What Nobody Taught Me in Seminary That I Had to Learn the Hard Way

Excerpts from Sermons by Dr. John Huffman, Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Eight Things Not Taught in Seminary Part 1, October 29, 2013
Eight Things Not Taught in Seminary Part 2, October 30, 2013

1. Seminary is the best place in the world to lose your faith.
2.  Maintain a daily devotional life independent of your studies and sermon preparation.
3.  The highest calling tin the world is not professional ministry.
4.  You will never be more in ministry than you are today.
5.  Get involved now in a covenant group and never be without one all through your ministry.
6.  A simple trust in God's Word is more important than a highly sophisticated intellectual set of answers for everything.
7.  Spend as much time in the newspaper as in the Bible, and vice versa.
8.  Be faithful to biblical moral standards now.
9.  Develop a physical exercise program now and treat it as faithfully as you do your devotional life.
10.  Ministry marriages are not exempt from the same problems other marriages have.
11.  Begin tithing now, don't rationalize that you will do it later.
12. If you mess up, claim God's grace, get help, and get up and get going.
13.  Pastors too come from dysfunctional families and can perpetuate it and even originate it.
14.  Because you are in fulltime Christian services does not mean you are exempt from catastrophe.
15.  Yours is the privilege of a "task within a task."
16.  Write out one sermon per week as your best effort and then claim God's help to come as close to possible to preaching without notes.

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By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Can you believe this?: In fifth grade Sunday School I had to learn them all: Genesis...

Exodus…Leviticus…Numbers…Deuteronomy…through those pesky minor prophets, Micah…Nahum…Habakkuk…and on through the New Testament books…all the way to Revelation. Not only did we have to learn the books of the Bible, we were also tested on a list of the kings of Israel and Judah and, of course, the prophets. Our hero at the time was our classmate, Peggy Corneil, who could recite all three lists backwards and forwards. Amazing mind, that Peggy!

By present standards, this kind of curriculum would be considered wholly inadequate. The measuring line by which we measure such things as Sunday School curriculum and small group materials is the degree to which it is considered “practical.” This is the gold standard question: “To what extent is there a life application attached to whatever we teach?”

Pastors and others in ministry know this all too well. The pervasive value behind whatever goes on in the church is its perceived practicality. Every time a sermon is preached, a bible study is taught, or a small group is administered, the pastor stands against the proverbial door and the congregation measures his or her growth against the standards of this one core value.

And, what goes on in seminaries is no exception. The current market, in fact, places traditional theological education up against para-church organizations whose central mission is cultural relevancy and a commitment to practical daily living. A whole cottage industry of manuals and CD/DVDs and three ring notebooks are geared toward ways in which biblical principles are linked to a myriad of life contexts, be it family life, or leadership situations, or relational complexities.

Seminary curriculum is increasingly expected to meet this litmus test of practicality. Did I hear an alum/pastor right a couple of years ago when she stated that her seminary failed her because we did not offer an entire course on developing church capital campaigns? Apparently, she was in the middle of funding a new building, and she felt inadequate with the pressures that were being placed on her by her church. Gordon-Conwell just did not measure up to her expectations.

There is much to be said about relating biblical and theological truths to daily living. A dynamic life of faith is nothing, if not connected to the warp and wolf of our lives. But, perhaps we need to rethink what we mean by “practical.” All of those lists of the books of the Bible, kings, and prophets certainly didn’t connect easily, in my fifth grade mind, to a life being played out at Garfield grade school. At the end of the day, I could not readily make out a life application related to my little world.

Those lists were not practical in that immediate application sort-of-way. But, I have been feasting off of the knowledge of that fifth grade class for over forty-five years, all the way through my seminary education and into ministry in the church and the seminary. To be honest, I am sure I would miss a few of those kings and prophets right now, but the residue of those lists still cling to me. The larger backdrop of my life has been measured unconsciously against my fifth grade education.

And so it is with the seminary education you received at Gordon-Conwell. The seminary is just not going to be able to anticipate every practical ministry contingency you or I confront, including fund raising building strategies. The curriculum just couldn’t hold all of them. But, the aim is to be practical when measured against years, and not necessarily days.

