Page 4865 – Christianity Today (2024)

LEADERSHIP asked Janet Omaits, a therapist with the Minirth-Meier Clinic West in Seattle, Washington, to answer common questions pastors and lay people ask about childhood sexual abuse. Janet specializes in helping adolescents and adults recover from the trauma of sexual abuse.

How extensive is child sexual abuse today?

A large part of my practice is working with victims of sexual abuse. Statistics say that as many as 38 percent of all women, by the time they reach eighteen years old, have been abused. The figure is between 20-30 percent for men. Sadly, the incidence of child sexual abuse is roughly the same in our churches.

What is sexual abuse?

In his book, The Wounded Heart, Dan Allender breaks down sexual abuse into two categories: sexual contact and sexual interaction. Sexual contact is any kind of physical touch aimed at arousing physical or psychological desire in the victim and/or the perpetrator.

Sexual interactions-those not involving touch-are harder to identify but include anything that is seductive or suggestive in nature. Threats or verbal sexual abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse. Any time an adult uses a child or adolescent for sexual stimulation or even to sexually stimulate the victim, sexual abuse is occurring.

Why is it difficult for the church to discuss sexual abuse?

Part of it has to do with a natural modesty about the subject of sexuality. When the subject is broached, many people feel overwhelmed, although denial also can be an issue. By denying that the abuse happened or that abuse can happen, both people and institutions avoid this painful subject. They refuse to confront their fears and the damage abuse causes to victims.

Ignorance is also part of the problem. Many people have a hard time identifying with the trauma of sexual abuse. And then there’s also the image issue. If a church openly discusses the problem of sexual abuse, some fear it will tarnish the ideal of what the church is supposed to be. The problem can be likened to a family who pretends that Uncle George didn’t really molest one of the nieces, so everyone still gets together for Thanksgiving to preserve the “family” image.

Can adults who were abused as children have no memory of it?

Certainly. Chronic depression, nightmares, anxiety symptoms, panic attacks, migraine headaches and insomnia-these are some common experiences of adults who have been sexually abused as a child. Often these repressed experiences first emerge in dreams. Then, in God’s timing, the memories begin to work their way into conscious awareness. Some remember it all along; they’ve just chosen to keep it a secret because they feel ashamed and dirty, blaming themselves.

Is emotional healing possible for abuse victims?

Like the death of someone we love or the betrayal by a close friend, abuse is a loss that can never be undone.

However, we can go through stages of integrating that experience into our lives in a healthy way, coming to accept that it happened and yet being able to go on with life. This is what I would call the healing process. While the experience can’t be erased, significant healing can take place.

The healing process, though, often becomes short-circuited when the abuse is repressed, when denial that it happened sets in, or when the person disassociates himself or herself from the experience with, for example, amnesia. This person, then, gets stuck in either shock, anger, sadness or another stage of grief. The trauma needs to be processed in a safe relationship.

Do abused juveniles run a greater risk of becoming abusers themselves?

Yes. Abusing others is a way of acting out their anger at what happened to them. Someone did this terrible act to them, and now they view abuse as the only available avenue to express their rage. This is why getting immediate help for an abused child is so important.

What are the thoughts of a child who has been violated?

A young child will often feel certain things but have no concept of what has happened to them. However, a child can tell the difference between normal love and lust. Just as we can sense the difference, so can they, but they can’t label it as such. They don’t know whether what happened is right or wrong; they just know it’s strange. Something is wrong.

When the perpetrator says, “Don’t tell anybody; it’s our secret,” or “If your mommy finds out, you’ll have to go away and can never come back,” fear and shame enters the child’s life.

Once the child says, “Stop, I don’t want to do that anymore,” but is forced by the adult to continue, they experience a loss of power. They no longer feel safe and, as a result, lose the ability to construct and enforce personal boundaries.

Because an element of pleasure is sometimes involved, the child can feel guilty. Children who divulge what has happened are often scolded by their parents with phrases such as, “Why did you let your brother do that to you?” That’s one of the worst possible responses. It reinforces the false notion that the abuse was the child’s fault.

What’s the likelihood of a child making false allegations?

I believe children are much more likely to hide or minimize sexual allegations than make false ones. If a child was found to make false allegations, I would want to understand why and how it came about, to help the child with his or her sense of reality and truth.

There are professionals who are carefully trained to interview children, gently coaxing them to tell their experience without “putting words in their mouths.”

What effect does child sexual abuse have on adolescents?

Victims of sexual abuse often feel, “I’m already ruined, so what difference does it make if I have further sexual activity?” Teenagers who feel this way can act out shameful behavior-what Freud called “repetition compulsion”-like promiscuity in dating relationships. Some may avoid dating, feeling uneasy and unsafe in a normal relationship with the opposite sex.

Where do you begin to help a child through such a terrible ordeal?

The two primary problems with which abused children struggle are a sense of betrayal and a sense of powerlessness. First and foremost, then, I try to help them see the abuse wasn’t their fault, that they didn’t have control over the situation, so they aren’t responsible for what happened. Next, I affirm their need for safety. They need to feel that they will be protected. I tell their parents never to leave them with new people they’ve not met before.

I help them redraw their personal limits so they can say, “No, don’t do that.” I help them see that they aren’t powerless, that they do have choices. Telling the story, feeling all the feelings is important to understand the abuse and to heal from its trauma.

How does abuse affect their view of God?

Many abuse victims are angry with God, asking “Where were you?” or “Why didn’t you stop it?” They feel God should have sent a lightning bolt and killed the person rather than letting the act happen. They feel he is a bad God.

To help them, I begin with their true feelings toward God and build from there. It’s the starting point of rebuilding their faith. Remember, God knows exactly how they are feeling. Allowing them to express their anger in prayer is much better than their saying, “I’m not talking to God anymore.”

Through Scripture and prayer I help victims see the reality of God’s love for them through the stages of their grief. I emphasize that we live in an evil world. I stress God’s understanding of their pain, and his provision for us through Christ.

What are some common-sense steps churches should take to ensure the safety of their children?

I would begin by setting up a system to screen volunteers, particularly those who work in the nursery or with young children. I would insist on a system of accountability that would not leave any adult alone with small children or allow them much privacy. I personally favor couples working together.

If an adolescent wants to work with children, particularly a boy, I would ask the simple question, “Why?” References are appropriate, as is supervision.

Education is also important-teaching parents to teach their children about “good touching” and “bad touching” and how to respond. Because sexual abuse occurs at young ages, we can’t wait for the school system to educate our children. Excellent materials-which aren’t offensively explicit-are available to teach personal boundaries and safety measures.

The job of the church is to provide a victim with a sense of safety and an environment to build a strong self-esteem.

– Janet Omaits is a therapist at Minirth-Meier Clinic West in Seattle, Washington.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Pastors may have more in common with the slim-hipped gunslinger of the Old West than the well-groomed corporate CEO of today. In ministry, OK-Corral shootouts at high noon are more frequent than carefully planned red-tie power lunches.

Bill Hybels knows conflict. While leading the innovative Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, he's faced sunset showdowns and ambushes not only from cynical media types and governmental regulatory agencies, but also from critics within the Christian world and even people within his own church. Contrary to megachurch-pastor stereotypes, when Bill Hybels speaks, even at Willow Creek, not everyone listens.

LEADERSHIP editors David Goetz and Marshall Shelley sat across the table from Bill and asked him about his survival tactics-physical and spiritual-when the lead starts flying. Bill leaned back in his desk chair, kept his back to the wall, and talked straight with us about standing in the crossfire.

Given the assortment of people and ministries at Willow Creek, how do you keep the church united?

Unity isn't the word we use to describe relationships at Willow Creek. The popular concept of unity is a fantasy land where disagreements never surface and contrary opinions are never stated with force. We expect disagreement, forceful disagreement. So instead of unity, we use the word community.

We say, "Let's not pretend we never disagree. We're dealing with the lives of 16,000 people. The stakes are high. Let's not have people hiding their concerns to protect a false notion of unity. Let's face the disagreement and deal with it in a godly way."

The mark of community-true biblical unity-is not the absence of conflict. It's the presence of a reconciling spirit. I can have a rough-and-tumble leadership meeting with someone, but because we're committed to community, we can still leave, slapping each other on the back, saying, "I'm glad we're still brothers." We know no one's bailing out just because of a conflicting position. Community is bigger than that.

How do you teach people to fight fair?

First, we acknowledge that conflict is inevitable. Then we go the next step and say, "When your nose does get bent out of joint-not if but when-you have a biblical responsibility to take the high road of conflict resolution."

That means going directly to the person with whom you're having this conflict rather than building a guerrilla team to ambush this person later.

We also teach a kind of reverse accountability. In staff meetings or in front of the congregation, we say, "If someone whose nose is bent out of joint comes to you for a 'Won't you join my cause?' conversation, you have a biblical responsibility to interrupt mid-sentence and say, 'I think you're talking to the wrong person. Please go to the individual with whom you're having this conflict and seek to resolve it in a God-glorifying way.' "

By expecting people to fight, and teaching them how, have you created more conflict in your ministry?

Yes. But most of it stays above ground. Conflict that goes underground poisons the soil and hurts everyone eventually. We would rather have conflict within community than a mask of unity.

But aren't you inviting people to dump on you?

Absolutely. After speaking at a weekend service, I may receive fifteen high-octane letters the next week, saying, "When you said thus and so, it wounded me deeply for the following reasons."

On the surface, that can be discouraging. (For me, the 10-to-1 rule applies here: ten complimentary letters are needed to get over one missile.) However, when I'm feeling wounded, I always say to myself, Aren't you glad this person expressed his frustration to you rather than calling fifteen people and holding a town meeting at your expense?

And so when I write these people back-which I do-I always begin the letter by saying, "Thank you so much for the courage it took to express your displeasure with me. I don't take lightly your willingness to follow the biblical injunction to come straight to me." Then I delve into the issue at hand.

How do you let the whole congregation see your approach to conflict?

Once a month I stand in front of the whole congregation and emcee an open question-and-answer time for half an hour. People can ask anything and everything-financial questions, personal questions, rumor questions. If people feel hesitant to ask a question publicly, they can submit it in writing before the session. I address every question.

Recently, before one of these meetings, I reminded the congregation, "When you stand and ask your question, remember pastors have feelings, too. So, if you're going to come after me, remember my heart is as fragile as your own."

Sometimes, though, someone will ask a question that has an edge to it. When that happens I'll ask that person to pose the question again, in a more careful way. That process is a subtle way of training the church how to phrase disagreement so that no one is wounded and how to react when attacked.

And they're learning. Our congregation has developed the habit of hissing-when I tell a joke they don't think is funny or make a statement they don't think is tactful. On occasion, they've even hissed a careless questioner. It's their lighthearted but firm way of saying, "That's not the way to fight fair."

What was one question that made you squirm?

When we shut down a magazine we published for a couple of years, several people asked, "Do you have any idea how hurt the volunteers were when you decided to close the magazine?"

Was that a fair question?

The question was fair. But the edge in the voice made me uncomfortable, so I said, "You're probably one of those volunteers who's deeply hurt over losing your ministry, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"I feel terrible that you made the sacrifice and then it fizzled. Let me explain the original purpose of the magazine, why it folded, and the steps we took to close it graciously. If we can learn from the way we handled it, we're open to suggestions."

After several months had elapsed, one of the magazine's writers and his wife attended a management team meeting and said, "I'd like to give this management team four or five ideas on how to shut a ministry down in a less painful way."

And we listened. We were humbled, and we learned much from their suggestions. But that kind of resolution can happen only in an atmosphere where conveying threatening or negative information is okay.

What do you do if a person's question is mean-spirited?

In a public meeting, I would simply ask the person to restate the question in a more gracious manner.

In a private setting, I'd be more direct: "Is there a spirit of love behind that question? What's going on in your spirit right now? Are you only upset about the specific question, or is there something deeper you're concerned about?"

Often someone will respond, "I'm filled with rage." Or, "I'm so angry." Or, "I'm just upset about a lot of things."

If a question is mean-spirited, it's usually because another issue is interrupting the relationship. I've learned to deal with the underlying problem first.

What's the toughest skill for you to learn in handling conflict?

Hearing. Not just listening, but really hearing.

Recently a colleague and I experienced a serious break over a complex issue-philosophical and personal. We spent three, two-hour sessions attempting to resolve our differences. Though both of us had prayed and submitted to the Holy Spirit, we couldn't put the issue behind us. Neither of us felt completely heard.

Finally, the other person asked if I would be willing to go to a Christian counselor to resolve our differences. I readily agreed. And we spent two sessions with a Christian counselor who gave us tools to work through the issue more effectively.

I discovered I was listening to only 90 percent of what this person was saying. There was 10 percent I didn't want to hear. The counselor helped me go the last 10 percent to get the issue fully exposed so we could move toward resolution.

Since then, I've worked on that skill in my marriage, with my children, and with friends in my accountability group. I'm becoming a better person for it.

What emotions do you feel when you're in one of these situations?

It depends. Not long ago someone questioned my motivation for being a minister. "The reason Bill is in ministry," this person said, "is because of Willow Creek's size and all the perks that go with being its senior pastor."

I was surprised how hurt I felt. I was devastated. I also felt defensive, which bothered me. After journaling and mulling over the criticism, I realized that part of what upset me was that the one making the accusations had been around Willow Creek for only two years. He was unaware of the years I worked with no salary, when my wife and I took in boarders to make ends meet, when we paid for the birth of our daughter because the church couldn't afford medical insurance.

In that case, I had to process his accusation, to figure out why it hurt me so deeply, not just accept or reject it. I also realized that in order to be freed up in my spirit toward that person, I had to explain to him why his accusation hurt and why I felt it was unjust.

At other times, conflict energizes me. If someone doesn't like a new venture I'm suggesting, I can respond as a competitor. When the final gun sounds, I think, we'll see who's right. It can make me work even harder. Or if it's clear the other person has a better idea, I can jump on board. Conflict, I've learned, can be a constructive part of the creative process.

What's the difference between the two? Is it being attacked personally versus having your ideas attacked?

Definitely. About my ideas, I've always been able to say, "You got me. I was wrong; I blew it." But when my motivations are questioned, I feel wounded. And I feel somewhat helpless. How can I prove the sincerity of my motives?

I think most people feel this same way. When conflict reaches the level of personal attack-suspicion about integrity, trustworthiness, purity of motivations-it's pretty hard to handle.

