Page 4591 – Christianity Today (2024)

“It was a morning,” announces P. G. Wodehouse in one of his Bertie Wooster stories,

when all nature shouted “Fore! … The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky; and the sun, peeping above the trees, looked like a giant golf-ball perfectly lofted by the mashie of some unseen god and about to drop dead by the pin of the eighteenth.

Not Psalm 19 exactly, but in the golfer’s world of scaled-back expectations a declaration glorious enough. And now, to remind us afresh of the theological illuminations to be gotten from the game, we have a new assemblage of golf pieces by John Updike (Golf Dreams, Knopf, 201 pp.; $23), who in one of his essays lovingly quotes the passage above. Updike is among the most theologically robust and athletic of American writers—Karl Barth, especially, figures in his work; he is also, having taken up the sport at the age of 25, a devout golfer. “In the fullness of manhood I took up golf, figuring that, now that I was a free-lance writer, I should do something with my afternoons.”

Much of the theology available to us on the tee or off by ourselves in the woods pondering our half-buried ball and the demands of private rectitude comes, of course, as moral instruction. At that settled middle age, says Updike, when all the company we keep conspires acquiescently to flatter us, “only golf trusts us with a cruelly honest report on our performance.” And the report typically is not good, with respect either to our golf or to our moral life—from the slippery-slope evasions of the gimme putt (“a mentally adroit golfer in obliging company can go eighteen holes without actually sinking a single one of those shortish white-knuckle character-builders that the pros … miss more than occasionally”) to the tergiversations of reassigning responsibility (that character who just caromed a drive off the tee marker wasn’t your true capable self, you reason, but “instead an imposter, a demon, an alien from outer space who momentarily breezed into your body”). The game abounds in moral paradoxes (“He who hits down sees the ball soar”) and in other metaphorical counsels of perfection, as in the warning against the half-hearted Laodicean shoulder turn (“lukewarm I spit thee out”).

But not all theology is ethics, and Updike explores golf’s other religious contours as well. “Like a religion,” he notes, “games seek to codify and lighten life.” No sport, surely, is more codified than golf, with its elaborate rules and sacrosanct etiquette (one might as well drive a golf cart down a church nave as up on the apron of a green); with its ritual discipline of the long trek, each hole a mini-pilgrimage and each green reenacting a symbolic interment and resurrection; and with its vast library of catechisms instructing us in the beauties of the straight left arm, the low backswing, and the perfectly pronated wrist.

As to lightening life, “I have asked myself,” says Updike, “what the peculiar bliss of this demanding game is.” Part of it, doubtless, is the sheer expanse in which the game is played, exalting to our senses and souls alike. Closer by, there is bliss even in the proper equipment, from the “dainty little gauntlet the left hand gets to wear” to the array of clubs in the bag, glistening, in their graduated lengths, like a rank of organ pipes. There is the eternal hope proffered by the game: “What other sport holds out hope of improvement to a man or woman over fifty?” And there is, lest we forget, the heroic potential for comedy every time we set hand to grip:

The duck hook, the banana slice, the topped dribble, the no-explode explosion shot, the arboreal ricochet, the sky ball, the majestic OB, the pondside scuff-and-splash, the deep-grass squirt, the cart-path shank, the skull, the fat hit, the thin hit, the stubbed putt—what a wealth of mirth is to be had in an afternoon’s witnessing of such varied miseries, all produced in the twinkling of an eye by the infallible laws of physics!

But golf is also a game that can with stunning unpredictability leap from the ridiculous to the sublime, five holes of “humiliation and misdirected adrenaline” issuing suddenly in inexplicable contact and a Tiger Woods-like drive of transcendent beauty. “It is of games,” says Updike, “the most mysterious, the least earthbound, the one wherein the wall between us and the supernatural is rubbed the thinnest.” At these moments all nature itself seems radiant with the light of the Promised Land. On the links, rhapsodizes Arnold Haultain, a nearly forgotten writer Updike quotes with relish,

are delights which to me, a duffer, are like Pisgah sights: hills, valleys, trees, a gleaming lake in the distance . . . the great breeze that greets you on the hill, the whiffs of air—pungent, penetrating—that come through green things growing, the hot smell of pines at noon, the wet smell of fallen leaves in autumn, the damp and heavy air of the valleys at eve, the lungs full of oxygen, the sense of freedom on a great expanse, the exhilaration, the vastness, the buoyancy, the exaltation.