Giving Thanks for Our Alumni

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Just before Thanksgiving weekend I was at the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature, all of which were held in San Francisco this year. I enjoy going to the meetings to meet old friends, make new friends, and have my thinking stretched by papers and presentations presenting new information, ideas, perspectives or approaches. I love coming back with some new things to chew on and to follow up and possibly incorporate into my teaching or research. But perhaps one of the things I like most about attending these annual meetings is the opportunity catch up with some of our alumni who also attend. I run into them between sessions, and also get to sit and talk with some of them during the GCTS Sunday breakfast and the dinner that we usually have for doctoral students and recent doctoral grads. It is such a joy to see our grads prospering in their studies (even if they struggle at times as well, of course) or teaching ministries.

This year I was able to chat with some grads studying biblical studies and others teaching missions, church history, and biblical studies. I’ve also had recent contact with grads who are faithfully ministering in the church ministries to which God has called them and who are using all that they learned while in seminary to minister to the people God has put in their care. Such quality people, doing such important things!

I am so grateful to God for the gifted and committed people he brings to Gordon-Conwell, and that I have the privilege to work with. Our students shape my thinking and inspire me to be a better Christian, scholar, teacher, and person. Our alumni do the same. And I know I am not alone, but that the whole faculty would heartily agree with me. This year as I think about the gifts of God for which I am grateful, you should know that alumni who are faithful to whatever calling God has on their lives (and who have left their marks on Gordon-Conwell along the way) are among the most precious gifts for which I give thanks. Psalm 106:1-5 reminds us that as we give thanks to God for his mighty works we are also to rejoice in the prosperity of his chosen ones and to glory in his heritage.

¹ Praise the LORD! O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. ² Who can utter the mighty doings of the LORD, or declare all his praise? ³ Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times. ⁴ Remember me, O LORD, when you show favor to your people; help me when you deliver them; ⁵ that I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation, that I may glory in your heritage. (NRSV)

I hope you are staying in touch with some faculty members, letting them know what God is doing in and through you. You can rest assured they are eager to hear from you and happy to pray for you, and are thankful for you and your commitment to advancing God’s purposes in his church and his world.

Day-to-Day Normalness of Life

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Everything changed. In little more than a month on that barren, floating shoal, their perspective on their lives was so radically altered. What they valued most in their lives up to that point--the tiniest pleasures that were their largest preoccupations, thought lives filled with what they considered “normal” things--all so quickly and unalterably became of so little consequence. In a relative moment in time, the “stuff” of their lives became the basic, unadorned preoccupations of survival. So little mattered of their old lives; so much rested on a new point of view.

If you haven’t read Alfred Lansing’s gripping story of Sir Ernest Shackelton’s ill-fated 1914 expedition to Antartica, I highly recommend it. It is a survival story of 29 men set adrift for five months on ice packs after their ship was crushed by ice, only to then suffer through a 1,000 mile voyage in an open boat across the stormiest ocean on the globe. It is a magnificent picture of persons pulled away from everyday normal life and forced to live and think in radically different ways.

Short of subjecting ourselves artificially to some form of fringe experience, I wonder what it takes for us to break through the day-to-day “normalness” of our lives? How do we who seek to bring freshness and new perspective to those to whom we minister keep our own lives fresh? How do the things that really matter from God’s perspective become our common, consuming passions?

I certainly don’t claim to know the answer to these questions, but if Shackelton’s story is of any help, it is that none of these men would have changed on their own. To a man, all of them were relatively comfortable with the make-up of their own lives. It was only as they were forced to change that they did change.

Certainly this is what is behind the joy we are all called to consider in the first chapter of the book of James. God makes trials and temptations part of the warp-and-wolf of our lives because He knows that we don’t have it in us to change on our own. Our faith grows, not from within, but from without as God works in and through the circumstances of our lives.

Pulling a Sting

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

When he said it, not many of us really thought that much about it at first. In fact, it sounded a bit odd. We were all sitting around the Ockenga conference table—the thirteen of us as we do every month at our Pastors Roundtable—and one of our group told us very innocently that the thing that finally was bringing his congregation back to life was his fledgling little Junior High ministry.

This pastor had been racking his brain for years, trying to motivate his church toward some sense of vitality. He had given his congregation the big vision talk, followed quickly by the even bigger envisioning process, leading to the development of a vision statement. He had read all of the books. He had preached all the sermons about perishing without a vision. Nothing seemed to pry his congregation from the grips of years of lethargy. Nothing…nothing seemed to be working.

