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"How
to Give Your Pastors a Hand" October
12, 2003 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower I want to let you know that I like being appreciated very much and
I want to thank you very much for this Sunday for me and for John.
And I say that all the more because in the message this morning, what I
want to do is communicate something of my sense of inadequacy, of not being up
to the job. And I want to make sure
that no one thinks that I am trying to block your well-wishing, to block your
show of appreciation. That's not
it. It's just that as I knew that we were sort of moving up
toward Pastor Appreciation Sunday, I thought that it would be a great time to
say some things that I hope help prepare us for the new Senior Pastor who is to
come. So I want to share--I want to
confess to you--something of my sense of inadequacy regarding being a pastor and
being your pastor, even though I don't think that what I say would exactly be
the same thing, would exactly be true for John. I don't think it would exactly be true for the new Senior
Pastor who is to come. Nevertheless,
I think all of us who are in full-time professional ministry will have something
similar to what I'm about to share. I remember, back in the fifties, I grew up in Bakersfield.
My father was a Presbyterian pastor in Bakersfield, California.
One of the minister jokes that I remember my mother telling me long ago,
back in those days, is a minister joke about a church without a pastor--a church
like ours, between pastors with a search committee.
The search committee was praying together about the new pastor to come
and the Pastor Nominating Committee was praying, "O, Lord, send us a new
minister, poor and humble. You keep
him humble and we'll keep him poor." I
want to talk about the "humble" part, not the "poor" part,
because I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever about my compensation here.
But the "humble" part I want us to look at.
And I want to let you know that ministry inevitably brings with it a
sense--life does to all of us, but being a pastor does in particular--it brings
with it just a sense that there's far more demanded of you than any one person,
or all people combined, could ever sort of live up to.
And in my case, this is something that I have always been haunted by. I remember when I was a new pastor. I had been to three years of seminary, got ordained, and
accepted a call. Very ironic:
I had been in seminary in Berkeley, California for three years and then
accepted a call to Lincoln, Nebraska, which is kind of culturally a little
different from Berkeley, California. So
I am a brand new minister and I remember it was in that first year.
It was Good Friday, and it would have been late enough on Good
Friday--this was a very large church, 3,000 members.
There were four pastors on the staff and I was the brand new person.
I was the low person on the totem pole. But
it was Good Friday afternoon and I'm the only clergyperson in the house.
A call came in to the receptionist downstairs. "Is Bob there?" (Senior Pastor) "No, he's gone." "Well, is Ev there?" "No, he's gone." "Is Lee there?" "No, he's gone." "Well, is Will there?" "Yes, he's here." So I got the telephone call. It
was the man, the member of the congregation who that night, for our Good Friday
service, was given the responsibility to read the Scripture.
He said, "Now, there are some words in the Scripture that I don't
know how to pronounce, so could you just tell me so I'll know how to say this
tonight?" I said, "Well,
what is it?" And you might
even want to turn over with me. He said, "Well, this is in Mark chapter 15 and they are
in verse 34. Mark 15, verse
34." So I looked and, you
know, it's sort of spelled out for us. And
I'm going, "Oh, my gosh . . ." Because,
see, I knew that Mark 15:34 is Aramaic and I had no idea how to pronounce these
words. So I looked down and I go,
"Well, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani.' " And he goes, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani"? And I go, "Yeah, yeah--that's it!"
And he goes, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And he goes, "Oh, man, am I ever glad that I found an
expert!" So he was so pleased, and he was so proud.
And I was there that night at the service and he, you know, had rehearsed
in the hours from late afternoon to that evening, he had been rehearsing saying
it. To this day, I have no idea how
to pronounce it. He said it exactly
like he had heard it from me, but, you know what?
In seminary we never studied Aramaic.
They never told me in three years of seminary.
Nobody ever said, "Here's how you pronounce these words."
You say, "Didn't you take Hebrew and Greek?"
Well, yes. Yes, I took
Hebrew. Yes, I took Greek.
This is neither Hebrew nor Greek. It's
definitely not English. This is the
language that the Palestinian Jews spoke at the time of Jesus and they no longer
spoke Old Testament Hebrew. It's a
different language. It's related to
Hebrew in the same way that Spanish and French are related to each other.
