Pray or Else!

Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. (Luke 18:1)

Pray or quit.

Pray or grow discouraged and drop by the wayside.

Pray or weaken and wither away.

If I were the devil, I would do anything within my power to stop God's people from praying.

If I were the devil, I'd be patting myself on the back about now, since it would appear that very few are praying. Well, praying in any sort of meaningful, situation-altering way, anyway.

No one believed in prayer the way the Lord Jesus did.

Perhaps no subject so permeates the four gospels like prayer. Jesus exhibited it, taught it, reminded His disciples of it, and told stories of people who did it well.

Pray or else, disciple of Jesus.

Your Church Can Solve 90 Percent of Personnel Conflicts Before They Happen

Nothing stresses a pastor like conflicts occurring on his staff. A secretary in the office, the minister of music, the organist, the head custodian--each of them was brought to the leadership team for good reason. Now, here they are threatening the unity of the church--not to say its mission and ministry--by a conflict with another team member.

In my four-plus decades pastoring six churches, I've seen the following (and plenty more, too, let me add) up close and personal....

--a senior staff member addicted to prescription drugs

--staffers using the computer for online porn.

--associate ministers who were protective of their turf, who resented anyone--including the pastor!--intruding to tell them what to do.

--Staffers who wanted to be left alone to do their work and not be asked to cooperate with anyone else

--Staffers who were angry at me about something and shared that little bit of gossip to laypeople in the church before telling me.

--Lazy staff members.

--Ministers who delighted in smutty stories and had flirty ways.

Wow. I'm imagining someone reading this and wondering if I ever worked with a single godly servant of the Lord! Of course I did. The great majority of them were sincere, hard-working, sweet-spirited men and women with servant hearts. And even these above were not bums. Most had endearing qualities about them and had served well in previous churches, according to the recommendations we received on them.

If you add to these the ministers I've known not in my church but in others nearby, we could add adultery, homosexuality, embezzlement, and a host of other conditions to this list.

Any one of these could wreak great damage to a congregation once it gets out that the minister (or one of the ministers) is engaging in such a practice.

Here is my offering today on how to solve a great majority of these conflicts either before they occur or at least before they are allowed to wreck a good church.

The Single Cure-All for Church Eruptions

An epidemic is sweeping our land in the form of church dissension over the smallest of issues.

The pastor wants to begin living by the constitution rather than the whims of a few self-appointed decision-makers. They are up in arms; who does he think he is, a dictator? That's their role.

A Sunday School teacher refuses to cooperate with her church's leadership. She and her little class have been together all these centuries; they certainly do not need to change. Everyone is upset at the high-handed way of the education minister.

The pianist has served that church forty years and now "owns" that little corner of the sanctuary. She has been faithful--let's give her that--but now, at the hint that the pastor might be wanting to replace her with someone actually qualified, her family and extended circle of friends rise up in arms.

An influential member of the congregation gets upset with the pastor for unknown reasons and lets it be known he wants the man replaced and will not take 'no' for an answer. Since he employs half the church, people are afraid to buck him.

Congregations watch in stunned silence as their beloved church tries to self-destruct when a few angry members threaten to bring the whole house down.

What's a pastor to do?

There is an answer, and this is it.

Preaching a Sermon for the Umpteenth Time: The Temptation to "Phone It In."

A football player's head is not in the game and he's just going through the motion. The narrator says he is phoning it in.

The stage actor has said those lines precisely 568 times before audiences and an untold number in rehearsal and in front of his bathroom mirror. He has to really work at his craft, lest he "phone it in."

The teacher has gone over those lessons each year for the last two decades. She could do it blind-folded while making a grocery list. If she's not careful, she'll "phone it in."

Our Lord warned of religious people using "vain repetitions" in their prayers. Putting the mind in neutral and the mouth spouting out those words and phrases we've all learned, as though the Lord hears and answers based on sheer volume. Phoning it in.

