Page 3606 – Christianity Today (2024)

Pastors

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

Fear nothing but sin.
George Herbert1

What is it about the human psyche that makes risk taking so difficult?

Much of the scientific research on the subject has been done in decidedly nonecclesiastical settings — gambling casinos. Psychologists Gideon Keren and Willem Wagenaar, for example, observed more than eleven thousand hands of blackjack played by 112 gamblers in an Amsterdam casino, attempting to analyze how the players made their judgments. They found most players were reluctant to take large risks, and attributed the generally conservative play to three factors:

— Minimizing regret. Busting (taking one card too many and going over the game’s limit of twenty-one points) was avoided. Better to let the dealer win than to be the cause of your own loss.

— Delaying bad news. Because the dealer plays last, players would rather lose at the last possible instant rather than force their own loss by acting too soon.

— Attentional bias. Players tended to work harder to avoid losing than to figure the best way of winning.2

Each of these reasons holds obvious implications for leaders. Leaders, like gamblers, tend to delay the decisive action needed in a risk-taking situation.

Leaders in the local church often add one more factor to this list — the reluctance to face personal confrontation. When we asked our survey respondents to list the biggest hurdles they have in making difficult decisions, they often expressed this fear:

— “I have a strong aversion to confrontation.”

— “It’s the nagging, building anxiety I hate the most.”

— “I’m afraid of the challenges to my authority such a decision seems to inevitably bring.”

— “I just dread the people hassle.”

Thus, in spite of its importance, most local church leaders find making risky decisions difficult, because it often means clashing with a church member. Even when pastors gather enough courage to make the confrontation, and even when it is successful, many have trouble taking any satisfaction in it because of the temporary conflict it creates. Tom Monitor, pastor of the Meadowland (Virginia) Baptist Church, remembers such a confrontation:3

“When I came here, two families controlled the church. One man had been first elder for twelve years, and a husband and wife team had been the Sunday school superintendent and treasurer, respectively, for eleven years. The control was so tight that when I went to the treasurer and said, ‘I’d like to know our financial standing and policies,’ she said, ‘I’ve been around the church a lot longer than you have, and I’m going to give you a little advice: You take care of the preaching, and I’ll take care of the finances.’

“That early conversation set the stage for our relationship. From then on I was ‘that arrogant seminary student who thinks he can run the church.’

“I learned the Sunday school superintendent/treasurer couple played a little game every year. When the nominating committee would ask them to continue serving, they would say, ‘No, we’d better resign’ … but it was well understood they didn’t mean it and just wanted to be begged to serve again. In the past, the pastor had dutifully done so and returned them to office.

“So my first spring in the church, when they said, ‘We’re not going to run for our positions this year,’ I said, ‘OK, we’ll find somebody else.’

“Then I went to the congregation and said, ‘Ralph and Martha have decided not to run again for their positions. Let’s thank them for their many years of service, and let’s begin as a congregation to pray about who God wants to serve in these positions.’

“What had been a cold war with this couple suddenly became hot. Several meetings with them, the first elder, and two other elders ensued, the stated agenda was to find out what the problem was between them and me — why I was not willing to work with them. But we all knew what was really happening.

“For one of those meetings, the superintendent’s wife sent a list of grievances with her husband. The first one was that I did not give a monthly report of my activities at the board meetings as called for by the constitution. The first elder said, ‘Well, I can tell you why he doesn’t do that. I’ve never told him about it.’

“The next grievance was that I spent money that wasn’t approved by the board, the third that I wasn’t willing to work with the people who had always been in charge of the church. I explained that a minister must have the authority to spend certain monies without calling a board meeting and showed how the accusations lacked any substance.

“After reading the first three, and listening to my responses, the superintendent folded his paper and put it back in his pocket. Sometimes the ideas you come up with in the privacy of your own home fall flat when exposed to outside air. At least, that’s what the superintendent seemed to feel, and the meeting ended shortly after that.

“But the couple soon took up the battle on another field. They sent a letter to all the denominational officials they could think of: general superintendent, district superintendent, former district superintendent, first elder of this church, third elder of this church. The letter said, ‘We are charter members of this church, and we have always been able to work with other pastors. But we have been unable to work with Reverend Monitor. Therefore, we are resigning our memberships.’

“The responses I got back were almost all supportive. My general superintendent called to say, ‘Tom, I just wanted you to know that I often get letters like this, and I threw this one in the trash can. Then I prayed that God would make you strong in a negative situation.'”

The strangling power structure of Tom Monitor’s church was finally broken. The church has prospered since then, largely because he had the courage to confront the manipulative couple. Without confronting the situation early in his tenure, he may have faced a far worse situation down the road. With the risky confrontation, however, he went through short-term pain and discomfort. But he created a better ministry for the majority of church members.

Why don’t more pastors face the need for such risk taking? There are many reasons.

Personal Insecurity and Other Hang-ups

Tom Monitor, despite his success, cites one factor that causes pastors to resist decisive but risky confrontation: “I’m still not comfortable about that situation. Even this morning I noticed the former Sunday school superintendent’s car parked at the home of another fellow who recently quit coming to our church. That brought back all kinds of fears.”

Afraid of another power struggle?

“Oh no. There’s no power base in the church for them to work from now. Most people are genuinely pleased the way things turned out.”

Then why is it still such a sore spot? Personal rejection? Fear of criticism?

“I think it’s personal insecurity. I’m a pastor because I love people — and I guess I want to be loved in return. After Ralph and Martha resigned, I looked for a letter to the editor in our local newspaper. Seriously! Our situation has worked out beautifully; I did what had to be done for the health of this church. But I hope I never have to go through that again.”

Youth and Inexperience

Reluctance also arises from lack of experience. Like most leadership skills, risk taking is learned on the job. Some experience lessens the fear. One pastor used the following analogy:

“When an airliner goes down and two hundred people are killed, statistics show that the number of people flying immediately falls off and stays off for three or four weeks, until the shock lessens and traffic gradually builds back up. The ones who cancel trips are the occasional flyers who probably don’t know, or believe, the statistics on how safe flying is. Business people who fly all the time don’t miss a trip.

“In many ways, a young pastor is like the infrequent flyer. He comes into a church with an underdeveloped ability to measure the risk of certain decisions.”

Pastor Monitor put it this way: “This is my first church. For five years prior to coming here I was associate pastor and youth director of another church. In that position I was not accustomed to risks. I was sheltered by my senior pastor, at least from the emotional intensity. He ran interference for me more than once. I was not anxious for confrontation nor ready for the challenge I was about to face.”

The veteran pastor, on the other hand, has learned that risky decisions are a natural part of ministry. The old hand realizes, Although it may be unpleasant at times, on the whole the ministry is a safe place, and I’m going to survive the rough spots.

The Unique Role of Pastor

The role of pastor is a delicate one, which also makes risk taking precarious.

Consider the difference between scientists and leaders. The scientist can study, perform experiments, and tell us whether a trip to the moon is possible. The leader, however, must say whether we ought to risk the human lives and invest the necessary funds. The scientist can provide the statistical probabilities, but someone else decides whether it should be done.

For the local church pastor, the roles of scientist and leader are rolled into one. As “scientist,” the pastor researches and quantifies the risk. As “leader,” the pastor decides whether the risk is consistent with the goals of the church. At times even a high probability of success is not enough to tip the scales in favor of making a certain decision. Perhaps the expense in terms of spiritual integrity or church morale is too great.

Colorado pastor Alan Ahlgrim uses an analogy to describe the multifaceted role pastors play: “A pastor wears many hats. One is the hat of the theologian. When I wear this hat, I make decisions based upon correct theology. A second is a shepherd’s hat. My concern is the lost sheep, and I make decisions based on their welfare, indifferent to the rest. A third hat is for the administrator, when I must disregard the lost sheep and cater to the ninety and nine.

“I find the multiple-hat problem most acute in relating to staff and the core people of my congregation. How are they to know when I’m wearing the hat of friend and when I’m wearing the hat of administrator or theologian? I’ve found they can’t. Some meetings I change hats so quickly that I come across as arbitrary or inconsistent. In my own mind I’m following perfect logic. To them I’m a scatterbrain, or worse.

“One of the most unfortunate problems this created was with a church secretary, one of the sweetest people I have ever known. She had the gifts of hospitality and mercy par excellence. She protected me from interruption during my study hours. She screened telephone calls. She even kept an eye on my health.

“Unfortunately, Brenda was not an efficient secretary for a large church. She became rattled easily. She confused phone messages and made frequent typing errors. She even listed people in the bulletin as having birthdays and anniversaries when in fact they had died a year ago. I knew something had to be done. After she made a series of serious errors with my correspondence, I finally said, ‘This just isn’t working out.’ She said, ‘Do you want me to resign?’ I didn’t answer her directly because as a gentle friend I wanted to let her have time to make the decision.

“I knew if she went home and finally decided to resign it would be devastating to her. So I called her husband, who was also my friend, and said, ‘I think you should be aware of what happened this afternoon, because Brenda will need a lot of support.’

“He said, ‘What you’re telling me is you want her to resign.’

“I said yes, and as soon as I said it, I realized our friendship was over. Both of them were extraordinarily angry.

“Looking back, I should have told her I was firing her instead of trying to finesse her resignation. I thought I was taking a pastoral, humane approach. But I didn’t realize that when one is wearing the administrative hat, the hat of pastor simply can’t be seen. Unless you know the difference, a few bad experiences like this can paralyze you with indecision.”

Shooting at a Moving Target

The decision whether to take a risk often depends on the importance of the issue. One pastor called this the “Choose Wisely the Cross You’re Going to Die Upon” Decision.

One pastor made such a decision:

“From what I understand, one man in our congregation was ready to leave the church anyway. But when I came, I gave him the reason to do so.

“He had the belief that you should not eat in the church building. He felt it was a theological issue, based on 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul deals with abuses of Communion and the love feast. Since these good practices had apparently degenerated into drunkenness and gluttony, Paul suggests people should eat before they come to church so they don’t defile God’s house.

“I didn’t think this should be taken as an across-the-board prohibition against eating at church. But this man felt strongly about it, and before I came he had somehow convinced the board they should prohibit eating in the church. Talking to others on the board, I discovered no one else felt strongly about it either way, so I decided to set my brother straight.

“I blithely assumed it would be a simple thing to go over to his house, explain the biblical principle, and correct his faulty interpretation. Once he understood how he had misconstrued the passage, the whole thing would work out.

“So I did, but it didn’t. He got upset and left the church, and bad feelings always accompany that. Looking back, I should have kept my mouth shut for at least two years. Even then, I’m not sure I would have fought about this issue.”

Complicating decisions like this is the fact that many issues change in importance from decade to decade. Thus, some reluctance to take risks comes from being uncertain whether this one is currently worth it. However, many issues in localchurch ministry have always been with us. People don’t change, and many of the confrontations pastors face are simply people problems.

Similar patterns punctuate the history of the church. Some of the problems facing the New Testament church (the question of circumcision, for example) are generally moot points for the modern church. There’s no more risk in them. But overall risk has not lessened; only the specific risks have changed.

For example, an accelerated growth rate has made change itself a problem for the modern church leader. The successful church leader is one who can quickly discern changes and adjust leadership style accordingly: “We need to teach survival skills to cope with risk, uncertainty, and stress which will be difficult for us to manage as individuals and as society.… Education of this sort must be perceived as a lifelong process.”4

Ever-changing conditions demand courageous, resourceful leaders. Gone are the days of a monolithic approach to decision making that fails to recognize that different procedures for decision making apply in different situations. Coping means flexibility where possible. Lynne Dixon, pastor of the Saratoga (Indiana) Church of God, used one approach in this case:

“I usually ask myself, ‘Is this decision good for the church’s organization and efficiency, or is it good for the church’s maturity and the growth of the body of Christ? If it’s mainly for efficiency, I tend to choose for the individual — we can be very inefficient at times.

“Our piano player is an example. She was an excellent musician at one time, but developed arthritis in her hands and also began losing her sense of timing. When it was time for the offertory, she would start playing when the plates were coming back in. But she did the best she could.

“Some people didn’t like it, but they couldn’t play the piano at all. This woman could, and she was willing to play even though it hurt a great deal. It might have been more efficient to look for another piano player, but there were none in our congregation, and it would have cost money to hire one from outside. I decided to stick with what we had. Maybe we didn’t sound as good as other churches, but I didn’t think that was quite as important.”

To what lengths would she go to retain this pianist’s right to minister at the expense of the “efficiency” of morning worship?

“If another pianist were available and willing, I think we’d change. If she still said, ‘This is my ministry, and I won’t give it up,’ then I think I’d work at it, maybe by saying, ‘Well, we need to develop some young pianists. Would you help me do that?’ But for now, she’s the best we have and doing the best she can.”

Has this pastor ever had to decide for the group against the individual?

“Yes, when we purchased the vacant lot next to the church, several people in the church didn’t think we ought to buy it. The majority did, though, so we went ahead with the purchase.

“I encouraged those who disagreed to come to all our meetings and voice their objections but to abide by the majority’s wishes. After the eventual vote, they were upset, but no one left the church over it.

“In that case, it didn’t seem to me the growth and maturity of some individuals were at stake as much as it was just a difference of opinion over a business deal. The will of the majority was the deciding factor in that case. In a sense we went with the efficiency of the organization.”

Clearly, the decision about when to take a risk is a complicated one. Many initial, innate fears tangle the decision. One way to overcome the uncertainty and conflicting value scales is to collect as much information as possible about the conditions of each case. Four questions cry for answers:

— What kind of risk is it?

— How important is it?

— What are the circ*mstances?

— What can I handle?

The first question is overlooked most often. Treating all decisions as the same type is to court disaster. To stress the importance of this distinction, the next six chapters provide guidelines for distinguishing different kinds of decisions. The last three questions are dealt with in chapters 10, 11, and 12.

Once these four questions are properly answered, it’s easier to assess the riskiness of the situation and decide whether it is time to boldly step forth or wisely mark time.

