A natural disposition toward shallowness: The preacher’s occupational hazard

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“I was born with a natural disposition toward shallowness.  I now work as a pundit and columnist.  I’m paid to be a narcissistic blowhard, to volley my opinions, to appear more confident about them than I really am, to appear smarter than I really am, to appear better and more authoritative than I really am. I have to work harder than most people to avoid a life of smug superficiality.  –David Brooks, “The Road to Character”

We preachers have a great deal in common with “pundits and columnists.”

We are constantly driving ourselves to produce the next sermon, develop the next church program, write the next article, and find the perfect staff member–no matter whether we feel up to it or not.  We work to appear confident.

Never let ’em see you sweat.  That’s how the commercials phrase it.

As a result, we tend to gravitate toward superficiality and shallowness.

It goes with the job, I suppose.  An occupational hazard?

Once in a while there comes along a great quote with wonderful insights into the Scripture, better understanding of Christian principles, and a clearer handle on the facts of life. We gladly queue up to drink at the fountain of such deep thinkers. My personal favorite is Clive Staples Lewis.

Elizabeth Elliot called C. S. Lewis, “That wonderful man who seems to have thought through everything.”  I have found myself quoting both Lewis and Mrs. Elliot, not only because of the great sound bytes, but because they are often clear on a matter I’ve not thought through. So, it’s easier just to quote someone else.

Shallowness: A way of life for many of us in the ministry.

There is a reason for this sad condition:  When you are under the gun to turn out several sermons a week in addition to all the other tasks pastors must attend to, you simply do not have the time to pursue most subjects to the depth you should and would like. (That’s one reason I have treasured retirement. Finally, I have the time!)

I criticize pastors who plagiarize, but I understand how it happens.

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The accidental blessing that lasts a lifetime

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I was a freshman in college and as was the custom in that school at that time, every student worked on campus two days a week. We were remunerated at the rate of fifty cents an hour for two eight-hour days.  Hey, this was the late 1950’s and no one was complaining.

Anyway, on one of my classroom dates, a classmate named Bob asked if I’d like to make a little extra money.  He’d been asked by the wife of the college president to wash the windows at the presidential home.  “Sure,” I said, “I’ll give it a try.”

That afternoon, Bob and I washed windows at the presidential home.  Not a huge job, nothing too difficult, but not my favorite thing to do.  So, next day, I did not show up.  This was no big deal to me because I had never committed to a second day in the first place.

That night in the dorm, Bob said to me, “You’re in trouble.”  I said, “Really? For what?”  “The president’s wife was upset that you did not keep your promise.”

I said, “I made no promise.  And so I broke none.”

“Well, even so,” he said, “she wants to talk to you.”

I shrugged it off.

Next afternoon someone called my name on the floor of our dorm.  “Telephone!”

It was the president’s wife.

“Can you meet me out front in five minutes?”

“Sure,” I said, still wondering what was up.

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The games some preachers play with God’s Word

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“I did not send these prophets, yet they ran with a message; I did not speak to them, but they prophesied” (Jeremiah 23:21).

What if we sliced off a bit of scripture here, pasted it in there, omitted a reference over yonder, and pretended the result is what Jesus actually said?

That happens.  (Fortunately, it happens rarely.  But it is done often enough to make it a concern to those who value God’s word and our integrity.)

Here’s my story from a few years back, one that still smarts….

At a preachers conference, we heard a stem-winding brother drive the several hundred of us to our feet in a shouting, hand-clapping final eruption of praise and joy.  He was good, I’ll give him that.

His text was Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.”  His theme was that God’s people today have no trouble with Jesus Christ being “the same yesterday”–His birth in Bethlehem, His miracle-working ministry across Galilee and Judea, followed by His sacrificial death and His divine resurrection–and no trouble with Jesus Christ being “the same forever”–as we proclaim His return to earth, the judgment, and His forever reign.

The problem present-day Christians have, said the preacher, is with “Jesus Christ today.”

We have no difficulty believing He did all those great things in the past and that He will do all He has promised for the future.  We just refuse to believe He can help us at this moment, said the speaker.

In order to illustrate this scripturally, he directed us to Bethany where Lazarus lay dead four days while everyone waited for the Lord to come.  (That’s John 11.)  When our Lord arrived, Lazarus’ sister Martha rushed to meet Him.

“Lord, if you had only been here!” she exclaimed.  “He would not have died.  You could have done something.”  She believed in Jesus Christ yesterday.

A moment later, she said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”  She believed in Jesus Christ forever.

The problem she had was Jesus Christ today, said the minister. Just like many of us.

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The pastor is called to an ignorant church; what to do

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“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Peter 3:18).

The pastor was excited about the new assignment God was giving him. In a parting comment to a friend, he assessed the spirituality of the church he was leaving behind:

“There is enough ignorance in this county to ignorantize the whole country.”

We could wish such churches were rare.  Unfortunately, they’re not.

What happens when a pastor gets called to a church like that? What’s the new pastor to do when the congregation does not know the Word of God and have no idea of how things should be done or why it matters.

