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by MARTIN E. MARTY Monday | Apr 21 2014 |
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A PASTORAL SURVIVAL GUIDE
By Rowland Croucher
~~~
Preface: ‘Reverend Joe’
Introduction: Pastoral
Challenges Today
1. Relationship with God
2. Family-of-Origin
3. Mentors and Networks
4. Leadership and
Interpersonal Skills
5. Home and Marriage
6. Stress Management
7. Problem-Solving
8. The ‘Vision Thing’
9. Professional Growth
10. Institutions and
Creativity
~~~
REVEREND JOE’S STORY
Reverend Joe (his story is
an amalgam of half-a-dozen from my files and my recent memory) was a
boilermaker in a factory, but he had a gift with words. One of his elders said
he should be a preacher, so he went to Bible College, and served a term as a
cross-cultural missionary with an interdenominational organisation. His
ministry in Papua New Guinea was ‘ordinary’ according to the mission-people,
and his wife developed some health problems. The doctors suggested that a
tropical climate would not be good for her, so the Mission Society asked him to
do some ‘deputation’ – which he did very well. He had only three talks to
offer, but that’s all he needed as he journeyed around Australia, preaching in
evangelical churches every Sunday. The General Superintendent of one of the
Baptist Unions heard him speak, and was impressed.
When Joe intimated that he
was thinking about entering pastoral ministry, the G.S. said ‘I think we can
find a place for you’ and Joe began the process of theological training with a
view to ordination. He struggled to pass his exams, but eventually made it. He
then served two rural churches, but both pastorates ended badly. In the first,
he ‘fronted’ a couple of the powerful people, and they virtually drove him out.
A second pastorate finished abruptly after a couple of years when he had a
breakdown. There was no farewell from either church. When he felt a little
better, he asked to be put on the Baptist Union ‘list’ for another pastorate.
The meetings of the ‘settlement committee’ came and went and Joe’s name would
come up each time. But there wasn’t a ‘suitable’ church. (One of the members of
that committee said to me, ‘We have to be efficient, because there’s always a
lot of business each month. But these names. they’re people! This is their
vocation, their livelihood, we’re talking about. We don’t pray for them, or
even meet some of them. They’re mostly just names. I feel very uneasy about the
whole process.’)
I met Joe when I preached
at the Baptist church he attended. We made a time to talk – at the local
McDonald’s. He got there early and was waiting for me, with a cup of coffee. (I
learned later he found a used styrofoam cup, and asked for a ‘refill’, as he couldn’t
admit to me that he was penniless). His wife was supporting them both with some
‘agency nursing’, but her health was still not good, and she could only do
about two shifts a week. After mortgage payments, and other bills, they had
about $50 a week for food. He couldn’t find a job – and his old trade wasn’t a
possibility any more.
He told me, in an
hour-and-a-half, the ‘headlines’ of his story. He had a brutal, alcoholic
father, and a mother who suffered ‘nervous breakdowns’ regularly. His childhood
was unhappy, and he was a lonely kid. School was always a bad experience, and
he left at 15 to work in a factory. A Christian work-mate befriended him, took
him to an evangelistic meeting, ‘and I was gloriously saved’. His life from
then on was focussed on serving God and winning others to Christ.
After a while, I asked him
to give me a rough assessment of his missionary and ministry careers. He did
some things well, he said, but he couldn’t cope with people who ‘crossed’ him –
either by making comments about his beliefs/ preaching, or by challenging his
leadership. ‘I got into trouble regularly because I would stand up to people.
That’s the only way I survived as a kid. They’re not going to squash me. But I
think I made a lot of enemies each place I served.’
We then talked about ‘where
to from here’. I summarised John Mark Ministries ‘ research into ex-pastors
like him – and me. There are about 41 responses to the question ‘Why did you
leave parish/ pastoral ministry?’ Most leave in a context of conflict – with
the powerful people in the church or denomination. But underneath all this
there’s always a story of ‘unfinished family-of-origin’ business. His story was
not unusual – indeed he’s a classic!
He told me he felt ‘the
Union’ had washed its hands of him. He was in the ‘dead wood’ category that
institutional people talk about. ‘The G.S. who encouraged me to enter ministry
has gone, and no one there now knows me.’ The Baptist Union had recently
developed a system to encourage the personal and professional growth of its
pastors, who now are required to renew their accreditation regularly. Joe felt
threatened by all this. ‘I’m not a reader, ‘ he said. ‘But I still think I
could be useful somewhere in the church.’
INTRODUCTION: PASTORAL
CHALLENGES TODAY
Now, what should happen to
Joe if he’s to realise his potential and make it back into pastoral ministry
again? Is he a hopeless case? I personally don’t think so, but it will
certainly be uphill. Non-tertiary-educated/ Bible college trained
ex-missionaries have generally had problems adjusting again. The society they
left has moved dramatically in their absence. They often lack the vocational
skills to compete on their return and the sending mission societies have often
failed to provide for their retraining and economic wellbeing after ‘years of
sacrificial service’. Even pastors that never went overseas, but were trained
in the 1950s/ 1960s, are often similarly disadvantaged.
I meet quite a few pastors
still leading churches because they can’t think of any alternatives. They’re
burned out, struggling on, and their churches are suffering.
Then, too, there’s another
category: pastors who feel they’re ‘mediocre’ in terms of effective leadership,
but who do a faithful job. until some powerful people in the church insist on
their ‘getting their act together better’. Then there’s trouble.
Another group is committed
to ‘church growth’, but their people often feel they’re pawns in a
triumphalistic chess-game. ‘Our pastor doesn’t listen: he suffers from an
edifice complex. We’re OK if we bring friends to church, but not if we
struggle.’
Some older pastors feel
they’ve passed their ‘use by’ date. One told me: ‘I don’t understand all this
post-modern stuff. I seem to be preaching about things the educated young
people aren’t interested in. A university student said to me: “You preach at
us. Our teachers encourage us to come to our own conclusions.”‘
Today it’s both easier and
harder to be a pastor. Easier, because we have more resources to help us – like
the World Wide Web for sermon-material (ever used the search-engine Google as a
concordance?), more support-groups to encourage and pray for us, better access
to the world’s practical theology experts, and a higher standard of living, on
average, than pastors have ever enjoyed.
But it’s also harder. Many
of us can identify with the apostle Paul who said, ‘Who is equal to such a
task?’, about his own call to pastoral ministry. These days the expectations of
our people are higher – and more likely to be expressed vigorously. Up-front
leaders and speakers compete with dynamic personalities on television. There
are more ‘religious’ people not attending churches (in the West) than ever
before in history. Our people are likely to be better-educated – and
differently-educated than we are. ‘One size fits all’ doesn’t work any more:
people are more mobile, and brand-loyalty doesn’t work for Generation X’ers
(those born since 1965) – or even Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964).
