There’s More to Church Than Just Attending

My father was not a converted man when my younger sister and I were growing up, but even so he attended church with the family Sunday morning and night without fail. I’m sure he believed in what the church stood for and felt the value of attending — at least for the children’s sake.

I will never know fully what his decision to attend contributed to my own life’s decisions. Neither of my Sunday School buddies, Fred and Howard, had fathers who ever turned up at church and both of them fell away from any church connections when they were 15 or so. Fred died of a heart attack when he was 31 and Howard had a checkered life and he, too, has been gone for many years.

As valuable as mere church attendance might be for either believers or unbelievers, it is far from the whole story when it comes to the Biblical understanding of church.

“Church” in the New Testament does not refer to a building or auditorium. The simplest translation for the word in English is “assembly.” Literally the word means “the called out” or the people of God whom he calls to assemble together. It means a gathering of believers — the “set-apart-ones.”

The Apostle Paul enhances our understanding of church when he further represents it as a body – a vital organism (1 Cor.12:12-27). This analogy indicates the living nature of the church. And just as a body has arms and legs, eyes and ears, internal organs, etc., all of which are subject to a common control center — the mind — so the church has living members who exercise special gifts in and through the assembly under the direction of the supreme head, Jesus Christ. These members thus contribute in an orderly way to the church’s communal life.

The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 has much to say about exercising these gifts to give the whole body order and usefulness.

And to the church in Rome he wrote, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully” (Rom. 12: 6-8).

The gifts God gives to the members of his church are varied for a good reason – they are to enhance the health and witness of the whole body. But the one gift, fundamental to all else, is the gift of God’s Spirit. He awakens us with the life of God (Eph. 2:4-5). That is called the new birth. And then he “gifts” us to serve in and through the workings of Christ’s body (Acts 1:4).

From these passages it is clear especially for Christians that the central idea is to participate as a living member, and to contribute to worship and ministry!

You might wonder what became of my father’s church involvement after my sister and I left home. He responded to the gospel at age 61.

He had “attended” church for nearly all his adult life but now he had become a “living part” of the church — a member of Christ’s body. He went suddenly to be with the Lord when he was 83, leaving that comforting witness behind him.

Why We Attend Church

From infancy onward, my younger sister, Eunice, and I were taken to church. When I was 16 I made a weak effort to declare that I was now old enough to choose when I would and would not attend. It was a trial balloon and my little English mother quickly punctured it. She put one finger on the dinner table and said, “Young man, so long as your feet are under this table you’ll go to church when church is on.”

Later, when Kathleen and I were first married we lived across the Queen Elizabeth Way from Lorne Park College, west of Toronto. On Sundays, whenever we were not away singing or preaching somewhere, we walked the long gravel lane to the main building morning and evening to join faculty and students in Christian worship. On Wednesday nights we made the same trek to attend vespers.

You might conclude that after our 64 years together we now attend church without thought and by sheer habit, and there’s some truth to that. But we have additional reasons.

We attend church because we are Christians and the Christian Scriptures compel us to do so. Look at the Old Testament sequence in developing Sabbath worship. There was the weekly Sabbath in commemoration of creation (Ex. 20: 8-11) and a reminder of the people’s release from captivity (Deut. 5: 12-15). There were also the special occasions when throngs gathered in Jerusalem to worship in remembrance of certain great events of Israel’s history — Passover, for example.

Much later the dispersed Jews built synagogues where they could meet on the Sabbath and listen to the reading of the Law. It was a weekly practice and Isaiah had even declared earlier that the keeping of the Sabbath gave assurance that God would give his people a special blessing (Isa. 58: 13,14).

On the evening of the day of our Lord’s resurrection, the disciples gathered for what became the first Lord’s Day celebration. (Lk.24:18-36). But as a second generation of believers came along, the commitment to attend worship to some seemed less important. So believers were exhorted: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day [of Christ’s return] approaching” (Heb. 10:27).

Another compelling reason why we maintain the church-going habit is that the Bible exhorts that when his people assemble the Scriptures are to be expounded for their profit (1 Tim. 4:13). Some assert that we could read them for ourselves or hear their exposition by means of television or recordings. But there’s something about being in the company of God’s people for this exercise that can’t be matched. We share a common agreement and respond with a common “Amen.”

