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Pastor

“I’m not here to change you; I’m here to change WITH you.”

Dec 7th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
7 comments

Before I was a pastor I wouldn’t have known where to purchase cocaine. Now, access is just a phone call away.

(For the record, there has been no accessing of this substance on my part.)

What I’ve discovered since becoming a pastor a couple of years ago is that there is more of a drug culture, even in our small towns, than we think. This has led me into some dark places to be with the kinds of people that it turns out Jesus was keen on reaching out to.

They’ve brought their friends to meet me too. These meetings – the initial ones and the subsequent ones – never have fairy tale endings. The friends I’ve met, even the ones who have decided to follow Jesus, still struggle with their addictions. They struggle with their addictions, with their ongoing social strife, with the poor start they were given in life, and with their inability to avoid a daily existence involving the worst kinds of drama.

You know, all of the stuff that most of the rest of us don’t need to worry about.

Walking with someone through all of this is frustrating, draining, and difficult… but it’s not boring, I can tell you that, and it is ultimately rewarding.

Sick Physicians
It’s the sick, Jesus tells us that are in need of the physician. Unfortunately too many physicians are happy to gather together weekly for mutual affirmation while ignoring the sick.

Many of these physicians are just as sick in other ways, but it’s really hard to tell that when you’re surrounded by a bunch of other people with the same sickness. More mutual affirmation…

We Need Each Other
The sick and the healthy – we need each other. Those who are sick with addictions need those who are not and those who are sick with pride need those who have none.

I was in a meeting on Saturday night when a thought occurred to me. I was sitting with three very good friends talking about where the ideal place would be to plant a church amongst the homeless, drug addicted, and sex-trade workers.

What’s important at the outset, we all agreed, is to let people know that WE are not there to change THEM. We are there to change WITH them, since WE are not complete in our perfection.

When you meet someone who struggles with addiction, they are changed but you are too. Sometimes, you change more than they do!

Connections
Do you have the right connections to make a call right now and have the ability to purchase cocaine? If not, you probably don’t know enough of the types of people Jesus did.

I can help you find these people if you’re interested. Let me know.

(Of course there are a couple of cautions to throw in here. Don’t do this if you’ve struggled with this type of substance abuse in the past. Don’t walk into an area of weakness and tempt yourself beyond your limits, etc.)

But for most of the rest of you, you really need someone you can look in the face and say:

“I’m not here to change you; I’m here to change WITH you.”

“Youth Groups Destroy Children’s Lives”

Nov 24th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
10 comments

So says David Fitch. First, Fitch offers an admission (one that I could make myself):

I often use the pedagogical tactic that starts out by saying something provocative and then, after I’ve gotten myself into some trouble, and acquired some people’s attention,  I try to explain myself. It’s a bad rhetorical habit. Nonetheless, it works. This time it seems to have attracted some attention so let me take advantage of it and explain what I meant.

So, is there some hyperbole in the statement? Yes, but it did get your attention, didn’t it? Fitch explains:

Prototype youth groups are built on the worst of modernist assumptions concerning the way human beings develop as cultural beings. [Parents] think the answer is to somehow get their children to a place where the youth culture attracts them and somehow makes Christianity attractive to their age group. All these things, I argue, work against the child growing up into a vital and real relationship with the living God and what He has done in Christ for the world.

He then lists as least three ways that prototype youth programs are destructive:

1.) YOUTH GROUPS FOSTER PEER ORIENTATION.

Youth groups segregate the youth from the adults creating programing geered towards them as a separate culture. This creates a gap between the youth and the adults culturally. This then leads the youth to look to their peers for orientation into life. This I contend works against the discipleship of youth into Christ. I contend this peer orientation is disasterous for the lives of our children.

2.) YOUTH GROUPS UNDERCUT WHOLISTIC COMMUNITY from which a child can learn faith in Chirst as a way of life/relationship, not just information slickly delivered… children learn about the living God by being in living relationships within a community where God is present. Once Jesus becomes infotainment, once it becomes a program, detached from real relationships, it loses its reality. It takes on the character of a learning experience in competition with other learning experiences.

