4 More than Knowledge and Skill
CHAPTER FOUR
MORE THAN KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL
I have heard the tale again and again. The summary is always the same: “We finally came to the realization that we had called (hired) someone we didn’t know.” The most recent story was quite typical. The senior pastor, now in his sixties, knows his time to step down is drawing near. A search committee is formed and begins to develop the criteria they will use for vetting the applicants. The opening is published through the church’s network, and the process begins. Other than a few lines that were vague and all too general, the two pages describing the profile of the man they were looking for showed little interest in the man himself. Getting to know the heart of the man, whose impressive list of knowledge and skills was expected to jump off the application page, was simply not a part of the search process in an essential way.
There was excitement at the search committee meeting when the head of the committee presented the application of the man that seemed to fit their profile in every way. Not only did he have the right training, the right skill set, and what seemed to be the right ministry philosophy for bonding with and growing their church, but also he came with a resume of ministry experience in a variety of settings. By the end of the meeting the search group had decided to send a delegation to hear the man preach and get a read of how his current church was doing. After hearing him speak that first Sunday morning, it was full steam ahead for the committee. They loved the way he handled the passage, and several members of the committee remarked that his preaching reminded them of their retiring pastor. It wasn’t long before he was invited to preach at the calling church, followed by a Monday morning interview and an invitation later that week to be the new senior pastor of the church. Yes, there were cursory interviews with elders and deacons, and the group had one opportunity to meet his family, but the reality is that once he matched their profile of knowledge, experience, and skill, it was hard for the committee to listen to or hear anything that would get in the way of offering him a call.
The first several months of his ministry at this new church were filled with enthusiasm and hope. It did seem as though God had provided just the right person. There was one thing that gave some insightful people pause: the new pastor’s wife seemed neither comfortable nor happy. She was not bonding with the ladies of the church, and she seemed to participate only in the required “pastor’s-wife-must-be-there” activities. He was not around the office as much as the staff had anticipated and was therefore hard to reach, but these seemed to be minor issues. “Eight months, and no one has been invited to their house or spent time with them socially,” was the concerned comment of a wise, old elder as he met for coffee with a fellow leader. It was clear that the new pastor hated meetings and was socially uncomfortable in informal settings. He spent most of his time during the week studying at his home office and generally only showed up at the church for Thursday staff meetings and Sunday services. The staff had to learn how to operate without him, and the interns felt abandoned. In public settings he seemed like the quintessential qualified and experienced pastor, but the public persona and the private man were beginning to collide, and no one seemed to know.
At the end of the first year, he announced that his wife was going home for a time to be with her parents. He said he felt that it was too soon for him to take time off, so she and the kids would be gone for a couple weeks, and he would be “batching it” on his own. No one thought much about it, and meals were provided so that he would not starve in his wife’s absence. It made people wonder when two weeks stretched to four, but not many questions were asked. It wasn’t long after his wife returned that he began to ask for prayer for his family and for the “normal” tensions that pastors experience between family and ministry. Meanwhile his wife did not appear to be any better adjusted to her new ministry home or any closer to her peer group in the church.
His abnormal isolation from the staff and leadership of the church and his wife’s abnormal discomfort with her new church community became the new normal. Everyone seemed to adjust and to forget what had been and what could be. The staff learned to load all their essential dealing with the senior pastor onto Thursdays, the interns learned to make their own way, and the congregation seemed content with well-functioning public gatherings. The “less-than-what-should-be” became the “we-can-make-this-work.” This is often the way it is.
I’m convinced that the big crisis for the church of Jesus Christ is not that we are easily dissatisfied but that we are all too easily satisfied. We have a regular and perverse ability to make things work that are not and should not be working. We learn to adjust to things that we should alter. We learn to be okay with things we should be confronting. We learn how to avoid things we should be facing. We would rather be comfortable than to hold people accountable. We swindle ourselves into thinking that things are better than they are, and in so doing we compromise the calling and standards of the God we say we love and serve. Like sick people who are afraid of the doctor, we collect evidence that points to our health when really, in our heart of hearts, we know we are sick. So we settle for a human second best, when God, in grace, offers us so much more.
