This talk, given by Paul DeCelles at an area leaders’ retreat in Servant Branch, offered instruction for pastors. Although Paul was specifically addressing heads of men’s groups, what he said applies to all pastoral care. He explained different phases of interaction, moving from teaching and learning to friendship. The health and vitality of the community rests in pastoral relationships. The approach of this talk is very pastoral.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
PAUL: . . . Glory to God!
ALL: Amen!
PAUL: Amen! So far, we’ve been talking a lot about the personal characteristics of a pastor. Actually, we’ve been talking about it more just in terms of being basic “Christian” as opposed to being “pastor,” but everything that applies to that applies to us as pastors, too.
I want to talk now a little bit more about some nuts and bolts about how to go about pastoring. Before I do that, though, I want to try to situate what I have to say in the life of the community. You have to understand that the way the People of Praise is structured is that the heart of the community is not found among the coordinators; it’s found in the men’s groups. Now, it’s also found in the women’s groups, but it’s found in the women’s groups in a somewhat different way than it is in the men’s groups.
That is to say, the—where do you find the highest, most intimate—the highest-intensity interaction among members of the People of Praise? Where’s that going to be found normally? It’s going to be found in a men’s group or in a women’s group, or in a household, or in the home. And if it’s an ordinary, simple family, then you won’t find the same intensity of household living, as such, as you would in an ordinary household setting. That is to say, you won’t find it marked uniquely by its characteristics as part of the People of Praise, ordinarily. The reason for that is that there probably won’t be a very highly, you know, structured pattern of life, and that sort of thing.
The first place where you begin to see something as a pattern of life of the community is in the men’s groups or in the women’s group. So, what I want to talk about today, in this period of time allotted to me, as little as it is [Paul and all laugh], is, “How can we work at making those things work better?” Now, that’s the same thing as saying, “How can we all be better pastors?” Because that is the fundamental pastoral unit in the community.
So we have the notion that the community is—it’s like a person. It’s got lots of organs attached to it, but it’s also got a structure, which runs—the structures—I’ve talked about this here before. . . . The structure is not necessarily the most attractive part of the body, but it’s an essential part, or you won’t have things hanging together properly. The backbone, so to speak, of the community is the pastoral connections that, for example, all of you have with the men you head, and the people you care for with pastoral care in the community.
So, for example, if somebody were to say, someplace down there in some part of the body, of the branch, the Servant Branch of the People of Praise, that “I don’t feel like I’m a part of the body; I don’t feel like I’m really in the community. I don’t feel like I’m really in the branch. I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t think I fit in,” that’s your business. That’s not the coordinators’ business directly. It’s directly your business, because you’re the ones who are supposed to be doing that.
Now, this is a big burden that I’m putting on you, because it means that you have to know what the community is. You see, you’re at the interface. We don’t have a lot of levels. Do you follow me? It’s like, you’ve got to know what the community is so you can tell your people. You’ve got to understand the life of Christ, so that you can pastor them. You have—it’s direct, it’s immediate. You’re the pastors.
Now, you’re responsible for your pastoral care, to the main pastor in your areas: the area coordinator. And he’s responsible also to the body of coordinators and the principal branch coordinators. And then, you know, there are—there’s something like a chain of command, but it’s not exactly like. . . . I’m sure I won’t be telling any of you anything to tell anybody in your men’s group—and I’m the overall coordinator! I’m just not—I’m not in touch! You’re the ones who have to do that. We haven’t got the community set up in such a way that you would normally expect me to do something like that. I might get some kind of a revelation, and, according to the constitution, I’m free to come and tell you or somebody, directly, something. I’m the only one in—the overall coordinator’s the only one who’s supposed to be able to do that if he isn’t somebody’s head, if you follow me. I mean, it’s an unusual position, but—in that regard. But the point I’m trying to make here is that it’s—the health of the Servant Branch is directly attributable—or its illness is directly attributable—to you.
So, I want to tell you how to do your job better. Okay? What kind of a job are we expecting you to do? How are we supposed to live at this level? How are you supposed to exercise your responsibilities, and what are your responsibilities? Okay. So, you’re at the—you’re responsible for the “heartbeat” of the community.
