COMPLETE ... FOR A WEEKEND

With all four kids under our roof tonight, it seems like a good time for a quick family update.

Samuel and Hannah both arrived home last night from Ball State and Olivet respectively. Caleb had a final exam and a project to complete yesterday, so we moved him home today.

Tonight we had a belated birthday celebration for Caleb and tomorrow we plan to celebrate Mother's Day.

That's because by Sunday morning, the scattering begins.

Samuel leaves early Sunday for Atlanta, Georgia. Believe it or not, he plans to spend his summer selling books door to door. The company is called Southwestern Advantage and they give two weeks of training - one in Atlanta and the other in Nashville - before sending college students out into unsuspecting neighborhoods. 

I think he will learn a lot. Like how to handle rejection. 😉

But seriously, those students who develop good sales skills can rack up a small fortune in a few months. I will be curious to see how the experience unfolds for him. It sounds like he will be working in Michigan all summer.

Caleb will be the next to leave. On Wednesday of next week he heads to Florence, Italy for about 18 days for a language immersion program. The rest of the family is quite jealous. He will return to Indiana for a couple of weeks early in June before a month at Fort Knox for Advanced Camp followed by a monthlong internship at Fort Bragg. 

We're glad to say that Hannah is planning to spend most of her summer here in Columbus. She will likely be waitressing at the local Cracker Barrel and hanging out with friends.

And Sarah? She plans to continue her ice cream scooping at Zaharakos and get some driving experience. 😬

Melissa and I will be doing what we can to enjoy the time we are given all together.

Some photos from tonight:

Tacos for dinner - Caleb's favorite. 

I found the perfect birthday cake for the birthday boy.

His presents had a travel theme going. Grandma Trudy gave him a travel backpack and plenty of souvenir money. 

21 YEARS AGO

Twenty-one years ago today I became a father for the first time. 

We were living in Pensacola, Florida. It was a Saturday morning. (I didn't remember the day of the week, but you can find anything on Google.) We had entered the hospital Thursday morning for an 8 AM induction. 

Caleb arrived safely at 6 AM two days later. Yes, Melissa endured 46 hours of labor. What a woman!

Look at my face in this photo:

I don't look scared. 

I look delirious. (And a bit sleep-deprived.)

I remember going to church the next morning - I was the youth pastor at First United Methodist in downtown Pensacola. And I remember sitting in the front row before the service started.

The organ was playing and people were finding their seats and I had one of those spiritual moments where the mist of life clears and everything seems crystal clear.

At that point, I had been a Christian - as far as I could tell - all 33 years of my life. But I had often wondered why Christianity was always glorifying God the Father for sending his only Son to die in our place. By my reasoning, sending was the easy part - it was the Son who did all the suffering on our behalf, right?

But now - one day into fatherhood - a new appreciation for the sacrifice of the Father overwhelmed me. I thought of Caleb, who so far had done nothing more than eat, open his eyes, dirty his little diapers, and cry. But I knew that I would do anything in my power to spare him any pain, any hurt, any suffering for the rest of my life. 

But our heavenly father valued me enough to send his only Son to earth? Even knowing his Son would be spit on, ridiculed, and crucified? 

That is almost incomprehensible.

"For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son ..."

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Happy Birthday, Caleb! It has been tough for your mom and me to watch you go through such trying circumstances in recent months and years, but you have proven to be tough and full of grace. Welcome to adulthood. You are one of greatest men I have known in my lifetime. 

And the best is yet to be!

PASTORS ACTING BADLY

I have known and worked with some incredibly gifted and godly pastors.

And some real stinkers.

I worked with a pastor who was so ill-tempered he once nearly provoked the custodian to a fist-fight. Mean as a snake. 

I watched a pastor in Haiti steal money from our Christian school. There was no tangible proof.

I know of one pastor who left his wife and moved in with another woman. Completely unrepentant.

I thought I had seen the worst. Then in Columbus here a few years back there was a prominent pastor who got himself in debt to the drug dealer who supplied his addiction. The pastor's solution was to stage a home burglary at his own address and then split the insurance money with his dealer. 

