The Pastor Your People Love

18 06 2013

Tuesday Re-mix -

One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.  Psalm 27:4

gaze-upon-the-lordI think I am a pretty good supporter of my pastor…I try to do the things he asks and I try not to do things I know he would frown upon…but he is going to HATE this post.  And that makes me happy.   I have learned a great deal about “shepherding” from watching my pastor.  In fact, in my work with conflicted congregations, there have been many times when I wished young pastors could just sit with my pastor for a few days and learn the balance between humility and authority, between assertive and quiet, between empowering and disciplining.  My pastor has shaped how I see many of the difficult issues pastors face today.

I am meditating this week on the 27th Psalm, and it made me consider what kind of leader David must have been in order to say these things.  Amazing and gifted in so many ways, but at the end of the day, he just loved God and wanted to spend “all the days of his life…gazing upon the beauty of the Lord.”  Those “mighty men” of his probably followed him for lots of reasons, but surely none more compelling than this.  He was a mighty warrior, a passionate leader, a visionary King, a loyal friend, and the quintessential complicated, flawed hero…lovable for so many reasons.  But all those qualities and characteristics of David boiled down to a shepherd boy who loved God above all else…”this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord…“.

That desire (and the disciplines which reflect it) is at the very core of every great pastor.  It is absolutely at the very core of my pastor.  Yes, we all want to be loved well by our pastor, yes we all want to be spiritually nurtured and fed and cared for, and yes we all want to follow visionary leaders who push us to accomplish things well beyond our imaginations.  But more than any of that, beyond our own selfish needs and desires, we need a pastor who adores the Lord and craves His presence above all else.  A few times a year, no matter what else may be going on at the church, my pastor pulls away for a few quiet days with the Lord.  I have watched in times of enormous stress as he maintains his disciplined prayer life.  I have walked with him through his own terminal illness and seen a peace that surpasses all understanding.  As with King David, at the end of the day, it is not the giftedness nor the charisma nor the huge pastoral skills…it is a solid, time-tested near-desperate thirst for the Lord.

Pastors and church leaders, do not be fooled by the cultural press to be awesome visionaries filled with charisma above all else.  Rather, make sure your disciplines reflect nothing short of this attitude…”this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord…“.  I will follow that all day long.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : leadership, Pastor Search, prayer

I Want Maturity (and I Want it Now)

13 06 2013

Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Genesis 37:9-11

Old and youngMaybe it was youthful arrogance that made Joseph share his dreams with his family.  Or maybe it was just youthful ignorance of how it would be received by them.  Either way, it was not a problem with telling the truth; rather, it was just an ill-conceived manner of handling the truth.  In a word, it was immaturity.

Just a couple of chapters later, after some hard life experiences and some growing up, we see Joseph making much wiser decisions.  Life has a way of doing that to all of us.  When I think back to the naive and arrogant young leader I was 20-30 years ago ,well, it is a bit embarrassing.  Maturity, alas, cannot be learned from books or from classrooms.  Moreover, it almost always requires a generous measure of time and experience.

It is worth noting that Joseph was actually wise beyond his years.  By most standards, he is the model character in God’s story.  He is, from the beginning, a young man of integrity and high character.  His gift of interpreting dreams elevated him to leadership heights at a reasonably young age.  But his youthful faux pas were glaring and ended up costing him years of heartache and hard knocks.  In short, for leaders among God’s people, no matter the talent level, there seems to be no substitute for time spent maturing.

For this reason, I have some concerns about many of our churches’ apparent disrespect for our more elderly congregants and our seemingly obsessive search for younger, dynamic leadership to the exclusion of its older, wiser counterpart.  I do not ever want to serve in a church without plenty of elder wisdom from more mature members.

I have been in churches whose “market” is Gen X and Gen Y, and who have precious little of the kind of mature leadership which only comes from 20 or 30 or 40  or even 50 years of experience in church life.  The best case scenario for those churches is that they are literally filled with young “Josephs”.  Maybe you have seen it happen in your own church…a bright, young leader comes up with an idea for this ministry or that ministry and he/she presents it with an arrogance that suggests he/she actually believes nobody has ever thought of it before.  Yes, 2,000 years of the New Testament church in action, and he/she believes this is actually an original thought.  It is embarrassing.