Can you ever convince people that your heart's in the right place? Or is that futile?

No, it's not futile. But the conversation will require an enormous level of maturity-for the accuser and the accused. The person making the accusation has to be mature enough to sense the gravity of what he's doing. And the one feeling stung has to be mature enough not to lash out in defense. Each has to enter into that discussion with a high degree of vulnerability.

Not long ago someone questioned my motives in launching a new ministry at Willow Creek. I arranged a time when I could express my hurt and openly explain my vision for this new program. He received it beautifully and apologized for his broad accusation. He then brought up several legitimate points we discussed at length.

Some people would say a pastor should never defend himself. Obviously you think differently.

When the apostle Paul felt that the church of Corinth was not understanding his role, essentially he said, "Excuse me. Pardon what I'm going to do here for the next few minutes, but I'm going to tell you the price I've paid to carry out my apostolic calling." And Paul proceeded to recount his shipwrecks and beatings for the sake of the gospel. I see that as a way of defending himself.

What are the battles that you simply have to win, the issues for which you'll go to the wall?

First, we at Willow Creek will not tolerate biblical infidelity, a discounting of the clear teachings of Christ.

Second, we insist on the enforcement of Scripture, the "living out" of the teachings of Christ. We'll not only defend the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, but also the indisputable importance of applying biblical teaching to our daily lives in practical ways.

Someone told me recently of a woman who is terrorizing a local congregation with her slanderous tongue. She's doing so in a church that holds high the Word of God. But the church leaders don't enforce it. They'll permit a loose-tongued woman to poison the body of Christ. They get an A for inerrancy and an F for enforcement. We want an A in both.

Third, we expect lay and staff leaders at our church to be on board with the basic vision of Willow Creek. We had a leader who, after several years of service, concluded that he could no longer agree with our vision. When we were a small church, he believed in our mission. But when we passed the 4,000-attender mark, he thought we should start satellite churches, moving toward decentralization. The rest of us, however, didn't sense God leading in that direction.

We had an oil-on-water mixture. He made a high-integrity move and voluntarily resigned from his leadership position.

The last nonnegotiable is verbal discipline. Years ago, I took to heart what Scott Peck had to say about conflict resolution. Often what undermines the conflict resolution process, he says, is the lack of verbal discipline. When we attend a piano concert we expect the pianist to offer a disciplined performance, demonstrating that thought, skill, and practice were part of the preparation. A concert is not a "whatever I feel like" event.

In confrontation, however, too often our verbal discipline goes out the window. People make always and never statements. They exaggerate the truth or get careless with facts. Volume levels increase. And then we wonder why we're unsuccessful in finding resolution.

Through the years, I've reminded our church continually about disciplined verbal expression. If in a debate someone is losing verbal control, I'll call a time out so people can settle down. Then we'll come back together for a discussion that is controlled, accurate, and constructive.

Have you ever had to confront someone outside your congregation for their verbal shots?

Yes. At times certain accusations take root in my spirit. If resentment grows, I have to go to the individual and say, "As hard as I'm trying to ignore what you're saying, you're hurting me, and you need to know that."

Many years ago, I heard from reliable sources that a local pastor had commented repeatedly that Lynne and I were unhappily married, headed for divorce. Included in his charges were accusations of unfaithfulness. Needless to say, Lynne and I were deeply saddened by these false reports.

After much discussion and prayer, Lynne and I drove to this pastor's church and walked into his office, unannounced, and introduced ourselves.

"The things you've been saying are ripping our hearts out," we said. "They're not true. We're wondering why you're saying what you're saying."

"I thought my information was accurate," he sputtered.

By the end of the conversation, he was apologetic. He appreciated that we had come to him and spoken the truth in a loving way. I think we all learned some valuable life lessons that day.

Do you handle shots from the outside-whether from Christian critics or secular media-differently than you do from critics inside Willow Creek?

A man at our church once told me: "When you swim in the ocean, you get attacked by sharks and guppies. Don't worry about the guppies."

Over the years, I've concluded that some of the potshots I take from the Christian community are guppy problems. If a Christian leader criticizes me for allowing drums in the church, I'm not going to worry much about it. Someday we'll reach across the table at the marriage supper of the Lamb and say, "Wasn't that silly? Those were guppy things."

However, when our church was struggling in the late seventies, the outside attacks felt like shark attacks. We were renting a movie theater then, doing an unusual style of ministry that some considered liberal and others called fundamentalist. Many vocal critics never took the time to figure out who we were and what we were all about.

Careless media coverage, in which we were called a cult and linked with everyone from Reverend Moon to Jim Jones, threatened our viability at times. Many people became suspicious of us.

It was a frustrating and scary time for us. But we converted our anxiety into earnest prayer energy. It forced us to examine our motives. We asked ourselves a hard question: "Are we really doing what God called us to do?"

Such attacks forced us to become even more committed to pursuing God's specific will for us, even if that meant being criticized or persecuted. We said, "Let's quit complaining about the attack, and get on with the ministry."

Now that the church is established, are you still taking shots from people outside the church?

Just a few years ago, a freelance reporter spent four days with us to write a story for Parade magazine. This reporter, while not a Christian, was impacted significantly during her time with us.

She wrote the article and sent it to New York, where an editor, who had never been to our church, slashed her story and put a completely different spin on it. The story was titled "McChurch: Where Fast Food Religion Sells." The piece capsulized our ministry as cheap and quick-nothing substantial. The reporter felt so offended by what the publisher had done to her story that she severed her relationship with them.

I was deeply wounded by the article. My daughter comforted me by saying, "Cheer up, Dad, it only went out to 29 million homes."

You've also bumped against the Environmental Protection Agency. How did that affect your church and specifically you as a pastor?

The conflict erupted after we built an access road through our property. We thought we had complied with all governmental regulations regarding the project, but discovered, after building the road, we hadn't. We inadvertently bypassed one agency.

After discovering our mistake, we contacted the agency and apologized, saying that we weren't aware of their restrictions, and that we had no intention of violating environmental guidelines.

"Fine," they said, "that's no problem. Just tear out the road."

That began a five-year, conflict-resolution process that is finally coming to an end this year. Because building our road destroyed a swampland, we had to "create" a swampland area on a previously dry portion of our property. I can't tell you how challenging those five years have been. We've tried to maintain a Christian witness while jumping through scores of bureaucratic hoops-and spending thousands of dollars-as we worked toward resolution. But the process was worth it. We have use of the road, while still complying with the law and being environmentally sensitive.

Has your public posture towards criticism changed through the years?

In my early years of ministry, I rebutted people who wrote to me and said I had offended them or hurt their feelings. For years, I'd write back and say essentially, "I'm sorry you took it wrong, but there really wasn't anything wrong with what I said." But then they'd write back, doubly hurt. They knew what I really meant was, "I'm sorry you're so sensitive that you get upset about petty things."

After several years of this, I thought, What if I just said, "Thank you for writing me and expressing your hurt. I'm sorry. I didn't intend to hurt you. Please forgive me."

Soon after implementing this approach, I began receiving letters saying, "Thank you for your letter. You don't know how much that meant to me."

Many people, I discovered, just want to know if their pastor is a safe person. Can he respond to hurt with compassion? Does he care as much about relationships as he does his sermon material?

I don't mean to imply that I write patronizing "I'm sorry" letters. I don't apologize if I truly believe I have nothing to apologize for. But often the source of offense is a flippant remark or an insensitive stab at humor-something I thought was harmless, but ended up being offensive to someone.

During Christmas vacation several years ago, my family and I visited a church where for special music the pastor played a song on an accordion. That was so contrary to the culture in which my children had grown up that they were choking back their laughter.

When I returned to Willow Creek the following week, I enjoyed the first half hour of our service so much-the orchestra, the singers, the drama-that in my pre-message remarks I said, "It's so good to be home. Last week I was in a little church where the only thing besides the pastor's message was the accordion solo." Most people laughed. I went on to thank the people who planned and presented the music and drama that morning.

But then came the letters. Some were angry because they felt I belittled pastors who don't have staff and music programs. Then I received letters from people who played accordions.

I knew I had crossed a line. So after writing ten or fifteen apology notes, I decided the situation called for a public apology. So, at each of the weekend services, I said, "I really didn't intend to make a disparaging statement about limited church staffs or accordion players. I just felt thankful for the people God has provided to minister so creatively here. But the way I phrased my comments was careless and conveyed negative values. I was wrong. I am sorry. So please forgive me."

Do you find that hurts your credibility?

Absolutely not. In fact, it builds credibility. People have sought me out later, saying, "Knowing that you'll apologize makes me feel safer accepting your leadership."

Our people already know we make mistakes. What they want to know is whether or not we have enough integrity to admit them.

Are certain types of people more prone to create conflict in your ministry?

People who are unhealthy emotionally, carrying around unfinished business and negative baggage, are more likely to create the kind of conflict that is difficult to resolve.

Emotionally healthy people are less likely to internalize differences of opinion and less likely to assume the worst. For that reason, we are committed to placing healthy people into key leadership roles, both on a staff and lay level.

How can you be sure you're looking at a healthy person?

You can't be 100 percent sure. But a person who has never wrestled with how his upbringing impacts his adult relationships is a sure bet for a barrel of conflict.

In our interviewing process, we often ask, "Were you raised in a perfect family?" Most often, of course the answer is no. Then we probe deeper. "How did your parents let you down? Have you worked through that?"

If someone says, "My family wasn't a safe place growing up," we'll ask, "What have you done about it? How have you worked through that?"

We're looking for self-aware individuals who are coming to grips with their pain and their woundedness. If someone says, "Actually, my family was just about perfect. There were no problems," or, "My dad was an alcoholic, but it didn't affect me much," we know there's cause for concern.

People on the journey toward health generally can answer yes to two important questions: (1) Will you admit that you have baggage from your past? and (2) Will you do honest work on it so it doesn't distort your relationships and work around here?

How does an unhealthy person create unnecessary conflict?

For example, in a leadership meeting I am passing out assignments. If I say, "Tom, can you handle this project for me?" I expect Tom to give me an honest "Yes, I can" or "No, I can't."

Let's say, however, that Tom doesn't do that. Tom's plate is full; he's buried in work. But he's afraid to say, "Bill, I can't handle it right now. My project boat is already full."

Though he told me yes, in reality the extra work overwhelms him. So he spends the next eighteen evenings trying to finish my project and winds up feeling angry at me.

Then, through the grapevine, I learn that Tom is busy telling people that I overwork him, that I'm not sensitive to his family.

I have a problem with that kind of behavior! If I've asked an honest question, I should be able to expect an honest answer. Often, an unhealthy person will say yes when he should say no.

We look for people who have the emotional health to say, "I'm swamped right now. I won't be able to get that assignment done by the due date. Can we discuss how the assignment can get done another way?"

Another tip-off that something might be amiss emotionally is when a person cannot subject himself or herself to loving, constructive evaluation. Obviously, if we're evaluating with Uzi's, then the process is the problem. But around here, we have a carefully thought out and regularly scheduled evaluation process that is normally done with sensitivity and tenderness. In a situation like this, if people are terrified of the evaluation process or hostile to it, there's usually an underlying issue that needs to be explored and understood.

What are some of your standard precautions to head off unnecessary conflict?

Just the other day, a denominational executive called me, asking if he could bring a large group from his denomination for our presentation on seeker-oriented ministry. His only available night was a Tuesday evening. Our senior high ministry uses the auditorium on Tuesday nights.

I resisted the temptation to say yes and then deal with the logistical problem later. Instead, I called the director of the youth ministry and explained the situation.

"You make the call," I said. "How do you feel about us using the auditorium that night? Can you make different plans for that evening without disrupting your program?"

He said, "No problem. With this much advance notice, we can easily work around that evening. Thanks for checking with me."

Had I said yes before calling him, he would have felt devalued and taken for granted. It would have broken our trust.

Around Willow Creek we also talk about having "check-ins." If we sense tension with someone, we sit down and say, "I just need to check in with you. Is everything okay between us?"

Once a month, we also have a question-and-answer time with the staff, and in addition, we have regular talk-back sessions with those who work in the subministries.

The more interactive we are, the more we preempt serious conflict, because we get people talking before conflict goes underground.

What character qualities do you want to exhibit in conflict?

Due to my own upbringing, one way I have handled hurt is to clench my teeth and say, "I'm not going to let that get to me." I'd buck up, power through, put it out of my mind, and keep going. The problem was that each time I did that, my skin became a little tougher, my heart a little harder, my feelings dove yet deeper below the level of my awareness. I became another step distanced from the people around me.

With the help of my wife, Christian counselors, and other trusted friends, I'm learning a more constructive way to negotiate conflict. I'm learning to admit to the person involved that what they said or did hurt me, and slowly I'm learning to feel that hurt inside. I'm learning to say "ouch" and talk about what that ouch means, rather than discounting relational wounds and powering past them.

As I get better at acknowledging the hurt that conflict causes me, I also become more aware of the hurt that conflict causes others. This has led me to approach conflict resolution with a much gentler spirit, both for my sake and for others' sake.

Bottom line, I'm talking about a kind of vulnerability in relationships that did not come naturally to me. But I really believe it's a necessary part of obedience to Christ.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

It was a minister's nightmare. The search committee had said there weren't any serious problems, but before his boxes were unpacked, the interim pastor (my husband, Jerry) learned that thirty people had left the church when the last minister was pressured to leave after serving not quite three years.

Why wasn't the last minister acceptable? The secretary, the custodian, and many others complained to Jerry that Brian didn't leave his study doors open. He had even drawn curtains across the window. What's more, the secretary did not always know where he was. That's just not the way Timothy, their former beloved pastor of twenty-three years, had done things.

The more Jerry heard from the secretary and custodian, the more he realized any minister who was not a mirror reflection of Timothy would have a hard time. These two people slanted everything the new minister did differently as bad. They were disruptive and divisive. The negative climate they created had contributed to Brian's ineffectiveness.

Temporary troubleshooter

Though this scenario is difficult, it's just what a specialized interim minister is trained and called to confront. This in-between-ministers time is proving to be valuable for congregations, not just to give them continuity until a new pastor arrives, but to provide a designated period to resolve problems, evaluate themselves, overcome the grief or anger many feel from losing their last pastor, and to select priorities and goals for the future.

Frequently, in the rush to get a new minister on board, congregations don't take the time to resolve issues. Thus, the new pastor inherits the problems. The intentional interim ministry is changing that.