George Herbert, “Jacula Prudentum,” Works (London: Oxford University Press, 1941).

Robert J. Trotter, “Blackjack Behavior: When Rational Minds Go Bust,” Psychology Today (October 1985): 14. See also Gideon Keren and Willem Wagenaar, “On the Psychology of Playing Blackjack,” Journal of Experimental Psychology (June 1985): 133-157.

Names and some identifying details have been changed in this story.

Elsie Johnson, “Anticipatory Leadership,” Catalyst for Change (Spring 1981): 27.

Pastors

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

Security is the mother of danger and the grandmother of destruction.
Thomas Fuller1

Ignoring risk can be fatal.

Misunderstanding the risks of ministry, if not fatal, at least leads to ineptitude and failure. Misunderstanding, in this case, means treating all risks as if they were the same, a mistake that greatly increases the chances of disaster. So first we must identify the nature of the risk in question.

A primary resource, of course, is Scripture. Although the Bible never uses the word risk, story after story tells of risks taken, risks that end in flaming disasters or inspiring victories. Principles emerge from these stories.

Fred Craddock, professor of preaching and New Testament at Candler School of Theology, tells of a sermon he preached early in his ministry based on Luke 15, the story of the shepherd and the sheep. Craddock says he used to preach the sermon as if the shepherd left the ninety and nine in the safety of the fold and went out to search for the one lost sheep. After many years of telling this story with that presupposition, he discovered, to his embarrassment, that the text doesn’t say that at all. The ninety-nine were left not in the safety of the fold but in the wilderness.

“That is far more descriptive of our heavenly Father,” says Craddock. “Only God, exhibiting his risky, careless love, would leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness to look for the one who is lost.”2 The principle: Risks taken with the goal of presenting the gospel to those who have not heard are high-priority risks indeed.

Look for risk in the New Testament and you find it. In fact, you find many different kinds of risk. Eventually categories emerge that help us develop other principles for making decisions in risky church situations.

The four general categories of problems the early church faced are ones we face today: theological, institutional, interpersonal, and personal. Although these categories are not mutually exclusive, they do make convenient hooks on which to hang different kinds of risks and the way we treat them.

Theological Risks

The most important category involves decisions that deal with fundamental theological truth. Perhaps the prime New Testament example is the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. Some people had been teaching young Christians that circumcision was necessary for salvation. Other teachers, including Paul and Barnabas, realized this was a fundamental theological error — one that could not be tolerated no matter what fallout resulted from the confrontation.

At the meeting of apostles and elders to consider the question, Paul and Barnabas put their previous ministry on the line as evidence they were right. Had the council determined the other teachers were correct, Paul and Barnabas’s future as teachers would have been shaky indeed.

We now know the council decided in favor of their theology and sent Paul and Barnabas to deliver a letter outlining the decision to the confused churches. Having stood for this theology, the church leaders now faced the risk that the young churches teaching this error would reject the edict and break away. Since the Christian church was young and vulnerable, the prospect of losing any new groups was frightening. Yet the theological principle at stake — the universality of the gospel — was so crucial that the risk had to be taken, regardless of the potential fallout.

In this case, the risk paid off. The one church we read about, the young Gentile congregation in Antioch, accepted the teaching with enthusiasm and remained healthy. Possibly there was some backlash not included in the text — perhaps a few members fell away — but the essential integrity of the body of Christ was insured.

Institutional Risks

Though the most important risks are theological, two-thirds of the risks a local church leader takes have little to do with theology. In fact, according to our survey, a full one-third of the risks a pastor takes fall into a category we call institutional. Just keeping the institutional church together and smoothly functioning makes up a considerable part of the local church leader’s task.

Many institutional issues faced the New Testament church. In Acts 6 we find the dramatic growth and increasing ethnic diversity of the young church creating institutional problems. The Grecian Jews complained that their widows were being shortchanged in the daily distribution of food in favor of the widows of the Aramaic-speaking Christians.

The Twelve realized that administering this benevolence was an important practical issue but in a different category from the task of preaching the Word. They met and decided that “it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.” So they asked the church to select seven wise and spiritual men to be assigned the task of dividing up the food fairly.

The whole church was pleased with the solution. An unfair and potentially divisive situation was confronted directly, and the risk of schism was avoided simply by delegating the problem to a group of people with the gifts to solve such problems.

The institutional issue was not ignored, nor was it allowed to deflect the church from its primary mission of spreading the Good News.

Interpersonal Risks

A third category involves interpersonal disagreement among church members. Because human nature is universal, many New Testament examples of interpersonal conflict could just as easily have been written last week as two thousand years ago. For example, 1 Corinthians 6 warns believers against taking a dispute with another believer before secular judges, certainly a continuing concern in our litigious society.

Equally familiar is the human nature displayed in Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant. In the story, a king was calling in outstanding debts from his servants. One servant owed a huge sum and was unable to pay. The king was going to sell the servant and his family into slavery to recoup some of his losses. The servant begged for rescission of the obligation. The king felt sorry for him and forgave the debt.

The parable has a bittersweet ending, however. The servant also had some outstanding debts. And when he faced one of his debtors, a fellow servant who couldn’t pay, the forgiven servant refused to forgive.

When the king heard about this hardness of heart, he threw the servant in jail and berated him: “You wicked servant. I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”

The king was well within his legal rights to demand the debt. Since his kingdom didn’t depend on recovery of the money, however, he was also well within his rights to cancel the debt.

The root issue here was an interpersonal one — how the first servant related to the second servant.

Personal Risks

Some risks that church leaders take can only be described as personal — involving their call to ministry or personal relationships. Sometimes a relationship problem is based on theological, institutional, or interpersonal concerns. Sometimes, however, the crisis is essentially personal in nature. Personal crises take several forms.

The call to ministry. The call has changed somewhat since New Testament times. In Acts 1, for example, Matthias was added to the eleven apostles as a result of drawing lots. Although many young people today “put out a fleece” to decide whether to go into the ministry, few flip a coin to make the decision. We take a more “professional” approach.

In addition, after a pastor has been in a church for a year, or five, or ten, sometimes his or her ministry gifts no longer match those required by the congregation. The risky question: Should I stay or leave?

Personal growth or stagnation. Pastors also face decisions regarding their personal spiritual growth. I suspect the apostle Paul would have died a thousand deaths in a denominational desk job. The “great lion of God” seemed to thrive on the missionary tasks God set before him. Paul decided how to use his gifts by listening to God, not weighing the opportunities elsewhere. The question: How can I use my gifts to the kingdom’s greatest advantage?

Personal conflicts. In cases of personal conflict with members of the congregation, the burden usually falls on the church leader to resolve the problem. And rightly so.

In some cases, however, this is simply not possible. Occasionally, the pastor’s spiritual batteries are too low to turn the other cheek or go the extra mile. Sometimes the situation has deteriorated beyond what two people, however well-intentioned, can patch up. In those cases, the best resource is the elders, who can help provide the outside objectivity needed.

Sometimes the conflict is with a staff member. Paul and Barnabas had barely gotten into their first missionary journey when they had a “sharp disagreement about whether to take Mark along with them” (Acts 15:36ff.). They resolved the conflict by dividing their energies, Barnabas taking Mark with him, and Paul finding a new associate missionary in Silas. Apparently the arrangement worked very well.

When to Take a Risk?

Not every situation, of course, calls for risky action. Some call for maintenance, some for compromise, others for careful and premeditated ignoring. Yet more serious situations develop from a pastor failing to take action than from acting too hastily.

How to know when to rush in where angels fear to tread? The first step is to identify what kind of problem you’re dealing with. Attempting to handle an interpersonal problem as if it were an institutional issue only compounds the problem. Similarly, a theological misunderstanding must be dealt with much differently than a personal crisis.

In the next four chapters we will discuss the four kinds of risk in more detail, outlining specifically the approach to be taken in each.

Thomas Fuller, The Virtuous Lady. Quoted in Sydney Roberts, Thomas Fuller: A Seventeenth Century Worthy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953).

Fred Craddock audio cassette, “Preaching as Storytelling” Workshop, Preaching Today 23 (June, 1985).

Pastors

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

The blind man is not afraid of ghosts.
Burmese Proverb1

Al Stoller’s decision not to take the risk of confrontation differs little from an executive neglecting to make a decision because he can not or will not recognize the long-range implications.

Several years ago an executive faced a difficult decision at his chemical company’s co*king plant. co*ke making requires a gigantic battery to cook the co*ke (a derivative of coal) slowly and evenly for long periods. The battery is the most important and expensive piece of equipment used in the process.

This particular plant’s battery showed signs of weakening. A replacement would cost $6 million. Such a large expenditure would adversely affect the bottom line that year. Pressured by a recent corporate decree to cut unnecessary expenditures, the businessman tabled the request to replace the battery. Instead, the existing battery was patched and held together for four more years.

When the battery finally collapsed, however, the company, unable to produce co*ke for several weeks, was sued for breach of contract by a steel producer. The Environmental Protection Agency cited the firm for violating pollution regulations. Eventually, the total bill, including lawsuits and replacement, exceeded $100 million.

In hindsight, of course, we can see the executive should have replaced the battery earlier. Had he acted decisively, millions of dollars would have been saved. He took what appeared to be the risk-free way — and ended up risking not only his leadership but the very existence of his business.2

Contrast that account of indecision with a story told about Calvin Coolidge. During his term as governor of Massachusetts, the Boston police force went on strike. The police commissioner responded by recruiting a new force. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, appealed to Coolidge to recognize strikers’ rights. Coolidge dictated a reply: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”

Friends urged Coolidge not to send it, saying it would end his political career. “Very likely,” said cool Calvin, and he sent the message anyway. It proved to be a successful, and popular, decision.

Such commitment under pressure inspires. The contrast between our close-to-the-vest executive and daring Coolidge appears to teach a simple lesson: act decisively and with bravado.

But is it really so simple? When we stop to think, we recognize that in the case of a prudent, successful politician like Calvin Coolidge, for every risk he took there were ten he did not take because he judged the danger too great. In fact, Coolidge’s biographer later noted that “Coolidge was the reluctant hero of law and order. Only with great caution did he recognize the issue that had been forced on him by the Boston Police Strike.”3 Coolidge did indeed stick to his guns — but out of careful deliberation, not any John Wayne bravado.

How does one judge the relative riskiness of a decision? When do you take a risk? Answering those questions demands that we look more closely at what risk is.

Risk Is Inescapable

We go to great lengths to avoid risks, especially physical ones. Entire government agencies protect us in the work place, on the highways, and aboard public transportation. Other agencies guard our food, drugs, and medical care. Educational institutions are monitored to protect us from psychological risk and manipulation.

With this apparent cushion of protection around every facet of our lives, we are tempted to think of ourselves as safe. Two factors, however, betray the illusion.

The first is our own secret yearning for the zest that risk brings. Something deep in our psyches tells us it is better “to put all, save honor, in jeopardy” than to look too long before taking a leap.

The second factor is reality itself. Risk is still an inevitable part of daily life. Death, the ultimate risk, lurks on the edge of everyone’s consciousness. We take a risk every time we drive a car, eat a meal, meet a new acquaintance. Unknown contingencies challenge every waking moment.

The illusion of risk-free living weakens our ability to cope when danger, either physical or psychological, does strike. August Heckscher, in the Christian Science Monitor, said that perhaps the primary aim of education is to make informed risk takers: “Every graduate from the ideal school should be constantly undertaking ventures that test him and put his very being in hazard. What he learns from his books and teachers is not information, certainly not technical knowledge. It is a sense of the values that make him what he is and that may permit him to become somebody different. It is an instructed judgment and a capacity to dare.…

“To be a risk-taker requires a mature perception of our changing position amid complexities. If an acquaintance is to turn into a friend, and a friendship into a deeper intimacy, one must be aware at each stage of what is happening in one’s inner and outer world. Shakespeare described the nobility of life as being able ‘to look before and after,’ to appreciate, that is, precisely the pitfalls one is escaping and the rewards one achieves.”4

Once the ubiquitous nature of risk is understood, we become better decision makers. Instead of forfeiting opportunity by doing nothing at all, we can choose between actions, accurately weighing the risk of each.

Risk Is Essential

Without risk takers, life would be even more dangerous. Politicians, doctors, and scientists throughout history who were willing to take well-calculated risks have benefited us all.

Smallpox was the scourge of mankind in 1717 when Zabdiel Boylston developed an effective but hazardous method of protection. He called it innoculation. He injected a small amount of infected material directly from smallpox patients into uninfected patients.

It was reasonably effective. During previous epidemics of smallpox, one in seven of those infected died. Only one in forty-one of those Boylston innoculated died. Boylston did not lack volunteers for this risky procedure because fear of the epidemic drove people to him. Boylston’s medical colleagues, however, strongly opposed his revolutionary practice. They made a great deal of the one of his forty-one patients who died, ignoring the extraordinary improvement in mortality the other forty represented.

They accused Boylston of violating two of the ancient injunctions of Hippocrates, whose teachings had guided medical ethics since antiquity: “Above all do no harm to anyone nor give advice which may cause his death.” Boylston persevered in his treatment because he understood the relative risks of not being innoculated (at epidemic’s end, 844 of 5,759 people, or 14.6 percent of those who developed smallpox, died) compared to the risks of being innoculated (eventually 6 of 247 people, or 2.4 percent of those he innoculated, died).

This striking reduction in the risk of death eventually exonerated Boylston and demonstrated the principle that smallpox could be prevented by human intervention, eventually leading to the almost-foolproof method of vaccination.5

It also illustrates the principle of benefiting from a thorough understanding of risk.

Risk Is Necessary in the Church

Risk taking is a necessary part of local church ministry. Without risk-taking leadership, churches quickly become ineffective. The great leaders of church history recognized this and took great risks to further the cause of the body of Christ. Two examples:

John Chrysostom. A Christian orator, Scripture exegete, and church father, Chrysostom was born at Antioch about 347. After ordination as a priest in 386, he began a brilliant preaching career. In his zeal to keep the church pure, however, he frequently called the clergy to task. He berated the rich in his congregations for not regarding their wealth as a trust, and charity to the poor their chief obligation.

