CYBERCOLUMN: Pastors & Mavericks_duncan_60203

Posted: 5/23/03

CYBERCOLUMN:
Pastors & Mavericks

By John Duncan

I am sitting here under the old oak tree, pondering the powerful playoff run of the Dallas Mavericks and the precipice upon which pastors stand.

Do basketball and pastors coincide? Like coaches in today's society, pastors live on the edge of a precipice, ready to step into the glorious promised land, or they gingerly step toward the not-so-ready dangerous fall into oblivion. Pastors possess the joy of a higher calling, but for many, pressures mount.

Not long ago after a draining playoff game, Dallas Mavericks coach Don Nelson talked of Los Angeles Lakers' coach Phil Jackson, who had a medical procedure after heart trouble. Pastors work with people who have heart troubles of numerous kinds.

Nelson remarked that on a scale of 1 to 10, the job of a coach is a 10 on the stress meter. Nelson followed his remark with a telling statement: “It's not just the pressure you put on yourself, although that's the most of it. It's the whole environment, the competition, the press, the radio talk shows-for nine months of the year, everybody's killing you. And if they're not, you're killing yourself.”

I have pastored only three churches, which may not completely qualify me to stake my claim, but pastors today face pressures like coaches in a playoff run. I remember and appreciate with fondness the churches that I have been privileged to pastor–the country church of my college days, my first full time church and the growing church I now pastor, a church where God amazes me daily by his grace.

I also think of the precious people–Merle Taylor, who taught this city boy the difference between sheep and goats; Earl and Emma, who defended their 19-year-old peachfuzz preacher as not some “little preacher boy” but “our preacher” and served me pecan pie; Mack, with his winsome spirit of encouragement that carried me on low days; Cooter, who laughed and forgave me the day in which I plowed over a water pipe while mowing the church yard; Elsie, who appreciated my trips to the nursing home; an unnamed East Texas lady, who once served up these words: “You young! The Laud done gone and sent you out early”; the Lees and the Smiths, who invited us over for games and fun; Sam, who allows me to be myself whether good or bad; and a host of other unnamed saints at Lakeside Baptist Church, who have helped me hold on to Jesus in the joyous roller coaster ride of 16 years here at Lakeside in Granbury.

The struggles, the mostly highs, and the joys of 16 years in the same place and two other churches still cause me to appreciate God's work, his call, and pastors on the edge of a precipice in the pressure.

I remember through the years numerous pressures and a few not-so-precious saints–a couple of anonymous letters; the guy who once declared, “You'll never make it as a preacher”; church financial pressures; people and personality pressures; growing pains and the pressures of growth; lectures from my parishioners; saints worried about bathroom toilet paper supplies and worship temperatures (Too hot! Too cold! All on the same Sunday!); crowded parking lots; watching the sails rip off of families falling apart; families in other crises like job layoffs; and the ever present joys of music and worship in this complex 21st century, to name only a few. I learned the pastor's greatest challenge–knowing what to accept as truth and what to ignore or dump into the File 13 of life. Satan often comes cloaked with shining wings.

I often ask, “What is the greatest pressure pastors face?” Is it sneaky spiritual warfare, which aims to destroy? Is it crises like death and marital straits, which aim to rip the sails off marital lifeboats? Is it people who stir trouble in the church? Is it a lack of experience or a lack of knowledge about a church's particular history? Is it a lack of Bible knowledge or spiritual discipline? Is it not enough of Emma's pecan pie?

Or do pastors get beat up by incipient competition between churches? After all, Eugene Peterson once quipped of the dangers of always wishing for “something bigger,” or, in his own words, that eternal quest for the perfectly desirable church of the pastor's imagination, “a tall steeple church with a cheese cake congregation.”

I think Don Nelson must have been preaching at a pastors' conference. Preachers, pastors and staffers sometimes get beat down, but if the truth be known, most spend a lot of time beating up on themselves.

For all this talk about coaches and preachers and playoff run by the Dallas Mavericks, two things must happen in the boiling pressures of ministry. Eugene Peterson himself admits: “Hang around (the church) long enough, and sure enough there are gossips who won't shut up, furnaces that malfunction, sermons that misfire, disciples who quit, choirs who go flat-and worse. Every congregation is a congregation of sinners. And if that weren't bad enough, they all have sinners for pastors.” Peterson calls for God's servants and his people, albeit all sinners, to develop two things–holiness in relationship with God and a passion for his calling. These two essentials appear to be missing among pastors and people today amid life pressures.

So here is to all pastors whose sermons have misfired and whose ministry passion has fizzled: Develop holiness in relationship to God again. Ask Christ to renew his joy in you. Beg for his Spirit to rekindle the flame of his passion and calling in spite of the pressures.

So here is to all the people of churches all over the globe: Trust God in your own pressures. Recognize the pressures your pastor faces, even amid the beating up of the inner self. Encourage your pastor today. And, by all means, stop looking for cheesecake congregations. Invite your pastor over for pecan pie. It will do you wonders, and it sure will bless your pastor. I sure miss Emma and Earl and that piece of pecan pie of shared fellowship in Christ.

Finally, to Don Nelson, I say, “Go Dallas Mavericks!”

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines