ALIVE, WELL, AND HUMAN

Reflections on the Ministry

Scioto Valley Presbytery, Pastor's Retreat
September 13, 1982

John M. Buchanan

There is nothing in the world I respect more than the faith commitment
each of my colleagues in ministry has made, and the way that commitment,
that faith response, is expressed vocationally. In fact, I respect it so
much that I hesitate to assume that anyone of us knows anything the others
don't. However, one time, early in my own ministry I was helped a great
deal by a pastor's pastor, Bill Laws (H.R., First Church, Columbus, Indiana,
Moderator of General Assembly - 1970) who met with the pastors of my Presby-
tery in a retreat much like this one. Bill simply shared with us the details
of his ministry: his unforgetable phrase was an "ecclesiastical strip tease".
I know that I am always enriched to learn about the ministry of my colleagues

--and my hope is that you might be helped to know about mine.

# The format will be to share several ideas I have found helpful in my
ministry; their respective sources; and something of the actual practices

which have grown out of these ideas. I claim_no originality. In fact, I
suspect you may have heard all of this before. / a the end I hope to probe a
bit deeper - into theological reasons for our éccasional discomfort in ministry.
Finally, we will have opportunity to reflect individually, and then, in groups,
on the conduct of our ministry and lives in the year ahead.

Idea number one I have called, Learning to live in the present. Its
source is a little book under the title Minister on the Spot. It was written
ten years ago - providentially when I needed to learn about living in the
present. It's author is James Dittes who was then, and still may be, Director wet
of Graduate Studies, Department of Religious Studies, and Professor, Psychology Ws
of Religion at Yale, and Editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of —
Religion. I Dittes Ghnee===bet he helped me a great deal
in a way which serves as a constant and helpful motif for me, particularly when
the going gets tough.

Dittes took the story of the man who had been reposing on the portico of
the Pool of Bethzatha for 38 years in John 5 and suggested that he was a fair
representation of a lot of clergy. The man, Dittes had the audacity to
suggest, really didn't want to be healed, actually healed in the present.
Without pressing the metaphor too hard, may I suggest that there is something
intrinsic about our humanity which is stimulated by the eschatalogical twist
to our faith, the result of which is that many of us have trouble with the
present tense.....

Dittes helped me to see something at the age of 30 or so for which I am
everlastingly grateful; namely that I had concluded that the kingdom of God
wasn't going to come in my parish. Obviously, what I had going wagp't going
to make it. But - with a little assist from the Vocations Aganey, Noueaa

tren ci St =hLLa = c oe A

might move, and then along with a few more dollars, bigger house, I would

have

the ecclesiastical resources to open the gates to the eschaton. The theme
is played out in a myriad of variations....."If only I had better youth
advisors the Senior High program would succeed. If only my Session members
were as supportive as the Session of Tom, Dick, or Jane's church. If only
my people could care." Many, if not most of us, I concluded, have heavily
invested in the future's ability to bring us joy, a sense of satisfaction,
completeness, or even salvation.

Dittes helped me finally to understand that those voices in the Bible
which come with such stark clarity: to Moses - Elijah - Isaiah - Peter -
Paul, were in all probability not very clear at all at the.time; that the
only certainty and clarity we may ever have is in looking backward to
describe events, or looking forward with hope. The moment - the present -
will probably be murky, unclear, ambiguous.

That was, and I believe it, good news. I found it liberating. I found
that I took a lot less seriously the marvelous success stories I kept hearing
about what someone else was doing and looked with new interest at my situation.

And as person - most of all - as person I was helped to see that it is
part of my humanity which needed saving, this propensity to live so much for
the future that the present moment is meaningful only insofar as it provides
for, builds a better tomorrow. That's a lousy way to live: it's not a good
way to be’married - or to parent - or to plan one's life or to structure
leisure time activities.

Idea number two is that The Ministry as Profession Is Macerating - more
so, I have concluded than the profession of anyone else I know. This idea
came from one of the most stimulating persons - certainly one of the most
eloquent I gave been privileged to know: Professor Joseph Sittler, University
of Chica Sittler wrote an essay once - The Maceration of the Minister —

which ed in various publications. The first time I ever saw it was in
a looselegf workbook, The Church and Its Changing Ministry - and the most
recent jig in Grace Notes and other Fragments - a collection of essays and

vignett@s published on Sittler's 75th birthday. I commend it to you highly.