This was a risky position to take in a day when Christianity was the state religion, endorsed in all its pomp and luxury by the Empress Eudoxia. Eudoxia was known for both her support of the Christian clergy and her luxurious lifestyle. Surely Chrysostom understood the risk of attacking not only the church hierarchy but the empress. After weighing the risks, he decided it sufficiently important to take the chance. As a result he was exiled by Eudoxia and was deposed as bishop by the clergy.

Was it worth the risk? Eudoxia is now a footnote to history, the other clergy of the period mostly unknown. Chrysostom’s writings, however, have influenced countless theologians in the fifteen centuries since his death.6

Ulrich Zwingli. In 1522, Ulrich Zwingli had been preaching the gospel in Zurich for three years. Shortly after Ash Wednesday that year, Zwingli made a symbolic stand regarding the rule of fasting from meat during Lent.

Zwingli attended a simple evening meal at which some of those present ate sausage. Although he did not eat any himself, he raised no objection, an equal sin for a clergyman. It would have been easy for him to escape the consequences. He could have explained it as a mistake or admitted it as sinful and sought absolution.

Instead, Zwingli not only condoned the action but made it a public issue in his sermon of March 23, which was enlarged on April 16 into a short pamphlet.

In that pamphlet he explained that he had never spoken against abstaining from eating meat during Lent or on Friday. What he had encouraged, he said, was freedom in Christ, and this had been interpreted by some to imply they need not abstain from meat. It was this opinion regarding freedom in Christ, rather than the action taken, that Zwingli sought to justify.

Eventually the Swiss church adopted Zwingli’s position, which led to a more unified church in Switzerland and contributed to the reformation of the church throughout Europe. Zwingli accomplished this by risking his name and position on the matter.7

We could go on with further illustrations of risks taken in local churches throughout the ages. Risk is part of life and ministry. Indeed it might be accurate to say that to minister well is to know when to take risks.

J. L. Cranmer-Byng, ed., Burmese Proverbs (London: John Murray, 1962), 23.

Robert Jackall, “Moral Mazes: Bureaucracy and Managerial Work,” Harvard Business Review (September/October 1983): 126.

Donald McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President (New York: Macmillan Company, 1967), 86-95.

August Heckscher, “The Risk-Takers,” Christian Science Monitor (19 June 1981): 20.

John Urquhart and Klaus Heilmann, Risk Watch: The Art of Life (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1984), 21ff.

See Donald Attwater, St. John Chrysostom (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1939).

See G. R. Potter, Zwingli (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

Pastors

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller

We are not used to thinking of ministry in terms of risk. Risk implies an element of doubt and uncertainty. It suggests dangerous initiative. Risk is a frontier word, a word borrowed from the arenas of war and business.

Religious propagators, on the other hand, tend to present the church as a risk-free zone, a haven of rest floating on clouds of salvation. This view has understandable roots. God has promised us the security of eternal life. Where is the risk in such certainty? Many of us have sung the Daniel Whittle hymn: “I know whom I have believed / and am persuaded that he is able / to keep that which I’ve committed / unto him against that day” (italics mine). No uncertainty there. With such an absolute theology, it is only natural to think that a church, properly functioning, hums along without the risk associated with the secular world.

Intuitively, local church leaders know different. They know the gut-wrenching decisions they are forced to make and the pain a misstep, or even the proper step, can bring. They have made many difficult decisions and waited for the consequences — occasionally peaceful resolution but more often explosions of varying magnitude.

In spite of such crises, the popular image of the church as a smoothly operating temple of God’s Spirit remains strong. It is an image all of us would like to believe, so we sometimes work on two different planes. On one level, we present a smoothly functioning facade to the world (occasionally even in our own thinking), all the while trying to cope behind the scenes with the reality of administering a complex church institution — a task that requires every bit as much skill as handling a small business.

Thus, too often the image of harmony, good and worthy in itself, hinders the strong, direct initiative called for in the everyday functioning of the body of Christ. Would coming to grips with the concept of risk taking help?

The following story of one pastor and his antagonist can be read two ways. It can be read passively, without the notion of risk, with only the feeling that this kind of thing should never happen in the body of Christ. That disavowal, as we shall see, is itself why many of these skirmishes escalate into full-scale war.

Or it can be read actively, with an eye to danger and decision, putting yourself in the place of Pastor Stoller, and asking: What would I have done differently? When would I have taken a stand? When would I have risked the short-term pain of a difficult decision in anticipation of long-term health?1

A Case History

Al Stoller always relied on two things to work himself out of tight spots — his gift for dealing with conflict and the belief that God would take care of people problems. So when trouble surfaced in the person of Pete Mankin, Al figured things would work out.

Al, with his wife, Marcy, had been pastoring the Christian Church in Hamilton, Ohio, for eight years when they met Pete. Hamilton is a town of seven thousand west of Pittsburgh, and Pete was a local businessman whose factory employed many of the people in the church. They met when a flood damaged a dozen houses in the neighborhood where many of Pete’s employees lived.

Al’s congregation had a disaster unit. When a house burned or a barn collapsed, the unit would offer food and assistance. Following this flood, they brought in tractors and trucks and brooms and buckets to clean up. Several days after the flood, Pete heard from his employees how the Christian Church people had helped. So he dropped by the church and asked, “Who are you? Why are you helping these people?”

The Mankin family started attending Al’s church. It began to make a difference in Pete’s life. He had been living in the fast lane, but soon opened his home for a Bible study. Then he became involved in the administration of the church’s grade school and served on its board of directors, eventually becoming chairman.

“We recognized right away he was a strong man,” remembered Marcy. “He had charisma, which made it easy for people to take his side, even if they didn’t really believe in what he was doing. He was attractive and warm in many ways.”

“He was generous,” said Al. “He and his wife had a large house and would have the whole congregation in for a pizza party. He even bought a bus for our Christian school — a twenty-thousand-dollar gift.”

The first year after Pete joined the church, everything went smoothly. He continued to grow spiritually. He initiated men’s Bible studies at his home or at restaurants. He would stand up on Sunday and tell the people how much they meant to him. Al felt they had found a strong leader. He remembers telling Marcy one Sunday evening, “Pete is really growing. I can see him being an elder of the church one day.”

Pete’s spiritual growth, however, proved selective. Certain areas of his life remained untouched by repentance and grace, particularly the material side of life. He had lots of money and enjoyed spending it on comforts and entertainment. He did a lot of expensive traveling. He was known as a sharp businessman, occasionally too sharp.

“It’s hard to describe the problem I began to sense. So much of it dealt with his motives,” said Al. “Pete was outwardly supportive of the church, but he did things that made me wonder.

“For example, I would preach about fairness in our financial dealings with others, and Pete would nod his head. But then he would tell me privately how great it was that he could pay his employees so little. He said he wouldn’t be able to compete in the Pittsburgh market, but here the rural environment enabled him to get cheap labor and make good money.”

Al suggested that Christian managers should want employees to benefit when the company benefits.

“These people are happy with what they have,” snapped Pete. “They wouldn’t know how to handle more money if they had it. They’re just grateful for a job, and that’s what I’m giving them. If I weren’t here, where would they be?”

Soon Al realized that Pete was telling his employees a different story. “Some of the employees who attended our church reported that Pete would go through the shop and say, ‘We’re having a bad year, guys. We’ve got to do better. We need more production.’ At the same time he would be telling me how much income he’d made this year, and how great the bottom line looked.”

Pete’s sharp business practices extended beyond low wages, however. Although others in the church didn’t know much about Pete’s business ethics, he took Al into his confidence, probably out of a need to engage in the executive’s version of locker-room talk.

“He told me things that I kept confidential. But I would tell him how I felt about those things. He didn’t like that, of course. He would tell me, ‘You’ve never been in business, so you can’t possibly understand all the issues.’

“This put me in an awkward position. I felt a need to keep it in confidence, because I didn’t want to prejudice the church against an immature Christian. But I also realized some of the things he was doing, particularly where they affected other members of our church, had broader implications than Pete’s own spiritual well-being. The church would eventually be adversely affected.”

The trouble started shortly after Pete announced he wanted to make his business a Christian establishment. Calling his workers together he said: “I want my business to be run the same way we run the church — by New Testament principles. I may have been lax in this in the past. But from now on I want to run not only a profitable business, but one that is as ethically sound as any organization there is.”

That sounded great. But pretty soon the men from the church who worked for Pete started telling Al: “He still swears like a sailor. And he mocks leaders of the church, both the elders and the pastor.”

Al asked them why they hadn’t told him this before.

“Before, we put up with his double standard because we all do it to some extent,” one young engineer confided, “but his grand announcement was too much. Announcing he’s going to run his business by Christian principles — and then not changing anything — is pure hypocrisy.”

That was Al’s first sign that all was not well between pastor and nascent disciple. Viewed alone, that would have been disturbing, but not enough to keep Al awake at night. But other collisions of the pastor’s sphere with Pete’s sphere began to make Al wonder if he wasn’t involved in a game that had more at stake than simple competitive pride.

For example, the principal of the church’s grade school resigned. Attempting to aid the search for a replacement, Al, as the church’s chief administrator and thus ex officio member of the board, suggested a teacher from the staff. An excellent teacher, who had been with the school from the beginning, she had just gotten her master’s degree in school administration. She wanted the job and was fully qualified. Pete, however, started the rumor that Al was twisting his arm and trying to take over his job as board chairman.

Marcy, not knowing Al had recommended this teacher, also recommended her to Pete. Pete then told his friends that Al was using his wife and “several others” (the church secretary had also talked to him) to sway him.

“It was simply a case where there was one logical, qualified candidate, and everyone recognized that — except Pete,” Al said later.

In the end, Pete didn’t consider the teacher, and she left to teach in another private school. That was a loss; dedicated teachers were hard to find. Even after she left, Pete persisted in implying that Al tried to twist his arm.

Al finally talked to the elders of the church about Pete. “Of our four elders, two were cautious about Pete and were aware of some double-dealing; the other two were favorable toward him, and they soon let Pete know I was raising questions about him.

“Another time we were building a new building and some people were painting at night. We needed lights and used some stage lights Pete had loaned the school stage troupe. He got angry about the lights being used that way. I offered to buy new lights, and he said no. But he continued to tell people how he resented it.

“These all sound little, but I felt a growing conflict. I should have dealt with it, but I let it slide, hoping it would go away.”

The conflict was beginning to take its toll on the pastor’s home life. Marcy noticed all was not well.

“I was aware of what was going on, but not its intensity,” she said. “Al would tell me some things people were telling him, and I couldn’t understand how Pete could lead two such different lives. How could he keep from tripping himself up? How could he remember what he said to someone at work and not contradict himself at church?”

Gradually the emotional anguish became more obvious.

“I knew Al was struggling, and my intuition told me big trouble was brewing. I knew two of the elders would have a hard time standing up to Pete, so when Al mentioned setting up a retreat with the elders to determine what direction to go, I was all for it.”

The elders went on retreat in the Poconos in March. Things appeared to go well. Al outlined the growing conflict with Pete, and after discussion the head elder told him, “We don’t see any problem with your ministry — let’s just keep working at this.” Even the two who were more supportive of Pete agreed that Al was the person to support.

When the elders came back and told the church they were in full support of their pastor, Pete started coming on strong. He began to tell members of the church, “If you aren’t men enough to stand up to the pastor and get him out of here, I will.”

Six weeks later one of the elders came to Al and said, “I’m withdrawing my support from you.”

“What changed your mind?” Al asked.

The defecting elder didn’t have an explanation.

Again Al remembers that as a time he should have acted: “I knew the elder was withdrawing his tithe from the church, and he acknowledged his loyalty was withdrawn. I should have asked him to step aside until the problem could be worked through. But I didn’t.”

The next Sunday, Pete stopped Al after the service and said, “If you don’t leave the church, I will.” Al could only stammer something about those not being the only alternatives, but he knew he was in for a battle.

The pressures mounted. At a church business meeting, Pete told the congregation, “The Lord has told me it’s time we got new leadership. The time has come for Pastor Al to move on.”

Apparently, God hadn’t been telling any one else in the congregation; Pete’s reasoning came across as unclear and arbitrary. The people didn’t know how to take Pete’s “message from God.” No action resulted.

For Al, the message was especially confusing: “I’m not sure what was the root of his motivation to have me ousted. Theologically, we disagreed over prosperity teaching. Pete would say things like, ‘The more money you give, the more you’ll get back.’ It affected the way we did some of the business of the church. I told him, ‘Pete, I believe the Bible says the Lord is going to give back to us, but not necessarily in dollars. And that’s a low motivation for giving.’

“He was particularly disturbed when I said in the pulpit that I disagreed with a preacher I had heard say, ‘God gave his Son in order to get more sons.’ To me, God’s love is so pure that if only one person had responded he would still have loved. He didn’t give his Son only to get a greater return on his investment.

“Yet I can’t believe theology was the real reason. Much of it was personal, I’m convinced. He knew I was learning more and more about his business practices, and that made him uneasy. I learned that in order to get rid of his plant manager, he accused him of having an affair with someone in the office. There was no basis to the accusation. The man did leave the plant, however, with a broken life.

“Few people in the congregation were aware of what was going on, and I didn’t tell them. The elders and I didn’t know how public to make it. Now I see it was weak leadership on my part that I didn’t do something publicly. We had disciplined people who were unfaithful sexually and released them if they were unrepentant. We should have followed the same procedure in this case. Pete’s actions were just as harmful spiritually and should have been dealt with.

“Yet if we had confronted Pete with these things, he would have gone to any length to convince people they weren’t true.”

Once an employee at Pete’s business overheard him talking on the telephone about the pastor: “We almost have him broken down. Just hang in there. We’ll get him to resign yet.”

Al asked Pete to come to an elder’s meeting and there he asked him about the story. “That’s a big lie,” Pete said. “My entire office staff will deny it ever happened. I’ll swear on the Bible it didn’t happen.”

