If I were a pastor . . . ! The proposition is enough to tempt me to eloquence if for no other reason than I am not a pastor, do not have to face a pastor's problems, and have, in fact, never been a pastor despite the fact that I am an ordained minister and have worked closely with hundreds of pastors both in good times and bad.
Of course, I realize that some readers (perhaps many) will say, "If you haven't been a pastor, there is no way you can understand my problems or share my joys or bear my sorrows. And even if you had been a pastor, you probably wouldn't have been a pastor in my size town, with the absolutely horrendous problems found in my congregation, and the miserable conference administration that it is my special cross to bear. Either way, you can't speak to me!"
That's so much fish fuzz. The "deficiency" of not being a pastor may actually provide opportunity for a perspective with a particular value. So while I invite you to challenge me whenever I stray too far afield, I am certain that I can speak to your concerns in spite of a nonpastoral handicap.
If I were a pastor, assigned to a new pastorate, I'd take an hour or two, some time between getting the van unloaded and hooking up the utilities at the new house, to realize that my parish must include not just the 391 members listed on the church books, but also every person in my new town—the fire chief; the superintendent of schools; the self-appointed spokesman for the Hispanics who are clustered west of the railroad tracks; the head of the police department's vice detail; and the manager of J. C. Penney's, even though I intend to shop at Sears.
I would resolve, in the interest of learning the special needs of my community, to visit one such person—at least one—every week, regardless of what hand-holding, marrying, or burying I have to do for the saints that occupy the pews in my church each Sabbath morning. And, further, I would add to that commitment the resolve to drop everything and go hold the hand of anyone who is hurting— whether it is the mayor or the mother and father of those two children killed by a drink-crazed drunk. It wouldn't matter if they were members of my congregation, because I would view the entire community as my congregation.
Of course, some will criticize the breadth of such a pastoral mission. So was Christ criticized by those miserable Pharisees, as He went about dining with publicans and sinners, comforting outcasts and women of the night. When called to task for such associations, the Master replied, "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:31, 32).
It has always been difficult for many of our church members to realize that in order to appeal in love to a sinner we have to draw near to him and win his confidence and affection. We cannot hold a person at arm's length and touch that life as we must if, by God's grace, we are to be an instrument of His love.
Howard Weeks, in his book Break through, tells of a Seventh-day Adventist pastor who accepted this kind of a pastoral mission. Because he was interested as well as interesting, he became an active member of Kiwanis and was asked to be chaplain of the club. He decided to go beyond just saying grace for their meals. He ministered to the spiritual needs of those men; he visited them when they were ill, comforted when they were bereaved, counseled when spiritually they were weak.
When he was called to another pastor ate, those Kiwanians, for whom he had done so much, held a farewell testimonial dinner in his honor. Each one recited something the pastor had done to help him. When they were finished, the pastor told them once again, as a group, the great spiritual burden he carried on his heart for each of them. He said that the most important thing each could do was to prepare his life to enter the eternal kingdom for which we should all be bound. There was scarcely a dry eye when he finished. He had taken them all into the circle of God's love and appealed to their higher nature.
When he arrived in his new town, even before he had gotten settled, this pastor read in the newspaper that the chief of police was in serious political trouble with differing factions. In an act that had become almost second nature, he was out of his house and down to city hall asking to see the chief of police. He had never been there before, had never met the police chief! He had just arrived in town!
In the chiefs office he identified himself as the new Seventh-day Adventist minister. "I just felt that I had to come see you this morning," he explained. "I don't know anything about the politics involved in this squabble; that isn't my business. But I do know that in a situation like this a man is under great temptation to do the expedient thing rather than the right thing. I just came in this morning to encourage you. Do the right thing, chief. No matter what it costs you, do what in your heart you know is right."
Tears came to the policeman's eyes. "Sit down," he said, taking the pastor by the arm. "No one has talked to me like that since I was a little boy at my mother's knee." Then they talked, the pastor and the police chief, for a long time. They knelt together there in the city hall and prayed. When the pastor left, he left behind a stronger man, a man nearer to God, because he had come.