Just as we're more aware of dysfunctional families in today's world, so we are becoming more aware of the dysfunctional churches that need outside help. Too many churches have antagonists in their midst who grab at power and rule by intimidation. Christians often do not know how to handle such people graciously and are afraid it is unchristian to confront them. During the interim time, congregations can learn skills to confront disruptive people, thus refusing to let them destroy the ministry of the church any longer.

A minister trained for interim ministry can be especially helpful for a church coming off a long-term pastorate, or for a church that loses their minister every three or four years. Churches with power struggles or personality problems can also benefit from an intentional interim.

If a congregation calls a new minister before working through any of these problems, that minister will probably not last. Since the interim is temporary, these sticky problems can be tackled precisely because he or she will soon be leaving. Even though the board or church leadership makes the decisions, the people affected will nearly always blame the interim pastor, much as the child blames the nurse who gives the shot.

Confronting division and personnel problems

To get in touch with the pulse of the congregation, Jerry talked to dozens of people individually. Though it was clear the real problem was the congregation had not let go of their beloved pastor of twenty-three years, they nearly all verbalized the closed-door problem.

At the next board meeting, Jerry addressed the issue. Was always leaving the office door invitingly open so important to them that they wanted to make it a requirement for the next minister, or were they going to let the new minister choose his or her own style? He passed out a minutely detailed questionnaire of just how open the door of the next minister should be. The more it was discussed, the more the source of their friction began to look ridiculous. They ended up laughing about it, agreeing the minister should be allowed to follow personal style.

By then Jerry had further evaluated the staff problem. He presented the board with his observations: the church had (1) a secretary who was unpleasant to many people and who slanted the minister's activities to elicit a negative reaction, and (2) a lazy, gossiping custodian. If they remained, a new minister wouldn't have a chance.

"It has to be your decision," Jerry told them. "I'll leave in a few months, but you'll have to live with the problem. If you decide to confront it during the interim period so the new minister won't have to hurdle these obstacles, I'll help you." (This approach is necessary for a successful interim ministry. The congregation's leadership must own the process.)

They agreed, and the board made the decisions. All Jerry did was coach them. The board eliminated the jobs of full-time secretary and custodian. They created new, part-time jobs, then invited the present employees as well as any other interested persons to apply. The secretary of twenty years was hurt and wouldn't accept a retirement party. In fact, she quit the church, but returned after Jerry left. (That's one advantage of an interim ministry. The interim can take the heat.) The custodian's family switched to another church.

After putting up for years with a possessive, rude secretary, the church was delighted with the pleasant, cheerful new secretary selected from outside the fold. It changed the atmosphere completely. A janitorial service was contracted part-time to handle the former custodian's responsibilities.

Once the known problems had been faced and dealt with, the board appointed a pulpit committee to search for their new minister. In the meantime, Jerry led a well-attended mid-week Bible study of 1 Corinthians, which gave opportunities for discussion of conflicts. He also led a seminar on how to encourage and support a new minister and his or her unique ministry.

Interims as consultants

Interim ministers are like business consultants. They come in to solve a specific problem, then leave. It's customary for the contract to give an interim sixty days following the signing of the contract with a new minister. It usually takes a new minister that long to arrive, anyway. During this time the interim minister contacts the denomination's leadership seeking leads to other congregations. Interims sometimes cross denominational lines for this specialized ministry.

Confronting personal conflicts

Another church was building an addition when we arrived. The building committee was disintegrating over whether a certain space should be open space or have built-in closets. The more Jerry listened, the more sure he was that a certain retired professional was the primary cause of this conflict.

Dick (not his real name) was secretary of the building committee. If the group made a decision he didn't agree with, he'd write it up the way he wanted. If his idea was voted down, he'd bring it up over and over. He and his wife would then start a letter-writing and phone-calling campaign in the church. He frustrated the architect and contractor with his demands.

The building committee asked for Jerry's help. He showed them a contract for committee members that affirmed basic issues like working in Christian love and respect, and supporting group decisions. All verbally agreed to the contract, including Dick, but another of Dick's letter-writing campaigns followed.

Jerry then talked with the couple and tried to explain it wasn't that his ideas were bad, but that he had to go along with the consensus of the committee. When that didn't work, Jerry talked individually with the committee members and the general board. (A long history of Dick's rendering committees dysfunctional came to light.) He suggested they remove Dick from the committee.

The board, at its next meeting, voted to remove Dick from the building committee. Dick had shown up unexpectedly at that meeting, but Jerry went ahead with his suggestion, trying to affirm Dick's sincerity and contributions in other areas, while emphasizing he did not work well with people. Afterward Dick and his wife sent another letter to church members explaining why they weren't going to worship there anymore.

The building project was finished before we left. Dick and his wife began attending again and even hugged Jerry when we left, though Dick was adamant that he had no problem working with others. The board had learned how to deal with a difficult personality and prevent problems in the future.

In June, this church called a minister, who agreed to come as full-time pastor. So Jerry accepted the call to another interim opportunity. Unfortunately, the prospective minister changed his mind before signing the contract. (After that experience, Jerry made sure he never accepted another church until the prospective minister had signed a contract.) The church had to call another interim minister who continued almost a year before they found a pastor.

What an interim minister avoids

Congregations go through so many changes during the interim time that it is unwise to make major changes in matters such as the order of service, function of committees, and format of the newsletter, unless these are part of a major conflict. Neither is it the time for a minister to install his pet projects.

Wise interims never force any change or program on the congregation. Changes must come from the congregation with the coaching of the interim. Forced change will not only cause unnecessary turmoil, it won't last once the interim leaves.

Because two churches Jerry served were in desperate financial straits, Jerry did help them put into place a stewardship program. Because the people themselves carried it out, they were able to continue the program after their new pastor arrived.

A good interim pastor doesn't make changes that will create a problem for his successor. If you do things it would be impossible for a permanent pastor to do, you have set him or her up to fail-for example, if you try to save the church money by coming for a lot less than a pastor would need or by doing the janitorial work or typing the bulletin.

The congregation must know from the beginning that the interim will not be available as their permanent pastor. That is an important ethic of the interim ministry, necessary for it to fulfill its purpose.

The interim minister should never help select the new minister. The selection should be left completely in the hands of the pulpit committee and congregation.

The interim pastor should, however, offer guidance in the process and procedures. He or she can guide them along the way by explaining denominational procedures, offering insights into what questions to ask prospective candidates, and salary considerations. The interim pastor has a unique understanding of the needs of the congregation and the needs of a professional minister.

Considering interim ministry

Those interested in such a ministry may find helpful the comprehensive training program in intentional interim ministry offered by:

Interim Ministry Network

916 S. Rolling Road

P.O. Box 21251

Baltimore, MD 21128

Interim ministers perform a crucial, John-the-Baptist role for many churches, making rough places smooth and preparing for the one to come.

-Nola Deffenbaugh

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

“I thought you might like this book,” Ed said and quickly disappeared.

Later I opened the book and found his inscription thanking me for a series of sermons.

“You gave me a fresh perspective on some enduring questions. My faith has been renewed,” he wrote. “Perhaps I can, in some way, reciprocate with this book.”

We had met only briefly-he, a face in the audience, and I, a guest preacher, blindly shooting words at the hidden needs of strangers who sat in the pews.

Miraculously, something hit a bull’s eye. Some thought struck home in Ed, and faith was revived.

As I mulled over the inscription, my thoughts went from self-satisfaction and accomplishment to surprise and curiosity. What did I say that touched Ed? I had no clue.

* * *

Preaching is an odd enterprise.

Some preachers are wordsmiths, crafters of fine art. Others are silver-tongued orators who dazzle listeners with their dexterity in juggling language and moods and gestures. Some are scholars who come across as possessing more knowledge about the Bible than God does.

Others communicate a sincerity that warms the listener, while still others burn with such intensity that those who hear find themselves caught up with conviction.

The rest of us do the best we can, trying not to put anyone to sleep the way Paul did in Acts 20, while being careful not to dangle too many participles or heresies along the way.

To the casual observer, it appears that the tough work is happening in the pulpit, where the preacher strains to express the unexpressible.

In fact, the listener is working just as hard, without the advantage of formal training, seeking to catch something that will revive the soul.

Week after week, preacher and parishioner join together to play their roles as speaker and listener. They meld into what often becomes a familiar dance, circling around the holy.

It’s an odd sort of dance, which seems to lunge and jerk. Both sides feel a little tentative.

Preachers who have integrity recognize the audacity of standing up and speaking on behalf of the Ancient of Days when they can’t even balance their own checkbooks.

And honest listeners know they too are more prone to chat about the daily news than to ponder heavenly mysteries.

But the Scripture is read. A prayer is said. The preacher expounds. And sometimes, something happens.

* * *

A variety of messages are heard by people sitting on the same pew, depending on their point of view and point of need.

“I appreciate what you said about such and such,” someone remarks while shaking the preacher’s hand.

Did I say that? the preacher wonders.

As the congregation files out, the preacher realizes that some of them have begun dancing with Someone Else. Where preacher and parishioner began a rhythm together, the Spirit has slipped in, and the dance goes on.

Joseph Phelps is pastor of Church of the Savior in Austin, Texas.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

As a teen during World War II, I kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings recounting the battles raging in Europe and the Pacific. Every evening at 6:00, I tuned in to Gabriel Heater on WOR in New York, wondering whether he’d open his radio newscast with “Ah yes, there’s good news tonight” or “There’s bad news tonight.”

After World War II, we knew that wars could be just, and they were winnable.

I felt drawn to the military. I enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean conflict, and in 1965 I almost went to Viet Nam. I seriously considered a commission as an Army chaplain. A retired colonel in our church talked me out of it, though, arguing that the congregation needed me.

The Viet Nam war, however, taught us all a bitter lesson: some wars are unwinnable.

During my years as a pastor, I experienced both kinds of wars within the church. Sometimes church wars are winnable; sometimes they aren’t.

Winnable Wars

In 1950 my wife, Fay, accepted Christ as her Savior in response to my testimony. We married a year later and planned for me to go to college and seminary and into the pastoral ministry.

From the start we agreed on our roles. I would be husband, father, and pastor. She would be wife, mother, and ordinary church member. I didn’t expect her to do any more in the church than any other Christian woman. And that’s how she wanted it.

The arrangement worked well in my first pastorate. The people loved us, we loved them, and Fay felt like she fit in. She could be herself and still be the pastor’s wife.

The church board was spiritually mature. These individuals shared the responsibility of leading the church. They were the seasoned veterans, essential to the church’s operational success.

And we were tested in battle. The congregation voted to relocate and build, but a faction fought it. The board and I stood our ground, letting them know the congregation had spoken. We expected them to cooperate with the program, to cease and desist from further factionalism. At the board’s request, our district superintendent spoke at a church meeting, bluntly telling the faction to shape up or ship out.

The opposition had voiced its disapproval but followed the rules of engagement and refrained from further action.

This was my first experience with church discord, and the solution seemed so simple. From the battle-scarred district superintendent to the youngest member on the board, we moved as a team, quickly and decisively. The church grew, and though Fay hated conflict, she, like me, was encouraged by its outcome.

The Unwinnable War

In 1967 a California church invited me to candidate. It was a larger church with multiple staff. Fay and I spent a week with them discussing their needs and ours.

I made it clear that I based my philosophy of ministry on Ephesians 4:11-13. I would bring God’s people to maturity; they would do the work of the ministry.

Both Fay and I told them she was not my pastoral associate but my wife and the mother of my children. They should expect her to do no more in the church than any other member.

They accepted our terms, but I should have known something was wrong.

The board of deacons told me, “The previous pastor resigned largely because of opposition from the director of Christian education. He couldn’t work with her, didn’t get rid of her, and couldn’t do anything about the faction supporting her.”

That’s strange, I thought. Baptist polity gives the congregation power to remove her. If this was what they wanted, all the deacons had to do was call a business meeting, let them vote, and fire her.

As I was to find out later, it was not that simple. Like Viet Nam or Afghanistan, the elected leaders held office, but they weren’t able to control the countryside.

The deacons had little power. This church, a split from another church, didn’t want a strong board of deacons. They felt the deacons in the previous church had too much power, and they weren’t going to let that happen again.

Only after I was involved did I discover the real situation. On paper, the church’s government was congregationally ruled and pastor/deacon led. In reality, the church countryside was controlled by a cadre of charter members, who used their money and power of intimidation to thwart the elected leadership.

The victory in my first church still fresh in my mind, I assumed success was possible here.

I knew that if the church called me, we’d need to face the problem of the divisive director of Christian education. I told the deacons that the solution was simple. One of my terms of call would be the right to select my own pastoral staff. I would retain everyone except the DCE.

I was much like the naive Americans who thought they could do in Viet Nam what the French couldn’t. I would put this faction in its place.

Making War on Civilians

The church called us by a sizable vote, and Fay and I and our four boys moved to California. The DCE did not submit her resignation prior to my arrival (though the other staff had submitted theirs). So in my first week at work, when I found her in her office doing business as usual, I went in and told her I was exercising the terms of my call and was letting her go.

She left in a huff. It didn’t matter that this was one of the terms of my call and that the church had voted to accept it. I tried to get on with my work. But the guerrilla war began.

I first realized the type of conflict we’d be facing when the women asked Fay to speak at a church banquet and to become president of the women’s group. Fay declined and offered to do work more suited to her gifts. One of the women (one of those appalled by how I handled the DCE) told Fay, “When Shirley (the former pastor’s wife) was here, she was the president of the women’s group. And she didn’t turn down speaking engagements.”

Shirley was a gifted, energetic woman, and she had endeared herself to the women’s group. The exchange made Fay feel like a failure. These women pressed the attack.

Another time, one woman said to another, while looking at Fay, “If Shirley were here, she’d know what needs to be done.”

The attacks began to feel like terrorist bombs. We never knew when the next would detonate. Once when the women’s group was discussing the need for someone to lead a church delegation to a large meeting of church women, someone said, “What about Fay?”

In front of the whole group, another woman blurted, “Fay doesn’t do things like that. Maybe we can get Shirley to come back and do it.”

Fay came home in tears.

I was furious and personally spoke to the women involved.

“You agreed to the terms of my call, which in part said that Fay would find her own place of service in the church and would not be another Shirley,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I expect you to honor that commitment.”