We also experience that attending church each Lord’s Day gives a divine order to life and this plays back on the way the whole week is lived. Turning up to worship is like resetting life’s priorities or getting one’s marching orders. That may be one reason why the Psalmist said, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Ps. 122:1).

Finally, we attend church because in doing so we join forces with a company of God’s people who are committed to certain ministries in community and beyond. In doing so we help to keep a Christian witness alive. For examples, we support pastoral ministries to the bereaved, the hospitalized, the shut-ins, parents of the new-born. We are instructed on how moral issues in society should engage us. We support gospel, educational, and medical ministries for the needs of people in other lands. Local churches are often the unsung heroes of the Christian mandate to go into all the world with the gospel.

What goes on in church, we admit, can become hum drum or lacking in the excitement of faith. But, as Carl Bangs once said, “So long as the Bible continues to be read in church, there is hope.”

So, as we were taught in early childhood that attending church regularly is crucially important for Christians, so now we pass on that counsel to our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. We say: Know the Lord; experience him in a personal way; then find a church where you can be loyal and make regular attendance and participation a key feature of your lives.

Ushers Are Ministers Too

I once served a church nearly 50 years ago where I had the privilege of training a newly-chosen corps of ushers. For Howard, the recently-elected head usher, I drew up a sheet of instructions and expectations. The entire group of us then met in the sanctuary on a Sunday afternoon to acquaint ourselves with the plans and to rehearse.

There was enthusiasm and camaraderie. It made these men feel like what they were called upon to do was important. The following Saturday, the day before our Sunday launch, Howard hosted a steak dinner at the nearby lake for fellowship and final instructions.

The instructions included such expectations as that ushers arrive 30 minutes early, dress uniformly in suit and tie for morning service, and for the evening, in jacket and matched pants; that they refrain from such distractions while on duty as socializing with other ushers as the large congregation gathered; that they remain on duty until the congregation had dispersed; be prepared for any emergency (with details given); and notify their team leader if they were unable to serve on any particular Sunday.

As I recall, the men were divided into two teams. To serve the large sanctuary required 12 ushers, three for each side aisle and six for the center aisle. If the balcony was to be in use, that would require an extra two ushers. There were also back-up personnel to be called upon whenever needed.

I had asked ushers to face forward as they passed the offering plates rather than appearing to peer down the row as offerings were given. My rationale was that this was to be a moment between each worshiper and God.

Meanwhile, in teaching moments I taught the congregation that the time for the reception of offerings in a service was not an intermission from worship while mundane things were cared for. Instead, the offering was itself a moment of worship. And I had made the point that in that moment of worship the ushers were not “taking up collections;” rather, they were “receiving offerings.”

Because I sat near the pulpit while the ushers received the offerings I could see this team of men at work each Sunday as they seated late-comers and later received tithes and offerings. Each usher was a committed believer, respected by the congregation. They went at their assignment with conviction. I am warmed as I recall it.

During the early days of this new regimen, I was counseling with a young man who came to see me because he was distressed over his increasing doubt and fading interest in following Christ. I recall his saying several times in our visits, “I just don’t care.” He made it clear that he was contemplating abandoning the church and its faith because of his inner conflict.

As I recall, it was during his third visit on a Monday that he told me what was keeping him from following his impulses. He said, “I look at those men who take the offering and carry it forward to the communion table and I say to myself, ‘These men are not dumb. They’re intelligent, committed, and they have a real faith.’”

Just seeing them at worship in that way had arrested him momentarily. For him, it was not the moment of an instant returning. The Lord was dealing with him about issues at deeper levels. Nevertheless, he had used a corps of faithful, believing ushers to get the young man’s attention while he dealt with him.

So you see why I say that ushers, when they serve well, are ministers too.

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Even Right Decisions Can Bring Pain

When the invitation came we were a young couple, 35, serving a growing church in New Westminster, a beautiful city of 40,000 in Western Canada. The phone call was from a conference superintendent in the Midwestern United states asking us to come and serve a larger congregation in Greenville, Illinois – a congregation where great numbers of college students attended.

The invitation created conflict. There were reasons for us to stay where we were. We loved the people and they loved us. The growth of the church was exciting. We loved the city. Our children were settled in a good school. But I had said to a favorite professor back in seminary that I would like some day to be a college pastor, and here was the opportunity.

