Ministry Perspectives: # 31/42

by Revd John Simpson,
(General Superintendent, Baptist Union of Victoria, Australia)

Yes, But Do You Love Them?

The meeting was a tough one. The pastor and elders met to reflect on
the growing unrest in the church. Harmony just now was eluding
everyone. After the elders left, the pastor said quietly, “I think I
know the real problem. It has just struck me. I do not love these
people.” Despite several years of hard work and creative leadership,
he left the church a month or two later.

In Love with the Congregation

Do we really love our people? What does it mean to embrace a
congregation with love? Since God modelled love by giving His Son to
an uncaring world, how do we respond in love for the faithful who
turn up each Sunday morning? What is our heart for those outside the
Kingdom? Do we love them too just like the Father does? How much
genuine ministry can be exercised if we are long on vision, strategy
planning and organisation but short on giving ourselves lovingly in
the exercise of leadership?

It is so easy to cop out on this one. We can point to long hours,
plenty of sermon preparation and program planning, the inconvenience
of meetings and emergency visits. Very soon we will think of the
interruptions to family life: the phone, knocks on the door at odd
hours, weariness (with our partners and families getting the dregs of
who we are). If we had stayed in our profession or trade we would
have been financially secure without all the hassle of budgets,
erratic giving and wondering where the next dollar is coming from.
Great commitment! But, do we love them?

The Symphony of Divine Love

The story of Jesus is nothing less than a great symphony of love, the
glorious music of unrestrained passion, the chords of tenderness
echoing across the centuries. We have been wooed by an everlasting
love, saved by a loving sacrifice, loved into new life with
Jesus Himself. This rugged, generous, comprehensive love calls us to a
new direction, a new orientation, a new depth, a new way of being. We
are now located in His love, inseparable from it, shaped by it, giving
ourselves away because of it, ordering our priorities in response to
it.The greatest mystery of all times is this mutual, divinely
romantic, joyous love between a God Who cannot be seen and His friends
who cannot live without Him.

Is it any wonder that Jesus identified love as the supreme hallmark of
His followers and that this rich experience of community would arise
from simple obedience? It causes us to reflect for a moment on the
quality of our congregational life. Is there not a real danger that
we tend to describe our church by the variety of our programs, or our
numbers, or facilities, or our style of worship, may be even our
doctrinal position? If so, this is a far cry from what Jesus had in
mind.

We may have a brand new building or balanced budget but without
love it amounts to a clanging gong or noisy cymbal. We may have a full
car park, no empty seats, marvellous music and programs for everybody
but without love it is nothing. We may have strategies to follow
up visitors, feed the poor, support missionaries and attack injustice
but without love we gain nothing.

And the love of Jesus was not meant to stop at the church door. If
Jesus wept over Jerusalem,do we weep over our community? Do we long
for that time when the love of God will soften our town or city, when
reconciliation will bring us together, when we will put paid to
violence and injustice once and for all? A hunger for that collective
righteousness which protects the weak and vulnerable is more powerful
than critical, angry diatribes in the marketplace which have little
to do with the love of Christ for people. We may have our principles
in order but there is a risk that they may not be packaged in love.
Jesus loved the wealthy enquirer even though he decided to keep his
cheque book and investments.

The Pastoral Model of Love

It is about here that the pastoral example becomes crucial. If we
really believe that we will known by the love which exists between us
as Christians, are we loving our people? What kind of model are we
offering? This is not easy stuff. More often we find ourselves
relating well to those who are like us but we battle when it comes to
those who are not. We all have our short list of those who tickle our
sinuses. They are our difficult people, the ones who have that subtle
ability to drive us up the wall. But we need to remember God has
brought them to us to be loved. This raises the key consideration
about the giving of love.

The awesome truth is that we cannot love others from within our own
resources. We do not have what it takes. Now we may be able to get
along with the amiable ones, the people we feel at home with (but
even they will test us from time to time). We have absolutely no hope
whatever with the truly prickly crowd. The only possibility is to
allow Jesus to love His people through us.It is in the very act of
loving each other that we discover the inner, enduring life of God
within us making that divine love complete, full, overflowing. We can
know that love and rely upon it.Our love for others springs up as a
response to the love of God for us. This defines the dynamics of the
relationship between pastor and people. As we are open to the life of
God within us, we are set free to love just as He wants us to.

It is strange that so much effort goes into every other aspect of
leadership and so little into helping pastors learn how to love their
people. It is not solely a matter of preaching, of organising,of
following up, of having great dreams. Rather, pastoral leadership is
primarily about loving, of being Jesus to others, of looking past the
awkward and unattractive foibles and seeing the potential for growth.
It is about exercising the courage to confront thorny issues and
people when there is a need. It is also about discipline, the tough
love of correction and rebuke.