This guy was so deep into his sin - so unable to confess and repent - that he willingly traumatized his own family on Christmas Eve! And when the local paper reported that even his daughter's savings jar had been "stolen", this man watched a stream of friends and neighbors come by to refill his girl's jar with their own coins and bills in the following weeks ... and never said a word.

His plan didn't work to his financial benefit, but I hope it brought him the opportunity for true repentance.

When I saw the Lifeway Research finding that 61% of the pastors they polled said that confessing and repenting of sin was an issue they currently faced, I assume that most of them did not have in mind adultery, fraud, or even anger.

Now this is just a guess - a reasonable guess, I believe - but I am guessing for most of them, the sin they had in mind is summed up in one word: 

Pornography.

It's a vile scourge across our entire culture and it doesn't stop at the doors of the church.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

In the Lifeway Research study of the biggest challenges facing 2,000 pastors, 61% checked the box for "Confessing and repenting from personal sin". 

In real numbers, that's 1,220 of those 2,000 pastors. Three pastors out of every five. 

I don't know how you read "confessing and repenting from personal sin" being a problem for a pastor, but in my mind, that equals "I have a secret that could ruin me if it ever got out". 

I can't think of one thing that would stunt a church's growth more thoroughly than to be governed by a pastor with a secret sin. Why? Because that pastor is never going to go hard on sin in any sermon. In fact, that pastor is going to struggle to emphasize sanctification through the Spirit's help at all when their own experience with sin is one of recurring failure. If you are a slave to some particular sin, every aspect of your faith and the veracity of the Bible itself is called into question. 

That is a preacher who is going to feel hypocritical every Sunday morning, mouthing the words "Hallelujah - I've been set free!"

But what can be done? Pastors are trained by experience not to be real and open with people in their own churches. How would a pastor go about confessing a sin? And to whom? Pastors are guarded for good reason. They are prone to being talked about and judged on a regular basis. 

Not to mention that confession of certain sins could well mean instant unemployment.

I hope you don't hear an ounce of judgment in my words here - I genuinely feel great empathy for pastors in general and those hiding secret sins in particular.

They have to long for freedom. And that freedom is possible, but not without confession and repentance. 

There's no easy answer here. My question is a real one: 

What can be done?

SLURRED WORDS

Yesterday I floated the idea that a pastor's personal prayer and Bible study time should be considered as part of the standard "40 hours" committed to the church each week. (Though, not too many pastors get by with just 40.)

This idea sprouts from an experience I had 25 years ago with one of the most unusual churches I have ever come across.

Back in my seminary days (the late 1990s), I was part of a youth ministry team with my good friends Tim and Jamie. We called ourselves FishForce and we traveled around to speak and sing and teach at youth events of various types, as our school schedules allowed.

One weekend we found ourselves in a small town in West Virginia. As we pulled up to the site of the weekend youth retreat we had been hired to lead, something seemed quite incongruous about the scene. The town we had driven through was more than a bit run-down, hit hard by slumps in local coal mining demand. The church hosting the retreat was small and traditional, with a steeple. Well kept. Nothing unusual about that. 

But across the street was a newly asphalted parking lot the size of a football field. We soon discovered what had prompted such a large lot. 

Friday night and Saturday, we worked with the kids - an enthusiastic and attentive group. Along the way we got to know the pastor a bit. The guy's name was Dave Knight. 

He was in a wheelchair, put there by a severe stroke a couple of years earlier. The stroke had left him unable to speak without slurring his words a great deal. 

(In fact, the first time I had talked to him on the phone a few weeks before the youth retreat, I thought someone was crank calling me, pretending to be drunk.)

Fortunately, the congregation had been supportive and patient. Physically incapacitated and unable to DO the traditional work of the church - no visitation, no typing bulletins, not even making phone calls in the early days - Pastor Knight had turned all of his attention and energy towards prayer and Bible study. He had all the time in the world to sit and pray and read his Bible. 

And soon the church exploded with growth. Both new believers and deeper believers. 