"To macerate" is to "chop up into small pieces", a grim but altogether
accurate metaphor. The size or location of the parish doesn't matter; in
fact there is a sense in which the smaller the congregation, the more
macerated the minister. Our profession, alone so far as I know, demands
that we be mystic, scholar, business person, counselor, manager, personnel
director - all before lunchtime. And then comforter, grief therapist,
conflict resolver, theologian, cheerleader, coach, song leader, and cook.

It is not an unusual day when you and I do all of that. I confess I love it.
The counterpoint turns me on. To go from Schoedinger's Funeral Home to the

OB ward within the hour is a great, great privilege and a deep joy. But it

is exhausting. And there is a real sense in which it is not possible certainly
to do all of that fully and well and satifactorily.

Sittler wrote that in the classroom - and I can testify to the great
distance between the rarified atmosphere of the Divinity School at Chicago
and the basement of a small church in a small Northern Indiana town - "the
student comes to know that the 'basileia tou theou' is a phrase of enormous
scope and depth, that its study ought to persist throughout life. And then,
the professor, visits the graduate on the job and sees the lines of old books
on the shelves. Filed on top of these will be momentos of present concerns:
a roll of blueprints; a file of negotiations between the parish, the bank and
the Board of Missions; samples of asphalt tile; and a plumbers estimate." (p. 58)

The result: numbing, exhausting, life-denying maceration’ and a strong
sense of vocational guilt.

What to do? Understand it, then decide which of these rolls define your
own sense of call; get a Personnel Committee working in your church; get your
people involved in clarifying what you should be doing with your time.

The third idea is that there is Rent to Be Paid in ministry. That idiom,
of course, is the brainchild of James D. Glasse, former President of Lancaster
Theological Seminary, United Presbyterian Pastor, in his 1972 book, Putting It
Together in the Parish. Glasse simply said what most of us discover in time,

namely that "most parishes want three things of their pastor. If he/she meets
these minimal requirements he/she is free to do almost anything he/she wants
to do. Once the rent is paid, he/she can march for peace, fly a plane, devote
self to youth of the community, paint pictures, play golf - almost anything."
(p. 54-55) But first - three things:

1. Preaching and worship: a service to which they are not ashamed
to bring their friends.

2. Teaching and Pastoral Care (not cut rate psychotherapy): what
they want to know is that their pastor cares for them and will
be available when they need him/her.

3. Organization and Administration: a balanced budget, a building in
reasonable repair and an organization that works.

Glass is convinced that pastors who deliver will be free - and that paying
this rent is not a full time job.

We spend a lot of time complaining about the rent. The bottom line is
that it isn't going to go away - or change much.

The form in which the issue presents itself to most of us is, of course,
the pastor/prophet dichotomy. The trouble is that we do not have the luxury
of choosing to be one or the other. We must, I believe, be both. In fact,
each feeds the other. We have, over the past two decades, been relentlessly
urged, prodded and insulted into being prophetic. (When someone among our
people observes that there are other socio-political conclusions open to
thoughtful Christians than the places we have come down, we have been inclined
to ignore the voice as hopelessly reactionary. The result of all this is that
some have pulled out all the stops, convinced that the kingdom demands a
stand on the Farm Worker's boycott of Campbell Soup, and that the surest indi-
cation of faithfulness to one's calling is to have been unceremoniously fired
by at least one dismayed and angry rural midwestern church. I'm confessing
now. I graduated from seminary in the year of thé March on Washington. I

was weaned on the assasination of three men about whom I had very deep feelings,
the agonizing awareness that what we were doing in Vietnam was wrong, and the
atrocity of Kent State. I felt good in the 60's when I had "let em have it on
Civil Rights" in Northern Indiana.

Somehow I escaped unscathed, which is a testimony to their grace alone. )~"

Orville Gilliam, dying of cancer back down home in Portland, Tennessee, who
for my benefit, tried to call Black people colored, and with whom I had deep
and strong conflicts, wrote to me just last week.

I conclude that it takes courage to be prophet in these days. But it

takes greater courage to be prophet and pastor - to the same people at the
same time. If people know their pastor loves them, cares about them, will

be attentive and available, they will allow him/her to be prophet; will, in
fact, listen with earned respect; will, in fact, be nudged out of solidified
positions on occasion. They will not be humiliated and insulted into anything
except predictable anger.