There was a pause, and one of the elders said, “Pete, you may not like this, but you did make that telephone call and say those things. I was the one you called.”

Pete started to backpedal. “Boy, I don’t remember saying that.” But he was caught red-handed.

Al let his defenses down. The battle was the Lord’s, and the Lord would win the battle. Hadn’t the elder, one of his opponents, held Pete to account? Surely they all could see what kind of man they were facing. But Al hadn’t seen the end.

In the middle of May, two days before Al and Marcy were set to leave for their vacation, another elder withdrew his support from Al.

“That didn’t give us time to do anything,” remembers Al. He told Marcy, “We can’t leave now.”

But the other two elders urged Al to go: “We will keep things under control until you get back.” They wanted Al to get the rest he needed.

“We did need the time off. Because of the day school, I worked seven days a week. I was really tired. So we went.”

Shortly after Al and Marcy left, there was a death in the congregation. Al flew home for the funeral and immediately sensed things were not well. He performed the funeral Sunday afternoon and was told the church was having a congregational meeting that evening — and he wasn’t invited. Their reason: “Things that need to be said can be said in your absence.”

Al flew back to Vero Beach, Florida, where they were staying with friends. When Marcy saw him, she immediately knew something was wrong. “We walked the beach, and Al was beside himself. Being in the dark about what was going on made everything seem a hundred times worse than it might have been. Finally he said, ‘If the people can’t see what’s going on, maybe we ought to resign.’

“Al felt betrayed by the elders. He couldn’t bear the tremendous gulf between himself and the congregation he’d been so close to. I was angry at God a little myself for what it was doing to Al. Many nights I would lie awake listening to him sob in his sleep.”

Finally Al called the chairman of the elders and said, “I’m going to give it another twenty-four hours of thought, but I think I’m going to resign.”

“Boy, that’s going to be hard,” said the elder, “but that’s up to you.”

After thinking about it for one day, Al called the elder and dictated a letter of resignation that he wanted read to the congregation. “The elder told me later he cried that night, but he didn’t say anything then. He felt I was resigning for my health, and he didn’t want to talk me out of it. I felt he wasn’t supporting me, that Pete had gotten to him, too. I knew this man had a heart for the church, and if he didn’t think I should stay, I didn’t want to. If he didn’t want me to resign, I didn’t get the message.”

By December, Al and Marcy left the congregation they loved and cared for. To this day they both feel their work there was left unfinished.

“Marcy had told me in March we should leave, and I had said, ‘I won’t run from trouble. We’ve had difficulties before, and we’ve always worked through them.’ She felt this was different, but I still think we could have prevented it, and I also think I made too hasty a decision. I walked away from a lot of people who didn’t know what was going on and who would have jumped to my support if they had seen the whole picture.”

* * *

Al has done a great deal of reflecting on what happened: “What could I have done differently? A lot of little things, I suppose. But I can think of two major things that might have made a difference:

“First, I could have taken the risk of confronting the situation much sooner. I might have lost the battle with this powerful man earlier, but I doubt it. It would have been better to act early and perhaps get my nose bloodied than to wait until my entire ministry was at stake.

“Second, I could have involved more people and told more of what I knew. I felt a responsibility to keep in confidence things I knew were going on. Now I feel that when sin is occurring in a parishioner’s life, the elders should know about it.”

Two months after Al and Marcy Stoller left the church, Pete Mankin left also. Several months later, the two dissenting elders left. A behind-the-scenes power struggle decimated the leadership and left a church full of bewildered people wondering what happened — and why.

What to Do?

What happened to Al and Marcy Stoller is replayed someplace almost every week. A powerful person or group in the church develops a dislike for the pastor, and over time the bad feelings escalate to warfare and dismissal, resignation, or church split. Even in milder cases of conflict, bad feelings and hours of wasted ministry time leave the church weakened.

What can be done? Al recognized he needed to take the risk of confrontation sooner. He didn’t because it would have involved a fight. There was a chance, however small, that the conflict would have dissipated without confrontation. But there was a chance it wouldn’t have. How could Al have gauged the relative probabilities of the two possibilities?

It was possible Pete would have a miraculous change of heart. It was possible he would leave the church of his own accord. It was possible someone in the church, a strong elder perhaps, could have seen what was going on and put an end to Pete Mankin’s shenanigans. It was also possible no one would notice what was happening until it was too late. What resources do beleaguered pastors have, and how can they measure the strength of them?

Knowing when to act decisively in hard situations is one of the arts of ministry. It can make the difference between productive ministry and spending all one’s time putting out fires.

Not that aggressive decision making will remove hard decisions. No amount of wisdom removes the risk from ministry. There will always be Pete Mankins ready to challenge the integrity of the work and our right to do it. Nothing will change that.

Risk is part of church life, just as it is part of everyday life. Everyone tolerates a certain amount.

But it is possible to avoid being paralyzed by the prospect of risk. Understanding risk helps strike the best balance between opportunity and fear. There is no opportunity without risk, but there can be risk with minimal fear.

Similarly, understanding the relative riskiness of various church decisions will make us more comfortable with those decisions, and thus more efficient and effective in making them.

We have changed the names and identifying details in this story.

Pastors

Ben Patterson

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

The paradox of the pulpit is that its occupant is a sinner whose chief right to be there is his perpetual sense that he has no right to be there, and is there by grace and always under a spotlight of divine judgment.
A. C. Craig

After the sermon is finished, the church doors locked, and the roast eagerly devoured, we start to unwind from another Sunday morning. During the sermon, all thought was on getting it said. Immediately following, there were hands to shake and people to see. Finally, though, some time during the next several hours, the questions begin rising to the surface:
How did I do?
Did I convince anyone?
Was the Word heard?
We begin to reflect on whether or not the sermon worked. A sermon that fails is emotionally devastating. The sermon that works, however, can be just as spiritually devastating. Holding sway is a heady thing. Producing conviction may well convince a preacher of his own greatness — a terrible price to pay for success.
At Irvine (California) Presbyterian Church, Ben Patterson fights a weekly battle with the twin devastations as well as the other everpresent pulpit temptations. His transparency in this chapter allows us a glimpse at the temptations we, too, face — temptations to rail at the saints, to use rather than absorb Scripture, to “grandstand” for the crowd.
Patterson demonstrates that quality of effective preachers: the ability to sort through a sermon in retrospect, finding satisfaction in the good and continuing to work on the rest.

It was years ago, early in my preaching ministry. I made a broad gesture to the right, and every eye swung that direction. Wow! I thought to myself. I can do that to people! That marked the beginning of my acquaintance with the unique temptations of preaching.

Performing While You Preach

The first and greatest temptation is the one I experienced that day — to be a performer in the pulpit. In one sense, that’s exactly what you must do when you preach — perform. Anyone who dares get up in front of a group of people and take twenty-five minutes of their time to deliver a monologue must be something of a ham. If you loathe that kind of exercise, chances are you will not be effective as a preacher.

But there’s the catch. To preach well, you must constantly open yourself up to the deadliest temptation of the preacher: to put on a performance that will draw the applause and appreciation of the audience. There is no problem in all this if the audience, for you, is God. But unfortunately, God is not usually easy to see. What we do see is the crowd of people sitting in the pews. They are very easy to see, and too often the ones whose approval we seek.

Jesus laid his finger on this temptation in the sixth Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” A pure heart is one with unmixed motives. SØren Kierkegaard says a pure heart wills one thing — to do the will of God, seeking his approval. That’s why Jesus looked at the Pharisees, who did their good works to be thought well of by others, and said, “They have their reward.” They were getting just what they were looking for: human approval.

Look for God, and you will see him. Look for people, and you will see them.

John Bunyan once preached an especially powerful sermon. The first person he spoke to afterward told him so. He said, “Yes, I know. The Devil told me that as I walked away from the pulpit.” I cannot count the number of times I have stood outside the door of the sanctuary after I have preached, ravenous for the praise of my congregation. I had worked hard the previous week to be well prepared. I gave the delivery every bit of energy and concentration I could muster. In many ways I brought to the pulpit all the intensity I would bring to racquetball. Now I am even drenched in perspiration underneath my robe. I want to know, did I win?

In moments of clarity, I know only God can make that judgment and hand out the trophy. But it seems that things are rarely very clear to me after I have preached. Bruce Thielemann put it accurately when he wrote, “Preaching is the most public of ministries and, therefore, the most conspicuous in its failure and the most subject to the temptation of hypocrisy.”

Preaching the Words of God

A second temptation for the preacher is to hear the Word of God only as something to be preached. The pressure to produce a sermon, combined with the fact that sermons are to be preached out of the Bible, can render impossible a simple reading of the Bible for its own sake, or for your own sake. Every time I pick up the Bible and begin to get some insight into a particular passage, I immediately start thinking of how I can preach it to my congregation. I almost always by-pass its relevance to myself. That is deadly. Paul the apostle alluded to his struggle with this temptation when he expressed his concern that “after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27).

The Book of James uses the metaphor of a mirror to describe the Word of God. The purpose of a mirror is to reveal an image: yours. In his brilliant essay “For Self-Examination,” Kierkegaard described how people will examine the mirror, measure the mirror, list its properties, write dissertations on the uses of a mirror; in short, do everything and anything but look at the person the mirror would reveal! So it is with preachers who hear God’s Word only as something to preach to someone else.

Preaching that has integrity comes from men and women who have wrestled personally with what they are proclaiming publicly. I fall prey to this temptation so easily that I must discipline myself to study passages devotionally before I attempt to sermonize on them. And I must do this months in advance of the actual preaching.

Turning Stones into Bread

A third temptation for the preacher is to try to turn stones into bread, to give people what they want instead of what they need. Because the preacher is, in one sense, a performer, there is always present in his psyche the desire to be liked and appreciated by those he preaches to. That desire can become so strong that he becomes as sensitive as a seismograph to the audience’s tastes. It is at this point that the preacher can turn into a propagandist.

All propagandists really do is convince you that the thing you want will be furthered by their products, their candidates, or their messages. Whenever the gospel is portrayed as something that will help people get what they want, uncritical of what they want, it is made an instrument of propaganda. “The Bible has to define your needs before it meets them,” said James Daane. “It has to tell you what you need — the nature of your hurts, pains, aches. In other words, the Bible has got to tell you what sin is, because you don’t know.”

A variety of this temptation to give people what they want is the overuse of stories and illustrations. Everyone who preaches knows how effectively a good story or joke gets people’s attention. The problem with stories is that they lend themselves so readily to being interpreted any way the hearer wants. A congregation of widely divergent points of view can hear a sermon filled with a lot of entertaining stories, and everyone will leave the sanctuary feeling edified. The pastor really told it “like it is.” Of course, if everybody’s point was made, no point was made. But the pastor came off sounding good to everyone.

Prophet and Priest

A fourth temptation for the preacher is the opposite of the one just outlined. It is the temptation to fancy oneself something of a prophet to the people, and to do so at the expense of also being their priest. A prophet, as we all learned in school, is one who stands before the people on behalf of God. A priest is one who stands before God on behalf of the people. Prophets are mouthpieces. Priests are intercessors. Prophets confront the people with God’s truth and their lies. Priests hold up the people before God’s grace.

The temptation of being a prophet at the expense of being a priest is that you can blast away at your people from a position of splendid isolation. You don’t have to go through the agony of caring for the ones you wound with the truth. You can sit in your study, do your exegesis, and give them the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But the truth you give might bludgeon someone without leading on to healing.

John tells us that Jesus came with grace and truth. Among other things, that means the Word became flesh and walked among us. It was no disembodied truth, but it came incarnate in one who shared our flesh and walked in our shoes. As the writer to the Hebrews put it, Jesus was a high priest who was not “unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are …” (4:15).

A preacher simply does not have the right to blast away at his people with the truth — especially if it is the kind of truth that wounds — unless that preacher is also himself wounded by that truth and heartbroken over the plight of his people. A very wise old pastor once told me of two equal and opposite errors a preacher can fall into. One was to neglect his study for his people. The other was to neglect his people for his study. Both errors are tragic. People and study are in constant tension and competition with each other. But both must be attended to.

Making the Bible Relevant

I offer one last temptation of the preacher. It is the temptation to try to make the Bible relevant, to make it come alive. This particular temptation used to be the sole province of the liberal theological tradition. But in the past few years, it has gained a number of victims in the evangelical community.

I succumb to this temptation whenever I feel the Bible needs my help to be believed, that somehow it requires my zinger illustration or my perceptive restatement into thought forms more familiar to my congregation. Most often today those thought forms are the categories and vocabulary of pop psychology.

The sin courted in this temptation is the presumption that it is the Bible that is dead and we who are alive. Of course no preacher would admit to that formal proposition. But many act as though they believe it.

Is the Bible relevant? Dr. Bernard Ramm once remarked, “There is nothing more relevant than the truth.” The longer I preach, the more convinced I become that the best thing I can do is simply get out of Scripture’s way. The soundest homiletical advice I know is not to try to preach it well but just to try not to preach it badly.

This does not mean the preacher should not translate the message of the Bible in words people can understand. But the purpose should always be to help them see the relevance of the Scriptures, not make the Scriptures relevant. In the final analysis, the Word of God authenticates itself through the work of the Holy Spirit, often in spite of, not because of, us preachers.

One might conclude from this chapter that to be a preacher is to walk into a minefield of temptations. It is. I don’t think I have ever preached a sermon with even 30 percent good intentions. And I have despaired as I have looked inside myself and seen the many ways I have fallen before the temptations of the preacher. If the purity of my motivations were the basis of my being in the pulpit, I would have been kicked out long ago. But, thank God, that is not the basis. The basis is the call of God. I am there only because he summoned me many years ago, gave me the necessary gifts, and said, “Start talking about me.”