You're a retired pastor and travel a good bit. You get invited to guest-supply in various pulpits and speak to congregations that have never heard any of your best stuff. By the third year of this, you've boiled your preaching down to a solid one dozen messages. You're having more fun than you've had in a lifetime of ministry.

And no deacons meetings to attend, no church business conferences to moderate, no angry church members to deal with. You preach, accept a check from your host, pray the Lord's blessings on him and his ministry, and go back home. Next week, another drive to another church to deliver a similar sermon.

Question du jour: How does a minister keep from robotically and mindlessly mouthing the same platitudes over and over in a sermon he has preached ten, twenty, fifty times?

It's Sunday morning, three a.m., and that's my challenge for later this morning. Fortunately, I know the answer. (What, you ask, are you doing up at this hour of the morning? Answer: I'm a preacher and I'm delivering a sermon in a few hours. That's what I'm doing up at 3 a.m.)

Ignore the Culture, Preacher, to Your Own Detriment

The big event on my Spring calendar is a pastors-and-wives retreat for English-speakers in Europe. We'll be there several days and have time to run out to Pompeii and check on Vesuvius and such. (This is the Amalfi Coast of Italy, near Naples.)

Piece of cake, right? Not so fast.

The executive director of the International Baptist Convention, my hosts, pointed out in a recent email a thing or two I might want to keep in mind.

All the retreat participants speak English, but they are not all Americans. Therefore, guest speakers from the States have to be careful not to use idioms and references that only those from Yankeeland (my term, not his) will understand.

I knew that, but I had not thought of it.

So, I started going over some of my choice stories. These are tales of growing up in rural Alabama, of small church preachers and narrow-minded Baptists and Southern ways. Uh oh. We might have a little problem here. I'm going to have to revisit all my messages and stories and illustrations. And even then, once we begin in Italy, there will need to be some fine-tuning and tweaking.

What happens when the preacher does not make an attempt to learn the culture of his audience and adapt to it?

He messes up royally.

10 Ways Churches Show That They Want You

My friends keep teaching me that it's not enough to pose a negative and let it lay there. What's the positive? So, recently....

When I did an article on this page about "how churches show you are not welcome," among the comments it generated--and on Facebook, it pulled in more than here at the website--was one asking me to do the reverse: 'Tell us how churches show you are welcome." Great idea.

So, I posed that question to the 4,200 or so FB friends I've managed to amass in the last couple of years. And the comments began flying in.

Oddly enough, however, all the comments on how a church shows it wants you boil down to the same thing.

10 Signals That Say "You Are Not Welcome In This Church"

"You shall love (the stranger) as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Leviticus 19:34).

As a retired pastor who preaches in a different church almost every Sunday, a fun thing I get to do is study the church bulletins (or handouts or worship guides) which everyone receives on entering the building. You can learn a great deal about a church's priorities and personality in five minutes of perusing that sheet.

As an outsider--that is, not a member or regular here--I get to see how first-timers read that material and feel something of the same thing they feel. I become the ultimate mystery shopper for churches. That is not to say that I pass along all my (ahem) insights and conclusions to pastors. Truth be told, most leaders do not welcome judgments from visitors on what they are doing and how they can do it better. So, unless asked, I keep it to myself. And put it in my blog. (smiley face goes here)

Now, in all fairness, most churches are eager to receive newcomers and want them to feel at home and even consider joining. And the worship bulletins reflect that with announcements of after-benediction receptions to meet the pastors, the occasional luncheon for newcomers to learn about the church and get their questions answered, and free materials in the foyer.

Now, surely all the other churches want first-timers to like them and consider joining. No church willingly turns its nose up at newcomers, at least none that I know of. But that is the effect of our misbehavior.

Here are ten ways churches signal newcomers they are not wanted.

The Sin That Worries Me Most: Sloth

Some of the laziest people I know are workaholics. But most aren't.