Four years in, and the evidence was mounting and inescapable that something was wrong in the heart and life of this man and his family. He often looked beaten and distracted. He had become less patient and more easily irritated with those who worked with him, and his wife often looked as if she was at the edge of tears. He quietly asked the deacons if there was a fund that could assist in getting counseling for him and his wife, and money was gladly provided. People in the inner circle were heartened by the fact that the couple was seeking help and, looking back months later, were thankful that a crisis had been avoided. But it hadn’t.
The call that no elder wants to get came to the head of the elder board on a cold winter Saturday afternoon. It was the pastor asking if there was any possibility of finding someone to fill in for him the next day (two morning sermons and a missions luncheon talk). The elder mistakenly thought his pastor must be physically sick, so when the pastor told him it was a family emergency, his heart sank. Little did he know what the next few days would bring.
Monday the pastor called an emergency meeting of the executive committee of the board and told them what was going on. On Saturday the pastor’s wife had given him an ultimatum: “It’s me or your ministry. You have to choose one or the other, because you’re not going to have both.” She went on to say that she could not do it anymore. She couldn’t deal with the huge disconnect between their public and private lives. She said she was exhausted with pretending that things were okay when they were everything but okay. She was tired of hearing her husband consistently call people to do things he wasn’t doing. She hated the new city she lived in and bitterly reminded her husband that she had begged him not to uproot her and the children. Having unloaded on him, she then told him that she would not be in church on Sunday or any other Sunday to come. It was “done, over” and he would have to make her and the children the focus of his attention “for the first time in many years.”
“She’s right,” he said with head bowed. “It has gone on too long. I don’t know if this is my resignation, a request for a leave of absence, or just a cry for help, but we can’t continue doing what we have been doing. My wife is home packing. She’s heading with the kids to her mother’s, and I plan to go as well, as soon as this meeting is over and I have put several ministry things in order.” The shocked executive committee should not have been shocked. They should have known. They should have guided, counseled, and protected. They should have warned and encouraged. They should have served and rescued. But they had hired a man they did not know in a marriage they did not know and with a wife who was more troubled than they knew. They were persuaded by a body of knowledge, the history of ministry experience, and obvious ministry skills. They made assumptions they should not have made. They failed to ask questions that they should have asked. They knew the vitae of the man, but they did not know his heart. Had they known, they never would have called him, because they would have been able to predict what they were now dealing with.
They had no knowledge of the late-night arguments between their potential pastor and his wife that had led up to his acceptance of the call. They did not know that the isolation the staff and interns had been experiencing was also the experience of every member of the pastor’s family. They did not know that the reason he had sought and taken this new position was that his relationship with his wife had already begun to disintegrate, and she was already beginning to emotionally crash. They did not know that she had been devastated when he took the call and that he was convinced it was the only way to rescue his marriage and family. The operative words that unpack the crisis of this one local church and many other churches that are going through similar things are “they did not know.”
WHAT MAKES PASTORS SUCCESSFUL?
I am convinced that much of the problem in situations like this is an unbiblical definition of the essential ingredients of ministry success. Sure, on their candidate profile was a line that required, “Vibrant walk with the Lord,” but these words were weakened by a process that asked few questions in this area while making grand assumptions. They were really interested in his knowledge (right theology), skill (good preacher), ministry philosophy (will build the church), and experience (isn’t cutting his pastoral teeth in our place of ministry). Because of what I do, many times I have heard church leaders, in moments of pastoral crisis, say to me, “We didn’t know the man we hired.”
