At What Cost Focus?

Preparing to host the Quickening Preview on August 31st brings back to mind some of the lessons I have learned from Brian Klemmer and his team.

• When intention is clear, the mechanism will appear
• It may not be my fault, but I always share responsibility
• No matter how eloquent or true, excuses are no substitute for excellent results in God's reign
  
• Those who lead must serve

Every one of these has corollaries in Scripture - particularly in the teaching of Jesus.

Who among us would not want to lead or to be part of congregations that, in a Church-wide Congregational Olympics, would win a gold medal?

Who among us would turn down an opportunity to help mentor the apostolic equivalent of a Michael Phelps or the Williams sisters - Venus and Serena"

And, despite God's track record for bringing life out of unlikely places, what reasons do we frequently hear when the results of hard work and faithfulness don't produce exceptional fruit?

• If we just had better attendance and more youth . . .
  
• If only our members were more invested . . .
  
• If only this community was not so parochial . . .
  
• If only we included more . . . (name your oppressed group) in leadership . . .
  

Mea culpa! (I thought I'd admit it before you correctly pointed it out.) Been there. Still go back to that up-chuck more often than I care to think about. Just can't stay there, however, and move forward. (Or as Henry Blackaby likes to say, "You cannot go with God and stay where you are.")

If we would allow God to better clarify our focus, would we not only see more clearly God's intended future, but, looking around at the same context, suddenly notice more of the provisions given to us by a God who is passionate about loving people. And what about all those gifts given to us by those who went before us in hot pursuit of God's highest intention?

Tom Russell rightly reminds me at every turn that we need not beat up on pastors for not delivering on God's promise. Church, after all, is unlike professional sports. It's mission is carried out by volunteers - many running only on what the Spirit provides today. It is never the fault of any pastor for congregational failure, however, don't we all share responsibility? Does not the life of the congregation - its strengths and weaknesses, victories and struggles reflect to some degree our own stuff?

My own continuing education has become less focused upon technique and more on developing my character. I can have the best tools, programs, and congregational context available, yet, if my own life is unfocused and short on positive results I will probably also notice that also in the communities that I serve.

From recent reflections by Tom Bandy, a few questions may help to guide our introspection:

• For whom does my heart burst? Whose suffering or failure to fully become who they are in God keeps me awake at night?
  
• What am I driven to accomplish for/with them? What else am I willing to give (or to give up) to do more of that or to do it with greater excellence?
  
• Am I part of a "pilgrim band" from which I receive and give helathy accountability and appropriate support? If not, is my reason for not creating one really more compelling than my reasons to be in one?
• Do I really believe that the purpose of my life is God's purpose? If not, what am I doing in ministry?
  

Lately, I answer the same questions in this way:

• My heart bursts for leaders who struggle to what they love with more excellence among those they love and serve
• What I want with and for them are more and better networks of support so that they succeed more often and with greater effect in leading communities that make the Kingdom an earthly reality in their zip code
  
• I'm willing to give more time and energy to becoming a better human being so that when I am invited to bring my "tools," I don't distract from what God will do with those tools in that moment. One way I'm working at that is to say "Thank you," and mean it, more often.
• I am part of a pilgrim band. The area staff of nine paid and volunteer staff (and growing) has done more to sharpen and support than I could ever have imagined
• I do believe that God's purpose trumps every personal dream. I cannot out-create, out-redeem, out-inspire God. Left to its own devices, the planet and everything in it will run out of energy and dis-integrate. The will to live and love - as modeled by Jesus Christ - keep that from happening sooner than later. I cannot think of anything better to offer with my life than that.

How about you? How do you gain clearer focus? What are striving to achieve in Jesus' name? How may I better support you this week?

Bill

Wisdom For Pastors From Tom Bandy

One of my disciplines is to keep up with the conversations between local church pastors and the staff at Easum, Bandy & Associates.

Occasionally I see something too good not to share - especially when the timing is serendipitous.

In congregations everywhere pastors are gearing up for the resumption of church activities and attending a flurry of meetings to prepare for new and on-going programs - most of which have their real center not in advancing the reign of God but in satisfying existing parishioners and attracting new church members.

Admittedly, I am not immune to that dynamic in middle judicatory work. Perhaps this is the real reason why Tom Bandy's words in a recent post jumped out at me:

"I mention emotional burnout primarily because family church pastors become overwhelmed and exhausted bearing the problems of others, listening to complaints, and a steady barrage of selfishness.

