Page 5395 – Christianity Today (2024)

By the time twenty-two-year-old Eva Eber showed up in the pastor’s office, her life story was already book length. Born into a nominal Catholic family in Los Angeles, she had begun to respond spiritually in junior high when a school friend invited her to a Baptist camp. Soon she was singing in the church’s teen music group and even doing street witnessing. Her parents, however, scorned her “turning Protestant,” and during her senior year, Eva moved out of the house.

By age nineteen she had landed a teacher’s aide job 200 miles away, and at church there she met a young Air Force sergeant who gave her the acceptance she craved. The very first intimacy resulted in pregnancy, and only then did the news come out that her lover was already married. They lived together until six weeks after Ryan was born; by then the sergeant had tired of Eva and was off to arrange his divorce and take up with someone else.

Eva drifted from job to job, and from bed to bed, over the next two years. “I just went crazy-all I wanted were arms to hold me through the night,” she later admitted. “As long as a man was taking me out and supplying the cocaine, keeping me from loneliness, I was OK.”

She eventually moved in with a mid-thirties divorced father of three. Occasionally she would drop in at a church, faintly clutching for the anchor of her teen years. But then, suddenly, she decided to start anew in Chicago, where a friend would help her get settled, find a job. Things would be different there.

Within a month, she found herself in bed one night with her friend’s former boyfriend. “God-just give up on me, why don’t you?” she prayed in the darkness. “I’m hopeless.” By the next March she literally had nowhere to live. A Christian she had met at her last job introduced her to an older woman named Eleanor Hill, who let Eva and two-year-old Ryan stay with her temporarily. It was Eleanor who directed Eva to her pastor for help.

The Exasperaters

Ministering to people who have created their own fiascos is not the same as reaching out to victims of external adversity. We are readily drawn to help those stricken with leukemia, overwhelmed by the birth of a handicapped child, hit by a drunken driver, made homeless by a tornado. They were going along in life minding their own business when suddenly, tragedy attacked. Our compassion and empathy are instantly aroused.

But what about the unwed mother who should have known better? What about the mid-life man who is suddenly obsessed with trading in his job and marriage for a condo on a warm beach somewhere with a blonde? What about the Christian who’s been indicted for embezzlement . . . the parents who were too harsh or too lenient with their children and are now reaping the whirlwind . . . the person whose intemperate remarks have ignited a raging family (or church) feud?

These people are in no way candidates for heroism. In fact, they are an embarrassment, a blot on the name of Christ. They make us uncomfortable, even exasperated at times. Our lofty ministerial principles tell us to stay calm, sympathetic, and helpful, and we try. But sometimes we cannot help fighting the internal battle that emergency room personnel confess when the ambulance rolls up with someone who has attempted suicide: Why should I knock myself out trying to save her life when she didn’t think any more of it than to do this?

Echoes of the Past

At such moments, we must take a deep breath and remind ourselves that we work for a Boss with an odd penchant for bunglers and rebels. His store of patience goes to extravagant lengths sometimes, not because he enjoys playing the fool, but because he’s been around so long he has already seen it all. He keeps saying things like “I will restore you to health and heal your wounds . . . because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares” (Jer. 30:17).

It does us good occasionally to remember parts of his track record. He called a man named Abram to a great destiny-and the fellow promptly ran off to Egypt . . . conjured up a fancy scam to protect himself, but landed his wife in Pharaoh’s harem . . . got evicted from the country . . . taking along an Egyptian named Hagar, whose presence almost split his marriage.

This is the paragon of faith, “the friend of God”? All the honor and achievement for which both Jews and Christians revere Abraham came after his personal disaster.

God is the type to pick up a murderer named Moses, who in one angry moment torpedoed his career as Pharaoh’s prot‚g‚. No one would argue that the murder was meant to be-but as a fugitive Moses learned the Sinai terrain, and it is fascinating to see God use that knowledge when it was time to lead a nation eastward.

The trail continues through David’s mid-life affair, to Simon Peter, whose apostleship reminds us that God has a future for people who blurt out things they don’t mean. John Mark spoiled his initial chance at ministry (Acts 13:13) and yet went on to write the second gospel.

The case that stretches propriety is Jonah. When he decided to head for Tarshish, why didn’t God just let him go on and have a nice vacation? Why not choose another, more obedient prophet to speak to Nineveh? One might answer, “God had to punish him. He could not let Jonah get away with ignoring a divine order.” But why then the recommissioning? Hadn’t Jonah “missed God’s perfect will” for his life, now to settle for second best?

Hardly. In fact, he turned out to be the one shining success among the prophets. Most of the others got kicked out of town, plunged into dungeons, or at least ignored. Jonah’s altar call drew half a million, “from the greatest to the least” (3:5).

Sometimes God gets carried away with this restoration business.

The Kind of Lord We Serve

Such exhibits lead us-both ministers and counselees-to four conclusions about the nature of God.

1. He is unshockable. We human beings have the power to make him laugh, cry, smile, or yawn (especially)-but never gasp. He never claps his hand over his mouth and says to the angels, “Did you see that?” He has watched every imaginable stupidity, every twist of self-destructive behavior, every faux pas, to the point that he is beyond surprising.

2. He is bent on restoring whenever possible. “The steps of a man are from the Lord,” David wrote in Psalm 37:23-24. “Though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord is the stay of his hand.”

It would make little sense for him to give up on us, since the planet is populated exclusively by maladroit mortals. He could perhaps start over with a better breed elsewhere in the galaxy, but he has promised to stick with us and make the best of our case.

3. He has more options than we think. We are too prone to think there’s only one way out of a bind, and even that one way is too often ex post facto (“If she’d only done/not done such-and-such, her life could have been straightened out”). We forget that even human managers in business, if they’re worth anything, can think of two or three ways to solve a problem. The successful manager takes roadblocks and hitches as all in a day’s work, instinctively looking for Route B, C, or D in order to keep the organization moving.

How much more our God? He is certainly as creative as a corporate division head, and more so. His alternatives for the future of broken people are rarely as limited as we imagine.

4. He uses us in his restorative work-IF we will be involved.

The trouble is, too many of us are like the English ministerium who dismissed William Carey by saying, “Young man, if God wishes to save the heathen, he can well accomplish it without your help or ours.” We assume that the divorced, the immoral, and the disgraced can make their own responses to the gospel like anyone else. After all, we’re faithfully proclaiming the Word every Sunday; now it’s up to them.

Unfortunately, most of them find it impossible to take the first step back. A man I interviewed for my book Another Chance: How God Overrides Our Big Mistakes said in the wake of his affair, “If you had asked me who in the Bible I was most like, I would probably have named Adam. I had gotten myself thrown out of the garden, with absolutely no chance of return, I thought. Now I was banished.”

Such people are paralyzed by their shame. Nothing is likely to happen until the people of God break the awful silence.

One man who was ousted from his profession for an indiscretion took work as a hod carrier simply to put bread on the table. He was suddenly plunged into a drastically different world; instead of going to an office each day, he was hauling loads of concrete block up to the fifth level of a construction site. Gone was the piped-in music in the corridors; now he had to endure blaring transistors. Any girl who walked by was subject to rude remarks and whistles. Profanity shot through the air, especially from the foreman, whose primary tactics were whining and intimidation: “For _____ sake, you _____, can’t you do anything right? I never worked with such a bunch of _____ in all my life. . . .”

Near the end of the third week, the new employee felt he could take no more. I’ll work till break time this morning, he told himself, and then that’s it. I’m going home. He’d already been the butt of more than one joke when his lack of experience caused him to do something foolish. The stories were retold constantly thereafter. I just can’t handle any more of this.

A while later, he decided to finish out the morning and then leave at lunchtime. Shortly before noon, the foreman came around with the paychecks. As he handed the man his envelope, he made his first civil comment to him in three weeks.

“Hey, there’s a woman working in the front office who knows you. Says she takes care of your kids sometimes.”

“Who?”

He named the woman, who sometimes helped in the nursery of the church where the man and his family worshiped. The foreman then went on with his rounds. When the hod carrier opened his envelope, he found, along with his check, a handwritten note from the payroll clerk: “When one part of the body of Christ suffers, we all suffer with it. Just wanted you to know that I’m praying for you these days.”

He stared at the note, astonished at God’s timing. He hadn’t even known the woman worked for this company. Here at his lowest hour, she had given him the courage to go on, to push another wheelbarrow of mortar up that ramp. God had used a fellow believer to rescue his spirit just in time.

How We Help

It is only natural to assume that in pastoral ministry to the fallen, repentance comes first. The sin(s) of the past must be confronted and confessed in order to restore oneself to a holy God and release his blessings in the future.

Theologically, that is impeccable. Psychologically, it doesn’t work very well. John van der Graaf and the people of Saint Mark’s United Methodist Church in suburban Saint Louis learned that two years ago when they started a support group for divorced and separated people. “I’m a firm believer that people have to take responsibility for their own behavior,” says the pastor, “and I knew from my counseling that hard questions had to be faced somewhere along the way. But that was not the starting point, we decided. First we had to try to bind up the wounds.”

They emphasized acceptance, warmth, and healing love from the first Thursday night on, moving to personal renovation only when people felt secure. No wonder their group zoomed to 200 members in a year.

The opening task in ministering to those who have made a major mistake in their lives is to restore confidence. It is to let them know that God just might accept them again in spite of what has transpired. It is to light the match of hope, to crack the gloom. As Paul says, “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

How do we do this? We use the powerful words of Scripture, of course. We say it with our body language, our openness, our touching. We say it through the stories of others in similar straits who have been restored. We let the person know he is not the all-time wretch. Others have been as low, or lower, and have rebuilt their lives before God.

Music can be a great ally in penetrating the spirit-for example, Phil Johnson’s song:

He didn’t bring us this far to leave us;

He didn’t teach us to swim to let us drown.

He didn’t build his home in us to move away;

He didn’t lift us up to let us down.

On both the cognitive and emotional levels we convey the Christian theme that beyond death lies resurrection.

Only then are we ready to move to the second task: confrontation. The person who has erred must be carefully, sensitively brought to realize that this is not a case of “It happened to me” or “They did me in.” This is a case of “I did it, didn’t I? Others may have been a bad influence, but I made the crucial choices.”

We must play the role of God’s messenger wrestling with Jacob by the stream, who at the critical moment asks, “What is your name?” What he is really saying is “Jacob, what is your real problem? You’ve blamed your father, Isaac, for his favoritism toward Esau; you’ve blamed your brother for his sour attitude; you’ve blamed your Uncle Laban for his shadiness-but down at the root of things, who are you? You’re Jacob-the supplanter, the tricky one. Face it.”

Some will rebel at this point. If we rush the question too soon, some will slip back into despair. But if we are Spirit-led, we will bring about a great awakening.

The pastor who counseled Eva Eber spent more than one session getting to some important roots: that while her parents had acted unwisely in some regards, she was carrying a cancerous resentment of them; that her churchgoing as a teenager did not guarantee that she was indeed a Christian; that her physical attractiveness and self-confidence was not enough on which to build a life. She eventually came to make an adult choice to surrender her problems, her value system, and her future to God’s shaping with the result that her lifestyle underwent a remarkable stabilization.

Once the cards are on the table, we are ready to move to the third step: confession. As Ecclesiastes notes, there is a time to be silent, but then comes a time to speak. Self-devastated people are often initially quiet; it hurts too much to air the sordid details. But healing cannot come without it.

After the prodigal son came to his confrontation in the pigpen and resolved to get up and go home, he was hit by a sobering thought: He could not just waltz in the front door and go to his bedroom. He would have to say something. Getting right with his father meant getting verbal.

So he planned his speech. “I will . . . say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy . . .” (Luke 15:18-19).

The exciting thing is that when he arrived at home and nervously began his speech (v. 21), he only got halfway through. The business about “make me like one of your hired men” was lost in the father’s whooping and shouting for the robe and the ring and the fatted calf. That’s the way our Father is.

An aggrieved spouse or employer may not be so enthusiastic in receiving our counselee’s confession, but that does not reduce the value of the act. The point is to clear the offense, so the guilty person can dismiss it forever. If the interpersonal relationship can be restored, so much the better, but it is not mandatory.

Now-we dare not stop. We must complete the fourth task: guiding the person back into the stream of worship and service. If we only lead people through the first three steps, we have set them up for disappointment and possible relapse. If it becomes apparent that the forgiven person still bears a stigma in the church, all that preceded is thwarted.

It is sometimes hard for lay people-who weren’t present for the in-depth counseling and didn’t see the bitter tears of repentance-to swallow this. Most pastors can tell of situations in which God forgave, but the deacons wouldn’t. Sometimes the attitude of the church is like a button I once saw in a tourist shop: “To err is human. To forgive is out of the question.”

We must not succumb to irritation or disgust at such attitudes. People are not always being mean; sometimes they are just being cautious, fearful of condoning sin. In these situations, we must instead employ the creative end runs for which God has made himself famous. If tradition (or the by-laws) prevent divorced persons from teaching Sunday school, how about a neighborhood Bible study? If ministerial credentials have been withdrawn, what about a specialty ministry that doesn’t require ordination?

A nagging fear sometimes comes along: “What if he blows it again?” The Devil loves to get us fantasizing about that. We must rise against such bullying and believe “that he who began a good work . . . will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

Does this mean instant reinstatement? Not usually. Reinstatement to the original post of responsibility? Not always. Sometimes it is better to start again in another town, not because the person is running from unfinished business, but because it’s not worth waiting fifteen years until everyone’s attitude mellows. The Lord runs a big vineyard, with plenty of work to be done in all corners.

Rescue Training

One reason we and our congregations feel uneasy about the ministry of restoration is that we have not talked very much about its possibility. We have long maintained the facade that all is reasonably well, and no good Christian steps very far out of line. Thus, when a spectacular crash occurs, we have no strategies on file for dealing with it.

Given the realities of our times, we must begin to lay down an ethos among the people that embraces rescue initiatives. We must preach the subject on sunny days, when there is no precipitating crisis. It is too late to talk of forgiveness the Sunday after the head elder’s daughter turns up pregnant. People’s emotions are aroused, and the hardliners will crucify us. We must teach, exhort, and explain the road back from failure in calmer times, so that the Christian community is prepared when the storm hits.

King David once puzzled over what to do after one of his wayward sons, Absalom, had created a family scandal and then run for cover. According to 2 Samuel 14, David came to a kindlier feeling for his son but couldn’t quite bring himself to make the first move. What would people think? How would it look in the press? Maybe it’s better to let the matter lie. …

The wise woman of Tekoa eventually brought him around with this insight: “God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him” (v. 14).

That is our ministry today. Estranged, banished people are huddling in caves all around us. It is our duty to take the risk of guiding them gently back into the sunshine.

Dean Merrill is senior editor of LEADERSHIP.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

A headline in Bottom Line, a respected management newsletter, announces, “The best advice I ever got.” Here are some samples from the article.

Sirio Maccioni, owner of Le Cirque, New York’s super-chic restaurant: “Do your best, your very best.”

Cameron Meraj, president of the top-selling Century 21 firm in the country: “Working hard isn’t enough-you have to work smart.”

Betty Friedan, feminist, author, lecturer: “The best advice I ever got? ‘This above all: to thine own self be true.’ Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3.”

Do your best. Work smart. Be true to yourself. By now you may be questioning my psychological health, or at least my intellectual depth, for printing such cliches. They seem inappropriate to an issue devoted to pastoral transitions. At first brush, I would agree.