The lazy-overachievers push themselves night and day in a vain effort to convince themselves they are not lazy, not sloths or couch potatoes or blights on humanity. But most lazy people are under-achievers of the first order.

The workaholic has his own demons to tame, so we will leave him to them.

The rest of us are just cotton-pickin' lazy.

Who would have thought that the ancients would have identified sloth as one of the deadly sins? It looks so tame, so benign. It doesn't hurt anyone, but just lies there on the couch doing nothing. How could that be a sin?

The sloth rises from the bed at 10 am and whiles away the day, then rises from the couch at 10 pm wondering where the time went. Where the time went is into the trash bin, into deletion, never to be recaptured.

The sinfulness of sloth is that it wastes life. It denies that "this is the day the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24). It takes what is God's and buries it. Sloth is life-denying, and thus rebellion against the purposeful Creating God.

I know about laziness. You too?

Now, I'm known as the guy who rises early and works late, who gets up in the night to tweak something and stays at it for hours.

As a young minister, I went for years without a vacation or taking an off day. From the outside, it looked noble to everyone except my longsuffering family. On the inside, I was living in fear. I was afraid of being accused of laziness, of not doing enough, of not earning my pay.

From the outside, that does not look like sloth. But my heart is where sloth resides.

In the same way that some part of me is an unbeliever, a thief, a liar, and an adulterer, I am lazy. The urge is ever-present, the all-too human tendency toward rebellion and indulgence. Staving it off is a never-ending chore.

Now, one reason we know laziness is so prevalent across humanity is that Scripture--particularly Proverbs--has so much to say on this subject, none of it good.

Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise (Proverbs 6:6). The ant, says Solomon, is worthy of our study. Unlike the ancient philosopher-king, we have seen nature films depicting colonies of ants working and cooperating and fighting. We stand in awe of this little critter.

Now, Solomon clearly knew nothing approaching what today's scientists have learned about ants. And yet, what he said is exactly on target. The ant, as well as the squirrel in my back yard, puts us to shame.

The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly (Proverbs 26:16). The person who does not get up off the couch to run the vacuum or wash the dishes or to earn his pay in the office always has reasons and excuses.

For the record, here are the Proverb references to sloth and laziness: 10:4,26; 12:24; 13:4; 15:19; 19:15; 20:4; 26:14-16.

First, let's say what laziness and sloth are not.

The Biggest Problem About Prayer

This is one that almost never gets addressed. It was put to me this week by my friend Nancy. Her note, almost verbatim:

Someday I need you to help me understand why we are told when we pray and believe our prayers will be answered. Then people die in spite of our pleas for health. I know it is within God's will but why ask if His will is what is going to occur anyway? I know thousands of prayers were said for (a friend who died some years back) and for my friend I saw buried today. Thousands are being said for (a friend with cancer) yet she is in a battle for her life.

We are told "you have not because you ask not." Maybe this would be a good blog topic. I can't be the only one who struggles with these thoughts.

If you only knew, Nancy.

On this blog, I probably have fifty articles dealing with prayer in one way or the other. And--truth be known--most of them skirt around the edges of this subject.

So, let's try to meet it head on.

Let's start by this upfront admission: Things are not as simple as they seem at first.

Frankly, as one who likes things simple and cut-and-dried, this is painful to admit.

The Bible actually does say things like: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives...." (Matthew 6:7-8) And this: "Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it" (John 14:13-14).

There are plenty more, but those two are sufficient to establish that the blanket promises are out there.

What are serious disciples of the Lord Jesus to make of such prayer promises?

Penetrating Your Culture: How to Get Started II

You move to Miami Beach from Sand Mountain, Alabama, in order to start a church.

Big assignment. Not because there aren't zillions of needy people there and not because you are not committed and zealous.

The first problem is you don't know these people, do not speak their language--actual or cultural--and have no idea how to connect with them.

