Letters to a Young Pastor

Alabama

Section One

Letters on Locating Your Life

A Layman in Search of Authenticity

Life is hard when you don’t know who you are.

I’ve been a part of this church for a long time. A couple of preachers back, we had a pastor who never seemed to find out who he was. He preached other people’s sermons. He copied other people’s programs almost entirely. There was this big church up in the windy city, and he felt like if he could duplicate it exactly, our church would be just as big. He even dressed like that preacher too.

All of us on the board kept peeling back the layers of his ego, trying to find out who he really was. We never could find out. I expect because he didn’t know either.¹

1 Calvin Miller, The Empowered Leader (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1995), 21.

I know who I was

And

I know who I am

And

I have become convinced

That this double foundation

Dictates the form of

Who I will be.

Calvin Miller

Anyone who listens to the word

But does not do what it says

Is like a man

Who looks at his face in a mirror

And, after looking at himself,

Goes away and immediately forgets

What he looks like.

James 1:23–24

Letter 1

Seeing the Significance of Your Call Whatever the Congregation’s Size

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For all the usual evaluative purposes, the large and global churches are obviously the most important. But for deep spiritual renewal, the recognition of identity, the birth of awe, the small, local church serves every bit as well. Perhaps, they serve even better. In my history of small, local gatherings, the rooms were full of characters—divorced bankers, cantankerous physicians, drama queen choir members, faithful janitors. Characters. I have never been able to look upon people in any other way since. I hope I learned something from praying with the same lady who taught me English, from singing with the same man who bagged our groceries, from listening to the same preacher who also tucked me in at night. A small church like that, one big enough to house the people that you meet each day, can be both lonely and grand and simple. It is as good a place as any for the experience of learning to be content in any and every circumstance. Save a piece of locality like that intact, and it does not matter in the slightest that only a couple of hundred people every year will go into it. That is precisely its value; a theography of hope.¹

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Dear Young Pastor,

Sum up reality and opt for hope.

At the turn of the last century (1900) there was a ratio of 27 churches per 10,000 people, as compared with the close of the century (2000) where we have 11 churches per 10,000 people in America! What has happened?

Given the declining numbers and the closures of churches compared to the new church starts, there should have been over 38,000 new churches commissioned to keep up with the population growth. The United States now ranks third following China and India in the number of people who are not professing Christians; in other words, Americans are becoming an ever-increasing unreached people group. Half of all churches in the United States did not add any new members in the last two years.

I’m hard but honest when speaking to graduating preachers. I always say something like this to them: "Most of you will be taking churches of 100 members or less. Twenty years from now, 80 percent of you will no longer be a pastor, having chosen another profession primarily because the pain of hanging on was greater than the risk of letting go. The 20 percent of you who have continued preaching will still be in churches of 100 members or less.

Happy graduation!

The work is hard, and the pastoral survival rate is scary. Every year 4,000 churches close their doors forever, compared to just 1,000 new church starts. Between 1990 and 2000 the combined membership of all Protestant denominations dropped 5 million members (9.5 percent), while the US population increased by 11 percent. Each year 2.7 million church members fall into an inactive status. In probing for a reason for this dropout rate, the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development found that these people were leaving because they were hurting and wounded victims—of some kind of abuse, disillusionment, or just plain neglect.² The Schaeffer Institute did not comment on why pastors were leaving, but it is probably for abuse, disillusionment, or neglect also. Since both pastors and laity are abandoning the church, we can infer that churches are not just dying; they’re dying unhappy.

It is this inference that bothers me.

Doctrinal differences are not the only thing that is killing evangelicalism. We are dying from a deep infection in our own group dynamics. We don’t love each other enough to cling to each other and survive. Forget love. We don’t even like each other. That’s the core reason we are dying. And into this painful cauldron of ill will we drop young preachers and expect them to save the church. But most soon leave behind the notion of trying to save the church and commit themselves to trying to survive the church.