And then, out of no where, with hardly a strategy in mind and certainly beyond the scope of his own best intentions, the right volunteer couples from his little church in Maine, with the right giftedness and sincerity in their hearts, connected with the right junior high students. And it was this that brought new life as families began to be attracted to his little church. Broadsided with the simple and unintended! Imagine that; the life and vitality of a church resting on the narrow shoulders and low riding jeans of a group of adolescents. The church took off.

In subsequent conversations with this and other Pastor Roundtable groups, similar stories began to surface. In another of our New England churches whose pastor had a cup of coffee on a pro sports team, the church’s sports ministry to the community became the place of new growth and excitement for the congregation. For another pastor, it was their children’s ministry. Imagine a church whose annual summer focus on Vacation Bible School became the spark that has brought genuine excitement to the entire congregation the year round.

I wonder sometimes if we miss the forest through the trees for those of us who are committed to breathing new life into our places of ministry. With our best intentions in tow, we place five thousand pounds of vision and strategy down on a five hundred pound church. It is utterly crushing.

I admit it. I have done the same thing periodically when asked to do church consulting. Frankly, it is not that difficult to diagnose the problems within most churches. The real difficulty lies in churches having the resources and the will to respond to the solutions offered. The economics of the situation work like this: The smaller the church, the bigger the problems to be solved. But, alas, the smaller the church, the less resources there are to respond effectively to proposed solutions. The solutions sometimes almost become more onerous than the problems.

To be considered healthy, why must every church have a thriving small group ministry and thriving youth ministry and thriving evangelism ministry and thriving hospitality ministry and a thriving community outreach ministry and so on…? Rather, what if we looked at our churches more organically than systematically? It takes some investigative work, but where is the place—sometimes ever so small—of vitality in your church? Where is there evidence that God is working, and how can we come along side of that place(s) where He has decided to work uniquely in your setting? Where is the thin thread in your church that, if pulled, could unravel into whole new possibilities for your church?

I am convinced that every church has these areas, sometimes in the most surprising of places. As one pastor of a church that is filled with the currently perceived deadly demographic of elderly people told me the other day, the point of excitement currently in his church is a small group of his elderly couples that have found new excitement in their faith. The fragrance of their newfound excitement has wafted across the rest of the church. Go figure, old people and junior high kids: places where God is doing His best work in His church. There must be a God.

Thanking God for Friends from Seminary

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

They were the first couple that Marcelle and I met when we arrived at seminary back in 1982, and we quickly became the best of friends. To avoid referring to them as “they” or “them” let’s call them “Keith” and “Rebeccah”… Keith and I had many classes together and talked through all kinds of subjects. He and Rebeccah introduced us to music we hadn’t been familiar with but liked right away and that has been a part of our lives ever since. They also taught us some card games and, as poor seminary students, much of our leisure and entertainment time in seminary was spent playing cards together as two couples and talking into the night. We also went camping together (at the foot of the Maroon Bells ) and enjoyed great times of fellowship.

We wouldn’t be where we are today were it not for the influence of Keith and Rebeccah, and others like them, in our lives. Keith saw me as a seminary professor long before I could ever see myself that way. He became the president of the student body and appointed or recommended me to serve as the student representative on the seminary’s Faculty Affairs Committee, which gave me the opportunity to get to know faculty members and see how they conducted some of their business and to imagine what it might be like to be in their shoes someday. When Carl F. H. Henry came to campus it was Keith who arranged for the two of us to have a private meeting with him, during which Keith referred to me as the “theologian” of the student body. It was a title I didn’t deserve, by any means, but it reflected Keith’s perception of my gifts (and calling), one that would later be confirmed by others and within myself. To this day I don’t remember a bit of what we talked about with Dr. Henry, but I’ve never forgotten the complement paid to me by my friend and what it said about his view of my potential!

Keith has been a faithful pastor since our days in seminary. He’s now pastoring a church in Arizona. Marcelle and I just enjoyed a wonderful visit from Keith and Rebeccah. They took the time to come and spend a few days visiting and catching up with us. We walked the freedom trail in Boston, visited Salem, attended church together, discussed the Bible, theology, ethics, philosophies of ministry, ministry challenges, family issues and many other things. We also enjoyed evenings with long card games and deep conversations into the late hours. He and Rebeccah continue to be an encouragement to us and models for us of faithful ministry in both good and very challenging circumstances. I thank God for them and the roles they have played in our lives.