I believe the church is operating at its best when it has the benefit of both the energy and creativity of young leaders and the experience and wisdom of older leaders, and when there is genuine respect and humility in each of them toward the other.  That, it seems to me, is what “church” should be…young Josephs and older Josephs working side by side and together.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Church Unity, leadership, Spiritual Formation

How Your Church Compares: Apples to Apples

11 06 2013

Tuesday Re-mix -

I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:8-9

apples-to-orangesGenerally, I have never liked comparing churches…for lots of reasons.  It is a thing wrought with pitfalls and other dangers.  I think comparing churches just fosters the already-prevalent attitude that churches are somehow in competition with each other for all the best people.  We all know better intellectually, but our actions and attitudes say otherwise.  I also do not like comparing churches because each local body of believers is dealing with its own special calling to a community or a certain people group or some other such “calling”, and the processes and programs should be specific to that calling, which makes comparing your church’s programs to my church’s programs an apples and oranges kind of thing.

But as with almost any other rule, there are exceptions to my rule against comparing churches.  I mean, seriously, if a particular comparison was OK with Paul, then who am I to question it?  Paul did not seem to hesitate in his second letter to the Corinthian church, comparing the generosity (in giving) of that church to that of the poorer Macedonian churches.

You see, there is something about “living generously” that transcends cultural differences or even differences of church size or Christian “flavor”.  It is the very heart of a church, and it has a way of leveling the playing field in any comparison.  The church who focuses on pouring itself into the lives of others, who focuses on being generous in giving and in meeting the physical needs around it, stands out…in any culture and in any demographic.  When Paul says he wants to “compare your sincerity with the earnestness of others”, he recognizes that this comparison has little to do with church size or with the particular needs of this community versus that community, or with language or with church government or structure.  No, Paul is putting his finger right on the very pulse of the church when he speaks of generosity in giving and ministering to others.  He is assessing a vital sign of that church, determining how “alive” it really is.  In a very strong sense, measuring a church’s “heart” for generosity (irrespective of the size of its membership or the size of its bank accounts) is a very real measure of life for that church…a very real measure of the Spirit of Christ in that church.

Shouldn’t we have clued into this reality from our reading of Paul himself?  Notice he spends precious little time in his letters to the churches talking about the things with which we in the church are obsessed.  There is simply not much there on facilities and grounds, nor on budget, nor on worship styles, nor on personnel costs versus program costs, nor on denominational politics and affiliations.  But without hesitation, Paul wades right out into comparing the apples of this church’s generosity with the apples of that church’s.

So, I believe it is a mistake to look at how another church handles its corporate worship and decide to do it the same way in your own church.  It is a mistake to ask why your church cannot do its children’s programming as well as that other church, or why your church’s buildings don’t rival that church’s.  It is a mistake to listen to another church’s pastor and wish your pastor would preach more like him.  But when you see another church living generously and giving sacrificially to its community, it is perfectly acceptable, even good, to ask, “why isn’t my church living that generously?”  It is the common calling to every church…it is a fair comparison…apples to apples.  Look around.  Ask the hard questions.  Make the comparisons.  It is OK to insist that your own church live as generously as the church across the street or across the world.

So, how about it?  How are your church’s apples?

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : The Church's Influence, strategic planning, missional

Beware of “Samson” Community Church

6 06 2013

He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. Judges 16:20

Pride goes before destruction,
    a haughty spirit before a fall.  Proverbs 16:18

It’s an awesome thing, being used by God to further His work in this world.  I am sure you would agree that the empowerment by God to accomplish things bigger and greater than anything we could do on our own is a true blessing.  That is true for individuals and it is true for churches as well.  The problem, of course, with being gifted and blessed is that it can start to go to our heads and we can lose site of any sense of humility.  We can grow so accustomed to the giftedness and blessing, we can forget where it comes from and whose bidding it is for.  That, it seems to me, was Samson’s problem.

Strong ArmBy pretty much anyone’s standards, Samson “had it going on”.  Having taken the Nazarite vows and having committed himself to God’s service, he was empowered with almost super-hero-like abilities.  He became a powerful leader among God’s people and actually served as one of Israel’s more famous leaders (one of the “judges”) for some twenty years.  What was his “super power”?  Uncommon strength.  That giftedness propelled him to great acclaim among the people.

But Samson had a lifelong struggle with self-control and instant gratification.  He had, it seems, a virtually unquenchable appetite for pleasing himself, even if it meant being disobedient to God or to his Nazarite vows.  He worshiped God.  He loved God.  He had great faith in God.  He was remembered by the writer of Hebrews as one of the heroes of the faith in God’s story (Hebrews 11).  But he was seriously flawed with regard to his self-absorbed attitude and notions of entitlement.  And there were consequences to that attitude…dire ones in the end.