The role of the clergy is
by not as clear as it was. Nor is there clear public affirmation of their role
in many instances. Most people see no need for religious professionals. And
there’s a lack of confidence in institutions. Why waste precious time propping
up ineffective institutions? Indeed, the very way in which people are
approaching spirituality is that community involvement may be helpful at some
points in time, but is certainly secondary to the individual spiritual journey.
In the past 40 years I’ve
preached in about 700 churches in Australia, and they’re becoming more varied
each decade. The single most common question in our ‘Marks of a Healthy Church’
seminars: how can we cater for old and young with their different tastes in one
worship service, particularly in smaller churches? This centres particularly on
the issue of modern vs. older music. But then, we’ve argued about music before:
some churches in 17th century England and Scotland forbade all singing, others
said we should only sing Psalms. When new hymn-books are produced, there are
mixed reactions. (In 1691 when the first Baptist hymn book appeared, many
Baptists refused to use it!).
Back to TV: most
church-attenders have watched almost 20 hours of television the previous week.
Not only is the medium the message, but if communication in church isn’t
dynamic/interesting (and cognisant of an assumed 45-second attention span), the
music excellent, and the themes life-related, people will go elsewhere – even
back to the TV. (See Tony Campolo, 1995, chapter 4 ‘The Television Challenge’
for one of the few writers-about-churches to underline the significance of
television for churches).
Baby Boomers and GenX’ers
have grown up with television – that’s why they’re less-than-committed to a
particular church/denomination. They’re part of a consumer culture in which
choices/freedoms dominate their lifestyle. They want ‘value for money/time’ and
won’t hang around a church that’s boring, irrelevant to their questions, or
stuck where it was. (Tradition is a good servant, but a very bad master).
Baby Boomers still have a
disproportionate influence over our entire society, consuming (in the U.S.) 51%
of all the goods and services and comprising 81% of journalists. Again, they
don’t share at all the ‘brand loyalty’ of their parents: indeed they scoff at
it – hence the decline of denominations that have ‘expected loyalty but
neglected needs’. Baby Boomers and GenX’ers see the church they’re in as a
‘way-station’ for their ongoing spiritual journey rather than the final
destination. (This is partly because they’re open to upward job mobility, which
may require changing location). They’re more likely to be loyal to a pastor
than to a church or denomination. They’re also more tolerant of change, and
more comfortable with diversity and ambiguity.
GenX’ers got the best of
everything: they’ve never had to wait for the good things of life, so don’t
understand ‘deferred gratification’. They listen to music privately, and grew
up in the first generation that devalued children as having less social and
economic value. They finish their education later, marry later, have kids later
and enter the job market later (hence the term ‘the postponed generation’).
They’ve been even more influenced by television than have the Baby Boomers: but
their concern for global issues often tends to be unfocussed, even shallow.
They face an almost overwhelming array of options, and tend to be indecisive.
Said one: ‘We search for a goal, and once it’s attained, we realise it has
moved farther away’.
So an important question at
this point is: should we surrender to the ‘I/me/myself’ selfishness of the
consumer culture? Two excellent books on this are Philip Yancey’s Church: Why
Bother? and Eugene Peterson’s The Wisdom of Each Other: A Conversation Between
Spiritual Friends. The point these two books make: ‘church is essentially in
rebellion against selfishness and is committed to diversity’.
Another contemporary issue:
most Christians believe that a society which loses its commitment to certain
core moral values, where most ‘do what is right in their own eyes’ is ‘on the
skids’. Post-modernism rejects absolute ways of speaking of truth. Post-modernism,
as the clich� puts it, is essentially a rejection of
‘meta-narratives’. So religion is pushed out of the public arena into the
private domain and such relativism can have disastrous consequences. Christians
believe that to claim a morality which is purely self-referential is to claim a
freedom which ends up as being no freedom at all. If there is no point of
reference beyond ourselves, then reason, justice and law become exploitable by
the powerful and the influential, and the weak have nothing left to appeal to.
If we have no word for sin we shall soon find we have no words left to describe
responsibility. As the ancient Roman adage puts it: ‘What are laws without
morals?’
An Indian pastor was
excited he was about his up-coming marriage. A Western missionary asked a few
questions about the bride-to-be and it soon became evident that the young
fellow had not yet even met the woman to whom he was betrothed. It was an
arranged marriage. With as much cultural sensitivity as possible, the
missionary asked how did they know if they loved each other? The Indian
pastor’s response: ‘We will learn to love each other.’
The Church, whether we like
it or not, is like an arranged marriage! We don’t determine who is or is not
part of the Church, God does. We won’t get on with everyone. In one sense, when
we give our lives to Jesus, we actually don’t have any choice in the matter,
for we are called to learn to love even those we don’t get on with.
Back to pastors: please
note that we are not here judging the effectiveness of a pastor’s work simply
in terms of cleverness or measurable success. I know some faithful ‘Jeremiahs’
whose congregations have dwindled; there were often factors at work beyond
their control. Generally, however, well-led and healthy churches grow,
spiritually and numerically. There’s a climate of love and expectancy and
competence and relevance in them which encourages people to come back again!
So here we will use words
like ‘effective’ and ‘faithful’ rather than ‘successful’.
After listening to hundreds
of their stories, I believe the following are the ten characteristics (in my
preferred order of importance/significance) of pastors – women and men –
who ‘make the distance’.
1.. RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.
1-1 JESUS OUR MODEL
Christian ministry – of any
kind – is simply doing in our world what Jesus did in his. Jesus is our pattern
for ministry – to God and for the world. Close communion with the Father was at
the heart of all he was and did. As his disciples saw this reality they wanted
to be part of it (why don’t more people ask us to teach them to pray?). His
prayer-life was disciplined and ordered, although he too, was busy. It began
with a contemplation of God – ‘Our Father’ – before moving to human need. He
prayed hard before important decisions, like choosing the twelve. His
meditation on Scripture gave strength in times of testing, particularly when
the devil wanted him to do ministry another way. Time was found for prayer – 40
days, a whole night, very early in the morning. Hurry is the death of prayer.
(When did you last take a retreat?) Nowhere did Jesus pray ‘to feel good’: for
him, and for us, the key imperative is obedience.
1-2 SPIRITUAL FORMATION is
the process whereby the Word of God is applied by the Spirit of God to the
heart and mind of the child of God so that she or he becomes more and more like
the Son of God. It’s ‘growing firm in power with regard to your inner self’
(Ephesians 3:16). It’s the maturing of the Christian towards union with Christ.
Assumptions of spirituality
include
* God is doing something
before I know it
* Love and prayer are gifts
* The aim of spiritual
formation is not happiness, but love, joy, peace – and courage and hope
* Prayer is friendship with
God, a response to his love
* Prayer is subversive:
it’s an act of defiance against the ultimacy of anything other than God
* We are always beginners
in the life of prayer: pray as you can, not as you can’t (‘to seek to pray is
to pray’)
1-3 IMAGES OF MINISTRY
The minister – whether
pastor or other – serves by introducing persons to Jesus, our only antidote for
alienation. Alienation (sin) is the severing of self from self, self from
others, self from God; and all these are connected (if I’m alienated from self
I won’t be OK with others). The opposite of alienation is belonging: the
process is called metanoia (‘turning’ from blaming to owning one’s alienation
and being ‘converted’). Truly ‘converted’ people are eucharistic, thankful,
grateful.