3.) YOUTH GROUPS TOO OFTEN TRY TO ATTRACT YOUTH PLAYING TO THEIR WORST INTERESTS.

It’s a mistake to try to “attract” youth to discipleship with either social occasions that play on their sexual insecurities or music entertainment that plays on their desire to be “cool.” There will be times I am sure to attend the occasional rock concert or have the occasional social time together. But what the church should do for its youth most of all is foster spaces for meeting God where they can be trained to listen for God and commune with Him in silence, in prayer.

These are just the highlights. Read the whole thing here. If you have time, take in some the content in the comments section as well.

Woody Allen Interviews Billy Graham

Nov 24th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

Billy handles himself superbly. Returns wit for wit without compromise. Have a look:

Part 2

Who are the prominent pastor-preachers today that can go head-to-head with a top-notch comedian/social satirist and not come out with two black eyes and a bloody nose?

Your Virtual Pastor Is Not Your Pastor

Nov 18th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

There was an excellent post at Desiring God a few days ago called “Embracing the Ordinary“. The posts consists of a quote by Carl Trueman in Republocrat followed by six implications – three for churches and three for pastors. First, Carl Trueman:

[The] Lord has blessed the church of today with some remarkably talented individuals who have been used to do remarkable things. The danger is that, in focusing on such men, we create unrealistic expectations. The evidence that the church models developed by these men can be transplanted with success elsewhere is highly equivocal; more likely, their success is rooted in God’s using their own remarkable gifts and contexts—the right men in the right place at the right time for something great, if you like. The life of Don Carson’s father, outlined so movingly in his Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor, is more likely to be closer to the norm for most churches and pastors than that of Redeemer in New York (38-39).

Bingo! This, as I have pointed out ad nauseum, is the major failing of Willow Creek’s “Leadership Summit” event. The “leaders” they present as authorities bear little to no resemblance to the average attendee of the event. Unless you are trying to build an empire with the same look and size (which is actually the goal of many), it makes no sense to idolize these leaders.

They are the exception, not the rule and by defining leadership success by their accomplishments implies that a majority of pastors and other leaders are losers and failures.

The post at DG then considers these six implications (Shortened here. Read the full post for the expanded points):

Three Implications for Churches

  1. Listen (attentively and expectantly) primarily to your pastor’s sermons
  2. Listen to extraordinary preachers (unless he’s your pastor) sparingly
  3. Lower your (likely unrealistic) expectations of your pastor. While he may not be (and likely isn’t) extraordinary, he is (for you and your church) likely the right man in the right place at the right time.

Three Implications for Pastors

  1. Broaden your diet of your favorite preachers
  2. Be content being an ordinary pastor and preacher
  3. To give you proper perspective (and deep encouragement) as you aspire and cope with your newly embraced “ordinariness,” read Carson’s Memoirs annually

Posts like this is one of the reasons I continue to read content at Desiring God written by John Piper and others. Piper’s church is  mega-church size without mega-church BS. Theologically, you may have a few bones to pick with him, but you have to admit that there’s a refreshing lack of mega-church thinking.

There is far too much free-lance pastoring going on, and that’s where this post hits a bit of a paradox. Desiring God and other large ministries put out so much content, with increased influence being the primary goal. Still, I like the “proceed with caution” attitude displayed in the post.

Sometimes people need to be told “That’s a nice thing to say, but that guy’s not your pastor,” and also “If you want him to be your pastor, here’s the address of his church and a membership transfer form.”

Disciple-Making – Beyond The Front Door

Nov 16th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

In Matthew 28 Jesus tells his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Disciples making disciples – this is what Jesus has sent us to do.

But this is more than a one-trick assignment. We are not called merely to bring people to the front door of faith, usher them through it, and then circle back to gather more recruits.