"Our attitude toward the society in whose midst God has placed us will determine our success in communicating perhaps more than will any present unfavorable attitudes of that society toward one church," writes Dr. Weeks. "Let us not merely regard the community as a field of conflict from which we may retreat with a handful of the faithful, burning over the rest as barren ground. Rather, let us regard it as a society of God's children, to all of whom He would have us minister, and all of whom He would, if possible, save."
Of course, many an overworked pastor may well challenge this view of the ministry with "How am I going to go around holding the hands of needy persons in the community, when I don't even have enough time to hold the hands of my own parishioners?"
If I were a pastor, I would reorder my priorities regarding my own congregation. I would determine that they would be put to work doing, in one way or another, the same work I will be doing in seeking out people in the community to whom I can show love and understanding, and in that way, the love of Christ.
You see, we cannot reach our communities for Christ unless we learn to know them. When you preach to your congregation, how do you know what to preach? You get close to your members and learn their needs. And your sermons reflect, or should reflect, those needs. The same thing should happen with your community as a whole: If you would draw close to your community, for the gospel's sake, then you must get to know it. And your congregation can help you; indeed, to keep out of mischief, it must help you.
It is amazing how much help you can ask of your congregation in learning about your community. Break the members into small fact-finding units. One unit can study the population of the community, its age structure, the number of young families with children, education and income levels, what kind of houses people live in, distribution of income, ethnic and racial divisions, et cetera. Another unit may study development plans of the community, another the town history, yet another the community's religious structure, and another the news media.
And all the while these units are doing their work, they will have opportunity to let the community know that the church is interested in it, and they will be able to speak a word of courage and help here and there.
When ten or fifteen of these units are operating with forty-five to seventy-five of your members directly involved, word is going to spread rather quickly that the church is trying to find out about the community and reach out in friendship to it.
And all the while these various units are at work, if I were pastor, I would be continuing to visit at least one leadership-type person in the community each week. These visits would not be to establish Bible studies; they would be to establish common ground, to make friendships and to learn all I could about these persons' views of the community's needs and how my church could fit in. I would be talking in friendly terms and listening very closely for attitudes about my church. Believe me, if you consistently visit in this way, Bible studies will follow
In personal visits with those in the community, I and members of the study units in the church have our antennae up to catch the direct and indirect signals that people are telling us about our church. This is important strategy information that we need to use prayerfully.
If I were a pastor, I would dedicate myself to follow up the valuable information my units were gathering in the community. I'd turn every church member into a public-relations evangelist to make sure our church moved into the community as a friend, looking for friendship, ready to help in a Christian way that just naturally brings reciprocity.
As a pastor, I would know (and let my people know) that the strategy for friend ship will fail if every member of the congregation is not fully aware that he or she creates the reality behind the church's image in the public mind. By whatever method necessary, I would educate my church that we are not merely seeking to gain public attention; we want friendship with our community. We want to speak as one friend to another. When we talk to our neighbors, we do not want to talk as religious salesmen. We want to talk as friends, and there is a decided difference.
My church members would come to know that, yes, a friend talks, but a friend also listens, and that means the church listens to the community as well as asking the community to listen to the church. And my church members would learn that a friend doesn't walk out on his community when a job has to be done—United Way participation, or fund raising for a new library.
Indeed, where are the majority of Seventh-day Adventist Christians when there is work to be done in the community? Far too often they are busy organizing a duplicate of the organization already established in the community so we can do it "within the church." What an exercise in keeping ourselves separated at arm's length and more from those we have been commissioned by our Lord to reach! If I were a pastor, I'd spend much of my energy educating my congregation that not only must it reach out, but it must also touch the community. I would point out as many times as necessary that a church cannot extend an invitation to its spiritual home if it has made no friends. Sure, some curiosity seekers will come, some malcontents perhaps. But friends? How can they come if they do not exist?