So How is Pastoral Love Expressed?

There are endless possibilities:

* We will be more concerned about building people up rather than
being critical of them. It is all to easy to see the rough edges, at
times quite forgetting that we have our own peculiar collection too.
We live in a culture where criticism has almost become an art form
and we must stand out against this.

* We will not be put off by early setbacks in relationships. Even
the most caring and sensitive of pastors will find a few people who
delight in residing in the too hard basket. They are the
ones divinely appointed to help us develop our patience.

* We will put in the long haul to bring reconciliation. There are no
magic formulae here. People do fall out of fellowship with us and
each other. The reasons may be complex and difficult to identify.
Our task is to work hard at leaving out the welcome mat. Sadly, not
every fracture in the Body of Christ will be healed though.

* We will be careful in our use of the pulpit. It is one thing to
preach, equip and teach. It is something else to even a score (yes,
that temptation is there), or take a gentle dig at a
problem person, or even inadvertently breach a confidence in
addressing a touchy matter. If we have unfinished business with a
member of the congregation, we have no right to use the pulpit
to make a point which should have been attended to one on one.

* We will regulate busyness and leave quality time to enjoy our
people. Love is stifled and stunted when every waking moment is
accounted for. There is the real danger of never having a good
belly laugh, or sharing a funny story, or seeing the funny side.
The pastor who is forever wound up tight like a spring and
constantly engaged in bringing in the Kingdom come what may has lost
the capacity for joy. We need to hang around much more and waste
time with our people.

* We will not hide away in the study when we should be out
encouraging our people. Some pastors hibernate all week in their
private burrow. No one knows where they are. Wonderful opportunities
for informal contact are lost when the pastor fails to show up at a
special event even though it may not necessarily require the
pastor’s attendance. Just being there is a great statement of
support. Sporting occasions, outings for the seniors or the young
people, waving goodbye when the bus leaves for the camp do not take
acres of time but they communicate interest, care and love.

* We will choose to be good listeners. Staying in touch with what is
happening within the collective life of the congregation requires
good listening (and not just the kind exercised in the offering of
pastoral care in times of need). The small talk after the service,
the informal prattle which precedes most leaders’ meetings, the chit
chat in the car park are all thermometers of where people are at. A
good lead which has emerged in casual conversation can be followed
up quietly, effectively and lovingly.

* We will be honest and offer correction and advice sensitively when
it is needed. Genuine love,the real McCoy, will sometimes call for
frank conversation on issues which are bound to be hard to address.
The perennial gossip, the carping critic, the errant partner, the
over zealous deacon will all need “a word in season.” Each pastor
will have their own way of tackling these situations and, with
experience, will become increasingly adept at so doing. It is how
these matters are raised which counts and it helps if such are seen
to arise from a loving commitment for the well being of the person
concerned and the church as a whole.

* We will model those behaviours which we long to see in our people.
The leadership of love will be alert to the power of an authentic
example and not rely on words alone for an impact. This has nothing
to do with feigned perfection or pious pretence. It is about a real
follower of Jesus living the Gospel: being the Good News for their
own family, taking time to relax, pursuing a hobby, and going on
retreat as much as putting in the hours to shape that sermon, or
visiting the terminally ill, or attending those meetings and all
that vast collage of being which constitutes sincere pastoral
engagement.

Love as an Expression of Call

To love a congregation is to give real substance to the call of Jesus.
The pastoral love affair with the people of God is subject to all the
mountains and valleys which are part of any great commitment of love.
There are times of profound delight, satisfaction, joy and reward. But
there are also times of desolation, misunderstanding, disappointment
and frustration. The love of Jesus embraced the loneliness of the
cross and we are naive indeed if we imagine that our love for His
church can flourish without our own Gethsemane and Calvary along the
way. It is the hope of a recurring resurrection which keeps us going
when the way is hard and the returns for our labour seem to be minimal
or non-existent.

With all the courses for pastors these days, there are none which
offer a Diploma in Affection for the Congregation. It is a course
which cannot really be taught, of course. For this loves springs from
the activity of the Spirit within us; it is His gift to us; it is the
mediating of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to all whom we serve.
It is not too much related to our personality type, or background, or
academic ability.

On those days when we are ready to tear our hair out, when our
leaders seem unreasonably resistant to change, when a crisis is
tearing the place apart, let’s not lose the plot ourselves. It is
time to remember that we have been invited primarily to love this
tiny part of His Body into wholeness.

Rewarding? Absolutely. Painful? Certainly. But that’s the price and
the privilege of serving the Great Lover of our souls.

– John Simpson <>