Day after day I wrestled with the invitation. Kathleen did the same. We talked over the pros and cons. She said she would not leave our place in Western Canada if our profoundly retarded son, John David, had to be moved from the nearby institution where he was happily situated. Apart from that consideration, she entrusted the decision largely to me.

I knew that our decision was more than a mere choice about “furthering my career.” I didn’t think of what I was doing as a “career.” I was ordained for a lifetime of ministry and we were trying to live out a “calling” — a vocation. There had to be some right direction for us that would be in harmony with a divinely-approved plan. Although in our denomination a Conference Appointments Committee assigns ordained personnel to their place of service, moving from one conference to another was usually a personal decision.

Caught in the toils of that decision, one morning I went from my study into the empty sanctuary of the church and knelt by a green pulpit chair. I had to decide. In that moment of anguish, with resolute finality I knew the answer. We would go. I told Kathleen. I phoned the conference superintendent to say that our response was, yes.

I wasn’t prepared for what followed. When we told our congregation of our decision we became acutely aware of the strength of the bond between us. There were tears. There was grieving on both sides. We began to feel forlorn. I now question from a position of greater maturity: could we have found a way to break the news to them more gradually. Pastoral relationships are far more than mere business connections to be severed.

In my distress, I phoned the superintendent who had invited us. I told him I had given my word and I would not break it, but I requested that he release me from my commitment. His response left no doubt. He would not release me. At his end, the Appointments Committee was counting on my coming. That closed a door with a thud.

My anguish increased. We were still being pulled in two directions. I was in such turmoil that I walked the streets of our city seeking respite. We both lived with this tension for a few weeks.

Then pieces of our furniture that we were selling began to disappear. The half-vacant parsonage made the reality more vivid. Finally, two of our beloved members took us and our three children, Carolyn, 12, Donald, 9, and Robert, 7, to the train for our trip across Canada where we would spend a few days with family and then go on to Detroit, enter the United States, buy a used car, and start the five hundred mile trek to our new field of service south of Chicago.

The grieving didn’t end immediately. We grieved the loss of a beloved congregation. We grieved the loss of an urban complex we had come to love. We grieved the loss of the beautiful landscape of the Lower Mainland of British Columbia ringed as it was by mountains. And it took us most of a year to become comfortable with a different sort of congregation in a very different community. But we see all of this now as the inevitable stress of making a major change.

Our move began a thirteen year ministry at a college center which brought us lifelong friendships, countless good memories, and former student/congregant connections locally, across the continent and beyond. Only last week I received communications from three former students from different places, each speaking of the help I had been to them at a crucial time of decision. From a lifetime of ministry we now have contacts with people who back then were students and now are grandparents living in retirement.

Seeking and knowing God’s will is a mysterious undertaking. Certainty of knowing his will did not in this case initially introduce calm. In retrospect we know we made the right decision, though at the time our minds were torn.

But it is some comfort to know that when we are making such destiny-shaping choices, even if the choice we make should prove to be the less desirable of two, Our Lord can take our blunders or missteps and bring good from them. That is only one aspect of his provident mercy and it is a great consolation to those who sincerely attempt to live in obedience to him by faith.

A Pastor’s Wife at Work

When I married Don, I knew that he was moving toward some form of ministry as a life vocation, but I didn’t know for sure the specific form it would take. I knew only that he was a ministerial student and would have several years of education to finish.

I also knew from the start that I would support him in whatever work he felt called to do. That was the way most wives felt back in the forties of the last century.

I was a primary school teacher when we were married and he was a student and staff member at Lorne Park College west of Toronto, Ontario. After we lived there three-and-a-half years, we went on to Greenville College in Illinois with our two-year-old daughter, Carolyn, so Don could finish his final two years of college. From there, we went on to Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, for another three years of training.

By then it was clear that the focus of his ministry was to be the pastorate. In fact, he was assigned to be pastor of the Free Methodist church in Lexington, nearby, for his three years of seminary, and that’s when I got my first taste of what it meant to stand with him in that sort of ministry.

Besides caring for the three little children we had by then and taking as much of the burden of the household as I could while he studied, I made myself available to teach Sunday School and often entertained seminary students on Sundays so they could canvass the community with my husband.