Here are the reasons we give up on Christian ministry:

First, we die because we suffer from congregational social schisms that result from huge doses of unforgiveness between jealous, wrangling laypeople.

Second, we have too many pastors who compete within their denominations and fire at each other with blitzes of resentment.

Third, many preachers who resent each other’s success within their city limits participate in sanctimonious name-calling: Easy gospel church! Calvinist Mecca! Bible-free preaching! Social gospelers! Modernists! Most of these churches rarely say these things out loud, but they do say them. Even statements like Come to our church; it’s the largest church in the city say it. Or as I saw painted on the back of one church bus: Follow me to Exciting WestBrook! All such labels divide and destroy.

In 1970, Francis Schaeffer wrote a thirty-five-page book titled The Mark of the Christian. In a little more than a hundred paragraphs he gave us the only possible solution to the dying of evangelicalism:

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another (John 13:34–35).

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me (John 17:21).

What then shall we conclude but that … we as Christians are called upon to love all men as neighbors, loving them ourselves.… We are to love all true Christian brothers in a way that the world may observe. This means showing love to our brothers in the midst of our differences—great or small—loving our brothers when it costs us something, loving them even under times of tremendous emotional tension, loving in the way the world can see. In short we are to practice and exhibit the holiness of God and the love of God, for without this we grieve the Holy Spirit.³

It took me years to understand what Francis Schaeffer meant when he said that grieving the Holy Spirit was a direct result of our failure to love. But now I do understand: Grieve is a love word! This is what Paul meant when he said, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30). When we sin, we do not infuriate God, our Lover. We only hurt Him. We grieve Him! Until pastors and churches come to understand this, evangelicalism will continue its decline. When we fail to love each other, there is an empty ache that runs throughout the halls of heaven. And people who wanted more from us and expected more out of us will leave the church hurting, and we who are pastors will leave the church hurting, all because we have read the Bible all our lives—even knowing it in Greek and Hebrew—and never caught the connection between John 13:35 and Ephesians 4:30.

This is not a truth that can ever be sold on a group basis. You can solve the dilemma only within the singular, narrow place that is your soul. And you can solve it there. Here’s your chance to turn things around.

Christ is on the mound.

You’re at bat.

Save the game!

1 John Blase, Theography of Hope, The Burnside Writers Collective blog, 2008.

2 Richard J. Krejcir, Statistics and Reasons for Church Decline, Schaeffer Institute, www.intothyword.org/articles_view.asp?articleid=36557&columnid= (accessed April 15, 2011), par. 7.

3 Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1970), 34–35.

Letter 2

Keeping the Passion in Your Call

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"[General William Booth founded the Salvation Army in 1878.] His approach was a militant assault on the social evils of the day, and his movement specialized in addressing the needs of the poor and laboring classes. He most famously expressed his creed as follows:

While some weep as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, I’ll fight; while men in prison, in and out, in and out, as they are now, I’ll fight; where there is a drunkard left, whilst there is a poor, lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight! I’ll fight to the very end!

"He did fight, until he died on August 21, 1912, and 150,000 mourners attended his funeral. The poet Vachel Lindsay immortalized him in a poem, ‘General William Booth Enters into Heaven,’ in which, among other things, he said:

"Booth died blind and still by Faith he trod,

Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God.

Booth led boldly, and he looked the chief,

Eagle countenance in sharp relief,

Beard a-flying, air of high command

Unabated in that holy land.…

And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer

He saw his Master thro’ the flag-filled air.

Christ came gently with a robe and crown

For Booth the soldier, while the throng knelt down.

He saw King Jesus. They were face to face,

And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place.

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?"⁴

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Dear Young Pastor,

The call to preach is a compulsion to serve God by writing and delivering sermons. It is a holy, healthy compulsion. Every call makes one statement: One preaches because one must.

When your call comes, distrust the grand omen. The story is thumb worn, but remember the rural parson who saw GPC in the sky and immediately believed God wanted him to Go Preach Christ. God was really telling him to become a farmer and "Go Plant