Mistakes the beginning pastor will probably make

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“Let no man despise thy youth.” (I Timothy 4:12)

You’ve finished your formal schooling or you’re trying to continue your education while pastoring. Whether the congregation is fifty people or five hundred, your plate is full and you wonder how you could ever pastor a larger church since there are not enough hours in your day.

But you’re excited.  This is what God called you to do.  You can barely restrain yourself.

Here are three things lying in wait for you, young pastor.  Three potholes? Three comeuppances?  Three lessons you may expect to have to learn the hard way.

1) The beginning pastor can expect his sermons to be too heavy as he attempts to cram into them everything he has learned on the subject.

The young pastor cannot yet bring a sermon on one word in the Bible or even one verse. Not yet.  So, in order to fill the allotted sermon time, somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, he overstuffs it.

Since he has been studying all week on this message–his notes on the text fill five pages!–he dare not leave out any of the great stuff he has unearthed. Some commentators had fascinating things to say on this scripture.  So, he uses it all.

The young pastor typically uses far too many scriptures, cites too many texts, and brings in too many stories from other places in the Bible.

Over time, he will learn to streamline his sermon, to pick a single theme and stay with it, and will learn how to recognize great ideas and exciting illustrations which do not fit this message and will need to be laid aside for another time.

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You and I are running this race. It’s most unusual.

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“I have finished the course” (2 Timothy 4:7).

“But flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness….” (2 Timothy 2:22)

If you think of life on earth as a race, the Christian life is the strangest one ever.

Okay, let’s think of life as a race.

And we don’t mean ‘rat race.

I conducted the funeral of a 53-year-old man whose death was sudden and completely unexpected.  Weeks later, the coroner had still not figured out why he died.

This gentleman was a runner and a longtime member of a local track club which oversees dozens of races of all kinds every year.  Several members of the club eulogized him during our service.

While they were speaking, something occurred to me.

Imagine a race where you have no idea how long it is or when it will end.  You don’t know whether it’s a sprint or a marathon.  It could be short, it could be long.  You would not be so foolish as to save your energy for that final burst at the end, that sprint to the finish line, the way so many runners do. 

In life, we do not know where the finish line is located. This is simply another way of saying with God’s Word, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). Or, the statement in James 4:13-14 which emphasizes, “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”  Life’s race may end at any time.

For that good gentleman, the race ended at 53 years, 2 months, and 6 days.

Life is like that: a starting line here, obstacles up and down the course, a pothole here and a detour there, and eventually the finish line, however unseen and completely unknown until you hit it.

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The three special ladies in my son’s history

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i’ve not asked my son’s permission for what follows.

I wonder whether Neil ever gives thought to the debt he owes to three very special Christian ladies whom God used to do good things in his life.

Neil is my firstborn son.  Joe Neil McKeever, Jr.  Born to a 20-year-old mama (Margaret Ann Henderson McKeever) and me. I was 23.  This newborn son was nine pounds nine ounces.  Big from the first.  He got his size from Margaret’s dad. J. W. Henderson, a career Greyhound bus driver, was six foot three.  Neil ended up close to six five.

I’m going to skip over his upbringing and growing up years.  He was the pastor’s son, raised in a Southern Baptist church. He sang in the youth ensemble, sang in the college ensemble, and took an active role in church life.  At the same time, he also was being drawn into the world. He struggled some in his later high school and college years. (Yes, didn’t we all?)

When he finished college, Neil tried different things.  He lived away from home, worked in various enterprises, was searching. And was not going to church.

A year or so after he finished college, we moved to a church in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Our sons Neil and Marty and daughter Carla came too.  The boys rarely if ever attended church, busy with jobs and who knows what.  Carla, a high schooler, attended but made few friends.

That pastorate did not go well and four years later, Margaret and I relocated to New Orleans to lead a church by the airport. Large church with a huge debt and a troubled past.  I took a cut of over thirty thousand dollars in salary.

The church had a Christian school that went through the eighth grade.  Our principal was Pam Mancuso. She’s the first of the three special ladies.

Pam was a prayer warrior.  Sometimes in the mornings she would tell me what God had told her in her prayer time. At first, my thought was, “Oh boy.  I’ve got one of those!”  Then I began to see that everything she said was on target.

One morning during my first year there, Pam said, “Brother Joe, the Lord told me this morning he wants Neil to teach in our school.”