# Wounded Healer: The
minister of Christ expects trouble (as Jesus promised) in a world tempting us
with clean sorrow and clean joy. The Lord is closer when we are vulnerable,
when we stop pretending to be powerful, and admit how wounded we are. Personal
spiritual renewal comes only through brokenness, dying (Psalm 51:10-12,17, John
12:20-28). The Christian life begins and continues as a via crucis. We
recognise Judas and Peter in ourselves – we’re both wicked and weak. And yet,
in our despair, when resurrection seems unlikely we hear him in the garden or
on the sea-shore, alive, calling us by name. Because we are identified with a
dying/risen Christ, our ministry is a ‘living reminder’ of this oneness. So we
will avoid crucifixion-only spiritual masochism or resurrection-only
triumphalism. And our pastoral task is to prevent others suffering for the
wrong reasons.
# Servant Leader: Ministry
is the translation of the Good News into human relationships. It’s having
authority to empower others to live in the Kingdom. ‘Authority’ = a firm basis
for knowing and acting; ‘authorities’ maintain their position after
knowing/acting have finished, and ‘lord’ it over others (which is why people
who climb institutions often have difficulty maintaining a spiritual life).
Jesus, in contrast to the authorities, was a servant, identifying with us in our
ordinariness (the Suffering Servant wasn’t good-looking, Isaiah 52:13). So
ministry has to do with ‘the quiet homely joys of humdrum days’ (Sangster), the
sheer Mondayness of things. Such servanthood is indiscriminate (if I cannot
embrace someone, it is because he or she reminds me of some fear in myself).
But let us remember: if we live to please people, we become slaves of those
people. Instead of one master (Jesus, whose yoke is easy), we end up with
numerous Pharaohs who are never satisfied with our performance no matter how
much we do. Our servant role is well expressed in Colossians 1:24-29 and Acts
20:28 (‘Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, over which
the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he has
purchased with his own blood.’). As we are called to be servants of the church,
we also affirm that the church is not our master – Christ is.
During the installation of
a pastor, the congregation is asked two questions phrased something like this:
‘And you, people of God, will you receive this messenger of Jesus Christ, sent
by God to serve God’s people with the Gospel of hope and salvation? Will you
regard him/her as a servant of Christ and a steward of the mysteries of God?’
# The Scholar Teacher (Latin
schola = free time): Henri Nouwen (Creative Ministry) contrasts violent and
redemptive teaching models. ‘Violent’ teaching is competitive (knowledge is
property to be defended rather than a gift to be shared), unilateral (the
teacher is strong/competent, the pupil weak/ ignorant), and alienating
(students and teachers belong to different worlds). ‘Redemptive’ teaching is
evocative (drawing out potentials), bilateral (teachers are free to learn from
students), actualising (offering alternative life-styles in a violent world).
# Coach/Empowerer. The
Protestant Reformation put the Bible into the hands of ordinary people, and
just about everybody agrees we now need a new Reformation to put ministry into
the hands of the laos – but many/most clergy will resist it. (Why do we persist
in using the word ‘minister’ in the singular?) The clergy are part of the
laity, equipping us all towards spiritual growth and maturity (Colossians 1,
Ephesians 4). Pastors are the churches’ resident spiritual directors (see Eugene
Peterson’s excellent writings on that subject), theologians (see Elton
Trueblood), and prophets (Walter Brueggemann).
1-4 THE SAINT AND THE
PHARISEE
In general there are two
religious mind-sets – those of the ‘saint’ and the Pharisee. We all have
something of each in us, and the potential to be either. Both may be ‘orthodox’
theologically, even ‘evangelical’. Both pursue ‘goodness’ but by different
means, for different ends. (Pharisees were ‘good’ people in the worst sense of
the word!). Saints (like Jesus) emphasise love and grace, Pharisees law
and (their interpretation of) ‘truth’. Saints are comfortable with
‘doctrine’, but for the Pharisee doctrine becomes dogma, law becomes legalism,
ritual (the celebration of belonging) becomes ritualism. The saint lives easily
with questions, paradox, antinomy, mystery; Pharisees try to be ‘wiser than
God’ and resolve all mysteries into neat formulas: they want answers, now. The
saint listens, in solitude and silence; the Pharisee fills the void with sound.
With Jesus, acceptance
preceded repentance, with the Pharisees it was the other way around. The saint,
like Jesus, says first ‘I do not condemn you’. Pharisees find that difficult:
they’d prefer ‘go and sin no more’. Jesus welcomes sinners; sinners get the
impression they’re not loved by Pharisees. For the Pharisee, sins of the flesh
and ‘heresy’ are worst, and they are experts on the sins of others. For the
saint, sins of the spirit – one’s own spirit – are worst. Saints are
‘Creation-centred’; Pharisees ‘Fall-centred’. The saint’s good news begins with
‘You are loved’; the Pharisees begin with ‘You are a sinner’.
For the Pharisee ‘my
people’ = ‘people like me’; for the saint ‘my people’ = all God’s people.
Pharisees are insecure (needing ‘God-plus’ other things); the saints are secure
(needing ‘God only’). The Pharisees’ audience is other people: their kudos
provides a measure of security (psychologists call it ‘impression management’;
Jesus calls it hypocrisy). The saints’ only audience is God: their inner and
outer persons are congruent.
Pharisees hate prophets
(‘noisy saints’) and their call to social justice; saints love justice. (Saints
aren’t into writing creeds very much, which is why the two things most
important for Jesus – love and justice – don’t appear in them).
So saints remind you of
Jesus; the Pharisees of the devil (demons are ‘orthodox’). Saints see Jesus in
every person: they haven’t any problem believing we’re all made in the image of
God (= Jesus) although they’re realistic about that image being marred by sin.
Saints are spread through all the churches: the closer they are to Jesus, the
more accepting they are of others. ‘Ambition’ for them means ‘union with
Christ’: they call nothing else ‘success’. In their prayer they mostly
‘listen’, ‘wait on the Lord’; the Pharisee needs words, words, words. Pharisees
have a tendency to complain about many things; for the saints life is
‘serendipitous’: they have a well-developed theology of gratitude. Pharisees
are static, unteachable, believing they have monopoly on the truth; saints are
committed to growing. (Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum; the Spirit abhors
fullness – particularly of oneself). Jesus was full of grace and truth; Peter
says grow in grace and knowledge: Pharisees aren’t strong on grace, but for
saints ‘grace is everywhere’.
The religion of the saints
is salugenic, growth-and health-producing; that of the Pharisee is pathogenic.
Only one thing is important: to be a saint.
Pastors who have not been
cured of their Pharisaism will not last the distance.
Saints appreciate these
sentiments (in Rory Noland’s song):
Holy Spirit, take control.
