COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS delivered to TABOR COLLEGE, SYDNEY, FEBRUARY
15, 1999

My fellow students (I hope that includes everyone). First,
congratulations to the ‘graduands’ – who’ll become ‘graduates’ when I’ve
finished. My text for you, from the New Living Translation of 1
Corinthians 13: ‘… and if you know everything about everything, and
have not love, you are nothing.’

You may be a victim of the illusion that you know everything about
everything after two three or four years in this wonderful college. You
don’t. I hope you’ll be learners all your lives…

As you heard, I’m a pastoral counselor – especially of clergy and
church leaders and their spouses, and especially for those in transition
out of one ministry into another (or, sometimes, into nothing!). I talk
to a pastor most days, and to a pastors’ conference most months. If
you’re a statistically-average group here tonight, at least fifty
percent of you will not last the distance in the vocation you believe
God has chosen for you. And when you make a transition out of that
ministry-vocation it will mostly be in the context of conflict. And the
majority of you will experience anger, some depression, and maybe a
crisis of faith in the process… In our research we’ve found that the
question ‘Why did you leave … ministry?’ evokes about 40 responses.
Beneath these, however, there is usually a collision between the
‘minister’ and some powerful people who do not approve of the way you’re
carrying out the ministry. But the way you handle that conflict usually
has its roots in family-of-origin issues which may not yet be resolved.

Jesus promised trouble for his followers. The apostles promised –
and experienced – trouble. So will you.

I think it’s good to begin a ministry-journey with a cosmic
conspiracy theory firmly in your consciousness. The Evil One (as Jesus
called the Devil/Satan) has a strategy to destroy your life, your
family, the ministry to which you are called, your church, your
denomination, your nation. The devil has a particular strategy to
destroy the work of God in each of the 23,000 different Christian
denominations in our world. In other words, the devil is active in all
the churches, the Holy Spirit is active in most of them!. You’d better
get a feel for what that strategy is, and do something to thwart the
Devil. The New Testament is full of advice about how to do that. He’s
(are masculine pronouns OK for Satan?) out to get you. Watch out, indeed
‘watch and pray’.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there are about 10 bits of classical wisdom
for ministers: if you follow them you’ll be saved some of the trouble
and stupidities we humans get ourselves into. When I use the word
‘minister’ I’m including evangelists, youth pastors, parish clergy,
social welfare workers, homemakers, parents, church planters – any
vocation the Lord is calling you to.

1. LOVE GOD MORE THAN YOU LOVE THE MINISTRY. The first and greatest
commandment is still (as Eugene Peterson translates it) ‘You shall love
the Lord with all your passion, prayer and intelligence’. Some
‘ministers’ seek to be successful in ministry to feed their egos. You
won’t last if that’s your motivation. In our culture we males, in
particular, define our worth in terms of our performance, compared with
that of our peers. Now how do you get to know and love God? There are
two suggestions I’d make: Get to know Jesus, very well. He is ‘the human
face of God’. ‘If God is like Jesus nothing is too good to be true’ as
the Jesus freaks used to say. When Jesus confronted sinners, for
example, grace precedes ‘truth/law’; acceptance precedes repentance. I
once asked a Bible College class what Jesus said to the woman caught in
the act of adultery. ‘Go and sin no more’ they responded in unison. ‘You
pharisees’, I retorted. They’d forgotten that ‘I do not condemn you’
comes first. The pharisee in us emphasises (our perception of) truth
over love, law over grace. Jesus invites us to repent of that
perspective. The second suggestion: develop some spiritual disciplines.
Read Richard Foster’s The Celebration of Discipline once a year in the
first five years after graduation. Make an ‘oratory’ somewhere in your
house or garden where you read the Scriptures and pray and do some
devotional reading. Be disciplined. You won’t last in ministry unless
you develop these time-honoured habits of prayer.

2. LOVE YOUR PEOPLE. They are not pawns in your grand scheme to be
famous. A layperson said to me, ‘I think I only have value to my pastor
in terms of a statistic in his church growth vision.’ Church Growth is
good, but don’t aim for growth: aim for health. Don’t commit yourself to
success, but to faithfulness and effectiveness. And be big enough to
encourage the ministry of others: weak pastors, for example, see the
strongest people in their churches leave over time because those pastors
are threatened by others’ giftedness. Relate pastorally and loving to
your enemies. Listen to their heart. Richard Rohr says your enemy is
your best friend: your enemy is the only person who’s likely to tell you
the truth about yourself. Who was the mystic who said ‘You love God just
as much, and no more, than you love the person you love least’?