Just last week I sat with a pastor who has been offered an exciting, challenging opportunity quite different from his present successful situation. He is in agony over his decision. If he accepts, he suspects the transition and new responsibilities will bring considerable change to his life and his family. If he declines, he refuses what may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

As we talked, I was at a loss for meaningful words. Well-worn phrases would have been insulting; well-known Scriptures would have been . . . well, well known. “My wife and I will be praying for you” seemed trite. What advice would help a friend staring toward transition?

In spite of the dilemmas this issue’s theme articles present, I find myself returning to the cliches of the “best-advice-I-ever-got” column. Let me share some thoughts.

Do your best. Seldom have I met a pastor or Christian leader who wasn’t doing his or her best. However, most were spending a disproportionate amount of time worrying about what they weren’t getting done instead of enjoying what they were. Many kept second-guessing their efforts and decisions. Yesterday, Harold Myra and I were reviewing a management decision we helped make two years ago that has turned sour. Harold remarked, “No, I refuse to feel bad about our decision. We did our best. Given the same context, we would still make the same decision.”

By definition, doing one’s best precludes anxiety over what didn’t get done or didn’t turn out very well. In major-league baseball, doing one’s best includes seven or even eight out of ten trips to the plate for nothing. In corporate management circles, it means bad judgment calls at least 30 percent of the time. Doing one’s best does not preclude ashes in the mouth, but it does stop you from poisoning yourself by ingesting them.

In his book Instrument of Thy Peace, Alan Paton tells a powerful story of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. When asked what he would do if Pope Paul IV dissolved or otherwise acted against the Society of Jesus, a cause to which Ignatius had devoted all his energies and gifts, he replied, “I would pray for fifteen minutes. Then I would not think of it again.”

Work smart. Be true to yourself. A lot can be said about working smarter. Concepts such as strategic planning, organizing, training, delegating, and implementing are all vitally important to the pastor. But these are a house of cards if not built on a foundation of self-awareness and acceptance. Comfort with ourselves is the basis for personal stability and security. Peter Drucker, the dean of management theorists, once said that when he consults, he tries to make people more effective the way they are, not the way somebody else is.

In the last three months, I have heard a lay person glowingly describe a minister I know to be a great preacher but a poor pastor. Within days, I heard another lay friend use almost the same glowing language to describe a minister who is a poor preacher but a great pastor. Both churches are doing exceptionally well, and both lay friends are growing spiritually.

Bravo for ministers who are true to themselves, understand and build on their strengths, and willingly let others shore up their weaknesses.

If you’re a veteran reader of LEADERSHIP, you will be familiar with the questions on our Reader Survey (p. 94). To the query “What do you like least about LEADERSHIP?” a pastor recently responded, “Not having freedom to legitimately Xerox a specific article and distribute it to the church board for an upcoming meeting. By the time I see some articles, get the time to read them, and decide to use them in a board meeting, there’s not enough time to write for permission to copy.”

Well, we deeply appreciate the conscientiousness of this reader. Furthermore, we want to solve this problem once and for all by granting blanket permission to photocopy any original article in any issue of LEADERSHIP at any time for distribution in local-church meetings. Yes, you read correctly. (The only exception: articles we have reprinted from another source.) We encourage readers to use photocopies as a resource for any meeting of your church if the content might be of help. All we ask is that you indicate on the copies that the article was taken from LEADERSHIP and is used by permission.

If you want to use it beyond your local church, however, or offer it for sale, then you need to ask us in advance for authorization.

Paul D. Robbins is executive vice president of Christianity Today, Inc.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

To a missionary, mail is one of life’s treasures. If you were ever in the military and remember standing in the rain for mail call, you know what a letter from home can mean. It’s the same with missionaries. Mail can minister-if it’s thoughtfully sent. In the seven years our family has been in Kenya, some things have passed through our mailbox that meant much to us.

Reading Material: What magazines do you read? Would a missionary enjoy those magazines also? From time to time a fellow in the States air-mails me the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. Because air-mail postage is so expensive, he can’t do it often, but it’s a nice gesture when he does. It makes us feel like someone cares.

How about comic books for the kids, Good Housekeeping for the wife? Do you enjoy a subscription to LEADERSHIP? Do you think a missionary would? Would a missionary’s wife enjoy a subscription to Today’s Christian Woman or Partnership? Would the kids enjoy receiving Campus Life? What are their hobbies? Maybe they would like Mechanix Illustrated, Computer Digest, or Creative Crafts.

Recently a pastor sent me a book. He wrote, “I enjoyed this book; it was a blessing to my life. I thought I’d share it with you.” What thoughtfulness!

Cassettes: I had been in a mud hut for a week teaching national pastors. One morning, discouraged and a little lonely, I turned on a music tape I had just received from a pastor friend. The first song was “Someone Is Praying for You,” by Praise. I can’t begin to describe what that meant to me that morning.

What type of music do you enjoy? Do you think a missionary might enjoy the same? Perhaps they like classics, show music, country and western, or pop. Recently a church surprised my daughter with her own cassette recorder and some tapes.

Several pastors send a copy of their church services on tape. I have also received teaching tapes on leadership principles, finances, and motivational material. These are helpful to keep a missionary from going dry.

One year someone sent me the World Series on cassette, commercials included. As I drove my truck in the desert, I listened to Vin Scully’s play-by-play. It made a four-hour journey in 100-degree heat almost enjoyable.

Video: Sitting in his home in Odessa, Texas, watching a movie on video, Rev. Jerry Thorpe turned to me and asked, “Lewis, if our church bought you a video machine, could you use it?”

“We sure could!” I answered.

Video players are difficult to get into some countries, but I don’t know of a better morale booster. My family enjoys worshiping the Lord in English. After being in African churches, preaching in Swahili, it’s nice to watch a video-taped American worship service. Even Bible teaching courses are available on video.

Practicality aside, my wife is a movie buff, my kids are cartoon buffs, and old dad is a news and sports buff.

I realize some people feel old movies and cartoons don’t have anything to do with the Lord’s work, but if isolation is harmful to missionaries’ morale, perhaps a little Americana might be of some practical use. We won’t know till we get to heaven, but perhaps Paul would have enjoyed the Olympics, and Livingstone would have enjoyed a little cricket if they had been able to watch it via video.

Packages: The Women’s Missionary Society of Central Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas, are pros when it comes to sending packages to missionaries.

At their meetings they bring empty milk cartons and pack them with little items not available in many parts of the world. We have received such precious American products as KoolAid, cake mixes, chocolate chips, coconut, balloons, artificial sweetener, and pocket calendars. That may not sound very exciting to you, but when you’re 10,000 miles from the land of plenty, those are neat items to receive.

They aren’t expensive; the value of the contents never exceeds five dollars. They send the packages surface mail, so postage is less than two dollars.

Recently we received a box from another church. They had no idea what was available here or what we could really use, so their box was a hodgepodge of-well, junk! Soap, toothpaste, used pencils, combs, and used yarn. As much as we appreciated the thought, it looked as though they had cleaned out the closet.

The key is knowing what missionaries like to receive. Write and ask what suggestions they have.

Clothes: In a Third World country like ours, many people still wear very little clothing. We work among two backward tribes. Several churches in America regularly send us used clothing for our Christians, which is well received by the Africans. If you pack well and use surface mail, you can provide clothes for thirty naked kids for about twenty-two dollars. Our men especially like to receive trousers; the women enjoy dresses and skirts.

These are just some things we have received. I would encourage churches getting involved in this ministry to correspond with their missionary first. In some countries, customs regulations are very strict. Needs are also different. Some missionaries might not want chocolate chips but have need for soap and used pencils.

Not everyone can go to a mission field. But if you believe in world evangelism and want to do something more personal than a mission offering, the mailbag ministry is a way to “go into all the world.”

Richard Lewis is a missionary in Kitale, Kenya.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

At the age of forty-seven, Roy Oswald has already endured more career shifts than many people do in a lifetime.

A Lutheran pastor for four years in Kingston, Ontario, he then became a denominational youth worker in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1966. From there he became a synod executive, working in leadership development.

After personal crises cost him his marriage and his job, he accepted a position as director of training at the Metropolitan Ecumenical Training Center in Washington, D.C., where the spiritual guidance of executive director Tilden Edwards helped Oswald rebuild his life.

Since 1977, Oswald has been director of training and field studies at Washington's Alban Institute, which provides resources for clergy and congregations. Not only does he know the upheaval of transition personally, but it's now the object of his professional research.

LEADERSHIP editors Marshall Shelley and Dean Merrill asked him to map out the pastor's passages.

A lot has been written about passages or seasons of adult life. Are there also predictable stages in a pastor's career?

Definitely, especially at the beginning. The transition from seminary to first parish is usually a major cultural shock. The relocation from one parish to another is also dramatic.

After that, the transitions are more internal-the adult life crises, for instance. Another occurs when a pastor moves to a large parish and becomes a virtual corporate manager. Still another happens in a long pastorate, where a shift in thinking is required in order to thrive over the long haul.

Then retirement, naturally, is a big one.

Let's take them one at a time. What are the pressure points in entering the first pastorate?

The biggest is role and authority. Even if pastors had an internship in seminary, they're not ready to be the resident religious authority-the community holy man or holy woman. It throws them for a loop, because it can't be learned in an academic setting.

Some people have suggested that seminary should be four years of nothing but role clarity-the rest will come easy. The role can't be learned conceptually. You have to stand in the middle of the community and handle all the transactions coming at you.

Is it possible to be a good pastor in your twenties?

Wow. I'm just now understanding the kind of spiritual depth necessary to be a pastor. That makes me question whether I had much to offer when I first got out of seminary.

Are we asking the impossible of young pastors? Should we require them, like presidents of the United States, to be thirty-five years old?

Some denominations do encourage second-career pastors. Yet how else do you get pastoral maturity unless you start, make mistakes, and learn from them?

One of the evidences of the Holy Spirit's working is that congregations are forgiving and able to nurture and help us learn. It's surprising the authority they confer on even the young and inexperienced.

Does being an associate pastor help or hinder the process of learning the authority role?

It depends on the mentor. If your senior pastor is a good model, you need to follow that person around-into hospital rooms, in counseling sessions and do lots of watching and asking, "Why did you do that?" Seminary, you see, comes in separate pieces-theology, Bible, history-and you're expected to integrate. But you can't until you see somebody actually mixing it into a lifestyle and ministry that works.

If your senior pastor isn't a good model, you'll have to find one elsewhere, preferably among your colleagues. But even someone in the next town would work.

How much time should you ask for?

One day a month would be fine-a whole day spent together, concluding with time to debrief so you can ask questions.

How do you find a good mentor? What do you look for?

Some denominations try to match up names. That doesn't work. Carl Rogers's research shows there are limits to what you will learn from someone you don't like. Personal respect-"chemistry"-is a crucial factor. So you should look for a mentor with a style of ministry you'd like to emulate.

Did you have a mentor in your first four years in Kingston?

No, and that was traumatic. A mentor would have helped greatly, but I wasn't prepared even to think in those terms. I came out of seminary thinking I was complete, wholly trained, and adequate. I felt I needed to face issues myself.

Later in my career, when I had good mentors, I realized how important they were.

How would a mentor have helped?

I spent 20 percent of my ministry trying to cure one woman, clearly neurotic, who didn't want to be cured. I was naive, totally blind to the fact that she was sexually attracted and only wanted to spend time with me. A mentor could have given me clarity.

Another example: I was so turned on by systematic theology in seminary that I thought all I needed was to begin teaching that in church. When I did . . . and the Kingdom didn't come in . . . I said, "Now what?" The whole spiral of self-doubt began. A mentor would have helped.

You mentioned a second passage-moving from one parish to another. What are the important elements here?

Learning to say good-by. Our research on termination styles of clergy shows they are typically bad, not allowing adequate opportunity for people to express their feelings, to say what this pastor has meant. Maybe pastors feel it's maudlin. Usually, however, they slip off into the night without really saying good-by, and that can undercut everything they've done up till then. People may question whether the pastor really cared for them at all.

How do you say a good farewell? One to one? You obviously can't go out to dinner with five hundred people.

We tell clergy to make a list of the people closest to them-probably between a dozen and twenty names-people who ought to get a visit because they need the closure, and you do too.

There's another list of people who should at least get a phone call. Then there are the significant groups you've worked with, and you need to spend an evening with them.

What do you talk about?

The good-bys we detest are the ones where all is sweetness and light. If you talk only about the good things, you leave knowing that wasn't reality.

But if you can agree on what was good and what wasn't good about this relationship, and celebrate that, then you're free to move on to another part of life. When those things aren't surfaced and celebrated, the unresolved tensions linger for years.

It's up to the pastor to initiate this. Most laity won't bring up negatives unless you give them permission.

Should any of this be shared in public?

Yes. In the final sermon, at the farewell party, or somewhere, you need to share what it's like to be their religious authority. That doesn't mean backing up the truck and dumping on them. But this is a teachable moment when the congregation can learn something about its corporate identity- how it comes across to a pastor. People need to know their strengths and what makes them hard to live with.

How long should you be a lame duck?

Closure takes a minimum of two or three months. In one sense, you are a lame duck, but that's good. You can stop programming and bolstering your favorite activities. Your task now is closure, and that takes time, especially if you're well liked. People's initial reaction is shock and denial. They can't say good-by on the spot. There's a subtle withdrawal, and then they come back. This can't be done in two weeks.

Good closure prevents lots of problems. Pastors don't realize that in order to start well in a new parish, they must say good-by to the old parish.

Why? How does unfinished business at the old parish affect your new ministry?

It can get you into trouble. When I left St. Mark's in Kingston, part of me genuinely wanted to try youth work, but part of me was also deeply hurt by having to leave. I didn't close well. I spent most of my time trying to prop up my programs and see that they would continue after I left.

When I arrived in Harrisburg, I had lots of unexpressed emotion. I took out that unresolved anger on my job. I became a radical. Those were the days of the Vietnam War and the race issue, and youth work was an excellent opportunity to beat up on people. If you were for kids, you were against adults. I was more biting, cynical, and controversial than I needed to be.

Eight years later, I shaved my beard and put on a three-piece suit, but I couldn't escape my radical image. I left that job as a broken person.

How you come across in the first twelve months often determines your effectiveness for your entire ministry. Communication patterns, roles, and expectations all get set. If you come in with anger, that will create a style you'll be locked into for years.

If you close well, you can get on with life, put to rest one chapter, and begin another. Both congregation and clergy feel better about themselves, and they can reach out in ministry sooner without emotional scars.

Give us an example of someone who closed well.

A friend of mine in a church near Washington recently accepted a call from Michigan. Before he left, we sat down with a tape recorder, and I asked him what was good about this ministry, what had been painful, and what things he was having to let go of. Feelings came out in that exit interview that surprised even him.

We distributed the transcript of that interview to the church board. His candid comments encouraged them to be candid, too. When he visited the key people personally, it set a healthy atmosphere.

Just before his departure, the congregation held a roast in his honor. With humor, drama, and songs, they recalled his faux pas-he was a terrible administrator, never on time, often scatterbrained. All this came out, but the tone was affirming: "It was worth it because you're a loving person, and we're going to miss you."

You mentioned the first twelve months in a parish are crucial. How can new pastors make sure they're setting good patterns?

The task of the first twelve months is to be a lover and a historian-to fully understand what has taken place here and to learn to love these people before making changes.