Take my body, mind, and
soul.
Put a finger on anything
that doesn’t please you,
Anything that grieves you.
Holy Spirit, take control.
1-5 SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES
The spiritual life cannot
be nurtured without discipline. So make a chapel or oratory somewhere, perhaps
a corner of your bedroom, away from interruptions (put the telephone answering
machine on), where you do your prayer and Bible/spiritual reading (not ‘Bible
study’ or sermon preparation: that should be done in another place at other
times). Daily solitude is not a luxury; it is a necessity for spiritual
survival. If we do not have that within us, from beyond us, we yield too much
to that around us.
Spiritual wisdom suggests
we begin our ‘quiet time’ with a Bible word, phrase or prayer (‘Be still…’,
‘Maranatha’, ‘Lord, have mercy on me a sinner’). ‘Occupy yourself in it without
going further. Do like the bees, who never quit a flower so long as they can
extract any honey from it’ (Francis de Sales). ‘Lectio divina’ is the slow,
reflective reading of the Bible. Scripture is God’s personal word to me – for
my ‘formation’ not just information. I read it reverently, ready to be
‘converted’ again and again (conversion begins but never ends), willing to be
led where I may be reluctant to go, believing that God has yet more light and
truth to reveal to me, and to the church. I try to learn to ‘meditate on the
Word day and night’ (Psalm 1:2).
The Daily Office is an
excellent structure for daily devotions. Try the Australian Anglican Prayer
Book or the Daily Devotions section in the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book.
The Daily Office, says (Baptist) Stephen Winward is absolutely scriptural,
God-centred, depends on an ordered use of Scripture (including difficult and
challenging passages), is corporate, educative (we’re in touch with prayer
traditions centuries old) and ‘obligatory’ (even though the discipline is
sometimes hard). Of course, as the Protestant Reformers emphasised, it can be
mechanical and formal, but it doesn’t have to be. ‘Few things are needful, or
only one’ says Jesus to Martha (Luke 10:42 RSV mg.). Be still, and know that he
is God. Contemplation is the awareness of who (and where) God is. The intellect
and lips are still, and one is open to beauty, goodness, wisdom, gentleness and
love – in short, to transcendence. It’s the descent of the ‘Word’ from mind to
heart. The most important element in the contemplative life is not knowledge,
but love. This is a hard discipline for ‘heady’ and busy people.
Christian spirituality
issues from, and creates Christian community. We have suffered from too much
privatised religion (‘receiving Jesus as your personal Saviour’ is not an
expression we got from the Bible). Pastors, too, need to be accountable
spiritually to someone. ‘Self-made Christianity’ is a contradiction. And
remember, pastoral ministry is not automatically self- (or spirit-) nurturing.
Because you handle holy things doesn’t ensure you’re a holy person. So we will
find a spiritual director, a ‘soul friend’, someone who helps one respond to
the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit, listening together to the Lord. The
key question in direction is not ‘Who am I?’ (that’s counselling) but ‘What
happens when I pray?’ Spiritual direction is all about following Jesus who
taught his disciples to pray. So did the apostles: read the magnificent prayers
in Ephesians 1 and 3 and Colossians 1, where Paul spells out how he prays for
his friends – obviously modelling a way to pray he would like them to emulate.
However, Spiritual Direction is not, in essence, directive (it’s the Spirit who
directs). We come to God, said Augustine, not by navigation, but by love.
The sacraments are the
Lord’s specific gifts to his people: the corporate acts par excellence of his
church.
Fasting is a good regular
or occasional discipline. Fast from food, words, TV, spending money, the
telephone, sex, watching sport – whatever will help get ends and means in
perspective for a while.
Silence is ‘the royal road
to spiritual formation’ (Nouwen). It is not just the absence of noise, but an
opportunity to listen to the still small voice of the Spirit. ‘Meditation’ is a
way for Scripture to be internalised not merely (as in Transcendental
Meditation) a technique to ‘calm down’.
Journaling is a useful
means of recording the promptings of the Spirit in our lives. A spiritual
journal is a written response to reality: a record of one’s inner and outer
life (including dreams), a way to inner growth, reflection and healing.
Prayer cannot be divorced
from daily living. Baron Friedrich von Hugel’s first suggestion to Evelyn
Underhill when he was invited to be her spiritual director: visit the poor in
inner-city London two days a week. After all, the Spirit, says an ancient Latin
hymn, is pater pauperum, ‘father of the poor’.
A final word from
Bonhoeffer: ‘It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he or
she is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world’
(Prisoner for God, SCM, 1953, 166).
1-6 THE CALL TO MINISTRY
Here is some classical
Christian wisdom on the subject of vocation:
# ‘Your motives are mixed.
So are mine, for I shall not know this side of death why I became a preacher;
and I have no right to assume that all that moved me in the choice was of angel
brightness. Sometimes we see how incredibly ravelled are even our best desires.’
(George Buttrick, Sermons Preached in a University Church, Abingdon, 1959, p.
109).
# Traditionally, an ‘inner’
call was dominant when one entered monastic life; but the call to the
presbyterate/pastorate needed an ‘inner’ call confirmed by the church. God
always calls people to leadership in the community of Jesus Christ through the
community. Calvin taught that there is a ‘two-fold’ call to pastoral ministry:
God calls, but the church must also call. Wesley distinguished between an
‘inner’ and ‘outer’ call.
# The call to ‘ministry’ is
a subset of the call to be a child of the living God. The New Testament talks
about the ‘high calling of God in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 3:14); it is a
‘holy calling’ (2 Timothy 1:9); and a ‘heavenly calling’ (Hebrews 3:1).
# Sometimes people wear
rose-coloured spectacles when considering a call to pastoral ministry /
full-time evangelism / cross-cultural missionary work. Those people are
considered fortunate, because they have lots of time to sit around and meditate,
without being bothered by the hassles of ordinary living. A mother-of-nine told
the evangelist Gypsy Smith that she believed God was calling her to be an
evangelist like him. ‘Isn’t that wonderful!’ he responded. ‘God has not only
called you; he’s already provided you with a congregation!’ Jesus said to
Peter: ‘Follow me (leave your home)’. To the Gadarene demoniac (Luke 8:26-39):
‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’
# An old church paradigm
suggests six ‘vocation indicators’ – Faith (words and actions that indicate a
deep-down commitment to Christ and his Church); Idealism (often expressed
through initiatives which promote peace, justice, and strive for a better
world); A Search for Greater Meaning (eg. an authentic questioning of current
lifestyle); A ‘People Person’ (either extroverted, or a quieter ‘one-to-one’
personality); Leadership (ability to draw others to oneself, make decisions and
take initiatives); Strength of Character (integrity and a sense of
responsibility for one’s own actions and decisions).
# God may have to call you
more than once before he gets your attention. God had to call Samuel three
times before he got the message.
