last Saturday morning.

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Not long ago, on a Sunday when I wasn’t preaching anywhere, I dropped in on a church service not far from my house. A luxury of being retired from pastoring and denominational service is that–with the okay of my pastor–sometimes I visit churches led by friends of mine.

That day, I saw something that struck me as precious and extremely rare.

During the sermon, listening to the preacher and watching the interplay between him and the congregation, it occurred to me how finely tuned the people and minister were to one another. In fact, I had the feeling that I was sitting in on a private conversation between the pastor and his flock.

It was as impressive as anything I’ve seen in a church in years.

I grabbed my pen and jotted down the following notes:

Relationship.

This is the best. It’s not a TV sermon.

So, today, I went to lunch with that pastor and picked his brain on the subject.

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Saints Coach Sean Payton gets it.

Watching a football game on television the other day, I noticed the camera showing a dispirited player on the bench with his head hung low. He had clearly had a bad game–interceptions, fumbles, something–and his team was losing. The problem is, his facial expression and his bodily posture were signaling to both his team members and opponents that he was finished here. The game was over as far as he was concerned.

I called out to the screen, “Get your head up, boy! The game’s not over! Do you have any idea what you are doing, looking that way?”

In this morning’s Times-Picayune, sportswriter Jeff Duncan tells how Coach Sean Payton stresses the same lesson to his players.

As I watched San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers throw a conniption fit at midfield in Kansas City last week a thought occurred to me. This would never happen with the New Orleans Saints.

I can’t remember the last time a Saints player lost it on the field. Of course, there’s not a lot to get upset about when you start a season 13-0 and win the Super Bowl. Still, the Saints, by and large, are as demonstrative and emotional as snipers when they take the field. Their insides might be bubbling cauldrons of emotion but it rarely shows.

There’s a good reason for this, Duncan says.

Body language is a big part of Payton’s coaching curriculum. Maybe more than anyone in the NFL, Payton believes in the power of nonverbal communication. He talks about it in team meetings, preaches it during practice and demands it during games.

“He harps us on all the time about it,” Bushrod said. “If something goes wrong, he doesn’t want us to show it.”

Let’s talk about this business of our posture and demeanor when things are going badly. The lesson has unusually strong applications to the believers’ life and ministry.

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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.

“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?

I have been teaching at that church for eight years. Of all the passages I have exegeted and all the messages I have preached, that is the one moment that gets replayed before conferences and workshops. Over and over.

That moment forever endeared Pastor John Ortberg to the congregation of Willow Creek Church.

In fact, the power of that moment was so strong, it would have been worthwhile for him to have planned the flub.

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