With great giftedness and blessings come great responsibility and humility.  That was a reality which seems to have often escaped Samson.  I see it in particularly gifted churches as well.  When a church becomes the popular place to be and enjoys season after season of growth and esteem, and as it becomes more and more effective in its efforts to impact the world around it, its people (and dare I say its leadership) can get a little prideful or even haughty.  I’ve seen churches who were particularly blessed act a little bullet-proof.  I think we are all capable of treating our “successful” church as there to satisfy MY immediate needs and comfort as opposed to humbly thanking God for this season of blessing and turning it all outward to help others.

In short, Samson’s story paints an ugly picture of what arrogance and entitlement look like, even in one of the heroes of God’s story.  I wonder which of our churches today are painting similar pictures in God’s eyes?

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : leadership, missional, The Church's Influence

What to Give the God Who has Everything

4 06 2013

Tuesday Re-mix -

With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.   Micah 6:6-8

gift-tieFather’s Day is nigh upon us…just a little less than two weeks away.  It is not too early to start thinking about what (for most of us) is the most difficult gift of the whole year to find.  What in the world will you give him for Father’s Day?  He is so very difficult to buy for!  Whenever he needs something, he just goes and gets it…what could I possibly get him that he doesn’t already have?  A tie?  Did I give him that last year?  Did I really give him a tie last year!?  How cliche is that!?  I am so embarrassed.

This passage out of Micah got me thinking about God and what He really wants from His church (from His bride) and what we could possibly give Him, and I wondered…What do you give the God Who has everything?

Some would answer we should give Him our very best gathered worship…excellence in music, in preaching, in communion, in corporate prayer…that we should give Him a truly amazing gathered worship expression week after week.  They might cite Psalm 22:3 (our God inhabits praise).

Others would answer the church should give Him our broken Spirits and contrite hearts…that what He really wants from us is moldable hearts.  They would cite Psalm 51.

Still others would argue that what the church should give God is everything.  After all, it all belongs to Him anyway!  They would argue that we should give Him our very lives and all they contain…that we should present to Him “our bodies as living sacrifices”.  They would cite Romans 12:1-2.

None of those would be wrong.  That’s the nice thing about serving this God…it’s not really the gift that counts, it is the heart behind the gift.  Cain and Able taught us that.

But Micah captures the very essence of what it is God really desires from His people.  Micah, it seems to me, has the answer for what to give the God Who has everything.  What God really wants from His church is simply that we do justice in the world, that we love and show kindness or mercy just like Jesus did, and that we walk humbly with God.  Somewhere in there is a pretty good strategic plan for your church, wouldn’t you say?  What would it look like in your church?  How can your local body of believers do better to give this great gift to God?  Are you up for it?

Or, you could just give Him another tie.  Your choice.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Everyone's a Minister, Spiritual Formation, leadership, strategic planning, missional

Defiling the Church

30 05 2013

 But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine…In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. Daniel 1:8, 20

Daniel was not a dietician.  He was no more prepared to offer a scientific explanation for his food choices than he was prepared to explain the theory of relativity.  All he knew was God’s Word and he was “resolved not to defile himself”, i.e., he was determined not to dirty his hands with the ways of the world.  He knew God’s law.  He trusted it.  And that was enough for him.

dirty handsIn my ministry of consulting with conflicted congregations, I have reached a conclusion about the church: it can be complicated.  This is true because people are complicated and because relationships are messy and the church, after all, is comprised fully of people and relationships.  It is not always easy to find our way forward through those complications.  It may be doctrinal issues or personality issues or governance issues or moral issues.  It may be generational issues or worship style issues or social issues.  Whatever the issues, the way forward can seem almost impossible to find, even for the most brilliant strategist.  I am reminded of that difficulty time and time again.

When we find ourselves in new, unchartered territory (like Daniel), it is always tempting to fall back on conventional wisdom of the world in which we live and work.   We want answers, and sometimes scripture does not offer us quite the full explanation we are hoping for, so we “defile ourselves” (and God’s church) by relying on strategies and processes from the world.

