Tim Clark’s Blog

Continued from part 2…

As a leader who loves to lead and a preacher who loves to preach, I must recognize that I am not preaching to or leading just a congregation, but also unique people who make up that congregation. How, then, should I be thinking about these individuals I serve?

Having a vision statement and purpose plan is great; heading in a common direction is necessary. The church needs a leader, but the church also needs to grow into a healthy unit. Our job is not just to lead the congregation to the promised land, but to also ensure the people are cared for and healthy along the way.

Is there a balance in all of this? I think so. I don’t have the gift of counseling or mercy, so I have been learning to train and release leaders in my congregation to display those gifts. I’m not the primary counselor for those who come through our doors. If you want to talk to the pastor in our church, it’s not always going to happen right away.

However, I do keep my eyes and ears open. I try to stop in at the hospital if someone is sick—although they don’t expect it because we have a great prayer and elder team and supportive small groups. I’ll hear about someone who is hurting and if I feel led I’ll take him to coffee and listen and laugh and learn. If pastoral care is required I’ll refer a person to someone I know who manifests a counseling gift, or to a small group where I know they will receive care.

To make sure people do receive care, we are working on multiplying small groups, and we are developing training for more leaders to “shepherd the flock over which God has made you overseers” (Acts 20). We do this because people are not hindrances to our ministry—people are our ministry.

We develop small groups and teams, and release ministry to leaders, because I have found that if I try to be the personal shepherd to the whole church, I will invariably disappoint the people who are counting on me to be their primary personal spiritual caregiver. So I am attempting to contextualize Jethro’s advice to Moses, and I’m working hard to figure out how the choosing of the seven in Acts 6 can be walked out where I serve. I’m learning that I can care for my people best when I do not carry the responsibility to personally follow up with each person.

Jerry Cook wrote the following in his classic book, Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness, “It is not the pastor’s job to care for every person in the church, it is the pastor’s job to make sure that every person in the church [can be] cared for.”

Amen, Jerry. Thanks for reminding me that the church is full of amazing and gifted people, and even though I may not counsel or “pastor” well, there are many who have been given that gift. For the lead pastor or the paid staff to try to do it all steals ministry away from the rest of the Body and gives the congregation, and the leaders, a false messiah complex that should never be embraced or encouraged.

…Continued from Part 1

So, I’ve admitted: I’m not the world’s most natural pastor. I love the Lord, I love to study and teach the Bible, I love to cast vision and create culture, and I love to lead and develop leaders. But a pastor (noun) still has to pastor (verb). So what do I do?

Jesus called himself the good shepherd. Then at the very end of His earthly ministry, he handed this call to Peter (not the worlds best candidate for shepherd either); “Feed my sheep, care for my lambs”. Peter then, in his epistle, transfers this same call to the elders. Paul, in Acts 20, does it too. I find very little room in scripture to support a ministry heart that strays from the sheep: This kind of ministry might look good or flashy up front but it leaves to others the work of walking in the sheep dung.

I think there is a good balance in the philosophy that explains the difference between a shepherd and a rancher. But a rancher who cannot identify with the sheep, and who forgets what it is like to be out in the trenches is about as good as an officer who never gets close the battle-lines or an executive who is totally detached from day-to-day organizational reality. I can become a rancher, if necessary, but I should never lose a shepherd’s heart.

The church where I learned ministry understood this. At the time I served it, this congregation had a full-time ministry staff of over 100. All of them started at the top…cleaning toilets. You didn’t gain any position of influence or ministry until you learned to serve. There wasn’t a pastor on staff who didn’t know where the cleaning supplies were kept or who didn’t understand the heart behind having to work hard to serve thousands of people every weekend by cleaning up after them. I often witnessed executive Pastors roll up their sleeves and dig into work doing things like moving tables to help us “grunts” transition the sanctuary between a service and a dinner.

So what does this all have to do with shepherding? A lot! Ministry is messy. Toilets get messy, carpet gets messy, and the people we serve and work with have messy lives. If we go into ministry thinking we are above working in people’s mess, we are unfit to lead. I’ve seen so many young people preparing for ministry who, after graduating with a degree, think they are prepared to do the “important” stuff like leading and preaching. These are people who think they have something coming to them. People who ‘deserve’ to earn a full-time salary with loads of benefits. They might even be competent to counsel, but they have no passion for people.

