Page 3851 – Christianity Today (2024)

My biggest fear about being a pastor’s wife was that I would have to bake cookies for every church function. When my husband Brad and I candidated for our first ministry position, we met one night with the search committee. I wanted to weep when we were presented with a plate of fresh-baked cookies—straight from the oven of the pastor’s wife. So it was true! I was relegated to the life of boring Betty Crocker.

My reaction wasn’t about the cookies; I actually love to bake. It was about the assumptions regarding what my role would be. Leaving seminary, the expectations of being a pastor’s wife loomed large and intimidating as storm clouds.

“Betty” fit the image I had conjured up in my head—a woman in a beige dress, ever-smiling, with a lackluster personality as she scurried to and fro to meet the insatiable demands of a congregation. I feared being pressed into a mold that didn’t fit. I wanted life and liveliness in the Lord. How could I have that if these rigid requirements were forced upon me?

My self-protection turned into rebellion. In fact, at each interview for pastoral positions, I asked, “What is expected of me as Brad’s wife?” A legitimate question, but I meant it as a trap. If the answer was anything other than “nothing” or, “same as any other church member,” I was incensed. After all, it was Brad who was employed by the church, not me, right?

I don’t know where my husband’s patience came from. He was young and fresh out of seminary, but my prickly resistance didn’t seem to intimidate him. He didn’t insist on talking me out of my fears or forcing me to conform. I think he knew that I had to become reconciled to where the Lord had placed me, to find my own way. And I have.

Incredibly, I now enjoy my role. I can’t believe I am thankful to be a pastor’s wife, but I am. The softening of my heart was enabled, in large part, by the way my husband loved me. As I think back on our first few years of ministry, Brad did several things that helped me.

Not staking his image on me

As a married couple, the actions of a husband and wife do reflect upon each other. I guess that’s why I have to sit on my hands sometimes to refrain from picking lint off Brad’s shirt. The way he looks reflects upon me, and I don’t want to look bad.

I’m sure Brad doesn’t want me to make him look bad either, but I’ve often done just that. Soon after he accepted his first call (not at the cookie-baking church), I also accepted a full-time job. We didn’t have children yet and weren’t sure we were ready for them. I wanted to try the professional world for a while.

My position required me to represent the organization at health fairs, sometimes on weekends. One of the first was scheduled for the same Sunday as Pastor Appreciation Day. I felt torn, knowing that my first priority was to be at church with my husband, but I was stuck in a commitment I had made to my new job.

It wasn’t until Pastor Appreciation the following year that I realized what a big deal it had been.

This loving church sets apart the day to honor their pastors. A long table is spread with a potluck dinner. Enormous baskets are marked for each pastor’s family and filled with gifts. I cringed when they pinned a corsage on my shoulder, honoring me, too. The previous year, the corsage had gone unworn.

As Brad and I stood up front with the other pastors’ families, looking out at the proud and smiling faces of our congregation, I was so ashamed. Brad had done this by himself the year before.

What went through his mind, standing up there alone? I would have felt unloved and abandoned. I would’ve been mortified to have my spouse’s lack of support so publicly displayed.

There’s a reason I didn’t realize the significance of Pastor Appreciation until the following year. Brad didn’t emphasize what an event it was!

Whatever my husband felt that day, he didn’t pour the guilt on me. He didn’t give me a speech about my priorities. If he was concerned about my making him look bad, I never knew it. He continued to give me time to figure out my place even when it was costly to him. He was aware that my actions reflected on him, but he didn’t stake his image on me.

It sounds like a small thing, but Brad didn’t object when I painted the interior of our first house in traffic-light colors. The kitchen was “yield” yellow, and the red in the living room would stop you in your tracks. Brad gave me free reign to decorate our house, fully realizing that church members would be visiting us there.

Knowing how I recoiled against beige and boring, Brad didn’t insist that anything be subdued. The result would have made the author of my new paint techniques book proud. The den was the clincher as I tried a “dragging” technique with cobalt blue, resulting in what one friend called an “underwater effect.”

It was just paint. But it went a long way in giving me permission to be myself. Out of a home that was “me,” I was comfortable to show hospitality creatively. I didn’t have to do dinners a certain way for people we invited into our home. Fondue was okay and, because of that, I didn’t focus on the rules to follow but on the people we were getting to know.

I will add, however, that Brad selected the perfect shade of beige for his church office.

Time well spent

Another preconception I had was that the pastor’s wife was to accept without complaint all demands on her husband’s time, even if it meant she only saw him one night a week and an hour on Saturdays. I wondered what would happen to our marriage. We had struggled through being newly married while in seminary, and I knew that a good relationship required time.

I can tell when Brad is just trying to pacify me, and I didn’t want to be another item to check off his to-do list. Brad gave to our marriage, too, not just to make me content but because he wanted to.

Friday nights were almost always date nights—not having people from the church over, not spending time with other couples, but just us. On his day off during the week, Brad really was off. Instead of taking care even of personal business, we would plan something fun to do or have a lazy morning at home.

As a result, I didn’t resent his time spent with other people. I wasn’t put in the position of vying for a slot in his schedule; therefore, I was glad for him to give to others when they needed him. When something unusual came up that cut into “our” time, that was okay. He saw time together as important. Since I didn’t have to convince him of that, I could take my claws out (as he so tenderly calls it) and let him go.

Permission to relax, sir

Another way Brad helped calm my fears was by simply relaxing with our friends. First of all, he thought it was important that we have friends who really knew us. He knew that, being human, we couldn’t live without connecting with others on a deeper level. Brad led our weekly small group in such a way that he didn’t hold himself apart from the other members. He let them know him.

Although sometimes I was embarrassed by it, I am now proud to say that my husband was also notorious for lying on people’s living room floors. When we were invited to someone’s house for dinner, we would usually end up in the living room afterward, talking over coffee. Tired and full, Brad would grab pillows from the couch, throw them on the floor, and sprawl out. Hostesses took it as a compliment that he was comfortable in their homes (or at least I think they did!).

This way of letting down his guard made Brad approachable. And it gave me permission to relax, too. If Brad were always in “teaching mode,” holding himself at a distance, life would have been a lot more isolated for me as his wife.

Since he saw himself as preacher but also friend and fellow struggler, I had “permission” to struggle, too. I could simply live life with people rather than worrying about constantly maintaining my role.

When I’m his pastor

Brad jokes that I’m his pastor. But in a sense he’s also serious. It’s draining to be a pastor. At the end of a day, he’s often depleted. All day long, people have sought him out for help. So what happens when he comes through the door at night? Well, it’s not always pretty (but I’m focusing on my sin this time).

For the most part, Brad will let his guard down with me. He lets me share in his weariness, his burdens. He may be expected to have answers for everyone else, but he doesn’t have to have them with me. He lets me in on his weaknesses, which, ironically, takes incredible strength.

At times, Brad has been at the end of himself with no more ideas about how to solve a problem. In those moments, he lets me pray for him and minister to him. He is open to insights that I have. It might not sound like a big deal, but it is meaningful to me when he trusts me enough to make himself vulnerable.

As Brad’s wife, I want to be needed by him. It feels good for my opinions and my input to be valued. If he were altogether self-sufficient, keeping his doubts, fears and suffering hidden, much of my capacity for helping and loving him would go untapped.

