The retired pastor moves away and begins searching for a church

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Question from a retired pastor–

I recently retired from full-time ministry, and my wife and I find ourselves in the position of having to find a new church for the first time in 43 years.  It’s not as easy as I thought it was going to be.  Part of the problem may be our location.  After spending the last 27 years of our ministry in a metro area of California, we retired to a small town in a nearby state.  We’re close enough that we can easily visit our children and grandchildren, who still live in California.  Problem: In our little town, there’s only one church of our denomination.  We attended twice, and then because of Covid watched at least two dozen services online.  Expository preaching is at the top of my list of what I’m looking for in a church, so we would not be happy going to this particular church.  Then, we considered the other churches in town:  one Methodist church, two Presbyterian churches, two Lutheran churches, two non-denominational churches, and one Catholic church.  We’ve looked into each of them and so far, we don’t seem to have found where we belong.  Some neighbors of our denomination drive nearly 50 miles to a larger city for church.  With a population of 100,000 there are a couple of fine churches of our denomination.  We may end up doing that too, but we’d prefer to belong to a church in our little town if possible.

What do we do? 

I don’t like being in a position of having to be “critical” of churches, yet now that we’re looking for the church that will be our home, it’s hard not to look at them with a somewhat critical eye.  So perhaps another way of framing my question would be, what should one look for in a church?  What things are important?  What things are not important?

An unsolicited note came this week.  The retired pastor and I do not know each other and have never met.  He asked if I had written anything on this subject.  I said I have not but invited him to give a fuller description of his situation.  The above is his response.  Below is mine.

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Turning put-downs into motivation

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“Jesus said, ‘No doubt you will quote this proverb to me, “Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.” No prophet is welcome in his own hometown’” (Luke 4:24). 

John Fogerty’s group Creedence Clearwater Revival is unforgettable to anyone who has owned a radio in the last 50 years.  Once, in an interview with Dan Rather, Fogerty was remembering a key moment in their formative years.

The group was one of many bands to perform at a particular event.  As the final group to warm up, and thus the first band to appear on stage, suddenly CCR found they had been unplugged.  John Fogerty yelled to the sound man to plug them back up, that they weren’t through.  The technician did so reluctantly, then added, “You not going anywhere anyway, man.”  Fogerty said, “Okay.  Give me one year.  I’ll show you.”

One year later, the group was so hot with hit record after hit record (“Proud Mary,” “Born on the Bayou,” “Bad Moon Rising”) that “we were too big to play in that place any more!”

Turning sarcastic putdowns into a healthy sic ’em!

I was 25 and the newly called pastor of a church on Alligator Bayou some 25 miles west of New Orleans.  I was in my first year of seminary.  The church ran forty in attendance, just as it had done for the two decades of its existence.

Sunday morning, I’m standing outside the front door shaking hands as worshipers exit the building.  Behind us, just emerging through the doors, two men were talking.  They had no idea I could heard them.  One said, “Well, this little church is doing about all it’s ever going to do.”

The other fellow agreed.  But it was like a spark to my powder keg.  Everything inside me said, “We’ll show you!”

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What the church staff owes the pastor

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This is a followup to our recent article on “What pastors owe their church staff.”

A pastor has a right to expect that the ministerial staff working under him will carry out certain basic responsibilities, which include….

1) Doing their particular jobs well.  If you are called to work with the teenagers, that should be your focus.  If your area of responsibility is administering the children’s program or the work with seniors or discipleship, you will always be interested and supportive of the total work of the church, but you will be rated on how well you do your particular area.

2) Living a solidly Christian life at all times. This should go without saying, but after seeing the way some people compartmentalize their lives–“Hey, this is simply my job. What I do in my spare time is my business!”–we need to spell it out: If you are not living as a disciple of Jesus Christ, you have no business serving in any capacity whatsoever at a church.

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Why the Lord has to call people into this work

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The pastor said to me, “Pray for me. It’s hard out here. But we’re hanging in there, trying not to return evil for evil.”

I teased, “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, to put up with that stuff.”  And after a moment’s reflection, added, “It’s why God has to call people into this ministry.”

If it were easy, they’d be lining up to get in on it.

Called by God. Yes, it’s how He fills the ranks of shepherds.

“Now, the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country…to the land which I will show you; and I will make you….” (Genesis 12:1ff.)

“Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law…. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush…. (And God said) ‘I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring my people out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3)

“And God said (to Isaiah), ‘Go and tell this people…’” (Isaiah 6:8)

“Now the word of the Lord came to (Jeremiah) saying, ‘I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5).