Do you remember particular friends from college or seminary that have encouraged you, or helped you identify your gifts or who played key roles in shaping your vision for your future ministry? Was there someone (or more than one person) without whom you don’t know how you would have gotten through, or that you feel made a significant contribution to your understanding of God’s call on your life? If you haven’t been in touch with that person for a while, or haven’t expressed your appreciation for them recently, perhaps you should think about giving them a call or writing them a note. And perhaps you might even think about planning a way to get together again for a few days to renew that friendship, and see if you don’t both benefit from the truth expressed so well in Proverbs 27:17: ^“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (NIV).

A Stroll Along a Raging River

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Harsh words for a gentle, country Scottish pastor, but here they are:

The pastor is called to feed the sheep, even if the sheep do not want to be fed. He is certainly not to become an entertainer of goats. Let goats entertain goats, and let them do it out in goatland. You will certainly not turn goats into sheep by pandering to their goatishness.

Amazing words with a surprising sting to them.

Surprising, indeed! I began reading William Still’s book, The Work of the Pastor, with the idea that I would be taking a leisurely stroll along side of a placid Scottish pond and found myself most often knee deep, fighting a raging river. This faithful country preacher who ‘pastured’ in the same small parish at Gilcomston South Church of Scotland for over fifty years packs quite a punch in his understanding of what it means to be a pastor.

To read what Still places at the very center of what it means to be a pastor seems at first obvious. Obvious, until you realize he really means it. He insists, the Word of God fully and exclusively defines the role of the pastor. Not only does it shape the preaching and teaching ministries of a pastor as one would expect, but the simple power of the Word is meant to spill out into the life of a pastor as he or she walks through his or her community, the way he or she goes about the mundane management of church life, the way pastoral care is distributed to the flock. Allow me to have him speak for himself again:

"To be true pastors, your whole life must be spent in knowing the truth of this Word, not only verbally, propositionally, theologically, but religiously, that is, devotionally, morally, in worshipping Him whom it reveals, and in personal obedience to Him whose commands it contains…”

Everything in a pastor’s life should be laced with the Word.

One of the implications of this radical commitment to the Word in ministry is that Still would suggest that many of the ministry tools we have grown to view as important for doing our job as pastors not only are not essential but actually compete with the Word for our attention and the attention of our flock. Unintentionally, perhaps, our over-dependence on church programs has become a cheap substitute for the power of the Word, entertainment most often has become a substitute for fellowship in the Word, and in the case of his words at the beginning of this blog, cheep gimmicks intended to attract unbelievers are more evidence of our lack of confidence in the power of the Word than of our well-intended concerns for the lost.

I recommend you take a stroll along this raging river of a book. It is well worth the risk.

Bibleconomics?

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Granted, Freakonomics it’s not. But the title is meant to raise the question – does the Bible have anything to do with Economics? My answer, as you probably expected, is yes…but how that should play out in pastoral ministry may be somewhat unexpected.

There are three basic approaches one finds with respect to economics in the American pulpit. In perhaps the majority of churches, economics is more or less ignored, apart from the occasional mention of the need to “help the poor” when the day’s Scripture reading makes that conclusion unavoidable. The second approach, more familiar in mainline churches, is to stress concern for the poor much more frequently, with “concern for the poor” generally defined as supporting left-ish economic policy. In reaction against this, one encounters churches which mount a robust defense of capitalism, often as part of a right-leaning political package.

The latter two approaches tend to rest on (at least) three assumptions: 1. The Bible engages with economic issues; 2. The Bible clearly encourages one approach to modern economic practice; 3. The Pastor’s job is to know the correct answer to point 2.

The first assumption, as I have already indicated, is a pretty good one. The Bible regularly addresses economic concerns, from the command to Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it, right through to the kings bringing their glory into the New Jerusalem in Revelation (on the supposition that their “glory” includes the products of culture). It surfaces in obvious ways in the commands in Deuteronomy to permit gleaning, and in more subtle ways in places like Revelation 18, where “Babylon” is condemned for its luxurious self-indulgence and its exploitation of subject lands.