But I, that night, went away feeling there's something really, really
wrong with me that I don't know how to say this and that I get looked at as the
expert who is going to know the answer to all of these questions.
And this one incident, with several others--this was not the only one. There were probably about twelve different things that
happened to me in those early years. But
honestly, this was one among others that made me feel like, "I don't know
enough and I'm terribly embarrassed about the fact that I don't know enough.
I'm going to go back to school and get a Ph.D."
Now, not this incident alone, but this incident and several others.
And they all had to do with times where I was embarrassed that I didn't
know enough. I felt like,
"Yes, I should know the answer to questions I am being asked, but no, I
don't." So I spent five
years--went back to school, got a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology.
And now the wonderful conclusion to this story is at the end of that five
years of additional study I got the doctorate in Systematic Theology.
You know, there was never a time where I learned Aramaic in any of that.
I still do not know the answer to that question!
And, as a matter of fact, if you've done advanced study, then you're
going to appreciate what I'm about to say.
The only thing that getting a Ph.D. does for you is it impresses you with
how little you know. Because you
become the world's expert in such a small and inconsequential area that it
drives home for you not how much you know, but how little you
know! And I would say every day I'm
haunted by the fact that I don't know nearly as much as I wish I knew.
And please continue asking me your questions, because I very much want
for you to bring those to me. But
every now and then you will ask me something and it will simply reinforce to me
this sense of inadequacy that I have. Now, in one sense I'm confessing something that I think is a
negative, but in another sense, I'm trying to share with you something that is
actually a very, very good thing. It's
actually a very, very good thing for you to have a pastor who knows that
he doesn't know. There may be
pastors who don't know that they don't know.
But, honestly, I don't think that there are very many.
Because there's something about the job that forever brings across our
path things that we are not adequate to, things that we are not up to.
And this morning's Scripture is going to illustrate that for us.
It's not the Mark passage. We're
not going to do any more with Aramaic. It's
the passage that we have in Exodus, Exodus chapter 17.
This is a wonderful incident that illustrates the point that I'm making
this morning. Exodus 17, beginning with verse 8. This is an incident having to do with the life of Moses and
having to do with the people of Israel after they had come out from their
slavery in Egypt. In verse 8, this
is what we read: Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim.
Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some men for us and go out, fight with
Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on
the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand."
So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses,
Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.
Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he
lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But
Moses' hands grew weary; so they took a stone and they put it under him, and he
sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up
his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were
steady until the sun set. And
Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the sword. Now in this story, it's a fairly simple story, you know.
When Moses' hands are up like that, the Israelites prevailed.
The battle goes in favor of Israel.
When he lowers his hands, the battle goes the other way.
And his hands get too tired. After
a while, he can't hold his hands up any more.
So they sit him down on a rock and Aaron stands on one side and holds up
his hand. And Hur stands on the
other side and holds up his hand. If
nothing else, what we see in this incident is that God has more blessing, more
victory, more success for His people, than any one person is adequate to
bringing in, to ushering in, to mediating.
If I think that all of the blessings of God that are going to come into
this congregation, or if John does--if any one group or even one little faction
within the life of this congregation thinks that everything that God is going to
bring into this church is going to come in through us, sooner or later our arms
are going to get too tired. Sooner
or later, we're not going to be up to it. And
God is going to have more that could come in--there could be more blessing, more
success, more victory. And so the question
is, are those of us in leadership going to allow for ourselves to be supported
by the rest of you? And I want to
say I hope that my answer is always, "Yes." I hope that I am always being kept with a fresh awareness
that I need your support, that I need your prayers, that I know that God's plans
for this church are bigger than me. And
I think that we have every reason to believe that the new Senior Pastor that is
going to come our way is going to be someone who, though maybe not having the
insecurities that I have--do you understand?
May not have the sense of inadequacy in exactly the way that I do, but in
some way or another is going to have fresh in his or her mind the sense that,
"My hands aren't strong enough. My
hands aren't steady enough. I can't
keep my hands up long enough. I
need other people around to support me, to encourage me."
