E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten
Hughes Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome
1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2101-0
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2101-0
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
R. Kent Hughes (DMin, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is senior pastor emeritus of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and former professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hughes is also a founder of the Charles Simeon Trust, which conducts expository preaching conferences throughout North America and worldwide. He serves as the series editor for the Preaching the Word commentary series and is the author or coauthor of many books. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Spokane, Washington, and have four children and an ever-increasing number of grandchildren.
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ONE
Disappointed Dreams
As I begin our story, do not suppose that this is the hardest thing that has happened to me in the ministry. It is not. The significance of my experience is not its hardness, but that it almost made me quit my divine calling.
When a man is forty-five he is said to be in mid-life, and I certainly am. It is also often said that he is in his prime, and that I am. I have been married twenty-five years to a woman who is not only my love but my soul partner. We have four children, all of whom love Christ and want to serve him in their callings.
Twenty-three of our twenty-five years have been spent in ministry. Preaching is my passion. Even on vacation, I enjoy books that have to do with the history of preaching and homiletic thought and theology. I feel as if I am doing the thing I was born for.
The ministry has made it possible for me to experience what some would (unwisely!) call success, as I have traveled widely, spoken to international conferences, written several books, and sat on the boards of Christian organizations.
Those who have served alongside me these past twenty-plus years say that they see me as a capable, solid, even-dispositioned pastor who has a positive approach to ministry—and all of life. And without hesitation I can say that they are right. Though I am not unfamiliar with dark moods, such times are rare in my life—and always have been.
All of this is what makes the following account so enlightening.
I was not feeling well as I stepped from the car onto my broiling southern California driveway and walked, briefcase in hand, toward the shade of the front porch. There Barbara cheerfully greeted me through the kitchen screen.
Aware of my gradual depression, she had been observing me with increasing concern. My gait had lost its characteristic energy and I often appeared downcast. Barbara knew that it had to do with my work, for she observed that when things were going well at church I was OK, but otherwise I was discouraged. If church attendance was up, I was up; if it was down, so was I. And the numbers had been going down for a long time.
What Barbara didn't know was that I was seriously wondering whether I should continue in the pastoral ministry. Neither was she aware that the doubts troubling me were actually so repugnant that I could not bring myself to verbalize them. Nor could she know that as I further suppressed them, my depression itself had become increasingly ugly.
A covert, unarticulated animosity had crept through my soul. It was hidden from all. Years of honestly cultivated Christian civility served me well—for inside I was a very angry man.
The focus of my resentment was God himself, the one who had called me to this. I had given everything—all my time, all my education, years of ministry and true Christian devotion (he knew?)—and now I was failing. God was to blame.
Beneath my pastoral veneer, dark thoughts moved at will.
Inside I was embarrassed and fearful. At night, as I drifted off to sleep, the beneficent faces of my well-wishers would slip in and out of focus—always smiling. They seemed benignly to watch me sink into a pit of miserable despair.
I wanted to quit.
How had I come to this? In retrospect, I can now see that much of it had to do with my expectations, which went back to the very week when as a twelve-year-old I meet Christ at summer camp. . . .
I can still remember the growing lens of my flashlight illuminating the delicate pages of my tiny Bible. After lights out in the musty, gym-sock air of my sleeping bag, trembling with joy, I read and reread the great texts of salvation. I had come to know Christ!
Although I was not quite a teenager. I knew that I was called to preach. So sure was I that the next day I let everyone know. When I went home, I announced it to my family and gave testimony to it before the whole church. It was a precocious announcement, but it was of God. The call was never to leave me. It gave profound direction to my young life. God had saved me and called me, and in my youthful egocentricity, I assumed he was going to do great things through me.
Because of this my teenage years were full and focused. I wholeheartedly entered into the life of my local southern California high school and church—all the while happily growing in my pastor-to-be persona.