Now, I want to say a couple of things. In—the men’s groups are—go through phases. The first phase is, when people start—first get into a men’s group, they have a lot to learn and so the—whoever is their head in that group will, in fact, spend quite a bit of time trying to get that person up to speed. Now, you know that you can’t do that all at once. You can’t just dump a huge load of manure, you know, all at once. Even though it’s wonderful when you put it on sparingly and in the right places, it’s not so good if you dump a whole truckload at once on a poor sucker, okay? [Paul and all laugh.]
So. . . . I mean, our life is very rich, and if you pile it on somebody all at once [Paul chuckles], you can cause burnout! [Paul and all laugh.] So, what people normally experience is several years of training. In fact, it may stretch into six years. And, we’re always going to be learning something, so I don’t—but the emphasis on training in the men’s group attenuates over a period of time. You just sort of naturally [unclear—“dance”?] out, and you find out that you don’t have to spend so much time teaching in a men’s group. In fact, that is not the normal mode; teaching is not the normal mode of life in a men’s group. It’s a—a healthy, mature men’s group does not have a strong component of teaching in it.
Now, what I’m trying to point out here is, we try to set men’s groups up in such a way that they’re like the men’s group that our Lord had with his disciples. All right? Where he said after three years, or however long that it was that they lived together, and he taught them everything that he—he passed onto them everything that the Father had told him. . . . And at that point, then, he said, “So I don’t call you my disciples anymore. I’m calling you my friends.” So, we do want the men’s groups to gravitate into simple friendship. The relationship that should exist among the members of the men’s group should be that—the goal is friendship.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t headship operating. There’s no reason why a head can’t be a person’s friend. I mean, our Lord is certainly the head of the universe, and he said to his disciples at the Last Supper, you know, “I’m calling you my friends.” So, we ought to be able to pull it off if he can, right? I mean, he being cosmic Lord, and stooping all the way down to be friends with us, we ought—we have a much, obviously—not much of a step to take at all, to be friends with the people we are pastorally responsible for.
Okay. So even—so some of the things I’m going to describe apply to groups of friends. In fact, basically, that’s the situation I want to describe, as opposed to the transitional stage of a men’s group, which is highly teaching-oriented, or—even though it may not look like it. So—it should never look real “teachy,” you know. But it should have a very instructional comp-, large instructional component to the men’s group in the beginning.
But I want to talk about the normal way in which people should be headed when they are mature members of the People of Praise. That is to say, how should you head a mature member of the People of Praise? What is the normal pastoral life in the community? Well, I’m going to talk about that; honestly. I promise you I will. But before I do, I want to say a few more introductory remarks! [Paul and all laugh.]
So, the key to—I’m just going to raise it as a label. You’ll have to think about it yourself. But, the fact that I’m not going to talk a long time about it is an indication of the little time I have been given to talk [Paul and all laugh], as opposed to its relative importance [Paul and all laugh]—in reference to the other things I have to say, I mean. [More laughter.]
Basically, in your men’s groups, in the situations where you are heading somebody, you should be helping as a friend. Now, I’m going to just give you a few ideas, and I’m not—we’ve already talked a lot about this. But one thing is that you have to be with friends! I mean, it may be that you won’t be able to spend an enormous amount of time with your friends over periods of time, you know, over years, in fact. Maybe that you only have a little bit of time to actually spend one-on-one with people. But basically, you’ve got to be with them. You know what I mean? It’s like, even when you’re apart, they know that you’re friends. You know how that works . . . with friends. You should be that kind of a person for the people you are heading: that, in fact, you are a friend. And the emphasis there is on being with them.
Secondly, as our Lord said, you know, “No greater love does a friend have for somebody else than that he lay down his life for his friends.” And so, there is that element of laying down your life. I would—I’d like to take Dan’s word this morning about the “vulnerability.” The way he defined it, with—there’s a bad way to use the word “vulnerability,” you know, being vulnerable, you know, a “weak sister” kind of thing. Not to—that’s not meant to be a racist—sexist remark, rather. But it’s like—well, you know, it’s not a good idea for men to be “weak sisters.” Of course, it’s not a good idea for women to be “weak sisters,” either. But the point is that there’s a way to be a bleeding heart. You know, that sounds like vulnerability, too, and a lot of the stuff you read in pop psychology paints a person—a man should “become vulnerable” in that way. And that’s not the way that Dan was using it.
The dictionary definition that he gave it was, you know, “expose yourself to being wounded.” For example, you’ll be in a trench with somebody fighting a war, and counting on him, you know, to fight with you—and then you turn around all of a sudden, and he’s gone. Well, you’re vulnerable.