So, we come back to our question on penetrating a culture: "Where would you get started?"

Our initial answer was: "Ask Questions."

But questioning is useless without this: "Be very quiet and listen."

If you are not there to learn, no surface respect for their traditions and no superficial asking of questions will make a bit of difference.

Nearly a year ago, Chris and Kassy brought their two small children from Kansas to New Orleans to start a church.

They did it right.

Ministering to Your Culture: How to Get Started

I had just returned home from England where our youth choir had given concerts in churches and schools, and I'd preached several times. The phone rang in the office of my Mississippi church. It was a fellow in the next town over.

"We're beginning an amazing ministry to England," he said, without any idea that I had just returned from there.

"What we're going to do," the young man said, "is to invade that country with the gospel of Jesus. We're going door-to-door and show those dead churches how to do evangelism, how to build great churches. We're going to bring the dead back to life again."

I said, "Uh, my brother, have you ever been to England?"

The fact that he had not did not seem to bother him. He was sure that the approach to Kingdom-building that had worked for him in rural small-town Mississippi provided a template workable anywhere, in any culture.

The conversation went downhill from there. I recall telling him that several ministers in the London area had told us how they resent know-it-all American evangelists arriving in their country with all the answers. One said, "We do not mind their coming to help us. What we hate is that they are not interested in anything we have to say, not in learning the customs or traditions. And if we don't get behind them and support them, we're opposing Jesus."

Arrogance is not the exclusive property of young ministers, although I can tell you from personal experience, it seems to find the ideal elements for incubation in those who are uninformed but zealous, untrained but certain. I will spare you the numerous stories of my own presumption and foolishness in judging faithful workers in the Lord's vineyard for not producing more fruit when I had very little idea what I was talking about.

There is a way to make an impact on any culture, thankfully.

And there is a way to begin. May I suggest that way is: Begin by enrolling as a learner.

Engage the Culture, Pastor. If You Dare.

Now, I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world... They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. (John 17:11,16-17)

A half-century ago, Theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote a book titled "How the Church Can Minister to the World Without Losing Itself."

It's worth buying just for the title.

That's the challenge. God's people are sent to be in the world but not of it, to relate to the world without loving it, to bring the gospel to the world without succumbing to its enticements.

And yet, many of us love the culture where we find ourselves. Is this wrong?

Adrian Rogers used to say, "We are like a fellow in a boat. As long as the boat is in the water, he's fine. But as soon as the water gets in the boat, he's in trouble."

At what point does the culture threaten to swamp our lifeboats? I'm a football fan, and love cheering on the New Orleans Saints. Am I succumbing to the world?

Seminarians discuss these matters in classrooms. They study books in which philosophers and theologians bring up the ramifications of engaging culture. Eventually, the young minister develops a set of principles for future ministry. In time, he graduates and goes forth to pastor a church with real people.

Suddenly, all bets are off.

In the urban setting where his seminary was located, the culture was one thing. In rural redneck America where he has gone to pastor, it's something else entirely.

One of his classmates has started an innovative church in the artsy section of Chicago where the culture is unlike anything he has ever known.

A classmate is now serving a mission in smalltown Ohio, a community dominated by labor unions and factory life. The highpoint of the social season, he says, is the tractor pull at the local arena.

Another friend has been appointed missionary to the bush country of West Africa where the culture is pagan, primitive, and powerful.

Lastly, a colleague has taken a county seat ministry in the heart of the Bible Belt, where four churches stand on the corners of the major intersection and every community leader belongs to one of them.

Nothing to it, right? Just "preach the gospel, servant of God."

5 Things I Want For My Church

Last Sunday, January 1, my friends Mike and Karen, who pastor a church in Mobile, invited their married daughter and her family home with them after worship for a traditional New Year's meal.