At times the expectations of people are still overwhelming. But the Lord has slowly taught me what he wants of me and how he wants me to serve. Brad helped smooth that process by trusting my heart for God and looking to the Lord to change me rather than exercising his own control or coercion.

So, who wants a batch of cookies? I’ll whip them up for you right here in my yield-yellow kitchen.

Britt Staton is married to a pastor in Martinez, Georgia.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Jim Collins’s recent book Good to Great has inspired both business and church leaders. It is a study of 28 good companies that became great as measured by their outperforming the stock market by at least seven times over a 15-year period. Countless companies are now applying the “hedgehog concept” and other principles from the book, trying to become similarly great.

Likewise, many churches are seeking to become great churches. Entire ministry industries exist to help that process—from fund raising, to church building programs, to worship resources, to programming. And in nearly every community, there’s at least one great church, as measured by numbers and facilities.

But large churches discover a troubling secret. Size alone isn’t good enough. Great or small, churches need something more than bigger numbers.

Bob Buford, author of Half-Time, notes that at midlife, many people discover they’ve built their lives around “success” only to find it empty. So they reinvent themselves to build the second half of life around “significance.” Similarly, Christian Washington, former investment banker and current director of Leadership Network’s MC2 (Missional Church) Network notes that many “successful” churches are now in “half-time” mode and want to move “from success to significance.” What’s that look like?

The Bible says, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and … he went around doing good … because God was with him” (Acts 10:38). Wouldn’t you expect more superlatives to describe his greatness? Yet Jesus’ ministry is summed up, “he went around doing good.” Maybe from God’s perspective, the greatest thing we can do has more to do with goodness than greatness. Some churches follow that pattern—trading “greatness” in numbers for doing the “good” that Jesus modeled.

These are the “Great to Good” churches.

And this isn’t just about big churches. Two-thirds of America’s churches are either plateaued or declining. Not all churches are destined to become “great.” But regardless of size, they can go about “doing good.”

Good churches are those that do good things. The good that Jesus did can point the way.

Ministries of mercy

What did Jesus do? He did “good” through his ministry of mercy. Mercy is “God’s attitude toward those in distress.” Mercy is giving a person a fish so he can eat today. It’s not attacking problems at the systemic level. It’s just making someone’s life better, if only for today.

It’s why Jesus so willingly fed the five thousand (the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels). He didn’t give them a lecture on planning ahead, or how to plant wheat for a future harvest. No, he said, “I have compassion on these people … I do not want to send them away hungry” (Matt. 15:32).

He did not solve the world’s hunger problem, but he did make these people’s lives better for that afternoon. And that was good. Sometimes we are paralyzed by inaction. With the overwhelming problems that people have, we often think, What good will this little act of kindness do? But Jesus said, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

At Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, California, Andy Bales is well aware of the poor and homeless people in his community. Although there are nearly 1,900 homeless people in Pasadena, the shelter capacity sleeps under one hundred. The problems with “the system” are huge, but that doesn’t prevent Andy and the caring people at Lake from showing Christ’s mercy to those without homes.

Last January Bales held a Super Bowl party at Lake for the homeless in Pasadena. It was a day of feasting and football with 250 homeless people coming to a place of love, care, and celebration. The party did not cure their homelessness that day, but for those January hours it was a respite. This Super Bowl party has since turned into a weekly supper followed by a bourgeoning Bible study.

If Bales’s dreams come true, one day soon Lake will have transitional housing apartments over their parking garage, but for now, he is “doing good” by making people’s lives better for the day.

Martem Tenens (later to be named Saint Martin) was born in what is now Hungary and was drafted into Constantine’s army at age 15. As a tribune at the age of 18, on a bitterly cold day in Gaul, Martem came across a beggar, naked and shivering. Martem, a follower of Christ, slashed his heavy military cloak in two with his sword and gave half of it to the beggar. That night, sleeping under his half cloak, Jesus appeared to him in a dream wearing the other half and commended Martem for his mercy. “When you did it to the least of these brothers of mine you did it to me.”

If we really believed that our actions toward the “least of these” were actions toward or against Jesus, would these little acts of mercy have greater meaning for us?

Every time a church gives someone water in the name of Jesus, it is a good thing, which makes visible the kingdom of God.

Ministries of empowerment

Among those Jesus encountered were the blind, the lame, the deaf, the lepers and the demon possessed. Apart from the physical infirmities, these people faced at least two other problems.

First, they were most often unable to work and so lived in dependence on others to care for them. They were unempowered.

Second, they were excluded from the social and spiritual life of the community. They were disenfranchised. They were outcasts looking in.

Jesus comes across one such individual in John 5:1-15, a man who had been lame for 38 years. Jesus asks him, “Do you want to get well?” This question was neither cruel nor rhetorical. It was a real question because Jesus knew that if the man were to be healed, everything would have to change—he’d have to go from dependency to sufficiency. He couldn’t sit and beg the next day; he’d have to get up, get out, and earn his livelihood. Every time Jesus healed someone of a debilitating illness, he was empowering him or her not just for a day but for a lifetime.

It is well known that proficiency in reading is essential to be in the mainstream of our educational and employment system. As director of urban ministries at Hope Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Eli Morris seeks to involve every member in meaningful ministry both inside and outside the church.

Three years ago 25 volunteers from Hope paired up with 25 inner-city first through fifth graders from South Memphis. Children were tested before the program began. In the first 12 weeks of reading with these children for just an hour a week, reading scores were raised by 1.2 grades!

Today Hope has over 100 of its adults helping children to read. Every time you teach a child to read you empower that young person for a lifetime.

In 1987 Luis Cortes, working with other clergy in North Philadelphia, began Nueva Esperanza (New Hope) “to improve the quality of life in our community through the development of Hispanic owned and operated educational, economic, and spiritual institutions.”

The economic disparities in Philadelphia are challenging. The average net wealth of a Latino family is a mere $4,000 compared to an Anglo family’s wealth of $44,000. With 60 percent of wealth held in home equity, helping people own their own homes was a natural place for Nueva Esperanza to start. This innovative ministry has now built or refurbished more than 100 homes to sell to Latinos at cost and provided mortgage counseling to over 2,500 people. They have served more than 650 people in their Welfare to Work initiative. People in North Philadelphia are better off because of Luis and Nueva Esperanza.

Helping kids that struggle with reading, coaching the unemployed with interview training, providing job skills—these are ways some churches are making the leap from great to good by empowering others.

Ministries of evangelism

Jesus also went about doing good through announcing the good news. Ultimately his agenda involved bringing people into the kingdom of God through faith. While mercy brightens one’s day, and empowerment prepares a person for a lifetime, when a person comes to faith, that life is changed for eternity. Nicodemus, Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, and many others came into the kingdom because of this aspect of “doing good.”

The most effective apologetic for the 21st century will be a combination of good news and good works. Often Good works is the bridge over which the good news runs.

Ministries of replication

The forth way Jesus went about doing good was through his ministry of replication—helping transform others from followers into leaders. If Jesus wanted to change individuals he would have stuck with teaching, feeding, and healing. But because he wanted to change the world, he invested in leaders, primarily 12 disciples he trained to duplicate his good works and to preach the good news.

Before sending them out, Jesus gave them the essential components of replicable ministry—authority and instruction.

In East Los Angeles is a church called Mosaic, which is full of ministers and not just consumers. For the past four years, they have averaged one adult each month being sent out as a career overseas worker—mostly into the 10/40 window of China, Indonesia, India, the Middle East, and North Africa.