“You shouldn’t have hopped in a trench with him,” somebody would say; you know, “You shouldn’t go to war with somebody like that.” And the answer to that is, “Well, no, we’ve got to be vulnerable, in that sense. We’ve got to put ourselves at risk, for the sake of the Lord and for the sake of each other. We have to be open to being disappointed. I mean, in fact, being almost mortally wounded, being. . . . What happens when people whom you’ve trusted leave your side? As—our Lord certainly must have experienced that when Judas left his company. And not only—I don’t mean to take only Judas, with such—loaded with such opprobrium, but there are other less treacherous kinds of betrayals that we encounter. There are just things that we’ve got be. . . . When you pastor people, you’re liable to wind up putting yourself in a very exposed position.
I’ve—myself have experienced that a lot. I often read in newspapers things that I have said to people that I thought would help them, you know. And they were actually, they were very good things to say, and I’m not ashamed of them at all. But they do look a little funny when they’re printed in the newspaper! [Scattered laughter.] You know, you may work with somebody for a long time and you say, you know—and you really are friends, and you say, “Well, I think, in order for you to make any more progress, you’re going to have to do something like. . . .” And then you say something to the person. Later—and it may be very intimate and personal about that person’s life, and it may be exactly what they need to hear. And then, later on, it turns out that, you know, your having said that can be greatly misconstrued. And so, you can get hurt by doing that.
I actually have gotten gun-shy about that. Have any of you ever gotten gun-shy about telling people what you know you really ought to tell them, for fear that, if it doesn’t work, you’re really going to pay a big price later on, and it’s going to come back to haunt you a hundredfold, or something like that? That happens, and I’d say, well, that what the pastor has got to do is: do it anyway. He should do it—not unwisely, you know; don’t be a fool about it—but at the same time, that’s part of the burden that a pastor has. He has to say some things that he really wishes he didn’t have to say. And in fact he may wind up paying an even greater price for it later on. I mean, it’s—it may not be so difficult to say it, as it will be difficult to bear the fact that you had said it later.
Okay, so there’s a laying down of life for—and it has that dimension of vulnerability that Dan was talking about. But there’s—there are lots of other ways, too. As John mentioned, and also Dan, you find yourself working so hard, and you are really drained. Say, perhaps, you’ve been getting up at quarter to six every Saturday morning when it would be wonderful to sleep in, and. . . .
I do think, by the way, that it is a good idea to program in maybe one Saturday a month in which you sleep in or something [Paul and all laugh], so that you don’t just kill yourself. [Paul and all laugh.] I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt me! [Paul and all laugh.] You do have to take care of yourselves a little bit, right, or you will in fact run out. . . . I mean: the difference between running out of gas and running out of oil. Running out of gas, you know, you can always get the gas tank refilled againut . Bwhen you run out of oil and you run the car when there’s no oil in it, you can’t simply add more oil after the engine block has frozen up. okay? So you want to be sure to make sure that your oil gets changed regularly, in my analogy. That means, take a little bit of care of yourself, and make sure that you have a personal life, where you can keep some sanity, where you have some repose yourself, and maybe even a hobby, or something like that.
Okay. Now, another thing is that you have to teach your people. But that’s something like, mainly, sharing, witnessing, talking to your brothers about—and your sisters, whoever you’re responsible for—in fact, everybody, but in such a way that you build them up, you edify the body. You bear witness, give your testimony, share the good things that God’s doing with you, and attribute to God the things which he is doing. You know, recognize God’s providence as his action, as opposed to just the circumstances of life and accidents and things like that.
Another thing you have to do is: you have to simply sometimes endure with your people. I don’t mean endure your people, now; that’s another category [laughter]. No, it’s—that is to say, it’s something like “Comfort those who are mourning.” You have to give them something of the sense of the blessing which comes to those who mourn. That is, peop- —your brothers and sisters, you’ll find, [are] sometimes in circumstances which are just heartbreaking. They are not at fault. They’re simply—God is dealing with them in such a way, in a loving way which is very difficult to understand, and it’s very heartbreaking. And the best you can do with somebody like that sometimes is to just stand there with them, and occasionally remind them that they will be comforted, that this is a vale of tears we’re passing through, and one day we will, in fact, be with the Lord, where there is no—there are no more tears, no sadness, and we will have our reward. In fact, we will have better than what we deserve. So, sometimes, we have to endure with our people.