Shepherding has to start with a passion for sheep. It doesn’t matter how big our ministries might get. It doesn’t matter how much influence we might end up having. We don’t simply lead a crowd; we lead churches that are made up of individuals. These individuals deserve to be well taken care of and served. In fact, if we want to lead like Jesus did, He tells us we have to lay down our lives and ambitions so we can serve (Luke 9).

Case in point: I had a guy in my last congregation who had been saved for about 10 years. He was a drug-using carpenter who happened to be working on Ron Mehl’s house (who at the time was pastor of a church of over five thousand people). Ron saw him working, felt the Holy Spirit’s leading, and took time to find out his name, to come and talk to him every day, and then to lead him and his family to the Lord. I have no doubt that Ron was too busy to do that, but he still had a shepherd’s heart, and cared about the people that God cared about.

So, the question I ask myself is, “how do I keep that shepherds passion and effectively lead a growing church at the same time?”

Continued in part 3…

Once I was sitting with a group of local pastors at a ministry association Christmas lunch. The President of a nearby seminary asked all of us a question: “what is your favorite part about being a pastor?” One by one the men and women in attendance  answered with stories of staying up with people through crisis’, counseling young people with stars in their eyes about to be married, walking with people through life events…one guy even talked about funerals being his favorite thing (I promise, I am not making that up).

As each one spoke their turn, I began to sweat. The conversation headed around the table—towards me (I was dead last). I wanted to find an excuse to bolt for the door. When the question finally got to me I just knew that I was done for. I couldn’t think of anything that would make this sound better and I literally heard myself saying, “I really respect all of you because it sounds like you are great pastors, you are my heroes. I think I must be missing something. I don’t really enjoy the “pastor” part of this job so much. I’d much prefer to preach and study, to develop leaders, to lead a service, or to dream about where we are going and how to get there”. Miraculously (or maybe unfortunately), I wasn’t kicked out of the association.

The word pastor is related to the word for shepherd. Pastoral ministry at its core is really about taking care of each sheep—Psalm 23 kind of stuff. Walking side-by-side with folks, counseling them, and remembering every challenge they have—not to mention every birthday and anniversary.

Unfortunately, that’s not always me. I’ve taken many spiritual gifts tests through the years and on every one of them I rate dead last in the gifts of Mercy, Pastor, and Counseling…all those things normally associated with being a good pastor. It’s not that I don’t love people—I really do—but some of the things that are seen as classically ‘pastoral’ are not part of my basic personality make-up or God-given gifts.

So as a pastor without the gift of pastoring, what’s a guy to do? On one hand it would be easy for me to side with some of the current Church leadership voices who encourage Sr. Pastors to be only leaders. I could feel smug by taking solace in the advice that says Pastors will be “successful” and grow large churches only if they hand off every true pastoral duty. But I don’t want to do that. Not just because I may feel guilty if I do (a bad reason), but because I really do think that I will be missing something vital if I go that route (a good reason).

It doesn’t matter where my gifts or inclinations lie, I must shepherd people. If I don’t posses a shepherd’s heart, I need to quit. This is my call, even if manifesting these pastoral skills isn’t seen as my gifting. So how do I walk the tightrope?

Continued in Part 2…

While I was in the throws of studying for a sermon, I sent my assistant an instant message that said I was wrestling with preparing my message. Her reply back to me was supposed to be funny: “Don’t forget the head-lock, that’s a winning move”.

The humorous response actually impacted me. I immediately thought of Jacob. In Genesis 32, Jacob was preparing to meet Esau—his brother—with an unknown (and possibly life-ending) outcome at stake. The night before the fateful meeting was to take place, he had an encounter that would change him forever.

God showed up in human form. When this happens in the OT it’s called a Theophany—a pre-incarnate physical appearance of Jesus before he was born. John 1 tells us that before He was called Jesus his name was the Word of God, and in this instance the Word took Jacob on in an epic wrestling match.

So here’s Jacob wrestling the living Word of God, all night long, asking for a blessing. In fact, he won’t let go until he has that blessing. What if Jacob had been content to let go? From Jacob (later to be called Israel) would come first a family, then a whole nation, who God would use to change the world. That wrestling match was important. We might even say historical.

Fast-forward about four thousand years: We pastors sit in our studies, or the library, or Starbucks as we wrestle with the Word week after week, asking God to bless our messages, not just for us, but for the people we are going to lead and preach to. We’re looking for the touch of God on our work, because we know that without God’s touch, people might be Biblically informed, but they won’t be spiritually transformed.