To become a part of Mosaic’s community is quite easy. One simply needs to declare that they “want to be a part of this community of faith.” But pastor Erwin McManus challenges everyone in their community to become part of Mosaic’s self-supported “staff.” To be on the staff requires four commitments:

To live a holy life (understanding that no one does it perfectly, but to come clean when you fail).

To be an active participant in ministry.

To be a generous giver reflected in tithing.

To live an evangelistic lifestyle.

Over 400 of the 1,300 attending adults have been anointed and commissioned to be part of the church staff. McManus has multiplied his effectiveness nearly a thousand-fold by teaching and empowering these people to invest their passions, their service, their resources, and their relationships for the kingdom.

Jesus said the key to greatness really is goodness through service to others. “But whoever wants to become great among you shall be your servant” (Matt. 20:26). Not every church can go from good to great in the traditional sense, but perhaps it is in going around doing good that we become great—no matter what our size.

Eric Swanson is associate director of Leadership Network’s MC2 (Missional Church) Network. www.leadnet.org

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

From my journal: “As I try to clean up my office from the piles of papers which have accumulated in all the speaking I’ve been doing, I find myself wondering if there are more than a few times when I just might miss the point of all that I am speaking about. How do we get so busy that we risk slipping away from the core of faith which is bound up in the simple fact that we are called to love, to obey and to serve the living God that Jesus reveals to us?”

I clipped this from a book review: Reflecting on Deborah Cramer’s book Great Waters, a book on environmentalism, Michael Parfit says, “She’s selling despair, not motivation. This willingness to incorporate shaky information as long as it supports her thesis mars the book. Worse, Cramer’s focus on the hobnails in the human footprint gives no real weight to the efforts—and successes—of millions of people who have changed their way of life to make less impact or who have worked hard to protect watersheds and coral reefs, individual species of seabirds and fish, or natural beauty. She’s selling despair, not motivation.”

The value of this comment. It sheds light on a temptation that many preachers and organizational leaders face every week when they want to raise money or hold crowds: to underscore only the darknesses of people and events in the world so that one can promote his or her answers and systems of thought. The subtle message: things are really, really bad, and I alone have the solution. Sometimes this means shading the truth, shouting loud, massaging surveys, using quotes which may or may not be entirely truthful. But it does gain the loyalty of unthinking people.

This happened all too often in the days of the Y2K “crisis.” Remember Y2K and the folks who had us frightened half out of our minds? How quickly they became silent; how fast the “crisis” got buried after January 2, 2000. But Y2K did raise a lot of cash for some. I guess I’d hoped that some who sold all that despair would give the money back. But I guess I was just dreaming.

Book from a friend: Anne Lamott’s rather irreverent Traveling Mercies. Perhaps there are a few in our evangelical neighborhood that would be put off by Lamott’s use of profanity, even her frankness about her own living situation at various times in her life. But I can’t help being drawn into her story of life-journey. She is the woman religious people love to despise; but the kind that Jesus so dearly loves. Her one chapter about the onset of her conversion is worth the price of the book. Get it in paperback.

There’s got to be a sermon illustration in here somewhere: My brother writes of a television interview with a balloonist who was grounded by the weather at a national ballooning festival. When asked if he was disappointed, he said, “I would rather be on the ground wishing I was in the air, than be in the air wishing I was on the ground.

These thoughts provokes me: Ellie Wiesel speaks of a prophet who came to a city and delivered his message every day in the market place. Soon everyone ignored his all-to-familiar message, and if they noticed him, it was only to laugh. A small boy, pitying the prophet, asked, “Sir, why do you keep crying aloud like this every day, year after year. The people here will never listen to you.”

“I gave up hope,” was the reply, ” that they would listen to me a long time ago. I go on crying lest I begin listening to them.”

My wife, Gail slips this into my backpack as I head for Europe: May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may wish for justice, freedom, and peace. May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. (A Franciscan blessing)

You know you’ve neglected the Sabbath discipline when: Houston Smith tells of a legend on the lips of people at MIT. Edward Land and his partner were at the decisive point in their discovery of the process that led to the Polaroid camera. They’d been working around the clock day after day, sleeping only when necessary, and that on laboratory tables. At one point Land’s partner said he was exhausted and would have to take a break.

“Good,” Land said, “we can get our Christmas shopping out of the way.”

“Ed,” his partner said, “Ed! It’s January 3rd.”

A note to those who wrote about my questions regarding war. Hey! They were only questions (smile).

— Gordon MacDonald, editor-at-large

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Since 1990, Minneapolis and St. Paul have seen a massive influx of refugees. The Twin Cities metro area boasts the largest Hmong, Somali, and Oromo (Ethiopian) populations in the United States and the second largest Tibetan and Liberian concentrations.

The University of Minnesota is home to the largest Chinese student population in the country, and the cities were the eighth-fastest growing Hispanic area in the country during the 1990s. All this adds up to nearly half a million internationals, speaking more than 136 different languages.

And the church is responding, with 309 churches planted in the past three years, a pace of one new church every three days. And more churches are taking seriously the need to demonstrate the love of Christ in their communities.

There’s “Church at Champps,” a ministry of Wooddale Church that meets at a popular sports bar and grill. Its unconventional setting is drawing an unconventional crowd.

In addition, more than a dozen postmodern churches are meeting across the region. Ethnic churches are popping up, and Hispanic, African-American, and Anglo churches are reaching out across ethnic barriers.

With nearly 2,600 churches in the Twin Cities metro area, we can offer just a glimpse of what’s happening as congregations are ministering to their changing community.

The urban-suburban link

When Roland J. Wells, Jr., arrived in 1988 as pastor of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, in the shadow of downtown Minneapolis, he found himself in a quandary.

Wells and his wife opted to purchase a home in Roseville, a first-ring suburb adjacent to both Minneapolis and St. Paul, which put him 15 minutes from his church. It also put him at odds with the prevailing urban-ministry philosophy: live in the city, minister in the city, and build a congregation that reflects the culture of the immediate locale.

But Wells’s decision was just the beginning of the story.

St. Paul’s, a 130-year-old congregation of suburbanites, was committed to making a difference in its urban neighborhood. Members remained at a distinctly inner-city church, Wells says, because they viewed their membership as a matter of mission.

“Our people wanted to do significant things in the city,” Wells remembers, “but didn’t know how to go about it.”

Enter CitySpirit Ministries and the School of Urban Ministry (SUM). St. Paul’s launched the two initiatives in 1991. CitySpirit builds what Wells calls bridges to suburban congregations. SUM is a training tool for both church members and suburban partners.

Without Wells’s leadership, the move could have been perceived as simply an inner-city church’s clever fundraising attempt. But Wells built CitySpirit on three understandings: (1) the congregation’s budget, with all its expenses, would remain the congregation’s responsibility, (2) outside money could fund only new initiatives, and initiatives were to be discontinued if funding was not available, and (3) any partnerships developed would be mutually beneficial and would require St. Paul’s to give back to suburban congregations as much as it received.

The key component of SUM, Wells says, is to equip suburban churches and their members for ministry. That, of course, is easier said than done. Suburban churches undergo changes in leadership regularly—new pastors, new committees, new leaders often mean changes in vision.