The fifth thing I want to mention is: you have to be sure to build unity. As somebody else mentioned earlier, how diffic- —how much of a disaster it can be for individuals to be critical of others. One of the main problems that [sic] talking about other people in a critical fashion, in a negative, critical fashion, is that it is essentially isolating. It takes—it’s disunifying. It doesn’t bring people together. It rather carves them out, paints them a certain color, and puts them out of the way, see, so that it’s disunifying rather than unifying.
Actually, sometimes, you do have to say some things that seem to be negative, and you do have to have a realistic appraisal of men, individually. You have to know them. But you have to know them and use that knowledge in such a way as to build unity in Christ as opposed to—sort of, know them, and know how they fit in, and how to handle that situation. And one of them is unifying and the other one is disunifying.
You have to really understand, for example, the constitution, and you have to have your people come to an appreciation of it. Always try to put a favorable interpretation on what’s there, and on the actions of the whole community, and on the body. It’s up to you to try to build unity. If you have some—if you hear some legitimate disunifying kind of remark, but it’s legitimate, that should be dealt with. I mean—I don’t mean it should be papered over or whitewashed or something like that. It should be something that is resolved. Nothing is perfect, including the constitution that we have. It’s not perfect, I’m sure, and it never will be perfect. Or even if it’s sort of perfectly what it is supposed to be, it may not be perfectly what any—what some particular person needs, if you follow me. I mean there are lots of ways in which things can fail. So—but it’s up to you to try to understand and pull together. This is a time for us to pull together. It’s not a time for us to divide anymore in the Servant Branch. Division time is over. It’s on now to multiplication time! [Light laughter.]
LISTENER: Amen!
PAUL: Next thing is that I want to urge you . . . these things don’t have necessarily any logic that—you know, they don’t flow out of each other, all these different things. And so I’m trying to just cover a bunch of points here. I want to urge you to act a certain way in relationship to activities of the community. Of course, you should always take responsibility for them. I mean, come prepared, for example, to community meetings with something to share. The chances that you’re going to get to share may be small because there are so many, even of you [at this talk], and you certainly want others to share besides those who are in this room, at the meetings. But you ought to come prepared. You should come expecting something important to happen at the meeting. And, when it does happen, you should react, you know, with, like, “Well, I knew it was going to happen.” You should be happy about it, and should encourage it.
You should use every opportunity you can to contact “your people,” the ones you’re pastorally responsible for. Now, it’s nice to go to a community meeting and see everybody else. But that is something which the people you care for have the adv- —they can afford to take advantage of that. You really can’t. When you go to a meeting, you should see your people, and make sure that they’re doing okay at that meeting. Make sure they—and ask them what they did. You know, like, “What did you think of the prophecies?” Talk to the people you head. You may not be able to get every one of them every time, because, you know, the community meetings are big, and the people are out there spread around throughout the meeting space. But, if you make an effort, you’ll probably get more than half every time.
And when you talk to them at the meeting, not only greet them like a good friend would, but also ask them, what did they think about the prophecy, what did they think about the teaching? I mean—I don’t mean—you don’t want to ask them all those questions. But use the occasion as an apostolic moment, to see how the people you head are “getting along” with what just happened. I mean, “We think God just moved at this assembly. What do you think?” You know, “Did something happen? Was there something there? What was good? What was good for you? What can you apply to your life? How did this solve any of your problems?” In fact, you might even offer, you know, some comment, like, “I thought that prophecy—I thought of you when that prophecy was given: you know, the one about the glorious saints of the Lord, you know, who are going to go before the throne, worshiping and praising God. I—right away I thought of you!” I mean, if you did. [Paul and all laugh.]
In fact, that’s another thing. It’s—one of the things that you’ll find at meetings like this, then, is that you yourself are spending your time thinking about how your people are doing, rather than sort of thinking about the meeting itself. The meeting becomes an important meeting for you to do something to help the people you’re supposed to be helping, the ones you’re caring for. That’s the way in which you lay down your life.
Now, it really is the case that it would be a lot better if you could just go there and simply enjoy it. But what I’m describing, actually, is something like—somebody said here one time, how was it? It’s like a father going on a vacation with his family, you know. It’s—you really should call it a different name, or at least give him two weeks off after it! [Paul and all laugh.] Because, while everybody’s having fun, the father is making sure that nobody’s, you know, falling off a cliff, or that, you know, nobody’s drowning in the pool, and then he’s stopping all the fights, and he’s seeing to it that the food is good, and the travel is good, and the arrangements, and he doesn’t travel too long, and all the things. . . . And he’s always thinking about the people that he’s trying to make a good vacation for. And that’s something like what you have to do for the meetings. The community meeting is a wonderful place for you to do some good apostolic work with the people you head.
