Few things disturb me more than hearing a pastor admit that he refuses to preach on money because so many preachers do that to manipulate people.

The main reason it disturbs me is that I do not believe that. The pastor is not being honest.

He fails to talk to his people on money because he does not want to be criticized. It’s a fear factor, and he has decided to cave in.

Consequently, he is failing his people in one of the most important areas of their lives. He is failing the Lord who expects His shepherds to lead the flock to be faithful stewards. He is failing every missionary whose support is growing weaker and weaker because of the lack of stewardship education back at home. And, therefore, he is failing every unsaved person who will not hear the gospel because of a lack of missionaries.

That pastor’s failure reverberates across the world like a tidal wave, bringing all kinds of bad consequences in its wake.

I wish such pastors could have heard my preacher, Dr. Mike Miller, last Sunday. Preaching in the First Baptist Church of Kenner, across the street from the New Orleans airport, and in his third year, Mike used the best common sense I’ve ever heard from the pulpit in this matter.

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You help your wife unpack the boxes and hang the pictures, then drive down to the church office and put your books on the shelves and say hello to the staff. The other ministers and office workers gather around and look expectantly in your direction, “hoping to receive something” (Acts 3:5).

What do you do now, pastor?

If you are really, really green or a veteran but stupid (sorry for the plain-spokenness!), you will do all the talking. You will act like a newly-elected-politician-with-a-landslide who thinks he has a mandate.

You don’t have a mandate. You have an opportunity.

What follows is merely my suggestion on what the new pastor should do in his first few days and weeks at the new church. Disagreements and additional insights are welcome in the comments section at the conclusion.

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As a young pastor, I could never repeat a sermon any more than I could eat yesterday’s breakfast again. Each sermon was a one-time thing. When it was over, it was gone forever.

And then, the invitations began to come in to preach in churches pastored by friends who thought I had something worth sharing with their people. That’s when I had to get serious about repeating a sermon. After all, my friend’s members have not heard my stories or sermons. Anything I did would be new to them.

Those early attempts to preach repeats in my late 20s and early 30s were fairly pathetic, I’m thinking. Since my sermon notes were always one thing and the actual sermon something else entirely, nothing in writing told me what I had preached the first time so I could reproduce it verbatim. So, I had to go from memory, or better, get with the Lord anew on that sermon.

These days–I’m now 70 and retired–almost every sermon I preach is on a topic I’ve preached before (with the occasional exception; hey, I’m not living on reruns here!). As a result, I have more or less figured this thing out, at least to my satisfaction.

Maybe pastors wll find something of benefit here.

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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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