3. KNOW YOURSELF. In every case of emotional burnout I have
counseled there were some unresolved family-of-origin issues behind it
all. Find a good counselor and talk through these! If you don’t, these
issues will inevitably surface in times of conflict. The motto of my
little counseling practice is ‘It’s never too late to have a happy
childhood!’ Also it’s a good idea to get a handle on your personality
type. Do a Myers Briggs test, or the Enneagram – or both. And buy a
couple of good Christian books that explain how your personality type
best relates to God. I’m an INTJ and a five: the ‘I’ means I’m more
introverted than extraverted – severely introverted in fact. Now I don’t
believe you have to be locked in to a personality type: God can change
us. But when I think back to my days as pastor of 1500 people, with 25
salaried staff at Blackburn Baptist Church, I can understand why I came
home emotionally drained too often, with little to give my family. If
only I had known better in those heady days!

4. KNOW THE FAITH. 1 Peter 3:15 exhorts us to be ready to make our
defense to those who challenge ‘the hope that is in us; yet do it with
gentleness and reverence’. This is the only time I think in the entire
Bible where we are commanded to treat other people – even adversaries –
as we treat God: with reverence. Now ‘knowing the faith’ is more – much
more – than knowing creeds or systems of apologetics. Our faith is not
primarily a body of doctrine, but a relationship with the living God, in
Christ, by the power of the Spirit. And our little systems will ‘have
their day’, which is why we are always committed to the idea that ‘God
has yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy Word’. If you
want to wrestle with a couple of Christian beliefs, read the articles
‘Is Gandhi in Heaven?’, ‘Was Jesus a Christian?’ and ‘Homosexuality: an
Interview with Jesus’ on our website! Let us hold to time-tested
theological ideas but shed timeworn ones!

5. KNOW THE WORLD. Today’s ‘postmodern’ world is unique. The
Generation X-ers who inhabit this new world are a unique generation.
Look up the article on Generation X’ers on our website. There you will
find these generalizations about this group of people born between 1960
and 1980: they’re a group in search of an identity, the electronic
generation, brought up on TV; they’re the first to wrestle with issues
of global ecological catastrophes and AIDS; their ideas are shaped by
music and MTV; they’re the best-educated and most-traveled generation in
history; they’ll have, on average eight major jobs in their lifetime;
they’re anti-materialistic; the girls will have, on average, more
husbands/partners than children; they’re the most counseled generation
in history, and the most suicidal; they’re the most aborted; 50% of them
had more than two parental authority-figures as they grew up; they hate
institutions, and prefer to work collaboratively; their worship is not
traditional, but interactive and experiential; their pervasive feelings
– despair, confusion, narcissism. Now how do you reach this generation?
Not primarily with pat answers, but through authentic relationships
(actually, the way Jesus operated!).

6. FIND A MENTOR. I now carry copies of John Mallison’s new book on
Mentoring with me everywhere I go, to give away or to sell. It’s an
important book, about a vital concept. The story of the boy Jesus in the
Temple is one of the most important – and least understood – stories in
the Gospels. Here are the male VIP’s in Jesus’ world pausing in their
task of running the universe to give quality time to this boy. Every
young adolescent boy needs that experience. A wall-full of literature
from the Men’s Movement tells us that all the pre-industrial cultures
know the incredible importance of initiating boys into manhood. If that
doesn’t happen intentionally, boys will not know how to be men: how to
be strong and tender (both), how to relate to women other than as
sex-objects or as maternal nurturing or authority figures, how to lead.
In my talks to men’s groups I find on average only one man in 100 spent
more quality-time with male elders during his early teenage years than
with women. Most of the social problems of the Western world stem back
to this lack. But it’s never too late to find a mentor. Go to the
best-put-together adult (preferably a mature man, if you’re male, and
probably also a mature safe male, if you’re female, as most women were
not properly fathered in our culture either), and ask ‘Can I talk to you
sometimes?’ Try it! Part of the process will involve reality-checking.
It will also involve the ‘getting of wisdom’. Confucius, he say, ‘The
wise person learns from others’ mistakes before they make their own’!

