Why I Love My Pastor

7 06 2012

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

I 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

The Multiple-Choice Pastor Search

29 11 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

I always preferred essay tests when I was in school (duh, I became a writer).  I didn’t like the “objective” tests, because I felt like they weren’t as accurate in measuring how well I knew the material, at least for material that is thick in concepts and not-so-thick in memorizable facts.  In law school, I became even more opposed to objective tests…we called them “multiple guess” tests…it seemed always about finding the “least wrong answer”.  Give me an essay test, please!

I feel that same way when it comes to eliciting information from a person or a group of people.  If learning what is on their minds is important to me, I would much rather sit down and have a conversation with them than give them an objective survey.  And I especially feel that same way when it comes to discerning God’s will as a church…my concept of God’s will just does not lend itself to a series of multiple-choice questions.

And yet, the conventional wisdom (and literature) for Pastor Search efforts is to do just such a written survey to your church in order to develop a profile for your pastoral candidates.  The problem with asking your church objective, demographic questions like “Place a check next to the age range you think our next pastor should be?” is that, invariably, once all the results are tabulated, what your church ends up telling you is that they want a 40-year-old pastor with 30 years of pastoral experience…and a big, red “S” on his chest would be nice as well!  Good luck with that.

Objective surveys may be mildly effective (not greatly effective, but mildly so) at figuring out what the people want, but not so much at figuring out what God wants. For that, if you don’t have the time and resources to personally interview every church member, then I suggest an essay survey.  Because when it comes right down to it, there are only a couple of questions which matter:

1.  Describe how you believe God has been working in recent years in this church, and how you see Him working right now in the life of our church?

2.  In light of how you answered question #1, describe some qualities or characteristics of the person you believe God would have pastor this church?

When we used this simple, two-question survey with my own church body 16 years ago for our last pastor search effort, we got hundreds of responses, ranging from one paragraph to multiple pages.  It was a lot to assimilate!  But as we began poring over the responses, we began to see certain words and phrases and concepts over and over again.  We began to see a few characteristics which had the consensus of the congregation…five characteristics, to be exact.  These are not the five most important characteristics for any other church’s pastor.  But they became the defining characteristics of our own search committee’s profile:

1.  Humility

2.  A man of prayer

3.  Impartial; not a “respecter of titles or positions”

4. Good communicator

5.  Not political (this was a reference to denominational politics)

Those characteristics may seem broad and vague to you, but that would only be because they aren’t intended to describe your pastor.  They represent God’s will for my pastor, and anyone who knows my pastor even moderately well would immediately put his picture next to this profile.  Before we ever knew him, we knew his profile.  But most importantly, it was NOT because we asked our congregation to fill out an objective survey.  It was because we asked them to help us discern God’s will.  This profile helped us sift through scores of resumes and candidates.  It literally eventually took us right to our pastor, because it was a right reflection of what God wanted for us.

So, as your church works to discern God’s will together, may I suggest that you not try to relegate that process to an objective, multiple-choice test?  Give them the opportunity to share testimony of what they see God doing among you.  You may just be surprised at what God does with that.


© 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 : Discerning God's Will Together, Pastor Search

The “Star-crossed Lovers” Pastor Search Process

1 11 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

One of the early parenting skills I learned was how to appreciate the works of art my girls brought me.  There were plenty of times I looked at their drawings with no clue at all what they were supposed to portray.  I learned to say things like, “Wow, that is beautiful!  Tell me about it, please!”  That way, I could find out what it was supposed to be before I got myself in trouble.  But no matter what, there would never be a time or circumstance where I would ever communicate to them, “I just don’t care.”  That, for me, would be the exact opposite of love.  Of course I cared!  Any loving father would.

I believe this about God as well.  I believe that, in every difficult decision we make, in every season of searching for answers, God cares enough to guide us and direct us to specific outcomes.  I just cannot get my heart wrapped around a god who says, “I just don’t care…decide for yourself…it doesn’t matter to me.”

One of the privileges God has given our ministry is training Pastor Search teams.  Training those teams to use a prayerful process for searching for a shepherd for their congregation is one of my favorite ways to help churches.  It gives me an opportunity to draw from and reflect on my own experience serving on the pastor search committee of my home church…easily one of the spiritual highlights of my life.  For me it was 18 months of weekly praying and meeting together with eight of the most spiritually mature Christians I have ever known.  It was at times emotionally grueling and at times spiritually invigorating.  It was an intensive season of discerning the hand of God as a group.  In short, it was amazing.

It was a spiritual blessing for all of us because, from the outset, we all agreed on our task.  We all believed that there was one person somewhere out there who God had in mind for our church and that we had the daunting task of hearing God’s heart and following God’s direction to find that one person.  Even as we first began meeting and praying, we all firmly believed that God was already working in the heart of a person somewhere in the world, creating unrest and discontent in that person’s heart, making a future relocation emotionally possible.  Finding this “needle in a haystack” seemed like an impossible task to us, so we spent our first three months of meetings doing nothing but praying together and leaning on each other and on the Lord.  To us, it was a process doomed to fail without intensive prayer on our part.

That was 17 years ago.  As I have met with scores of other search committees since then, I have learned how blessed my committee was to have everyone on the same page in this perspective…because not everyone sees God’s will in this same way.  There are plenty of people who would disagree with a perspective on God’s will that says God has only one person in mind to shepherd your church.  I have heard them refer to that notion as the “star-crossed lovers” theory of God’s will, implying that God does not work that way.

But doesn’t He?  Isn’t the God of the Bible one who involves Himself in the day-to-day details of his people?  And when it comes to the spiritual leadership of His people, do we really believe God simply does not care enough to have a best, perfect will in mind?  If I am wrong about this, then a pastor search is little more than a personnel/human resources, secular process…just figure out what YOU want, and go find someone to fit that desire.  But if I am right, and God does have a perfect and specific will for who pastors your church, then shouldn’t the process be one filled with prayerful discernment?  Shouldn’t that process be something MORE than just an employee search?

I am curious what you think about this.  When it comes to finding a shepherd for a church, does God have a specific will?

© 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 : Discerning God's Will Together, leadership, Pastor Search, prayer

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