# Sometimes a ‘call’ will
come when we are really discouraged in our work; sometimes when we are
successful. Christian wisdom says that usually a ‘restlessness’ will precede a
call to another ministry, but escaping, running away from a tough job to enter
pastoral ministry does not augur well for a ministry-future. (Have you heard of
the black cotton-picker in the American South who was very tired one scorching
day. He looked up to the heavens and said ‘O Lord, de sun am so hot, de work am
so hard, de cotton am so grassy dat I believe you callin’ me to be a
preacher!’).
Shalom!
Rowland Croucher
July 2002
Note: For A Pastoral
Survival Guide [2] visit http://jmm.org.au/articles/8659.htm
To find more articles in
this series, put the words (in double quotes) “A Pastoral Survival Guide” into
the website’s search facility.
Or increase the numbers in
the URLs until you get to the 10th in this series –
http://jmm.org.au/articles/8667.htm
Rowland Croucher
October 2010
~~
CHURCH GROWTH AND PASTORAL STRESS
October 2010
~~
CHURCH GROWTH AND PASTORAL STRESS
What has church growth
thinking and practice got to do with the clergy’s ‘not being a happy lot’? I
believe there are at least four ‘presenting problems’:
I have yet to meet the
healthy pastor who is not gratified by an increase in his or her congregation,
nor disappointed by its decrease. (10) McGavran’s Understanding Church Growth
is a passionate defence of the idea that numerical growth is the only really
valid criterion of church growth. (11) He makes the a priori claim that all
other areas of church life – evangelism, ministry, cultural adaptation,
stewardship, etc. – are tied in an absolute way to the one overriding factor of
numerical increase. The essence of church growth thinking is to research the
factors which help or inhibit such increase. So whether we like it or not,
‘church growth’ connotes numbers, quantity. Is this idea biblical? Church
growth protagonists affirm that the Bible is ‘full of numbers. It’s full of
counts. Twelve apostles, 70 disciples, 5000 fed, 500 meeting after the
resurrection, and so on’. David Pawson goes on to say: ‘The Book of Acts is
particularly striking here. Somebody on the day of Pentecost was so full of the
Spirit that they counted heads. And do you notice the progression in the Book
of Acts? At the beginning they count individuals. At the end they’re counting
in churches. At the beginning they’re counting men, women and everybody. But
pretty soon they found that counting the men only was the quickest way. There
is an intense interest in growth.’ (12) Similarly, Orlando Costas notes that
throughout the New Testament there are numerous references to growth. (13) ‘The
idea of growth is therefore basic to the experience and missional expectancy of
the first Christians and to the biblical theology of mission.’ (14) David
Pawson says every major denomination in his country (Britain) has been
reporting a decline for sixty years… and we have not only accepted the decline,
but we have begun to justify it, psychologically, theol- ogically,
ecclesiologically. We have developed the kind of remnant theology which can
even lead to a certain satisfaction, psychologically, in being a despised
minority. (15) Certainly, numerical growth may not mean that the church is
really growing: it may, in the words of Juan Carlos Ortiz, be simply getting
fat. Orlando Costas has given us, in my view, a devastating illustration of
this in his analysis of the growth of Chilean Pentecostalism, 1910-1975. (16)
An accretion of individuals into the ‘church’, as history has witnessed in some
of its mass movements, may indeed be ‘Christendom in the making, and not
Christianity breaking through’. (17) Are quantity and quality antithetical? Is
‘getting the numbers’ always to be thought to militate against ‘better
relationships?’ Certainly, some evangelists, in their zeal for ‘numbers’, have
neglected qualitative follow-through with those who have made ‘decisions for
Christ’. I believe we need three cautions here. The first has been expressed by
Erich Fromm: Our age has found a substitute for God – the impersonal
calculation. This new god has turned into an idol to whom all may be
sacrificed. A new concept of the sacred and unquestionable is arising: that of
calculability, probability, factuality. (18) The second must be an affirmation
that numerical growth is not everything; it is not the only way to measure vit-
ality, although it may be one way. Numerical increase ord- inarily and ideally,
ought to be an index of quality. Cert- ainly, in the Acts of the Apostles,
numerical increase was an occasion for celebration rather than (as
unfortunately exists in some Christian circles today), an occasion for
cynicism. (19) Thirdly, and, I believe we must understand the psychology of
either an obsession with, or depreciation of, ‘numbers’. Such attitudes either
cater to our egos, or, conversely, we lose sight of the fact that ‘numbers are
real persons, for each of whom Christ died’. The danger of the first attitude
is that of ‘triumphalism’, of the second, that expressed in the unbiblical
dictum, ‘Proselytizing is a non-Christian activity’. (20) Further, as I try to
point out elsewhere in this book, any notion which produces ‘winners and
losers’ has to be examined very carefully indeed. Perhaps ‘numerical growth’ is
like the motor car: it’s alright in principle, but in the wrong hands…!
Here we are linking two
related church growth princ- iples, one a corollary of the other. The principle
of selectivity simply says the church should concentrate on the responsive
elements without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers. (21) A
homogeneous unit is simply a group of people who consider each other to be ‘our
kind of people.’ (22) Win Arn summarizes the research: ‘Churches grow, and grow
best, in their own homogeneous unit… [and, in addition] people want their
pastor to be ‘like’ them. Not too far above or below, not too far ahead or
behind.’ (23) The practical outworking of these principles has very important
theological, ethical, and strategic implications for pastors and missionaries.
Jurgen Moltmann has written: The church of the crucified Christ cannot consist
of an assembly of like persons who mutually affirm each other, but must be
constituted of unlike persons… For the crucified Christ, the principle of
fellowship is fellowship with those who are different, and solidarity with
those who have become alien and have been made different. Its power is not
friendship, the love for what is similar and beautiful (‘philia’), but creative
love for what is different, alien and ugly (‘agape’). (24)
So the homogeneous unit
principle is a form of ecclesiastical apartheid. Usually church growth
practitioners have rationalized their adherence to this principle by saying
that a monocultural approach is necessary in evangelism, whereas more mature
believers can be encouraged in their koinonia to widen the circle. But this
ignores two important issues. The first, and most basic, is that minority
groups in all societies may offer, from their rich cultural and spiritual
traditions, something of God’s truth hidden from the dominant group. But, more
seriously, if the church-on-earth is supposed to exemplify in its life the
unity-in-diversity ideals of the New Testament vision for the church, how can
such selectivity be countenanced? Church-members ought to be encouraged from
the outset to incorporate ‘kingdom values’ authentically in their individual
and corporate living. In response to these and other considerations, McGavran
says, in effect, ‘show me’. There’s some sort of ‘homogen- eous glue’ in every
growing congregation (even if it’s a ‘charismatic’ or ‘prophetic’ glue in
culturally heterogeneous churches such as that at Antioch, Acts 13:1-3). He
says the ability to transcend racial and ethnic barriers is a fruit of the
Spirit reserved for those who have already made consider- able progress in the
Christian way. It is not a virtue that can be expected of neophytes. I believe
a counter-argument can be made on other than pragmatic grounds (what strategy
will win the most with the least effort and dollars?) to those who have trouble
with this principle. And it’s simply that the whole notion of ‘progressive
revelation’ implies an adaptation of truth to the ability of the recipients to
assimilate it. God has been very selective in his covenantal dealings with the
human race, and refuses to give rational reasons for this approach. Jacob yes,
Esau no, and that’s that. God ministers his grace to selected people, and
sometimes, because of their hard- heartedness, stops striving with them, and
even ‘gives them up’. Christ himself operated selectively, he came not to call
the (self-)righteous, but sinners to repentance. The unproductive fig-tree is
cut down. Pearls should not be given to swine. These messages are loud and
clear: select- ivity is a function of responsiveness. Perhaps there’s a
strategic dimension here: first, the responsive come, then later, and through
them, the less responsive. First the multitudes, then a large number of priests
(Acts 6:7). McGavran indicates that this is the right approach today too. The
best way to win the resistant is to win the responsive first. Bishop Pickett
reports that the only place in India in which any significant number of
high-caste Indians have been won is Andhra Province, where multitudes of
outcasts were won first. Paul’s missionary approach is similarly ‘selective’.