The task of disciple-making is at least threefold and is accomplished not just in getting new people “into the fold”, but also caring for them while they are there, and retrieving them when they wander off – leaving the other 99 in relative safety, depending on the terrain and prevalence of predators.

Focusing on getting people into the fold is what we’ve tended toward -  a remnant of “sign on the line and get saved” Evangelicalism perhaps.  And while new community is formed with the making of new disciples,  deeper community is found only as we pursue the other two aspects of disciple-making.

These other two – care for and retrieval of – are by far the more difficult and time-consuming, and for that reason they are more often neglected.

Preaching and Teaching Resources

Nov 15th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
1 comment

My favorite weeks are the ones when I’m preparing to preach. Last week was one of those weeks.

During the week Darryl Dash posted a “preaching cheat sheet” based on Haddon Robinson’s book “Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages”

I have two of my own that I, like Darryl, have posted beside my desk. One is based on John Piper’s article The Marks of a Spiritual Leader, the other is from a section of John Stott’s book “Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today“. You can view these three resources either by blog post or PDF by using the links below posted below.

Haddon Robinson (blog post | PDF | order the book)
John Piper (blog post | PDF)
John Stott (blog post | order the book)

Now, go work on a sermon… my next one is in two weeks. The passage is Galatians 6.

What Is a Good Teacher?

Nov 15th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
3 comments

From John Piper’s article The Marks of a Spiritual Leader, here’s a section where he seeks to give some of the essential characteristics of a good teacher. These have been helpful to me in preparing to preach and teach.

  • A good teacher asks himself the hardest questions, works through to answers, and then frames provocative questions for his learners to stimulate their thinking.
  • A good teacher analyzes his subject matter into parts and sees relationships and discovers the unity of the whole.
  • A good teacher knows the problems learners will have with his subject matter and encourages them and gets them over the humps of discouragement.
  • A good teacher foresees objections and thinks them through so that he can answer them intelligently.
  • A good teacher can put himself in the place of a variety of learners and therefore explain hard things in terms that are clear from their standpoint.
  • A good teacher is concrete, not abstract; specific, not general; precise, not vague; vulnerable, not evasive.
  • A good teacher always asks, “So what?” and tries to see how discoveries shape our whole system of thought. He tries to relate discoveries to life and tries to avoid compartmentalizing.
  • The goal of a good teacher is the transformation of all of life and thought into a Christ-honoring unity.

Download as a PDF.

Pastors And Their People

Nov 10th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

More wise words from John Stott about pastors and their people:

A pastor caring for his people, “is not satisfied that Christ dwells in them; he longs to see Christ formed in them, to see them transformed into the image of Christ, ‘until you take the shape of Christ.’(NEB)”

In response, a congregation should, “neither flatter him because they find him attractive, nor despise and reject him because he is not… Instead, a congregation’s attitude to their minister should be determined by his loyalty to the apostolic message.”

“In the church today there is far too little deference to the apostolic word. Frequently, what interests a contemporary congregation most is the teacher’s technique, mannerisms, or voice, how long he preaches for, or whether they can hear him, understand him and agree with him. And often when the sermon is over, they love to criticize it and pull it to pieces.

Certainly, people have cause for criticism if the preacher is unfaithful to his commission, if he makes no attempt to preach biblically, or if he is not himself subject to the apostolic word.”

The pastor’s attitude in the process should resemble Paul’s in that, “He should be preoccupied with people’s spiritual progress and care nothing for his own prestige… He should not use them for his own pleasure, but be willing on their behalf to endure pain.”

In summary:

“What should matter to people is not the pastor’s appearance, but whether Christ is speaking through him. And what should matter to the pastor is not the people’s favor, but whether Christ is formed in them.

The church needs people who, in listening to their pastor, listen for the message of Christ, and pastors who, in laboring among their people, look for the image of Christ. Only when pastor and people thus keep their eyes on Christ will their mutual relations keep healthy, profitable, and pleasing to almighty God.”