“The danger is that some suburban churches have the attention span of a 4-year-old ADHD child,” Wells says. “The pastors are under pressure to produce, to show results. They need to be able to say, ‘We have a church that relates to the youth of the city. We have a socially conscious church.’ But the key to the city isn’t splash; it’s long-term. It’s not 18 months or a couple of trips with junior high kids to serve at a soup kitchen. If a suburban church is going to make a difference in the city, it’s with a minimum of a five-year plan.”

The foundation of successful urban-suburban church relationships, suggests Wells, is accountability.

“There’s lots of time, lots of phone calls, lots of coffee,” he says. “And it’s hard.”

To make his point, Wells tells about the Asian teen who was a part of the church’s ministry in the 1990s, an immigrant from Laos with an abusive stepfather. “A brilliant kid,” Wells says, “the smartest I’ve ever worked with, and one of the greatest natural leaders I’ve ever seen. But he kept one foot in church and one in gangs.”

It was the gangs, of course, that spelled trouble. Wells runs through the sad details. A fake pizza delivery. Other gang members with sawed-off shotguns. Someone is killed. Bad public defender. Stillwater Prison. 16 years. “That was our key kid,” Wells says.

It’s a snapshot of ministry in the city and, Wells believes, one of the reasons suburban church members have a difficult time ministering there.

“There’s tons of disappointment, tons of difficult times. You get kicked in the gut over and over again, but that’s the calling,” Wells says. “People need to understand that city ministries are full of chaos because the city is full of chaos.”

Still, there are many victories—small and large.

Some 125 people, most from St. Paul’s suburban church partners, have attended SUM, and nearly everyone who has had training is putting it to use. Some work with Metro Hope Ministries, a long-term faith-based treatment program. Others help ethnic churches in the neighborhood. One grad put together a cross-cultural ministry for African-American single mothers in a nearby apartment complex. Other grads have worked with women trying to escape prostitution.

Wells is careful to point out that the goal of SUM is not to generate new members for St. Paul’s.

“People get grabbed by the Spirit when they come here,” he says. “A tiny handful have plugged into our church, but we encourage them to return to their home congregations and help them develop other people’s understanding, to raise their consciousness of what’s available here in the city.

“It’s a mission field that’s 15 minutes from their pillow.”

Reach, reconcile, reclaim

Just 15 blocks south of St. Paul’s and a short drive down the ethnic corridor that is Lake Street, Pastor Mark Horst and his 1,200-member congregation are operating in what he calls “kingdom-building, Satan-busting territory.”

In any of the church’s three Sunday services, you’ll see a reflection of the neighborhood the church calls home.

“It’s a racially diverse church,” Horst explains, “with probably 40 percent of our people being people of color.” While some of the congregation comes from the suburbs, Horst estimates that at least 50 percent of those who call Park Avenue United Methodist Church home live within one mile of the church.

The commitment to the neighborhood starts with Horst and his staff.

“There’s no requirement that our staff live near the church, but we are a church that’s anchored in the neighborhood. And a number of our staff members have made choices congruent with that,” he says.

“We want to line up our lives—where we live, where our kids go to school—with the ministry of Park Avenue and the people we’re serving here.”

Park Avenue’s ministry is rooted in the three Rs: reaching out, reconciling, and reclaiming. This commitment began in the late 1960s, when white flight began in earnest and city neighborhoods began declining.

This summer, Park is preparing for Soul Lib 30, the thirtieth anniversary of its Soul Liberation Festival. The annual event takes the gospel to the streets and brings summer camp to the heart of the city.

“It’s very effective in reaching neighbors with the gospel and communicating the vision of the church as an urban ministry,” Horst says. “It’s kind of cultural and speaks the language of the neighborhood.”

The four-day celebration is part gospel songfest, part kids festival, part evangelistic rally, and all fun.

The church’s emphasis on evangelism and reaching out are married to its desire to reclaim people from the snares that keep them from experiencing life in Christ. The church’s Cornerstone Ministry provides food and clothing to needy neighborhood residents and provides financial help to those about to be evicted or foreclosed on. For those without medical insurance, there’s a once-a-week health clinic staffed by volunteer doctors and nurses who dispense pharmaceuticals that are paid for by the church. There’s also a free legal clinic run by attorneys from Park Avenue. The attorneys help with a variety of legal matters, but most of their time these days is spent assisting the neighborhood’s Hispanic and Somali populations with immigration issues.

The Park Avenue Foundation, dedicated to eliminating barriers to academic success, plays a prominent role in the church’s efforts to help neighborhood children. In addition to after-school educational programs, the church and the foundation work together to minister to children during the summer.

“We had 600 kids in our summer ministry last year,” Horst says. “We have camps that allow kids to get on a bus and go away for the week. There are Bible clubs that last all day. On hot days, the kids just go swimming. It’s all geared toward the kids’ learning. It’s about them encountering Christ, about fellowship, and about fun.”

As a multi-ethnic congregation, Park also takes seriously its responsibility to address reconciliation issues.

“Reconciliation means, first of all, that we’re brought into relationship with God through the blood of Christ,” Horst says. “And then we become a community. We say that our church is a sneak preview of heaven. As we worship together, we’re a dim reflection of what it will be like when every nation and every tribe and every tongue gathers around the throne of the Lamb and sings hallelujah.”

A racially diverse staff is also an important element.

“That’s been very intentional,” Horst says. “Our staff of 20 or so is about half people of color.” Horst says the move toward racial diversity isn’t about political correctness but about the power of culture.

“We had a pastor from a church in Bogotá preach at Soul Lib a few summers ago,” Horst recalls. “He comes to the altar call, and we’ve got this diverse crowd of people standing on the blacktop on this muggy July night. Practically every person who came forward to receive Christ was Latino.

“Culture runs deep with us, and we’re not a church that tries to minimize culture to build unity. We’re trying to honor the cultures and the differences and be honest about the divisions we experience as people with different backgrounds, different skin colors, and different traditions.

“Then God really gets the glory when we can find unity and reconciliation in that mix.”

Global ministry right here

Sierra Leone. Uganda. Haiti. India. Zimbabwe. Panama. Liberia. Mexico. Nigeria. Central African Republic. Rwanda. Guinea. Great Britain. Malaysia. Ghana. Philippines. Vietnam. Laos. Japan. Marshall Islands.

It’s an answer that would stump even the best Jeopardy! contestant. The question: What countries are represented in the congregation at St. Paul’s Bethel Christian Fellowship?

Yes, that’s 20 countries in a congregation with a weekly attendance of 350. And that doesn’t include the members of Haitian Christian Fellowship of the Twin Cities, which Bethel helps oversee, or the Spanish-speaking congregation that meets in the church’s facility on Sunday afternoons.

For Pastor Jim Olson, who came to Bethel in 1990, it’s simply the fulfillment of the church’s calling to be a house of prayer for all nations.

Explains Olson: “We’ve said we will embrace our location in the center of this metropolitan community. It gives us the opportunity to cross ethnic, racial, economic, and ecclesiastical boundaries and to be a mosaic of people who experience unity amid diversity.”

Bethel’s adoption of a multi-cultural mentality required more than good intentions. It demanded that the congregation be intentional. And that’s how MOSAIC, an acronym at the church that means Ministry Outreach Supporting an Inter-Cultural Community in Christ, was born.

“We began to adopt refugee families,” recalls associate pastor Harrison Williams, himself a former refugee from Liberia. “A care group would adopt a refugee family, help get them settled and adjusted to this culture. That process helped open people’s eyes to what God was calling us to.”

