I recently had to make a
change in my weekly routine. I had set
up a Google alert to bring me news of specific church events that popped up on
the World Wide Web. One of the alerts I
set up was the word, “pastor”. Anytime
the word pastor would appear in the news Google would send me a link for the
news report.
I had to delete that alert
because it was so disheartening.
Everyday I would get alerts where pastors would appear in the news and
it was almost always bad news. The
number of alerts varied from as few as a half dozen to some days twenty or
more. The stories ranged from the goofy,
such as the pastor who delivered the sermon dressed as the Easter Bunny, to the
all too frequent reports of criminal/sexual misconduct. It was a daily heartbreak that saddened me to
the core of my being. It also angered me;
so much I wanted to take some of these pastors on a “Millstone Swimming
Trip”. But the most pronounced effect was
that it discouraged me. It was not
unlike the painful betrayals I have experienced in local church ministry. The discouragement of these daily briefings
of ministerial failure wounded my heart and twisted my soul. Getting down into
the slough of despair can and will happen to any of us. But once there what do we do? I have taken three steps to help readjust my
attitude.
First, I have to take
responsibility for my negative attitude and for changing it. That begins with limiting the negative input
in my life. While I work with pastors
and do need to stay current on the negative issues related to ministry, I have
to make sure that the volume, both in bulk and in decibels, is limited. Paul gives a great list of things to think
about in Phil. 4:8. Awareness of evil is
wise, but meditation needs to remain focused on attributes Paul mentioned. I need better boundaries.
Second, I must remember that
it is not about me. Luis Palau once
said, “We have everything we need when we have Jesus Christ living in us. It is his power that controls our
dispositions, enables us to serve, and corrects and directs us.” By both personality and training I am a
fixer. I enjoy fixing. Both the process and the result are very
satisfying to me. The desk I am using as
I write is in the process of being restored.
I would love to get a “basket-case bike” and put it on the road. My dream house is a fixer upper. I like to fix things. The problem is that I want to fix stuff that
is not mine to fix: the church, pastors and situations from the Google alerts. I need better boundaries; I also need to remember
who is Lord on all sides of all boundaries.
Third, I need to encourage in
order to be encouraged. It is a
spiritual principle that never fails that what you sow you reap. In the act of loving someone you discover
that you are loved. In the blessing of
an enemy you find that you are blessed.
It is true of encouragement as well.
When you encourage someone it comes back to you and you are
encouraged. When I am pulling someone
from the slough of despair it helps pull me from that same bog. We all need to be encouraged, but we forget
that a good place to start is by encouraging someone else. We shouldn’t go on an encouragement fishing
expedition, but encourage another and trust that in giving we will receive. You never know the impact of our
encouragement on another person.
I will conclude with an excerpt
from my up coming book, The
Adventures of June Bug Johnson.
The story is true, but embellished, and the names and characters are
fictionalized to protect identity. The
chapter is called “Cussing in Church” and tells about a word of encouragement that
rescued a young pastor’s ministry.
At this point, Randy realized what he had done. He had slipped back into his old Marine
words. He stopped mid-sentence and
looked over the congregation. They sat
there eyes wide and mouths hanging open, it didn’t seem like there was even one
of them breathing. Grandpa Lymon and
June Bug sat on the second pew. Grandpa
Lymon had his brow so knitted together it looked like a once-plowed field. June Bug looked afraid-really frightened-as
if he expected the roof to be split open by fire from on high at any
moment. There is never a silence like
the silence in a church after someone slips up and cusses and Randy did a dandy
job of cussing.
Randy almost broke down in tears. He was so ashamed that he couldn’t even word
an apology. He saw the shock on the
faces of the little congregation and simply stepped out of the pulpit and went
and sat down on the front bench. He didn’t
look like a proud Marine or even a young preacher. He looked like a dog that had been beat all
its life. He looked like he might just
curl up on the front pew and cover his face with a hymnbook. He just slouched there hoping everyone would
just leave without him having to talk to anyone. In that moment, he decided he would go back
to school, drop out of college, and go back into the service.
That is when, Grandpa Lymon stood up and took just
three steps to stand next to Randy and turned to face the congregation. He put one hand on Randy’s shoulder and
extended the other to the congregation, hand up as if asking for a coin. After a moment that seemed like a year to
Randy, Grandpa Lymon spoke.
“I don’t care much for the way he said it, but I sure am
glad to know which side he is on. I
think this church ought to hire this young man.
I think he could do with a bit more training, but you got to admire how
he feels about the enemy.”
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