But you are identifying another facet of this burnout. In order to escape chronic guilt, many pastors retreat into a false "professional personae". Although they talk about self care and protecting time off and private space, it is really often keeping life at arms length. So they become consummate preachers but they can no longer worship God personally.

Yes, perhaps it can help going to worship occasionally at another church of your spouse's choosing ... but more often than not we are still so obsessed with competitiveness and comparison that we find it difficult to be refreshed by God. So I think it is even more important to build a devotional partnership with a pilgrim band, and let yourself be refreshed by a smaller, more intimate circle of worship." (Taken from a post by Tom Bandy on the Advanced Leadership forum of Easum, Bandy and Associates.)

I want to close this post on a more hopeful note. This past week NW Area pastoral and support staff and Area Board officers met by conference call with Dick Hamm - our coach - and then we met face-to-face at the area office. Perhaps the most important thing we did was to agree to be for each other more of the kind of "pilgrim band" that Tom talks about. Over the course of last month we worked out a covenant with each other to:

• be in prayer at least two and more times each day
• take part in a telephone conference call at 7:45 am each Thursday morning to identify our missions, to ask for and to offer support, and to pray
  
• to seek help if our prayer discipline seems dry, lifeless, or fruitless
  
• remember each other in prayer daily
• worship together as a team on fifth Sundays with our families - sometimes at a church not among those we serve
• spend part of one day every month in personal prayer retreat
  
• be in spiritual retreat with each other, directed by someone else, at least once a year

Perhaps the best thing about this for me is that we agreed to do this - not because any of us wanted to be trendy or religious but because the mission entrusted to us was too important not to do this. There is simply no way for us to advance as servants to congregational leaders without significant spiritual and personal transformation of this team and of each individual member.

Most of those making this covenant are volunteers and are choosing to be more accountable to one another, so, you may understand why my spirit soared after we agreed to this.

I cannot tell you how much it has meant to me to be part of a group of highly committed Christ-followers where planning about mission is usually focused on serving and not preserving. I look around the table and see folk who have sacrificed a great deal and endured lack of support, apathy and criticism from those they serve - primarily because they are passionate about serving congregational leaders.

And, no, ours is not a perfect situation, nor is any of us without serious flaws and gaping holes in our characters. All of us still depend deeply upon the forgiveness Christ offers. We are, however discovering fresh expressions of the Spirit in more missional community and for that I give thanks and encourage you to seek or perhaps to help call together such a community.

Ephesians 4:11 Revisited

A lot of modern literature describing the role of the pastor assumes that she or he is an extraordinarily high capacity leader in whom are embodied the five gifts: apostle, shepherd, prophet, evangelist, and teacher.

That description works well within a highly personalized, consumerist paradigm of ministry which happens to predominate the current church culture in North America.

Sanctioned by the denominational bureaucracy, trained by professional academics, and entered into a complex, competitive system of search and call, the pastor functions much like one's cardiologist or orthodontist. Congregants consume what pastors are trained and strained to deliver until they become enamored of another or if ever disappointed with the customer service or competence in all five areas.

Put into the context of the servant-leader congregation, however, and the pastor-as-embodiment-of-the-five-fold-gifts breaks down.

In the servant-leader congregation, lay people live and work in their communities with authority and power, equipped for sacrificial and sustainable mission by a leadership team that contains at least one or more for whom one of the five gifts is a significant and tested strength.

The role of the pastor becomes more that of overseer, coach, and accountability partner to the team of leaders. Mission - which is central to the life of the Christ-follower - becomes apostolic, evangelical, prophetic, educational, and pastoral because leaders serve the various members of the congregational team - which sees itself not as a voluntary association but as a community of people called into purposeful work together with expectation of significant outcomes.

If that is true, then why are so many pastors still attempting to fill too many of the equipping and serving roles?

I suspect that so long as congregants can afford to pay us to serve vicariously through us, and, so long as we allow their co-dependence to be our defining paradigm, nothing will change until the downward spiral goes deeper and faster enough to require positive change.

Of course, through prayer, the Spirit may transform us and those we serve to move more into the model the Ephesians seem to employ. This may be what we are seeing in some congregations that are rediscovering their love for serving and leading in their communities.