When just sixteen I preached my first sermon on Jonah and the Whale. I gave it a double title: “The Chicken of the Sea, or God Has a Whale of a Plan for Your Life!” So it was a sermon of dubious wit and doubtful quality! The mere doing of it established my identity as one called to the gospel ministry. Many kind and affirming people in my church predicted I would be a “good” preacher. And with their predictions, my anticipation of future success increased.
Despite my immature pride, my call was an intensely serious matter to me. Virtually everything I did was with an expectant eye to the sacred goal of ministry.
I went to Whittier College. There I became deeply involved in studies and preparation for the pastorate. I directed Youth for Christ clubs, did some street preaching, and organized evangelistic outreaches to students at other colleges.
Meeting and marrying Barbara—my cheerful, outgoing. ministry-minded wife—deepened my commitment and the sense that the best times lay ahead.
Choosing to begin a family as college ended meant increased pressures. I attended classes, worked forty hours per week, and together Barbara and I began an exciting ministry with young married couples in our church that carried over into our years at nearby Talbot Theological Seminary. To be sure, our single-mindedness left us tired, but we were happy.
Seminary was all I had hoped for and more, There is a distinct romance to biblical study. “The Queen of Sciences,” With its epic history, magisterial doctrines, delicately nuanced theology, its Greek and Hebrew. And I entered the romance completely, for studying the Scriptures and learning about Christ were heaven to me. Lifelong friendships with godly professors and students strengthened our resolve to serve God with all that we had. Seminary confirmed for me the rightness of my vocation. It also had the effect of heightening my expectations of success.
During seminary I began a memorable ten years of ministry in my family church, first as youth pastor and then as associate pastor. This was the sixties—restless, unsettled, but a time of wonderful spiritual harvest. Our Bible studies overflowed with teenagers honestly and earnestly seeking truth. Many not only met Christ but went on to become missionaries and ministers.
The highlight of that ministry is framed in a five-by seven photograph hanging in the hallway of our home.
The photo was taken in 1968 in Parker, Arizona, during our high schoolers’ Easter Outreach week. It was snapped in the intense low morning sunlight of the Arizona desert, which gives it almost surrealistic detail. In the background is the turquoise ribbon of the morning-lit Colorado River. In the foreground are five young men posed on a boat trailer. They are tan, windswept, and holding beers with postured male élan. Three of those young men would confess Christ that morning. Today two of them are in the ministry and the other is now a prominent Christian counselor. That picture demonstrates for me the sovereign, ineluctable power of God. Those young men, before that week completely unknown to me, not only were revolutionized by God’s grace but have led unusually productive Christian lives and have been my good friends for almost twenty years.
If only all of Christian ministry were as triumphant as that photograph. Unfortunately, ministry is messy. One experiences a wide range of disappointments and criticisms in ten years of aggressive Christian service.
Even so, those were productive and satisfying years. But, having reached the age of thirty-two, I realized it was time for me to begin an active pulpit ministry. God’s call was clear. And I looked forward, with an anticipation that had been years in the making, to what God would do.
The church I served decided to mother a new church with me as the founding pastor. In this adventure, the sponsoring church and its pastor were wonderfully magnanimous. Together we produced an excellent multimedia presentation to communicate to the congregation the potential of the new work. When the pastor urged all to respond who felt the call of God to commit themselves to planting this new church, twenty families decided to go with us. To top that off, the church gave us a gift of $50,000 to get us started.
What a way to begin a church! Optimism ran high. As the fair-haired boy, I was told by friends that great things were about to happen, and it would not be long before the new church would be larger than its mother. Such talk enlarged my expectations. I believed it.
The people who gathered with us to begin the church were terrific. We left our initial meetings amazed at the array of gifted, hard-working, visionary people the Lord had brought with us. With such people we expected to grow.
And we did things “right.” Our denomination retained a church growth expert who instructed us in the broad principles and minor subtleties of growing churches. They sent me to seminars on church growth. We obtained aerial photographs and demographic projections...