Such a church often exists only to condemn sin and sinners, knows only slivers of Scripture, sees pastors as slaves of the whims of the congregation, and is ready to reject any minister who believes the church should feed the hungry, take a stand for justice, and/or invite in the minority neighbors.

Veteran preachers have stories of those churches, tales of run-ins with those leaders, and scars from the battles they have waged to set matters right.

–One pastor told the group of ministers meeting in his fellowship hall, “This building is actually owned by a member of the KKK. We rent it from him.”  The rest of us naively thought the Ku Klux Klan had died out ages ago. Here they were living among us in our own southern town.

–One lady visible in church leadership told her pastor (me!), “I don’t know what the Bible says but I know what I believe.”

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My seven worst mistakes as a pastor

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In a national publication, one of our denomination’s leaders was giving seven mistakes he had made in ministry.  Every preacher will identify with them…

He wishes he had spent more time in prayer…given his family more time…spent more time sharing his faith….had loved his community more…had led his church to focus more on the nations…he wishes he had focused on critics less…and last: he wishes he had accepted the reality that he cannot be everywhere and meet every need.

That started me thinking about my own list.  Now, a list of goofs I have made since entering the ministry in 1962 to the present would be limited only by how much time I had.    I can think of 10 mistakes I made as a preacher, 10 as a pastor, 10 as a visionary leader for my church, 10 as a leader of the church ministerial staff, 10 as a denominational worker….

Get the idea? Anyone who does anything for the Lord and mankind in this life is going to do a less than perfect job.

No one wants to grovel in regrets. I assure you I don’t. (Even though I fully intend to give you my list.)

But there is a huge reason for not dwelling on our failures and mistakes: God works even in our mistakes and can make good emerge from them. As a result, even though we look back and see the times we dropped the ball, we give thanks for what He accomplished through it all.

God can bring much out of little and good out of bad. He knows what he is about.

Okay. On to my list of worst mistakes as a pastor.

1. I should have found a mentor early in my ministry and made good use of him.

After majoring in history in college, I began pastoring. Not exactly great preparation for this work. My efforts were like trying to invent the wheel. I started from scratch in every sense of the word. What I wish I had known–and had the gumption to act on–is that behind the door of almost every Baptist church (and a lot of others) was a veteran preacher who would have been glad to spend time with this kid pastor and help him. All I had to do was ask. And I didn’t.

I didn’t ask because I didn’t know they were available. So I tried it all by myself. Over the years, I’ve worked to mentor a lot of young preachers. I remember what it was like being in their shoes.

2. I wish I had become a better, more disciplined student of the Word.

Now, my hunch is most of my professors thought I was a pretty good student. I made good grades. Not the best in the class, necessarily, but did well enough to get into the doctoral program without taking anything of a remedial nature. But I knew I was coasting.

What I wish I’d done back in college was to get with some excellent students and copied their study practices. As it was, I seemed to do as little as I could get by with.

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Pastor, when something doesn’t sound right

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This has happened to me again and again. I’m sitting in some huge meeting with hundreds of the Lord’s people representing churches across our state or country. A large number of preachers are in the audience. The speaker is sounding forth on some subject of importance to us all.

Suddenly, the speaker comes out with a statement that gets a hearty “amen,” something that sounds profound and undergirds the point he is making. He goes on in the message and everyone in the room but one person stays with him. Me, I’m stuck at that statement. Where did he get that, I wonder. Is it true? How can we know?

If “Facebook,” that wonderful and exasperating social networking machine, has taught us anything, it’s to distrust percentages and question quotations.

A Facebook friend’s profile contained a quote from President Kennedy. I happen to know the quote and while I cannot prove JFK never uttered those words–how could we prove that someone never said a thing?–I know how the line got attached to the Kennedys. It’s a quotation from a George Bernard Shaw play.

Some see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ I see things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’

In 1968, at the funeral of his brother Robert F. Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy spoke those words as applying to him. It’s a terrific depiction of vision. For most of us, I imagine it was our first time to hear the quote. The source was not given in the oration, which may have led some to believe Senator Kennedy made it up.

One thing we know, however, is President John F. Kennedy is not its source. Nor is any Kennedy. And yet, keep your eye out for that quotation. Half the time, its source will be listed as one of the Kennedys.

Accuracy is important for all of us, but particularly those of us called to preach the Truth to get people to Heaven.

Unfortunately, because we speak so often, our sermon machines devour a lot of fodder. It figures that sometimes we are going to get our stories wrong.

That’s why a statement from a preacher hit me so hard and drove me to do a little research.

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The pastor’s passion

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A 10-year-old girl said something that has had me thinking about passion ever since.

Interesting word, passion. It gives us compassion, passive, dispassionate, and a host of related concepts. At its core, from the Latin, “passion” means “to suffer.” It’s opposite, passive, or impassive, means “unfeeling.”

I was teaching cartooning to children in the afternoons following vacation Bible school. At one point, I had to take a phone call and turned the class over to my teenage grand-daughter who was assisting me. Ten minutes later, I told the children about the call.

“One of the editors of a weekly Baptist paper in another state called about using a certain cartoon. I found the drawing in a file and scanned it into the computer and emailed it to her. Next week, that cartoon–which is still in that file cabinet in my office–will be seen in 50,000 newspapers in homes all over that state.”