Experienced guerrillas know how to handle this kind of confrontation. My behavior, rather than the rudeness of the women, became the issue. Not only was I to blame for removing the DCE, now I was “opposed to the women’s group.” The faction spread word throughout our community and denomination that I was an “abrasive person with a bad attitude, particularly toward women.”

Like political terrorists, these guerrillas use noncombatants as pawns and justify it on the grounds they are an oppressed people.

In response, conventional strategy dictates that pastors must forbear, and when they act, be beyond reproach. I was not about to forbear attacks against my wife. They were right. I did have a bad attitude. I was angry. They’re not going to take advantage of my wife’s gentle spirit.

But like government troops, my efforts couldn’t prevent the guerrilla strikes.

Fay attended a women’s banquet, and several of the factious women sat at the next table.

“Well, did you hear about the pastor’s latest stunt?” one of them said, loudly enough for Fay to hear. “He had the nerve to come to my home and tell me that I owed his wife an apology for the way I treated her. I told him that I owed no apology. What I said was the truth. The women’s group needs Shirley.”

“That man has serious problems,” another chimed in. “I hear that his former church had problems with him, too-and now we’re stuck with him.”

Again, Fay came home in tears.

“It’s bad enough that I’m no Shirley,” she said. “But when they talk about my husband as though I’m not there, they’re communicating that not only am I a failure as a pastor’s wife but also that I’m a non-person! What did I do to deserve this?”

Her pain broke my heart. I had introduced her to Christ. But in so doing had also introduced her to the hardships of ministry: the pain of being told your husband’s a failure and, as his wife, you’re a failure as well.

Many years passed before Fay could attend church without dissolving in tears. Even today-some twenty years later-church is not an enriching experience for her.

It was only a matter of time before they struck my children. My oldest son, in high school at the time, was dating a girl in the church. I was concerned that she was manipulating their relationship. He was afraid even to go out with the guys before checking in with her.

Not wanting his social development crippled, I relayed my concerns to him, reminding him that he wasn’t married to this girl, that she had no right to constrict his social life.

“I’d like to see you date other girls,” I said.

Soon a story was circulating around the church that my son was planning to run away from home. Another story had me angry and abusive toward the girl and her parents.

Then our youngest son, who attended school where a woman from the church volunteered as a playground supervisor, had a dispute with another child.

This woman dragged the boys to the principal. Someone in the school office told me later that she had said to the principal, “Don’t be hard on the boy. His father is the pastor of my church, and I can tell you he’s a very troubled man.”

My Face in Their Gun Sights

Though the terrorism against my family continued, I was the main target. They accused me of not being a caring pastor. This certainly was understandable given that the former pastor was a gentle spirit, patient with the people, and avoided challenging the power politics. Yes, by comparison, I was a bull in a china shop.

Another criticism was my preaching. I had made a deliberate attempt to avoid harping on topics by preaching through the books of the Bible. Unpopular subjects such as predestination and election, however, couldn’t be avoided when preaching through Romans and Ephesians.

The faction also took issue with slang expressions I used in sermons, such as “hang loose,” “gut feeling,” and “wearing masks.”

But the problem was much larger than these issues. I had dared to challenge the power structure.

In one of their letters to the congregation, they said that I lacked “the confidence of a majority of the responsible leaders, as well as the working, supporting [emphasis theirs] members of the church. (Note-we are not necessarily referring to or implying a majority of the church membership as a whole).”

Translated: The war lords in the church wanted me out, though they admitted the majority of the board of deacons and the congregation supported me!

Cutting Off the Supply Lines

In spite of the tensions, our attendance grew. We went to two Sunday morning services. The church had plans to build a new sanctuary, and now seemed to be the time. We launched a bond program, with the trustees responsible for its execution.

The people of the church quickly raised the money, which was put in escrow. Though the trustees told us we had reached our goal, they never closed escrow. When we began to talk about actually building the church, we discovered three trustees had returned their bonds and withdrawn their money. This precipitated a raid on the escrow by the disaffected members of the church.

We never pursued the legality of the escrow raid. One church member was an officer of the bank holding the escrow, and I didn’t want the church to get a black eye for suggesting legal action. Legitimate government must behave nobly on the field of battle in spite of guerrilla tactics.

We also had a practical reason for not pursuing legal action. The unrest in the church didn’t bode well for a building program. Enemies in the countryside was one thing, but having them within your own administration was another.

I felt the three trustees who had violated their trust needed to be confronted. I met with the deacons and suggested calling a meeting of the congregation to remove the trustees from office.

The meeting was a fiasco. The trustees justified their behavior by saying, “The pastor is demoralizing and ruining the church” and “It is not a good time to build” and “The pastor doesn’t care about the people’s feelings.”

They were partly right. I didn’t care about the feelings of those I considered saboteurs. If they couldn’t cooperate with the board of deacons and the 80 percent who supported the church’s direction, I felt they ought to leave.

Though the faction tried to make me the issue, the congregation voted to remove the three trustees from office. The three responded by leaving the church. I was sorry it had come to this, but I hoped that a public victory would demoralize the guerillas and prevent further attacks. I should have known better.

Winning Battles But Not the War

After the church meeting, the stories, whispers, and undercurrents did diminish. But it was only a lull before the next offensive. Within a few months, they began circulating a petition for my resignation.

One Sunday morning, as I walked into the sanctuary to prepare for the worship service, I saw several individuals welcoming the arriving congregation by handing out flyers, urging them to sign the petition. I went out and said to one of them, “How can you do this to people who are coming here to worship and hear God’s Word?”

“This is our church, not yours,” one of them replied, “and it’s about time you realized it!”

One of the deacons was making friendly small talk with those handing out flyers. I took him aside. “Do you expect me to lead worship and preach with this going on?”

The deacon, who loathed confrontation, replied, “Pastor, you have to understand these people . . .”

I was devastated. The guerrillas were attacking our most sacred event, and one of my officers tells me I need to understand these people! My anger got the best of me.

“You’ll have to lead the service,” I said, “because I’m going home.”

I gathered my family, and we left town for the day.

Fay feared the future. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “We can’t keep going on like this.” My boys, in the back seat of the car, were silent. I’m sure they wondered what the future held for them, too.

That week I asked the deacons to call a congregational meeting to vote on my tenure. Though the constitution called for a two-thirds majority to remove the pastor, I told them I would resign if a simple majority wanted me out.

Previous church meetings had been about specific controversies, not my leadership per se. Perhaps by making my leadership the issue, we could finally settle the conflict. I still thought this was a winnable war.

The opposition beat the bushes and handed out absentee ballots to those who’d left the church but hadn’t transferred their membership. Yet with all their effort, 80 percent voted in my favor.

After the vote, however, the war continued. I still didn’t get it. It didn’t matter what the congregation wanted. The opposition would have their way, even if it meant scorched earth.

While the deacons supported my leadership, many of the trustees did not. With their power over the purse strings, the trustees progressively demoralized the church by thwarting programs the congregation had voted into the budget. They would claim the bids for goods or services from outside vendors were unsatisfactory. As they waited for “satisfactory bids,” enthusiasm for the programs died.

Another dodge was budget priority. Money budgeted for programs they didn’t like wasn’t available because, they said, other priorities (what they wanted to spend money on) came first.

One of the trustees made no secret about how he felt.

“I started this church and paid for it,” he told me. “If you think I’m going to let you tell me what we’re going to spend money on, you are mistaken!”

Is Victory Worth the Price?

The deacons, realizing that nothing had changed since the vote on my tenure, tried to correct the situation by sending a letter to all the officers, committee members, teachers, and workers in the church. It said, in part: “When the church was given the opportunity to vote on the Pastor’s tenure, the Board of Deacons announced ‘that once the vote is taken, we expect all to cooperate with the majority vote and to seek the Lord’s highest plane of outreach for this local assembly.’ “

They attached to the letter a statement for all workers to sign. It was a pledge to support the leadership of the pastor and deacons, to attend church and Communion regularly, and to refrain from public and private criticism of the church, its pastor, and leadership.

But the faction fought back. When the deacons took their request for a pledge of allegiance to the congregation, the meeting quickly got ugly.

The moderator struggled to maintain control. He reminded the dissenters repeatedly, “You will address the moderator and stop your direct verbal attacks on other members.”

Ignoring him, an angry member shouted at a deacon who had just spoken. “You don’t deserve to be a deacon,” he snarled. “You’re just one of the pastor’s pawns. You’ve forgotten your friends who’ve sacrificed to build this church. The pastor didn’t build this church. We did.”

Something happened inside of me. It had been coming for several months. As a result of marriage counseling, I had come to realize something important about myself. Sometimes I would fight for things, not because the cause was noble and just, but because I had to win.

I had often said to my wife, “It’s a good thing that I was never a professional soldier because I would be either very decorated or very dead.”

But now I had begun to change. I silently prayed, “Lord, I don’t want people to be bloodied because I have to win.” In my mind’s eye, I saw God smile, and I knew what I had to do.

I asked the moderator for a recess to meet with the deacons. We went to my office, where I told them, “I don’t want any more fighting, but I don’t want you to feel I’m pulling the rug out from under you by resigning. I’m ready to leave the field of battle if you are.”

We prayed, and to a man, they were ready, too.

After the recess I was given the floor, and I announced my resignation, stunning the congregation. My supporters knew that surrender was the only way out-for me and for them. Church history already had a Thirty Years’ War. Two years was enough for me.

Prisoner of War

A few days later, a group of church members asked if I’d start a new church.

“I don’t want any part of a church split,” I replied. “The reason I resigned was to stop the fighting.”

“Church split?” replied one of the delegation. “That’s a joke. Whether you stay in town or leave, there’s going to be a mass exodus. Many are disgusted and want nothing to do with this church. Others, like us, want to start again with you.”

Given this argument and the practical reality that I needed a job, I stayed.

The new church blossomed, but I soon discovered that as long as I lived anywhere near my detractors, I would never be at peace.

One day a neighbor stopped me in the grocery store and said, “I’m sorry to hear about your son David” (who was away in the army).

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“His arrest for doing drugs and selling them.”

“Where did you hear this?”

“A member of your old church told me.”

I couldn’t believe it. The war was continuing even though I’d surrendered. I didn’t tell Fay because she had been battered enough.

But the stories continued. Another time I saw a friend as I walked in the park.

“It’s good to see you’re doing better,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You were in the hospital under suicide watch, weren’t you?”

Old friends and colleagues would see me in public and be surprised that I seemed to be functioning like a normal human being. Fay ran into old neighbors who expressed concern over something that was supposed to have happened to her-like her husband leaving her for another woman.

Fay often wept, saying, “Will we never get away from this?” After six months, I couldn’t take it any longer. I finally resigned my new church. I told the elders what was happening, and they understood. They gave us a lovely send off.

Our plan was for me to take all of our household goods back to Washington, D.C. in a moving truck, then to work a secular job while I built a counseling practice. When school was out, Fay would come with the kids. In the meantime, she functioned with “survival gear” (bedding, but no beds, a few cooking pots and dishes).

After I left, friends told us that the faction was saying that I had left my wife and children and that I was so mean I didn’t even leave a stick of furniture behind for them.

I remember crying all the way across the country, feeling such a terrible sense of failure. My seminary professors once thought of me as a promising pastor. What would they think of me now?

Signs of a No-Win War

I wish my training had taught me how to avoid no-win wars and recognize when I was in one. What I didn’t learn in seminary, however, I learned in jungle combat. Here are a few factors to consider when deciding whether or not you are in a no-win war:

Is there a history of factionalism? All pastors experience conflict. Some conflict is healthy; it can be a signal that the church is moving ahead. But a church that has a history of driving pastors away is probably a political quagmire, unlikely to turn in your direction once they’ve decided you are the enemy. Tragically, too many pastors, like myself, discover the church’s sordid history only after they’ve accepted the position.

Are your peace initiatives having no effect? In a winnable war, when you make repeated constructive efforts at peacemaking, there is some positive response. When peace overtures are rejected outright, however, you may be in an Afghanistan-like conflict. Peace is unlikely; the only question is whether or not you and your family will get out alive.

Are the leaders willing to pay the price to win the war? Look at the battle-readiness of your leaders (the elders, deacons, or “official board”). Leaders who’ve never been through church conflict may be disillusioned and devastated by it. They may be unwilling or unable to take the heat.

When trouble breaks out, veteran noncoms and lieutenants are priceless. Without them, you can’t survive. By the time my board of deacons became seasoned veterans, the war was out of control.

Your leaders must be willing to make decisions that will result in casualties. They must have the resolve to continue despite losses and discouragement. They must have the ability to prevail. Above all, they must be able to maintain their humble dependence upon the Lord amid a hostile climate.

Is there enough popular support to continue the war? There will always be some who advocate “peace at any price” and refuse to stand up to opposition. But you need a critical mass of congregational support. Without that, you’re in a no-win war.

Is the opposition willing to negotiate, or do they demand unconditional surrender? A determined faction is all but impossible to defeat. Guerrillas can commit atrocities, but the actions of legitimate government must be beyond reproach. If the opposition is willing to sit down and work on the issues, the war can be settled. But if they refuse to settle for anything less than unconditional surrender (or your resignation), the chances of winning are remote.

Are you unable to protect your own family? You may be willing to endure a no-win church war, but what about your family? I thought my wife and children were safe because they were noncombatants. But they weren’t. Not only can family members be wounded in battle, but they can carry scars for life. Having a spouse become bitter toward the church or a child reject the faith because of a church conflict is a price I’m not willing to pay.

Do you know why you’re fighting? Are the objectives clear? Are the reasons becoming more personal? Do you have a need to win? Because militaristic themes enamored me and I had a personality that needed to win, I saw things through the lenses of scriptural phrases, such as “fight the good fight.”

What is more, my first experience with conflict, which resulted in the growth of the church, gave me a false sense of competence. I didn’t know how vicious a church war could be. In my first church, the conflict was different. The opposition did not act like terrorists. They followed the Geneva Convention.

I have come to believe that there are times when we should turn over scorched earth to determined terrorists. Yes, you will feel a sense of defeat. I did. In those dark days, ironically, the reality of God’s sovereignty sustained me. The sermons I preached from Romans came home, and I was able to pray, “God, I don’t know what you’re doing but I believe you do, and that’s good enough for me.”

As I look back on this some twenty years later, I recognize that God did not abandon me. He has blessed me beyond anything I could have imagined. I have a solid marriage and a satisfying counseling practice.