— fy tees four is that Administration Is Not the Dark Side of our calling,

thé boring, tedious routines which are the bane of our creativity. Administra-
tion: ad- minister. It was the late Jack Meister, First Church Fort Wayne,
who became head of the Council on Theological Education, who taught that one.

It is ministry to enable the organism of the church to stand up, to grow, to
walk. Administration is how you and I help our churches do what they want to

do.

"Don't put it down and don't, for Christ's sake, literally - ignore it."

Meister used to say. If you believe in incarnation, if you mean it when you
say "I believe in the holy catholic church" there is nothing more important
than your administration. Do it with your ‘a intelligence, be prepared for

it, improve your skills, give it prime time.

Idea five: God Can Use Even a Lousy Sermon to Address His People - if

the preacher invests in it: (1) time; (2) skill; (3) faith; and (4) love.

I don't presume to tell anyone how to do it. My only secrets are ones

that we all know, and use with varying degrees of effectiveness. If I have
anything at all to offer it is this:

l.

I work ahead, I keep a book with each Sunday assigned a page. I read
the texts, identify a topic - and then let it begin to ferment - and it
does, like wine on a rack. They are there for me now, up till January 1,
and a very fragmentary Lenten Series. But they're fermenting, and I'll
pick up some stuff here and write it in for Advent or Stewardship or
Epiphany.

I read, sometimes obsessively, always with the task of preaching in my
awareness. JI cannot escape it. I have finally become selective. I
cannot read every word of the Reformed and Presbyterian World regardless
of the intriguing titles and so I don't even try any longer. I set
goals: I try, in summer, to read hard and long and good, and find that
Kung - Schillebeeckx - Rollo May - will feed me all winter long like fat
on a bear.

I am indiscriminate and promiscuous in my use of resources. We must
touch base with the life people live: concerts, plays, football games,
traffic jams - all get in my book.

4. I can't do it on the run, in small snatches, or under the gun. I am
obsessive about a few things, but mostly about this. I have a place
and a time: Tuesday morning, Capital University Library. I take a
briefcase full of books and a thermos of coffee and I come out at about
1:00 p.m. with 12 legal size sheets of stuff. On Wednesday night I
mark that material with a red pencil, scratching, underlining, and pro-
duce one sheet of single sentences - which easily becomes an outline.
Thursday morning I write it. I simply am not "in" unless my Clerk of
Session is perched on the 40th floor of the Nationwide Building calling
my name. Even then I'd try to get Gerry or Barbara or Jerry to go.

And then I preach it Friday morning, and I put it away, till Sunday and
then I preach it in the Sanctuary at 7:00 a.m. and then I edit - some-
times ruthlessly. Hemingway wrote the conclusion to Farewell to Arms

37 tani€@ST A sermon deserves at least one good laundering, I conclude.

,? Five) Wet dee You Dem Here an Sok Ate ?

Idea™edary my fdvorite, e one | treasure most, in its original form,
was a question. The situation was this: newly ordained, serving a small
church in a small Indiana town, full of Inland steelworkers, a few truck
farmers, and a teacher or two; I decided that it was important to work
harder than anyone else in sight. I'd let them know that being a preacher
is hard going. It was a Saturday morning, early. I was behind my desk.

Into the study came the husband of the treasurer to bring me my check and
some muskmelons and a dozen eggs, Mike Paddock, grizzled, tough foreman in
the mill. ""What the hell you doin here on Saturday morning?" he asked.

"You ought to be home with your family - like everybody else." "But, Mr.
Paddock", I protested, "I need to be here, available, and on the job when

my people are here." "Baloney!" he said. "People don't wanna see you today.
They wanna go to the store, get a haircut, watch the game. Go home. They'11
see you tomorrow."

I can count on one hand the Saturdays I have worked since that one,
with the exception of weddings, of course, and, ironically, last Saturday
when I wrote this.

Thanks to Mike I have, to the best of my ability, not asked my family
to share my ministry. I was saved from a lot of nonsense because neither
Sue nor I knew the first thing about the ministry nor really very much about
the church. The University of Chicago, needless to say, was not aware of
either - to my knowledge. So we didn't know about expectations for minister's
spouses, or public behavior, or minister's children - God, I hate what we
persist in doing to them. Sue typed because I didn't know how, but stopp
dead in her tracks the minute it was part of anybody's expectations of ae
And she has yet to hold an office in UPW, not for perjorative reasons, and
she is as faithful as she choses to be and probably the best church person
I know. And how she endured the sermons I used to read to her as if they
were masterpieces of rhetoric and insight I'll never know, but she never
once laughed.