My friends and I stayed for Sunday morning after our retreat. The sanctuary was packed out. It is still the only church I have ever visited where the ushers rushed about, searching for empty seats for new arrivals. Each Sunday morning, as the service was about to start, two ushers would grab Pastor Knight by the back belt loops of his pants and lift him out of his wheelchair. Dave would shuffle down the center aisle holding onto a walker in front of him and supported from behind by those two men. 

Upon reaching the front of the sanctuary, Pastor Knight was lowered onto the front pew. The couple of steps up to the pulpit were too much and he couldn't have stood in the pulpit for any length of time anyway. 

As soon as Dave was placed in his pew, the ushers hurried to the back of the sanctuary and grabbed extra folding chairs to place at the end of each pew down the center aisle to squeeze in a bit more seating for those who came in late. 

Dave Knight actually preached from the first row pew, half-turned toward the congregation. It took a newcomer a few minutes to get acclimated to Dave's slur, but in time his words were understandable. And his conviction was unquestionable.

And God spoke through that man in powerful ways, despite the slur. 

Because his spirit was strong, the pastor's physical failings were inconsequential.  

A SIMPLE SUGGESTION

Lifeway Research asked 1,000 pastors to look over a list of 44 common challenges faced in ministry and then indicate which ones were current struggles for them. I listed the top 11 challenges a few days ago from the Lifeway website, but lets narrow our focus today to six of those top 11.

Here they are with their ranking and the percentage of pastors who indicated this as a current challenge:

#2 - Consistency in personal prayer: 72%

#3 - Friendships and fellowship with others: 69%

#5 - Consistency of Bible reading not related to sermon or teaching preparation: 68%

#6  - Trusting God: 66%

#8 - Consistency in taking a Sabbath: 64%

# 11 - Confessing and repenting from personal sin: 61%

Why focus on these particular 6 items?

They are all indicators of the spiritual health of the pastor. 

Is it ironic that 75% of pastors say their congregation's lack of commitment is a big problem while roughly the same percentage of pastors are struggling in their own spiritual lives? (Consider the likelihood of the percentages for these six items being a bit underestimated, considering how difficult any one of them would be for a pastor to admit.)

Every church should have some sort of board or committee overseeing the pastor. (Most do.) And the pastor's spiritual health should be fair grounds for inquiry. 

And then fair grounds for compassionate action. 

What sorts of actions? Offering to pay for a spiritual retreat, gifting books, or even paying for an extended sabbatical. 

But if you are on one of those church committees and looking for a way to boost your pastor's spiritual vitality in a simple, ongoing capacity, I have for you what sounds like a radical idea on first hearing.  But chew on it a bit and you might find it makes loads of sense: 

Pastors should be encouraged to think of their personal prayer and Scripture time as part of their church work week. Perhaps even their first and most important duty.

Could change everything. 

APATHY

Topping the list of challenges faced by pastors in a recent Lifeway Research study of 1,000 pastors was this: 

• People’s apathy or lack of commitment

75% of pastors polled indicated their flock's apathy was a significant challenge to them. 

3 out of every 4 pastors!

A word of advice to pastors: Guard yourselves. Your attitudes and your words. This frustration over your congregation's apathy can leak into your sermons. I have heard it happen plenty of times.

It reveals itself in condescension. And complaining. And assuming. The pastor may end up preaching only to the uncommitted, leaving the spiritually mature unfed.

I once heard a pastor say, "People never change".

Woe to you if you preach a book that holds out the promise of transformation while resigning yourself to a belief that people's hearts are forever static. 

What do we make of the 25% who did not see their congregation's apathy as a serious challenge?

Maybe some segment of those pastors have such low expectations that they aren't bothered. Maybe they quit asking for commitment years ago.

Or maybe they have so many other problems that apathy just doesn't rank in their top 20. 

But I have to believe that a large part of that 25% isn't bothered by their flock's apathy precisely because their flock is engaged and ever-growing in their commitment to Christ and His Kingdom.

Is there a secret anti-apathy recipe?

I am sure this is a gross oversimplification, but what if those pastors are ...

Preaching the whole gospel?

Expecting transformation?

Discipling individuals?

Calling out sin?

While also ...

Accepting that there are tares among the wheat and that's just the way it's always going to be?