Most pastors arrive and make immediate changes, which says to the people, "You don't understand Christianity. I'm the expert, and you need to do it my way." It's an act of rejection, almost hostility. It undercuts lay ministry.

Some clergy cook their goose right away by too many immediate changes, especially in worship.

I know one young woman who started pastoring in a small town, and she thought it ridiculous that the pulpit Bible was a huge King James, which didn't leave room for her notes. So she put it away. The next week it appeared back on the pulpit with a note: "This Bible belongs on the pulpit. (Signed) The Management." She refused to give in and removed the Bible again. She began having major problems in that congregation, largely because she couldn't recognize what was valuable to those people.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about "honoring the Christ that is present in the community," and that means discovering how the Holy Spirit has already been working. A congregation may not be doing things the way you think they should, but something is happening.

It'll take at least twelve months to find out where the power is, build credibility for yourself, and show the people you care about them.

You're saying beware of taking too much initiative early, and yet a few minutes ago you said the young pastor's biggest battle is establishing authority. How does a pastor demonstrate authority while not making changes?

That's quite a dance, isn't it? Making changes isn't the only way to gain authority. The authority that's needed comes from one's own credibility and caring. You clearly diminish your authority by not honoring what's there.

Is there a "honeymoon" with a new congregation?

That's a deceptive term. I prefer to call it a period of suspended judgment. It feels like a honeymoon, because people withhold criticism to give the new pastor a chance. But they're sizing you up. In one sense, they're giving you enough rope to hang yourself.

What then do you want to accomplish while the wolves are still at bay?

In the first twelve months, you need to establish personal authenticity. People try to see if you're genuine. They'll listen to your sermons, observe your life, and see if your head and heart are together. They want to know if you can be trusted with the deeper issues of life.

What can you do to help that happen?

Be aware that you're being tested with seemingly insignificant issues. Word spreads fast about how you manage things and whether you can be trusted.

What kinds of things are people watching for?

How you deal with chronic dependents is one. You can get sucked into spending too much time with them, like I did, and lose your credibility. People will like you for taking these dependents off their hands (after all, they had to deal with these types before you came), but they won't respect you if needy people are able to wrap you around their fingers. Somehow you've got to say no at the right time in the right way.

Other people will try maneuvering into an influential relationship with you. You've got to set boundaries, and that sometimes means conflict.

Perhaps the most traumatic transition is resignation. In some situations, of course, the actual decision is out of a pastor's hands-the denomination reassigns or the church fires. But where pastors do have a say, when should they resign, and when should they fight to the bitter end?

The history of the congregation is an important factor. If a church has perpetually solved its problems by getting rid of leadership, its welfare will not be served by pushing yet another pastor out. That just repeats the negative cycle. Sometimes clergy need to hang in there with the support of their denomination.

What about cases when you're not under heat, when no petitions are circulating? When should you stay, and when is it time to go?

That's a complicated problem, because the longer you're in a church, the harder it is to get accurate feedback. People say, "I can't be honest with Pastor Joe about his weaknesses. He sat with my mother when she was dying-I could never thank him enough. … " The more people trust him as an individual, the harder time they have talking about his professional inadequacies. And yet, pastors need that information to make decisions about resigning or changing their ministries.

How do you get that information out of reluctant parishioners?

They'll evaluate honestly when they know the comments will be handled well-likely when there's a professional around. They'll risk candor if someone with authority, integrity, and skill is available to help them if they get in trouble.

Once you get an honest evaluation, then you and the congregation must decide together the direction of the church and the cluster of skills needed to move on. Pastors must honestly decide if they have the necessary skills and energy. Some pastors go to seed because the church is too comfortable; they're not excited anymore. I call it "going native"-they've become like everyone else, and they're not willing to confront the congregation on where it needs to grow.

There needs to be a little tension. If things are too comfortable, you've got folk religion.

Suppose you miss all the warning signals-and are asked to leave. What happens to you at that point? And how do you recover?

Fired pastors are deeply wounded. Often a downward spiral begins. The divorce rate among clergy being fired is enormous. They may need counseling. They probably have been neglecting their own growth. They probably need to face some pretty painful things to turn it around. Despite the emotional shock, a pastor must seek an objective answer to the question "Do I still have a valid ministry?"

Admittedly, sometimes pastors are victims of scapegoating. Clergy may be more vulnerable to that than other professions. If the Sunday school isn't growing, if the church isn't moving, some churches assume removing the pastor will solve the problem. But even with scapegoating, pastors can learn something about what they did wrong.

Do you seek closure when you've been fired?

Absolutely. Even with the people who signed the petition against you. You can learn a lot by seeing these people and asking, "Where did this relationship get off track?" and "I'd like you to hear my point of view before I go."

And every pastor has supporters, too. These people will be upset over what the congregation did, and the pastor needs to get closure with these friends.

You mentioned internal transitions that pastors face. Describe some of these.

According to Daniel Levinson, adult life crises for males happen at the decades, give or take a few years, and the crisis at age forty is the most traumatic. These crises come when people realize their finitude-I'm forty, and I've only got half my life left. How do I want to spend it?-which catapults them into making drastic changes.

They look back and see what they're not getting out of life. Usually it has to do with marriage or work. Many get divorces. Others find their marriage relationship changes. Attitudes toward work shift dramatically.

When clergy do this, it shakes the congregation. They've had a staid ministry, and all of a sudden, they've got a hippie on their hands. Or the pastor drops out, or starts a second career.

So around age forty, most people find something has to give-or else they need outside help.

Parish ministry is especially hazardous to marriages. Why? Because the very commodities essential to marriage are the same commodities necessary to pastor: listening, giving, and caring.

Someone once defined love as "giving a person your full attention." That takes a lot of energy. When you come home from giving full attention to parishioners, and your spouse says, "Honey, we need to discuss something here," you haven't got the energy. The necessary ingredient for a good marriage has been exhausted.

The marriages of ministers require special attention; sometimes that means cutting back on the ministry.

Let's talk about another transition. Not so long ago, the first stop out of seminary was usually a rural church. Today it's more often a staff position in a large church. Describe the transition from associate to senior pastor.

I recently read that 80 percent of seminarians come from large churches, and yet 80 percent of the churches are small churches. And I don't think we fully understand how different large-church ministry is from small-church ministry.

As Lyle Schaller says, "A large church wants a pastor who leads them; a small church wants a pastor they can lead." Often the only way small churches have survived is by ignoring their pastors. When they've had a series of two- or three-year pastorates, there's no way they could take those pastors seriously.

Taking large-church associates and placing them in small churches sets up a cross-cultural barrier as tough as any foreign mission field. Committees and programs are the assumed structure of a large church, but they don't work in a small church, which is a unified system that makes decisions as a whole. Or perhaps they're patriarchal-matriarchal churches, where two or three key figures make all the decisions. Unless pastors recognize that and work with the key figures, their ministry is doomed.

In some ways, a small church is almost a tribal ministry, isn't it? If you win the chiefs, you've won the followers.

You got it.

Tell us about the final transition-approaching retirement.

The ten years between age fifty-five and sixty-five are the period of most discouragement, lethargy, and burnout for many pastors. They know they're not going to be bishop, they begin seeing colleagues die, they feel stuck. Many churches say they don't want a pastor over fifty-five.

Often these pastors don't know what else they can do; they're just hanging on. And hanging on for ten years is devastating to a parish.

The problem is that they've not developed interests in anything but the church. Most clergy have no idea what they'll do after retirement-they're sitting ducks for a bad transition.

When they retire from being an authority and become a nobody, it hits them psychologically. That vulnerability often draws them back to pastoral acts in their church, and nothing is worse for the new pastor. It's intoxicating to be asked to do a wedding for people "who need you," but you mess up the credibility of the new minister.

What are some other directions a retired pastor can go?

Interim pastorates are an emerging profession. Experienced, credible people who can move into a crisis situation for six to eighteen months can do some very effective work.

Not every church with an empty pulpit needs an interim. But denominational executives need a handful of effective interims for certain situations. A congregation that's fired its pastor, for instance, is in no position to call someone until it has healed for eighteen months or so.

Another example is after a long pastorate. A church's identity has been so tied to that pastor, it needs an interim so it can come to terms with its own identity. Yet another instance is where there has been rapid turnover or a church split. All of these could use an interim for a couple of years.

What are some other options for those approaching retirement?

Some do counseling, others oversee training programs, and still others become volunteer administrators of homes or large churches. Some focus on visitation.

The question of retirement options can't be asked at age sixty-five. It demands planning. Arthur Bell, who recently retired as president of Ministers Life, has for the past ten years been managing a small company on the side that builds log houses. When he retired, he had something to go to.

When should a pastor start planning for retirement?

Middle forties. You need to think about where you're going to live, what the new challenge will be, and what will keep you going. That's got to be a corporate decision with a spouse, because two people will be moving.

As pastors start their careers and look ahead to all these transitions they're likely to face, what maintains emotional and spiritual health? How can you prevent transition shock?

Spiritual depth makes the difference through all the transitions. The difficulty is that we're not taught how to keep ourselves alive spiritually. In seminary, with chapel and classes every day, we don't learn the disciplines we need to overcome the vulnerability and emptiness we face when we're alone.

The difference between seminary religion and parish religion is greater than the difference between denominations. When we graduate, we want to push seminary religion on parishes-the great singing, the thoughtful liturgy, the sense of community. But we haven't developed an authentic spirituality to carry us over the long haul.

The only way to negotiate the transitions is with a deep sense that God cares for me, and that I am nurtured by grace.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

It’s now been a year since I came to this church, and nearly two since my predecessor left.

It’s been a good year. Attendance and giving have increased (following trends already in motion); the men’s group shows encouraging signs of life; we’re expanding our weekday program from half days to full days. And yesterday, one long-time member said she senses an attitude of caring here the likes of which she can’t remember. She even said it publicly.

Then there’s what happened at last month’s fish fry. The emcee noted I had just bought a car shortly after a rather strident sermon on pledges and tithing. The audience was delighted. Carl Dudley of McCormick Seminary says you’re accepted “when they start to tell stories on you.” By the end of the evening, I could have used a little less acceptance.

One of God’s blessings here has been a predecessor who has deliberately not “come back.” Jim, if you’re reading this from your new perch, know that I am grateful.

If a pastorate is like a marriage, then relocation is something like divorce. And if things have been going well (as they were with Jim), the congregation left behind often feels the pain of an abandoned spouse, and the aftershocks include any of the stages of grief.

Here, for instance, one family who had suffered through an agonizing death showed great anger at being left in the middle of the struggle. In others, denial showed up in one of two forms. Some insisted the old was gone, the new had come, and there was no sense looking back. They shut the door on the memories of Jim, claiming it would be easier for us all.

I made it clear that Jim’s memory did not intimidate me and, in fact, mattered a great deal. Most who wanted to “forget Jim” were only trying to protect me. When they saw nothing needed protecting, we could get on with the real new beginning, which included the past.

Another variation of denial, though, has proved more difficult. It shows itself in the member who not only remembers “how Jim did it” but who calls him once a week “just to chat.”

We ministers have to expect some of that. The pastor who followed me back in New Orleans has faced it, too; for several months, I got calls asking for pastoral advice and insight on church matters.

Clergy-parish relationships are a strange mix. On the one hand, clergy are surrogate parents: we tell our folk right from wrong, the true meaning of life, comfort them when the situation warrants, and bless their celebrations. In short, we become God’s stand-in.

To complicate things, we also serve as surrogate children/siblings. In us, older members see many of the traits they hoped for in their children. One of my former officers once told me, as we went to lunch, that of course he would get the check; after all, he was old enough to be my father, or even my grandfather. Others talk to us as they might to brothers or sisters. None of these relationships automatically ends just because the moving van rumbles over the horizon.

Ideally, they metamorphose into once-close-but-now-distant friendships. Most of them do. But some need help to make the shift. In fact, it is predictable that some former parishioners will continue to seek pastoral attention as surely as Faye Furillo on Hill Street Blues keeps popping in at her ex-husband’s precinct office.

How do we handle that? Carefully, gently, remembering that while those problems once laid claim on our lives, they now belong to someone else, even if the new pastor has yet to arrive.

And we handle it with pain. When I got word that the flock I left wanted to blow a lot of money on an unnecessary capital expense, I could hardly contain myself. I wanted to respond pastorally when the president of the women’s group died. The idea of performing a friend’s wedding made my mouth water, even though I knew I could not.

I had to stay out of things.

Somewhere in the Midwest, according to Lyle Schaller, a pastor retired after years in a parish and stayed in town. When his successor came, board meetings continued on the first Monday of every month at 7:30.

It was not until several months had passed that the new minister learned quite by accident that board members were gathering in the former pastor’s home that same night at 6:30. Those meetings, of course, were “just a time of fellowship.”

Would you like to guess which meeting was the real board meeting?

Or, take the case of a minister who had been serving a church for about a year when some discussion arose about the physical plant. When she asked about the architectural drawings, her board chair responded, “Dan’s got them,” referring to the former minister, who had been gone nearly three years. Ellen, the pastor, wondered why the church would leave the plans with a minister now some eighty miles away.

“He always takes care of those things,” came the reply. Notice the present tense.

When a pastor keeps the old ties after moving, bad things happen, no matter what the intent. Obviously, the authority of the next minister is undermined. If the former pastor comes back for weddings or funerals, it leads the new pastor to the almost inescapable conclusion of being unworthy to handle the “important” pastoral duties.

It also confuses everyone: the new pastor about his or her role, the people of the church about who to turn to, the former minister about his or her real task (the new work), and the new church-if it knows-about the whole situation.

I’m not suggesting that phone calls, Christmas cards, and even occasional visits are in and of themselves destructive. But we need to take care that they remain positive.

One of our families recently spent a weekend with Jim and his family; they chose to rendezvous at a resort about 100 miles from here. When we went back to New Orleans for a visit, we stayed with non-church friends across the river and limited our contact with former parishioners. Surprisingly little discussion about the former church occurred, except for updates on people we could not see.

It is possible to maintain friendships over the years. The trick is to do so without submarining the work of the people who follow us.

-Ed Gouedy

First Presbyterian Church

Alexander City, Alabama

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

No two pulpit committees function alike. Some generate mounds of paperwork; others rely mainly on memory. Some view their work as essentially a talent search. Some spend long hours on their knees seeking divine direction. Some push through the process as quickly as possible (and sometimes regret it), while others leave no stone unturned.

The following chronicle includes almost all the elements of finding a new pastor. Some readers will question spending this much time (twenty-six months) on the process. LEADERSHIP’S point in publishing it is not to say, “This is the way to do it,” but rather to showcase the various factors and procedures, giving other churches a planning guide for when a vacancy occurs.

A song in the play Fiddler on the Roof starts out: “Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match; find me a find, catch me a catch.”

More than two years ago, I stood with fourteen others and received a charge from our congregation to do just that. We were to discover the most qualified and eligible suitor, convince him he couldn’t possibly be happy without us, and then deliver him already in tuxedo to the congregation. Of course we were to proceed every step of the way with full assurance that God was smiling on our efforts.

Twenty-six months later I stood with tears streaming down my cheeks as our new pastor and his wife walked down the sanctuary aisle to the thunderous applause of a membership that had voted 311-0 to consummate the marriage.

Those were tears of joy. I am convinced God was not only pleased with the decision but had nudged us in that direction.