J. It simply never occurred to us that anybody might think being married
to a minister was a profession ipso facto. And we have never made an issue

of it - and it has never been one.

I don't work Saturdays (even though I know others, for good reasons,
chose to). I guard evenings much more than I used to and regret that I
didn't start much earlier. It can be done - I'm convinced.

I simply refuse to miss one - time only concerts or games in which my
progeny have a part if it is humanly possible. I am shameless. I will
simply say, "I can only be here for 30 minutes. My son is starting

no)
center this afternoon.
ge
Dace + Leys bed hat Cn
I foci good cbenecimingll idee number syle Tae ee
; i hontai I conclude that _klee

the most serious detriment to our happiness, even our sanity, in ministry is
the nearly pathological attachment most of us have to busyness; and conversely
our refusal to stop and give time to self. [I 'd like to call on Wayne Oates
to help us. Oates is the distinguished Professor of Psychology of Religion

at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville. Ten years ago Oates wrote a

book, Confessions of a Workaholic: The Facts About Work Addiction, in which

I found most of the ministers I know.

Workaholism, according to Professor Oates, is "addiction to work, the
compulsion of uncontrollable need to work incessantly...It has its beginnings
in childhood. It becomes acute in second and third decades of life. If it is
not reversed or arrested in the forties or early fifties, it becomes chronic
and may lead to death in one form or another in the late fifties and/or sixties."

(p. 1)

How can you tell if you are a workaholic? AA has helped us to be sensi-
tive to the warning signs of alcohol addiction in ourselves and those we love.
What are the early signs of workaholism?

1. A workholic, in the middle of social conversation will tell how early he
came to work; how late he stayed; how little sleep he's been getting,
comparing himself favorably to Thomas Edison, who, everybody knows, never
slept at all.

2. A workaholic, in private conversation, will compare the amount of work she
is capable of producing with the paltry amount achieved by her peers. A
workaholic is always busy: even at leisure she is tightly programmed and
running slightly behind.

3. A workaholic can't say "no". A familiar litany is, "If I don't do this

job, who will." 0 y: % -+he is, likely take on
more and more r and above his p ribed activi . Heerfs a perfec-
yes tionist b e commits hi tO so Many peop or the“use of his skills

that iety depression

imse
cannot do the jobewell. This results in an
amSunting to panic.'| (p.~60)

4. A workaholic has real trouble with leisure. Batt tmrett@-2-psychoanalyst
by the name of Fercuczi observed "Sund rosis" in busy executives.
By Sunday afternoon they were experd@ncing anxiety,“physical distress,
depression. A workaholic takes-#ittle if any tiie off, often forgoes
vacation, or works while on,a#facation, works 1 day Saturday and Sunday
morning, and is simply imtapable of relaxjrig in leisure.

om

‘5. A workaholic is "other-directed", rather than "inner-directed". Bevid—
Riesman in The Lonely Crowd, coined the phrase "other directed". It means
behavior determined from outside "rather than by~an autonomous self that
makes decisions on the is of a senneubie tie local value system." (p. 14)
A workaholic doesn' ave an inner life, the prerequisite for a strong
sense of identity.

6. A workaholic has problems with the theology of grace, the idea of God's
unearned love. He or she cannot deal with forgiveness without paying,
and whenever the Gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed simply doesn't hear
the Good News. Workaholics believe they can produce everything they need,
alone. If they need spiritual benefit, they'll get it by working for it;
not by receiving an open-ended offer from God. Thus life is invested in
building a "mighty fortress" - an impregnable bastion of security...in
public esteem, in professional skill, in real estate - in money. The
name of the game is working for salvation.

Those are the signs. We see all of them in some people and some of them

The real problem with the workaholic, however, is that he or she is
applauded, praised and supported by the culture. Excessive work is seen,
not as a problem, but as evidence of commitment, love, loyalty, and self
sacrifice. * The Protestant work ethic - the drum to which most of us march -
is very suspicious of idleness and the model of the successful, upwardly mobile
man or worman is the one who works harder than anybody else, is at the office
earliest, stays latest, and works through lunch. Organizations love workahol-
ics. William H. Whyte, in his classic study, "The Organization Man", dis-
covered that large organizations depend on those ascetics who will subordinate
all for the organization and, of course, will pay him or her handsomely.