Now, let me. . . . Hmmm. This is really difficult. But it’s . . . well, I don’t know. We’ll come back to this in the question-and-answer period [Paul and all laugh], perhaps. If I can get to some of you to plant some questions! [Laughter.]
See, any given community meeting is—has practically no logic to it whatsoever. You know, I mean, it’s just like you’ve got about a thousand different speakers, in a way. There’re all these different messages that are coming out. And occasionally it’s helpful for whoever is leading the meeting to try to say—you know, pretend to bring some kind of order into all this message, and say, you know, “I think the Lord is—” and then he connects a couple of the prophecies or something like that, or he says, “There’s a message that. . . .” And sometimes there is a—some kind of a theme that does emerge. It’s often. . . . I’m sure it’s your experience—it’s certainly been my experience—that when I ask people what they got out of the meeting, and I ask a whole bunch of different people, I get a whole bunch of different answers. It’s like the Lord had something special for each one there. And it wasn’t as though any of them got the same thing, particularly, but they got what they were supposed to get.
So, I’d like to think of these things as, like, streamers that are hanging down off of—off the ceiling, with messages on them, like Chinese fortune cookies containing messages, okay? I mean, they’re long things. . . . And so, the meeting is a time when the Lord just sort of fills the ceiling, and the space above us, with all kinds of messages. And what you ought to do—this is an image I use a lot: sort of walk with your friend whom you’re heading, sort of, along, and say, “Oh, I think. . . . ” You know, pull this message off and look at it, and say, “Gee, what do you think of this?” Apply something specific that has been said there to the person. Sort of point out to him that, “I think this one is worthwhile for you.” And that’s a way in which you can take—you can use all the wonderful things that are said. You won’t be able to use all of them, but you’ll be able to use the fact that there was one there that would be helpful for one of the people you’re heading, and a different one for another one, and so on. And maybe none of them particularly applies, as far as you can tell. In which case, you know, you do something else with the people. You just ask them what they thought. Maybe—
In fact, very often what I find is—when you talk to people in those circumstances, is that they won’t have gotten anything particularly out of the meeting as such, that is, out of what was said, but while they were there, the Lord told them this; and they didn’t get a chance to prophesy, or they didn’t get a chance to share and testify, and so on. But it’s wonderful for them to be able to tell you what it is that the Lord did there! That is—we’re—human beings are just funny animals. If we don’t, in fact, say what happens to us inside, we forget about it right away! It doesn’t take long at all. We’re like the people in Scripture who look in the mirror and then walk away, and promptly forget what they look like. So, there’s a—that’s one of the great values of testifying with your mouth to the lordship of Jesus. It really changes you when you sort of—when you put it out there, somehow, and give your people a chance to say to you, “Wellm, this is what happ- —what the Lord did to me.” And that will really make permanent the effect which God wants to accomplish in their lives. At least it helps in that direction to make it permanent.
Okay, those are a few things, about—just some little helps. Now, what should you do with somebody you’re heading? I’m going to have to—I will have to, actually, do this fairly quickly. Can I use one of these; will that—? Will one alone be okay? I want to. . . . [Paul is now speaking from farther away from the microphone.] Does this work, or does it only amplify half the room? [Inaudible comment from a listener.] Okay? Okay, good.
I want to write a few things on the board here. Every person’s life can be broken down into some kinds of categories. Probably about four or five will do a pretty good job of covering. . . . It’ll be—it’s a big enough set to cover most of what happens in a person’s life. In fact, it’s enough to cover everything. I’ll give you some.
For example, one area has to do with the “personal life.” Now, under personal life, I would put things like personal prayer, right? Personal prayer, and personal study of the Bible, or—and study of other important things that we should be reading. Study of Scripture. Study in general; I’ll put it down as “reading.” [Sounds of Paul writing on a board or an easel.] Also, things like some time off, some letter-writing, some writing poetry, painting, whatever a person likes to do, horseback riding, something else having to do with . . . I’ll call it “leisure.”