Those were also tears of relief. I had spent over six hundred hours in the process-the equivalent of seventy-five eight-hour work days. That includes reading dossiers, discussing them, listening to taped sermons every Tuesday night for three hours, calling references, traveling to hear pastors in their home churches, and interviewing candidates during extended meals. The weekends, however, were the killers. I made eight overnight trips to see people on their turf and was involved in an equal number of visits when they came to ours.

And they were tears of sadness. I will miss this group. During the life of the Pastoral Nominating Committee (PNC), fifteen disparate-and sometimes desperate-individuals became organically bonded to one another. We and our families experienced the evolution of life together, including birth, death, falling in love, loss of job, retirement, honors and promotions, home buying, alcoholism, attempted suicide, marriage, and finding faith.

We also learned much about how to search for a pastor. We learned even more how not to do it.

The Way We Were

One crucial factor was beyond our control. The size and makeup of the PNC was set by an ad hoc selection panel, later confirmed by the membership. We had to live with each other’s strengths and foibles for the duration. There were times when we were amazed at our collective wisdom; at other moments, we would have cheerfully strangled our appointers for their shortsightedness.

The group was loaded with experience. Some had served on previous search committees for associate pastors. All but one had been an elder or deacon. When candidates asked specific questions about our church, these present and past officers could give detailed and authoritative answers. Our ranks included a man who headed the current stewardship campaign, an elder who was immersed in presbytery governance, two folks who had seminary training and understood theological subtleties, a magazine editor who could compose turn-down letters that left the recipient feeling good, a private pilot who could fly us to other cities, the head of our session’s personnel committee who was responsible for seeing that the pulpit was filled in the interim.

In one sense the group was a microcosm of our church, a broad spectrum of theological and social positions. It wouldn’t have been hard to find two people who disagreed on everything but the divinity of Christ. That diversity made it tougher to agree on a pastor, but it also decreased the chances of a significant element of the church feeling grumpy when the candidate was finally presented.

In another sense, the group was different. Our commitment to the church was higher than you would expect from the average member. I don’t think any of us realized how long it would take-yet in over two years of frustrating search, no one quit. We laughed that the only way to get off the committee was feet first. The joke had the hollow ring of truth.

A PNC quest affects job performance, places a strain on family relationships, and cuts deeply into social time. At least it does if the job is done right. Yet I cannot think of anything I could do for the church that would have a greater impact in shaping its direction. So when asked, I swallowed hard and did an Isaiah: “Here I am, Lord, send me.”

Incidentally, toward the end of our labors one minister expressed surprise that we didn’t have any youth on the committee. We just smiled and said that we did when we began-but now they were grown, married, and had kids. Of course the real reason was that it would have been unfair to expect the time/energy/travel commitment from a high school student. It’s a thorny issue, but I think our decision was right.

We weren’t a cross section of the congregation in another way. The committee was hand-picked to put the church’s best foot forward. How do I write this without sounding like a snob? But it’s true-the PNC was chosen with an eye to physical attractiveness, social skills, and intelligence as well as spiritual commitment. This was in recognition of our dual role: not only were we selecting a pastor, but we had to sell the pastor on our church. We were the only people he or she would know before making a decision.

There were some real minuses in the way we were constituted. The chief one was size. There were too many of us-fifteen. The original ad hoc selection body feared that economic necessity, job transfer, or family needs might cause members to drop out. They wanted to guarantee enough people to keep the load manageable. I fear they increased it. We got even bigger when one person was nominated and elected from the floor.

So what’s an optimum size? I’d opt for twelve committed members for a large diverse congregation, nine or ten for a small hom*ogeneous fellowship.

One other major problem with our composition-we were eleven men and four women. Surprisingly this doesn’t reflect chauvinistic bias in our church, since the selection committee was mostly women. But the end result put us at risk in at least three ways. A pastoral search team desperately needs some workers who are free during the day to meet candidates at the airport, take them to lunch, and give tours. This typically means retirees or nonemployed women. We were fortunate that two of our ladies were free to take on these chores, and they performed superbly, but if they’d been less personable, less competent, or less committed, we would have wallowed in good intentions but poor performance. Besides, it wasn’t fair to them.

A second problem created by the imbalance was the emotional tone of the group. This was a committee of racehorses. Put a dozen or so of these high-performance types together, and the sparks fly. We needed the gentle hand of some who were relationally sensitive in order to keep things cool and give perspective. At the risk of stereotyping, I will say that women in our culture are more likely to display and evoke the human warmth necessary to keep a group cohesive. We could have used a few more.

Finally, the sexual imbalance sent a message to prospective pastors. The overload of men was a stumbling block to some candidates.

Will the Real Leader Please Stand Up?

You might imagine the difficulty for one person to ride herd over such a group of fast-track thoroughbreds. Actually it proved impossible. Yet over the first year, a leadership team evolved that served us well.

We started out traditionally, electing a chairman. Don seemed a natural, possessing a vibrant faith, affable personality, and up-front ability before the congregation. The other four or five likely candidates pleaded lack of time or special circ*mstances, so Don was selected unanimously. As an apparent afterthought, Bill and Barb were elected as vice-chairpersons. In retrospect, I see God’s hand in that decision.

It soon became apparent that Don was unable to lead the group. Business reverses and family tragedy sapped him of time and energy. An understandable aversion to conflict rendered him incapable of making tough decisions. I’m not sure what would have happened if he had been the solitary leader. Our two vice-chairs took the reins without embarrassment or public announcement. We ended up with a leadership troika-three leaders pulling in the same direction.

As we entered our second year, Barb clearly became first among equals. Why? She was willing to grasp the power, even eager. (I have yet to see an honest-to-goodness leadership draft. Barb’s rise to the top was no exception.)

She was also willing to hold others accountable. Barb understood that people vote with their presence, and the mission disintegrates if absenteeism goes unchecked. One certain way of arousing her wrath was to not show up without clearing it ahead of time. She was capable of leveling you with a stare that made you realize it was your turn to go on a trip, call a reference, or host a dinner. Members would refer to her as “The Sergeant Major” or “Mother Superior.” I thought of her as a velvet-covered brick.

Yet another factor was even more important: she had an unswerving commitment to the unity of the PNC. More than once Barb exhorted the group to love and care for one another. She backed this up publicly by insisting that not only should everybody have a say, but others should listen and respect the opinion. This was one reason why our meetings went so long, but it’s also a reason why we finally reached unanimity.

The listening ear extended past the meetings. I was on the phone to Barb two or three times a week. PNC business and private life merged in those conversations. (My wife decided two years was long enough when I once called home and absentmindedly said, “Hi, Barb.”) Her willingness to get involved in the lives of individuals was a catalyst in drawing the group together. It also gave her the behind-the-scenes intelligence necessary to tiptoe the committee through emotional minefields of hidden agendas.

All three leaders recognized the importance of forging warm emotional bonds within the committee. They scheduled parties with spouses to bring us together in nontask situations. Times of prayer were interspersed with moments of laughter.

The lesson here for other groups: Don’t get locked into a leadership structure too early. Select a leader for the first few months to get you through the organizational phase. By then everyone will have a good idea of each other’s capabilities and personality quirks, and the true leader will naturally emerge. Or select dual leadership. One person can shepherd the group in its task while the other can focus on the emotional needs of members.

Narrowing the Field

We started slowly. The Presbyterian Church places a premium on order. It’s sometimes a strength, sometimes a weakness, always maddening. Before we could interview candidates or even peek at their credentials, we had to prepare our own Church Information Form. The CIF is an exhaustive document that gives the prospective pastor a handle on who we are.

The statistical data was quickly researched-size of membership, annual budget, average Sunday worship attendance, number of churches in the community, nearest hospital, etc. The goals and long-range plans took more thought. Did we want to grow? What form of ministry to the community had priority? The page that gave us most pause was the one that asked us to rank twenty-two emphases in ministry. Preaching, hospital visitation, community service, counseling, evangelism, laity training, Christian education-they all sounded good, yet we had to choose. It forced us to concentrate on the characteristics we felt a person had to have in order to be eligible.

Pastors were impressed with our CIF. An 1,800 member church with a $500,000 budget, a going youth program, large well-trained choirs, founding church of a Christian counseling center-it was almost too good to be true. It hurt us in the long run. Successful pastors in large churches read this glowing report and saw no challenge. Some in less ambitious situations were intimidated. Only later did we share the soft underbelly of the operation. Although we were loaded with lay people of unquestionable talent, on the whole we were biblically illiterate. We had fine programs but little sharing of faith between members. Our weaknesses attracted the desired kind of leader as much, if not more, than our strengths.

A friend who’s a corporate headhunter tells me that matching an executive with a firm is a question of what you can get with what you have to offer. The good match is one that clicks between equally attractive parties. We spent the first year aiming too high, looking for the forty- to fifty-year-old superstar with a proven track record at a large church. I firmly believe God can call someone to step down the status ladder, but we saw nothing to indicate that would happen in our case. So in the second year, we concentrated on younger pastors who were looking to make the jump from a smaller successful situation. It was fun to talk with people who wanted us rather than trying to kindle a lukewarm interest. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

After the CIF was submitted to church headquarters, we received a flock of dossiers. Some of these we requested because they had been recommended by members or outside friends. Others came from pastors who knew of the vacancy and submitted their own names. A final group was generated by a computer that compared our desires with a minister’s stated strengths. (Based on the quality of this material, I’d never recommend a computer dating service.)

We had signed the required pledge that we would consider candidates of either gender. But in the end, only one woman’s name came our way, and by the time we made contact, she had taken a church in California.

The dossiers were long, running from six to ten pages. In an effort to save time and money, we made only four copies of each and farmed them out to a subgroup. If those folks liked what they read, the papers were sent on to another subgroup, and so on until they’d made the rounds. It was false economy. Over a three-month period, forty resumes entered the pipeline, but nothing ever came out. On the advice of a wise pastoral adviser from another congregation, we bit the bullet and duplicated fifteen copies of each vita. Everyone was assigned to read the same dossiers for a given week, and the system began to flow.

We devised a plan for giving zero to three points to each of the top six areas we had selected. This was fine in theory, but I found myself short-circuiting the system. To me, preaching was more important than administration. If I liked what I read about sermon preparation, I’d rate the person high in everything to hype the score. If I didn’t approve of the theology, I’d mark him low, even though there was no doctrinal category to check. Others fudged in the direction of their interest, so we finally scrapped the system and went to a zero-to-eighteen scale based on whatever the rater desired. Form should follow substance.

Each meeting we’d list all the candidates and plot members’ scores on a grid for all to see. Then we’d talk about the candidates one at a time. It was a tedious practice, but well worth it. Not only did we get a better handle on the candidates, but we learned even more about our own tastes and attitudes. This was an essential part of the jelling process.

An average score of twelve or more was usually enough to cause us to pursue someone further. But if anyone had a “tingle”-a strong emotional response at the base of the spine-we’d pursue no matter how low the score. It was part of the respect we had for each other’s views.

It’s tough to say what earned high marks. After reading over two hundred dossiers, I’m still not able to spot a magic formula. A plain-language summary of educational training, previous pastorates, present accomplishments, plus strengths and places for growth worked best. We were irritated whenever someone tried to get too cute. We also got suspicious when a resume ducked questions on theology, never mentioned family relationships, or showed a history of job hopping. We didn’t want a shepherd who would soon itch for a new flock.

Within the Presbyterian Church, dossiers include the salary range a person expects. In some cases, that lets you know immediately if a candidate is out of the ballpark. In the case of the pastor we eventually called, his stated salary needs were much less than we had been paying his predecessor. So salary was not a major consideration in his decision to come.

All of this validates the traditional wisdom that a resume will never get you hired but is often a reason to turn you down. Some of our best candidates barely cleared the dossier hurdle. The one we called received a score of seven from the PNC member who later became his biggest booster. The moral of this story: Don’t put too much weight on the dossier. If you’ve got a good reason to believe a person is a prime prospect, go and meet him.

We learned the hard way on this last piece of advice, because we persisted in one-way communication. If we liked what we read, we sent for a taped sermon. This was the most discouraging part of our search. Our previous pastor had an imposing presence in the pulpit. Our first-year pulpit supply was even better, using rich imagery to make Scripture come alive. Most of the stuff we heard on tape was pallid by comparison.

I admit it’s not fair to judge a sermon without getting the visual impact. But to a committee planning on using tapes I’d recommend the following: Request copies of sermons given on specific dates. That increases the chance of a representative sample rather than having a person select one sure-fire spellbinder. Insist that they be recorded live. We groaned every time we heard a message recorded in a study.

If you hear solid content but are put off by the mood and manner of delivery, have someone see the speaker in person before you write him off. If you respond to both the words and the style on tape-run don’t walk to see him in his own church. He’s an endangered species.

The advantages of seeing a pastor on home turf are:

1. You see the whole person, not a truncated version. He’s interacting with real people. The way he greets folks as they leave is as telling as what he does during the service.

2. You can get an idea of the type of people he attracts. One of the winsome factors about our candidate was the warmth of his congregation. We hit another church that seemed more loyal to the American flag than the cause of Christ. We wouldn’t have spotted that without traveling.

3. It shows the pastor you are seriously interested. If he’s a reluctant candidate, it provides a watershed where he has to decide if he’s serious about relocating or just playing games because the interest is flattering.

4. The travel is a catalyst in drawing PNC members together. We were often at each other’s throats until we sat together on a Sunday morning in Milwaukee eating bratwurst or got lost trying to find a church in Cleveland.

The toughest part about visiting another church is the inner knowledge that you may soon want to steal their pastor. That induces guilt when the woman next to you in the pew welcomes you warmly as a visitor and even raves about their minister. More than once I felt like a spy whose cover was about to be blown.

Although we began to get a good composite image of a candidate from the dossier, tapes, and visits to the church, we found it wise not to trust our own judgment solely. We worked hard to contact people who’d seen the person in action. As might be expected, stated references were always laudatory. If a man can’t find five people to put in a good word for him, he’s in big trouble. But we wanted candid appraisals of strengths and weaknesses, the nuances of personality that don’t come through with a simple “He’s great.”

Here are some of the lessons we learned: Check references after you already have a decent handle on the person. You’ll be able to ask intelligent questions and zero in on particular problem areas.

If you’re just going through the motions, write a letter. If you really care, pick up the phone. Someone who’s sold on the person will be willing to take twenty minutes to be specific. If you catch him or her at a bad time, set up a specific hour to call back.

Take copious notes. You think you’ll be able to remember details, but unless you have a verbatim account of key phrases, all you’ll retain is a general impression to share with the committee.

Give the references an opportunity to rave about their colleague, but also give them permission to be critical. The more you tell about your church, the more specific they’ll be. I happened upon a closing question that often provided a wealth of insight: “Thanks so much for your time. You’ve answered every question I had concerning John. But I’m afraid I may not have known what to ask. What question should I have raised that would help us understand the essence of who John is if I’d only known more?” Then I’d just shut up and wait for a reply. Sometimes there was an awkward silence for up to thirty seconds, but the response usually made the wait worthwhile. It also turned out to be a good question to ask the candidate himself at the end of an extensive interview.

Getting Serious

An invitation to meet with the entire committee wasn’t given lightly. It usually meant gearing up for a two-day visit involving food, lodging, preaching in a neutral pulpit, a tour of the community, and six hours or so of discussion. We did it ten times.