What does knowing the man mean? It means knowing the true condition of his heart (as far as that is possible). What does he really love, and what does he despise? What are his hopes, dreams, and fears? What are the deep desires that fuel and shape the way he does ministry? What are the anxieties that have the potential to derail or paralyze him? How accurate is his view of himself? Is he open to the confrontation, critique, and encouragement of others? Is he committed to his own sanctification? Is he open about his own temptations, weaknesses, and failures? Is he ready to listen to and defer to the wisdom of others? Does he see pastoral ministry as a community project? Does he have a tender, nurturing heart? Is he warm and hospitable, a shepherd and champion to those who are suffering? What character qualities would his wife and children use to describe him? Does he sit under his own preaching? Is his heart broken and his conscience regularly grieved as he looks at himself in the mirror of the Word? How robust, consistent, joyful, and vibrant is his devotional life? Does his ministry to others flow out of the vibrancy of his devotional communion with the Lord? Does he hold himself to high standards, or is he willing to give way to mediocrity? Is he sensitive to the experiences and needs of those who minister alongside of him? Is he one who incarnates the love and grace of the Redeemer? Does he overlook minor offenses? Is he ready and willing to forgive? Is he critical and judgmental? Is the public pastor a different person from the private husband and dad? Does he take care of his physical self? Does he numb himself with too much social media or television? If he said, “If only I had 
,” what would fill in the blank? How successful has he been in pastoring the congregation that is his family?
You see, it is absolutely vital to remember that a pastor’s ministry is never just shaped by his knowledge, experience, and skill. It is always also shaped by the true condition of his heart. In fact, if his heart is not in the right place, all of the knowledge and skill can actually function to make him dangerous. Let’s examine the situation that I have been unpacking for you.
The problem was not the pastor’s wife, although she had significant heart issues to deal with. The problem was not that he had a perennially troubled marriage. The problem was not his isolation from ministry partners and the body of Christ. All of these things were the signs and symptoms of a deeper, more foundational problem. The problem was one of the heart, one that would have an inescapable negative effect on his ministry. The problem was a vertical problem. It had to do with the character and content of this pastor’s relationship with God.
The problem was the pastor’s lack of a living, humble, needy, celebratory, worshipful, meditative communion with Christ. It was as if Jesus had left the building. There were all kinds of ministry knowledge and skill, but those seemed divorced from a living communion with a living and ever-present Christ. All this knowledge, skill, and activity seemed to be fueled by something other than love for Christ and a deep, abiding gratitude for the love of Christ. In fact, it was all shockingly impersonal. It was about theological content, exegetical rightness, ecclesiastical commitments, and institutional advancement. It was about preparing for the next sermon, getting the next meeting agenda straight, and filling the requisite leadership openings. It was about budgets, strategic plans, and ministry partnerships. None of these things are wrong in themselves. Many of them are essential. But they must never be ends in themselves. They must never be the engine that propels the vehicle. They must all be an expression of something deeper, and that something deeper must reside in the heart of the senior pastor. It must ignite and fuel his ministry at every level, and what ignites his ministry must ignite every aspect of his personal life as well.
The pastor must be enthralled by, in awe of—can I say it: in love with—his Redeemer so that everything he thinks, desires, chooses, decides, says, and does is propelled by love for Christ and the security of rest in the love of Christ. He must be regularly exposed, humbled, assured, and given rest by the grace of his Redeemer. His heart needs to be tenderized day after day by his communion with Christ so that he becomes a tender, loving, patient, forgiving, encouraging, and giving servant leader. His meditation on Christ—his presence, his promises, and his provisions—must not be overwhelmed by his meditation on how to make his ministry work.
You see, it is only love for Christ that can defend the heart of the pastor against all the other loves that have the potential to kidnap his ministry. It is only worship of Christ that has the power to protect him from all the seductive idols of ministry that will whisper in his ear. It is only the glory of the risen Christ that will guard him against the self-glory that is a temptation to all who are in ministry and that destroys the ministry of so many. Only Christ can turn an arrogant, “bring on the world” seminary graduate into a patient, humble giver of grace. Only deep gratitude for a suffering Savior can make a man willing to suffer in ministry. It is only a heart that is satisfied in Christ that can be spiritually content in the hardships of ministry. It is only in your brokenness in the face of your sin that you can give grace to the fellow rebels to whom God has called you to minister. It’s only when your identity is firmly rooted in Christ that you are free from seeking to get your identity out of your ministry.