Within two years of starting the ministry in 1994, the church’s non-Caucasian population jumped from 6 to 24 percent. Today, that number is in the 30 percent range. Despite the success, Olson admits the adopt-a-family approach wasn’t in the church’s grand plans.

“There’s a principle here,” he says. “It’s not so much what we’re doing or what we’ve strategized as it is allowing God to guide us and open doors and being willing to step through those doors.

“When we first began, most of us were envisioning a Caucasian congregation that would welcome and embrace African-Americans. That was our first thought. When the doors opened with World Relief to sponsor refugee families, that’s when we began to discover what God was really up to.”

While the advances on the diversity front have been encouraging, it’s the congregation’s growing sense of community that excites Olson and Williams most.

To illustrate, Williams tells the story of a couple who recently grieved their stillborn child.

“Members of the congregation came around this couple, who had become completely vulnerable,” Williams says. “You are exposed. Everything about you is known. Here is a couple—people who had been raised in an individualistic society—allowing others to come into their house at any time. They were just open.”

In a multicultural church, the significance of that kind of interaction can’t be underestimated.

“Here we’ve learned to redefine what we take for granted,” Williams says. “What is a friend is a very different (concept) for someone from outside of the U.S. There will be misunderstandings and preconceived ideas.”

In actuality, Williams says, there are three cultures in play at Bethel: American culture, Third World culture, and heavenly culture.

“Both U.S. and non-U.S. people have to understand what God defines as a friend or what God defines as love.”

On the surface, things change quickly for Bethel’s Third World congregation members: the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the way they greet people and the language.

What doesn’t change, Williams says, are their feelings and values: their concepts about truth, their motivations, their beliefs about gender and authority roles

A variety of other intentional programs are in play at Bethel, including life groups to connect people cross-culturally in smaller settings and a hospitality ministry designed to “transform strangers into friends and visitors into ministers,” but Olson says Bethel’s success or failure ultimately rests with God.

“If we did this in our own strength, the wheels would come off very fast,” he says. “We don’t come at it as if we have the answers. We try to be honest with our questions and to really be a place where we can learn together and grow. God’s doing something pretty extraordinary here, but we’re in kindergarten in terms of learning and discovery.”

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Other Community Impact Articles

Wizard of OddsInterview with Bishop Vaughn McLaughlinLeadership Journal, Spring 2003

My neighbor bicycled past me as I walked the two blocks to the church office. I wasn’t too surprised when he ignored my greeting. He had never been too cheerful.

Across the street from the high school, he got off his bicycle and began to pick up several pop cans that littered the sidewalk.

How nice, I thought as he put them in the basket hanging from his handlebars. Then he walked the bicycle across the street, put down the kickstand, and threw each of those cans onto the front lawn of the high school with obvious disgust.

Is that how he also feels about our church? I wondered. Had we been a bad neighbor in any way?

Later that month I met with the elders of another church that was searching for a senior pastor. I asked, “If I went to three houses in your neighborhood, knocked on the door, and asked what they think of your church, what do you imagine they would say?”

Puzzled looks crossed their faces. One responded, “What do you mean, ‘What do they think?'” Their attitude was one of indifference, as if it didn’t matter what anyone outside the walls thought about the church. But it’s a question worth considering. It isn’t safe to assume you know what your community reputation truly is. Cultivating a reputation that glorifies God takes work. Becoming a church of good repute requires these six keys.

What do our neighbors see?

A decade before I came on staff, our church grew concerned about drug deals and car thefts occurring in the parking lot. After much discussion, a seven-foot iron fence was constructed across the front of the church property. The gates were padlocked except during service times.

This did indeed stop the parking lot from being used for unholy purposes. It also loudly communicated that we wanted little to do with our community. We had to work twice as hard to show we welcomed people.

Most of what we do in church is behind closed doors. Never venturing inside, many neighbors have no occasion to observe the church gathered. To overcome this, our church held an annual carnival every fall. The event served as an advertisem*nt and kickoff for our weekday children’s programs, offering games, rides, refreshment stands, and fun for all ages.

The iron gates (which had been padlocked open for years) now serve as a backdrop for the booths. People from the community flocked to the event in increasing numbers. Each year something new was added.

Many neighbors discovered who we were for the first time.

Are we communicating?

Prior to expansion and major renovation of our church, the building committee invited our surrounding neighbors for an evening of coffee and discussion of our plans. Quite a few came. After the presentation, we asked for feedback. Their leader (they had organized) spoke up.

“We are glad to see a church grow,” he said kindly. “But some things have to change if you don’t want opposition from us.” I swallowed hard.

We considered ourselves good neighbors, and our church had been there longer than any of these homeowners.

“The problem is the noise,” he continued. “The loud music, singing, drums, and noisy conversations in the parking lot until two in the morning have to stop.”

As we explored the issue further, we found that our Spanish congregation was exceeding the village’s 10 P.M. curfew.

“I don’t know what God they worship,” said another neighbor, “but he’s deaf.”

Had we not actively communicated with our neighbors, we would not have learned about this until the opposition was militant. We were able to adjust the Spanish congregation’s activities, and everyone was satisfied.

Do we join their events?

Churches are sometimes seen as standoff-ish. Putting a float in the town parade is not a waste of time. Our congregation has also taken part in our village’s annual “Christmas Walk.”

This is an evening in December when stores stay open late, serving treats and spreading holiday cheer.

Since ours is the only church located right in the village, it became the center for a musical extravaganza put on by all the churches. People could wander in, enjoy some great Christmas music, have some refreshments, and wander back out again. Such participation gives a face for our church to the village, and a better relationship.

Another opportunity arose for me when, as the new pastor in town, I was invited to be the chaplain for the village fire department. None of the other clergy felt able to do so.

I accepted the task. This did not go unnoticed by the village leaders. They have expressed a great deal more appreciation than I have delivered in actual ministry. This simple act communicated that we care for more than our own interests.

Have we shown kindness?

Years ago I realized that our community only heard from the church when we wanted something from them—inviting them to some program we were offering. These were all good and worthwhile ministries, but I wanted to make sure that our neighbors heard from us in different contexts.

With this in mind, we had some of our people go door to door offering to fix, clean, paint, or haul stuff away. Recently, our junior high students stood out in the cold, handing cups of hot chocolate to commuters on their way to the train. Why? To serve the community. Yes, some people were suspicious enough not to drink what they’d been handed. But it was a gesture of kindness from our church.

We try to find ways to let our neighbors know we care about their salvation and are ready to help them in other ways.

Are we caring for our property?

From the condition of their buildings and grounds, churches can exude a “we don’t care” attitude. Certainly there are more pressing aspects of ministry, but a battered sign, overgrown hedge, peeling paint, or burned out lights send the wrong message to the neighbors.

One way of dealing with this issue is a church work party, which can also be beneficial to congregational life. I’ve found work days to be times when the neighbors will stop by with compliments, complaints, and suggestions. It’s another means of visibility and communication.

Yes, I know the church isn’t a building. Yet our theology can be a rationalization for ignoring our most visible presence. Too easily we grow accustomed to shabby, outdated, uninviting surroundings. While we view our church through the lens of theology, memories, and imagination, our neighbors haven’t been fitted with those lenses, so they see every dandelion, defect, and design flaw.