But the latter two assumptions are highly questionable. Let us start with point 2. The economic world of the Bible does of course have some connections with modern economies, but there are significant differences as well. A caricature may help make the point. We can imagine a toga-clad forebear of Scrooge McDuck swimming in a sea of gold coins as a paradigm for the ancient view of wealth. I have it, you don’t, and it’s all stashed away in my vault far from your prying hands. This is significantly different from a modern person with a stock portfolio, whose wealth is in fact active paying salaries, funding factory building, and doing all sorts of other things. This hardly frees the modern rich person from the need to be generous and self-sacrificial. But it does raise interesting questions as to how loving your neighbor works itself out in a complex global economy.

Assumption 3 is even more questionable. Unless you happen to have an especially handy pastor, you wouldn’t typically call upon them to fix your burst pipes. You would call a plumber. Why do we imagine it is any different with economics? The minister’s job is to orient people to the landscape of God’s word, not to imagine she can traverse every square foot herself. Rather than promulgate half-baked economic theories, pastors need to equip economists and business people and NGO activists to be the sorts of Christians who can use their unique abilities to further God’s kingdom.

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

A big God requires that we think big. Perhaps the reason our churches aren’t thriving is because we haven’t thought big enough? Right?

So, we set big goals for ourselves and our places of ministry, our churches. BHAG—Big Hairy Audacious Goals—is the current battle cry from a couple of years ago. Big Hairy Audacious Goals for prayer: (“It’s not enough for a few people to pray. Imagine what God could do if thousands of people prayed for the same thing at the same time, preferably at the same place?”). Big Hairy Audacious Goals for evangelism: (“Pick a number, any number; how many dare we save for Christ?”) Big Audacious Hairy Goals for missions: (“Dare we strategize campaigns that would encompass whole countries, even entire continents?”). Big Hairy Audacious Goals for churches: (“Big churches require big programs and big budgets designed to bulge our imaginations”). “We receive not because we ask not.”

To drive these goals, we, of course, need a vision. A neighborhood corner store kind of vision will not do. We need a mega-store, Wal Mart-Home-Depot kind of vision. We need an expansive vision, a great vision that matches the bigness of God. Dare I say, to truly honor God, we need a vision that explores the very frontiers of God’s providence in our lives? “If there is no vision, the people perish.”

And, of course, a big vision requires a certain type of leader. Big, thick, deep voices are required to not only think and articulate big, deep, expansive thoughts, but also provide the will to see these mega-visions through to their end. Leaders need to be out front—way out in front--of their organizations, calling their people to the kind of obedience required to fulfill these big visions. We need more big daydreamers, daydreamers for God’s glory.

In the midst of all of this mega-vision casting we hear a thin small voice: “God hates visionary dreaming.” Come again? A wisp of a voice it is, indeed, almost in auditable. Have we heard him right? The logic of the words run so counter to the current orthodoxy of obedience. There it is again: “God hates visionary dreaming.”

Allow me to put the words into context. Quoting from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's, Life Together,

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Bonhoeffer's creaky, sixty-plus year old words about Christian community fall like a thud on the current evangelical landscape. They just do not add up in our current economics of obedience. The words sound downright counter-intuitive to what we know of the way God works in our lives and expects of us. But are they wrong?

Perhaps Bonhoeffer's words expose a growing theological presumption on our part, a presumption driven by a deficient understanding of who God is in the economy of His design for His world. As well intended as our big designs are on behalf of God and His Kingdom, are they not sometimes tainted ever so lightly with our own hubris? Does God need us to fulfill His Kingdom here on earth? Certainly. By an act of His grace, He has providentially written us into His grand redemptive story. But, does He really need us in the ways we often design for Him? I sometime think if God were somehow written out of the big plans we have for Him in fulfilling His Kingdom, it would take an uncomfortable amount of time for us to realize His absence. At the end of the day, our grand designs for God are wonderfully expendable.

Perhaps the net effect of our well-intended pandering for doing great things for God is that our big goals and big visions and big plans sometime overshadow the hard work of obedience. Cast our eyes back to the narrative of Scripture and Church History. What is the pattern we see? Do we really see the great imprint of God’s work in redemptive history as the product of well conceived, humanly orchestrated, BHAG plans? Not really. More times than not, God’s story is one of steadfast, obedient people being caught up and transformed by a divine plan that extends far beyond their own best intensions. It may be that God’s work is periodically manifest in dramatic fashion. More often than not, however, the work of God is an exercise in plain, hard obedience.