In our liturgy we confess our sins corporately, before we hear the Word of God through the reading and preaching of the Bible. I must also do so afterward. That is the pattern for me: confess, preach, confess again; and pray Martin Luther’s sacristy prayer:

Lord God, you have made me a pastor in your church. You see how unfit I am to undertake this great and difficult office, and if it were not for your help, I would have ruined it all long ago. Therefore I cry to you for aid. I offer my mouth and my heart to your service. I desire to teach the people — and for myself, I would learn ever more and diligently meditate on your Word. Use me as your instrument, but never forsake me, for if I am left alone I shall easily bring it all to destruction. Amen.

- More fromBen Patterson

Ben Patterson

Pastors

The Real Inviter

First, we must be honest before God. The only right we have to ask people to commit their lives for time and eternity is that God is calling them. The gospel message is both an announcement and a command: It tells what God has done and calls people to respond. “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:19-20). God is making his appeal through us.

I am to present his message faithfully and give his call, trusting him with the response and giving him the glory. My part is to be faithful; his part is to produce fruit.

During a series of meetings conducted by R. A. Torrey years ago, there was no response the first several nights. Homer Hammontree, the songleader, came to Torrey in distress. “Ham,” the evangelist replied, “‘it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.’ Good night; I am going to bed.”

Then came a service with tremendous outpouring of the Spirit and a huge response. Hammontree was exultant. Again Torrey said quietly, “Ham, ‘it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.’ Good night; I am going to bed.”

I find it hard to be as cool as that, but I do admire Torrey’s sense of honest faithfulness to God.

Why Am I Doing This?

But then I must also be honest with myself. Why do I give an invitation? Because it’s expected in my church or tradition? Because I need the affirmation of seeing people respond visibly?

Or, on the other hand, do I not give an invitation because I fear embarrassment if people don’t respond? Or criticism because it’s not part of my group’s tradition?

The only proper reason to give an invitation is that God calls people to decision. From Moses (“Who is on the Lord’s side?”) through Elijah (“How long will you waver between two opinions?”) to Peter (“Repent and be baptized, every one of you”) and Paul (“I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds”) —the scriptural tradition is crisis preaching that calls for a decision. It has been noted that almost everyone Jesus called, he called publicly. Picture him directing James and John to leave their boats … Zacchaeus to climb down from the tree … the cripple to rise and walk.

None of us has completely pure motives. We are a mixed people. That is why I must continually pray, “Lord, let me not give this invitation because I need to see results. Let me not shun it because I am afraid or because someone might criticize. I must give it solely because you love these people, you want them to know you, and you have told me to tell them that.”

Up-Front and Open

Then I must be honest with the audience. Many people would like to know God, but no one has ever asked them clearly.

Tony Campolo, a Philadelphia sociologist, was seated at a state prayer breakfast next to the governor and found that he was sympathetic but had never committed himself to follow Christ.

“Why not?” asked Campolo.

The governor honestly replied, “No one ever asked me.”

“Well, I’m asking you.”

To his surprise, the governor responded, “OK, I will.”

The Scriptures use many metaphors to describe the step of faith: coming, following, kneeling, opening, receiving, turning. An invitation is a symbolic expression of that spiritual reality. It is nothing more, nothing less — and we need to explain that.

When I ask people to come forward at the end of an evangelistic meeting, I try to make it clear what I am asking them to do. At the beginning of the sermon I may say something like this: “Tonight at the end of my talk I am going to ask you to do something about it, to express your decision. I am going to ask you to get up and come and stand here at the front. This is an outward expression of an inward decision.

“Just as you make a promise to someone, mean to keep it, and shake hands on it … just as a young couple come to love each other, want to give themselves to each other, and then openly express that covenant in a wedding … so I am asking you to express your commitment. There is nothing magical in coming forward. Walking down here doesn’t make you a Christian. You could come down here a thousand times with your feet, and it would make no difference at all if that’s all it were. But as you come here with your feet, you are saying with your heart, ‘God, I am coming to you and leaving behind those things that are wrong and sinful. I am trusting Christ as my Savior, and I am coming to follow him in his church from tonight on.'”

People need to know what responding to your invitation means and what it doesn’t mean. They need to know that they must be open Christians, not private believers, and that this is a way of expressing that. It is also important that they know it is not the only way. While confession is required (Rom. 10:9), nowhere does Scripture demand that people raise a hand, come forward, or sign a card to confess Christ.

In my evangelistic invitations, I usually say so. “You don’t have to come forward to be a Christian, but you do have to confess Christ and follow him openly.” Some people are almost too shy even to come to church or be part of a crowd, let alone ever to come forward. Some overscrupulous souls live all their lives with a scar because they didn’t come forward at some particular invitation. They need to know they can come to God in the quiet sanctuary of their own hearts and then express it in the faithfulness of their living. But they also need to know there is something about the open expression that clinches and seals that inner faith.

Others need to be told honestly that they must not put off God’s call. “Not to decide is to decide” may be a common saying, but it is true. To hear the Shepherd’s voice and shut ourselves to the sound is spiritually dangerous. An honest invitation will say with tenderness but seriousness, “Now is the day of salvation.”

Some need to hear that Jesus is an alternative, not an additive to the good life. Through the Cross, he offers free grace but not a cheap grace that has no cross for us. Our Lord is not the Great Need Meeter in the Sky. Our invitation is not “You have tried everything else. Now put a little Jesus in your life.” Mickey Cohen, the Los Angeles racketeer, wanted to know why, if there were Christian politicians and Christian singers, he couldn’t be a “Christian gangster”! It was news to Mickey that Jesus didn’t come to ratify his sins but to save him from them.

More than One Method

How then to give the invitation? It should be prepared as carefully as the rest of the message and the worship.

Should an invitation be given at every service? Each pastor and evangelist will need to settle that according to circ*mstances. I think an invitation should be given regularly in churches of a size and situation where numbers of visitors and non-Christians are likely. Almost every Sunday morning at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Lloyd Ogilvie says, “I know that in a congregation of this size, there are those whom God is calling.”

Other preachers may need to sense the leading of the Spirit and extend the invitation at the times and seasons when pastoral work and visitation seem to indicate people are ready. Some churches, particularly in England and Australia, schedule monthly guest services, perhaps the first or last Sunday morning of the month, when members bring friends to whom they have been witnessing. They know an evangelistic presentation and appeal will be made.

Every invitation should be surrounded with specific prayer that the Holy Spirit will direct people to Christ. Both the preacher and praying people in the seats should cultivate a spirit of prayer throughout the entire service. Evangelism is a spiritual battle, and I am convinced that unbelief and indifference can create a field of resistance. Faith and prayer, on the other hand, can contribute to an atmosphere of expectancy and response.

An honest invitation, in my judgment, should begin at the outset of the message. People should know what is going to happen rather than having something sprung on them. Billy Graham begins giving the invitation with his opening prayer. I have already explained my approach. Then the invitation is repeated throughout the message as the truth is applied. I do not mean people are told over and over to take some action, but repeatedly they are asked, “Is this you? Has God been speaking to you about this and this? Are you sensing that God is calling you?”

Many good methods have been used. The simple, straight-forward appeal to walk to the front and stand or kneel during the singing of a hymn is often effective. Following the example of some English evangelists, I sometimes use an “after-meeting,” in which the congregation is dismissed and requested to leave while all interested people are invited to remain for a ten-minute explanation of how to make a Christian commitment. In some Lutheran churches, people are invited to come kneel at the altar or to take the pastor’s hand as they leave and quietly say, “I will,” if they are responding to the gospel appeal.

I have seen Vance Havner ask people to stand one at a time and openly say, “Jesus is my Lord,” particularly in an invitation for rededication. At some evangelistic luncheons or dinners, blank three-by-five cards are on the tables, and everyone is asked to write a comment at the same time. Those who have invited Christ into their lives during a prayer are asked to include their names and addresses as an indication of their decision. It may be helpful to have those persons bring their cards to the speaker or leader, which could then open up personal conversation and counseling.

At First Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, worshipers who desire prayer for healing or problems are invited to come at the close of the service and kneel at the altar rail for prayer. It would be easy to add an invitation to those who wish to become Christians to join them.

There is no one way to extend the invitation, but in every situation there is surely some way. The essential elements are opportunities for (1) directed prayer and (2) simple biblical counseling. In a large evangelistic meeting, those who come forward may be led in a group prayer, but that is not enough. They need to express their faith to God individually before leaving.

In my crusades, counselors are instructed to come forward at the beginning of the invitation. Why? Not to prime the pump but to assist people, for it can be scary to walk forward publicly and particularly to stand alone. So there is no misunderstanding, I explain openly that these are counselors who are coming to lead the way. Lloyd Ogilvie often has selected elders stand at the front during the closing hymn to welcome those who respond. In any case, counselors should be trained ahead of time and provided with simple literature on the basics of the Christian faith and walk. Their interaction with people deciding to follow Christ can happen at the front of the church or in a quiet room nearby. Quick and dependable follow-up in the next forty-eight hours both by telephone and a visit in person must also take place.

Some Do’s and Don’ts

In giving the invitation, do pick up the feelings of those in the throes of decision. Empathize with their fear of embarrassment, of not being able to follow through, of what others will say. Hear the inner voice that tells them this is too hard, or they can wait — it’s not important. Don’t berate or threaten. Do explain very simply what it is you are asking people to do. If you want them to get up, walk forward, stand at the front, face you, and wait until you have had a prayer, tell them exactly what will happen.

Don’t use “bait and switch” — asking them only to raise their hand, and then only to stand, and then only to come forward. This is not to say we should never give an invitation in two steps, but it does mean we must not trick people or make them feel used.

Do make the meaning of the invitation clear. I don’t think it’s wrong to give an invitation with several prongs: salvation, rededication, renewal. I do think it’s wrong to make it so vague that it’s meaningless. Don’t, on the other hand, overexplain so you confuse.

Do wait patiently, giving people time to think and pray, knowing the inner conflicts they may be facing. Sometimes those moments seem agonizingly slow for you, but be patient. Don’t, however, extend and prolong when there is no response, saying “Just one more verse” twenty times, until the congregation groans inwardly for someone to go forward so you’ll stop. Do encourage and urge people gently, repeating your invitation once or perhaps twice. But don’t preach your sermon again.

Do give the invitation with conviction, with courage, with urgency, with expectancy. But don’t try to take the place of the Holy Spirit.

To find balance in these matters is not easy. I find it helps if I ask God to speak to me as well as through me.

What if no one responds? Do you feel embarrassed? Have you fallen flat on your face? You may. I have felt that any number of times. But the embarrassment passes, and what remains is the conviction that you have given an honest invitation to the glory of God, and even if no one responded, they faced the decisiveness of confronting Christ. Who knows when what they have seen and heard will be used to bring them to faith?

And if people do respond? You can rejoice and pray that they will follow Jesus in the fellowship of his church and the tasks of their daily lives.

- More fromLeighton Ford

Leighton Ford

Pastors

David Mains

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

Good words without deeds
are rushes and reeds.
Thomas Fuller

Life is Act,
and not to Do
is Death.
Lewis Morris

Just as the fetching introduction pulls people into the sermon, the effective conclusion drives home the point and propels into the world people with an agenda.
A Rob Suggs cartoon in Leadership pictures a hapless pastor in front of a chart showing precipitously declining attendance. His companion suggests, “I’m no expert, Joe, but perhaps you shouldn’t close each sermon with ‘But then again, what do I know?'” The inappropriate ending can ruin even a great beginning.
But most preachers won’t destroy a sermon with a foolish conclusion. The greater danger is losing an opportunity by not tapping a sermon’s potential, by forfeiting the final push that makes a good sermon great and changes lives.
David Mains has a passion to change people’s behavior. With dogged determination he returns to one overriding concern: Have I given people a way to act on their conviction? Some concrete way to put conviction to work? If not, he believes, he has not concluded properly. The sermon is incomplete.
Mains, many years a pastor at Chicago’s Circle Church, now preaches on “The Chapel of the Air,” a daily radio program originating in Carol Stream, Illinois. With brief minutes to communicate to an unseen audience, Mains now concentrates all the more on providing appropriate bridges from conviction to action. He shares his methods in this chapter.

I listen to a lot of other preachers — carefully, too. It’s more than professional curiosity; I want to learn from both their strengths and their weaknesses.

I can usually determine the subject of the sermons I listen to. But often I’m confused about what I’m supposed to do or to stop doing. That’s frustrating, especially since it’s a rare text that doesn’t call for an explicit response.

Sometimes I work with student preachers. Once they choose a text, I tell them to look for two things: the subject and the response being called for. I ask them to identify these two elements before they look for anything else in the passage. Why? Because the success of their preaching hinges on imparting not only the meaning but the imperative of a text.

When lay people tell me they heard a preacher and “Oh, he was good!” I often respond, “I’m pleased. Tell me, what was his subject?” Usually, with varying degrees of accuracy, they can answer.

“And what did he want you to do or to stop doing?” Now we’re on a desert journey without water. Most people can’t remember. Most likely, the preacher never stated the desired response.

The major component necessary for better preaching, I believe, is the imperative — the call for specific action arising from the sermon text.

Scribes or Preachers?

To what did the multitudes respond in Christ’s preaching? After the Sermon on the Mount, Scripture records: “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teachings, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28-29). There is a grand difference between a scribe and a preacher.

Comments you hear in sermons infected with what I call “the scribes’ disease” include:

“Here’s what so-and-so writes about these verses.”

“A related passage that sheds light on this one is …”

“Those who want to dig deeper into God’s truth would do well to probe this passage further.”

Scribes tend to be fascinated with information. By contrast, preachers, like Christ, are more action oriented. For them, the word sermon means a thrust. “It’s a thrust from the sword of the Spirit,” writes Simon Blocker in The Secret of Pulpit Power. “And the preacher knows whether or not his thrust has been driven home.”

I’m convinced many people say they like certain preachers not because they’re helped to be different but because they found that speaker interesting, clever, able to project personality into his sermon. Their bottom line: He wasn’t boring and I enjoyed listening to him. But were preachers meant to be entertainers?