For example, we rely upon Robert’s Rules of Order and procedural trickery when we should be calling our people to prayer and to oneness in Christ.  In other instances, we fall back on secular human resources processes of talking about a problem employee, when scriptural models tell us we should be talking to that employee.  Even in matters of theology, our tendency is to navigate through suspected false teaching by bringing in the resident “expert” and leaving him/her to sort it out, rather than trusting Paul’s counsel in Ephesians 4 that the best defense against false teaching is NOT our theological prowess, but our unity and our corporate spiritual maturity.

As with Daniel, there are times (more than we can imagine) in the church where we may not necessarily be able to explain why Biblical processes and God’s wisdom works.  There are times when the Bible flies in the face of conventional worldly wisdom.  Those are the times which truly test our resolve, our faith in God’s Word.  We can enter the difficult waters with clean hands or we can dirty our hands with the ways of the world.  The choice is always ours.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Church Unity, conflict, Discerning God's Will Together, Ephesians 4, leadership

The Scary Truth About Pastoral Authority

28 05 2013

Tuesday Re-mix -

This is what the Lord says:

“As for the prophets
    who lead my people astray, 
they proclaim ‘peace’ 
    if they have something to eat,
but prepare to wage war against anyone
    who refuses to feed them.
6 Therefore night will come over you, without visions,
    and darkness, without divination. 
The sun will set for the prophets, 
    and the day will go dark for them. 
7 The seers will be ashamed 
    and the diviners disgraced. 
They will all cover their faces 
    because there is no answer from God. ”  Micah 3:5-7

hamiltoncropThis passage from Micah has something to say to us about pastoral authority.  And so does professional baseball.

They say that, among the various professional sports skills, hitting a major league baseball pitch may be the most difficult.  I’ll buy that.  And as far as I’m concerned, nobody practices that skill any better than Josh Hamilton.  I honestly think he has maybe the sweetest swing in baseball.  Last year, his four-home-run performance against the Orioles became just another illustration (just to put that in perspective, that has only been done 16 times in all of MLB history…that makes it even more rare than pitching a perfect game).  But let’s be clear about those home-runs.  They do not happen because of Hamilton’s amazing backstory, and they do not happen because of his title or his position as a major league player, and they do not happen because he has somehow earned the respect of his team mates or of opposing players.  Those home-runs happen because of many long hours of perfecting a swing and then repeating that swing perfectly under a variety of circumstances.  It is about sticking radically to that perfection and not wavering from it even a little bit.  When Hamilton does that, when he sticks exactly with that perfect groove, not adding anything to the well-rehearsed swing and not leaving anything out…when he does it exactly the way the swing was given to him, the power follows.  It is a terrific illustration of the “power” that comes with “pastoral authority”.

It should not surprise you that, in my work with conflicted congregations, the notion of “pastoral authority” is a hot topic.  The pastor, after all, eventually gets thrust into the middle of pretty much every congregational conflict.  Finding himself (or herself) there, he/she then must begin to form some conclusions about the issues.  As soon as that happens, there are some who disagree with the pastor, and that almost always will eventually bring to the table the discussion about pastoral authority.  What does it mean, when does it “trump” all else, and is it the end of the conversation?

I would like to answer those questions by first asking and answering a different question: under what circumstances does pastoral authority fade away?

First of all, it seems to me that “pastoral authority” (whatever it means) is meaningless except as it is attached to decisions.  In other words, it is what a pastor says or does (or chooses not to say or not to do) which is either filled with authority or not.  The power of Josh Hamilton’s swing is only “in play” when he is actually swinging a bat.  It is pointless to talk about pastoral authority separate and apart from the specific decisions in question.

Secondly, then, pastoral authority becomes less a question about office or title and much more a question about the presence and power of God in a specific word or course of action.  The more careful a pastor is to speak exactly what God has given him/her to speak, the more authority those words carry.  But as a pastor gets away from the precision of God’s message or direction, the authority begins to fade.  Like Hamilton’s swing, it is not likely to be perfect every time…but when it is, the power (the authority) is there.

The scary thing, then, about pastoral authority is that (like the sweetness of a baseball swing) it is neither guaranteed nor permanent.  Any pastor worth his or her salt can testify to this.  It takes hard work and discipline and study and prayer to find the precision of God’s message in each lesson taught.  And when we get it right, it is so very right.  But when that hard work and discipline and study and prayer wane, so does the authority. Like that baseball swing, no matter how experienced we get, there is never a time when we can afford to lose that discipline and focus.

For a true shepherd, a genuine leader among God’s people, that understanding comes with great fear and trembling.  Just ask Josh Hamilton…or Micah…they will tell you.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : conflict, leadership

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