It is easy enough to throw out big numbers, make big promises, set a big strategy that get our juices flowing. And, we would think these are harmless. But are they? Doug Birdsall—Executive Director of Lausanne and our own Director of the J Christy Wilson Center for World Missions—has made the observation that one of the dangerous trends in the mission’s movement today involves many of the current mega-strategies going on in missions. On the surface, setting big goals for winning millions of souls for Christ appears to be the very thing that will excite our imaginations and incite our prayers. In reality, they have had the effect of diverting much needed attention and resources from the really hard work of life long missions efforts by so many faithful missions agencies.

But, finally, Bonhoeffer's words are mostly directed toward church leaders. Leadership is a delicate thing, isn’t it? Looking across the landscape of the church today, don’t we see enough examples of leadership blinded by ambition, but falsely camouflaged as faithfulness? This is not to say that Christian leaders with big, deep visions aren’t sincere, but, isn’t this the point? Sincerity is a dangerous gatekeeper to what is truthful and right. Our hearts are so vulnerable to our own self-deceptive ways.

What is the antidote to this self-deception for those of us in leadership roles in the Church? Contrary to what we would guess looking at the row upon rows of books on leadership located at not only Border’s but also our neighborhood Christian bookstore, the New Testament really speaks very little about being a good leader. There really is so little biblical evidence for the need for big visionary dreamers. The clarion call of the Gospels is all about being good followers. This is what Jesus asks of us, to be humble dreamers with enough sense to follow Him.

Falling in Love

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Let’s call her Martha Kavinski. She was my first secretary at the first church I served as pastor just out of seminary. When they invented New Englanders, they carved her in New Hampshire granite and pointed to her thereafter as the model for the rest of us. She was tough as nails, she was utterly undiplomatic, and most of all, she did not like me. She met me at the stairways leading up to my office at the church on my first day, and right then and there, I felt like a first grader on the first day of class looking up at raw authority.

It did not take me long to realize that Martha was not the only one not immediately enthralled with my presence. The congregation was peppered with individuals who had been at the church a long, long time, and they wanted to make it clear to me early on that life had gone on reasonably well before I arrived and probably would go on just as well after I departed.

My experience, I am sure, is not unusual to most of you in ministry. Although my first years were not a disaster, they were not easy. Who would have thought that moving the church library to a more public location so that it actually could be used by the children of the congregation would provoke three meetings and an act of the full board of the church?

In hindsight, perhaps the only thing that saved me was what many would consider a grave liability on my part. I entered into the world of this three hundred year old church without a clear set of ambitions for the congregation. Perhaps too naïve for a clear plan, I fell back on something far more basic: Gradually, unconsciously, seemingly against my will, I found that I began to fall in love with this congregation, Martha and all.

In working with students and young pastors these past years at the seminary, I have noticed a growing trend that hints at good news and bad news. Perhaps buoyed by a cottage industry of church resources, pastors are entering their ministries with a growing awareness of the envisioning process required for healthy congregational life. That’s the good news. The bad news is that often time these well-intended visions of what a congregation should become comes with airtight, tone-death agendas.

A look at these agenda-driven processes from the inside looking out bears reflection. As a person who is now facing his mid-fifties, I can more readily fit into the skin of the long-time parishioner who has committed years of labor and well-intended, if often misguided, leadership in a church. The parishioner’s kids may have been born and nurtured in the church; he or she may have helped to develop and taken ownership of a program that at one time clearly met the needs of the congregation; he or she may have spent countless Saturday mornings toiling over the church lawn.

What does that parishioner see and feel when a pastor enters into the life of a church with a satchel full of good ideas on how his or her church needs to change. Change the worship service. Eliminate the hymnal. Get rid of a timeworn program. Re-organize the committee structure of the church. No doubt many of these things might benefit the church greatly and might be essential for new growth, both spiritually and numerically. But, on the face of it, what do these things say to those who, apparently, are in need of change?

I am convinced that churches are less in need of pastors’ well-designed agendas than their love. Falling in love with a congregation is an amazing legacy to give to a church. The measure of that love, like marriage, involves loving churches exactly as they are, with all their imperfections, before seeking more of them.