People may leave a scribe’s service pumped full of interesting new information. They can say how one verse relates to another or how the ethics of the Decalogue foreshadow the completion of the Beatitudes. But what a shame for them to leave church services unaware of what they are to do or to stop doing.

If someone wants to know how to play music, it does little good for me to talk about the lives of famous composers, or to compare in detail the various instruments in the orchestra, or review how violins are made. It may make me sound learned and wise, but this person needs to be told, “Lesson one is on how to hold your flute. Between now and when we meet next week, I want you to practice holding it like this.”

Most Christians I know don’t need more information or “deeper truths.” They haven’t processed a fraction of the ones they already know. Profundity is not the crying need but simplicity coupled with directness: “Here’s what my text is about and it’s calling for us to do this.”

I want my preaching to communicate specific responses to genuine needs felt by real people. And I find they respond favorably to such down-to-earth preaching anchored in their world. They don’t particularly want more ideas. They aren’t enamored with brilliant analysis or formal essays. I can’t even assume they have a great love for theology or a vast reservoir of biblical knowledge.

I always ask the question: “What practical suggestions can I give to help people respond to what is said?” That’s a watershed question. If I adequately address that question, my listeners will appreciate what they hear. And they’ll be helped by it.

Bridges to Behavior

To make sure I am communicating, I have tried various methods, like brainstorming my sermons on Wednesday nights with a random group of parishioners invited to my home, or holding a pastor’s class after Sunday worship to discuss the sermon. The people who have most shaped my sermons have not been ministers but parishioners gracious enough to not only listen but also critique what they heard.

In discussing my sermons with listeners, I’ve found it doesn’t take long before they agree that the subject is relevant and the response called for in the passage is legitimate. But they say they need help with the “how to’s.” That’s what the serious Christian comes to a sermon to hear.

“Don’t talk anymore about the subject,” they tell me. “I already agree with the biblical challenge to respond. Tell me how to pull it off! Can’t you use your time building a bridge for me to get into this coveted new land?”

We preachers must build practical bridges. We need to list the first steps necessary to respond to what Scripture requires, and then we have to walk people over those bridges, step by step, to get them to that point.

For example, when Billy Graham preaches about conversion — being born again — he challenges his hearers to follow Christ. That’s his desired response. Now how are they to do this? What’s his bridge?

“What I want you to do,” he tells them, “is to get up from where you are sitting and to walk down here to the front.” He knows trained counselors are ready to talk with these people and lead them to Christ. It’s a good bridge — “Here’s how to do what I’ve been telling you about.”

A number of other bridges lend themselves to evangelistic sermons. The traditional invitation is only one of many possibilities.

Some people find an immediate public response intimidating. They intend to respond — the Word has done its work — but making such a sudden decision and walking in front of all those people seems out of the question. For them I might devise bridges less threatening in a congregational setting, such as:

•Printing my phone number in the bulletin with specific hours I will be at the phone with the sole purpose of taking calls from those wanting to investigate the implications of becoming a Christian. Then I can point out the number and hours in my sermon.

•Providing cards on which they can write their phone number so I can call them. They may place the cards in the offering plate or give them to me at the door.

•Arranging a meeting after the service, sometimes over lunch, for any who want to continue working toward a decision.

•Making available inexpensive books they can either borrow or buy after the service. When they sign it out or pay for it, I then have a record of their interest or possible decision to use for follow-up. People will rarely seek out a bookstore to find a recommended book, but at the book table in the rear, they eagerly snatch up books on consignment from local bookstores.

•Challenging people to talk with a Christian of their choice about any decision they have made. Most know a mature believer whom they trust. I can offer to arrange such a meeting if they don’t know anybody. They may find talking to a lay person less intimidating than a pastor.

•Making available cassette tapes to those who have made decisions, again getting their names for follow-up. Cassettes can help new believers firm their decisions. Although neither books nor cassettes provide all a new believer needs, telling people to take this step is a safe bridge to the action I ultimately desire: growth through involvement with other Christians.

Each of these alternatives builds a bridge to action. People can walk away from a service knowing something concrete to do if they have made a decision. They have their first steps outlined for them.

The use of bridges, however, is not limited to evangelistic sermons. Every sermon can benefit from suggested steps to action. Since the type of bridge depends on the response intended by the text, there are countless possibilities. When trying to determine what bridge to use for a particular sermon, the questions to ask are: What response does the text demand? and How can I best move the people toward that response?

When preaching on prayer, for example, I wanted people to learn to pray thankfully. I might have left it at that: “When you pray, be thankful.” But that would have left most of them at a loss: “Thankful for what? And how do I pray thankfully?”

So I provided a bridge. I asked them to take a few minutes later that day to write out ten things they were thankful for. The next day they were to write out ten more, not repeating any from the first day, and on the third day ten more, until the week was up and they had a list of seventy blessings. I asked them to bring the list the next week, when we would talk about it some more. By the next Sunday, they were ready to hear more because they had acted on the first sermon.

For a sermon on addiction to p*rnographic materials, I asked the congregation if during the next week they were willing to throw away questionable mail before opening it, to destroy that hidden stash of unseemly materials, to avoid particular bookracks and magazines and theater marquees. Since p*rnography can be an addiction, I asked them to consider one more step they felt they could take to break its hold. The bridge took them from knowing what is bad to determining what to do in response.

For a recent series of broadcast sermons, I provided a simple graph for people to chart their day-to-day battle with a bad habit. People could choose the behavior they wanted to plot, and one woman wrote me of her experience fighting immorality. Although she was a Christian, she and her boyfriend were going to bed together regularly. It bothered her conscience, but she seemed unable to break the habit.

It was that problem she chose to plot on her graph. After one date that ended, inevitably, in bed, the next day with tears she marked her failure on the graph. She went several days without a problem and her graph started looking good. But then on another date she fell again. The simple task of having to graph another failure got to her. That’s not how she wanted her graph to appear!

She made up her mind that this couldn’t continue, so she talked with her boyfriend. He didn’t necessarily agree, but he was willing to respect her decision. Her letter said it had been a number of weeks and she had retained a perfect record since that time. She knew all along she shouldn’t be immoral. What she needed was a bridge to cross the deep divide between her knowledge and her desired actions.

A sermon by John Huffman at the Congress on Biblical Exposition stands out for me because he told me what to do and also provided me a bridge. His bridge was simple: Get into an accountability group. He told how he had done it and what it meant to him and his preaching. He shared his weakness and his need for counsel. I came away from his sermon with an idea of what he wanted me to do and how to do it.

Bridges take many forms. I watched an Episcopal priest finish a fine Good Friday sermon about the Cross by displaying two crucifixes and suggesting that all of us get one ourselves to help us remember the richness of propitiation and redemption — those big theological words that mean so little apart from the Cross. Even though I probably won’t buy a crucifix, simply by viewing one again, I am moved beyond theological language to worship our Lord, whose agony for us a crucifix strongly portrays.

Supply a short list of Scriptures to be memorized; print a card with the sermon theme for people to carry in their wallets; suggest they evaluate a certain television show for its secular or Christian message; put a question in the bulletin for people to discuss over Sunday dinner — the bridges are varied. The common denominator is their specific practicality. They can be done immediately as a way to begin to put the sermon’s message to work.

I have found through years of lay-preacher dialogue that if I can’t tell my listeners what to do, if I can’t construct good bridges for people, they probably won’t figure out applications for themselves. I don’t worry about sounding “Mickey Mouse.” The specifics, the how to’s, the practicalities belong in great exposition every bit as much as in Sunday school handouts.

When approaching a text, I can preach best by, first, zeroing in on the text’s subject; second, extracting from the Scripture the response being called for; and third, from my Christian understanding, constructing a bridge that will help people get from where they are to where this text teaches they should be. I want to help them respond to the challenge of the passage.

According to a 1985 poll, 42 percent of the adults in America attend religious services in a typical week. If we can get those four in ten adults to leave our preaching services saying, “I know what God wants me to do, and I have been given a reasonable way to begin the process. I’m going to do it!” — if we can pull this off Sunday after Sunday — then our preaching will fulfill its purpose: God’s Word will equip his people to begin doing his will.

- More fromDavid Mains

David Mains

Pastors

Jamie Buckingham

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though old the thought
and oft exprest
‘Tis his at last
who says it best.
James Russell Lowell

A significant part of preaching to convince is the skill of making a sermon breathe life through illustrations. Paul borrowed from philosophers and prophets; Jesus drew heavily from the Old Testament writers. Some were credited and others not. How’s a preacher to know where to plant the verbal footnote? And what’s fair game to steal — credited or not?
Preachers are rightfully wary of signing their name on another’s illustration. No preacher wants to appear phony or unoriginal when worshipers recognize an unnamed source.
Jamie Buckingham, senior minister of Tabernacle Church in Melbourne, Florida, knows the value of the appropriated thought in his preaching and writing. He has also wrestled with the subtle distinction between a pirate and a parrot, between larceny and license.
The following chapter helps preachers draw the ethical distinction in their own sermons, so their illustrations convince their congregations of something greater than their preacher’s pilferage.

When I bought my Apple IIe Word Processor, I discovered the capabilities of split-screen programming. By pushing the right combination of buttons, I could look at two things simultaneously. The top, for instance, could show data typed in earlier, while the bottom remained blank.

I asked my instructor how this could be useful.

“It is used primarily for plagiarism,” he said candidly. “By putting someone else’s material on the top screen, you can then rewrite it.

“It’s done all the time,” he winked.

I thought of the mess Alex Haley got in when he was accused by an obscure writer of having stolen his material — word for word — to be used in Roots. Too bad Haley didn’t have a split screen.

I almost did the same thing with one of my earlier books. I copied material I thought was a taped interview but turned out to be material my secretary had copied from someone else’s book. Horrors!

Now my computer instructor tells me I’ll never have to face that problem again. With my split screen I can change just enough words that I never have to worry about going to jail.

But a question remains: Is it right?

It is the same question preachers face. For if plagiarism is an occasional problem for writers, it is a weekly problem for preachers.

For instance: Should pastors feel free to preach others’ sermons? If they do, must they give credit for them?

And what about telling stories they’ve heard other people tell — and taking credit for the stories themselves?

To a certain degree, all of us preach other people’s stuff. After all, as Solomon once said, there’s not much new under the sun. Besides, so many in the pulpit today have to preach far beyond what they are creatively equipped to do. Using other pastors’ sermons would be a great help. In fact, preaching sermons already preached by great pulpiteers would teach the rest of us a great deal about homiletics.

On the other hand, it makes me feel slightly uneasy to endorse something like this — which in many other realms would be considered plagiarism — without having a very good basis upon which I could do so.

Of course, in the strictest sense of the word, everyone plagiarizes. In fact, the preceding paragraph was plagiarized from the letter written me by Terry Muck, editor of Leadership, when he first suggested I write on this topic. I lifted it, word for word, and doubt if he or anyone else would have known the difference had I not called attention to it.

This brings up one of the primary reasons for not giving credit. Most speakers hate to break the flow in the middle of a message. It’s much easier to keep going than to confuse the hearer with a score of footnotes plugged into the actual text.

But courtesy calls for gratefulness — as long as it can be given without distracting. Recently the leaders in our church have been studying Richard Foster’s excellent book Celebration of Discipline. I heartily agree with much of what Foster has written and wish I had said it first. But for me to stand in the pulpit and take credit for what originated with him not only would be theft — it would be foolish. I would be quickly spotted carrying stolen goods. I would lose far more credibility (at least in the eyes of my leaders) than I would gain in the eyes of others who might be impressed with my brilliance.

Therefore, it is far easier to say, “I learned something this last week while studying Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline.” Now I am free to take off on whatever tangent I wish. At the same time, I have pointed people back to the genesis of an idea. If they return to the spring to drink — as I have drunk — they, too, may come up with original thoughts, just as I did.

In my early days of preaching, I relied heavily on books of sermons and — perish the thought — books of sermon illustrations. Since a powerful experience with the Holy Spirit in 1968, I have not had to fall back on those. I discovered I had been preaching leftovers, while the Lord had set before me a banquet table from which I could feed the people. (This, by the way, is perhaps the strongest argument against preaching someone else’s material. If it is not your own, if you have not experienced the truth you are preaching, how can it minister life to those who hear it?) But the spring inside me that flows with eternal truth sometimes gets clogged with debris. My pump, then, is often primed by the sermons of others, written, taped, or heard in person.

A preacher friend once joked: “When better sermons are written, I’ll preach them.”

To that I say, “Amen!”

In fact, I hope I am one who will write the better sermons — and that he will not only preach them but improve on them as he does. It is a humbling honor to know that something I originated is now in wider circulation because it is being told from various pulpits where I could never go.

There is a danger, however, in taking someone else’s first-person experience and telling it as though it happened to you. This danger is especially acute in this day of mass media, when some of the people sitting in your congregation may have just heard the author tell the same story on national TV or may have just read the book you swiped your story from. (Incidentally, those folks will not call you a plagiarizer when they get in the car and drive home after church. They’ll call you a liar.)

Sometimes, of course, it works in the other direction. I remember when Charles Allen came to preach in the little South Carolina town where I was pastor of the Baptist church. I had read all of Allen’s books of sermons — and preached most of them.

Some of our folks went down to Main Street Methodist to hear Dr. Allen. One of them came back and told me, “You’ll never believe it, but that lanky old Methodist is preaching your sermons. He even told one of your stories last night and didn’t have the decency to give you credit.”

I held my breath until the week was over and Dr. Allen was safely out of town. At that time I was having enough trouble hiding other things without it being discovered I was stealing sermons as well.

The question is not whether we use material that originates with others. Of course we do. The question is whether we should give credit or not.

Sometimes we don’t want to give credit. The author may be someone who has a bad reputation — or whose works might lead people astray. In such a case, I find it easy to say, “Although I certainly don’t recommend the ideas of Hugh Hefner, I was intrigued by an interview in last night’s paper where he said …”

On the other hand, giving credit often strengthens the message. It lets your people know you are reading — and listening. In short, it adds authenticity. Even though Richard Foster is a legitimate scholar in his own right, he is relatively unknown. Therefore, when he quotes Saint John of the Cross, Brother Lawrence, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or his fellow Quaker Elton Trueblood, it adds credibility to his scholarship. In fact, had he not quoted so widely, many of us would not have read his books.

