Thursday, December 10, 2020

Thoughts about ministry from J. H. Jowett

     We have all seen, or heard about, pastors falling into some grievous sin. While the celebrity pastor gets the attention, more often the fallen pastor serves a smaller congregation. It may not be as public a fall but anytime a pastor falls, it hurts the people of God. I am grieved each time I hear of another situation in which a minister of the gospel dishonors his Lord and his office.

     In 1993 I was given a copy of John Henry Jowett’s book, The Preacher, His Life and Work. This book is a series of lectures that Jowett gave to a class of Divinity student at Yale in the early 20th Century. Jowett has been a faithful guide to me in my ministry. The second lecture is entitled The Perils of the Preacher. Jowett outlines four dangers to be faced and overcome by every preacher. I want to summarize each of these and offer some of my own observations.    

First is a “deadening familiarity with the sublime.” Jowett writes, “You will not have been long in the ministry before you discover that it is possible to be fussily busy about the Holy Place and yet lose the wondering sense of the Holy Lord. We may have much to do with religion and yet not be religious.” When we lose the sense of the Holy, we have become technicians rather than men of God. While our words may be helpful to God’s people, we risk hearing the words of Jesus, “Depart from me…I never knew you.”

     I have seen one way in which this manifests itself. When the preacher develops a “preacher’s voice.” When his words both in the vocabulary and even in the tonal inflections change when he is leading in worship or preaching, he is in danger. I have heard preacher who put on a pleading tone when in the pulpit. This is a tone which the preacher never uses in any other situation of life. This tone communicates to the congregation, “Come up to the heights from which I am speaking to you now.” Sadly the height is only the few short steps into the pulpit and not an exalted heart communing with the Almighty.

        The second peril is a “deadening familiarity with the commonplace.” The pastor listens to the marital struggles of his members. He is aware of the great moral failures of people all around him. He sees people hurting others on a daily basis and rather than breaking his heart, he calmly offers a solution. One pastor became aware that a staff member confessed to a consensual sexual relationship with a young teenager. The pastor knew that the staff member must be removed. Being familiar with sexual sin, the pastor sought to correct the teenager. He did not enter the poor girl’s life to hear her heartbreak. He did not consider that she had been manipulated by the staff member. He did not consider the deep tragedy of the rape which had actually occurred. The pastor failed because he had a “deadening familiarity with the commonplace” which prevented him from seeing the real issues involved.

     The third peril is “the possible perversion of our emotional life.” A pastor walks through the emotional highs and lows of the members of his church. He stands with the young mother as she becomes a widow. He pronounces the hopeful couple “husband and wife.” He gets to set apart a newborn child through the sacrament of baptism and will weep with the couple who lost a child in early pregnancy. In addition, he has his own ups and downs. He may have a child who faces physical hardships, emotional struggles, or even struggles with faith. He has the same disappointments others feel with the issues in society. His emotions can become raw; or maybe even desperate. As Hugh Price Hughes told Jowett, “The evangelical preacher is always on the brink of the abyss.” Jowett continues, “That is to say, the evangelical preacher, with his constant business in great facts and verities that sway the feelings, may become the victim of nervous depression, and in his nervous impoverishment his moral defenses may be relaxed, the enemy may leap within his gates, and his spirit may be imprisoned in dark and carnal bondage.” His emotions may scream for relief and he may seek such relief in a sinful opportunity. I have seen all too many pastors either seek comfort in the arms of a mistress, a bottle of alcohol, or who face burnout.

     The fourth is “the perilous gravitation of the world.” Jowett describes this peril…

It is round about us like a malaria, and we may become susceptible to its contagion. It offers itself as a climate, and we may be led into accepting it as the atmosphere of our lives. I suppose that one of the deepest characteristics of worldliness is an illicit spirit of compromise. It calls itself by many agreeable names, such as “expediency,” “tactfulness,” “diplomacy,” and it sometimes ascends to higher rank and claims kinship with “geniality,” “sociability,” and “friendship.” But, despite this fine borrowed attire, the worldly spirit of compromise is just the sacrifice of the moral ideal to the popular standard, and the subjection of personal conviction to current opinion.

Henri Nouwen wrote in The Wounded Healer that a minister “finds himself standing on the edges of events and only reluctantly admitted to the spot where the decision are made.” “Ministers are more tolerated than required.” This reality can lead many a pastor to want to be “relevant.” In addition, members of the church, and other leaders, will encourage the pastor to “let his hair down” to just “relax” a little. This will lead him to compromise to live in the gray, serving both God and mammon.

     By being aware of the perils, maybe pastors, both experienced and new to the calling can continue in a long term ministry that honors God by its length and by its depth.

Friday, June 5, 2020

Venn Diagram


A few of my friends recently posted this Venn diagram. I really appreciate it as a reasonable response to the issues again raised after the murder of George Floyd. I took some time to think about this diagram and realized I do not know anyone who is not in the middle triangle. I have friends who joined the protests in DC. They support “good police officers” and they do not “condone looting and rioting.” I have friends who declare “blue lives matter” who are also grieved by the murder of Mr. Floyd. While the diagram is a good representation of where most people stand, we must be careful to not use it as though everyone else is outside of the middle giving us a sense of superiority. How do I want others to judge me? I should probably judge them with the same understanding. As long as I assume “I get it right and “they” are all wrong” I will not listen to “them.” If I do not listen to “them”, I will not work with “them.”

Cynicism asserts that everyone is motivated by the desire for power and money. The Christian version of this confuses utter depravity (man is as bad as he could be) with total depravity (all of man is tainted by sin). It also fails to account for the power of regeneration that makes the Christian dead to sin (Romans 6:1-4). The great blind spot of cynicism is that it only applies to “them” and never to “us.” “They” are bad, while “we” are good. However, if everyone is motivated by power and greed, then so is the cynic. It could be fairly argued that the cynic is using cynicism because it allows him to gain the upper hand over others. In fact, it inherently claims a superior knowledge which allow the cynic to see the motivations of others. With a cynical paradigm in our minds, the above mentioned Venn diagram seems to indicate that “they”—those who are protesting—don’t “support good police officers” and/or they do “condone looting and rioting.” On the other side, those who support the police are not “outraged by George Floyd’s death.” Neither of these is actually true of the vast majority of Americans.

About Me

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I have been a PCA pastor since 1993, having been a pastor in Arizona, Florida, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and as the Team Leader for MTW’s work in Scotland. I am currently the Senior Pastor of Providence Presbyterian Church in York, PA. As a pastor, my desire is to help everyone I meet live out Psalm 73:25, “Whom have I in Heaven but You, and besides You I desire nothing on earth.” I love my Wife Robin, my two sons, Patrick and Michael and my daughter in law, Britney. I am firmly wrapped around the fingers of my granddaughters.

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