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Stories and jokes that are unworthy of Jesus’ people

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This fellow stopped me after church where I had just brought the evening sermon. I was about to walk out the door and drive home, a good 90 minute task. I was tired but he had a joke to tell me.

“You seem like a together person,” he said in my direction. “Comfortable in your own skin. Good sense of humor. So, I have a joke for you.”

He began, “Did you hear the one about Billy Graham, the Pope, and Oral Roberts all dying and going to Heaven at the same time?”

Now.  The question is how do I tell the guy, “Yes, I’ve heard it a few dozen times and didn’t like it the first time”?

You don’t. You stand there and try to look like you’re interested.

It took the poor guy forever to tell the story, of how God said they had arrived unexpectedly, that their mansions were not quite ready yet, and would they mind if He sent them to purgatory for a bit first. He told of a conversation between God and the devil, in which the Lord was asking permission from hell’s warden.

That’s bad enough, but it went downhill from there.

Finally, I said, “Is this where they air-condition hell?”

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What it means to “see through a glass darkly”

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The epitaph for this generation could read: “They Didn’t Know.”

Nothing new about that, however. Reading the New Testament, one is struck by how often significant players in the Lord’s drama were said to have not had a clue.

On the cross, the Savior summed it up when He prayed, “Father, forgive them. They do not know….”

Here are instances throughout the New Testament where that can be said.

Prayer. Matthew 20:22

The disciples did not know what they were asking for.

Ever pray that way? I have. I’ve asked the Lord to grant me success in this or that venture without ever checking to see if it was His will in the first place.

The brothers James and John wanted the places of honor in the Kingdom. And, who knows, they reasoned–perhaps it will be given to the ones with the moxie to ask. After all, isn’t it true that “you have not because you ask not”? And, they further reasoned, the worst that could happen was that the Lord would say, “No.”

He said, “No.” And more. That it was reserved for those whom the Father chose. And that they did not know what they were asking.

One wonders if a few weeks later when they saw the two thieves dying on crosses–one on the Savior’s right hand, the other His left–did they remember this sad conversation?

The Apostle Paul said, We do not know how to pray as we should. Boy, is that ever the truth. Where is that?  That would be Romans  8:26.

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The pastor’s greatest burden is a gift from God

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When the prophets Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi stood up to preach, they began with the words, “The burden of the Lord.”

That was a dead giveaway this was not going to be a sweet little devotional filled with funny stories and touching vignettes. The men of God were about to drop a heavy load from their hearts into the laps and onto the shoulders of their audiences.

It took me a long time laboring in the Lord’s vineyard to figure something out. The burden God gives His preacher for some problem, some people, or some cause is every bit as much a gift from Him as the blessings of salvation. And it becomes my starting place.

Starting place for what? I’m glad you asked.

The burden God gives you, pastor, is your beginning point for three things….

1. The vision God will give you for your work begins with a burden.

I like to think of the time we wrestle with a problem (i.e., the burden) as the equivalent of digging downward for the foundation of a mighty building. The deeper we dig–the more the problem burdens us, the longer we struggle with it, and the more it pains us–the greater will be the structure that eventually gets erected there.

You’ve seen the signs: “Watch this site. A new office building will be erected here.”

Well, post one of those signs on the burden God has given you: “Watch this site. A new visionary structure will go up here.”

What is your burden, pastor? What bothers you most in your community, your church, your world? What robs you of sleep at night and will not leave you alone?

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The fatal mistake of the casually religious

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One of a thousand reasons the Psalms are so well-loved is that once in a while, we will be reading along and come to a place where that psalm nails a truth so dead-on, we sit there gasping for breath. Case in point for me, Psalm 50.

You hate instruction and cast my words behind you. When you saw a thief, you consented with him, and have been a partaker with adulterers. You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.

And then, the clincher:

These things you have done, and I kept silent; you thought that I was just like you. (Psalm 50:17-21)

That is stunning.

Thinking that the Eternal God is like us is an ancient tradition with a noble heritage. Every culture has done it, every generation has adapted the art to its own idiosyncrasies, every worshiper struggles with the temptation to pull it off.

It’s been said, “In the beginning, God made man in His image. Ever since, man has been returning the favor.”

Some years back country music legend Johnny Cash paid to have a Hollywood movie made on the life of Christ. In the film, Jesus was depicted as a blue-eyed blonde. On our trip to the Middle East, the only blue-eyed blondes I spotted were in our tour group. Everyone else, all the natives, seemed to be of a sun-dried dark color with jet black hair.