Though this episode of my life was painful, if I could write the finale, it would read as Job’s: “The Lord blessed the latter part of [his] life more than the first.”

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The bar was called The Green Turtle, a sleazy liquor establishment housed downstairs in a weather-scarred apartment building. Here prostitutes picked up clients and then used the upstairs apartments to ply their trade.

The Green Turtle was on a strip of Arlington Street known to locals as “Satan’s Headquarters.” The infamous street was lined with bars, infesting the community with drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and gambling. On Arlington Street was also a church. In the early 1970s, I had become its new pastor, succeeding a long tenure by my father. Shortly thereafter, the city mayor contacted me, asking if the church would consider, as a part of a minority relocation program, moving closer to the suburbs. The city would make the land available to us at a discounted rate and assist us in its development.

His offer was tempting; a fresh start elsewhere would allow us to escape the blight of Arlington Street. We declined, however. The area, we believed, needed a Christian witness.

Working with City Hall

Several years after refusing the mayor’s offer, our church experienced significant growth, requiring us to build. But no vacant lots existed in our seedy pocket of Arlington Street to expand our facilities.

Reflecting on the mayor’s prior willingness to assist our church, I called the person from the mayor’s office who had contacted me several years earlier. The mayor would see me, she told me, and she gave me a fifteen-minute appointment two months later.

When it arrived, I didn’t want to waste my fifteen minutes, so I quickly made my point. “We have a need, and you have a need,” I began. I relayed our church’s history, explaining our current need for expansion. And then I told him about his need.

“You have a major section of the city that cannot attract business development because of the crime,” I said. “Nor can it attract new housing developments. The property values of the area are plummeting.

“If you would assist us in dealing with the social problems in our church’s neighborhood, we would like to make a major investment by expanding our church facilities on Arlington Street. A new facility could raise area property values and increase your tax revenue base.”

The mayor slowly straightened in his chair and riveted his gaze on me. He picked up the phone and asked the city’s chief of police and health director to come up to his office.

When they arrived, the mayor said, “Reverend Fowler, could you repeat your story to these two men?”

In short, the mayor agreed to link arms with us. As a part of a complex agreement, the city agreed to be more aggressive in cleaning up the crime on Arlington Street. (Their previous crime policy on Arlington Street was containment: they treated its crime with benign neglect as long as it didn’t spread.)

They began rigidly enforcing the city’s building codes on the local bars, causing most to shut their doors. Then the city beefed up their police patrol, making numerous drug and prostitution busts, eventually closing down The Green Turtle and other businesses contributing to the area’s crime, rooting out Arlington Street’s unwanted clientele.

The city also made a proposal to HUD to redevelop our street. Before the city could receive federal funding for Arlington Street’s facelift, they needed to show investors were interested in the area. They needed our $850,000 expansion investment. For that to happen, however, we needed a place to expand, so the city purchased a city block adjacent to our church, declaring eminent domain, and then sold it back to us at a reduced rate.

We finally were able to build.

From that experience I learned that the local church can work together with other institutions of our culture for redevelopment. We can look for windows of opportunity to ally with both government agencies and business to stem cultural decay.

An Institution with a Reason

After reflecting on what transpired between Arlington Church of God and the City of Akron, I see at least two reasons why the local church is in a position to aid our nation in its war against crime, the endless cycle of poverty, and the other evils destroying our nation from the inside out.

The church is in the business of changing lives. That’s the heart of the gospel. One Sunday each year, our church holds a camp meeting sixty miles from Akron. (We still hold a church service in Akron on that Sunday, though it’s usually a bare-bones service, for those not able to attend the day at the camp.)

This Sunday was no different. Most of our people had headed out of town for our meeting. I would preach at the early church service in Akron and then make the sixty-mile trek to the camp.

With the choir gone, our minister of music led the remnant of approximately twenty-five parishioners in a few congregational hymns, and then I got up to preach. After my sermon, a person unfamiliar to me walked up to the pulpit to make a profession of Christian faith.

“Bob, I’m going out of town today,” I said after asking for his name and address, “but I’ll be back later this evening. If you’re serious about growing in your faith, I want to see you in my office tomorrow morning at 10:30.”

“I’ll be there, Pastor,” he replied.

I then drove to our camp meeting. Later that morning, sitting on the platform where I would be speaking, I leaned over to my associate and said, “Guess what? While all the saints were rejoicing here at the camp ground earlier this morning, back in Akron, a man made a decision to follow Christ.”

“Great!” replied the associate. “What was his name?”

I told him.

“Pastor,” he gasped, “do you know who he is?”

“No.”

“That man is the biggest drug pusher in Akron,” he said. “He lives just a few doors down from the church.”

Later I learned that this drug pusher had stepped outside his door one morning several weeks prior to his conversion, looked up, saw our church steeple, and was impressed with his need to get his life squared away with God. He didn’t respond immediately, however. A few days later, two of his drug cronies were found dead, a bullet through each of their heads in an execution-style, gangland shooting. He had planned to accompany them that evening, but at the last moment decided against it.

Several weeks later, when he came through our church door, his life began to be transformed. He has since walked away from his lucrative career as an illegal drug salesman, is now holding a legitimate job, and is growing in his faith, attending our church regularly.

His story illustrates the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to change lives. His seeing our church steeple and subsequent coming to faith is a testimony to the lasting change only the local church can provide. When it’s appropriate, then, maximizing our efforts by linking arms with city hall to bring about that lasting transformation, makes good sense.

The church, by working within the system, can help shape the government’s attitudes toward needy people. One of my church members went to apply for welfare, and I decided to tag along. I dressed deliberately in my grubbies-worn jeans and tee-shirt-to see firsthand what she had to endure. I had been working in my yard earlier in the day.

We drove to the welfare office, waited for our turn, and when my parishioner’s number was called, we walked to the window. “What are you here for?” the clerk asked, tersely.

“I want to apply for assistance,” my friend, Betty, said.

The clerk motioned for us to go to the back of the service area where she would be interviewed. The person who assisted us then started grilling Betty mercilessly, shoving forms at her with seeming contempt. Even the clerk’s tone of voice was negative and disrespectful.

“It’s doubtful whether you’ll qualify for the next month,” the clerk said. “This process may take two or more months.”

I bet they don’t treat everyone like this, I thought.

Just then one of the department administrators walked by the cubicle where we were seated. I happened to look up.

“Reverend Fowler,” this administrator oozed, “what are you doing down here?”

“I was working in my yard today,” I replied, “and decided to run a few errands with a friend from my church.”

“Do you know who this is?” the administrator said to the clerk. “This is Reverend Fowler who sits on the school board and is pastor of Arlington Church of God.”

All of a sudden, we were told that my parishioner’s check would be sent immediately. The entire tone of the interview moved 180 degrees.

Their treatment of my parishioner frustrated me. An institution designed to aid my parishioner was dehumanizing her. But that experience also reminded me that we need to work to change both individual lives and governmental structures. My parishioner needed the aid provided by the government. The governmental agency needed renewal too.

Since we serve the same constituency, why not link arms when meeting the physical needs of our shared community?

The church ought to be asking, “Who has the resources to help those needing food, clothing, shelter?” Some desperately needing faith in Christ also need the tools to move towards independence, breaking the cycle of poverty.

Ministry in the Marketplace

After my experience partnering with city hall to build our new facility, opportunities arose for my helping various community groups work with the disenfranchised of Akron. When I could, I did this in addition to my parish ministry.

My work with these various agencies took me into the power structures of the city, to people who would not normally enter a local church. It struck me one day that I was more than just the pastor of Arlington Church of God, that I also had a calling to be a priest in the marketplace. Making this a part of my calling has been one of the most satisfying aspects of my ministry.

Not long ago, one the city’s business leaders said, “Reverend Fowler, you’re the only pastor I know whose congregation is larger outside the church than inside.”

Though she’s not a member of my church, she still considers me her pastor. Through the years I’ve ministered to her family, once when one of them endured a painful, cancerous illness. She and her family are faithful to another church; I don’t pressure them to attend mine. When I know I’ll be speaking at someone’s church at a later date, I often say, “I’m going to be preaching at your church, and I’d sure love to see you there. If you have time, let’s go out for brunch after the service.”

Like salt, the purpose of my ministry is to penetrate the secular areas of my city with the presence of Christ, deliberately carrying Christ’s attitudes and concerns to the lonely, desperate men and women who are making monumental decisions affecting the lives of thousands in our community.

I’ve done that in several ways: sitting on the school board and the board of a local bank, initiating community projects in tandem with local business and governmental agencies. Through these opportunities, I’ve made a special point to develop friendships with no strings attached.

The president of a foundation that had given our church a grant for a community project asked me to come to his office to evaluate the success of the project. While we were sitting in his office, the telephone rang. The foundation president swiveled his chair around to the credenza, picking up the phone.

As he talked, with his back turned to me, his voice lowered, and his responses shortened: “Okay.” “Yeah.” And “All right.” He hung up the phone.

When he turned, tears were streaming down his face. I gently said, “Can I pray with you about something?”

“Reverend Fowler,” he sobbed, “what do you do when your heart has just been broken? That was my daughter. She’s just been served divorce papers. She has two children. We always hoped this would never happen to our family.”

We prayed there in his office. Moments like those come along in marketplace ministry.

Marketplace Addiction

Though my congregation has given me permission to minister outside the church walls, I’ve had to be on my guard. Here is a list of dangers endemic to a priestly ministry in the world of business and government.

An addiction to excitement. Real growth, more often than not, is painstakingly slow. But in the marketplace, getting things done is the way business is conducted.

That can be intoxicating to pastors who battle to get parishioners to attend a monthly board meeting. There is a subtle pull, when working with outside agencies, powerful business-types, the movers and shakers of the community, to lose interest at home, to sabotage our ministry through neglect.

Losing credibility at home. Pastors who invest an inordinate amount of time away from their church risk losing the trust of their people.

If our ministry is stumbling along, needing more attention than we’re willing to give it, our hard-earned credibility will slowly erode. We have no business being elsewhere when things are shaky on the homefront.

Politicizing the pulpit. Just because I sit on the school board doesn’t mean I have the right to use Sunday morning to influence my listeners to vote yes on an upcoming mill levy.

I’ve often felt drawn to pound the pulpit about certain social ills plaguing our city. I’ve seen firsthand the broken lives and think I know what it will take to turn this evil trend around.

But I resist that temptation. My people need to hear God’s Word on Sunday morning.

Going in debt. The first axiom of the marketplace is “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.”

I’ve consciously attempted not to play that game. As a priest in the marketplace, I’m there to carry the presence of Christ, not to work the network and schmooze with the powerful. In addition, I do not want to be indebted to politicians, business leaders, and government officials because these people will come to collect.

When I went to the mayor about redeveloping Arlington Street, I asked him to do it for the good of the community, not because I cared only for my parochial concerns. I never say, “I’ll support you if you’ll support me.”

Losing your vision. With all the social ills boxing me in, I have to be careful not to become so socially minded that I’m of no spiritual good. For me, the hard question is, Am I helping people know God? Am I impacting their core belief system? Am I seeing lives changed?

My highest concern is to prepare people for eternal life. Any allies I make in the business world must not divert my commitment from what is eternal. I must balance my concern for the total person with a passion to see people draw near to God.

Gaining Trust

Not long ago I received a call from a leader of a foundation that supports an educational training program for young people in our community. Our church houses and coordinates the project.

“Reverend Fowler,” he began, “we’re at the end of our fiscal year. We’re convinced you’re serious about helping people. We have $2,500 left to distribute before our cycle ends. We’d rather not put it back in the pot, carrying it over to next year. Do you have any idea what you could do with $2,500?”

I choked back my first reaction to shout, “You bet we do.”

“May I have your FAX number?” I said instead. “We do have a program we’d like to launch. I’ll send you a proposal this week.”

The check arrived three weeks later. His confidence in our ministry has been earned through years of our working with children, the youth, the poor, and single moms.

Many business people view clergy as slick talkers but woefully ignorant of wise business principles. The only way I can link arms with business, government, and community leaders is if they trust me. I’ve found several factors that build credibility.

By staying put. Some have told me that one reason they trust me is my long tenure as pastor of Arlington Church of God-twenty-three years.

By administering shared programs well. The first time I went to see the leader of one of the largest foundations in Akron, I asked him if he would support a program to provide low-income, minority youth with job experience in areas of their vocational interest.

“Reverend Fowler, I want to help you for two reasons,” he said. “First, I’m tired of building buildings. Our foundation has been funding hospital and university buildings for years. I want to help people.

“Second, it’s hard to give away money intelligently. I must be able to trust those whom I’m funding.”

His comment reinforced my obsession to manage carefully other people’s money. The leaders of our church work hard to ensure that good bookkeeping practices and management procedures are in place so that funds are used as appropriated.

In several instances, our church didn’t expend all the financial resources given to us. So we called the foundations, asking if we could hold the funds over for the next year, and they granted us permission. Whatever funds we receive must be used exclusively as budgeted.

It’s attention to these fine details that ensures fiduciary integrity, laying the groundwork for increased responsibility and trust by others.

By continuing to identify needs that can realistically be met. The idea for one project hit me while visiting an elderly woman in one of our area’s nursing homes. A professor of English literature at a well-known Ohio college, she had devoted her entire life to young people. She was one of the founders of what is now a national youth convention to inspire young people to faith and to train them for the real world.

The day I visited her, the stench of the nursing home was so foul I could hardly stay the few minutes I did. It struck me that here was this woman, who had no family structure and little resources, stuck in this institution with no hope. She had invested her life in people, and her final days would be spent alone in a rotting institution.

As I left that day, I asked God to provide the means for people like this woman to live out their days in dignity. Not long after I ran into an old friend at a youth convention.

“What do you have cooking on your burner?” he asked.

“I’d like to develop a home for the elderly around the biblical concept of koinonia,” I replied. “We would create a family atmosphere where they could live life fully until they die.”

This man eventually donated $60,000 to the project. We eventually built a home near Arlington Church of God. Since most of the residents receive only $400 a month in Social Security, we needed more than what the residents could pay to cover our debt service.

Eventually several banks and major corporations also contributed financially to the Wilson House, the city sold us the land at a reduced rate to build the house, and our church provided the volunteers and coordination of the project. The Wilson House is now a separate entity from our church, with its own board of directors.

Today there are sixteen residents in the Wilson House. The other day I went to see one of the elderly women in the home. She was sleeping when I arrived.