Okay, so that’s one aspect. The second one—I’m not putting these down in order of priority, by the way, but—that is to say, all of them that I’m going to write down, they may not be adequate to cover everything for—you’ll have to figure out yourself. But I think they cover my life, okay? And that’s what really matters! [Burst of laughter, which Paul joins in on.] The second—okay, let me put down here: “family life.” This is particularly important if you’re dealing with a married person.
Three is the “workplace.” Not just place, but also the nature of the work itself, and so on, okay? The work a person does at his job. I’m talking about “job” here, as opposed to “drudgery.” Okay? Okay.
Next, I want to put down, say, the—our “commitment to the covenant life of the community,” [continuing sounds of Paul writing] to your brothers in the People of Praise.
Next would be “finances.”
And another one would be the “use of the gifts.” Now, I would normally put “use of gifts” under the “commitment to the life of the community.” You see, this commitment to the covenant actually itself is a pretty big “cover.” It covers all the things that we promise when we make the covenant, about our sharing our apostolic life, and so on and so forth.
Okay, those will give you a pretty good covering. Now, when you head somebody—can you all. . . . ? Some of you can see it, anyway. At least ten in the middle, there. [Laughter.]
You are responsible for sharing with the person you’re heading his life in these areas. That is to say, you’re supposed to help him as a friend in his personal life, in his family life, in his work, his job, his relation- . . . , his commitment to the covenant of the People of Praise, his brothers and sisters in the community, his finances, and his—and the use of his gifts. That means that when you meet, for example, at your weekly men’s meeting, you should be talking with all the people there, whether one-on-one or sharing in a group, in such a way that everybody gets a chance to say something about some of—about all of these elements, basically. Now it may be that you run out of time on a given week and you’ll have to pick it up the next week, to move on after that. But you should regularly be test- —not testing, but helping—in all of these areas. You should be, I would say, “tapping” these areas: opening them up, so that people can talk about them, and they can share with one another their lives, especially so that you can—so that you will be in position to help them personally.
Let me tell you, one of the immediate benefits is that it’s kind of a revelation to the people you’re heading that they’re supposed to have a personal life. For example, “Oh! You mean I can have a personal life?” [Laughter.] Okay? So, there are all kinds of things that just come out, just by opening them up.. It keeps them being a whole person. It keeps them involved with all the aspects of their life.
Now there may be other things that you want to add. I singled out “use of gifts” because I wanted to say something about that, but probably not now.
Let me say a word about finances. I think that it is really helpful to review with the people you head their financial picture on a monthly basis, roughly. Maybe you can—you don’t have to do it that often, but you ought to know how they are doing, like how big is their credit card account, you know, these days. That is, has it reached the $4,000 mark yet? [Laughter.] You might mention to them that, gee, there might be a better way of getting out of this financial crisis. One thing might be, go to the sharing fund. Another might be a bill consolidation; another thing might be, “I’ll loan you some money,” or “I’ll give you some money.” Or—I mean, there are lots of ways out of this. Anyway, the point I want to get at is that you need to review with people their attitude toward their finances, so that they understand, and continually understand, that what they—that they can give everything to the Lord. They have to be good stewards of the things the Lord gives to them to be good stewards of, but, basically, they can be in the right position in their finances in relationship to Christ. That is a very big issue, and it’s something which I think we need especially to pay attention to these days.
Okay. One—another thing I think you should share with the people you head is what you are learning about the Spirit and Purpose of the community. That is, you need to explain to them the meaning of it. And when you meet with—you know, in groups among yourselves, you should be seeking to understand it as well. Talk about it, and read it, consider it—daily, I’d recommend. And you will, in fact, be able to—be in position to help others understand it, if you study it yourself. It really can be quite a helpful thing for you. As—I was really delighted with what Gil—the way Gil broke open the first paragraph of the constitution this morning, at morning prayer. That was—he really got it just exactly right, and it was really—in fact, better than right. And it was really helpful, I thought, in our prayer time together.
Okay. So, each week, you should review with the person you’re heading what’s going on in these areas. Now, I’m running a risk here. I did it on purpose. I mean, I wanted to write it down so that you could write it down and they’d be numbered. What I have in mind is this, that—the risk is this: that—there’s a chance that you could take something like this and just go mechanically through it with the people you head. You could sit down every week and say, “Well, now what about number one?” and you could work up sort of flags, or [for?] communications. Now, I mean, you could go through it mechanically and routinely, and do some violence to the person you are heading, as a matter of fact. [Laughter; Paul joins in.] Okay? Now, that’s one risk. Now that would be—if you did that, you’re not functioning right as a pastor. But—now this is the risk.