I had heard it was unwise to ask a prime candidate for our first such weekend. Good advice. In fact, we botched the first few. We’d pick up the man, whisk him to the church, and start asking about his theology. Dumb. It had all the grace of a bulldozer. One candidate scolded us for setting up an inquisition. He wanted some positive strokes for his track record in the ministry. While we rationalized his comments as springing from a bruised ego, I think his criticism was valid. We did learn from our mistakes.

A typical visit involved both the man and his wife. We found it essential to view the interplay between the two. Our church has low expectations for the woman’s involvement in congregational life. (The last two pastors’ wives had careers of their own.) But we wanted to call a senior pastor who would be able to walk away from the pressures of ministry into a warm home, a safe haven.

The obvious tension between one pair raised all sorts of warning signals. Conversely, the spontaneity between the man we called and his wife confirmed our view that we had an effective people person.

We’d pick them up at the airport on Friday and get them established in a nice motel. There are pros and cons to the motel versus home issue. A home conveys warmth, but it also means having to be “on stage” the whole time. We opted for privacy. They discovered flowers and a basket full of items tailor-made for their interests. If he was a jogger, there was a map of all the jogging trails in the county. A classical music buff received a brochure of upcoming concerts. Women from rural areas appreciated news on shopping centers. Of course we included the usual Chamber of Commerce maps and blurbs on the community. Some couples liked to take these and scout on their own, so we put a car at their disposal. A guided tour of the church followed by a dinner with the whole committee in a member’s home rounded out Friday. We were careful to rotate seating at meals so everyone had personal exposure to the couple over the weekend.

Saturday was a day of discussion at the church. Various committee members would lead off on certain topics. We tried to block out time frames for theology, mission, worship, preaching, Christian education, stewardship, and evangelism. But we also gave the candidate equal opportunity to ask us questions.

The mood and manner were as informative as the content. One man talked himself out of a job by giving fifteen-minute answers to fifteen-second questions. Multiple coffee breaks and lunch gave everyone a chance to shift mood as well as body position. Sometimes wives were in on these discussions-sometimes not. Their choice.

Saturday night was a time for the couple to relax by themselves. We figured there was a lot of pillow talk about us.

On Sunday we would go to another church in our area where we had arranged for our visitor to preach. This reflected our concern for confidentiality. He wasn’t speaking at a church that was “looking for a pastor,” so his crowd wasn’t suspicious. If our congregation were to hear that we were considering a certain person, the inevitable pro-and-con polarization would weaken his chances. We learned from the dictum that treaties are best arrived at in secret and then openly announced. Even our spouses were not privy to the names involved.

Some thought we went overboard on secrecy. They accused us of being paranoid about information leaks. But as the saying goes, “You aren’t paranoid if they’re really after you.” And many members and staff were really after us-to glean inside information or to influence the outcome.

One of the rumors going the rounds claimed we were too picky. Our final test for a prospective pastor-so the joke ran-was to take him to the nearby lake and see if he could walk across. Fears like this could have been quelled by periodic announcements as to the number of candidates we were actively pursuing. But I firmly believe a tight-lipped policy about the actual person involved is the only way to go.

Following the service, we would meet for a final time. If he had no further questions and if we hadn’t done so earlier at his request, we’d go around and share our individual visions for the church. It was at these times I felt particularly proud of our congregation. Our excitement and commitment to each other came through clearly.

Although I’ve outlined the typical visit, things were a bit different in the case of the couple we called. We sent a delegation of four people to visit their church. They met with the pastor and his wife for a three-hour discussion over a meal. He had just lost his associate and was unable to get away for a weekend, so we arranged for a midweek visit, knowing we’d be unable to hear him preach. Most of us were comfortable with that, since his tapes had been so fine and the four-person team had raved about his sermon.

However, he volunteered to conduct a worship service just for the committee. It had everything going against it. We met in a cold chapel at dusk on a bleak day-fifteen people sitting in a sanctuary that could hold a few hundred, and without any of the usual trappings of worship. But his prayer, reading of Scripture, and message made the sanctuary come alive with light and warmth. It was one of those magic moments.

Popping the Question

We had adopted ground rules for the final decision making early, before any personalities were known. As it turned out, we needed the protection. We had some stormy sessions. On more than one occasion, individuals walked out of a meeting. Shouts of accusation and protest were not unknown. The same candidate could generate praise and scorn from different members. But our standard was simply this: No one would receive a call who had four or more no votes, even if the other eleven thought he was the greatest pastor since the apostle Paul.

Since abstentions were allowed, it was theoretically possible that a bland personality who didn’t arouse anyone’s ire might slide through even though no one was strongly for him. To counter this possibility, we stipulated that a candidate had to receive eleven positive votes. Although we held only two formal votes to call, the bylaw colored all of our deliberations. Each member had to deal with the question “If it comes to a vote, which way will I go?”

There was an added complication at the end. After two years of diligent work, we were confronted by an embarrassment of riches. We had three excellent prospects, each with their champions on the PNC. In other pulpit committees this has led to each member staunchly defending his own choice and knocking the others. The result is a fractured committee and loss of all candidates. To counter this, we set up an elaborate preliminary polling procedure. It may seem cumbersome, but it served us well.

On the fateful night we took an initial straw vote in which each member had fifteen points to spread among the three. We couldn’t give more than eight or less than two votes to any candidate. A typical distribution might run:

Pastor A 8

Pastor B 5

Pastor C 2

15

The results were tabulated, and we began discussing the candidate with the least votes. Every member had up to five minutes to comment on that candidate. This was followed by similar rounds for the middle vote getter and finally for the top choice. We then took a second straw poll using the same fifteen-point forced-choice system.

Finally after a time of prayer, we took a call vote on the person receiving the highest total.

The genius of our system was that the leading candidate emerged before the official vote. Through the discussion and straw poll every member could see which way the wind was blowing. And we’re fully convinced that part of it was the breath of the Holy Spirit. Much to everyone’s surprise, one man’s total was almost as high as the other two combined. He increased that lead on the second straw poll following discussion. When the official vote was taken, there wasn’t a negative vote. After twenty-six months, we sat in awed silence. We had unanimous agreement on a match.

Would he agree? Even though it was past midnight, we phoned long distance to extend our call. At most we expected him to say, “Fine, let’s get together and talk about the financial specifics,” but without hesitation he said simply, “I accept.” God had been working on him as well. How glorious it was to have someone we wanted want us.

Would the congregation agree? We still had work to do. We hammered out a financial package including housing expenses, study leave, and moving costs. We prepared a brochure introducing the entire family to the church. We scheduled a Saturday coffee for members to meet our couple, and on the following day he preached to a packed church. At three o’clock that afternoon, all fifteen of us stood before the congregation and made our report. This was no formality. One after another, each of us gave his or her reasons for recommending a yes vote.

Three hundred eleven to zero says it all.

Would I do it all again? Consider the benefits. I had a significant say in choosing the leader who will affect the spiritual lives of my family and friends. As a student of human behavior, I got to be a participant/observer in a fascinating group. And I’ve established a firm friendship with three or four new people-one of them our new pastor. I trust he’ll be with us many years. But if he leaves, knowing what I know now, would I like to be part of the matchmaking business again? All I can say is I hope I don’t get left out.

Emory A. Griffin is an elder at First Presbyterian Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

By now, you have probably read that close to 40 percent, or 55 million, of the adults in America are single. You have no doubt been drummed over the head with the fact that only 7 percent of American families are the traditional model: husband and wife with two to three children where the father works and the mother stays home.

You have also probably been confronted by single adults in your own congregation who want their own particular needs met but also want to be more integrated into the total life of the church. Christian single adults are tired of being looked upon, in Joe Bayly’s words, as “single, saved, and second-class.” They are up to their eyeballs with being stereotyped as losers or social misfits with little to offer the Christian community.

For twelve years, I have been listening to and working with single people in two congregations. During that time, I’ve also been in touch with large numbers of singles across the country. From these relationships, I have tried to develop and coordinate strong, meaningful programs that meet the needs of single adults and also lead to balance and wholeness in the church. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot. I hope some of the following will prove helpful to those who are somewhat overwhelmed.

The Context

Understanding the numbers game. Single adults are mobile. They move from church to church, trying on for size a variety of organizations, clubs, and classes. In every single-adult program, there is incredible turnover. Most pastors who work with singles say their groups turn over 50 percent every six months.

One quickly becomes aware that a program must grow at a fantastic rate just to stay even. Singles ministries must be set up and geared to grow, or they will quickly die from the normal attrition.

The older the age group, the more females will outnumber males. Those who work with singles need to work as hard as possible to reverse this, but at the same time they should be prepared for limited success.

Single people like large groups with lots of relational possibilities but also small groups where there is authentic intimacy. Growing, healthy singles ministries are always a combination of large events that attract significant numbers and small groups that provide close-in sharing.

Developing leadership. No one ever led a successful single-adult ministry alone. It always takes a team of committed leaders. And one must be continually developing new leaders. Often, I have stopped to take a breath, turned around-and wondered where everybody went. There is no substitute for spending an extravagant amount of time with a few key people and additional time with others in groups who are either elected or appointed to carry out the program.

I have found that up-front male leadership is absolutely essential to a growing single-adult ministry. This does not exclude women in leadership positions; in fact, the most successful officer groups are equally divided between men and women. Nonetheless, be prepared for the fact that you will have to work harder to attract males. I have discovered over the years that, programmatically, women do not draw men, but the reverse is usually true. Consequently, I spend a great deal of effort contacting, spending time, sharing a vision, and developing male leaders. When this is effective, there is no difficulty involving capable female leadership as well.

Overcoming stereotypes. Married people in the church, particularly those in their thirties and beyond, are swimming in stereotypes. Their vision and understanding need to be gently raised. Singleness is not a disease for which the only known cure is marriage. One is a whole number. I have sought invitations to speak to all the couples groups in our church, and this has proven to be an excellent opportunity to shatter the myths and open a fresh, new understanding of who singles are and how they feel about themselves and the church.

Some of the half-truths that plague single adults are:

They have more money and time than couples.

Something is wrong with them, or they’d get married.

They’re almost always “swingers” with an abnormal sex drive.

Children from single-parent families are usually undisciplined, maladjusted, and doomed to failure.

I remember greeting a married woman one Sunday who said, “Reverend Flanagan, what a wonderful thing you’re doing with ‘those people.’ ” The ignorance and insensitivity that slips from the lips of well-meaning people has cut like cold steel into the hearts of many vulnerable singles.

The importance of ministry structure. Many churches make the mistake of developing a singles ministry on a youth ministry model, which means the first thing they think of is finding couples to be advisers or sponsors. Adults are not interested in being directed in ministry. They want to take responsibility for themselves. I have often expressed my relationship as being chairman of the board with the singles as the only stockholders. They must own the ministry. They’re not interested in programs being done for them.

In my church, my title is not minister to singles or even minister of singles but rather minister with single adults. They have been the primary determiners of the program, the age delineations, and the written job descriptions that go with each office in our ministry cabinet.

I have also discovered that while most church terms are a minimum of one year, six months is much more advisable with single adults (remember the turnover factor). It is also vital that these leaders be integrated into the whole life of the church. What a congregation is doing with its single adults must never turn into a satellite operation, much less a leper colony. I know churches that totally isolate their singles from the rest of congregational activities. Single-adult ministry structure needs to be compatible with the rest of the church’s life, and singles should be plugged into decision making in the whole congregation.

Most singles ministries that attempt to be comprehensive need to have at least three separate groups, divided by age. I suggest twenty-one to thirty-five, thirty to fifty, and over fifty. The overlap is intentional, and obviously, no one should be “checking I.D.’s at the door.” People need to feel comfortable with folks their own age, and there can be regular interface between the different singles groups as well as the whole church.

It is never a good idea to separate people by their status of singleness, i.e., whether they are “career,” divorced, or widowed. Age delineations help people discover the right group for them and also guard against older adults seeking unhealthy relationships with those far younger.

Pastoral support. The total support and consistent encouragement of the head of staff is fundamental. Any single-adult ministry is in trouble without it. That is because a singles program on the growing edge will not be without controversy. So many times, I have been asked by the pillars of the church, “What are we going to do with all these divorced people? Remember what the Bible says about divorce!” A few years ago, I received an angry letter from one of our prominent leaders who was having dinner in a local restaurant with his wife and heard some of our singles in the bar next door, singing loudly the praises of our church and its singles ministry. At that moment, it was good to have a senior colleague who understood that many non-Christian singles in our group did not yet grasp all the principles of church etiquette and public behavior. He was able to lend support in a situation that could have damaged our outreach.

We must learn to accept people where they are, not where we want them to be. Unmarried couples living together, the “swinging singles” scene, and how the church incorporates divorced persons raise serious moral and biblical questions. The church of Jesus Christ cannot bury its corporate head in the sand; neither can it stand in self-righteous judgment. It is crucial that we incorporate a compassionate view of realities such as divorce with a high view of marriage as commanded by Scripture. We must struggle to find the healthy tension between God’s law and his forgiving love.

The value of a network. Interdenominational groups of both professional and lay single-adult leaders are springing up everywhere. In Southern California, over 50 singles leaders from a wide variety of churches meet quarterly to share resources and develop new skills. Many of these leaders, both pastors and lay persons, travel long distances to these meetings.

Get on as many mailing lists as you can, and seek out resources and relationships that can enhance your understanding and implementation of the ministry.

Marketing the ministry. Singles ministries grow only when congregations see the larger community as their marketplace. They must have a vision to reach people who are out there and utilize creative means to do so. Clear, attractive publicity works. Single adults read newspapers and are responsive to clear and creative ads. Just remember, however, that you have to fulfill your promises of an exciting, quality program.

The Content

A Christian focus. Some singles are so afraid of turning non-Christians off that they compromise conviction and soon become just like the other secular organizations in the community. I have watched the demise of single-adult ministries that forgot who they were and why they were in business. Successful singles ministries always revolve around a class or group where biblical study and Christian growth is emphasized.

A singles ministry should never exist solely to meet its own needs. Single adults are a mission field, largely unreached by the institutional church, but single adults must also have a mission. I have watched so many serve beautifully as “wounded healers.” I have often found the most honest, generous, sensitive group in any congregation is its singles fellowship.

They seem to understand the beautiful balance between our Lord’s commands to come and to go. We come to the church to get our needs met, meet new people, participate in events that offer stimulating opportunities for personal growth; then we go into our world of work and play to be disciples and witnesses of Jesus Christ. If all the church says is “Come,” it soon stagnates and dies.

The importance of special events. Single people respond to seminars, workshops, and programs that meet felt needs. It takes only nominal effort to draw them to quality seminars on issues like sex, marriage, loneliness, stress reduction, self-esteem, single parenting, and divorce recovery.

Speakers and people with special skills in your church can be important resources. A concerned auto mechanic in our congregation recently put on a basic car maintenance and repair seminar for forty-five women.

In addition to this, weekend conferences, trips, and service projects are a part of the make-up of a successful singles ministry. These events require time, energy, and planning, but over the long haul they are the “grease in the gears” of a thriving, ongoing program.

It’s true that not all churches can provide all this. Congregations under 300 members need to recognize both their possibilities and limitations. While some churches should not have a single-adult minister, all churches can minister to single adults. They can pool resources, leadership, and facilities with other churches in the community. A joint singles ministry, in fact, may lower the barriers of competition, jealousy, and suspicion.

Pastors should not let large, successful programs intimidate them, but at the same time they should not bite off more than they can chew. Many single adults participate in larger churches’ singles programs and still remain loyal to their own smaller congregation.