“Mother,” I said, “this is Pastor Fowler. How are you doing?”

“I’d recognize that voice anywhere,” she said, turning over. I bent down and kissed her on the forehead. She smiled and said, “Do you know what it’s like to be an old lady and receive a kiss?”

I silently praised God for providing the resources to create an environment where old ladies get kissed and can live out their years with joy. It shows what can happen when the church partners with business and government to meet the needs of “the least of these.”

Ron Fowler is pastor of Arlington Church of God in Akron, Ohio.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Sometimes it feels like this isn’t a congregation but a bus depot.

“How big is your church?”

My standard reply: “It’s a church of 1,000, in successive groups of 100.” In my small, New England flock, every three years the membership turned over.

The normal attrition rate for church members is 10 percent per year. Ours was 35 percent. Each time a church directory company offered their services, I refused. In our case it would be church history by the time it reached us.

We struggled with two sources of instability:

First, due to the large Naval Air Station nearby, one third of our congregation, located in Bath, Maine, was comprised of active and former military personnel. Many of these military families had only two or three years to belong to our church.

Second, during the 1980s a large shipyard in our town boomed economically, which brought skilled workers to our area. We rejoiced when several of these families attended our church. However, when this boom ended in the 1990s, the flow of people reversed, and we watched the economic tides carry many dear friends away.

This entrance and exit of church attendees, while acute in our instance, affects every local church. The average American changes careers four times during his or her lifetime and moves every five years. This can make pastors feel like we’re running a bus depot rather than leading a community of believers.

Dizzied by the revolving door

The migration of our members, we discovered, impacted our congregation in several ways:

Organization. Putting together consistent programming was difficult. Most vulnerable were ministries such as Sunday school that required week-in, week-out commitment.

The problem was not so much a lack of warm bodies to fill positions as a lack of qualified leaders to motivate, train, and direct those willing to serve. No one seemed to be around long enough to accomplish anything. Frequently we ended up with a roster of part-time, substitute teachers larger than the regular staff! Many wanted to help, but few could serve fulltime.

Relationships. Our church averaged one hundred members. Even with that small size, however, the members began to feel disconnected from one another. Each Sunday the faces changed. No one felt like they knew, or could ever hope to know, more than a small percentage of the whole body. I was constantly asked, “Who is that new person?” or “Whatever happened to so-and-so?”

When many of our permanent members lost close friends in the waves of out-migration, their incentive to get to know new people diminished-why expend the energy to get to know someone when, in a short time, they would leave? We suffered the worst of both worlds: the weak programming of a small church and the impersonal atmosphere of a big church.

Grief. Such losses led to grief. After several years of high turnover, the energy and excitement seemed to be draining out of the body.

The source of this spiritual recession became clear to me when a leader in the congregation shared with me how lonely and hurt he and his wife were. They had counted on a local church being a place for close, long-term friendships. They had not bargained on so many friends leaving them, and they were considering changing churches.

At this point I realized my people were grieving deeply over their many lost relationships. An undercurrent of mourning affected everything we tried to do.

Self-esteem. When enough people left our church, those remaining began to ask themselves, What’s wrong with us? I sensed the congregation losing confidence as it witnessed so many moving away only to be replaced by others who would leave eventually, too. It was as if each departing family took a piece of our strength with them. Turnover created the false impression that our body was seriously diseased and that someone (maybe the pastor?) was doing something terribly wrong.

Frustration. I found this transience extremely frustrating. The worst part was seeing spiritually growing members leave just as they were ready for significant leadership. I identified with the Jews in Egypt who were commanded to make bricks without straw. How could God give me a vision to reach my community and then strip me of the tools necessary to do the job? Throwing my best efforts into that situation but still not producing growth was humbling.

Hope for the passing parade

Is there any hope? Yes! Pastors can lead a high-turnover church, but it calls for the following assumptions and strategies:

Adopt a world perspective. I am continually reminded that I do not own my people, I only lease them. Each person that the Lord brings to a church belongs to him exclusively. My job is to be a good steward of the people until the Lord moves them on.

I had to teach the congregation that we were a bakery and not a warehouse. God had called us, in part, to process people for shipment, not to store them for inventory.

Hit it head on. If turnover is troubling the people who remain, talk about it. Whenever a vacuum exists, people rush in with their own interpretations to fill it. Frequently these interpretations are negative and, if they start placing blame, sometimes dangerous.

Several years ago I preached a message from John 15 on the pruned vine bearing much fruit. Losing some people now could prepare the church for a greater work later, I said. This perspective struck a responsive chord among the people, easing some of the grief and low self-esteem.

I also reminded them that our name, “Elim,” was taken from an oasis in the Sinai where the Israelites stopped on their way to Canaan. We too could be a place of rest and healing for people on the move.

To show that we accepted this calling, we began honoring each departing member by holding small celebrations. Refusing to run away from these losses, these celebrations were healthy times of fellowship instead of quiet funerals for lost relationships.

Integrate new people quickly. The good news about high-turnover settings is that new people move in. We wove each new person into the fabric of the church’s life rapidly.

We did this primarily by offering small group fellowships. Since worship services can be the loneliest place on earth for a new attender, our fellowship groups provided a climate for getting to know one another and for personal ministry. These groups also gave our permanent people an island of security in a sea of change.

Connecting newcomers with the groups was the challenge. Our solution was to bypass the traditional method of having the pastor follow up on visitors and let the home fellowships do it. We passed visitor records along to each group leader weekly so that a group member could contact new people by telephone or letter. A call from a lay person was less intimidating than a pastoral contact and provided a more direct invitation to the fellowship’s next meeting.

Exercise leadership through teams. In more stable churches a handful of key individuals who have been around for years administer programs. In the high-turnover scenario, the ministry is always vulnerable to the loss of that key person.

To protect ourselves we began a team model of leadership. When a group worked together to manage a program, it was less likely to fold when an individual or two relocated. Moreover, many qualified parishioners who were unable to play the “key person” role were willing to be on a team.

A fringe benefit of the team approach: we could train newcomers to assume leadership. Since the team’s performance didn’t hinge on any one person, we could take chances on giving newcomers limited amounts of shared responsibility as on-the-job training.

Build ministry on projects. Having a mission and goals is crucial in any church, but when people are coming and going as if you were a travel agency, these goals are often too big for people to own. So we broke them into short-term steps.

We organized some ministries on a project basis. One such project team organized a community outreach for the Fourth of July, when 15,000 people visit our town annually. On the fifth of July the team was no more. The side benefit of this was an easier time of recruiting. Recruiting became easier when people realized they wouldn’t be drafted for a job that would last until Jesus returns.

Be willing to change. The hallmark of effective pastors in migratory churches is flexibility. This may mean “reinventing” your church every twelve months.

In my first years at our church, a Sunday evening service worked well. But as the church family turned over faster and faster, Sunday evening attendance dropped off sharply. Our needs had changed.

With two other services each week, we decided small-group fellowships featuring Bible study and prayer would care better for our families. Sunday evening services were a tradition in our movement, but they weren’t working for us. The groups, on the other hand, proved extremely effective.

We have found that if a ministry does not work well and cannot be fixed-cancel it. If individuals cannot commit to teaching Sunday school every week-recruit teams to share the responsibility. If weekly meetings prove to be a burden-try biweekly sessions. If a number of new folks can sing-start a choir. Our ministry is constantly evolving, calling for a willingness to try the unconventional.

Migratory congregations exist for at least two reasons: migratory people need them, and they serve as “pipelines” feeding equipped believers into their next church, often the one where they will bloom. Over the years we began to see person after person who moved on from our church develop a fruitful ministry in their new location.

Steve and Diane, one of our military families, weathered storms with us and then relocated to a church in Maryland where they developed a highly successful youth program and led a missions trip to Panama. Brandy, a student at a local boarding school, departed upon graduation and entered Bible college. Peggy came to us as a new believer and moved to Missouri six years later to enter seminary for missionary training.

Tim and Charlie, two sailors, were part of our congregation for only a year until their guided missile cruiser sailed from the shipyard in our town to its home port on the West Coast. They wrote to us several months later to say that they had both experienced important spiritual growth while among our people and were now leading a Bible study for crew members of their vessel. Reports like this help us get over the feeling that the product of our labors is slipping through our fingers. Instead, we can think of our church as having an international impact.

After seven years of ministry in a migratory church, I recently moved. I look back on my time in a high-turnover church as a rare privilege. We touched lives that carried the message of God’s love to many places. We prepared the seed to be cast into the wind of the Spirit, who alone determines where it will take root.

– Earl Creps

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

"We have to face reality," I announced to the congregation one bright October Sunday morning. "We are not bringing people to Christ."

Before me, seated on stacking chairs in a grade-school gym, were our fifty adults and a few children, appearing as civilized as landed gentry (toddlers excluded).

"The Great Commission is our mission," I continued. "We have to do whatever it takes to become a church that leads people to Christ."

Our church was nine years old, and I had now been the pastor for two years. We had grown from 35 to 80 on a bang-up Sunday, but I wasn't satisfied: it was transfer growth. We weren't reaching unchurched people.

I took responsibility and resolved to do something about it. I blocked out time in my schedule, prayed intensely about the problem, and birthed an idea-a seven-step strategy for breaking out of our shell.

Confidently and with great expectations, I handed the congregation my baby.

The Coming-Out Party

The first step was prayer, and on this Sunday morning, I was using my sermon to introduce it.

"James 4:2 says, 'You do not have because you do not ask God,' " I said. "We must base our outreach on prayer." For the next thirty minutes, I introduced three key prayer requests based on three Scriptures.

As we drove home after the service, my gentle wife didn't say anything about my sermon on this watershed day in our church's epic history. Finally, hoping that things had gone better than I had sensed, I asked, "How did it go?"

"Well, it went okay. But maybe you should have focused on just one Scripture and one prayer," she said. "I think people got a little confused."

"Three Scriptures, and they're confused?" I said incredulously. I had felt insecure, now I was burned. I had offered a clearly biblical message, presented it with passion, and the only response was a tepid critique of my sermon structure. I looked at my wife as if she were Attila the Hun holding my firstborn.

In the next few weeks, I discovered my wife's reaction was one of the most positive. My intensely felt vision wasn't immediately celebrated by the rest of the congregation. The reawakening of passionate prayer, the resurgence of evangelism wasn't ushered in by my introduction of the seven-part strategy. I was crushed.

When we develop a creative idea, it becomes our baby, the most wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, and promising child ever to grace the earth. However, the time soon arrives for proud parents to bring their brainchild into public, and that can be traumatic.

When we present our idea for approval and support, others may frown at our baby. They have the gall to scorn our baby's looks! If we place our baby in their arms, they hand her back without gushing over her. Some actually seem bent on harming our beloved offspring.

Often that's our own fault. Although the people we lead are thoroughly "civilized," we sometimes present creative ideas in ways that provoke what seem like savage reactions. Upon reflection, I realize more members of my congregation would have welcomed my ideas if I had done five things differently.

Keep It Simple

I love to analyze. I can multiply points like children spawn excuses for not cleaning their bedroom. Give me several weeks to develop a plan, and it can rival a computer chip for microcomplexity. Here was the thumbnail sketch of our evangelism strategy's first step-the prayer plan:

1. We would make three specific requests each day. "Make our church and me fishers of men." "Send us as laborers into the harvest." "Show me the people you want me to share Christ with."

2. We would develop a "Love List" of ten friends, family members, neighbors, and fellow workers and pray for them daily. Those who were willing would turn their list in to me, and we would compile a church Love List we all could pray for.

But I wanted us praying more specifically than "Save Aunt Mildred and Becky Sue." So I developed a list of sixteen scriptural prayer requests (two to the fourth power, no less!) for non-Christians. For example, "Convince _____ of sin and righteousness and judgment" based on John 16:8-11.

In our church meetings, I modeled these prayers, and in newsletters I explained them. After a few weeks, I wanted to involve others, so at the close of a meeting I asked anyone who felt prompted to pray our three strategic, evangelistic prayers.

Silence.

Silence that lasted longer than it takes to reach a human being when a voice-mail system answers your call. (There is no deeper silence on our vast planet than that which engulfs a room of people when no one wants to pray.)

Finally, thoroughly frustrated, I prayed.

On another occasion I popped a spontaneous quiz. "What are the three requests I'm asking everyone to pray daily?" Two out of three was the best the congregation could do.

Further removed from my baby, I can now see my plan was too complex. The people weren't obtuse. The plan simply struck them as so complex they didn't want to start. And this was only step one!

If Jesus had adopted this plan to evangelize the world, Peter and the Sons of Thunder would have gone home with an industrial-strength headache. If people ever get the idea something is complex or beyond them, many won't even try.

Here's the painful but simple truth: The more complex our brainchild, the more concentration required to understand it, the more others will seem to us like barbarians.

Be Realistic about Commitments

Once I had begun developing my new outreach strategy, it became my bonfire-sized passion. God answers prayer; I knew it would work. Many lives would be changed, and our church would turn into a pulsing evangelistic center.

Naturally I implemented the plan into my life, as best I could. Incorporating the three key prayers into my day was a snap. I did so once or twice daily.

But then I also began praying for the twenty-five people on my Love List. I found if I named each person and made my sixteen specific requests for the whole group in a heartfelt manner rather than just mouthing words and names from a list, it could take twenty minutes. When I prayed for people individually, it was a schedule buster. I had many other things to pray about as well.

I soon found it challenging to keep praying for my personal Love List even every other day, and I only prayed for ten or twenty names from the church's accumulated list of several hundred names once a week. If such difficulty in follow-through beset me, the originator of the plan, the one for whom the whole church enterprise was most dear, it's no surprise church attenders did less. A few implied they used the prayer guide sporadically, but most discreetly avoided the subject.

I still think the prayer program was a great idea for some, but an unrealistic theory for most. Getting adults to do anything out of the ordinary is as difficult as outdueling the American Gladiators; if we ask for significant commitment, we find significantly fewer people ready to respond.

Douglas Hyde, in his book Dedication and Leadership, says if you ask for great commitment you get a great response; ask for Mickey Mouse commitment and you don't even get that. I first read that while ministering to idealistic collegians, and I still subscribe to it. But I've also learned that asking for a significant commitment rarely gets a quick response from the majority of set-in-their-ways adults.