My gamble is that, if you’re not a perfect pastor yet, you will be by the time the retreat’s over. And that. . . . I would rather run the risk of becoming a little mechanical, at least for a while. That is to say, I’m asking you to write them down and talk, each time you meet with your people, about those things. I’m saying, start that. Your people have a right to know that you’re concerned about them in each of these areas. And if you don’t do something like this, if it doesn’t become second nature to you, you won’t do it regularly. So, I’m asking you to start doing it, fairly mechanically, even. But remember: you don’t want to become a slave to some document like this. But you do need to have some kind of reminder—and they do too—that their life does consist of some compartments, and they should be making progress in all these areas.
Okay. There are—when you’re heading people, you have to realize that all—let’s see—they do some things, but most of their life they’re done unto. That is to say, if you just watch them, most of what happens in the person’s life is done to them by somebody or something else. They get hit by a car, you know, They get up in the morning, and they’re built up by something their youngest child says. That happens to them. We want to focus on the part of our lives over which we have some control. But if in fact—so that’s why so much teaching is given on that. You know, you should be responsible and all that sort of. . . . Right? But that only covers, in fact, a pretty small fraction of what goes on in a person’s life. Most of what happens to a guy, he’s not so much responsible for it. Now, he should be a responsible person, but there are a lot of things that simply go on that he’s not responsible for. If you restrict yourself to talking about things that a person is responsible for, you’re not going to be talking about the majority of what goes on in a person’s life. Is that clear?
Okay. So, there are two categories there. One is: areas over which a person’s respons—is responsible—and maybe he’s acting irresponsibly in some of these areas, but he’s responsible nonetheless. Which is to say, he’s supposed to do something definite in this situation concerning this set of events, or these events that should take place. And, on the other hand, you have the area where he is not responsible. It’s uncontrollable. It’s out of his hands. That area that is out of his hands is—this is just remarkable, but I want you to understa- —really understand this: that is from God! It’s providence. It’s what the Lord provides for this person, who is a responsible person having to do with some of the things, you know, directly over which he is responsible, but who for the most part of his life finds himself feeling something like a victim, or at least the object of a lot of other activity, other people’s activity. I mean, he’s in a reactive position. He’s not—a man generally spends most of his time reacting, rather than acting. Okay?
Now the question is, How should a person act after he is—I mean how does he do the second half of the reacting? You know, it’s the re-acting. He does act, but he’s acting in response to something. So, we are all spending—most of our lives are made up of circumstances beyond our control. What should our attitude toward them be? Well, the first attitude is that, even in the worst circumstance, God is with me! I’m never alone. And God may be permitting this thing to happen to me so that greater good will come out of it for somebody: for the person who did it to me, or for the situation I’m in, or even for myself. Or for the sake of somebody else whom I’m going to share this with tomorrow.
This is just a little aside: I have never, ever been in a situation where something bad happened to me that I did not, within a short period of time thereafter, have an opportunity to share with somebody who was in a—almost identically the same situation. And, if I’m conscious of that—that is to say, I—the Lord lets me experience a lot of hardships of various types—if I’m conscious of the fact that this is from the Lord and the Lord is in this somehow, and if I seek him and I find him, and I see how to understand this in the context of the gospel and what the Spirit is witnessing to me about this situation, I know that within a short period of time, I will be able to pass that on to somebody else.
So I’m finding, in my own life, that these difficulties I encounter, I encounter for the sake of others. And it is becoming increasingly a conscious mentality of mine: that every hardship I have, I know I am enduring so that I can tell—and I can hardly wait until I can tell somebody else about it, so that they will be helped in the situation that they will find themselves in. And I urge you to think that way, because it really is—it’s true, and I’m sure that you’ve all experienced it anyway. I’m probably just bringing coals to Newcastle here, but I just want to—if you have experienced that, I want to sort of confirm it in you, and if you haven’t yet experienced it, then look for it, because it’s there. The Lord lets these things happen, often, so that we can help others later.