Financing. It goes without saying that any ministry costs money. A ministry with single people usually pays for itself and can ultimately produce revenue for the church as a whole as it attracts new members. But in the beginning, it needs help from the general budget.

If assigning a staff member to single-adult ministry, even part-time, is unrealistic, single people at least deserve someone on the professional staff who will coordinate and oversee what they are doing. Although adults are perfectly capable of assuming responsibility and developing meaningful programs, they want and need pastoral leadership.

Outside resources. Singles groups are constantly bombarded by professional opportunists who only want to use your ministry for their profit, seeking to capitalize on your success. Beware of them. Find counselors to whom you can refer with confidence.

Gearing for the newcomer. We are called to be shepherds, not ranchers. A shepherd knows the flock by name. A rancher only knows how many head are in the herd. The personal touch is crucial, no matter how large or small a group may be. The welcome mat must always be out, with committed singles warmly welcoming, integrating, and following up visitors. Name tags are essential. Coffee and “finger food” are necessary ingredients for nervous people who have thought about coming for a long time and finally gotten up the courage.

Acts 2:42 indicates that “the breaking of bread” was a key dimension in the growth of the early church, along with teaching, fellowship, and prayer.

This is particularly true in a ministry with singles. We never have an activity without food. Food facilitates fellowship and the building of authentic relationships. Simply holding a cup of coffee in your hands eases nervousness and helps create a spirit of warmth.

I remember a young single named Dave who came to our group several years ago and wasn’t sure whether he would return. A member of our social committee roped him into bringing mashed potatoes to the potluck the following Friday. Dave reluctantly accepted and, being a responsible person, decided the group was depending on him for mashed potatoes. It gave him a reason to show up. It also gave him an opening line as he went into a house full of strangers. Suddenly the group became “his group” because he was making a contribution to it.

Incidentally, Dave later met June. They fell in love and got married. Months later, Dave shared with me how it all started with a bowl of mashed potatoes.

Programs and personhood. An effective program is an umbrella under which the real ministry takes place. Wholesome single-adult ministries are microcosms of the Christian life in that they include Christian growth, study, music, laughter, food, social activities, prayer, and service. This makes for very busy pastors, and I’m still learning how to prioritize, to do only what I can do successfully. There’s always someone saying, “How about a group for left-handed basket weavers?” My response is always, “If you can find three or four who want to work on that, let’s get together and talk about it.” That helps sort out the worth of the proposal.

But through the years, I have discovered how honest and open single people are. They come, many of them, with incomplete or broken families and want to build new ones. They’re not interested in dog-and-pony shows. They want a meaningful place to heal, grow, and involve their children.

They are calling to the whole church to include them, to show that the church is young and old, black and white, handicapped and healthy, male and female, educated and ignorant, rich and poor, married and single.

Single people have kept me on the growing edge of the Christian life. They have forced me to think, to constantly develop new avenues of ministry. The work is intensive and emotionally draining, but the rewards are incredible. I wouldn’t trade jobs with anyone in the world.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

How do you identify the spiritual needs of people? Do you wait until tragedy strikes and then give counsel? Do you hope that the sermon and education program will cover the bases? Do you try to keep in touch with every person through visitation?

When I started at my church seven years ago, forty people attended worship. I could visit every home at least once a month, visit shut-ins every week, and follow up visitors within the first week. Pastoral care was immediate and fulfilling.

But then things began to change. More people started attending worship, more weekday ministries were added, and a building program was begun. In short, the church came alive. Along with the excitement of growth came a growing sense of frustration. I didn’t have enough time to do pastoral care the way I knew it should be done.

Since I’d once tasted the sweetness of pastoral care, the in-depth, unhurried equipping ministry of the pastorate, all the other things I did in the church seemed shallow and unsatisfying. I discovered that my deepest desire was to provide spiritual care. My ministry gift was to mend brokenness and help people become whole.

But could I do that in the modern, chief-executive-officer pastorate to which we are all sentenced? It takes time to oversee staff, property, and programs. Those cannot be neglected. Further, could any one person really pastor a group of 300 or more?

Pastoring takes time with individuals. What could I reasonably expect of myself, remembering family and my own spiritual growth? I could just try to keep the fires out, responding only to the immediate and urgent. Or I could forget pastoral care and focus on the pulpit ministry. But if I really dealt with the reality that spiritual care takes time, would that mean I must forget study and preparation and give myself to the people?

I still struggle with this. I suppose I always will. But I am getting a handle on some of it, and I present the following idea simply as a help to anyone who would like to use it.

First, I came to grip with some realities. I asked my congregation to provide an administrator to care for property and programs. They agreed. And since the size of the congregation made it difficult for one person to provide all the personal contact needed, we began a Bible Study Training Group to train leaders in the art of leading small home Bible studies.

But that still left me with the desire to do in-depth spiritual care of my people. I thought how useful it would be if people made an appointment with me to talk only about their spiritual lives-not about marriage, children, or current crises, but the current state of their spiritual health.

The idea of health made me think of doctors’ checkups. You don’t go in and tell the doctor what’s wrong and how to treat you. You go in, have some lab work done, and then let the doctor listen, poke, and probe. Then he gives his counsel.

When I compared that with my own approaches to spiritual care of my people, I realized how infrequently I probed into some of the most important questions of spiritual life:

their personal time with God;

their struggles with temptation;

their dependence on money and possessions;

their gifts and whether our church was utilizing them.

Did my people understand my role in their life-that a pastor is not a free psychologist but a spiritual shepherd responsible for them before God? I knew part of the problem was how difficult it is for people to express themselves. And the inexpressible nature of one’s own spiritual walk makes this doubly difficult. Would the analogy of a checkup help?

As my thoughts began to jell, I began to write. I ended up with “A Confidential Spiritual-Life Checkup.” I decided to request an appointment with my people. The purpose of the appointment would be to talk over their spiritual lives. To prepare for this appointment, each individual was asked to do some “lab work.”

As you read the instrument, you will see how I’ve taken the basic functions of blood within the human body and made them analogous to the nurturing, cleansing, helping, and serving aspects of spiritual living. I end the lab report with two questions about tired blood due to imbalanced diet or imbalanced lifestyle, giving a more expanded explanation of my goal in each person’s life.

I had the instrument printed and, during a series on body life three years ago, distributed to my people.

That first spring, I had conversations with some of my people that I had never had in all our years together. It changed my relationship to them in many ways, enhancing the level of sharing and understanding my kind of help. It was beautiful-and it was effective for many.

After about six weeks of seeing persons every day, the appointments slowed down, and I sat down to tally the responses. About 30 percent of my people had come to see me. Many others said they were filling out the lab report, but by the end of summer, all appointments ended.

At first I was disappointed. But then as I reflected, I identified several dynamics at work:

1. Some people never have physical checkups either. I don’t know whether they are afraid they will find out something, or whether they figure that as long as they aren’t in pain they’re not going to worry. Perhaps some people don’t want to know what needs to be changed so they won’t be held accountable. Whatever the reason, some people avoid all checkups.

2. Several people mentioned to me that they wanted to get it all together before they came in. I took that to mean that as they did their lab work, they recognized their areas of need and didn’t really need for me to voice them, or perhaps were even too embarrassed to reveal them.

3. I have not established a pastoral relationship with all my people. I am the preacher to some, the reverend to others, and to still others, I am probably just a nice guy. But there has never been a trust relationship that could carry the weight of such a checkup.

4. Last, and I suspect one of the largest groups, are people who think it is a great idea but just never quite get around to the checkup. They procrastinate.

Over the last three years, I have distributed this instrument to the entire congregation two times. Both times I got about a 30 percent response of people actually going through the appointment. I estimate that 50 or 60 percent actually have done the lab work. The remainder do nothing with it.

For the ones who do use it, it seems to help. And for me as a pastor, there are few experiences as meaningful and fulfilling as pastoring a person through a spiritual-life checkup.

Dennis L. Wayman is pastor of the Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara, California.

Permission is hereby granted to reproduce the following three pages for use in your local church. Alterations are also permissible. For wider use, please contact LEADERSHIP for authorization.

* * *

A CONFIDENTIAL SPIRITUAL-LIFE CHECKUP

As your pastor, I am responsible for your spiritual health in much the same way as your doctor is responsible for your physical health. Both of us must be allowed the privilege of helping you. Often, unless a disease so overcomes us that our doctor or pastor is made painfully aware of it, there is no regular time when I can sit down with you and discuss the health of your spiritual life.

Therefore I am requesting an appointment with you. I am requesting that you do the following “lab work” not as a test, but as a tool for diagnosis, so that we might know your “blood count” and decide together on a proper diet and exercise program that will bring about your best spiritual health.

Since pastors (or doctors) can help only if we allow them, this is entirely voluntary, but I am suggesting that you:

1. Set aside an hour of uninterrupted time in which to thoughtfully answer these questions.

2. Keep your answers only to yourself, to be shared with me and God alone.

3. Make an appointment with me for a one-hour spiritual check-up.

4. Get your “lab work” answers to me a week in advance for my preparation.

5. Prayerfully and openly meet with me, trusting God to use this experience for you.

I. Blood Type: Are you now a Christian? _____ Comment on your answer:

Have you been baptized? _____ When? __________ Where?

II. Red Blood Cells (oxygen carriers that prevent anemia)

A. Devotional life

1. How meaningful is Sunday morning worship to you?

2. How meaningful is private worship to you?

3. Do you feel you are becoming more acquainted with God? _____ In what ways?

4. Is meditation a part of your spiritual walk? _____ Describe:

B. Intellectual life

1. Are your doubts and questions being answered? _____ If yes, how?

2. Do you feel you know the Bible? _____ What help do you need?

3. Do you understand basic concepts of theology-justification, regeneration, sanctification, gifts of the Spirit, etc.? _____ What help do you need?

4. In what areas of intellectual life (explaining your faith; theology; practical applications; Bible knowledge; body life; etc.) are you strong, and in which are you weak?

III. White Blood Cells (disease fighters for inner spiritual cleansing and renewing)

A. Do you feel you are a more accepting, forgiving, loving person than you have been?

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B. Do you feel you are stronger against temptations (to be impatient, angry, greedy, lustful, etc.)?

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C. Do you feel your self-esteem is healthy? _____

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D. Do you see yourself becoming more pure in motive, thoughts, and lifestyle?

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E. Do you find yourself usually encouraging others or competing with others?

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F. Do you occasionally tear another person down in jest or anger?

What triggers this?

G. How is the Holy Spirit helping you become whole?

IV. Platelets (blood clotters that stanch the wounds of living in a hurting world)

A. Have you found someone to help bear the burdens of life?

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B. Do you find you can share your inner joys, hopes, and dreams?

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C. When someone in jest or in anger tears you down, how do you handle it?

D. When you fail, what happens within you?

E. When you succeed, what happens within you?

V. Blood Pressure (hypertension and exercise)

A. Are you able to turn your finances over to God and tithe, trusting him to supply?

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B. Are you able to turn your vocation over to God to use you how and where he wants?

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C. Are you learning to let go of the desire for things?

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D. Are you able to exercise your gifts within the body of Christ?

What do you see as your gift(s)?

E. Are you able to explain to others in the community why you are a Christian?

Any problems here?

F. How much are you concerned for those who are less fortunate, wanting to share with them the gospel and the helping hand?

G. How concerned are you with injustices and other social evils?

VI. Tired Blood (from imbalanced spiritual diet)

A. Is you life balanced? How do you deal with pressure? Do you have regular time for family, recreation, personal growth, etc.?

B. Do you feel you have a balance of worship, study, and service to stay in shape?

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Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

What does it take to minister effectively to one congregation for thirty years? Are there secrets that could enable thousands of pastors to dismiss forever the thought of packing up and moving on? How can lay leaders stop worrying about the next pulpit vacancy?

To discuss these questions, LEADERSHIP brought together four veterans who have served their present congregations for twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-one, and forty-one years respectively:

Bartlett Hess, pastor of Ward Presbyterian Church, Livonia, Michigan, since 1956.

Jacob Eppinga, pastor of LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan, since 1954.

C. Philip Hinerman, pastor of Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 1952.

Wendell Boyer, soon-to-retire pastor of People’s Church in Beloit, Wisconsin, where he began in 1942.

Leadership: When you came to your current pastorate-who was president of the United States, and what kind of car were you driving?

Bartlett Hess: Eisenhower was president, and we arrived in a 1950 Chevrolet.

Jake Eppinga: Eisenhower . . . and we came in a green ’47 Studebaker. The first week I was there, I had the funeral of a rather well-to-do person, which meant the procession to the cemetery was mostly Cadillacs. We got about three blocks from the church when my old Studebaker, right behind the hearse, died. We had to push it into a side street and then continue. So my beginning at this church was hardly impressive.

Phil Hinerman: I’ve always driven Chevys, and in those days I could trade for a new one for $1,600. When I arrived in Minneapolis in the summer of 1952. Harry Truman was still in office.

Wendell Boyer: I came to Beloit on June 29, 1942, driving a ’41 Studebaker, what we called a “double-date coupe,” Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House, and the war was going badly for the Allies.

We had thirty-five people the first Sunday in a two-story rented building. On Sunday mornings we could use the whole place, but on Sunday evenings they often rented out the ground level to other groups, particularly for dances. There were big, wide heating ducts that came up through the floor . . . I must be the only preacher who’s ever given an invitation to the strains of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

To start our building fund, we tried to raise $18.75 each week to buy a war bond until we were ready to use the money.

Leadership: Fascinating. What would you say are the benefits of long-term ministry in a place? What happens now that could never have happened in your first five years at the church?

Hess: New ventures come easier because of the pastor’s long track record. We’re now preparing to start our second branch church, and people have caught the vision-whereas when I first came to Detroit, I could only persuade the session to buy the land where our church now stands by saying, “My wife and I will forgo the manse you promised.” We had to continue with four children in a small, one-bathroom house in order to get the church to look to the future.

Boyer: The bankers warm up to you the longer you stay. When we tried to borrow $30,000 for that first building, we had real problems especially being an independent church, with no denominational backing. Since then, we’ve been through five building programs, and the bankers now say, “Whatever you need, just let us know.” That’s because we’ve always paid off our loans early. One of them asked me if we had a lot of tithers in our church. When I said yes, he replied, “That’s a program you can’t beat. It’s very effective.”

Eppinga: The longer I stay, the better I understand the people. I’m now baptizing children whose grandparents I married. I understand the students in my catechism classes better as I see their family roots showing through.

Another thing: somewhere along the line I’ve acquired a greater freedom to just be myself. New pastors are on their best behavior for a while, but as the years go by, you let down the facade, and people become your family.

It’s getting harder and harder to bury people now-they’re my brothers, my sisters.

Leadership: How long does it take a congregation and a pastor to get comfortable with each other? Five years? Seven years?

Eppinga: So much depends on the personalities involved. At first I didn’t rock the boat at all, but I suppose I started moving around with a bit more authority in about five years.

Boyer: For me, things began to jell after about ten years, when we moved into our new building. You have to pastor ten years or so before you really enjoy it. Only then do you begin to know your people: which ones need their hands held through a crisis, which ones will come through it on their own, and so forth.

Hess: On the other hand, sometimes you make a lot of dust in the beginning if you and the church have an advance understanding. When I was called to Cicero, Illinois, early in my ministry, I said, “I can’t come unless there are some radical changes.” The youth program had been nothing but Sunday evening dances; the women’s program was all bazaars and suppers; there was no clear presentation of the gospel. The congregation re-voted to accept my program, and we had no problem. But ordinarily, you don’t sweep in like that.