But before the Pisgah sights come the rigors of the wilderness, where with “wild and self-punishing imperfection” we thrash out our salvation and subdue the earth—or at least gouge out nasty little chunks of it. No vistas here: “the landscape shrivels and compresses into the grim, surrealistically vivid patch of grass directly under the golfer’s eyes.” Our Kuyperian notion of sphere sovereignty takes on a ferocious specificity, we swing mightily again, and continue on our journey home.

Jon Pott is vice president and editor-in-chief at Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

B&C July/August 1997 p. 6

Gordon, you and Gail are going through one of the darkest moments you will ever face, and you have a choice: Will you deny the pain and run from it or will you embrace the pain and squeeze out of it everything God has for you?”

The man who spoke those words changed our lives.

His words echo the theology that often gets lost in the shadows of dark moments: God can play tricks on evil, if we let him, and pull from the darkness light and beauty.

Dark moments are not the exception, even in a life God blesses.

I would not have said that in my youth. I considered pain and suffering in the life of a Christian minister as gross anomalies or the result of sin.

But I’ve come to see the dark moments of life as precious moments, times to ask, “Is this a moment God can speak to me?”

As I look over my almost sixty years, I feel like the traveler in Pilgrim’s Progress: I can spot dark moments in which I’ve seen God at work in my life in a clear way. In each I heard a message in the midst of pain. I offer you six:

1. Escape is never an answer

I quit my first job at 24.

I was a youth pastor on the south side of Denver and a senior at the University of Colorado. For the first fourteen months of my ministry, I was dearly loved. It seemed I could do no wrong. The senior pastor even offered me his pulpit on occasion, and everybody marveled that someone so young and without seminary training could preach so well.

Then for reasons I can’t remember (or don’t want to remember), things soured. I went from “He can do no wrong” to “He can do no right.” The teenagers stopped showing up and began criticizing the youth program.

One afternoon, while walking through the church, I noticed a crumbled ball of paper on the floor. Instinctively, I bent down, picked it up, and opened it. One teenager had written to another these words: “If MacDonald doesn’t quit this youth-pastor job soon, this whole program is going to go up in smoke.”

I saw in my mind my great future of serving the Lord go up in flames. Numb, I marched to my office, called Gail, who, being discouraged at the time, didn’t persuade me otherwise, and typed a letter of resignation. Fifteen minutes after reading that crumpled note, I handed my letter of resignation to the senior pastor.

For the next nine months, I worked in a trucking company to support my wife and newborn son, wondering if I’d ever get another shot at ministry. During those months I experienced what I call “a dark moment,” the first of a series during the course of my life. Looking back, I can say my resignation was rather inconsequential, but I felt frightened at the time.

Many men will tell you that in their keenest moments of despair, they brooded about taking their life. I don’t think they were suicidal so much as they just wanted to escape the pain. They wanted to lie down and not awake. Many people in ministry also fantasize about escaping when conflict or hard times come. Consider Simon Peter, who after the resurrection went fishing. Or the apostle Paul who, in Second Corinthians, was so crushed that he despaired of life itself. I hear in the stories of Peter and Paul the message “I want to quit.”

I had to surrender to a much deeper and more mysterious God than I had known.

Looking back, I wish someone would have taken me aside and said, “Wait, Gordon, not so fast. Let’s take three weeks to do what the U.S. Navy did when several planes crashed—a seventy-two hour ‘stand-down.’ Nothing flies. Let’s evaluate every procedure. What’s gone on over the last three months? Let’s get some of your critics to talk to you face to face.”

But I had no advisers; I had to learn the lesson through quitting. I discovered that inside me was an internal relay that triggered a quitting response whenever the going got tough. I had to reset the relay. This dark moment taught me an important lesson about life and ministry: when the going gets rough, quitting is never the first option.

2. Conflict cannot be left unresolved

The word hate is a strong word; I don’t use it easily. But if ever I experienced this feeling, I did so many years ago toward someone in a church I served. I can’t reveal much of the circ*mstances, but this individual made promises to me that weren’t kept. Over the months, my resentment smoldered into hate.