When we went to our second church, the Free Methodist church in New Westminster, British Columbia, I discovered what standing by my pastor husband really meant. He led the church in a growth spurt that meant new prospects every Sunday, new programs to meet the needs of a growing congregation, and lots of social entertaining in our parsonage to get to know newcomers and otherwise promote fellowship and community.

One aspect of our experience stands out in my mind. We both worked hard at our assignment and my husband did lots of evening calling to follow up on new prospects and care for other pastoral duties. This usually involved two or three nights a week. During these times, I was at home alone with our four little children.

It wasn’t that we didn’t have time together. He was home for the noon and evening meals most days. We had simple, inexpensive, but good vacations together. We certainly were in touch with each other in the social life of the church.

But one night when my husband was out calling and I had put the children to bed and the house was quiet, I found myself wondering, “What is this all about anyway? I don’t like being alone so much in the evenings. There’s got to be more to life than this.”

After musing about this for some time I suddenly said to myself, “When I free my husband to be out doing the Lord’s work like this, I am really a part of that call he’s making. It is my ministry too.” That set my heart at rest. I never after that had the same feeling of personal deprivation about releasing him to work in the harvest field of the
Lord. And such mutual service has enriched our nearly 62 years together.

A Pastor at Work

From the start of our journey together, Kathleen and I have shared a common view of the pastorate and how a pastor should apply himself to his work. We both had strong work ethics. Recently an incident from those early days came to mind that we have both chuckled over occasionally and think worth sharing.

In August 1974, we had left a busy pastorate in Greenville, Illinois, to move to Canada. I had just been elected as one of five bishops of the Free Methodist Church of North America with special assignment to give onsite leadership to our conferences in Canada, and we were getting settled in Toronto.

Church leaders here had bought a commodious house in Toronto and because the assignment was new I was setting up my office in the basement until such time as we were able to acquire a building as a Ministries Center. The finished basement was large enough to meet this need adequately.

First, the house had to be put in order, furniture properly placed, kitchen set up, curtains hung, pictures arranged, and Kathleen had to care for dozens of little details to make the place both pleasantly livable and at the same time suitable as a semipublic building.

At the same time, I had to start by moving in some office furniture, having bookcases built, getting a telephone installed, ordering stationery, making arrangements in a separate room for a secretary, and otherwise caring for the myriad of little details that go with starting an office from zero.

My work as overseer also began immediately, which meant alternating times of being at home and on the road.

We addressed our tasks with energy. Sometimes we worked separately, sometimes together, and every now and then we dropped what we were doing in house and headed out to make some purchase or acquire some service. At the same time, very soon after arriving we began visiting churches where I was to speak on weekends.

After a week or so at this, Kathleen sometimes came down to my room to ask for help with some chore that needed attention. By then I was getting settled into a demanding routine, so on one such occasion I explained to her that we should think of me as though I were on duty in an office 20 miles across the city, just as any lay person might be. It should assumed that I was at the office or out of town during working hours, and we needed to save various chores for free evenings or off-hours.

She saw the sense of that idea immediately and agreed. So we went about our tasks, she continuing to add the touches that make a house a home — painting this room, scrubbing there, cleaning windows, organizing drawers, setting out knick knacks. At the same time, I began to immerse myself in my new assignment: getting acquainted with a new constituency, communicating by telephone or mail, working with superintendents, receiving visitors, and attending to new situations needing attention near and far.

The plan she and I had agreed upon worked fine, but she added a pleasant, even a surprising wrinkle to it. After our breakfast together, at 8 a.m. I would stand at the top of the stairs and say, “I am going to work now,” and she would come running to kiss me goodbye. We laughed over it then; and now, thirty-five years later, we still chuckle when that work-a-day formality comes to mind.

One Week in the Life of Pastor John Doe

(This story is a composite. Everything in this pastor’s week is possible. And not just for the mega-church pastor. Pastors who read this may find their vision of the scope of a busy, hard working pastor’s duties expanded. And lay readers who read it may have their own awareness of the pastoral task enlightened and their appreciation for the demands of the pastor’s work raised)

Please meet Pastor John Doe. Secular people may not understand his title though they know it has something to do with the church. A few even joke that it is a one-hour-a-week Sunday morning job. Here is a glimpse into one typical week, and the kind of thinking that drives Pastor Doe.