As a pastor I would tell my congregation that we cannot expect those in our community to be interested in our church's goals and plans unless they believe that our goals and plans are of some value to them and the community—in short, that we are their friends.
And we would go to work on a public-relations organization made up of at least five committees. An alert and very active hospitality committee would handle reception at the church and follow-up. This committee would also invite dignitaries to our church, and make contact with all new residents in the community, welcoming them and inviting them to visit our church.
A publications committee would get out a newsy church letter, prepare the church bulletin, and maintain a fresh and interesting bulletin board.
A public information committee would tell our community what their friends in the church are doing from week to week, with stories and pictures in the newspapers, and news pieces for radio and television. This committee would also write pieces for our union paper and for the Adventist Review and other denominational publications.
Yet another committee would make direct contacts in the community, finding how our church can participate in already-existing community programs, visiting influential people in the community in an atmosphere of friendship, and informing our congregation of programs we should initiate that would help the community directly. This would be a friendship development committee, if you please.
The fifth committee would be a research committee, charged with conducting surveys in the community, with drawing together special information on various events and groups in the community, and with providing all of the other committees the community intelligence demanded for success in their work.
Now this organization might involve fifty to one hundred members, but you probably have that many people who are not doing anything of tremendous significance in living their faith right now anyway. It will not be easy, of course, to organize and maintain these committees, but to do so will, by God's grace, bring our church and the community into the kind of relationship that I believe Heaven can and will bless. Remember that every single soul out there on the streets of my community is just as precious to God as are the saints who come from Sabbath to Sabbath into my sanctuary.
In fact, that community is part of my congregation—my second congregation. The first congregation is composed of my members, but my second congregation is meeting along with my first congregation each Sabbath morning. The only difference is that some of the members of my second congregation are meeting out on the golf course, others are fixing their cars or mowing their lawns, or washing clothes, or just relaxing after five days of work.
The work of God will not be finished until my second congregation comes to know clearly the great plan of salvation Heaven offers to every human being. And the truth is that far, far fewer than we know have had that opportunity yet. Most will never hear the story if they see us as religious salespersons coming to sell them "religion." But if we come to them as friends, friends who have been among them working shoulder to shoulder in community programs, then they may well hear us gladly.
As a pastor, I would gladly eat up all the juicy morsels of community information brought in by our community contact committee. And, of course, I would already be getting to know my way around town, and the townspeople by my at least one visit per week with a town figure. I would assume that my constant appearance in the community would generate requests to speak before clubs and other groups and to participate in community fairs, banquets, rallies, and the like. That would be something I would cultivate in a simple and unassuming way, for in this I would become a familiar and friendly figure to many townspeople. Of course, like everything else, this can be overdone. I must have time for ministry to my first congregation, but, really, it is not an either/or question. Kept in balance, this plan will bring me closer to the community, and it will also make my own church members more interested in the community, certainly one of the objectives of my ministry.
Of course, the local ministerial association will be part of my concern. Member ship will give me opportunity to take part in services conducted by other groups and to acquaint them perhaps, in a friendly way, with the truths that I hold dear. But my basic objective will be "What can I contribute to the ministerial association?" That, it seems to me, will make me the kind of member that will find a friendly part in the association's activities.
This, then, is something of the program I would embark on in my new pastorate. It sounds like a lot of work, and it is. But I would expect to have many helpers. Oh, I know how hard it is to get people to do things. But in this program I would be counting on two factors: (1) the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence—that is to say, in the community; (2) the help I would be asking for would be, for the most part, somewhat different than asking a person to be Sabbath school superintendent or lay activities secretary. I'd keep Ellen White's words ever before me as I went about my labor for my first and second congregations: "By personal labor reach those around you. Become acquainted with them. Preaching will not do the work that needs to be done. Angels of God attend you to the dwellings of those you visit. This work cannot be done by proxy. Money lent or given will not accomplish it. Sermons will not do it. By visiting the people, talking, praying, sympathizing with them, you will win hearts."—Testimonies, vol. 9, p. 41.
That's what I'd do if I were a pastor.