I am impressed when I attend a mainstream Protestant church and hear the speaker quote a charismatic or Roman Catholic — and give credit. I am attracted when I hear a Pentecostal quote a traditional evangelical. It lets me know the person is hearing what God is saying to the rest of Christendom. In short, the credits often mean as much as the material quoted.

“I was listening to a Charles Swindoll tape last week, and he told of the time …”

“I wish all of you would read Henri Nouwen’s book The Wounded Healer. In the chapter on ‘Ministry to a Hopeless Man,’ he describes a fascinating encounter between …”

“A few years ago Leadership magazine interviewed Dr. Richard Halverson, chaplain of the U.S. Senate. In the interview …”

Perhaps the original material grew out of something informal, such as a staff meeting or home Bible study. If the originator of the idea is local, that is even more reason to give credit and thus encourage the person.

“Last Monday night in our home church meeting, Brooks Watson pointed out something he had learned a number of years ago in engineering school.…”

“In our staff meeting Art Bourgeois touched my heart when he began praying for …”

Giving credit, instead of distracting from your sermon, often leads your listeners into the situation. They wait eagerly to hear what you have gleaned from others.

Courtesy demands a certain amount of credit, and ethics demands you not retell a story as if it happened to you — unless it really did. If you’re afraid the audience will think you stole a story when you didn’t, a simple technique will get you off the hook. All you have to say is: “In his book Where Eagles Soar, Jamie Buckingham confesses the difficulty he had demonstrating physical love to his aged father. It brought to mind a similar experience I had with my own dad.…” From that point on, the story is yours, even though it might sound identical to the one I wrote about.

All preachers have a way of picking up cute phrases, vivid word images, clever bits of dialogue, even snappy one-liners they heard or read from someone else. Certainly Billy Graham didn’t coin the phrase “The Bible says,” but at least for this generation, he made it popular.

Such snatches are below the threshold of requiring attribution. But there is a level that enters the forbidden zone of plagiarism. It happens when we take credit for something valuable which is not genuinely ours.

Recently I heard a preacher at a ministerial convention tell an uproariously funny story of being invited to speak at a strange church and discovering, upon arrival, that it was a drive-in church. His congregation was a large field full of automobiles. He had no eye contact and no way of knowing if anyone was laughing at his jokes. His final dismay came when the pastor whispered in his ear that it was all right to give an invitation for people to accept Christ. He could even pray for the sick. If the people blinked their headlights, they had been saved. If they tooted the horn, they had been healed.

(“Yes, dear brother, I see those headlights out there.”)

I don’t remember the point he was making, but his story was great. As we were leaving the auditorium, I overheard one pastor say to another, “I just got my illustration for next Sunday.” I didn’t ask, but I doubted seriously if he intended to give the original preacher credit for the story.

But for that matter, it doesn’t make much difference. Back in 1974, Kenneth A. Markley, a Rosemead Graduate School psychologist, published the original story in his book Our Speaker This Evening (Zondervan). Dr. Markley, however, had not mentioned the horn blowing. That was added by the preacher to spice up an already good story and perhaps clear his conscience of being a plagiarist.

I wondered, walking away from the auditorium, how many preachers would add yet another twist — maybe turning on the windshield washers if you wanted counseling or releasing the hood latch if you wanted to donate to the visiting speaker’s missionary fund.

Professional writers have strict guidelines concerning plagiarism. One definition is found in A Handbook to Literature by Thrall and Hibbard (Odyssey, 1960):

Literary theft. A writer who steals the plot of some obscure, forgotten story and uses it as new in a story of his own is a plagiarist. Plagiarism is more noticeable when it involves stealing of language than when substance only is borrowed. From flagrant exhibition of stealing both thought and language, plagiarism shades off into less serious things such as unconscious borrowing, borrowing of minor elements, and mere imitation.

Writers and musicians understand this. But while they can copyright words and notes, they cannot copyright an idea. It is in this area that the blacks and whites blend to gray, and each preacher must determine the difference between what is illegal, merely unethical, or permitted.

I remember asking a colleague if anyone ever plagiarized his sermons. He said, no, he’d never said anything worth repeating.

On the other hand, why would anyone publish a book of sermons if he didn’t want them used?

Corrie ten Boom used to say that everything she had written or said was public property. She didn’t want credit. She felt the glory should go to God, who gave her the ideas in the first place. She also felt copyrights were of the Devil. On occasion, her publishers had to hold her down, or she would have given carte blanche permission for anyone to reprint her material without even asking, much less paying a permission fee.

But Tante Corrie was a unique breed. She never did understand why someone would publish something “to the glory of God” and then get upset when another of God’s servants used it without giving the author credit. After all, she used to say, that’s why we put it in print in the first place — to be used.

On the other hand, she was always giving others credit. When she and I wrote Tramp for the Lord, I had to struggle to keep her from naming everyone she had ever talked to about an idea.

Perhaps that’s a good rule to follow: Everything we say is free, and we expect nothing in return. For everything we borrow, we try to give credit — not because credit is due, but because God has a way of blessing honesty.

- More fromJamie Buckingham

Jamie Buckingham

Pastors

Mark Littleton

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

An illustration is like a row of footlights that shed light on what is presented on the stage. If you turn the lights onto the audience, they blind the people.
Haddon Robinson

The greatest convincer preached with stories — a woman’s lost coin, treacherous renters, faithful servants. The simple stories communicated to depths that profound propositions would never reach.
Even the gospel itself is a story — a living (and dying and living again) illustration.
What preachers gather and swap and treasure like stamp collectors, they also want to use effectively: their sermon illustrations. But how? How can a preacher know when enough yarns have been spun? At what point does an entertaining illustration bully the text out of the spotlight? When is an illustration demanded? And when does one demean?
Mark Littleton is a Christian communicator who has asked those questions and arrived at some answers — answers he utilized in his former pastorate at Berea Baptist Church in Glen Burnie, Maryland, and answers now used in his writing ministry. Having made the common mistakes and learned from them, he offers his observations in the following chapter.

Anyone who must preach two different sermons on Sunday and a third on Wednesday, plus teach, give children’s sermons, and offer “a few words” here, there, and everywhere, knows the power of good illustrations. They bring fresh air to musty monologues. They grab the heart as well as the head. They help apply truth to life.

That’s why I collect, make up, steal, borrow, and beg them from everyone. My three-by-five card file of illustrations is so cherished I keep a picture of it in my wallet to show friends.

“Get a load of this baby,” I say. “Beautiful tan finish, full of laughter and babble, always ready to raise a smile. Everything from anecdotes to zoology. Of course, there are the occasional messes and 2 a.m. feedings, but it’s all worth it.”

Even more crucial then keeping the box full is the problem of use: How do I match the right illustration with the right situation? Too often we hear a good joke and instantly begin sniffing for a place to tell it. Any time will do, so long as it occurs in next Sunday’s sermon. We fall into the pit of depending more on our stories than the power of God’s Word and Spirit to hold the listener.

At that point, our illustrations block rather than bring understanding. After all, there is a difference between the almost right illustration and the right one. As Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”

Getting the Right Illustration

Three questions are useful in determining an illustration’s efficiency:

Does my point need an illustration? I’m the type who’s terrified of being boring, so I’ve learned to think in analogies and anecdotes. Sometimes I overdo it. If the people understand my point and don’t need further clarification, why use up my ammo? No need to shoot dead geese. My temptation is that if I’ve got a good story, I want to use it now, and if I’ve got two good stories, quotes, or poems, I want to use them both. (Once I got lost in one point with five illustrations. It was fun but foolish.) Life is too short and sermons too long to heap on the burning coals.

So in preparing a sermon, I simply ask, “When I struggled to understand this idea, did I have to create an illustration to explain it? Did I find myself saying, ‘For example …’?” This almost always happens when I have something abstract, cerebral, or theological at hand.

Recently in a sermon from Ephesians on “redemption through his blood,” I wanted to make the point that not even “good” people are acceptable candidates for heaven on the basis of their goodness. The natural question was “Why not?” All sorts of abstract answers swirled in my head, but I needed to distill the vaporous abstractions into something my size. My mind roamed over all kinds of things — personal experiences, quotes, analogies.

Finally, I remembered a friend’s bargain with his children, who resisted eating their vegetables. He and his wife decided to let the kids have one “most-hated” vegetable they would never have to eat. But they had to eat the rest without argument. Mealtimes improved noticeably.

Suppose God gave us all one most-hated commandment and allowed us to ignore that one in heaven. We would, of course, have to obey the rest. Heaven with people just one law less than perfect would be no better than earth. This analogy made the need for redemption clear to me and, hopefully, to the congregation.

Another way to determine whether a point needs illustrating is to try it out on a friend, spouse, or fellow minister. “Do you understand this point?” If our explanation leaves them cold, start searching for illustrations.

Many times, however, a point is clear, and illustrations only clutter the issue. Often the Bible provides its own word picture to explain the truth. Added ingredients, like day-old manna, can turn wormy and stink, spoiling the impact of an already powerful message.

What is my purpose or goal for this point? What do I want to do with an illustration? Consider some legitimate purposes — and some scriptural examples.

1. To clarify a point — Jesus’ parables of the lost coin and sheep.

2. To show a real-life application — much of the Sermon on the Mount.

3. To convict of sin — Nathan’s parable to David of the poor man’s sheep.

4. To inspire and move to action — the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.

5. To convince someone of truth — Paul reminding the Athenians of “the unknown god.”

6. To make truth memorable — Jesus’ unique sayings, such as the camel passing through the eye of a needle.

Pinpointing my purpose helps me see what I want the illustration to accomplish. If I want to convict of sin, I am not going to use a light, inspirational story. I must speak in specific terms of sins people in my congregation may not be aware they are committing. Several times I have confused people by telling something funny in the midst of a serious point, and everyone got off track. A serious illustration would have been much wiser.

What kind of illustration best suits my purpose? To answer this third question, I consult my files, library, friends, and memory for quantity. Then I select the best one on the basis of quality. That is one reason I believe in gathering illustrations by the bale. Quantity usually yields quality.

Certain general categories fit certain purposes. For instance, analogies and made-up stores are often excellent to enlighten. Object lessons, anecdotes, cross-references, and word studies are also good.

Sometimes, on the other hand, something light is necessary. In one sermon I wanted to say our world would never have peace until Jesus returned. I knew some people would take a dim view of that. I needed something light but enlightening. I tried a story about a dour Englishman seated on a train between two ladies arguing about the window. One claimed she would die of heat stroke if it weren’t opened. The other said she would expire of pneumonia if it didn’t stay closed. The ladies called the conductor, who didn’t know how to solve the problem. Finally, the gentleman spoke up. “First, open the window. That will kill the one. Then close it. That will kill the other. Then we will have peace.” Everyone in the congregation, regardless of political stripe, could appreciate the story.

To move people to action, several ingredients are necessary. First, the proposed action must be clear. That means many quickie examples of how to do what you are asking. Often, this is preceded by “like.” “Like when your mother-in-law says …” Second, the illustration must end with a clear exhortation. Give an example of a person who responded correctly. People need positive illustrations of what they’re to do.

To convict a congregation of something — sin, personal need, lostness — there is a different route: The listener must identify with the illustration. Personal experiences are valuable here as well as situations and roleplays — anything that involves people with the story.

For instance, I wanted my congregation to see the need for trust in God even when they don’t know all the hows and whys. I told about my diphtheria/tetanus shot when I was seven years old.

“It won’t hurt,” the doctor assured me. “Just keep thinking It’s not going to hurt, and everything will be OK.”

But it did hurt. My arm was still sore the next day, and I demanded an explanation from my mother. Why did I have a sore arm?

She couldn’t explain the physiological causes of my pain, nor could she explain to my satisfaction how the vaccine could prevent diphtheria. Finally she said, “Mark, I know you don’t understand, but you do know I love you, and this shot was something we had to do to protect you.”

Because I trusted my mom, I was able to accept the pain.

The people in the congregation could identify — most had experienced the same feelings. Deep inside, they knew the difference between trust and understanding — and that trust sometimes must precede knowledge. But the illustration brought to the surface what they already knew down deep.

In order to convince, an illustration must have authority. Sources with unquestioned authority — scientific reports, research, statistics, quotes from well-known people — may not absolutely prove the point, but most people find them convincing.

Finally, if the purpose is to make a point memorable, other elements are crucial: simplicity, uniqueness, usefulness, truthfulness, and most of all, vividness. An Arab proverb says, “The best speaker is he who turn ears into eyes.” In fact, I recall reading that proverb only once, but because of its vividness, it stuck.

Consider some of these memorable expressions that I never tried to memorize but were instantly nailed to my mind. From Haddon Robinson: “A mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew.” Howard Hendricks: “You can’t build a skyscraper on a chicken coop foundation.” Tony Campolo: “I’m sick and tired of people playing a thousand verses of ‘Just as I Am,’ who come down just as they are, and go out just as they were.”

Using the Right Illustration

Simply placing the right illustration with the right point is not enough. Good preparation includes good declaration. Here are some suggestions for serving illustrations hot.

1. Don’t waste time getting into the story. Get in and get out. Don’t overexplain, apologize, or make other unnecessary comments such as “I found this perfect illustration the other day …” Such comments challenge the listener to prove us wrong rather than to wait eagerly for the story.

2. Make sure the people know what you’re illustrating. Too often they remember the illustration and forget the point. Why? We don’t rivet the point to the illustration by repeating it before and after.

3. Make sure your illustration doesn’t overshadow your point. Many ripping good stories rip up the house and the sermon. All the people get is a good laugh.

4. Be excited about the illustration. If I’m not convinced it’s interesting and worthwhile, the audience won’t be. If I can’t generate enthusiasm about the material, I can hardly support it with the luster of a convincing rendition. Rather, I rend it to shreds.