- John R. W. Stott – “Only One Way: The Message of Galatians”

I Don’t Have a Plan: The Joys of Small Talk

Nov 3rd, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
1 comment

The entirety of chapter 10 of Eugene Peterson’s “The Contemplative Pastor:Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction” is worth further exploration since it deals with small talk. What’s that you say… you didn’t think Peterson would be a fan of Seinfeld?

He may or may not be, but endless, mindless, pointless chatter is not what he’s talking about in this chapter.

I have to admit that sometimes as a pastor I feel the need to turn ordinary conversations into “spiritual” conversations. There is sometimes a guilt experienced in the aftermath of a coffee meeting or an evening spent with people from my church in which the conversation never made its way past the ordinary things of life. But this is more guilt than conviction; more a capitulation to a perceived requirement than a failure to act on what I know to be right.

“Pastoral work,” says Peterson, “is that aspect of Christian ministry that specializes in the ordinary. It is the nature of pastoral life to be attentive to, immersed in, and appreciative of the everyday texture of people’s lives – the buying and selling, the visiting and meeting, the going and coming.”

There are always crisis situations to attend to but most people, most of the time are not in crisis.

“Small talk: the way we talk when we aren’t talking about anything in particular, when we don’t have to think logically, or decide sensibly, or understand accurately. The reassuring conversational noises that make no demands, inflicts no stress. The sounds that take the pressure off.  The meandering talk that simply expresses what is going on at the time.”

This is about the only way I do person meetings. No agenda, no point list, no “desired outcome” – just start talking and see where it goes. But I’m not sure that this is working, insofar as I haven’t tried going prepared, with an agenda and a desired outcome. Something to try perhaps – being more “intentional” – but I don’t think I can bring myself to do it.

Being intentional, to me, means being available, being involved, trusting God providence to supply opportunity. Seeing what happens, watching where it goes, making my contribution (by the grace of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit) and then repeating the cycle. Time will be the judge of the effectiveness of this strategy.

Peterson’s childhood pastor was the opposite – the only thing he ever wanted to know was how your SOUL was doing. The pastor’s refusal (or inability) to engage in any other kind of conversation implied that most of Peterson’s life was being lived at a sub-spiritual level. “Vast tracts of my experience we ‘worldly’, with occasional moments qualifying as ‘spiritual’.”

Not only is this practiced by some, it is expected by many. Back to Peterson’s earlier quote about the Pastor as court jester.

“I never questioned the practice,” he continues, “until I became a pastor myself and found that such an approach left me uninvolved with most of what was happening in people’s lives and without a conversational context for the actual undramatic work of living by faith in the fog and drizzle.”

I don’t have a 5-year plan – I don’t have a 1-year plan… I question whether I can legitimately say I have a plan beyond next week. I rely on serendipity as much as intentional action. I am wary (and weary!) of manipulation – of me or by me.

Stay tuned…

Pastors and Prayer: “People would rather talk to the pastor than to God.”

Nov 2nd, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

Eugene Peterson:

“Prayer is not work that pastors are often asked to do except in ceremonial ways. Most pastoral work actually erodes prayer. The reason is obvious: people are not comfortable with God in their lives. They prefer something less awesome and more informal. Something, in fact, like the pastor. Reassuring, accessible, easygoing. People would rather talk to the pastor than to God. And so it happens that without anyone actually intending it, prayer is pushed to the sidelines.

And so pastors, instead of practicing prayer, which brings people into the presence of God, enter into the practice of messiah: we will do the work of God for God, fix people up, tell them what to do, conspire in finding shortcuts by which the long journey to the Cross can be bypassed since we all have such crowded schedules right now. People love us when we do this. It is flattering to be put in the place of God. It feels wonderful to be treated in this Godlike way. And it is work that we are generally quite good at.”

– The Contemplative Pastor:Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction

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