HIS WEEK STARTS ON TUESDAY

It’s eight o’clock Tuesday morning and Pastor John Doe is closeted in his study, reading, researching, meditating, and praying as he lays out pulpit plans for the following Sunday. In the morning he’ll preach his last sermon in a year-long series from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “The Bedrock of Obedience” (Matt. 7:24-27). In the evening it will be, The Christian and Gambling.

When he hears his administrative assistant arrive at nine, the phone in the office next to his study begins to ring. She thoughtfully protects him from calls that can wait. But at 11:45 she breaks his solitude to tell him that the conference superintendent has called; the new Smeaton baby has arrived (a boy); and Jane Hewlett of the Mother’s Morning Out Circle phoned to ask if he would lunch with them this coming Thursday noon and bring a brief devotional. Oh, yes, and Mrs. Grundy phoned to complain that the sound system had not been loud enough Sunday and if this problem isn’t fixed she’ll just stay home and listen to a television preacher.

There’ll be no time for jogging, this noon. By 12:20 he is enjoying his lunch alone — a sandwich, an apple, and a thermos of decaf. By 1:15 he’s on his way to the hospital, first to give thanks with the Smeatons on the arrival of their son, then to visit a high-schooler who has had shoulder surgery, and finally to bring God’s comfort to Grandma Simms in the cancer ward.

By 3:15 he’s back at the church for an appointment with a troubled single mother. She fears her 13-year-old daughter, Alene, is getting into drugs. The symptoms are ominous — secretive conduct, falling grades, a forged bank withdrawal, and wide mood swings. Pastor Doe has had a good relationship with Alene so he assures the mother that he will get in touch with her and he’ll also put the mother in touch with a support group. He prays with her but both know that, if her fears are true, there may be hard days ahead.

In the few spare minutes before a 4:30 appointment with a young couple, he chooses congregational songs for next Sunday morning service. The couple arrive. They’re students at a community college who want to talk about marriage. As their story unfolds they confide that they want to wait until they’re married — they want to be chaste — but the struggle is intense. They are deeply in love. The pastor’s sympathetic ear and accepting response calms them and enables them to talk rationally about solutions. He suggests they talk with their parents (one middle-aged couple and a divorced mother) about setting an earlier wedding date. He makes another appointment to see them.

At 5:50 he arrives home. After a pleasant meal he has time to play a computer game with his ten-year-old son, Thomas, and read a Bible story to his five-year-old daughter, Cheryl. At 7:50 he slips away to look in on a newly formed building committee at the church. He’s home by 9:15 and in the quietness of the family room he and his wife, Lenore, chat about family matters — a better medication for Cheryl’s asthma, new tires for the van, and conflict at the child care center where she works.

NOT WITHOUT ANXIETIES

It was a successful Tuesday but it hadn’t started that way. Before leaving for the church his own quiet time with the Scriptures had turned out to be a worry time. He had tried meditating on a Psalm but instead he had meditated on unresolved stresses in the church. There were three men he couldn’t please. His vision for growth appeared to be the issue. The recent formation of a building committee had increased the tensions. After all, so far as they were concerned, the church was paying its bills, the building was well kept up, the membership was holding steady, and the people enjoyed being together. They complained to him about little things but were never satisfied when he tried to meet them half way. Maybe trouble was ahead.

This wasn’t the way he liked to spend his prayer time. Before he left his room he had committed the matter to the Lord, but was disappointed with the way the problem had got to him. He had confessed his failure, entreated for grace, and gone to face the day.

Wednesday morning bright and early Pastor Doe is on his way to a city 120 miles to the north. At a one-day interdenominational pastors’ conference the main speaker is a young man who in five years has grown a church of 88 members to a congregation of 850. Pastor Doe’s desire to grow his own church makes him eager to hear this man. On the two and a half hour trip he listens to “Preaching Today” cassettes.

The speaker is tall and sinewy with a ruddy face and sandy curly hair. With a couple of preacher’s stories he establishes rapport and then begins to tell how he achieved remarkable growth at his church. For example, he explains that he had to ease out of the membership a few who were obviously not going to support him. (Pastor Doe flinches inwardly.) Then, he had completely revamped the forms of Sunday worship to make them more sprightly, more energized. He was particularly proud of his church’s Jazz and Rock Praise Band, but when it became a fixture in worship a few more members left. That’s when the influx began. He had made it clear from the outset, he told the conference, that he was in charge, and that “sometimes you have to lose 100 to gain 1000.”