Honestly, if you are a preacher, do you ever struggle with preparing your messages like I do? Many weeks I’m fidgeting, praying, analyzing, moving, mumbling, and even shouting at God to position myself to hear His Word for me and for His people. I know how to study. I’m reasonably confident that I am faithful to the text—I’m not a heretic. But sometimes I’m too quick about assimilating the information and moving on. If I’ve got a memorable outline, some solid illustrations, and have integrity to the Word, I used to feel like that was good enough. Not anymore. I’m wrestling more. I want my preaching to be more prophetic. I want people to leave having really heard the voice of God in their hearts. I don’t want to be done preparing until I know that there’s going to be a blessing

At least once a week, many of the people who call my church home (along with a number of those who don’t) are going to be listening to me. What a great responsibility! These folks need to hear God. Not just my ideas about God; not just my novel interpretations of scripture; and especially not just my thoughts about how to get along in life.  They need to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit through my sermons in a way that they can respond to and be blessed. When that happens, God will use them to change their world. My weekly epic wrestling match becomes important…possibly even historical.

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity…it is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mt. Zion. For there the Lord bestows His blessing, even life forevermore.” (Psalm 133)

A couple of years ago I had the joy of hiking some trails around Mt. Hermon in July. The Middle East can get quite hot in the heart of the summer, and this day was a scorcher. Fortunately I had my water bottle with me, but even that started to overheat.

As I meandered down a steep tree-covered trail, the shade started to lessen the extreme heat. Then I heard it—a waterfall. I found my way onto a platform that overlooked the falls, and was refreshed by the cold spray coming off the water that was cascading over the rocks. I wanted to jump in. I could imagine David, the author of Psalm 33, swimming in the cold pool at the bottom as he refreshed himself in the run-off of Hermon during the heat of the day, sharing time and food and rest with other brothers who shared his life and purpose. Sounds like perfect day to me!

The only thing that could have been better was if it could have happened at Zion, which was the hub of Jewish Worship and adjacent to the core of the political Kingdom as well. David enjoyed his time away with friends in the North hills of Israel, but this kind of refreshing fellowship was harder to come by in the center of it all.

It’s one thing to get away with our closest buddies and live the good life for a day or two, but it’s quite another thing to live together in unity in the midst of the work that God has called us to. Combining the two together is the epitome of fulfillment. Refreshing, Godly, fellowship and God-purposed partnership hand-in-hand—there is nothing like it.

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve had opportunity to enjoy this kind of fellowship. Good friends who live far away are here for a brief visit. We ate and drank, we caught a movie, and we had long talks about what God was doing in our lives. It’s been refreshing to let my guard down and be honest about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in ministry, and not be judged for either. I look forward to those kind of special times, as infrequent as they may seem.

But the New Testament presumes this kind of connection in our day-to-day lives, as well. We don’t often find folks ‘doing ministry’ on their own. Peter served within a community. Paul was connected to others in his efforts. Jesus quickly established disciples and partners at the beginning of this ministry.

Getting away for an occasional time of refreshing is needed, but real blessing and life don’t just happen on vacation. If community is being lived-out properly, the context for refreshing should be in the midst of congregational reality, too. Living in unity presupposes that we do it together. Church is not to be about one person (the pastor) living on top of the mountain with God and occasionally delivering edicts, but it is an interconnected community who does life together and listens to and responds to God together, with the result being blessing and life ‘forevermore’.

After church on Sunday, my family hung out at a great park in Costa Mesa. This park had one of the coolest playgrounds I’ve ever seen. It was great fun for the 8 and 5-year old boys, but was also built with a system of ramps for wheelchair accessibility, so my almost 2-year old girl could totally get into it, too.

About an hour into play, I saw Caleb, my 8 year old, frantically pacing around the outside of the playground as if he was looking for something. Running up to me and out of breath, he said “Dad, Dad”. Slightly concerned, I asked him what was up? “This playground doesn’t have any rules”, he said. He had spent the last 10 minutes searching high and low for the posted regulations, because he had been pushed aside during play and wanted to discover if that other kid was ‘out of bounds’.