Martha died at 75 and I count one of the high moments of my ministry at that church the eulogizing of her at her funeral. We became fast friends in Christ. In the end, she saw what I saw in the subsequent six years of our ministry together. That creaky old church grew ten fold. I am convinced it changed and grew in large measure because the congregation genuinely felt loved by its pastoral staff. It is amazing what love can do when love comes without strings attached.

The Centre for Public Christianity: Communicating Christian Perspectives in Clear and Compelling Ways

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I’m writing this from Sydney, Australia, where I will be participating in the Moore Theological College conference on “The Wisdom of the Cross: Exploring 1 Corinthians.” Today, however, I had the special treat of going to the offices and studio of the Centre for Public Christianity (also known here as CPX) here in Sydney, where they interviewed me on the topics of Paul’s approach to sexual ethics in 1 Corinthians and on issues in Bible translation. For the former topic we did a longer audio interview to be posted as a pod-cast (and possibly a radio bit) and a shorter video interview to be posted online. On the subject of Bible translation we just did a couple of video pieces.

I must say I am very impressed with the work of CPX. They have put together quite nice library of audio, video and print pieces on a wide range of topics of interest to Christians and non-Christians alike. Their key categories are Christianity, Society & Politics, The arts, World Religions, Science & Religion, Ethics, History, and Big Questions.

The folks at CPX are an impressive and gifted group who are committed to articulating the Christian worldview and its implications in a way that is clear and (hopefully) compelling to modern listeners of various stripes. And for their efforts they have gained a reputation with some key media outlets here in Australia as being the key go-to people for getting the/a contemporary Christian perspective on whatever issue comes to their attention.

I encourage you to take a look at the resources available through CPX and to think about how they might be used in your ministry context, and how they might serve as a model for our own challenges in reflecting upon and communicating the implications of the gospel message for the issues of our days.

I think we need a ministry like CPX in North America. In the meantime I give thanks for the example they have set for the rest of us!

Friendship of a Pastor

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

It is quite amazing the things you realize at a funeral. There we all were, almost three hundred friends and family members, all of us there to honor my father who had just passed away a couple of days earlier. They came from all over the Midwest. The older folks, representing his five full-time and several interim pastorates sitting in the front rows to hear better, were the most conspicuous.

We laid my father to rest, and in doing so, we were really laying to rest sixty years of faithful ministry. It was my task to eulogize him for the family. As I looked out over the mourners that day, and particularly those tired souls in the front rows, I couldn’t help but think of the kinds of relationships that were being represented there before me.

How had they perceived my father? There my father was before us, first, seen through the eyes of a wife, certainly the most intimate of the relationships being represented. And, then, there were the four grown boys, less intimate but equally loving. There were four daughters-in-law. How did daughters tethered to this man all these years out of marital pledge rather than blood kinship view this man and his life? There were plenty of nephews and nieces who largely saw him past his prime. There were only a few of his peers left who observed him in his prime—no siblings, but a few brother and sister-in-laws. And finally, with the exception of the church custodian and the ladies who served lunch that day, all of the rest sitting there saw this man through the lens of his ministry amongst them as their one time pastor.

Of this latter group, I couldn’t help thinking of one of dad’s most memorable sayings while I was growing up: “My best friends are ex-parishioners.” Certainly he never made this little adage public, but there was something in dad’s past that always made him wary of getting too close to those he served. Perhaps it was a piece of pastoral wisdom that he learned in his seminary days from the forties.

Whatever it was, in hindsight I think this self-imposed ministerial convention left my dad privately lonely. Publicly, no one would have guessed it. Dad was a big, gregarious man. Our home was a big, hospitable place. Our family life was cluttered with people from all walks of life. Dad’s life was filled with relationships, but at the end of the day, few of those relationships could easily fall under the category of friendship, narrowly defined. Most of his friends sat outside the church door, at least of the church he was currently serving. Only when he left a church would he express friendship openly to certain special people.

The wisdom of this little saying of dad’s can easily be disputed? Is it wise for pastors to nurture friendships within their own congregations? If not, are pastors, then, doomed to a life of solitude? Aside for his or her family, where else is the source of community for those who are to oversee community to come from? What was dad so fearful of? And, what advice should young pastors be given as they enter into a profession that is enormously challenging, potentially filled with conflict, and often lonely?