As prevalent as that is–the way we picture Jesus as looking like someone who would easily blend in with our group–a far worse thing it is to think of God as carrying our own prejudices, hemmed in by our narrow-mindednesses, burdened by our brand of negativities, and limited by our own personal convictions.

The Bible’s favorite word to describe God is needed here. God is holy.

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Holy sandpaper, pastor!!

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This is a reprint of an article from August 2010.  The only changes are the names.  It’s been sixteen years and these people are in Heaven and it’s probably permissible to use their names.  Some members of that church in metro New Orleans are still with us, are active on social media and will read this.  I want them to. (It’s all good.) They were agents for our Heavenly Father in this pastor’s life.  

A pastor friend sent me a note just now reporting on his church. He has baptized several this year and had twice that number to join in other ways. I replied that God is using him to turn around that old church and, “Good for you, friend!”

He came back: “The curmudgeons are still there, though, still lurking.”

I answered, “They always will be. But let me tell you what I’ve finally learned about that. These detractors are doing you a favor. They motivate you to greater faithfulness, to do your best work, to keep the focus on the Lord.”

He said, “I call them ‘Holy Sandpaper.’”

The Lord uses them to get the rough edges off His servant.

Interesting how the notes I get from pastors–some are questions regarding ministry–turn out to be the very thing the Lord was talking with me about earlier.

Case in point. Yesterday, I was going through some old correspondence files, trying to decide what could be discarded. I ran across the most critical (as in life-changing) exchange of letters I ever had with a church member in nearly a half-century of ministry.

Here’s the story and our letters….

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The lighter side of Civil War stories

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As a history student (and history major in college), I love to read stories from our past.  I have shelves of books on Lincoln, Churchill, Truman, and the Civil War.  I have walked the battlefields with family members: Shiloh with my wife, Harper’s Ferry with both my sons, Gettysburg with my sons, and Vicksburg with my oldest son and his younger daughter.

Winston Groom, known to most as the author of “Forrest Gump,” is a well-respected writer of historical stuff including Vicksburg 1863.  What makes Groom’s books enjoyable is the human interest stuff he drops into the narrative. Like this, for instance….

ONE. Rebel General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a case study in a hundred things–ego, confidence, brilliance, foolhardiness, etc–caught up with Union Colonel Abel Streight near the Georgia line. Flying a flag of truce, Forrest invited Streight to surrender.  At the time this was outrageous since Forrest was out-numbered three to one.

Streight agreed to surrender if Forrest could convince him that he had a completely superior force.

Forrest was ready.

He had arranged for his soldiers to haul the only two pieces of artillery they possessed around in a circle, “across and behind a high cut in the road, so that it would appear to Streight that whole batteries were being brought up to the front.”

Finally, Streight gave in. “How many guns have you got? There’s fifteen I’ve counted already!”  Forrest said, “I reckon that’s all that’s kept up.”

Sensing the futility of his position, the Yankee colonel handed over his 1,466 troops with all their horses, artillery, and equipment. When he learned that Forrest had only 400 men and two guns, he demanded that his men and arms should be returned and that they should fight it out.  Forrest laughed, patted him on the shoulder, and said, “Ah Colonel, all is fair in love and war, you know.”

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A promise I made to the Lord, which I am trying to keep

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Nearly forty  years ago, when the Lord delivered me out of the pit of destruction (I’m channeling Psalm 40) that was a big oppressive church and when He showed my wife and me the Psalm (#66) with our names and situation in bold print, I made three vows.

I would live simply.  I would give generously.  I would encourage pastors.

The last of these I do all the time.  In fact, that’s what this website is all about, the encouragement of the Lord’s shepherds.

The first of these is a relative term, I suppose.  What living simply means in one culture would be something entirely different in another.  So, I’m going to leave that there.

But the second one is what this is all about.

I have decided to do something I have never done and may never do again.

I have never told others how much I give.

Today, I’m going to do that.

I’m not sure why.  Maybe it will be apparent some day.

It can’t hurt.  I have no congregation and no one to vote for me or against me.  No group of people to get up and walk out of church because I’m doing something they don’t like.  If I am.

No one really cares.

So, it’s just me.

These days in retirement, my income is basically two things but with the occasional smaller things.

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