I noticed a huge sign with the name of the park that thanked all the people who helped build it. I guessed—correctly—that we would find rules somewhere on that sign. Caleb had read it, but didn’t recognize the rules, because they didn’t look like any he had ever seen before. In capital letters at the  top of the sign were these words…

Swing High. Slide Fast. Play Hard. Have Fun.

We were not expecting that. These were words that gave all the kids permission to passionately have a blast on this playground. “Use this thing for all its worth” the sign seemed to be saying. And as I watched all the kids that day, it’s exactly what was going on.

On the very bottom of the large sign, in much smaller print was this follow up: “Please play fair, take turns, be safe, and most of all have fun. Adult supervision is required.”

Rules. We are always looking for the things we can’t do or shouldn’t do. More than that, we are often looking for the things that others can’t or shouldn’t be doing so we can point out the rules to them. But what if we understood life to be governed by a set of ‘rules’ that looked more like what was posted on this playground sign?

I think that God wants us to fall totally head over heals in love with Him and serve him with all we have. That is going to help us passionately enjoy our time on this playground called life.

Moses reflected on the law being given in Deuteronomy 10 and 11. He made it clear that the reason we needed to love, serve, and obey the Lord with all our hearts and souls was for our own good. There is great blessing tied to obedience—the focus was never on ‘the rules’, but on the fantastic potential of a full and passionate life that we were created to experience. The rules were simply the context that would release this kind of blessing (if you don’t believe me, go ahead, read Deuteronomy 10 & 11).

Too often we make life about the rules. Not only do we put them first, we forget what they are there for. Yes, there are some conditions to the ‘high, fast, hard, fun” play that is encouraged: Care about others; don’t do something that will hurt yourself or anyone else; play within the context of knowing somebody responsible is watching you. But within those very generous boundaries, prepare to have the time of your life…Get ready to swing high, slide fast, play hard and have fun!

This last weekend I experienced a fantastic conference called “The Idea Camp” that was conceived and led by my friend and colleague Charles Lee. This was a phenomenal event. I could go on and on about why I think it was great. For instance: participatory dialogue; no “talking heads” on the platform, rather interviews; a really good—but not arrogant—use of technology; an intense but focused schedule of a day and a half; pre-event, during the event, and post-event interaction with the presenters and facilitators; no product sales; the conference was totally free for everyone!

But this blog is about something else. My 8 year old artist son texted me (through my wife) and said “Dad, are you having fun at the idea camp? Can I go to that someday so I can come up with new ideas for my cartoons?” Participating in something called The Idea Camp should have cultivated some ideas, right? Here are a few that floated to the surface for me.

1.    Listening: Erwin McManus was great (as usual). For him, ministry does not come down to tools or technique, but at its heart it is learning how to really listen to people and listen for what God is doing and saying in their lives. That is the role of a pastor. Challenging…I need to learn to listen better.

2.    Using Technology Wisely: The emerging generation is constantly on Facebook, twitter, and their cell phones. If we are not engaging them through those technologies, we are missing out on a whole swath of their conversation space. The church needs to engage people where they are at; and where they are at is online. Not only is it relevant, but it can be hugely effective and save the church organization quite a bit of money, if it is processed correctly.

3.    Marketing the church: Marketing is simply reflecting who a church is so a larger group of people can understand it well. Marketing starts with the mission, not the other way around. So the question is: “does the vision and personality of our church come across in our efforts to communicate who we are?” The session on communicating the identity of the church was actually the beginning of a conversation about discovering and articulating that identity and finding the core…and the discussion never really made it to marketing (which is fine).  We can’t hope to communicate what and who we are if we don’t really know who we are, first.

4.    Caring about people: The subtext to the whole event was compassion in action. Yes there was a lot about technology, and some really cool people with really great ideas, but the goal was not to be cool, the goal was using these ideas and conversations to encourage one another to touch our world with Jesus’ love and grace. I loved that there was nobody trying to talk people into this kind of compassion; it was just understood that it is what we all want. We spent the weekend collaborating together and challenging one another regarding how to do it better.

So, it was good. Real good! It inspired me and challenged me. More than that, it supported some radical change that the Lord has been doing in me at just the right time. I’ll look back on this weekend and know that it was a defining moment for my life.

If you are interested in seeing some of what was said at The Idea Camp, check out the Vimeo site : The videos of the main sessions are posted there, and each presenter only shared about 15-20 minutes. Bite sized enough to spend some time watching; powerful enough to wreck your world.