7. FIND A CONFESSOR! Hey, you mean the Protestants got it wrong when
they ditched the confessional? Yes, by and large: they threw a baby out
with the bath-water. There was a lot of medieval hocus-pocus mixed up
there, but if you check the epistle of James in the New Testament, you
might find that the text is still there about confessing your sins to
another, then praying for one another, and you’ll be healed. The reasons
we don’t confess to another (and, I think, only one trusted other) is
not theology, but fear and pride. And so we carry an incredible amount
of unresolved guilt and shame around with us that stymies God’s work
through our lives. That passage I referred to earlier in 1 Peter says
‘Keep your conscience clear’. Do that! John Mark Ministries’ two-day
retreats include a dimension of prayer for healing in this area: the
relief, experienced by people even in their fifties and sixties, is
palpable! This is a charismatic college: that means you emphasize the
power of the Holy Spirit in your lives and ministries. Good. But don’t
forget Derek Prince’s illustration of the two neighbours. One had a
beautiful garden, weed-free, but he used a watering-can to nurture it.
The other had a powerful hose and sprinkler system but through
indiscipline rarely used it, so his garden was overgrown and ugly.
What’s the use of power without a disciplined and clean life? Why not
begin and end every day with the Jesus Prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, son
of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’

8. PURSUE EXCELLENCE! We used to sing a very meaningful little song
‘Have I done my very best for Jesus?’ Good question. There are two
reasons to do your best: it honours God, and these days, mediocrity will
lead to failure. People expect you to do well: whether we like it or not
the consumer culture has invaded the church. There’s a good and evil
side to this. The good aspect is that there are higher expectations of
the church’s leaders to do well at what they’re called to do: there’s
nothing wrong with that. The ugly side is that we now have a population
of ‘church-shoppers’ who are looking for the perfect church. Many of
them drop out of church altogether through disenchantment with the
church’s imperfections! Lyle Schaller, probably the Western world’s #1
church analyst and consultant says it doesn’t matter whether your church
is large or small, but find the best thing your church can do and do it
very well! Preach well (look at yourself preaching on a video and
experience some of the suffering others have to endure!), and prepare
for preaching thoroughly. Some of my charismatic/ pentecostal
preacher-friends think all they have to do is ‘wait on the Lord’ and the
words will just come. Well, words may come, but there’s often more heat
than light in their preaching! And intelligent people won’t stay around
when all they get is ‘pink theological fluff’ as one commentator
described this kind of preaching! Also: master the English language.
Learn the meanings of the words you use. And develop the habit of
communicating in non-sexist language: that’s a matter of courtesy and
justice to our sisters in the Lord. And, of course, ‘leaders are
readers’: no leader can afford not to spend ‘half their life with God,
and half with people, and the rest in administration’. And in the half
you spend on your own, spend half of that reading good devotional and
theological books. John Mark Ministries has produced the Still Waters
Deep Waters series of devotional books to help in this process: these
five volumes are full of quotes from the best spiritual writers, poets
and theologians in the English-speaking world. Read Eugene Peterson on
all this: you might like to start with his ‘Take and Read’ then ‘Under
the Unpredictable Plant’.

9. HAVE A VISION/GOAL FOR YOUR LIFE. Write out your eulogy sometime:
if you died today, what would the pastor say about you at your funeral?
As a boy of fourteen I developed a burning passion to educate people
about God. I’d leave gospel tracts everywhere – on trains, in library
books, in letter-boxes. I put together a filing system of illustrations,
Bible studies, magazine articles etc.: they now occupy twelve
four-drawer filing cabinets! Collect resources, and good reference
books. Learn to use the search engines on the World Wide Web: the
Internet has amazing resources for gospel communicators these days. Back
to goals: I think it’s not a good idea to be over-specific. I’m
counseling young pastors who ‘believed God’ for 1000 people in their
congregations and after five years were burned out and saw their
churches split. I’m talking to many people quite disappointed that God
has not fulfilled ‘prophecies’ said over them. (Don’t get me started on
this one: I have a conspiracy theory about prophecies – or, at least
most of them! Many are not God speaking at all, but someone playing at
omniscience! Be very careful before you link your future to someone
else’s prophecy over you. That’s not to say prophecy has ceased: when
God is in it, prophecy will serve the church ‘until the perfect comes’ –
that is, until we get to heaven and won’t need prophecy any more). One
of the key goals for your ministry-life is to become redundant: do what
Jesus and the apostles did, and train others to take your place. (See
the article ‘Ministry as Empowerment’ on our website).

10. FINALLY, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. Have a sabbath each week: you
are not called to work harder than God! Be rigorous about the sabbath (a
mid-week, say Thursday, is best for preachers), but not legalistic. I
know clergy who are out of the pastoral ministry now because they would
not return calls from desperate people on their day off. You are allowed
to ‘heal on the sabbath’, Jesus taught us! And have fun! Develop a hobby
(but make sure it’s not all-consuming). Enjoy your life: you’ll never
get out of it alive! And never forget, as Hugh of St. Victor said, ‘God
does not share his love between all of his creatures: he gives all of
his love to each of his creatures.’

May God bless you all. Thank you!

Rowland Croucher

February 1999.