Can we turn the other cheek?

It is rare to live next to someone and not have instances of tension. One church neighbor built a decorative concrete barrier between his property and ours. That spring he claimed our snowplow had broken sections of the barrier while plowing the parking lot.

Another neighbor had a similar complaint over damage to his wooden fence. Rather than haggling with either of them, we felt it more important to settle the issue to their satisfaction, and so we had both walls rebuilt or repaired. The good will this created was well worth the price.

“A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold,” says Proverbs 22:1. Shakespeare paraphrased Solomon with these words, “The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.”

To have a positive impact in the community, a church must mind its reputation.

John Beukema is pastor of Village Church in Western Springs, Illinois.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Ken FongEvergreenBaptist ChurchRosemead, California

Check the vision DNA.

After making sure that someone has demonstrated Christ-like character and some necessary expertise, I look for a third element. Many wonderful members of our churches have these requirements but embrace a different ecclesiastical paradigm. They may have served tirelessly, faithfully, even sacrificially, but we experienced mutual frustration and organizational entropy.

As we call out new board members, teachers, and group facilitators, we seek to determine if the candidates not only love Jesus passionately but also enthusiastically love where Jesus is taking this church these days.

Our current vice-moderator had never been a board member before. She was reluctant to accept this call. But as we reminded her that she was already committed to the vision, mission, and values of our church, it became obvious to her that it was time to step out and become a leader-servant with us.

This doesn’t mean we always agree, but her Vision DNA is such a good match that we all sense we’re on the same page.

We seek church leaders who share the heartbeat of this church.

Erwin McManusMosaicLos Angeles, California

Character first.

We don’t look for competencies. Genghis Kahn was a great leader, but I don’t want him leading the church. I don’t want to make everybody a better leader, but instead better followers of Christ. In future leaders, I look for three character traits—humility, faithfulness, and gratitude.

I look for those who are willing to do whatever is asked, nothing is beneath them; for those who are willing to do the small things and to see them through; people who will do without and yet be grateful for what they have in life. I look for people who are proactive and passionate. Those are good indicators that I have an emerging leader.

The best recommendations come from within the community, those who’ve worked with the person. At a distance, everybody looks good. Maybe someone is simply good at writing resumes. I wait for a person’s reputation to surface. When the community starts talking, I investigate. One of our leaders started as a janitor. Our student ministries pastor first volunteered as a parking security guard.

Our character-based system requires that people start from the bottom and work up.

Cheryl SandersThird StreetChurch of GodWashington, D.C.

The Maytag Test.

For me, the most important characteristic indicating potential for leadership is dependability.

I experienced great frustration in ministry when capable, intelligent, critical thinkers prove themselves unsuitable for leadership because they cannot be depended upon to “show up” or “follow through.”

In our congregation, people sometimes get selected for leadership positions not because they possess the most impressive gifts, talents, and training, but just because of their level of commitment.

I don’t know which is worse—dependable persons who lack the aptitude for leadership, or gifted persons whose issues and preoccupations preclude effective service.

The only way I know to teach dependability is to practice it, but it is painfully obvious to me that not everyone is impressed by my example.

In my view, the ideal leader brings gifts and insight to the task having counted the cost in terms of personal time and resources.

Discipleship implies that God can depend on us to show up, follow through, and care.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Churches are doing more for their communities than you (or they) realize. In fact, the monetary value of a church’s contribution to the community is far more than the financial benefits churches receive from their tax-exempt status.

That’s the surprising conclusion of a significant new study headed by Ram Cnaan, professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania, and published in his book The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare (New York University Press, 2002).

“Our findings strongly support the Supreme Court’s view of congregations as ‘a beneficial and stabilizing influence in community life,'” writes Cnaan, an Israeli-born secular Jew who is director of the Program for the Study of Organized Religion and Social Work.

The study provides one of the first assessments of the dollar value of the social services churches provide. The net value of a congregation’s social and community services averages $15,307 per month or approximately $184,000 per year. This number includes the value of space, utilities, staff, and volunteer hours (calculated at approximately $11 per hour).

“Although congregations can be viewed as being publicly subsidized because of their tax-exempt status, the value of their services to their communities exceeds the value of the tax exemption,” writes Cnaan. “There is also the value of services that cannot be measured in dollars, such as informal help, pastoral counseling, value instruction, residents’ representation, and community pride.

“As a key part of the national social safety net and the first to aid in time of local, national, and international emergencies, congregations allot a significant percentage of their budgets to helping others and are the major source for volunteer recruitment in urban America. In fact, one could say that our society is subsidized by congregations to a far greater extent than these same congregations are subsidized by the tax-exempt status granted by our society.”

The book is based on information from approximately 300 congregations, 251 located in the United States and 46 in Ontario, Canada. The congregations were chosen from lists of churches in seven metropolitan areas: New York City, Chicago, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Mobile, Houston, and San Francisco. Both historic churches and newer churches were included. A study was also conducted in Council Grove, Kansas, to provide information about churches in a small town.

The most significant finding is that nearly all the congregations in the study provided some form of social and community service, most commonly for children, the elderly, the poor, and the homeless. Besides formal programs, such as housing projects or neighborhood cleanup activities, churches provided a range of informal activities, such as pastoral counseling, care of the sick or bereaved, referring people to more specialized agencies, and providing space for community groups to meet.

Princeton sociology professor Robert Wuthnow, reviewing Cnaan’s work in Books and Culture (Jan/Feb 2003), writes: “Cnaan suggests that were it not for congregations, approximately a third of children now in daycare centers would have no place to go, most scouting troops and twelve-step groups would have no place to meet, and large numbers of homeless shelters and soup kitchens would disappear.

“The case study of Council Grove, Kansas, is especially interesting because we know much less about churches in rural areas than we do about urban and suburban churches. Council Grove, once an important point of departure on the Santa Fe Trail, is the seat of Morris County, one of the many counties in Kansas that has lost population (from 11,859 in 1930 to 6,104 in 2000) as a result of agricultural decline in the region. Consulting the county’s website, I learned that there were 373 men and 451 women in 1999 whose incomes put them below the official poverty level, that there were 429 people on food stamp assistance, and that there were 823 Medicaid enrollees.

“I also learned that there were nine churches in Council Grove. Cnaan’s research team collected information from all of them. All but one were Protestant, and all of these, except one, were affiliated with mainline denominations. Each of the churches developed a ministry that filled a special need in the community. The Christian Church committed itself to youth services, the Berean Baptist Church had a popular Kids Club for younger children, the Congregational Church specialized in helping single mothers with children, and so on. Collectively, the churches operated a thrift shop, a ministry to residents of a local nursing home, and a hospitality coalition. Altogether, the research team found that the churches sponsored 27 different programs which on average benefited 32 congregational members and 182 nonmembers.”

Cnaan’s book is an encouragement for churches, many of whom face resistance to their building or expansion plans from municipalities that don’t acknowledge their value to the community.

“It is important to remember that, except for neighborhood schools, no other social institution penetrates America’s neighborhoods as thoroughly as do congregations,” writes Cnaan. “Other non-profit organizations have only a minimal presence, since they are generally concentrated in selected urban locations. Because local congregations maintain a presence in the community, they are able to develop ties with the local residents even if those residents do not attend the congregations. The congregation is the one nonproprietary organization found in every neighborhood and within walking distance of virtually every household.