Leadership: Are there signs that indicate you’ve won your spurs and now you can move ahead with changes?

Hinerman: I don’t know, because my case was unusual. As a Southerner, I felt a lot of Scandinavian restraint when I went to Minnesota. I don’t know whether the problem was mine or theirs, but I would preach my great, powerful sermons, and nobody told me how great and powerful they were. Then came the death of my first wife. When I lived through that and didn’t collapse, something changed. From then on I felt more wanted, more accepted, more appreciated.

I had been at Park Avenue five years by that time, which was already a full term by Methodist standards. But we were just beginning to hit our stride, so I stayed . . . never expecting to remain this long, of course.

Eppinga: In my first church, when I went to buy Communion wine at the age of twenty-four, the storekeeper wouldn’t sell it to me. I said, “I’m the pastor of the church down the street.”

He looked at me and said in a tired voice, “I thought I’d heard all the excuses, but this is the worst!” (Laughter)

When I came to my present church, I was thirty-five but looked much younger, and the median age of the congregation was fairly high. I’m sure it was a good five years before anyone in a discussion said, “Well, what does dominie (pastor) think?”

Leadership: Bartlett, you were forty-five when you came to Ward Church. Did acceptance come more quickly as a result?

Hess: Not necessarily, because I followed Evan Welsh-a tremendous, lovable pastor. I remember a full twelve years after I came: some people would still greet me at the door and say, “That was a good sermon, Dr. Welsh.” And he’d been there only nine years.

But by then most of the people had made the switch. They would say, “Dr. Welsh came when we needed him, and now you have come when we need you.”

Hinerman: When I came to Park Avenue, a predecessor who had led the church for forty-two years was still living across the street. I was the fourth man in ten years to try and follow that act. It wasn’t easy.

Those of us who stay a long time have to think about this dynamic, too: someday somebody is going to have to follow us.

Eppinga: I had a very respected predecessor, too, who moved only about five miles away. So for the first two years we shared a lot of funerals. But we had a good relationship.

I remember one lady in the congregation who was one of his most fervent fans. She would shake my hand every Sunday but say nothing. Finally after five years or so she volunteered her first comment: “You’re getting better.” (Laughter)

Hinerman: Bishop Colaw was pastor of Hyde Park Church in Cincinnati for eighteen years before his election, and he used to tell about one man who never accepted him, fought everything he proposed, never had a good word for anything. But on the farewell Sunday, as a long line of people were coming up to say good-bye, many of them weeping, here was this fellow. He took Bishop Colaw by the hand, looked him straight in the eye, and said: “Don’t sing so loud when you’re standing near the mike!”

Leadership: Some denominations have legislated terms of service. How does this affect the dynamics of pastoral tenure?

Hinerman: The Methodist tradition is four years in one place, particularly in the South. It goes back to Francis Asbury and the early circuit riders who spent six weeks or six months building a church and then moved on. After a while, preachers stayed a whole year, and then, two years. By the turn of this century, that had evolved into four-year appointments.

It still prevails under certain bishops, who enforce it selectively. It’s called a “connectional itinerant system,” which in reality means “Keep your bags packed, and never unpack your books.”

Leadership: Are there weaknesses to such a system, and if so, what?

Hinerman: I’ll try to be candid-yes, there are. You never solve the problems. The chance to grow, to work through hostilities, to reconcile is forfeited. The local committee votes on the pastor every year if it wishes, and if the vote is no, then they go to the district superintendent and tell him how bad things are, how greatly they need a change. Over time, a small coterie, a power clique begins to rule that congregation, killing the preacher whenever the preacher doesn’t suit their fancy. It’s so sad.

Eppinga: It’s interesting to hear you say that, Phil, because in the Reformed tradition we have no such mechanism, and many wish we did. I wrote an article not long ago for our church paper saying I favored the bishop system, provided I could be the bishop. (Laughter) But we do have many ministers who wish they could move; the only way is by getting a call from another church, and they’re frustrated. There’s no one to move them.

We’ve always had a high view of calling, but I can’t believe some of the changes in the last ten years. Now congregations are actually advertising for ministers in the denominational paper-something that would have been highly frowned upon in the past. We’ve also had a rule that no one should be called to another church during the first two years in a charge. That’s also being forgotten occasionally.

Hess: In Presbyterianism, the life pastorate was certainly the old Scottish tradition. When the minister was installed, they used to say he was “married to the kirk,” which meant that only under the most unusual circ*mstances would he ever move to another parish. Times have altered that as well.

Leadership: Give us an independent-church perspective, Wendell.

Boyer: Well, when we started writing our constitution in Beloit, I wanted so much to be fair with the congregation that I insisted on an every-year vote on the pastor. We followed that for eighteen or twenty years, until the official board finally did away with it.

By then I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea. I remember the one year there were four votes against me-that was the “worst” it ever got-I spent the whole next year wondering in the back of my mind, Who are those four? I worried about that for twelve months. But the next year, all the same people were at the business meeting, and they approved me unanimously. That taught me a lesson: if someone gets a little unhappy with you over some circ*mstance, they’ll vote against you-but it doesn’t mean total alienation. I had done a lot of worrying for nothing.

Leadership: How have we gotten to the place in America where the pastorate is generally assumed to be only a four-to-six year thing? When you ask P.K.s where they grew up, they often just smile and say, “My father was a pastor”-that says it all.

Hess: The population as a whole is moving more often. We’re in a shifting society, with family life changing, more and more singles, and all the rest-which means the church must change to minister to real needs. If it won’t, for whatever reason, either congregational or ministerial, then voices will begin to say, “We need a change in leadership.”

In many congregations, morale is low. In some, there’s also division over theology or other matters. People have so many problems in their everyday lives that when they come to church, they don’t want to face still more problems. It’s just easier to try a new pastor.

Leadership: How have you four been able to stay so long? What has kept you fresh over the years, flexible to the times?

Boyer: Perhaps I’ve been fortunate, but from that first day in 1942 until I announced my resignation a couple of months ago, I have felt all the way that I was in the center of the Lord’s will. Beloit has been my town; it’s where the Lord wanted me to invest my life. The church has been happy and growing steadily, and now at the age of sixty-nine, I’ve said to myself, What better time to step down than when no one has suggested it?

One thing that has kept us on track has been our decision, from the very first, to make missions number one. We made “Tithes” the second listing on our offering envelopes so we could give “Missions” top billing. I remember the time we didn’t even have a building of our own, and there was a challenge to build a church in Cuba. We shelved our building program and spent the next year paying for that mission church. The amazing thing was that whereas we had projected ten years to complete our own building, we occupied it a year and a half later. This kind of emphasis has kept both me and the congregation alive and stretching.

Hinerman: Wendell, how large is People’s Church now?

Boyer: On Sunday morning, we’ll have about 600 in two services. This is in a town of about 35,000 people.

Leadership: How about the rest of you? What is the secret of freshness?

Eppinga: To be honest, I think the first building program at LaGrave Avenue sapped some of my freshness. I was going to so many committee meetings I didn’t have enough time to read, study, and pray. If you spread yourself too thin, it will eventually show up in the sermons. And the discerning listeners will sense it.

Even Spurgeon couldn’t just stand up and shake it out of his sleeve.

I remember that in my first charge, I felt completely preached out after six months. I’d already covered the whole Bible-what else was left? Now that I see retirement on the horizon, I wonder how I’m going to find time to say everything I want to say. The feeling is exactly opposite from the beginning.

But in between, there have been dry spots. I’ve felt more imaginative and productive at some times than others, and part of that relates to how much I was trying to keep my finger in everything.

Leadership: Is there a trap here, that the more one’s ministry is blessed and the larger the church grows, the more administration is required . . . which eats away at what caused the growth in the first place?

Boyer: Usually what happens is that growth comes as you get older and more experienced-but less energetic. It’s too bad growth can’t happen when you’re younger, before you get weary.

A. W. Tozer once said it’s almost impossible to be a good preacher and a good pastor. You have to choose between the two. That’s debatable, I suppose, but I know that had it not been for certain men in my congregation who carried the ball on the building programs, I wouldn’t have lasted forty-one years.

Eppinga: In another sense, though, the pastoring work feeds the sermon preparation. You face the needs out there, you work with people’s hurts, and then you try to preach to those needs.

Leadership: Your church’s summer brochure, Phil, looks like a whirlwind of activity. And you’ve done this kind of thing for ten years or more. Does it exhaust you?

Hinerman: Well, when you’re in the inner city as we are, you don’t dare take a vacation in the summer. June, July, and August are when we really make it happen, because that’s when the neighborhood is in turmoil and all the sociological and domestic problems boil to the surface. We go for seventy straight days with about forty people on the payroll, trained to do everything from sports clinics to canoe trips to backyard clubs.

But obviously, I don’t do it all. I oversee it, like a chairman of the board.

Freshness depends on whether you want to stay fresh. After all, we all have the same number of hours to work with. Underneath all my activism, I’m really a pietist. The quest for freshness, to me, means getting up at five every morning and spending two hours cultivating the inner life before I go down to the church. The rest of the day may be a blur of administration, counseling, and all the rest, but I can discipline the day if I discipline when I get up.

Leadership: What do you do in those two hours?

Hinerman: Drink enough coffee to make sure I’m awake, and then get into Bible study and waiting before God. The interior life is of the essence for me; I can’t function without it.

The two-hour slot is a devotional/creative package; I don’t try to separate my own growth from sermon preparation here. I pray, I study, I write sermons, I prepare myself for the totality of ministry.

Hess: I once heard E. Stanley Jones say, “Most of us are half-full vessels trying to run over.”

Eppinga: I admire your discipline, Phil, and would only add that other people can do the same thing at night. My most productive time, for example, is between eight and one in the morning, when the telephone quiets down and I can concentrate on the Word.

Another key to freshness is the stimulation of conferences. Part of my longevity, I’m sure, is due to the fact that after the first seven years, the church gave me a six-month sabbatical, which I spent at Union Seminary in Virginia. Seven years later they sent me to Cambridge, England, where I wrote a book and recharged my batteries.

Congregations must realize that ministers cannot go nonstop. I met a colleague from Iowa at a conference once who had had to ask his consistory twice for permission to attend. They had finally said, “OK, you may go, but we expect you back here in the pulpit on Sunday.” So there he was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, sitting up nights in the hotel room working on a sermon. I was angry. That’s why we have so many people leaving the ministry.

Hess: For me, expository preaching has been a well of freshness. I determined from the beginning to expound the Word verse by verse, section by section, and I find it feeds my soul as well as builds people up in the faith. It also saves me the wondering of what to preach about.

Another thing is wide reading. I’ve read both The Christian Century and Christianity Today from the start as well as a spectrum of current books and various magazines.

Eppinga: I agree with your point about expository preaching; it keeps you fresh and also keeps you close to the Word. Sometimes I look back at “the barrel”-my sermons from the past, especially the first five years-and say, “Oh, no! I preached that?”

It is true that some of the great sermons of history were topical-Thomas Chalmers’s “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” for example, or some of Jonathan Edwards’s masterpieces. But that is not the way for the long term.

Preaching at summer Bible conferences has been invigorating for me, too. It has reminded me of the church universal, which I need.

Hess: Sometimes we pastors simply push our program, our ideas too hard. I remember back in Cicero coming home from a terrible session meeting, and the Lord saying to me, “Bart-this is not the way you are to do my work.” About that time Norman Grubb came to our church, and his message on the surrender of the will-“Not I, but Christ”-spoke deeply to me. I learned to go and apologize to people for pressing too much.

I can’t say I’ve always stayed in this place of surrender, but I know what it is, just like a musician knows when he’s on pitch and when he’s not. When I exert too much effort of the flesh, I’m in trouble. When I stand aside and let God work, things go entirely differently.

As someone recently wrote in The Presbyterian Journal, Jesus didn’t say, “I will build your church” or even “You will build my church.” He said, “I will build my church.”

Leadership: Over the years, how seriously have you thought about relocating?

Boyer: I’ve always known I was supposed to be in Beloit. Once I was invited to a church of 800 when we were running only about 75. But after I spoke there on a Sunday, I still knew in my heart that God wanted me to stay put.

Eppinga: I’ve been tempted many times-usually after coming back from a visit to a mission field.

I’ve also had a running fantasy of being a small-town pastor . . . sitting on a park bench with folks . . . going down Main Street in the mornings, stopping in at the stores to say good morning, knowing everyone in the village. … Something about that attracts me.

But when the Lord places you somewhere, you have to go to work there and ignore the grass on the other side of the fence. This is “where it’s at.” This is where, in his providence, he keeps challenging you.

I’m not saying it is wrong to move. I believe the Lord has all kinds of ministers-some starters, some relievers, some sprinters, some milers. So the right length for one is not necessarily the right length for another. But all of us have to meet the challenge where we are instead of leaving it unresolved.

Hess: In my first church out of seminary (it’s now extinct, so I can tell this story!), I never saw such a collection of difficult people. (The man who followed me, in fact, finally called the session together and gave one woman a letter of transfer addressed “To any evangelical church” because she’d been such a problem.) I wanted to get away every day, I think.

About then I read an article about a minister who badly wanted to leave his church. But the Lord showed him that what was needed was not a new church, but rather a minister with a new attitude in the old church.

At that point, I was being considered for an executive position. We waited eagerly for the letter to arrive. Finally it came . . . informing me that I was too conservative theologically for the situation. My wife and I knelt down at our secondhand sofa that day and said, “Lord, if you want us to stay here all our ministry, we’ll stay. Our future is in your hands.”

Immediately, that little church began to blossom. The whole experience was invaluable to my entire ministry.

Eppinga: I stayed at my second charge only two years. I left because I felt we were not quite right for each other. Maybe I was wrong to leave. It is a good church, but I thought they would be better served by a different type of minister.

The short pastorate was right for me in that situation, I believe. And it didn’t mean I was a quitter. I went to the next church . . . and have now stayed almost thirty years.

Leadership: How have you handled the times when people have given subtle (or not-so-subtle) hints that maybe you ought to be moving along now? How have you responded to those who were upset with you?

Hess: If you feel the Lord wants you to stay, you ignore the hints and you keep treating the people kindly. I had a wonderful experience just yesterday: a woman who had given me all kinds of trouble and had gone elsewhere came back to say, “We want to join your church again.” Consistent love and kindness paid off.

Boyer: I learned early in my ministry never to answer a nasty letter with a nasty letter. Some of the best people in my church today are those who once thought I should have left town, and said so. I never quit loving them and always left the door open for them to return.

I’ve preached from the pulpit that for those of us beyond the Cross, there may be differences, but these are family matters. We can talk about them, work them through-but we forgive and forget in the end, because we’re family.

Hinerman: My experience is quite different from the two of you, because I’ve been in a thirty-year fight to stay alive in the inner city-and have lost about 3,000 members along the way! The neighborhood was changing even before I arrived, but there were no blacks in the membership, and as an old Southern boy, I knew that wasn’t Christian. One of the first questions I raised was “Will it be all right if your pastors bring into membership anyone who has faith in Jesus Christ?” The debate went on till midnight, because they knew exactly what the code language meant.

The curious thing is that race was never mentioned. There are no racists in Minnesota, you see; this is the land of Hubert Humphrey. I’d grown up next to people who were rednecks and proud of it, but the denial of racist feelings even as church members exited for the suburbs was new to me. Over the first twenty years, we basically lost my entire generation, the forty-to-sixty crowd. Some of them would have moved out anyway, but my ministry at Park Avenue didn’t help to hold them.