The meal finished and the dishes cleared away, Mike and Karen were settled in the living room and Mike had found the football game du jour on television. Oldest grandchild Jayda, nearly 10, I think, sat nearby doing something. The daughter, her husband, and their young son were in the kitchen gathering the dishes they had brought to take back home. The three of them were laughing it up and having a good time.

Suddenly, as Jayda jumped up and started toward the kitchen, she called out, "Are y'all being a family in there without me?!"

Grandmother Karen told me that story and said, "I love what it says about her concept of family." Indeed.

God wants us to be a family.

He wants our family to be a "real" family--that's the reason for the numerous proscriptions in Scripture regarding this smallest and tightest of all communities. We are to honor parents and obey them, to love one another, to provide food and shelter for them, not to engage in sexual relations outside marriage, and so forth.

God wants His people to be family, also.

10 Ways Church People Fail Their Pastors

Pray for us, brethren, that the Lord's message may spread rapidly and be honored...and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not all have faith. (II Thessalonians 3:1-2)

Don't read this article without the preceding one. That one led to this one.

What happened was this.

I put on Facebook this question: "What are 10 things you wish pastors would stop doing?"

I was unprepared for the answers. They poured in. Within a few minutes, we had 35 or 40 comments. Most were helpful, but a few showed real pain or even anger.

By the time we had racked up 75 or 80 comments, several pastors who read the contributions sent up white flags, calling for help. One said, "Joe, this really hurts."

When someone suggested we turn the question around and ask, "How do church members fail their pastors," the comments multiplied just as quickly.

As several noted, there seems to be a lot of pain out there in the pastor/member relationship. It would be great if we could do something, however small, toward healing that breach and lessening the anger.

Here, then, are my Top 10 Ways Church Members Fail Their Pastors. It's sent forth not to add kindling to a raging fire, but balm to some sore places.

10 Ways Pastors Fail Their People

Or, we could turn this around and call it "10 positive things some pastors do to build healthy churches."

But we won't.

I know what it takes to get people to read this stuff. (smiley-face goes here.)

The God who called us into His service and sent us into the pastoral ministry has a vested interest in seeing that we do it right and well. The fact that we are all over the map--as opposed to the strait and narrow--and disorganized in our approach--as opposed to a sharp focus--lies at our doorstep and not His.

That God would deign to use flawed and faltering creatures like us says volumes about His grace and mercy.

We are burdened for the younger generation of pastors coming along who are still trying to find their proper role, still trying to nail down their identity as pastors, and still trying to fine-tune the focus of their life-work.

This list of "10 ways pastors fail their people" is all about how my generation got it wrong. Not entirely, of course. But way too much.

In no particular order, they are:

There's No Love Like a Mother's

An article in the most recent issue of The New Yorker proved to be a conversation stopper. You read it and think, "What?" and walk away thoughtful and speechless.

Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City's public schools, tells how he encountered Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and her young son Jack at a social function. The boy approached him and said, "They tell me you run the city schools? And that you are the one who declares snow days."

Now, little Jack attended a private school--it will not surprise readers to know--but he knew that if the public schools closed the private schools followed suit. Jack said, "When I have a birthday, I'd like the schools to be closed."

I don't recall the superintendent's answer

As it turned out, it was Caroline who called in that favor. The snow was coming down in buckets and she called the superintendent's house. "Tomorrow is not Jack's birthday," she said, "but he has a big paper coming due and he's not ready for it. This would be a great time for you to declare a snow day."

The superintendent, now retired, admits that that was one of the days he closed the schools for snow.

Fascinating. More than a little strange.

One wonders just how many of the high level decisions being made every day are prompted not by economic or other realities but as personal favors to people of influence.

In my most recent article for this blog--"Greed: The Favorite Sin of the Free Enterprise"--I started to tell that story and make the point that, for most of us, it's not money we're grasping and groping for, but the things money can buy. Like influence with people in high places.

Caroline Schlossberg has such influence. And money too, we presume. Enough to shut down the city schools for a day for her young son. How he must admire his mom. The things she does for him.