Ask someone to babysit your brainchild for a few minutes, and there's a good chance they'll agree. But ask them to adopt her, support her from their own means, and promise to send her to a private college, and you'll have far fewer volunteers.

Remember Your Parental Bias

I presented the prayer strategy to the church in a way I hoped would seize attention, using the church's desktop publishing program to design a professional looking handout. I chose a distinguished looking type font and a large point size for easy reading.

Then, like an artist penciling in the eye-lashes of a portrait, I painstakingly enlarged and put in bold the first letter of each prayer request. When it was ready to print, I stood with anticipation watching my 24-pin Epson craft the words line by line onto paper. I took the original to the office, copied it on goldenrod paper, and immediately slipped one copy into a vinyl sheet protector in my desk-size Day Timer. (Compulsives keep the stockholders of sheet-protector producers rolling in dough.)

The next Sunday, with concealed pride, I nonchalantly handed those precious documents to the ushers to distribute to the congregation, keeping my eye on them lest any be dropped. (I resisted the temptation to put every copy in a sheet protector.)

After my sermon explaining each of the prayer requests, I urged everyone to "take this intercessory guide home, keep it with your Bible, and pray these requests regularly for the people on your Love List. And do a Bible study of each Scripture so you see how it inspires the prayer."

We closed the service in prayer, and I walked to the hallway, ostensibly to greet people, actually to garner rave reviews. After shaking the last hand-no one said much about the sermon-I returned to the gym and found to my dismay a number of the goldenrod prayer guides littering the seats. In shock, I went through the rows picking them up. Some had been scribbled on with crayons, folded into airplanes, or doodled on by adults-desecrated.

To many in the congregation, this was just another handout, church junk mail. To me it was the master key to our church's future, the product of weeks of thought and prayer, something that in my day-dreams I could see helping hundreds-perhaps thousands-of people find a relationship with Christ. (The truth is, I saw it on the same scale as Bill Bright's Four Spiritual Laws!) And there it was, left behind like trash in an alley.

No one adores our high concepts-these reflections of our intelligence, personality, and vision that resemble their parents so closely-as much as we do. We usually believe God inspired the idea. We felt the concept grow in the womb, we labored to give her birth, we nursed and cared for her in the middle of the night. We're emotionally, permanently bonded. To others, our baby-powdered idea is just another one of several million unexceptional children born into the world each year. Cute, yes; adorable, maybe; a prodigy, mmmmmm, we'll see. Even if they're warm to the idea, they won't fall over themselves to support it, yet.

I needed to present my ideas not like a mother proudly presenting her newborn in public but like a pregnant woman who sincerely wants help from a midwife. Church innovations are team efforts.

Give People Freedom to Choose

Conferences and books are hazardous to a pastor's health. A few months before conceiving my prayer strategy, I read a popular secular book on leadership. With the book's emphasis on communicating vision fresh in my mind, I campaigned for my prayer program through every available means.

I reminded the congregation of our "three prayer requests" in every weekly newsletter. At the end of our church services, I closed in prayer with them.

In my sermons and pastoral comments during services, I told stories of how I had seen those prayers fulfilled in my life during the week, seeing opportunities arise to share Christ and feeling equipped to do so.

I "asked" everyone in the church to sign a form saying they would commit to pray daily. "We need everyone to join in this effort," I emphasized repeatedly from the pulpit. "We have to be a team." A dozen people complied (anything to placate me).

I even asked people one-on-one, "What do you think of our prayer plan? Have you started praying regularly?" In short, for about four weeks I was twisting limbs as relentlessly as a cranky KGB interrogator.

I felt the awkwardness of my putting people on the spot, and I softened it with a laid-back smile and demeanor (check the mug shot accompanying this article; is that the face of an intimidator?), but everyone in the church soon knew that there would be no exceptions and no anonymity. No one had the freedom to say no and remain in a comfortable position with me. I hadn't given a challenge; I had set a policy.

I didn't feel guilty about drafting GIs rather than recruiting volunteers. Strong leadership is appropriate for a mission church. We needed a highly committed, special-forces-type platoon to fulfill our reason for being. We might lose a few people, but at least the ones who remained would be fruitful.

That may be true, but I quickly found that the more a leader pressures followers to adopt an innovation, the more resistant and resentful many become. If you twist the arm of someone unmotivated to support an idea, you get an elbow in the chops.

My first inkling of dental trauma was a letter from a woman explaining she planned to leave the church because, for one thing, I was "pulling teeth" to get everyone to support my prayer program.

That startled me. For the first time I realized what I had been doing for the previous month. I don't consider myself a manipulative person. I doubt if anyone from my previous church would have described me as such. In my previous pastorate, when I challenged people to commit to deeper involvement, I offered optional programs, growth tracks for volunteers, and didn't pressure the uninvolved. But my urgency to reach out coupled with my convictions about the need for strong leadership had changed my leadership style.

Within weeks nearly a dozen people in the church had become strong opponents of my leadership. I learned that the more we coerce people to adopt our brainchild, the more they will seem to us like barbarians.

Give Extra Attention to "Educators"

Church opinion leaders with a clearly defined, albeit unwritten, philosophy of ministry are as likely to stonewall avant-garde ideas as Kathy Lee Gifford is to have her mouth wide open in a magazine photo.

"Alan (name changed), how do you feel about our prayer plan?" I asked one of our men. "Are you using it to intercede for others?"

"Not really," he answered. "I try to pray under the leading of the Spirit, and so I don't use lists or written prayers."

"But the prayers are based directly on Scripture," I responded. "Isn't it possible that a prayer based on Scripture could be Spirit-led?"

I continued to argue my case, but our conversation ended with Alan unconvinced. Deeply committed to prayer and evangelism, he had his own well-established ideas about how both should be done. He had read a lot of books, and his mind was sincerely made up on most things related to the Christian life.

Expertise, real or supposed, often causes hardening of the categories. Just as a specialist in early childhood education may test a girl's IQ and conclude she belongs in the "slow" group, only for the world to later discover she's a genius (for example, as children both Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill were deemed slow learners), so "experts" in the church often dismiss a brainchild as stupid.

But church opinion leaders can't be by-passed. As I look back, I think one of my biggest mistakes was presenting my prayer strategy to the whole church rather than first going to the opinion leaders one-on-one, inviting their feedback, giving them time to process the idea, and then presenting it to the congregation. People in the know take kindly to being consulted, require extra attention and respect, and need it early in the process.

The people in my church who said "no thanks" to my pink-ribboned baby weren't the Teutonic hordes. If they seemed like it, that was largely my fault.

Frankly, with perspective I see that few of my brainchildren are wunderkinds and many of my ideas are stupid (though I still think these prayers will replace the four spiritual laws, no offense, Mr. Bright). What's more, most good ideas require considerable feedback to truly find "the mind of the Lord."

And so although it never feels like it, I've decided the "barbarians" in my life just may be godparents in disguise.

44 SUMMER/93

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

God’s Greatness

Thomas Aquinas, a medieval theologian, created one of the greatest intellectual achievements of Western civilization in his Summa Theologica. It’s a massive work: thirty-eight treatises, three thousand articles, ten thousand objections. Thomas tried to gather into one coherent whole all of truth. What an undertaking: anthropology, science, ethics, psychology, political theory, and theology, all under God.

On December 6, 1273, Thomas abruptly stopped his work. While celebrating Mass in the chapel of St. Thomas, he caught a glimpse of eternity, and suddenly he knew that all his efforts to describe God fell so far short that he decided never to write again.

When his secretary, Reginald, tried to encourage him to do more writing, he said, “Reginald, I can do no more. Such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems as so much straw.”

Even the greatest human minds cannot fathom the greatness of God.

– Don McCullough

Solana Beach, California

Planting Life

Jean Giono tells the story of Elzeard Bouffier, a shepherd he met in 1913 in the French Alps.

At that time, because of careless deforestation, the mountains around Provence, France, were barren. Former villages were deserted because their springs and brooks had run dry. The wind blew furiously, unimpeded by foliage.

While mountain climbing, Giono came to a shepherd’s hut, where he was invited to spend the night.

After dinner Giono watched the shepherd meticulously sort through a pile of acorns, discarding those that were cracked or undersized. When the shepherd had counted out 100 perfect acorns, he stopped for the night and went to bed.

Giono learned that the 55-year-old shepherd had been planting trees on the wild hillsides for over three years. He had planted 100,000 trees, 20,000 of which had sprouted. Of those, he expected half to be eaten by rodents or die due to the elements, and the other half to live.

After World War I, Giono returned to the mountainside and discovered incredible rehabilitation: there was a veritable forest, accompanied by a chain reaction in nature. Water flowed in the once-empty brooks. The ecology, sheltered by a leafy roof and bonded to the earth by a mat of spreading roots, became hospitable. Willows, rushes, meadows, gardens, and flowers were birthed.

Giono returned again after World War II. Twenty miles from the lines, the shepherd had continued his work, ignoring the war of 1939 just as he had ignored that of 1914. The reformation of the land continued. Whole regions glowed with health and prosperity.

Giono writes, “On the site of the ruins I had seen in 1913 now stand neat farms. . . . The old streams, fed by the rains and snows that the forest conserves, are flowing again. . . . Little by little, the villages have been rebuilt. People from the plains, where land is costly, have settled here, bringing youth, motion, the spirit of adventure.”

Those who pray are like spiritual reforesters, digging holes in barren land and planting the seeds of life. Through these seeds, dry spiritual wastelands are transformed into harvestable fields, and life-giving water is brought to parched and barren souls.

– Hal Seed

Oceanside, California

Vision

Soon after the completion of Disney World, someone said, “Isn’t it too bad that Walt Disney didn’t live to see this?”

Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios, replied, “He did see it-that’s why it’s here.”

– Haddon W. Robinson

Hamilton, Massachusetts

Truth

In the classroom setting of one Peanuts comic strip, on the first day of the new school year, the students were told to write an essay about returning to class. In her essay Lucy wrote, “Vacations are nice, but it’s good to get back to school. There is nothing more satisfying or challenging than education, and I look forward to a year of expanding knowledge.”

Needless to say, the teacher was pleased with Lucy and complimented her fine essay. In the final frame, Lucy leans over and whispers to Charlie Brown, “After a while, you learn what sells.”

The temptation to say “what sells,” that is, what others want to hear whether it is true or not, is always with us. When we give in to that temptation, what we really sell is the integrity of our soul. When we resist, Christ can say of us as he did of Nathaniel, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47 KJV).

– William M. Nieporte

Kilmarnock, Virginia

Commitment

In Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, Chuck Swindoll writes:

A house church in a city in the Soviet Union received one copy of the Gospel of Luke, the only Scripture most of these Christians had ever seen. They tore it into small sections and distributed these pieces among the body of believers. Their plan was to memorize the portion they had been given; then on the next Lord’s Day, they would meet and redistribute the scriptural sections.

On Sunday these believers arrived inconspicuously in small groups throughout the day so not to arouse the suspicion Of KGB informers. By dusk they were all safely inside, windows closed and doors locked. They began by singing a hymn quietly but with deep emotion. Suddenly, the door was pushed open and in walked two soldiers with loaded automatic weapons at the ready. One shouted, “All right-everybody line up against the wall. If you wish to renounce your commitment to Jesus Christ, leave now!”

Two or three quickly left, then another. After a few more seconds, two more.

“This is your last chance. Either turn against your faith in Christ,” he ordered, “or stay and suffer the consequences.”

Another left. Finally, two more in embarrassed silence with their faces covered slipped out into the night, No one else moved. Parents with small children trembling beside them looked down reassuringly. They fully expected to be gunned down or, at best, to be imprisoned.

After a few moments of complete silence, the other soldier closed the door, looked back at those who stood against the wall and said, “Keep your hands up-but this time in praise to our Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters. We, too, are Christians. We were sent to another house church several weeks ago to arrest a group of believers . . .”

The other soldier interrupted, “But, instead, we were converted! We have learned by experience, however, that unless people are willing to die for their faith, they cannot be fully trusted.”

Our commitment to Christ affects every other relationship we have. The greater our devotion to Christ, the more faithful we are to our church, spouse, family, friends, and people we do business with.

– David Waggoner

Cisne, Illinois

Love

In the prologue to Leadership Jazz, Max DePree writes:

Esther, my wife, and I have a granddaughter named Zoe, the Greek word for life. She was born prematurely and weighed one pound, seven ounces, so small that my wedding ring could slide up her arm to her shoulder. The neonatologist who first examined her told us that she had a 5 to 10 percent chance of living three days. When Esther and I scrubbed up for our first visit and saw Zoe in her isolette in the neonatal intensive care unit, she had two IVs in her navel, one in her foot, a monitor on each side of her chest, and a respirator tube and a feeding tube in her mouth.

To complicate matters, Zoe’s biological father had jumped ship the month before Zoe was born. Realizing this, a wise and caring nurse named Ruth gave me my instructions. “For the next several months, at least, you’re the surrogate father. I want you to come to the hospital every day to visit Zoe, and when you come, I want you to rub her body and her legs and arms with the tip of your finger. While you’re caressing her, you should tell her over and over how much you love her, because she has to be able to connect your voice to your touch.”

God knew that we also needed both his voice and his touch. So he gave us not only the Word but also his Son. And he gave us not only Jesus Christ but also his body, the church. God’s voice and touch say, “I love you.”

– Ed Rotz

Topeka, Kansas

Tongue

The classic movie, A Christmas Story, is a nostalgic look at growing up in Gary, Indiana, through the eyes of a boy named Ralphy. One scene depicts a school recess in the middle of winter. Two boys surrounded by their classmates argue whether a person’s tongue will stick to a metal pole in below-freezing weather.

Eventually one of the boys succumbs to the infamous “triple-dog dare.” Hesitantly he sticks his tongue out and touches it to the school flagpole.

Sure enough, it gets stuck. The recess bell rings. Everyone runs into the school building, everyone except the hapless victim. When the teacher finally looks out the window, she sees the boy writhing in pain, his tongue frozen to the flagpole.

While few of us have been in that predicament, we all know what it’s like to have our tongues get us in trouble. When we suffer the pain that eventually recoils upon everyone who speaks boastful words, lying words, bitter and cruel words, hypocritical or doubting words, we learn the truth of the proverb, “He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity” (Prov. 21:23).

– George M. Castillo

Whitewater, Kansas

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Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Native Trends

The Popcorn Report by Faith Popcorn, Doubleday, $22.50.