What were the reasons given? Well, they didn’t like this program or that program; they didn’t appreciate the way so-and-so was leading. The youth program has been the bane of my existence, because it reflects the neighborhood-about fifty/fifty black and white. So if you had three or four daughters, you really didn’t want to raise them in Park Avenue United Methodist Church. People would never come up to me and say, “I don’t want my daughters growing up here”-they’d say instead, “That’s a lousy youth pastor you’ve got, and if you don’t get him out of here, we’re going to move, and we’ll be taking our money with us.”

There has never been a move to oust me personally. But the pursuit of my conviction that the church ought to reflect the demographics of the neighborhood has been one unbelievable fight.

Leadership: How have you survived? Why have you stuck it out for thirty-one years?

Hinerman: Well, sometimes I just say I’ve stayed because the bishop can’t find anybody else to go to Park Avenue. When I plead with him for relief, he says, “Well, stay one more year,” because he doesn’t want to move me and have me wreck some other good Methodist church somewhere.

Seriously, in the midst of all the pain, there has been the joy of seeing a truly multiracial church come into existence. We had 700 people there yesterday, 70 percent of them under thirty-five. We’re just shoving the doors out trying to accommodate Christian education. The church experts have looked at us and said, “You can’t be doing this. You don’t fulfill any of the guidelines for church growth-no parking, no hom*ogeneity. This is impossible.” The fun is trying to grow where you’re not supposed to. It’s exciting to have 1,500 to 2,000 people out on our black top in the summertime for a weeklong festival. It’s fun to try to be the church in the middle of the world.

One of the neat things about this ordeal has been that we’ve kept getting a new congregation. When Bruce Larson asked the rector of Church of the Redeemer in Houston why he had to stay twenty years before renewal took place, the man said, “I had to stay long enough to get rid of everyone who didn’t want renewal.” That’s a lesson for many churches. Most of us come out of seminary geared to holding the faithful at all costs; nobody ever tells us that sometimes it’s important to lose some people before an awakening can occur.

Hess: That’s true. Many people subconsciously prefer a church of a certain size, and so as a church grows, their ceiling is gradually passed. Sometimes people leave for the wrong motives, but sometimes they really need to move on for their own spiritual benefit.

Eppinga: I haven’t faced the racial problem, but I, like the rest of you, have stayed long enough in one place to live through a social revolution. When the disestablishmentarians began taking over in the late sixties and early seventies, wanting to scrap the monologic sermon, wanting to sit in circles on the floor with a guitar-that was a rough time in my ministry. No one actually asked me to leave, but I’m sure some thought it would be a good idea.

I’d never thought of myself as rigid. In our circles, I was known as a progressive. And suddenly, I was a conservative. It wasn’t I who had changed, but rather the context. I tried not to be rigid, to allow some of these things and still keep the church on an even keel.

Leadership: What are the dangers of staying at one church a long time?

Hess: If the minister goes dead, then the congregation dies, and the longer the minister coasts toward retirement, the lower the church drops. To me, that’s dishonest.

Every year my session appeals to the presbytery, “Even though Bart is past seventy, we’d like to have him continue his ministry.” But when I see that the Lord is not continuing to bless, then I’m going to retire.

Eppinga: Yes, it’s easy to grow comfortable and coast. It’s also easy to identify more and more, as the years go by, with a certain clique. You have to remember you’re the pastor of everyone, not just the kindred spirits.

Another danger lies in coming to think it’s your church. People sometimes look at the Roman Catholic steeple on the other end of our block and say, “That’s Saint Andrew’s,” and then look at our tower and say, “That’s Saint Jacob’s.” But it really isn’t.

There are a lot of long pastorates these days that are really personality cults. In fact, one of the greatest dangers of a long pastorate is pride. When you’ve lasted in a church for a while, and things are going well, the Devil loves to heap up the credit in your direction. He wants you to forget that even Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve. If you’re a proud pastor, you’re a contradiction in terms.

Hinerman: If you stay long enough, you become the resident historian, don’t you?

Eppinga: Yes. For example, when the board is contemplating something, it’s a temptation for me to say, “No, that’s not the way we did it fifteen years ago. … ” Sometimes you have to be silent and let them work through a problem all over again.

It’s a funny feeling: our treasurer was once my catechumen. I used to make him get in line; now he signs my checks. I have to constantly adjust to changes like this.

Leadership: Can you have personal friends in a congregation and remain long?

Boyer: When I started the church, I told the people I would not be able to make personal friends in the congregation. We would gladly be their guests for dinner or any kind of event, and we have. But we’ve refrained from taking the initiative-having them over to our house and so forth.

This has made for a lonely life sometimes, especially after church on Sunday night when you’d just like someone to be with. But the congregation has never been able to say, “Well, so-and-so is his buddy.” Still, there’s a warmth in the church; visitors often comment on it.

Hinerman: I probably agree with your goal but have taken the opposite route to get there. My dearest personal friends are at Park Avenue. My staff is closer to me than anyone in this world except my own flesh. I’ll socialize with parishioners like crazy and even call them at two in the morning if I need help.

Hess: I’m glad you mentioned staff closeness. It’s sad when a church and a pastorate is built at the expense of staff relationships. It ought not to be as Phillips Brooks (the Episcopal bishop who wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem”) once said when a woman asked him how to become a good Christian. He replied, “Believe in Christ, be confirmed, be faithful in attending worship, reading your Bible, praying-and find out as little as possible about the inner workings of the church.”

Leadership: What would you four like to say to young pastors just starting their careers?

Hess: Work as if everything depended on you, and trust as if everything depended on the Lord.

Eppinga: Despite what you may have heard about the glories of specialization, there is no more satisfying work than the parish ministry. Parish pastors are getting to be like general practitioners in medicine-an endangered species. But there is marvelous variety and challenge in serving the local church. I’m sorry I’m not twenty years old; I’d love to start all over again.

My second word would be enthusiasm. On one of my sabbaticals, I sat down one night and read Paul’s writings straight through, from Romans to Philemon. It was so intriguing I did it again the next night. I kept it up for two weeks. His personality began to come alive, and I noticed something: Paul never writes with moderation. He’s about the most enthusiastic fellow you can find. When he wants to describe Christ’s power, he calls it dunamis. When in Philippians 3 he describes what he gave up to follow Christ, his language becomes downright crude. “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ,” he says in Romans 8, and he’s off into an extravaganza of comparisons. You almost feel like saying, “Take it easy, Paul-you’re going to have a heart attack.”

We need enthusiastic people in the ministry today, good replacements for those of us who are soon tiring out.

Boyer: I would ask young pastors to realize how much we Christians need each other. I would urge them to preach and teach a family spirit of loving and praying for one another’s hurts. More than at any time in my ministry I sense the need to rejoice with the joyful and weep with the distressed.

Hinerman: I think we need to caution seminarians, however. We’re not always honest about what the pastorate is really like. I say to young people, “Don’t even think about going into the ministry if you can get out of it. It’s the worst job in America, the most overtrained and underpaid professional group there is. The only rewards you get are internalized, at least during the early years.”

Don’t misunderstand me-I’m happy in my work, especially now that I’m reaping a harvest I never expected. And I pray that some young men and women will find the ministry unavoidable. But I want them to have a sense of “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel” burning inside to carry them through.

Leadership: Now let’s turn the clock forward a dozen years or so. What would you like to say to the mid-thirties pastor-let’s say a man with a wife and two children in school, who’s now in his third parish, and he’s feeling like it’s time to move, and his wife is saying, “Oh, please, not again.” How would you counsel him?

Hess: My father was a man like that; we moved every eighteen months, it seemed. My mother said he was an evangelist in the pastorate. In his case, it was legitimate. The Lord had called him to do certain things in a series of churches.

But there are many who keep running from themselves and their problems, and they really should come to terms.

Boyer: A lot of times something happens in a church that involves maybe five people-and the pastor assumes the whole congregation is against him, so he takes off. The whole congregation doesn’t feel that way at all. A conflict with even ten out of a hundred is not impossible to overcome; in the next church there might be twenty.

You don’t help anything by moving in such cases; instead, you must get on your face before God and work through the problem. You talk with the persons involved, pray with them, reconcile if possible, and keep ministering regardless.

Eppinga: We have a new mentoring system in our denomination that assigns seminary graduates going into parish ministry to older, experienced ministers who meet with them monthly. We hope this will stem the dropout rate we’ve been seeing in recent years.

The fellow who is burned out at thirty or thirty-five perhaps needs the same kind of help. Sometimes you can be so despondent you can’t even pray. You need a friend in the ministry to guide you through, help you think straight, and seek God’s direction for your life.

To my shame, I must say I’ve been so busy I’ve often failed to notice someone who was struggling, and all of a sudden, I hear he’s out of the ministry. I should have talked with him.

It’s a two-way street: the young pastors should seek help when they need it, and the rest of us should keep our eyes open.

Leadership: What has changed during your years in the ministry and what has remained the same?

Eppinga: Ever since I was ordained, the world has been going downhill, and I hope there’s no connection! (Laughter)

Hess: I’m seeing the unsaved come to church like never in the past. A man sitting by my wife in a Sunday evening service not long ago said, “I can’t believe I’m here. I’m an alcoholic; I lost my job as well as my family; I was in a tavern when I heard about Single Point” (our ministry to singles) “and so I came. Then I tried the church services, came to know the Lord, and now my whole life is changed. I’m even working again.”

In years past we were scared to death of singles groups, forgetting how our Lord associated with all types of people. I’ve never seen such spiritual hunger as there is today. People are looking for answers to their needs, and the Word of God is the only thing that will satisfy them.

We hold a divorce recovery workshop three times a year, and over 200 people show up-90 percent of whom I’ve never seen before. They’re bleeding, they’re hurting. The Sunday morning singles class runs up to 400.

Boyer: A lot of churches have come and gone in our town over the years. But among the survivors, closer fellowship has come as we’ve worked on joint projects. We’ve held a united county crusade thirty-one years in a row, for example. This morning, two busloads of teenagers from not only our church but the Congregational church around the corner left for camp.

The youth music has created some problems at times, but I see the young people there in church every Sunday morning and Sunday night, and I’m encouraged overall. More of them are going to Christian colleges than in the past. They’re very serious about doing something significant with their lives-often, missionary work.

Hinerman: Paul Rees’s book Don’t Sleep through the Revolution was to me a powerful word to the church. At first we tried to ignore the social upheaval that began in the sixties; we hoped it would go away. Only belatedly have we faced into it.

And we’re still the most racist institution in America. This is one of the most tragic failures of Christendom. The judgment of God is going to shake us eventually for playing games while the revolution roars on.

Leadership: How has your attitude toward that failure changed over the years? Are you angrier now, or less angry?

Hinerman: I don’t know. I’m just a journeyman pastor who works every day in the trenches. People say to me, “What’s your five-year plan?” I say, “Hey, we were torched three times in one year-I don’t have any five-year plan.” I’m just trying to survive and grow in the midst of difficulty, and I hope others will join me in that pursuit.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Since the 1977 release of Gail Sheehy’s book Passages, people are aware of the phases of adult life. The pastor’s life also has its phases. The following books deal with various stages of the ministry.

Arnold, Oren. Guide Yourself through Old Age. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976. Step-by-step help to making the most of the senior years.

Bolles, Richard Nelson. The Three Boxes of Life. Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 1978. Making the transition from one stage of life to another without getting boxed in.

Brister, C. W., James L. Cooper, and J. David Fite. Beginning Your Ministry. Nashville: Abingdon, 1981. Designed to help new pastors with the adjustments and tensions.

Calian, Carnegie Samuel. Today’s Pastor in Tomorrow’s World. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982. How pastors can adapt themselves and their ministries to changing times.

Carlson, Dwight L. Run and Not Be Weary. Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1974. Helpful reading for the rundown leader who wants to quit and move on to greener grass.

Clifford, Paul Rowntree. The Pastoral Calling. Great Neck, N.Y.: Channel 1961. One of the few books available on the subject of the initial call to ministry.

Clinebell, Howard J. Growth Counseling for Mid-Years Couples. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. Thought-provoking for the middle-aged minister and spouse to read together.

Conway, Jim. Men in Mid-Life Crisis. Elgin, Ill.: Cook, 1978. A Christian perspective on issues facing men aged thirty-five to sixty.

Engstrom, Ted. The Pursuit of Excellence. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982. Overview of the process of being all God wants us to be. Especially useful in rebounding from failure.

Gillaspie, Gerald Whiteman. The Restless Pastor. Chicago: Moody, 1974. The pros and cons of longevity, when to resign, and how to start fresh.

Green, Michael. Called to Serve. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981. A frank discussion of the servant orientation needed for effective church ministry.

Grider, Edgar M. Can I Make It One More Year? Atlanta: Knox, 1980. A penetrating look at the issues that make ministers want to leave their churches.

Hahn, Celia A. The Minister Is Leaving. New York: Seabury, 1974. The effect of pastoral termination upon the parish and the minister.

Harris, John C. The Minister Looks for a Job. Washington: Alban Institute, 1977. Covers the special factors a pastor must take into account in a job search.

Kemper, Robert G. Beginning a New Pastorate. Nashville: Abingdon, 1978. Discusses termination from one pastorate and the interviewing, candidating, deciding, and planning involved in starting a new one.

Kirk, Richard J. The Pastor and Church Face Retirement. Washington: Alban Institute, 1979. Planning for the final passage out of full-time ministry.

Miller, Arthur F. and Ralph T. Mattson, eds. The Truth about You. Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1977. “What you should be doing with your life.” Helpful resource regarding career changes.

Ortlund, Raymond C. Intersections. Waco, Texas: Word, 1979. Meeting Christ at all of life’s junctions.

Oswald, Roy M. The Pastor as Newcomer. Washington: Alban Institute, 1977. Discusses the stages of enthusiasm, frustration, and stability experienced by pastor and parish.

Paul, Cecil R. Passages of a Pastor. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981. “Coping with yourself and God’s people” from initial ministry to retirement.

Ragsdale, Ray W. The Mid-Life Crisis of a Minister. Waco, Texas: Word, 1978. Covers stages of various crises with a positive emphasis on making the most of the middle years.

Rand, William J. Jr. The Probationers Handbook. Burlingame, Calif.: Burlingame Press, 1981. Forty-eight questions often asked by United Methodist ministers in their first appointments.

Sanford, John A. Ministry Burnout. New York: Paulist, 1982. Help for the minister who feels ready to wear out.

Segler, Franklin M. Alive and Past Sixty-Five. Nashville: Broadman, 1975. Aging as it confronts the church.

Sheehy, Gail. Passages. New York: Bantam, 1977. The popular work on predictable crises of the adult life.

Smith, Oswald J. The Man God Uses. London: Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1932. A classic regarding the call to the Christian ministry.

Tournier, Paul. The Adventure of Living. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Perspectives on facing challenges of life directed by God.

Tournier, Paul. Learn to Grow Old. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. A candid look at the ways to age with grace.

Whiston, Lionel A. Enjoy the Journey. Waco, Texas: Word, 1972. Learning to live life to the fullest amid all its transitions.

Zeluff, Daniel. There’s Algae in the Baptismal ‘Fount.’ Nashville: Abingdon, 1978. A counselor of pastors identifies and discusses the most common syndromes that discourage ministers.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.