He stays in Corinth, for the Lord has many people in that city (Acts 18:8-11).
He must tarry at Ephesus, because a great door for effective work has opened
for him (1 Corinthians 16:8-9). And, so far as the homogeneity principle is
conc- erned, he is quite clear: to the Jew he becomes like a Jew, to win the
Jews, and so on (1 Corinthians 9:19-23). I would personally endorse the
‘homogeneous evangelism/ heterogeneous koinonia’ idea. However, there is a very
great danger in a church’s becoming like a country club if its people’s values
are not prophetically challenged. There is a constant – and sometimes
not-so-subtle pressure on preachers to selectively filter their message to
reinforce the racism, sexism, or materialism of one particular group of people.
The church should, by its preaching and example, be challeng- ing the
prevailing non-Christian elements of its surrounding culture. Its business is ‘culture
tranformation’ rather than ‘culture affirmation’. One further word:
strategy-wise, I agree with James Engel that perhaps the selectivity issue in
evangelism is not ‘either/or’, so much as selecting different strategies
according to the ripeness of the fields. To extend the agricultural analogy
further, we need to ‘analyse soils’ before we sow. Perhaps various
pre-evangelism strategies, using mass media, are called for, dependent upon
levels of biblical awareness, attitudes, and propensity for persecut- ion, for
some peoples, while employing more overt methods of proclamation with others.
(25)
Church growth people put
great stress on the social and behavioural sciences, particularly social
anthropology. The dangers here are self-evident. Sometimes these insights can
be used uncritically: some of the presuppositions widely accepted in these
disciplines are naturalistic. In practice, there can be a temptation by pastors
and missionaries to look for ‘guidance by computer’ or technology rather than
through the Word and prayer. Such expressions as ‘growth specialists’, ‘the
business of witnessing’, ‘cost per person’, etc. are sometimes found in the
literature of ‘elenctics’ (the ‘science of bringing people of non-Christian
religiosity to repentance and faith in Christ’). Rene Padilla has suggested
that ‘church growth people assume that you make Christians the way you make
cars and sausages. Mass production, achieved by having the machinery properly
regulated, is the way to do anything’. (26) Having now read fairly widely in
the literature, and attended several schools for pastors run by church growth
experts (both at Fuller Seminary and elsewhere), my personal contention would
be that the social sciences are not used widely enough by them. Too much stress
has been placed within anthropological disciplines and insights, and not enough
in areas of contemporary sociology, particularly social psychology, and within
that field, the dynamics of such areas of study as social class, communication
theory, organizational theory, etc. For example, the advantages of a dialogic
approach to evangelism in some cultures seem not to be taken seriously. Rather
there is a somewhat blinkered view in the literature that proclamation and
persuasion are the only viable or biblical modes. But the issue goes deeper.
Basically, we have here a problem which is as ancient as philosophical analysis
itself, namely the relationship between two levels of truth – the theoretical
and the functional (ie. ‘what is orthodox?’ versus ‘what works?’). In religious
contexts it is the question of the theological (Word) versus the methodological
(the proclamation of the Word in concrete situations). Put another way, it is
‘pure’ versus ‘applied’. The polarization between theologians and the church
growth people is a function of these tensions, I believe. Of course, busy
pastors and evangelists complain that they have little time for serious
theological reflection (‘and what’s the use of all that anyway?’). Conversely,
very few highly skilled theologians are pastors of growing churches.
Occasionally you’ll find a gifted preacher-theologian who preaches regularly to
large congregations (James Stewart, Helmut Thielicke, John Stott), but it may
be argued that such preachers have built their congregations around their own
declamatory and other gifts, and such congregations are not fully functional in
other respects. (Witness the exodus that usually happens when the Great
Preacher leaves or dies).
The danger of ‘purism’ is
in its propensity towards irrelevance. The danger of ‘appliedism’ is its
preoccupation with ad hoc, pragmatic concerns. A purely utilitarian approach
builds ministries out of needs, and its cousin, pragmatism, transforms ministry
into a marketing strategy. Partly, too, it’s a matter of temperament. I find it
hard to imagine some theologians running a sparkling talk-show: they’re just
not gregarious people. (Eberhard Bethge says of Bonhoeffer: ‘Because he was
lonely, he became a theologian and because he was a theologian he was lonely’).
(27) Conversely, it would be hard to imagine a ‘productive’ pastor being
reclusive! I would want to encourage pastors not to avoid the creative tension
between dogma and experience, contemplation and action. In fact, these days, if
we don’t learn both to be effective with people and walk with God, to be good
practical stewards of the ministerial trust given to us, and to ‘centre down’,
we’ll never win the battle against distress. A pastor these days – and, indeed
because he/she wants to all things to the glory of God – has no option but to
strive for excellence, both theologically and methodologically, both in
exegetical and experiential fields. Back to the question of ‘integration’:
there’s a burg- eoning literature on this subject from North America. In
essence, I believe that the Holy Spirit – God at his most empirical – guides us
into all truth. That truth can be theological, based on a study of the Word, or
sociological, based on a study of God’s creatures, human beings. If our
presuppositions are biblical, in both areas, I see few real problems. Re the
description/ prescription issue: as Peter Wagner openly suggests, ‘church
growth science’ is not merely analytical. It helps us maximise the use of
energy and other resources for God’s greater glory. It enables us to detect
errors and correct them before they do too much damage. It would be a mistake
to claim too much, but some enthusiasts feel that with church growth insights
we may even step as far ahead in God’s task of world evangelization as medicine
did when aseptic surgery was introduced’. (28) Like the world missionary
movement on the eve of the Edinburth 1910 Conference, McGavran sees
‘Afericasia’ ready and waiting for the gospel, so the task is essentially that
of finding the correct methodology for maximizing the opport- unities.
Thoughtful critics have found a couple of problems here. First, there seems to
be little emphasis in the New Testament on a self-conscious strategy for church
growth. (However, Paul does seem to suggest some intentionality in his focussing
upon the entrepot cities of the Mediterranean, leading ultimately to Spain).