The reason that I decided to bring you this word is because Pastor
Appreciation Sunday is a wonderful way for you to indicate to John and to
me--and I hope that you continue to do it for your pastors, to say, "Hey,
we do support you. We do encourage
you." Well, life just has a way of keeping ministers humble.
Why would that be? Well, if we're in the God-business and we know who God is,
then you have to go, "God's kind of big."
Amen? Can we agree on that
one? "And I'm kind of
little." And God is a lot
bigger, and God's plans for us are a lot bigger than just any one person can
sort of help usher in. So my first point is I think that life just has a way of keeping
ministers humble. And if, in the
midst of sort of confronting circumstance after circumstance where I feel like I
don't know enough, I'm not up to it, I'm not adequate for what's being asked of
me, it can help a lot to have balancing my sense of inadequacy the wonderful
shows of appreciation that you have been sending my way and Nancy's way from
when we first got here. I mean,
you've been wonderful at that! You've
been wonderful at supporting us. So
I want to say 99.9% of the ministers out there know that they're not good enough
and need encouraging words from you. Now, there may be pastors out there who don't appear to know that
they don't know. And, you know, I
don't even think that that's true . . . I mean, I can't imagine that.
But, for argument's sake, let's just say are there pastors out there who
don't know that they don't know. Or
who don't realize that God is infinitely large and that they are very, very
small. Well, what about that?
Well, I commend to you the avenue of giving ministers displays of
affection and appreciation whether they seem to have inferiority complexes or
not. Because, number one, some of
us in the clergy are sort of very, very good at hiding our inferiority
complexes. You know what I mean?
And in Presbyterian churches, these robes are really good at that.
Do you know what I mean? But
not only is it the case that a minister can actually really know that he falls
short, that she falls short, but hide it. But
even if God were to send us a know-it-all--let's just imagine, OK?
I want to commend to you the same avenue--the supportive, the showing
appreciation, the demonstrations of affection, even if it's somebody who does
not have the problem that I have. And why would that be? Because
congregations can have a wonderful, shaping influence on pastors.
I'm thinking of something right now that in academic circles is called
the "Greenspoon effect." The
"Greenspoon effect" is named after professor Greenspoon. He was teaching his students about conditioning, and about
how when you give the little pigeons the pellets, you can reinforce certain
behaviors in the little pigeons and soon enough the pigeon is sort of . . .
And the class (without Professor Greenspoon knowing about it) decided
that they were going to try a little experiment in class of their own.
And what they decided they wanted to differentially reinforce is any time
Professor Greenspoon would turn in this direction [to the left] their gaze would
go down, they would start looking bored and not interested, and showing no signs
of paying any attention at all. Any
time that he turned over in this direction [to the right] they would get
excited, and they would start asking questions and they would brighten up and
smile. During that semester--by the
end of that semester, they had him lecturing over to the chalkboard on the
right, against the wall, simply be being enthusiastic every time he made a turn!
Now, you know, can a "Greenspoon effect" work in a church
circle? I believe that it certainly
can. And so I want to commend to
you being affectionate, being encouraging, being appreciative, being supportive.
If you get a "wonderful blessing" from God, and also if
you get a "work in progress" from God, shall we say, either way, I
want to let you know whether that person knows it or not, God is way, way bigger
than he or she is sure to be. This
church is going to need your help. I'm
very, very sure that your pastor is going to know that.
And even if you can't tell whether the pastor knows it or not, the same
thing that I, with all of my insecurities, need from you--that's the same thing
that that other person, the theoretical know-it-all person, is going to need. So I want to say just as Moses needed Aaron and Hur to hold up his
hands so that the victory that God wanted the people to have could be realized,
you're giving that to John and me this morning. And I want to encourage you to keep doing that.
Let's pray. Dear
Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that it's your will that no one of us is
ever sufficient to bring in the good things, the victories, the triumph, that
you have in store. Lord, we pray
that you would give us the sense to hold one another up. And it's in the strong name of Jesus that we pray.
Amen. Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Interim Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the
worship service on October 12, 2003.] |
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