His message troubled Pastor Doe. It sounded like power tactics such as a captain of industry might use to turn around an ailing operation by treating employees as mere units of productivity, dismissing long time workers, and bringing in new personnel — always with his eye on the bottom line.

Pastor Doe gets home by eight; the children are in bed; the house is quiet. He’s glad, because he wants to discuss with his wife what he has heard. He describes to her the speaker’s strategies. Doe is confused. Power tactics can be alluring; they certainly seem to have been effective in one pastor’s good cause.

His wife reminds him about a recent sermon he preached from Ezekiel 34. It was about what God expects his shepherds to do — strengthen the sheep who are weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strays and search for the lost. He knew these were the speaker’s desires too, but the methods seemed heavy-handed. Doe’s wife reminded him of Jesus’ words: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

As they talked, the fog lifted. He remembered that he had been called to be a servant to God’s people, to offer creative leadership, to attempt to take them into greener pastures. He wanted to succeed as much as anyone, but he wasn’t willing to reinvent himself as an authoritarian boss. Pastoral authority, as he understood it, was not to be used to intimidate or manipulate the flock of God’s people entrusted to him.

A STRING OF CHALLENGES

Thursday and Friday bring Pastor Doe a variety of other pastoral challenges: a visit in the home of an elderly couple soon to be moved to a full care facility after 54 years in their own home; visits on two new families; a conversation with an anguished young man who had just been served divorce papers; a look-in at the nearby school gym on a growing youth group.

By telephone, he learns that one of his members had invited a neighbor to a women’s morning Bible study and after only three lessons her neighbor had professed faith in Christ. A shaken father phones to say that they have a pregnant teenaged daughter and she is hostile and defiant about it; the family needs prayer.

FAMILY NIGHT

Friday night is family night for the Does. No phone calls. No television. Just games or a good video or reading aloud from books the children love. When it had dawned on them recently that in this busy church their children were getting lost in the shuffle, his wife and he had decided to devote Friday nights solely to them. The children loved it.

Saturday morning he’s at the church for an extended time of prayer, a review of his sermon notes, a conference with the music director, and time to prepare his pastoral prayer. Saturday afternoon may include a family bike ride or a visit to the indoor community swimming pool or just looking after a few family chores around town.

But in spite of the daily challenges, he can’t shake the discomfort that surfaces in unoccupied moments over the tensions with the three members. He wants it to be different. He attempts to isolate this matter from all the other good things but it isn’t easy. Of one thing he is certain: he is not going to use any techniques to run these members off. That is too simple a way to solve the problem and it doesn’t fit with his understanding of pastoring. If they leave on their own that will be different. If he can’t win them to a larger vision then with God’s help he will be gracious and love them in the Lord — without allowing them to block the forward movement of the congregation.

SUNDAY’S BIG CHALLENGE

He awakens at 5:30 Sunday morning and lies abed a few minutes reflecting on the week past. He wonders: is pastoring just another job or is it a calling? Given the interpersonal tensions and the financial stresses and the heavy workload, is there an easier way to make a living? Most importantly, does this task have a center — something that ties it all together?

As he shaves, he thinks of the worship service just hours away. Only a pastor can know the satisfaction from caring for a flock of God’s dear people. Every part of the task has its rewards, but he reminds himself that seeing the people gather on a Sunday morning to join in Christian worship is a special joy.

It’s not just the sermon. For him, every part of worship has value. He enjoys singing selected praise choruses because they are sprightly, fresh, colorful, like garnish to a meal. The best of them contain truth in small packages. But his people can’t do without the richer content of great hymns. Who, he wonders, could sing Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Jesus, The Very Thought Of Thee,” without feeling linked to generations of believers who have sung those words together spanning 800 years?

Recently, a few in the congregation had complained that Scripture readings from Old and New Testaments in service seemed too formal. A few verses with the sermon should be enough. The complaint had led Pastor Doe only two weeks earlier to share with his board the reasons for reading Scripture as a separate act of worship. He explained that through the ages the Scriptures have been read aloud to acknowledge the authority of God’s word over his people. The Jewish people read them in their synagogues. They were read in the temple. The early Christians read them in their house churches. The Reformers rediscovered their power when read aloud. To use them sparsely in worship now would deny all this.