“As N. T. Ammerman noted in 1997, ‘The two institutions most likely to remain connected to the immediate neighborhoods they serve are elementary schools and congregations. But even that has changed. In many places, busing has strained the tie between school and community.’ This leaves the congregations as the final link between communities and their residents.”

Marshall Shelley is editor of Leadership.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Confidence in organized religion dropped 30 points in the year after the September 11 attacks, the lowest in the 62 years the Gallup organization has measured the public pulse. Gallup blames the plunge on the Catholic sex abuse scandal and the declining attitude of Catholics toward their church. Protestants fared better.

The Gallup survey, taken in December 2002, shows 59% of U.S. adult Protestants have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the church itself, while only 42% of Catholics shared this view.

Ministers’ ethics: Public opinion of clergy dropped likewise. In 2001, 64% gave ministers high marks for ethical standards; in 2002, the number dropped to 52%.

Clergy rank seventh in favorable opinion of their ethics, behind nurses (79%), pharmacists (67%), military officers (65%), teachers (64%), medical doctors (63%), and police (59%).

Ministers led bankers, journalists, lawyers, and congressmen. Car salesmen and telemarketers, by the way, were at the bottom of the list.

Billy Graham was sixth on the list of most admired men, behind three presidents, one pope, and one busy secretary of state.

Moral decline predicted: 67% said our society is only getting worse. Is religion relevant? The response has varied little since 1974: 59% say religion “can answer” today’s problems. Only 24% percent say religion is “largely old-fashioned and out-of-date.”

Where the heart is: Religion trailed family, health, work, friends, and money on the what-really-matters list. While 96% said family is “extremely important” or “important,” only 65% said the same about their religion.

Would you describe yourself as ‘born-again’ or ‘evangelical’?” Yes: 46%. No: 48%. No opinion: 6%.

Reading habits: Americans are more inclined to read John Grisham than John Ortberg, but by a slim margin. Religious books ranked third in 13 categories of preferred reading material, as 24% of respondents said they were “very likely” to read books on spirituality or theology. Biographies topped the chart (30%), thrillers were second (25%).

—Eric Reed, with information from Gallup.com

Trendex

» Bad words. These religious terms are on a new list banned by a major textbook publisher:

• Adam and Eve (replace with “Eve and Adam” to demonstrate males do not take priority over females)
• Blind leading the blind (banned, handicapism)
• Cult (ethnocentric when referring to a religious group)
• Devil (no reason given)
• Extremist (replace with “believer,” “follower,” or “adherent”)
• Fanatic (replace with “believer,” “follower,” or “adherent”)
• Founding Fathers (sexist, use “Founders” or “Framers”)
• God (no reason given)
• Hell (use “heck” or “darn”)
• Lame (use “walks with a cane”)
• Middle East (Eurocentric, replace with “Southwest Asia”)
• Pagan (use “nonbeliever”)
• Satan (no reason given)

—from The Language Police (Knopf), excerpted in Atlantic Monthly, March 2003

» As an 18-year-old sees it:

• A Southerner has always been president.
• Barbie has always had a job.
• GM has always made Saturns.
• Cars have always had CD players and airbags.
• Madonna is an aging singer.
• Fox was always a TV network.
• Dan Rather has always anchored the news.
• Never wanted to “be a Pepper too.”

—from The Mindset List published annually by Beloit College to help profs understand freshmen. www.beloit.edu

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Has your community changed in the last 10 years? In recent weeks I’ve asked that question to dozens of pastors, and not one has said, “No.” Everyone, whether in urban, suburban, small town, or rural settings, has noticed significant shifts in the communities surrounding their churches.

The most conspicuous change has been the increasing diversity of the population. Racial, religious, and economic differences are increasingly evident. This, of course, can be unsettling to some, but it presents tremendous opportunities for ministry. Every congregation is aware of human needs in its own back yard.

Just this week I heard from my friend Dr. Gerald Durley, pastor of Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, who described the “regentrifying” of that city:

“In the 1980s and early ’90s, many urban congregations were predominantly black, and suburban congregations were predominantly white, but as urban sprawl (and traffic snarls, longer commutes, higher gasoline prices, etc.) began to take its toll on the suburbanites, they began to move back into the cities.

“First, young, single whites came back remodeling old warehouses. Politicians once again recognized the viability of urban centers. Sports facilities began to attract more people back downtown who remained after dark. City planners began redesigning sections of the city. Lofts and condos were built. Real estate speculators bought entire black neighborhoods, at below market value, and rebuilt them for those returning from the suburbs.

“For the last 15 years, regentrification has quietly and now resoundingly transpired. Most cities are no longer merely black and white, but are rapidly seeing Latino and Asian populations emerge. As more and more Christians find themselves in racially integrated neighborhoods, the church is challenged to take the initiative to create ‘the beloved community,'” concludes Pastor Durley.

What opportunity! And regentrified cities are only one setting where changes are creating openings for churches to touch their communities with the gospel and with tangible expressions of God’s love.

But where do you start? Durley identifies three starting points for churches that want to transform their changing communities:

1. Provide Spirit-filled worship relevant to your particular community mosaic that offers the spiritual wisdom and power necessary for all those in attendance to endure the challenges of the week.
2. Actively seek to erase barriers of ignorance and misunderstanding across racial, gender, class, and economic lines.
3. Conduct ministries that directly contribute to solving whatever issues confront your community, whether unemployment, health care, teenage crime and pregnancies, senior citizen care, illiteracy, homelessness, or hunger.

This issue of Leadership offers multiple examples of churches, from Whitefish, Montana, to Jacksonville, Florida, that are finding ways to transform their communities.

You’ll also notice this issue of Leadership is something of a transformation itself. After 22 years, we’re changing the paper and the look of our cover. The larger photo illustration provides a “window into the world,” representing some aspect of the theme.

Last month, we showed this illustration and several other possibilities to those attending the National Pastors Convention. This one was the clear favorite.

“It communicates what the church does,” said Ted Schuldt, an interim pastor in Seattle. “The church turns the world upside down and brings it into focus.”

Others mentioned the sacramental overtones of the glass, while still others reflected on the cup of cold water.

Yes, such a picture can communicate on a number of levels, just as the church does as it touches its community.

Marshall Shelley is editor of Leadership.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Often I think of an inn-keeper my wife, Gail, and I met in Vermont. Everything about him seemed unusual: his dress, his use of language, the ambience of his inn. He aroused my curiosity, and I began asking questions. I learned that Jack Coleman had been the president of Haverford, a well-known college. Later on, he had headed a prestigious educational foundation. Now, in semi-retirement, he ran an inn. Then I learned that he had acquired the life-long habit of regularly disappearing for short periods of time. He simply dropped out of sight. Presumably some assistant (or relative) knew where to find him, but the rest of the people in his world didn’t.

When he resurfaced (perhaps ten days later), he would tell how he’d worked as a shoe-shine man at a railroad station or as a worker on a garbage collection team. Once he bussed tables at a fast-food location. Why?

“Because,” he said, “in my line of executive work, it’s easy to lose touch with the larger, very real world of common people. And once a leader loses that touch, a growing ineffectiveness seeps in. You forget where the real action of life is centered.”

When I was young in ministry, I spent about six months traveling every weekend to churches where I would lead seminars on creative forms of evangelism. The economics of the time forced me to stay in the homes of church members. Men (in particular) would talk with me in great candor about their attitudes toward faith and the church. Frequently, coffee in hand, their after-dinner conversation would turn to their pastor.