We must be careful how we define ministry readiness and spiritual maturity. There is a danger of thinking that the well-educated and trained seminary graduate is ministry ready or to mistake ministry knowledge, busyness, and skill with personal spiritual maturity. Maturity is a vertical thing that will have a wide variety of horizontal expressions. Maturity is about relationship to God that results in wise and humble living. Maturity of love for Christ expresses itself in love for others. Thankfulness for the grace of Christ expresses itself in grace to others. Gratitude for the patience and forgiveness of Christ enables you to be patient and forgiving toward others. It is your own daily experience of the rescue of the gospel that gives you a passion for people to experience the same rescue.
Because all of this is true, these things need to be brought to the forefront in the application and examination of all pastoral candidates. We are not calling skills, knowledge, and experience to ministry. We are calling whole people who live out of the heart and whose ministries will always be shaped and directed by some kind of worship. We are calling people in the middle of their own sanctification, still struggling with the seductive and deceptive power of sin. We are calling people who face the daily snares of a world that is simply not operating the way that God intended. We are calling people whom God will call into hardship for their redemptive good and for his glory. We are calling people who are in intimate daily relationships with other sinners. We are calling people who are capable of losing their way, capable of self-deception, and tempted to be self-sufficient and self-righteous. We are calling people who drag their feelings about and interpretations of previous ministry experiences into this new place of ministry. We are calling people who are as desperately in need of forgiving, transforming, empowering, and delivering grace as anybody to whom they would ever minister. We are calling people, real people who are not yet grace graduates.
So we must get to know, really know, the people we put into positions of spiritual leadership and care of God’s people.
SOME BIBLICAL EXAMPLES
It is clear from examining Scripture that leadership fruitfulness or failure is seldom only about knowledge, strategy, skill, and experience. Consider what is said of Abraham in Romans 4. He was chosen by God to receive his covenant promises. He was told that his offspring would be like the sand on the seashore. Yet his wife was a very old woman, way, way beyond childbearing age, and he had not yet given birth to the son who would carry on his line. Romans 4 tells us something very significant about Abraham’s heart. Think about it: when you and I are called by God to wait for an extended period as Abraham was, often for us our story of waiting is a chronicle of ever-weakening faith. The longer we have time to think about what we are waiting for, the longer we have time to consider how we have no ability to deliver it; and the longer we have to let ourselves wonder why we have been selected to wait, the more our faith weakens. But not so with Abraham. We’re told in this passage that during this time of protracted waiting, his faith actually grew stronger, and the passage tells us why. Rather than meditating on the impossibility of his situation, Abraham meditated on the power and the character of the One who had made the promise. The more Abraham let his heart bask in the glory of God, the more convinced he became that he was in good hands. Rather than a cycle of discouragement and hopelessness, Abraham’s story was one of encouragement and hope. Why? Because he meditated on the right thing.
What about Joseph, whom God had chosen as his tool to preserve the children of Israel from famine and resultant extinction? When seduced by the Egyptian ruler Potiphar’s wife, he would not give in. Why? It wasn’t fear of consequences, or what he had learned from past experiences, or his skill at negotiating the complicated relationships of the palace. Genesis 39 tells us clearly what motivated Joseph at this critical-choice point in his life. You see, he was able to resist because of the deep heart devotion he had to his Lord. His heart was not ruled by horizontal pleasure but by vertical worship. He could not conceive of doing such a wicked thing against God. A glory greater than the temporary glories of the created world had captured his heart; and so he spoke with an immediate, emphatic, and heartfelt no.