As he stands quietly with his musicians, praying together before entering the sanctuary to begin the service, he is suddenly aware of the prelude being played by pianist and flutist: Jesus the very thought of thee, with sweetness fills my breast …. The congregation sits quietly, waiting.

EVERY PASTOR NEEDS A FISHING ROD

Monday is always fatigue day for Pastor Doe. He sometimes putters around in the little vegetable garden behind the parsonage, but this is dangerous because needs can surface on Monday that lure him to the church. It’s best for him to get out of town and his favorite spot is the bank of a quiet river a few miles to the south. He loves to sit there under a large willow and let his fishing line dangle in the scarcely moving current. He can think or pray or read and allow the freshness of nature to renew him. The experience clears his mind, and by late afternoon he feels ready to gather up his tackle, stow the Russian novel, and get back into town. Suddenly, a new week looks challenging.

Why Does the Church Ordain for Ministry?

Do you wonder why the Church ordains to ministry?

Does it seem like a waste of energy for someone who is truly called of God — like jumping through hoops?

If so, check this link. (It’s a PDF by the way.)

www.freemethodistchurch.org/PDF%20Files/Leadership/Bishops/Ordination.pdf

Fire the Bright Spots

When I was fresh out of seminary and assigned to my first full-time appointment, in New Westminster, British Columbia, a retired minister, Rev. C. P. Stewart, told me a story I have carried with me throughout my pastoral life. Here it is:

Back in the days when steam-driven locomotives pulled 100-car freight trains across this continent, a westward bound train was laboring up a pass in the Rocky Mountains. Its pace slowed until it finally came to a standstill. The fireman on the locomotive, a younger man, felt helpless.

Riding the caboose at the end of the train was a retired fireman. He walked the length of the long string of boxcars, climbed into the locomotive’s cab, and offered his help. The young fireman was glad to let the retired man take over.

The fireman started shoveling coal from the tender into the firebox. The steam gauge began to rise. Finally, he signaled the engineer to open the throttle. After a couple of sharp jerks, the train began to move again.

Amazed, the young fireman asked his senior what he had done differently. He himself had been shoveling just as hard but without the same results. The senior man opened the door of the firebox. He showed his student that the fire was burning more brightly in some areas than others. Then he said, “You have to fire the bright spots.”

Local churches are complex. There are programs aplenty going on all the time — outreach efforts, children’s ministries, music groups, senior citizens agendas, membership classes, boards, and committees. Although the first duty of pastors is not to be promoters, wise pastors fire the bright spots. They keep the congregation aware of good things that are happening: that the new summer children’s program for the neighborhood has made contact with seven new families; that giving for missions has gone well beyond its annual goal; that the weekend youth retreat witnessed several commitments to Christ.

By firing the bright spots, they can help get their churches get moving again.

Pay Attention to the Children

When my mother could see that I was seriously heading toward becoming an ordained minister, she had only one word of advice for me. She said, “Don, be sure to pay attention to the children.”

My mother was an immigrant from northern England to the rolling prairies of Saskatchewan. She and my father had homesteaded there soon after the turn of the twentieth century. She had had a sixth grade education back in Lancashire and beyond that, her cultural opportunities both there and in Canada had been sparse. But she was a godly woman with good instincts about life.

Were her instincts in this case to be trusted? After all, leading a local church today is a complex assignment, even for modest-sized churches. Sundays with their extra duties seem to come at you about every three days. And there are seemingly endless duties to perform in the interim. It’s easy to become distracted.

In the last of three churches we served, one whole end of the new Christian education building was equipped to care for the little ones. There was the crib room for infants, the middle one for the toddlers, and the larger room for the care of three-year-olds. Often, before entering the sanctuary to lead the second Sunday morning service, I would go into the toddlers room, sit on the floor, and spend a few minutes with the toddlers. This was good for them and good for me. My mother’s advice was not hard for me to take.

When Jesus’ disciples tried to shoo away the children and their parents because they thought the Lord was too busy for them, they were rebuked for their actions. “Let the little children come to me,” Jesus said, “and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Luke 18:16). And after his resurrection, in giving Simon Peter his final assignment, he said, “feed my lambs” (John 21:15).