It is possible to laugh at most of those observations. Oates means his
book to be amusing. What isn't funny at all is the price nearly everybody
in medicine, psychology, religion, and management agrees we must pay for work
addiction: burn out - divorce - family alienation - ulcers - alcoholism -
heart attack - depression - suicide.

What I see is the guilt. We know the price we are paying personally.
We see the effects in our relationships, we know what we are neglecting, the
joy we are missing. The guilt itself becomes a heavy load to bear,

What is the answer? One is tempted to propose the logical antidote:
rebel, revolt, react. Some do. Some must. Some sell out, cash in, retire the
business attire and take up pottery in the mountains of West Virginia. That
seems logical, but obviously everybody can't do that. In fact, somewhere in
this exercise I want to say something in praise of hard work and in defense of
self sacrifice for goals that are intrinsically worthy, such as the security
and well-being of one's family, the education of one's children, the cultiva-
tion of professional skills or the planting of a straight row of corn. Work-
ing hard, by itself, is not indicative of addiction. Somewhere in this I want
to testify to the grace of hard work, the fulfillment of extending oneself and

and accomplishing and completing and ending the day with a sense that some
things are a little better for what one has done. I'm grateful, frankly,
that there are people almost possessed with their work to find a cure for
cancer, I'm glad for hard working, self sacrificing lawyers and bankers
and teachers and carpenters and preachers. The solution is not laziness,
unemployment, sioth.

The antidote is, first of all, the simple responsibility each of us has,
regardless of age, station, or status, to assign priorities ta all the de-
mands made of us starting with our personal needs, relational needs, profes-
sional requirements, and avocational pursuits. They are not all equal. Our
personal needs come first - when that list gets out of order, unhealthy things
begin to happen.

The solution is, second, to come to terms with the need each of us has for
an inner life. We may have buried that need. We may be frightened of the very
idea. But each of us needs inner space, time, a lonely place to use Jesus'
phrase. We have no authenticity, no core, no identity without that.

It is, finaily, I am convinced, a theological issue. It is a matter,
ultimately of coming to terms with grace - and that may mean the necessity of
a conversion experience for many of us. Our addiction to work is theological.
It springs from our inability to trust anybody else or conversely, from our
egotism which keeps telling us that we can be self-sufficient, self-reliant,
that we néed nothing.

I was touched to read Professor Oates's recollection of his conversion
from a lifetime of workaholism. He became aware of his addiction when his
child kept reminding him how much he was missing. His awareness grew when a
back problem which became worse when he overworked. The crisis came when his
eldest son was in Vietnam. Qates writes: ‘He was a combat sailor, a machine-
gunner on a small river assault boat in the Mekong Delta. And for the first
time in my life I was helpless. None of my actions or work could change a
thing. I found myself fallingback heavily on extra work to handle my anxiety.
In the summer, my major defense was gone...I realized that I could not face it
alone, but that I needed Ged's help and the help of all the other people I
could get."

And so one man changed his way of living, and started coming home at 6:00
without exception, and became very careful about extra commitments, and began
to trust that God indeed would save him, and that he didn't have to do it ali
alone. His testimony is that it worked and that the amount and the quality
of his work has not suffered at all. And this is perhaps the worst - but also
the best news of all.

The Good News of the Gospel is that in Jesus Christ God loves us. That
graceful love requires no work, no merit, only our receptiveness, That grace
is sufficient...it can liberate us even from our addiction to work. it frees
us for full life, it frees us from all the schemes by which we try to assure
our security.

We need to help one another. If the institutional church is feeding
our addiction: if you are a volunteer for any reason other than that you
want to be; if you are away from a family and feeling guilty - please resign.
Let us help each other. Let us help each other to use the time God has
given, responsibly, effectively, and gratefully. Let us support the person
who decides to arrange priorities honestiy, and to take time to do the
important things. Let us never judge or condemn when we see it happen.

And in the midst of it ali, let us covenant together to remember that our
chief end, according to those wise old theologians, is not to work till we
drop in cur tracks, but to glorify Ged and enjoy him forever.