My feelings about this person affected virtually every dimension of my life. I had no interest in praying. Every time this person came to mind, I fantasized about ways I could embarrass and humiliate this individual. My hate poisoned even my relationship with Gail. When she said, “You’ve got to talk to this person and make it right,” I became irritated with her for telling me what I knew—but didn’t have the guts to do. The root of bitterness descended deep in my soul and wrapped itself around my motivation for pastoral work.

Tormented, I cried out loud to God one afternoon, “Give me relief from this. Help me to forgive.” What followed during the next fifteen minutes can only be described as a mystical experience, the first in my life. It was a little like a vision, but I had a physical sensation of a hole being cut into my chest cavity. After the hole was cut, I felt something oozing out, like a thick molasses. The substance flowed and flowed. It was my hatred, which God was removing through surgery. After the flow had stopped, I felt as if I had lost fifty pounds; my hatred was gone.

I struggle to explain why God intervened so dramatically, but I learned from that dark moment never again to allow a relationship to stray that far off course. I learned that, like Paul and Barnabas, some people just can’t work together, that separation is better than hate, and that the engines of healing are forgiveness and grace.

3. Emotions must be attended to

Early in my pastoral career, I read The Secular City by Harvey Cox, a Harvard theologian. It was the first I’d read a book by an author who knew the fundamentalist mindset so well. Cox had grown up in fundamentalism, which in The Secular City he attacked and deconstructed. Reading the book tore open my belief systems.

At that same time, during a two-week span, I conducted the funerals of two homeless people. In the southern Illinois town where I served, the funeral director asked for my services for $30 a pop. In both cases, I walked into the funeral home to see a cheap, cloth-covered casket with an older man lying in state with all the marks of a hard life. Nobody showed for the first funeral. The only person who came for the second was a woman who looked almost as bad as the corpse. She had shared life with him on the streets. Her plight overwhelmed me as much as the person’s for whom I was conducting the funeral. I was struck with the absolute meaninglessness of their lives.

Also during this time, I was extremely busy, physically exhausted, with no time for spiritual activity.

One Saturday morning at breakfast, Gail innocently said to me, “You haven’t spent any time with the family this month.” I burst into tears. The book I’d read, the two funerals, my over-busyness—all combined to unravel my emotions. I cried until noon, until I was exhausted. In the midst of my breakdown, I wondered, Is this what it’s like to go crazy? I’d never had a moment when I couldn’t control my feelings. Yet this was a Niagara of tears.

During this dark moment, I discovered that unresolved feelings do not flutter away in the wind. They deposit themselves in the strata of our souls and lie waiting to escape. They’re all there: the resentments, the despair, the anxieties, the worries, the fears. When we’re young, we have enough energy to keep them from geysering, but as the years accumulate, we lose our ability to push them underground.

I resolved to keep a record of my feelings. Journaling is not fail-safe, but it has forced me once a day to take inventory of the last twenty-four hours. It has helped me to tend to emotions rather than let them accumulate until they cause problems.

4. Pain reduces us to our true size

For the first time in my life, in my early thirties, I was experiencing physical pain, a spate of migraine headaches that came close to unbearable. I worried they were caused by a brain tumor and feared I would live with pain the rest of my life.

This may sound unbelievable, but I could almost set my calendar and watch to the onset of the migraines: They came during the month of May of every even-numbered year. They generally hit about one o’clock in the morning every other night for about three weeks, and then they stopped. I had four sequences of these.

I finally went to a headache specialist. “Ninety percent of my patients remind me of you,” he said. “They are young men, heads of organizations or wanting to be heads of organizations. They’re not at peace with themselves; they’ve got some people in their lives with whom they have unresolved relationships.”

He had never met me and didn’t know what I did for a living, but he described me perfectly. I knew exactly the unresolved relationships to which the doctor was referring. Let me just say that I don’t advocate assigning blame to our parents for all that ails us. If they hurt us, it’s likely their parents hurt them. Families tend to pass on their politic from generation to generation. Each of us is living out the consequences of how our family related to one another. Also, I don’t think that every pain is psychosomatic, but mine, it turned out, was.

Some of the greatest moments of kingdom production have come from physical pain.

Down through history, some of the greatest moments of kingdom production have come during physical pain. Amy Carmichael, for example, was one of the greatest spirituality writers of the twentieth century, but everything she wrote was written on a bed of pain. The question then becomes, “What does God want to teach me while I’m in the theater of pain?” Pain humbles us, forcing us to recognize our reliance on others and God. It reduces us to our true size.