5. Make sure it’s believable and true. On one occasion, when I had converted a devotional-guide story to first-person, my father remarked, “It sounded bogus to me.” Some speakers say that putting yourself into a story, whether you really were there or not, is legitimate. But it can also create distrust. I have heard several well-known preachers use anecdotes I’ve read in old illustration books. They tell them as though the experience happened to them. Their credibility is destroyed.

6. Make sure people will identify with the illustration. Arthur Miller, the playwright, once said that if he came away from a play exclaiming, “That was me!” it was a success. When I see myself in it, that often indicates a potent illustration.

7. Be sure of your facts. One night I referred to a book and said the author had died recently. A student in the group nearly shot out of his seat. “Good grief! I just heard him last week at seminary. You mean he died over the weekend?”

I choked, looked for the door, and confessed, “I think I got the name wrong.” Where’s the grave? I wanted to crawl in.

8. Be visual. Visual speaking creates pictures in the listeners’ minds. It uses sharp verbs and nouns, few adjectives. Lots of color and specifics. No fuzzy generalities, just hard slabs of meaning.

Illustrating sermons is one of preaching’s most gratifying and challenging tasks. If an illustration is too big for its britches, it tends to break a sermon. If it’s too little, the sermon comes across with the clout of a feather. But the right illustration, used well, makes preaching not only interesting but effective.

- More fromMark Littleton

Pastors

William Kruidenier

Leadership BooksMay 19, 2004

As the nineteenth-century German theologian Tholuck said, “A sermon ought to have heaven for its father and the earth for its mother.” But if such sermons are to be born, heaven and earth have to meet in the preacher.
John R. W. Stott

Billy Graham preaching in an elevator would be a little overwhelming, but Fred Rogers of “Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood” teaching in the Los Angeles Coliseum might tend to underwhelm. The number of listeners determines much about the style of preaching. What flies with one group flops with another.
How you convince a handful differs from how you sway a crowd. Even the optimum content for a sermon will vary with the size of the congregation. Some subjects work best in the give-and-take of a group; others shine in mass meetings. Certain techniques lend themselves to a midsized crowd; others to an intimate setting. Skillful preachers select their subjects and techniques with an eye to the audience.
This is the subject William Kruidenier explores in the following chapter. Kruidenier is pastor of Emmanuel Christian Fellowship in Atlanta, Georgia. His analysis helps put dimensions on an often-perplexing question: Why do some sermons work better than others?
And, even better, he offers suggestions for designing sermons suitable for the various occasions.

On any given Sunday, whenever a sermon seems to fall short of what we’d hoped for (realistically or otherwise), we quickly look for a reason. Our notes (or manuscript) were flawed. We didn’t deliver the message powerfully enough. We didn’t get enough sleep the night before. The sanctuary was too hot. Or too cool. People just aren’t as hungry for spiritual growth as they should be.…

I think there is another explanation, perhaps more common than many of the above. It has to do with the match-up between the message and the group.

One helpful insight of the past decade is that not all groupings in a church are the same. Thinkers in the area of church growth have pointed out that when you gather the saints on Sunday morning, you have a celebration. In medium- and large-size churches, the individuals don’t all know each other personally, but that is not the focus; they are rather caught up in worshiping God.

Break into groups of anywhere from twenty to a hundred, and you have a congregation — people who know one another and view themselves as a special band (e.g., a choir, a “minichurch,” a permanent Sunday school class). The fellowship is lively, the relationships mainly horizontal. (Smaller churches maintain this closeness even on Sunday morning, which, in fact, is one of their assets.)

To take a quantum leap in intimacy, however, limit the numbers to ten and call for serious commitment and accountability. This is the cell.

A fourth kind of group is the class, where people gather not primarily to worship, fellowship, or grow personally, but to learn a new skill or body of information. An elective course on evangelism or the Pentateuch is a good example. The focus is on the content, and any worship or fellowship is a by-product.

Most of us are familiar with this. But only recently, as I’ve been immersed in the challenge of starting a new church and thinking through its formative structures, have I faced what all this means for homiletics.

Making the Good Match

Each kind of group has its own dynamics. What works in one setting will not necessarily succeed in another. But all too often, I have failed to match my proclamation with the dynamic of my particular audience. I’ve just stood up and done the single specialty I was taught in seminary: expository preaching.

What happens when parishioners hear expositions of Galatians on Sunday morning, 2 Timothy on Sunday night, and something from the Old Testament midweek, all in the same basic style?

They rarely sense that the pastor’s message is for now — for this group, this moment in time. They go home with a vague feeling of If you’ve heard one sermon, you’ve heard’em all. So why go to another service for more of the same?

Here is another problem. Suppose in the worship (celebration) service, I come to a text that mentions the training of children. From the pulpit I go into detail on techniques of child discipline; I even venture some comments about spanking. Many young parents who are listening appreciate the information — but go away frustrated because they weren’t able to raise their hands and ask follow-up questions. Meanwhile, the nonparents present (middle and older adults, singles) gaze out the window.

Certain types of scriptural truth raise certain needs in an audience that can be met only in certain group settings. That is why I have come to adopt the following guidelines:

Texts Appropriate for the Setting

Before opening the Bible, first ask, “What is the focus of this group?” If celebration, it is God. If congregation, it is social fellowship and kinship in Christ. If cell, it is personal growth and accountability. If class, it is skill or information.

Next question: What portions of Scripture originally spoke to these kinds of needs? Some obvious examples:

The Psalms, Romans 9, parts of the Major Prophets, and others lifted the attention of the original readers to the transcendence of God. Thus they make excellent choices to be expounded in celebration or worship services.

In contrast, much of the Pauline corpus dealt with problems in the Christian community. Proverbs and many of the Minor Prophets also speak to community issues. These can be used to promote the same results in a congregation-sized group today.

For the cell, where personal religion is the focus, books such as James, Proverbs, and the life of Christ from the Gospels are highly appropriate. They concentrate on personally living out the faith. They convict us; they promote self-analysis and confession.

The class works best when a task attitude is established: “We’re going to survey Romans,” or “Let’s learn the best way to do a word study in personal Bible investigation.” This is not a license for boring teaching. But it does allow us to speak more technically, less personally than in the other three groups.

Truths Appropriate to the Group

This is not entirely in line with my seminary homiletics classes, which urged me to discover at all costs the main thought of any passage of Scripture (in the mind of the original writer) and then convey that same thought to my listeners. While I was always encouraged to know and read my audiences, I was not taught very effectively how to apply the Scriptures on the basis of what the group dynamic would allow.

Some truths from a passage will connect with a particular group like lightning hitting a radio tower, while others barely sputter over the front edge of the podium. The preacher’s task is to select those that will strike hard and fast.

If I am working through the Book of Romans and come to chapter 8, verses 26-30 (“The Spirit helps us in our weakness.… We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.…” etc.), I can emphasize different aspects depending on the group.

Celebration: the sovereignty of God over his creation

Congregation: a lighter, less theological, more humorous treatment, full of instances from my life and others’ of how God’s sovereignty has worked itself out in daily and family living; a “hang-in-there” message

Cell: a hard look at my personal attitudes and actions when the situation demands that I depend on God’s sovereignty; counsel, exhortation, confession, forgiveness, a time of building and healing

Class: here I tackle the thorny subject of predestination from the perspectives of biblical, systematic, and historical theology.

Planning the Appropriate Response

Just as each of the four groupings has a different focus, each is different when it comes to response. The preacher does well to think this through ahead of time.

In the celebration event, my chief end is to bring individuals (both Christians and non-Christians) into contact with a transcendent, personal God. That means they need an opportunity to respond to him in repentance and faith. If I do not provide that before the end of the meeting, it is incomplete.

So there must be ways for non-Christians to meet Christ as Savior and Lord. There must be ways for Christians to repent of waywardness. Some of the methods to accommodate these are invitations, staffed prayer or counseling rooms available at the close, and allowance for individual responses such as hands raised in prayer or praise. These all show that we have not forgotten the goal of a celebration service: to bring men and women into contact with God.

My presentation in such a service is necessarily a lecture (one speaking to many without dialogue). In a congregationsized group, however, this should never be true. In a true congregation, the people know each other well and have developed the social skills of communicating with one another. This greatly aids the learning process if we take advantage of it. Therefore, we structure to allow discussion, dialogue, and even disagreement, so the body of Christ can hammer out the application of the Word to their lives together.

A well-designed congregation group, over the long run, is probably the most effective evangelism agent among the four types. It lets non-Christians hear and observe a loving community of Christians dialoguing together about Christ and their relationships to him. After the meetings, social interaction over refreshments or a meal lets the Word continue to be a stimulus for discussion.

The structure of a cell meeting must be the most flexible of all, since we never know what personal needs lurk behind the members’ masks of contentment. A properly structured cell group gives the Spirit of God freedom to leave the teaching outline after only the first point is covered if it raises a need in someone’s life. The cell leader can — and should — say, “Let’s pick up here next week,” whenever an unforeseen but worthwhile diversion comes along. This is acceptable pedagogy.

The class, of course, cannot just hand out information; it must discern whether the skill or content is being comprehended. Laboratory practice sessions (for students to use skills) or else quizzes (to measure retained information) must complement the teaching of the Word in a class group.

Specialists for Each Kind of Group

One of the discouragements we pastors bring on ourselves is attempting to excel in all four group situations. We assume that, having completed our training in homiletics, we ought to be consummate communicators at any level of group dynamic in the church.

Not so. Certain personality types and sets of gifts or abilities function much better in certain group situations than in others, and even seminary graduates are not exempt from this fact. We all need help discerning which roles in the body of Christ we might best fill. Then we could benefit from separate training, both exegetical and homiletical, tailored to the group dynamic best suited to us.

Far more lay teachers as well can be trained for local-church effectiveness if we align our training more closely with the needs and focuses of group dynamics.

Beware of Cross-Mixing Techniques

The above discussion is not meant to say that worship can occur only in a celebration service, fellowship in a congregation, growth and accountability in a cell, and instruction and training in a class. But it does say these goals are the easiest to accomplish in the various settings.

There are times when it is good to attempt to worship in a cell, or to encourage one another on Sunday morning. But such mixing should be done intentionally and intelligently, not accidentally. We must understand first what the best setting is for such a practice, and not expect as great a result if we choose to go ahead in a less than optimum context.

The things I have said here about preaching and teaching, like the four group classifications themselves, are not really new. The group dynamics have existed for centuries; only recently have we put names and definitions on them. So also, pastors long before me have sensed instinctively what worked best in one setting or another, and have gone about their ministry accordingly.

What is new here is, I hope, a clearer statement about why they succeeded. If we understand the kinds of groups a church needs to function well and meet the worship, fellowship, intimacy, and instructional needs of its people, and if we grasp how to narrow the focus of the Word of God in those groups to more effectively capitalize on their dynamics, then the net result should be more specific needs in more people’s lives being satisfied. And that is what ministry is all about.

- More fromWilliam Kruidenier

FAQs

What happened to Christianity Today magazine? ›

The journal continued in print for 36 years. After volume 37, issue 1 (winter 2016), Christianity Today discontinued the print publication, replacing it with expanded content in Christianity Today for pastors and church leaders and occasional print supplements, as well as a new website, CTPastors.com.

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Is Christianity growing or shrinking? ›

Christianity, the largest religion in the United States, experienced a 20th-century high of 91% of the total population in 1976. This declined to 73.7% by 2016 and 64% in 2022.

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What is the oldest religion? ›

Hinduism (/ˈhɪnduˌɪzəm/) is an Indian religion or dharma, a religious and universal order by which its followers abide. The word Hindu is an exonym, and while Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, it has also been described as sanātana dharma ( lit.

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What is the fastest-growing religion in the world? ›

Studies in the 21st century suggest that, in terms of percentage and worldwide spread, Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world.

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What state has the most Christians? ›

The most Christian states in the United States include Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Georgia.

Which religion is best according to science? ›

Buddhism. Buddhism and science have been regarded as compatible by numerous authors. Some philosophic and psychological teachings found in Buddhism share points in common with modern Western scientific and philosophic thought.

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What denomination has decline in church attendance? ›

Among religious groups, Catholics show one of the larger drops in attendance, from 45% to 33%, while there are slightly smaller decreases among Orthodox (nine percentage points) and Hindu followers (eight points).

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Who is the current leader of Baptist? ›

Barber served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest American Evangelical denomination for two terms. He was first elected in Anaheim, California at the 2022 Annual Meeting, and ran for a second consecutive term at the 2023 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Who is the living head of God's church? ›

The Father is supreme in authority, and His Son Jesus Christ is under Him in rank and authority (John 14:28). The “head [leader] of Christ is God [the Father]” (1 Corinthians 11:3), and “Christ is the Head of the Church” (Ephesians 5:23).

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Who is the current leader of Christianity? ›

The current pope, Pope Francis, is known for his particularly diverse group of cardinals- if you can call a group of old, male, Catholic diverse. There are currently 128 serving cardinals. Of those, Pope Francis created 88 from 56 countries.

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What is the status of Christianity today? ›

About 64% of Americans call themselves Christian today. That might sound like a lot, but 50 years ago that number was 90%, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study. That same survey said the Christian majority in the US may disappear by 2070.

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How often is Christianity Today magazine published? ›

Christianity Today delivers honest, relevant commentary from a biblical perspective, covering the whole spectrum of choices and challenges facing Christians today. In addition to 10 annual print issues, CT magazine also publishes and hosts special resources and web-exclusive content on ChristianityToday.com.

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What happened to the Believer magazine? ›

In 2021, the editor-in-chief resigned and the funding for the magazine was withdrawn months later. After UNLV announced that the magazine would be shut down, it rejected an offer from McSweeney's to take back the publication and instead sold The Believer to digital marketing company Paradise Media.

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Who is the CEO of Christianity today? ›

CEO. Timothy Dalrymple left a first career in academia, studying and teaching philosophy of religion, to help launch a multi-religious website called Patheos.com in 2008.

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