There are lots of ways in which we can look at people. One of them is that we do need to review with the people we head, concerning areas of this sort, namely, some adequate “cover” of their whole life, what are the things they’re responsible for, and how are they doing with it? Can we help them somehow? Can we strengthen them so they can become more responsible? We also want to review with them, in these things, those things that they’re not responsible for, and help them understand how they can react. How can they handle themselves in these difficult circumstances? Okay? That’s a different category. It’s not as though they’re likely to do anything bad, or particularly good. It’s rather a question of how are they supposed to be shaped by God’s action in these situations. In these—in this area, having to with providen—
[Short interruption in the tape.]
. . . trying to draw them on to a deeper love of him. And he’s begun to talk in a different language, [so] that all of a sudden he’s not burning you up with a lot of sensual experiences, but now he’s moving you on to a much deeper and quieter form of prayer. All of a sudden you feel like, “My gosh, I haven’t had a good prayer time in the last year and a half.” You know? But it may be that in fact you’ve had better prayer time than you had before; it’s just you don’t feel as good about it. Now, you’ve got to be careful—and we’d have to go through a whole analysis of how would you [sic] measure whether you’ve had a good prayer time or not. But let me just say that it certainly is inadequate to say that “I felt good” when i’m over—when it’s over, as a judgment that that’s a good prayer time.
Okay. There are a lot of other aspects. Let me just—I want to break this down into just a few. I’ve talked about those things you’re responsible for; and those things that you’re not responsible for, and yet you have to behave properly in them, and you have to understand what God is doing. And in fact, you have to grow even deeper in love with the Lord because of his providence for you. Sometimes that providence may look like a Mercedes-Benz; another time it might look like that pile of manure. But in either case, it might be from the Lord, and meant for your growth, and your health and your service. In fact, whether you’re in good health or in bad health, whether you’re rich or poor—whatever the circumstances of your life, the Lord is with you! He is with you! He is always with you. And he can be found in those things.
The third area—I don’t know how—depending on how you diagram this sort of thing—has to do with your mental makeup. That is to say, that set of ideas which you hold as being integral to your personality, which, hopefully, is Christ’s personality. That is to say, that nucleus of ideas which makes you what you are. What do you think about the most important things in life? For example, what do you think about being a servant? That’s a “for example.” What do you think about Christ? What do you think about the body of Christ? What do you think about the People of Praise? What do you think about being a pastor? What do you think about headship? What do you think—there are all kinds of things that are extremely important. What do you think about good relationships? What do you think about yourself as being a victim? You know, victimized constantly, as opposed to somehow having some personal control over your own destiny. What do you—what are the things that move you? Well, now, those things are things that you need to talk [about] with people that you head. That’s another area.
So, you have to help them in the area—the three areas I was trying to single out. One of them is that you have to help understand how they can be more responsible. You’ve got to help them to understand how to react in those providential situations where they are not responsible. And you’ve got to help them in the whole complex of the way they think about life: that set of ideas, their spirit, if you want, with a small “s,” their mindset, what they think about things.
I want to conclude rather abruptly, with—because I don’t have much skill at concluding. [Light laughter.] But . . . I also don’t have a great deal of skill at finding 1 Peter 5. . . . [Laughter.]
MAN’S VOICE: It’s towards the back.
PAUL: Somehow, I—I really feel as I—I know it’s towards the back. I feel that someday I’m going to bite the bullet and memorize the order of all these books of the Bible, because I thought by now I would know them. . . . It’s very embarrassing. How can you preach the gospel without knowing where 1 Peter is? Okay. [Inaudible comment from audience; Paul and all laugh.] Here we go. Now, this is the first verse, beginning with the first verse of 1 Peter 5, through the seventh verse:
Now, may I who am myself an elder say a word to you my fellow elders? I speak as one who actually saw Christ suffer, and as one who will share with you the glories that are to be unfolded to us.
Isn’t that great? Glory to God!
I urge you, then, to see that your “flock of God”—
And I’ll translate that here as “your men’s group”—
—is properly fed and cared for. Accept the responsibility of looking after them willingly, and not because you feel you can’t get out of it, doing your work not for what you can make, but because you are really concerned for their well-being. You should aim not at being “little tin gods,” but as examples of Christian living in the eyes of the flock committed to your charge. And then, when the chief shepherd reveals himself, you will receive that crown of glory which cannot fade. You younger members must also submit to the elders. Indeed, all of you should defer to one another and wear the “overall” of humility in serving each other. “God [is always against] the proud, but [he is always ready to give] grace to the humble.” So, humble yourselves under God’s strong hand, and in his own good time he will lift you up. You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.
Thanks be to God!
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