“We love our pastor,” I’d hear. “But truth be told, he has almost no comprehension of what life looks like for me from Monday to Friday. It shows in his sermons and what he asks of people.”

One man told me, “Our pastor reveals his view of our world in his Sunday benediction. He says, ‘Lord, dismiss us with your blessing, and bring us back for prayer meeting on Wednesday. Be with the youth on their retreat next Friday night. Help us to get more Sunday school teachers. Amen.’ ” My host went on, “Pastor doesn’t seem to know that I have a job; his perspective is all church-centric.”

I’m grateful for those weekend chats almost forty years ago. They changed the way I pastored. They convinced me that ministry is (brace yourself!) not about the church but about equipping and encouraging people for life on the weekdays—in the home, in the marketplace, at school.

Years later, a church member said to me, “I know you eat, sleep, and drink this church every day of the week. And so you should. But you need to know that when I leave here, I may go for several days and not think about the church once. I’m too busy keeping up with my work, my family, the pressures of life.”

He reminded me that I dare not assume everyone is as pre-occupied with the church as I am.

What if pastors—at least those responsible for preaching and inseminating minds and hearts with fresh ideas about how to follow Jesus—occasionally disappeared like my college president friend? What would we learn?

Unsheltered holiness

Among my favorite stories is one—a couple of centuries old—that comes from Eastern Europe. A brilliant young Jewish scholar had approached a wizened rabbi to ask: “They say I am the holiest of all men. Do you think this is true?”

At first the rabbi refused to answer. But after being badgered by the tenacious scholar, he responded, “You are the most pious man of our age. You study night and day, retired from the world, surrounded by the rows of your books, the holy ark, the faces of devout scholars. You have reached high holiness. How have you reached it? Go down in the marketplace with the rest of the Jews. Endure their work, their strains, their distractions. Mingle in the world, hear the skepticism and irreligion they hear, take the blows they take. Let us see then if you remain the holiest of all men.” In all my years as a pastor, I struggled with this. The very nature of the organization insisted on sucking me into its center, into conversations that centered on programs and problems. Rarely about ideas or hands-on issues of weekday life. Almost no one ever said, “Go down to the marketplace! Disappear!” Even the boards to whom I was accountable saw little value in my getting away from my desk and its administrative demands.

If they had, I tell you, my sermons would have taken on far more color, more useful application, more realism. Maybe my leadership would have been a more mature kind.

What I did do to fight the system was this: I made it my goal to visit every church leader (and beyond when possible) where he or she worked. I filled my calendar with breakfasts and lunches near where people pursued their livelihood. Often, then, I was invited to visit offices, construction sites, sales locations, and laboratories, where I met bosses, colleagues, and assistants.

But most important, I engaged people at their point of competence. They saw me at my best on Sunday; why shouldn’t I see them where they enjoyed the home-field advantage?

Virtually every relationship changed for the better after such a visit. In those encounters, I gained much of my sermon illustrative material and more than a few ideas for sermons themselves. But most of all, there was a new credibility in the pastoral relationship.

I like to think Jesus ran his mission similarly. The Gospels do not record much of his work being done on religious campuses. He engaged people almost exclusively where they worked and traded, where they suffered and survived. His metaphors and stories appear to be drawn right from the context where he spoke. “A sower went out to sow … a woman was sweeping her floor … a man was settling his accounts.” Those are the stories of a person who’s been there.

I sometimes fear recent pastoral ministry has taken a turn that could have long-range downsides. Pastors now have classy offices to which people come having made appointments. And the common people rarely make it through the door. E-mail communication grows more prevalent.

Plus, pastors are often hired as preachers and evaluated as managers of programs. This means numberless meetings, planning sessions, and budget appropriations. Which means becoming separated from the common pastoral exposures that maximize people contact and spiritual (not administrative) effectiveness.

I know. I’ve often fallen into those traps. Too often I let the system control my priorities. I lapse into believing that “org-talk” is more important than personal engagement out there.

Get outta here

Nehemiah was once advised by “friends” to close himself inside the rebuilt temple so that his enemies could not get to him. The man was smart enough to recognize that his place was among the workers at the walls where the arrows were flying, not in the artificial world of the institution.

How can you fight this institutionalizing system? When I was in fighting form, I followed these general principles:

1. Real-world appointments. I tried to book at least four or five meetings a week with people in the congregation that were not about problems or programs but rather about “life in the real-world” and how it could be more powerfully shaped by the influence of Jesus. I tried to schedule these meetings near or at the places where these people worked.

2. Stretching questions. I did my best to focus conversation on the things most pressing in the lives of others rather than myself. I tried to ask creative questions about their dreams, their fears, their greatest challenges. I asked about their families (if married), their friends (if single). If time permitted, I asked what they needed as participants in our church community—not what I had to “sell” them. The best compliment I could receive was, “Gee, you ask great questions. No one has ever asked me that before.”

3. Events remembered. Whenever possible I noted in my calendar events and deadlines that were facing people in their work. I tried to send a card at the appropriate time assuring them of my prayers at that moment. And I tried to follow up to learn what had happened.

4. New reading. Even now I try to expand the bandwidth of my reading to subject matter that acquaints me with the challenges facing the people to whom I preach each week. When possible, I send copies of book-chapters or articles to people when I think it would encourage them.

5. Workplace prayer. I always tried to pray for these people in the context of their work. “Lord, I ask you to fill this office with a powerful sense of your presence as my friend works …” “Father, when anyone crosses the path of my friend today, I ask that the love of Christ will be …” “Spirit of God, give my friend wisdom as he faces these work issues this afternoon.”

6. Marketplace language. I still try to incorporate the language of the real-world into my preaching. “You use too many business terms in your preaching,” I hear occasionally. And it’s possible that I overdo it. But I note that Paul’s writings are jammed with business terms, athletic analogies, and military references. He was in the middle of it all!

Ministry as pit crew

My grandson, Lucas, and I recently sat down to watch a NASCAR race on television. He loves speed; I love team work. I was fascinated with the work of the pit crews. Did you know that a good pit crew can change four tires, fill the gas tank, wipe off the windshield, and give the driver a drink (and maybe even replace a fender) in 15.8 seconds. A good pit-crew, I said!

Their goal? To get the driver and the car—fully operational—back into the race. Because the race is what it’s all about. Races are lost if one spends too much time in the pit.

Do our churches know this? Do I? Imagine a crew standing around when the driver needs a push back into the racing lanes. What happens if the pit crew forgets that the action is out there and not (apart from 15.8 seconds) in the pit? When I watch a pit crew working together to get the driver’s car prepared, I see a vision of pastors and associates: fueling, fixing, and pushing the people back into the race.

A final thought? As a pastor, I became convinced of the importance of the benediction prayer as a way of reminding people that they were headed back to the “race” of real life. Thus my benediction to them as I lifted my hands and made the sign of the cross over them:

“Go forth into the streets of this world. Go with the memory of this hour when you have refreshed your souls in the presence of God and his people. Go with the intention to be faithful to Jesus. With the promise that you will carry his love and extend it to your family and your friends, to those whom you meet along the way who are in need. Go with courage, with a resolve not to sin, and go with the exciting reminder that at any moment, Jesus may come again. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I bid you farewell.”

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and chair of World Relief.

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