Reviewed by Bruce L. Shelley, preaching team pastor, Bear Valley Church, Denver, Colorado

Popcorn is the hottest name in marketing.

The Popcorn Report is the latest product of consultant Faith Popcorn for her Fortune 500 clients and other market-driven companies. Faith is the prophetess who gave us, in the mid-1970s, the term cocooning for the stay-at-home syndrome. She also predicted the bust of New co*ke, the rise of 4-wheel-drives, and the home-delivery rush.

But what is this marketing wizard doing in the pages of LEADERSHIP?

The Popcorn Report may be the best available summary of today’s social tastes and trends. Popcorn calls them “psychographic shifts.”

Some may question the wisdom of church leaders consulting marketing experts. “Isn’t that like consulting a psychic?” Some consider the mere suggestion of marketing ministry as defiling the holy place.

And I am prepared, even eager, to grant that a ministry driven only by market concerns is in trouble up to its wheel covers. But dismissing popular impulses carte blanche is to operate with our eyes closed. We can’t pretend we aren’t affected by our culture.

Even the most anti-marketing churches have a sign in front of their building. Most use church letterhead. Few have shunned the use of the Yellow Pages. How can churches not minister in America’s society of choice without considering the way ideas are dispensed and institutions function in today’s world?

America is a consumer society and, as Popcorn preaches, when we change what we buy and how we buy it, we change who we are. Popcorn’s trends force us, as church leaders, outside our sanctuaries, to what the public “feels” and “wants.” She pushes us to answer the question: “How can I make the gospel ‘good news’ for natives in this culture?”

Ten prevailing preferences

Popcorn identifies ten trends of nineties natives. Church leaders will find these attitudes inhabiting not just the shopping malls but also the pews:

Cocooning in a New Decade. Cocooning describes the impulse to go inside when it gets too tough and scary outside. It is about insulation and avoidance, coziness and control- hyper-nesting. Cocooning today, however, is no longer about a place, the home with its VCR and CD player, but about a state of mind-self-preservation.

Fantasy Adventure. This is a vicarious escape-catharsis through consumption. “It’s a momentary, wild-and-crazy retreat from the world into an exotic flavor, a ‘foreign’ experience.” The safe and familiar is marketed with an exotic twist.

Shopping malls, theme parks, hotels-all are marketing their wares with themes of faraway places. “A chain of hotels in the Midwest offers adventure one night at a time in ‘FantaSuites’-your choice of tropical paradise, jungle adventure-hut, Bedouin tent.”

Small Indulgences. These are material “rewards” we give ourselves-the once-a-month chocolate bar or the once-in-a-lifetime gold necklace. The new element in this self-indulgence is a note of militancy. “I want it. I will have it. And I deserve it.” Crucial to this trend: people choose quality.

Egonomics. For decades we have been hearing about “me-ism.” Egonomics, though, is a nicer narcissism. It is the idea that everybody wants special attention, a little recognition of the no-one’s-quite-like-me self. It’s about individuating and customizing.

Not long ago, the mark of excellence in the modem age was uniformity. Now, egonomics means we prefer individually crafted products.

Customizing is seen not only in consumer goods but in today’s increasingly specialized interest groups. Popcorn writes: “If the wave of special interest groups forming now is any indication of just how subdividable we are, the answer is ‘very.’ We’re bonding together against isolation; in groups that bring us together for reasons from personal to political.”

Cashing Out. This is the recent trend among Americans who leave their jobs to go somewhere else to work at something they want to do, trading in the rewards of traditional success in favor of slower pace and quality of life.

They are asking what is real, what is honest, what is quality, what is really important. And apparently what they want is life to be more folksy and straightforward, plain and explainable.

Vicarious “Cashing Out,” according to Popcorn, is found in the yearning to incorporate small-town values into our lives. Many people are moving to rural areas and commuting to the cities. Others listen to country music or square dance in community centers. And people are going back to church-more than one-third of the baby-boom dropouts have returned.

Down-Aging. This is a redefining down of age-appropriate behavior- older people acting younger. It’s seen when 42 percent of the runners who finished the 1989 New York Marathon were over 40. Fifty-six runners were over 70.

What we are doing, says Popcorn, is chasing after the promise and hope of childhood. “Opportunity is to be found in almost anything that makes you feel better, makes you laugh, makes you have fun, makes you feel like a kid.”

Staying Alive. Disease dread is our culture’s collective phobia. This trend identifies the current American “hyper-quest for health.”

“The driving force behind Staying Alive,” writes Popcorn, “is a collective, somewhat reluctant, realization that we’ve all, in the end, got to take care of ourselves. Nobody else is going to do it.”

We see the “very meaning of life as improving the quality of life itself,” beginning with our own bodies. “We may not yet be ready to admit out loud that our goal is truly to live forever.”

The Vigilante Consumer. The consumer is fighting back.

Consumers are taking up the banner of protest against “marketing immorality.” The Vigilante Consumer is angry, nourishing the wish that companies should somehow be more human.

Popcorn observes that “we’ve had new all our lives. Now new is old. And what makes a Vigilante Consumer buy one product over another in this decade is a feeling of partnership with the seller. We want to buy from a person.”

99 Lives. Yes, we can have it all. “I can live every life I choose.” An attitude fresh from the eighties, 99 Lives wants a customized salvation-what Popcorn calls Streamlining.

“We don’t want more anything any more. What we want now is less. More and more less.” We are pleading to the big clock in the sky: “Give me fewer choices, far fewer choices. Make my life easier. Help me make the most of my most valued commodity-the very minutes of my life.”

S.O.S. (Save Our Society). Surviving has become our primary business. The S.O.S. trend is any effort to make the ’90s the socially responsible decade. Our predicament is too big for one savior to handle, so S.O.S. is our hope for “moral transformation through marketing.”

In assessing S.O.S., Popcorn predicts “a new ethic of self-sacrifice on the part of Americans.” The American marketplace will be transformed by products “that not only work best, but those that offer some ‘just’ benefits.” S.O.S., she says, is “a do-good, be-good trend.”

Bringing Popcorn to church

These trends virtually scream at today’s minister: “Think about me! Didn’t you see me in last Sunday’s congregation?”

I’m now asking myself several questions: How do I shape my sermons to make God’s Word “good sense” to these people? What sort of speakers and sermons do people avoid? Can I hear these attitudes in my small group or the special interest groups in our church?

Popcorn stresses that successful programs may be driven by one trend but supported by at least four. So don’t be quick to change a tradition to follow a single trend. Be a student of the human behavior reflected in several of them and then try something new-or better-try something old in a new and better way.

These Popcorn words are worth remembering: “It’s no longer enough to make and market a good product. You’ve got to have a corporate soul.”

Popcorn touches upon traditional Christian concerns for human nature, integrity, quality, spiritual hunger, personal choice, tradition, and values. And much of it applies to ministry in America today-if we have ears to hear.

Preaching to God’s Quirky People

Peculiar Speech by William H. Willimon, Eerdmans, $10.95

Reviewed by Steven D. Mathewson, pastor, Dry Creek Bible Church, Belgrade, Montana

It’s Saturday night.

You’re polishing your sermon manuscript on Romans 3:21-31. Scanning your work, you pause at words like justified, redemption, and propitiation. No matter how you phrase them, these theological concepts won’t preach well to your fast-food and blue-jean congregation.

How do you relate the gospel to people more at home with the language of USA Today than the Bible?

Communicators warn us about speaking the language of the academy to people whose world is the marketplace. We know we must demonstrate Scripture’s relevance to modern culture.

But can we venture too far?

Yes, suggests a concerned William H. Willimon, professor of Christian ministry at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina.

Instead of trying to make the gospel relevant to the culture, Willimon says, “Our homiletical effort is better spent helping contemporary culture (as it gathers in your church and mine on Sunday) to be relevant to the gospel.”

Peculiar Speech pinpoints a distinctive of Christian (in his terms “baptismal”) preaching: we talk funny.

But Willimon challenges the notion that church talk is “in-house” speech, whereas worldly talk is “public.” He claims all language is “in-house speech.” He claims Christians have as much right to choose the terms they use to describe the spiritual condition as doctors do in diagnosing the medical condition. We needn’t apologize for teaching specialized words and concepts if we’re doing surgery on the soul.

“When a preacher disposes of baptismal speech in favor of psychological speech (Robert Schuller’s ‘Be Happy Attitudes’ or ‘Self-Esteem’), or secular politicized speech (mainline Protestantism’s ‘Peace with Justice’),” he says, “the preacher .. . has merely moved, in speech, from one community to another.”

And so Willimon laments, “Unfortunately, most of the theology I learned in seminary was in the translation mode. Take this biblical image and translate it into something more palatable to people who use Cuisinarts. The modern church has been willing to use everyone’s language but its own.”

Four main chapters, interspersed with three sermon manuscripts, articulate Willimon’s concern.

In the first chapter, “Preaching as Baptismal Speech,” he contends that preaching to the baptized is to enter into a world of odd communication. Willimon’s point: let the text set the agenda, rather than the preacher distorting the text with a self-imposed agenda.

In chapter 2, Willimon delves into the theological implication of baptism. He encourages preachers to “articulate our symptoms [like ecological destruction, domestic violence, and poverty] theologically, through baptismal speech.”

Translation: preachers must attack social evils by communicating what Scripture says about sin, justice, and righteousness.

All this raises a question: what do we do with the language and thought forms of modern culture? Willimon’s answer is found in chapter 3. He points to Luke’s story of Paul on the Areopagus.

“In Acts 17:16-34,” Willimon writes, “Luke has become fully at home within the linguistic world of paganism, facing its questions and using its speech. Luke refuses, however, to fit the good news of Jesus into paganism’s preconceived categories.”

How can a preacher do this in practice?

First, he must speak “in the language of the receptor culture, accepting at least in a provisional way the way of understanding the world that is embodied in that language.”

Second, the preacher “will call radically into question that culture’s understanding of reality, which is both expressed and formed by its language, with an unashamed call for repentance.”

Third, “if the receptors do experience faith, repentance, and conversion, it is nothing less than a miracle, a work of God, not the result of the communicator’s competency.”

I noticed Willimon uses contemporary terminology in this book. For instance, in one of the sermons he paraphrases Jesus’ summons to the rich young ruler: “Strip down, raffle your Porsche, liquidate your portfolio, break free and give it all to the poor.”

I asked him why. “We do talk in contemporary modern idiom,” Willimon admitted. “But the test is, did you proclaim the text to be faithful to the gospel? We don’t begin with Murphy Brown; we begin with baptism.”

In chapter 4, “Preaching as Politics,” Willimon views his concern from yet another angle. He argues for meaningful engagement in politics by being the church. This constitutes “God’s means of confronting the principalities and powers with a new people who are organized around utterly different modes of communion than those offered by the world.”

The implication for a sermon using “shop talk” is this: we impact the “general human condition” by being the people of God. Let’s not abandon the language of our community as its message holds the key to bringing meaningful change.

So then, your sermon on Romans 3:21-31 may end up describing the world’s need with contemporary words. But in presenting the gospel’s solution, we may need to teach them some new words-or actually, the old words of Scripture.

“The homiletical, evangelicaI question for early Christian communicators was not, Should we use Greek? or Should we utilize Hellenistic concepts and to what degree? The question was, How shall we be a sign, signal, and witness to the world that Jesus Christ is Lord?”

-William H. Willimon

Church Around the Clock

The Seven-Day-a-Week Church by Lyle E. Schaller, Abingdon Press, $10.95

Reviewed by John Throop, vicar, St. Francis Episcopal Church, Chillicothe, Illinois

A far-reaching change has swept through American Protestantism in the last half of the twentieth century.

“The Sunday morning church,” Lyle Schaller observes, “has been succeeded by the seven-day-a-week parish.”

The author of many books on effective church leadership, Schaller is not prescribing how the church ought to be. He describes the way things are, predicting church trends in the foreseeable future.

One trend is the seven-day-a-week, need-driven church. These churches begin ministry with the questions: Where are you hurting? What are you lacking?

Schaller likens the seven-day-week church to a community college.

“One parallel, of course, is the widespread use of the word community in the name,” he writes. “Far more important however, is the fact that the program and the schedule are designed for the needs and convenience of the participants rather than the preferences of those in charge.”

Complacency Alert

Danger on the Comfort Zone by Judith M. Bardwick, AMACOM, $19.95

Reviewed by Gary Fenton, pastor, Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

Innovation, someone has said, is just common sense recycled. That would also describe this book on American business.

Judith Bardwick, consultant to blue-chip companies and clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California in San Diego, suggests three psychological states that govern American companies: entitlement, fear, and earning.

The entitlement mentality gets the blame for America’s ailing productivity. America, she believes, was at the top of the economic pile too long. Security without accountability, which can be traced as far back as World War II, is the villain. The entitled worker says, “Who I am, not what I do, is the basis for promotions and raises.”

Fear, the second psychological state, is the result of the economic pendulum’s swing in lean times: layoffs, hostile takeovers, massive corporate restructuring.

“When anxiety is high, cynicism rises and morale sinks,” says Bardwick. “Companies will not get gung ho performances from people who are scared, cynical, resentful, apathetic, and mistrustful.”

Both worker mentalities, of course, cripple productivity.

It’s the earning attitude, then, that characterizes the workers of competitive companies.

“People with a psychology of earning know they’re winners, but they also know they’re always being judged.”

Companies can purge the entitlement mentality, Bardwick says, by making workers learn new jobs and redefining what real work is in the company.

Having management demonstrate compassion to the rank and file and publicizing your company’s achievements are just two of Bardwick’s suggestions to reduce fear in volatile times.

Bardwick’s contribution to ministry, for me, is her diagnosis of our people’s attitudes.

Could it be that some denominational executives, pastors, and post-war, parachurch leaders are guilty of the entitlement malaise? That may explain why newer and leaner religious organizations are doing well.

The chapter on the personal side of entitlement intrigued me most.

She colorfully describes a 40-year-old, well-educated professional who accomplishes nothing: “He putters his way through life. He always looks busy, but he never grapples with what’s real. There are no deadlines. He continually postpones decisions. His goals are big, but vague, and there are no timetables.”

Bardwick’s comment to me-“no one wants to be around when entitlement is over”-is true even for leaders who aren’t used to earning their keep.

Bardwick is no theologian, but she puts a co*cklebur under the saddle of all leaders-business or church-who believe the world owes them homage.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.