So, what has your mom done for you lately?

Here's what my mother did for me recently.

Greed: the Favorite Sin of Free Enterprise

"Is life passing you by because you don't have a high definition television? Well, now you can...."

The advertisements in the various media make no secret of it. If you do not have the latest computers, televisions, phones, and techno-gadgets, if you are not driving a car less than three years old and equipped with rear cameras, heated seats, and Sirius radio, you are surely among the deprived in this world. You must be the poor and deprived we keep hearing about.

Life is passing you by.

That's how it feels to some of us. Teens in particular fall prey to this deadly syndrome.

The old-timers called it avarice. We know it as greed.

Twenty years ago, Wall Street was telling the world that greed is good, that the hunger to get more and more, to gain and possess and control and dominate, was all good. If anyone is listening to Wall Street any more, they're not saying.

And yet, greed is alive and well in this country. And every other country, too, I expect, since it seems to be related to the depravity of the human heart and not geographically situated.

Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. (I Timothy 6:9)

Someone responds, "I don't want to be rich. I don't actually care for money. I just want the things money buys." That's a little word-game we play to camouflage our grasping, groping greediness.

The Pastorate: No Place for Crybabies

It comes as a surprise only to a very few that pastoring a church can be extremely hard work. Rewarding, yes. Fulfilling, challenging, and blessed. But there are times when it taxes the child of God to the core of his being, when it tests his sanity, and drives him to question everything he ever believed about the faith he is proclaiming and the people he is serving.

Only the strong need apply.

They used to say that only the hardiest of stock settled the early American west. "The cowards never started and the weak died along the way."

There's something about that which fits the ministry.

What triggered all this for me was the sports guys on ESPN the other day talking about Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback. He's had an ankle injury this year, and has been making every effort to play on in spite of it. Whether this is smart or foolhardy, we'll leave to other people. The commentators were of one mind on it, however: Isn't Big Ben great! He doesn't give in to a little injury. He knows how to play hurt!

Playing hurt.

I've played hurt. You too, pastor? I will go so far as to say that every pastor who stays in the Lord's work for any period of time will sooner or later "play hurt." He will have a serious burden or strong opposition or major trial or some kind of massive handicap which would destroy a lesser individual ("a career-ending injury" it's called in sports), but he still stands in the pulpit preaching, still goes to the office, still leads his church.

Every week I hear from pastors and/or their wives with similar stories of great upheavals in their ministries. The one this week said, "I perceive that you too have had troubles and trials in your life. That's why I decided to write you."

She said what the others have say: "Please do not use any details from my story. I wouldn't want this to get out to certain people."

If they only knew. Each story is so similar to all the others, one would think it was the same thing happening repeatedly.

Take the letter this week.

Cartoons from Ecclesiastes

Nostalgia: Why This Friend Bears Watching

A few years back, a young friend in our church became hooked on "Happy Days," the television series. She fantasized of the 1950s as the golden age in American life. She thought it was all Elvis and sock hops and soda fountains.

One day I just couldn't take it any more and did something really mean.

I said, "Melissa, I became a teenager in 1953. In the '50s, we fought the Korean War, then went through the Cold War. We feared being bombed by Russia every day, and racism was rampant. I wouldn't go back there for anything."

I know, I know. I should have left her alone to her daydreaming. She wasn't hurting anyone.

The truth is I'm as much into nostalgia as anyone I know.

Nostalgia: Fantasizing about an earlier time in a way that denies the reality. That's my definition, not one you'll find in a book somewhere.

The current Sherlock Holmes craze owes its popularity to an idealized love for the 1890s as much as to an admiration for the observation and reasoning skills of the great detective, I wager. This fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle is more popular today than he has ever been, and that's saying something.

In "The Sherlockian," Graham Moore's new book that plays to the fascination for all things Sherlock, the protagonist, Harold White, sizes up the nostalgia thing perfectly.