Second, there is the problem of ‘manipulation’. Australian theologian Graeme
Garrett writes: It is true that ‘scientific sociology’ includes amongst its
many achievements the study of techniques and strategies for the manipulation
of social groups toward certain predetermined ends. The highly skilled
exploitation of such techniques in the realms of marketing, commerce and
politics is notorious if not scandalous in contemporary Western culture. I do
not wish to suggest that the Church Growth writers intend deliberately or
cynically to engage in blatant forms of mass manipulation. My only point is
that it is dangerous for the church to give even the appear- ance of using
disguised forms of manipulation to ‘persuade’ people to become church members.
The Gospel allows no warrant for such action. Not by any subtleties, but by
‘the open statement of the truth’ are we to ‘commend ourselves to everyone’s
conscience in the sight of God’ (II Corinthians 4:2). Techniques may bring
people to the church, they cannot bring them to faith in Christ. (29) Here we
come up against the difficult problem of the distinction between ‘persuasion’
(which Paul says he does) and ‘propagandizing’. Is it possible to conceive of a
kind of persuasion which does not ‘bend wills’ to some degree? I believe a more
cogent criticism was advanced by Orland Costas, when he points out that church
growth is a sign, not an instrument of mission. A sign, he says, is something
which points beyond itself, so ‘multidimensional growth’ is a sign pointing to
the presence of the kingdom. An instrument, on the other hand, is ‘a means
whereby something is achieved, performed, or furthered’ (Webster). ‘In God’s
mission, it is the church, not its growth, that is the instrument by which the
mission is furthered and fulfilled. Multidimensional growth witnesses to the
church’s faithfulness in the execution of its task.’ (30) This is a good
reason, I believe, for aiming at ‘church health’ rather than ‘church growth’.
If God grants an increase, well and good: if not, still well and good. Liv- ing
organisms grow anyway, but growth is a by-product of life, not its cause. A
church’s growth is not like that of a business: the church is to be evaluated,
not by its profits or institutional success, but by its adherence to its Lord’s
will and mandates.
For church growth
theorists, the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) provides a rationale
for success being a correlate of faithfulness. Wagner, for example, asks, ‘Why
were the two servants who put their talents to work faithful and the one who
did not unfaithful? Very simply, because they were successful’. Costas counters
that the point of the parable is not the money they made, but, rather, the fact
that they did not hide it away. They were faithful not bec- ause they were
successful (made money) but rather, because they faithfully put to work the
resources the Master had entrusted to them. (31) I believe both Wagner and
Costas are half-right. It seems to me that the essence of faithful stewardship
is that a steward does what his master wants him to do with the money: that is,
he increases it. The wicked and faithless steward has nothing to show for his
stewardship. Notice, however, that the man with two talents is not denigrated
because he’s not a five-talent person. I have the feeling that the main problem
is not with ‘success’ per se, but with the sort of sick competitive spirit we
in the church have inherited from the commercial world around us. I believe
there’s nothing wrong with being successful, provided our yardstick is between
our ‘actual’ and our potential; provided we live A W Tozer’s dictum: ‘God may
allow his servant to succeed when he has disciplined that servant to a point
where he or she does not need to succeed to be happy. The one who is elated by
success and cast down by failure is still a carnal person.’ (32) In other
words, some successful pastors preside over churches with growing memberships,
and other successful pastors have churches with a static or declining
membership. Let us not forget that the New Testament offers us a vision of the
church in the books of James, Peter and Revelation that is quite different to
the celebrating church in Luke-Acts. The church also suffers. It is faithful
not because it is succ- essful evangelistically, but because it is innocent,
and hopeful in its life-and-death struggle in a hostile world.
Probably the major problem
with the notion of ‘success’ is not biblical or theological but psychological.
It’s interesting that the country most ‘success-oriented’ (the U.S.) is, in my
view, the Western country where the church is most dynamic. Other nations
eschewing the notion of success have the poorest church attendances. I believe
there’s a connection there somewhere. A related notion has to do with ‘hope’
and ‘optimism’. In both his books The Humility of God and Christian Hope, John
Macquarrie draws a sharp distinction between the two: …there is a great
difference between hope and optimism. Hope is humble, trustful, vulnerable.
Optimism is arrogant, brash, complacent. Hope has known the pang of suffering
and has perhaps even felt the chill of despair. The word hope should not be
lightly spoken by people who have never had any cause for despair. Only one who
has cried de profundis can really appreciate the meaning of hope. By contrast,
optimism has not faced the enormity of evil or the results of the fall of man
and the disfiguring sin that affects all human life, both personal and social.
What drives some people to atheism is not a genuinely biblical hope but the
spectacle of an insensitive optimism, masquerading as such hope. (33) Now I do
not have any problem with Macquarrie’s central thesis that ‘Our God is great
enough to be humble.’ But I’m wondering why I can’t find words like Paul’s ‘I
can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’ in his argument? I believe
the biblical idea of hope says something to us both in good times and bad, when
our opportunities are apparent all around us, and when the going’s tough.
Macquarrie, in my reading of him, limits his discussion to the latter. The main
idea is, surely, God is with us in all our times and our testing – when we
abound, and when we are abased. Probably the words ‘effectiveness’ and ‘godly confidence’
might be better in this context. ‘Effectiveness’ is the appropriate embodiment
of faithfulness in given human contexts. (34) It involves the appropriate
coordination of means and ends for the sake of the overall purpose – the
extension of God’s kingdom (not ours). One is unfaithful if the aims are
misdirected. One is ineffective if the goals are disembodied. But winning isn’t
everything! As Vernon Grounds put it, we need ‘the faith to face failure’. In
the church of the crucified Lord, one’s esteem should not be a function of
‘better’ or ‘smarter’ or ‘bigger’. For some congregations, faithfulness and
effectiveness will issue in growth; for others it will not. For others, it may
mean decline, without that church’s having a pathological or terminal illness!
So let us not avoid the creative dialectic between being faithful in our love
for God and others, and being as effect- ive as we can be in ministry and
mission. The dangers of either deriving status and self-worth through ‘success’
or becoming bitter and cynical through ‘failure’ must be avoided at all costs.
There are many other issues
we could have looked at. The church growth phenomenon bristles with them: the
notion of evangelising ‘people groups’, the lack of an adequate
theological/ecclesiological base, a truncated notion of ‘mission’, the
question: how can people who have ‘made a decision for Christ’ be effectively
nurtured and discipled?, the ‘strictness principle’ enunciated by Dean Kelley
(note the title of his book Why Strict Churches are Strong), the question of
goal-setting (churches which aim somewhere are more likely to hit the mark, but
are numerical goals – whether of people or money – compatible with an
Australian ethos?) and so on and on. McGavran has certainly started something!
It is important to recognise that his unique contribution to missiological
thinking was originally as a counterforce to the ‘mainline’ sending agencies,
which were stressing devolution, abdication from proclamatory evangelism,
emphasis on the horizontal rather than vertical dimensions of mission, etc.