“And walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon, called Peter, and Andrew…. And He said to them, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men’” (Matthew 4:18-19).

“And the Lord said (to Saul), ‘Arise, and go to the street called Straight….’  ‘(Saul) is a chosen instrument of mine, to bear my name before the Gentiles….” (Acts 9:1ff.)

Anyone see a trend here?

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Everyone has his own idea about heaven

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Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.  That they may rest from their labors….  (Revelation 14:13)

My friend Bob was dealing with a difficult family situation.  Bob was getting up in years and his health was poor.

At one point he said to me, “I can’t wait for heaven.”

I agreed and said, “They don’t call it ‘rest’ for no reason.”

I’m remembering when I was a kid, we would sometimes hear a ditty called The Big Rock Candy Mountain. We enjoyed its silliness and thought nothing more of it.

It turns out that during the Great Depression, that was the hobo’s national anthem, of a sort.  And it gives us his own unique picture of paradise.

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The power of a good 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.

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 Bob Dole endured after his World War II injury. 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.  That he lived through all this was a miracle of the first dimension.

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

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What the church forgot to remember

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This notice appeared on the front page of the July 4, 2004, issue of the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader—

It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.

When that newspaper’s staff decided to prepare a special edition commemorating the 40th anniversary of the passing of the Civil Rights Act, they began combing through their archives looking for local material. That’s when they discovered a complete lack of such information. The newspaper had simply not covered the civil rights movement, period.

A local African-American leader said, “The white community just prayed that rumors and reports (of the civil rights movement) would be swept under the rug and just go away.”

As odd as it is that a newspaper would fail to cover a world-changing movement going on throughout the world and happening in its own hometown, it will not come as a surprise to many of our readers that churches lived through the same revolution in this country without the first mention of it being made from the pulpit.

And we wonder why outsiders found our sermons irrelevant.

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Parasites who feast on the church body

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I had never heard of an insect called an ichneumon until newspaper columnist George Will wrote about it as a metaphor for the City of Detroit’s bankruptcy.

According to Mr. Will, the ichneumon insect inserts an egg in a caterpillar, then the larva which hatches from the egg proceeds to gnaw the insides of the caterpillar. Eventually, it has devoured almost every part of the worm with the exception of the skin and intestines, while it carefully avoids injuring the vital organs.  The ichneumon seems to know that its own existence depends on the life of the insect on which it feeds.

Detroit’s government employees’ unions had been living parasitically on their own city, Mr. Will stated.  However, in devouring their own host, they were not as smart as the ichneumon insect.

I find that fascinating.

What kind of God would make such a world?

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Things never to tell a preacher

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Once on this website, we posted a list of “59 things not to say to a preacher.”  Several people suggested we do one on things we should not tell a preacher.  At the time, we posted this (below).  I’ve tweaked it some, but thought someone would like to see it anew.

Here are ten things not to tell the preacher, in no particular order….

1. We should not tell the preacher what we think of his hot wife.

Not only should you keep this to yourself, but you should ask the Lord to remove it from your mind altogether.  The prayer “let the…meditations of my heart be acceptable to Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” should cover it (Psalm 19:14).

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Something preachers keep forgetting

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For this reason I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you…. (2 Timothy 1:6). 

I was sitting on the platform, ten feet to the left and rear of the pulpit, studying the 300 people in the congregation. In five minutes, I would walk to the podium and, as the guest preacher, bring the sermon. The thoughts running through my mind were not helpful.

“They know all these things. My sermon is about the church. And these people are at church on a Sunday night, of all things. I might as well go into a diner and speak on the joys of eating. Or to a gym and talk about the need for exercise.”

Then, sanity returned. I knew this was not the case at all.

I thought about the times when I sat where they sit.  I often needed a strong reminder of the proper value to be placed on the church, of how solidly God feels about it, of the price Christ paid for it, of the assignments He has given it, and yes, reminders of the sorry way the church is being treated by some of its friends.

There was a genuine need for this message, and on this night I would deliver it as strongly as I knew how.

I gave it my all. The response at invitation time–not always the best barometer, I know–indicated the sermon had hit its target.

The best barometer, and one I’m not privy to, would be the behavior of the members of that congregation over the next few weeks and months.

It’s easy for preachers to fall into that little sinkhole which had opened up just in front of me, and think, “These people do not need this; they already know it.”

In such situations, it’s good for the man of God to remind himself of three facts:

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