Or think about Moses as he stands before that burning bush. God had chosen Moses to be his tool of redemption, to lead Israel out of captivity and into the land of promise. But Moses is neither willing nor hopeful. Exodus 3 and 4 record Moses’s argument with God. Moses’s personal assessment is that he is completely unable, unprepared, and unqualified to do the thing that God has called him to do. God’s response is simple: “I will go with you.” Moses’s bottom line is just as simple: “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (4:13). Moses says this even after God has given him a firsthand demonstration of the power that will be at his disposal as the chosen tool of God. What is going on here? Moses is not being protected by all of his Egyptian education. He is not being motivated by the wealth of his Egyptian cultural knowledge. He is not being heartened by his personal understanding of palace politics. None of these things are helping Moses at this point, because he is being betrayed by the fear of his own heart. And it is only in the face of God’s anger that Moses finally goes.
Or think of the army of Israel in the valley of Elah, armed for battle but too afraid to fight. They stood there as the chosen army of the Most High God, the Lord of Hosts, afraid to face the Philistine champion. It was an army suffering from a tragic case of identity amnesia. They forgot who they were. They forgot the promises they had been given. And because they did, they drew a false spiritual equation as they evaluated the moment. It wasn’t these puny little soldiers against this huge giant; it was this puny giant against Almighty God. First Samuel 17 chronicles David’s arriving. This shepherd, there to deliver provisions to his brothers, was a man of faith, a man who had experienced the rescuing power of God. So David couldn’t understand why the army was not fighting. In an act of courage that is possible only for someone who knows who he is as the child of God and rests in what he has been given, David walks into that valley to face Goliath with nothing more than a shepherd’s sling. David is drawing the right spiritual equation and knows that God will deliver the Philistine champion and his army into his hand. David knows that he fights not in the shadow of the glory of Goliath but in the brightness of the glory of God. It is the courage of the faith residing in his heart that propels him into that valley.
Or remember Elijah, who, after the great victory over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, finds himself so alone, discouraged, and hopeless that he wishes he could die. First Kings 19 pictures for us this pathetic prophet who has completely lost his way and is convinced it’s the end. He can see no way out. He is convinced that he is the only righteous man left, and from his vantage point it looks as though evil is going to win. God has to come to Elijah and return him to his senses. He is not alone; God’s work is not done. Evil will not ultimately win. There are seven thousand faithful who are still left to carry on the work of God.
Think about what Paul says of his opposition of Peter, who was about to compromise a core principle of the gospel because he was afraid of what a certain group of people would think and how they would respond to him. He was about to act in a way that directly contradicted the message that he was called to represent, not because he lacked knowledge, experience, or skill but because, at the moment, his heart was ruled more by horizontal fear than vertical belief.
In each instance, with each leader, the thing that makes the difference at crucial-choice points is the condition of the person’s heart. The heart is the inescapable X factor in ministry. Put two men with the exact same training, experience, and skill set next to one another, and it would be easy to conclude that they will respond in similar ways to the push and pull of local church ministry. It would be easy to conclude this, but dangerous. The potential for significant difference in the way these men function as pastors is as wide as the catalog of things that can rule a person’s heart in ministry. It is naive to think that pastoral ministry is always propelled by love for Christ and his gospel. It is simplistic to conclude that people in ministry have a natural and abiding love for people. It is dangerous to conclude that everyone in ministry is working for the furtherance of the big kingdom. It is important to recognize that many people in ministry have been seduced by self-glory and have lost sight of the glory of God. Not all people in ministry do their work out of a humble sense of their own need. Ministries are derailed because leaders begin to think they have arrived and don’t do the protective things that they warn everyone else to do. It’s naive to think that pastors are free from sexual temptation, fear of man, envy, greed, pride, anger, doubt of God, bitterness, and idolatry. It is vital to remember that every pastor is in the middle of being reconstructed by God’s grace.
So it is essential to know the heart of the man behind the knowledge, skill, experience, and ministry strategy before you call him to pastor God’s flock. You can be assured that like God’s leaders of old, he will face crucial personal- and ministry-choice points. In those significant moments, what will win the day and determine what he will do will be his heart because, like everyone else, it is inescapably true that whatever rules his heart will direct his life and his ministry. It is vital to get way, way beyond the profile that emerges from the data on his vitae.