McGavran’s corrective was, I believe, truly prophetic. However, in doing some
things well, he and other church growth protagonists have done other things
poorly. In the area of mission, for example, they have committed themselves to
making a part the whole: mission equals evangelism plus discipling. But mission
in the teaching of the prophets and Jesus begins with justice (Micah 6:8,
Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42). But that was customary in the sixties and seventies
among evangelicals. It is a shame that we have so few theologian-evangelists in
the modern church. The books on church growth are saying something very
valuable indeed, but sometimes tend to be guilty of residing in ‘simplicity
this side of complexity’. Conversely, many of the critics of the church growth
movement are wallowing in ‘complexity the other side of simplicity’. May we all
move to ‘simplicity the other side of complexity!’ The main issues, I believe,
are not whether the church is growing, but whether we are authentically engaged
in the mission of God in Christ, through the power of the Spirit. Is the church
‘transforming’ culture rather than being merely culture-affirming or
culture-denying (to use H. Richard Niebuhr’s motif)? Someone has said the
biggest business in modern societ- ies is that of ‘anxiety reduction’.
Potentially, church growth
thinking, if ‘baptized’, can become for pastoral leaders a redemptive rather
than a destructive force in their work for the kingdom. We need humbly to say, with
John, ‘I am not the Messiah … I am not the expected prophet. I am a voice
crying in the wilderness “Make straight the way of the Lord”. I am a herald,
clearing the way for the King…’ But we also can say confidently, with Charles
Wesley, ‘faith, mighty faith, the promise seizes and looks to that alone.
Laughs at impossibilities, and cries, “It shall be done!”.’ A final word from
David Pawson: if you wait until the wind and the weather are just right you
will never sow anything – and never harvest anything either! (36)
ENDNOTES
Note: I’m editing this in
2011, and sometime I’ll figure out what the footnotes 1-9 refer to!
(1) Rowland Croucher,
Church Growth Up-date, an unpublished paper, 1982. (2) Quote from The
Episcopalian, 1977, in Dean R. Hoge and David A. Roozen (eds.), Understanding
Church Growth and Decline, 1950-1976, New York: Pilgrim Press, 1979, p. 293.
(3) Ibid, p. 297. (4) C. Peter Wagner, What Makes Churches Grow?, an
unpublished paper, p. 2. (5) Regal, 1984. (6) ‘Must a Healthy Church be a Growing
Church?’, Leadership, Winter, 1981, p. 128. (7) See Rowland Croucher, ‘Renewal
in the Pastorate: An Analysis of Modern Clergy Needs’, unpublished paper, 1982
(8) ‘Clergy Morale’, Clergy Health, Vol 1, No. 3, 1979. My hunch is that church
officials have the same attitude towards this phenomonon as doctors have to
death and dying: it’s too stark an attack on their whole raison d’etre, so the
research isn’t publicized too much. There was an interesting spate of letters
in the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet, a few years ago, wondering if the
correct number of Catholic priests leaving the active ministry during the past
20 years is 40,000 or 100,000! A couple of Southern Baptist leaders told me
they lose 1,000 pastors every year. (9) One concomitant of the denominational
‘blind eye syndrome’ in this whole matter relates to the lack of on-going
caring and support of these pastors. A Catholic priest told me he receiv- ed no
help whatsoever from his superiors in his struggle, and has yet to get anything
other than a complicated, very personal questionnaire, from the Vatican. A
Baptist minister in Australia received no communication at all from his
denomination’s headquarters – and only two letters of encouragement from his
peers. When Charles Davis, the eminent British theologian, left the priesthood
and the Catholic church he complained bitterly about the lack of love in it.
(See the essays by Desmond Fisher and Jerome Herwin in On the Run, Spirituality
for the Seventies, ed. Michael F. McCauley, Dove Communications, East Malvern,
Vic., 1974, pp. 134ff and 144ff.) (10) A few years ago the Melbourne Age had
this ‘Odd Spot’ on its front page: ‘Secured to his church steeple by a safety
belt, the Reverend Gary Burgess of East Millstone, New Jersey, ate a hearty
meal of roast lamb and angel food cake as he promised his congregation he would
if 200 or more attended a service’ (14.6.84). Such antics are an outcome of the
hype inevitably associated with too great a preoccupation with numbers. (11)
McGavran insists that ‘a principle and irreplaceable purpose of mission is the
(numerical) growth of the church’ (Understanding Church Growth, Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1970, p.32). (12) David Pawson, ‘Let My People Grow’,
BUZZ Magazine, November 1976, pp.26-27. (13) Matthew 5:16; 9:37-38; 10:1-40;
13:1-8, 18-23, 31, 47; Mark 1:17; 4:1-8, 13-20; Luke 8:5-8, 11-15; 10:2; John
8:12; 9:5; 14:21-24; 15:5, 8; Romans 8:15; 1 Corinthians 3:9-11; Ephesians 1:5;
2:22; 4:14ff; 1 Peter 2:2,4ff. Orlando Costas, Christ Outside the Gate: Mission
beyond Christendom, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1982, p.46. (14) Ibid. (15)
Op.cit., p.25. (16) Op.cit., pp.48ff. (17) George W. Peters, A Theology of
Church Growth, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1981, p.23. (18) Erich Fromm,
The Revolution of Hope, New York: 1968, p.54. (19) See Ralph D. Winter in
Crucial Issues in Mission Tomorrow, ed. Donald McGavran, Chicago: Moody, 1972,
pp.178-187. (20) Marjorie and Cyril Powles, ‘The End of the Era: Further
Thoughts on the Church and Mission’, Japan Christian Quarterly, Winter 1968,
pp.38ff. (21) McGavran, op.cit., p.198. (22) C. Peter Wagner, Your Church Can
Grow: Seven Signs of a Healthy Church, Glendale, California: Regal, 1976,
p.110. (23) Quoted in Graeme Garrett, Church Growth: Some Questions, an
unpublished paper, p.2. (24) Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 1973, p.28.
(25) James Engel, ‘Church growth strategies plus …’, Evang- elical Missions
Quarterly, January 1976, pp.89-98. (26) Quoted by John Yoder, in ‘Church growth
issues in a theological perspective’ in The Challenge of Church Growth, ed.
Wilbert R. Shenk, Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1973, p.29. (27)
Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Collins, 1970, p.23. (28) C. Peter
Wagner, Your Church Can Grow, Glendale, California: Regal Books, 1976, p.41.
(29) Op.cit., pp.2-3. (30) Op.cit., pp.52-3. (31) Ibid., p.57. (32) Quoted by
John Yoder, in ‘Must a Healthy Church be a Growing Church?’, Leadership,
Winter, 1981. (33) John Macquarrie, The Humility of God, London: SCM, 1978,
p.13. (34) Robert A. Evans, in Hoge and Roozen, op.cit., p.95. (35) Op.cit.,
p.27.
Rowland Croucher
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