Then I asked the question on their minds but which none dared to raise.

“Now, how much money do you think I made doing that?”

Some kid said, “Thousands.” The rest had no idea.

“Zero,” I said. “Not a dime.”

“Very few cartoonists make much money doing this. Almost all have to have ‘day’ jobs to pay the rent.”

“So why,” I asked, “do we keep drawing cartoons when it doesn’t pay much money?”

That’s when the 10-year-old girl raised her hand and said something I had never really thought of.

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The toughest job in any church

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There are few easy jobs in the typical congregation and plenty of really difficult ones. My candidate for the hardest elected position is chairman of deacons.

The absolute toughest and most critical, of course, is the position of pastor. He’s the point man and so much rides on his faithfulness. A close second to that is the deacon chairman.

I say this in full recognition that in our denomination at least–the Southern Baptist Convention–deacons are a varied lot. What they do and how they minister is strictly up to the individual church. Some function as boards of directors, some are teams of servants, some work as a steering committee composed of chairs of every committee in the church, and some are true spiritual leaders.

But there is one thing true in 99 percent of our churches: the chairman of deacons is the number one lay position within the congregation.

On paper, the deacon chair is simply the moderator of the monthly meeting of his group. But in actuality, he (and in the rare instance, she) is the go-between for the pastor and the congregation.

The congregation is having a major problem that involves the pastor. Someone has to visit the shepherd for a confrontational sit-down with him. It falls to the deacon chairman.

Someone or some group within the congregation is out of line. They are attacking the pastor unfairly. For the shepherd to confront them seems self-serving and puts him on the defensive. Someone else needs to do this. The chairman of deacons inherits the job by default. There is no one else better situated.

When you are nominated by the church as a deacon, they convene a council to examine you, then the church ordains you. It’s a big deal. We need to do something just as significant when the deacons choose their leader. The job is the weightiest in the church when done well.

A deacon chairman needs four qualities; if he misses even one, the church could be in trouble.

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The thing about Truth: Only the obedient get it

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“If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from myself” (John 7:17).

Truth is a funny thing: If you want it, you tend to find it.  If you don’t believe it exists, you never come across it.

A generation ago, Professor Allan Bloom wrote a bestseller called “The Closing of the American Mind” in which he said a growing percentage of young Americans considers the mark of the modern man to be an open mind.

By “open mind” they mean an intellect that tolerates everything and considers truth to be relative, that takes no hard and fast positions, and gives  all positions equal footing. To them, a “closed mind” ranks as the epitome of ignorance and backwardness.

Students enter the university, said Dr. Bloom, “just knowing” that maturity requires that they jettison all those “prejudices” and outdated restrictions from their parents’ repressed generation.  Those wishing to take a strong stand for (insert your favorite value here) patriotism, Americanism, the Bible, the Ten Commandments, or the church are old-fashioned and still bound in chains of ignorance.

In the years since Professor Bloom’s book topped the bestsellers’ lists, nothing has happened to change this sad state. To far too many young Americans, to be educated and sophisticated is to reject hard and fast notions of truth and to welcome relativity in every discipline.

Such is the philosophy of a large section of the up-and-coming generations.

“Open-mindedness” sounds so good, like a virtue we should all aspire to. Likewise, “close-mindedness” sounds like we have a Neanderthal in the room.

However, not so fast…

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Why we need a hell

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These days, books about heaven are very popular.

Write one about how you died for a few minutes and experienced a momentary jolt of nirvana beyond anything you ever imagined and publishers will line up outside your door ready to print it. They know the book-buying public is eager to get a glimpse through that scary curtain called death…so long as what’s on the other side meets with their preconceptions.

Ross Douthat is a columnist for the New York Times. In a column titled “Hell’s grip on religious imagination weakens,” he wrote, Even in our supposedly disenchanted age, large majorities of Americans believe in God and heaven, miracles and prayer. But belief in hell lags well behind, and the fear of damnation seems to have evaporated.

He says near-death stories are quick to sell. “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven” tells of a child’s return from paradise. However, “you’ll search in vain for ‘The Investment Banker Who Came Back From Hell.”

Douthat blames this disenchantment, this unbelief, regarding hell on “growing pluralism,” among other things. Meaning what?

Meaning that people of all religion live on our block, go to our schools, shop in our stores, and are no longer abstractions to us. So, when we consider the question whether those-who-do-not-believe-in-Jesus go to hell, we are asking about some very real people we know personally and not the impersonal heathen of some dark continent.

Can we talk about hell for a moment?  I’m convinced there needs to be one.

You may recall when a Navy SWAT team dropped in to Islamabad, Pakistan, to take out Osama bin Laden. They shot this terrorist twice, then gave him a prompt at-sea burial to prevent his body from becoming a relic of worship or martyrdom to the Islamic world.

Americans were quick to react, almost all enthusiastically endorsing his dispatching. Religious leaders chimed in. Hardly a Facebooker resisted the temptation to say something about bin Laden’s execution. I said a couple of things about it myself.

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