It was during this dark moment that Gail and I, ten years into our marriage, first learned to pray together. It was one way I worked through my unresolved relationships. Over the next nine months, Gail and I pursued God together in prayer, in more than just a perfunctory way, and it changed our lives. I discovered the importance of saying to her, “I need you to pray for me,” and that was something I had not done before. Years later, when Gail and I faced the blackest of my dark moments, the discipline of prayer we had learned during my physical pain was in place.

5. God cannot be boxed

About fourteen years ago, I was asked if I’d be willing to be a candidate for the presidency of a major Christian organization (not InterVarsity). I was advised by wise people not to turn it down, since God, they said, may be calling me to leadership at a world level. I had grown up in a tradition where finding the will of God was the most important pursuit of the Christian life. My mother would say, “If God calls you to do something and you say no, you’ll be miserable for the rest of your life.” I took finding God’s will seriously.

As the process moved along, I learned that other leaders were being considered for the position. While I had agreed to submit my name as a candidate, Gail and I did not expect much to come of it. The other candidates, in my estimation, had far superior qualifications.

But then the headhunter called, asking if he could come to Boston to visit us. Our hopes spiked. We knew the former president had destroyed his marriage because of the job, so Gail and I remained wary. But we slowly warmed to the idea, and since we had a long vacation coming from the church, we decided to seclude ourselves for five weeks in our New Hampshire home to pray. Neither Gail nor I has ever asked God for omens or signs to determine future direction, but during these weeks, the dots seemed to line up. The books we read, the conversations we held, the prayers we prayed, the voice of God we heard in our souls—everything pointed to my getting this position. We felt God was saying, “This is going to happen.”

As the search process reached its zenith, the final two candidates—I was one—were asked by the organization’s board to come for a final interview. Gail and I met with the board on Friday morning and then flew back to Boston. Gail told me, “They’re going to ask you to be the next president.” That surprised me, because Gail is not prone to such pronouncements.

On Saturday, knowing the decision would be made Sunday afternoon, I told the staff at Grace Chapel, “I’d like to meet with you Sunday night after church.” I didn’t tell them why, but I planned to announce my resignation to them, for by then the chairman of the board of the organization was to have called me with the decision.

Sunday afternoon came and went, but the phone did not ring, so by the time the staff gathered that evening at our place, I was in agony. I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I told them, “I need to tell you why you are here. It’s a story that, as of right now, doesn’t have an ending.”

So for twenty-five minutes, Gail and I told them about what had unfolded the past four months, how we felt God was leading us in this new direction, though we still hadn’t heard the final decision. Everybody was in a state of shock. No sooner had we finished, then the phone rang. It was the chairman of the board of this organization. The other candidate had been chosen.

I stumbled into the living room to tell the staff the news. I said stoically, “You’ve been with Gail and me on many occasions when God has said yes. Now you’ll get to see how we handle things when God says no.”

After the staff left, I canceled the church elders meeting I had scheduled for the next morning (I had planned to resign), canceled my plane reservations to meet with what I thought would be my new board, and went to bed. The next morning, I was back at work at 8:00 a.m., as if nothing happened.

Ten days later the full force of what happened crushed me. I submarined into the depths of disillusionment. At a subterranean level, I told God, “You’ve made a perfect fool out of me. You drew me to the finish line and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ I no longer know your language. You speak a different language than I’ve been trained to understand.” I was questioning God, something I had never really done. I doubted whether it was possible to hear God speak.

During this period, I resigned from Grace Chapel out of exhaustion, disillusionment, and bewilderment. By candidating for that position, I had lost trust with the leaders of Grace Chapel. That was 1984. My world had fallen apart.

I can say this only now, with more than a decade of distance from those dark moments, but I had to surrender to a much deeper and more mysterious God than I had known up to that moment. I had to surrender all of my prejudices and preconditions of knowing God. That takes time. God wasn’t in a hurry with Moses (I often wonder what was on his mind for forty years in the desert), and God certainly wasn’t in a hurry with me.

In retrospect, I can say that if the board of that organization had picked me, I would have failed. I wasn’t mature enough. The job required characteristics I don’t have. Even so, there’s a memory of those days that has stayed with me: Don’t expect everything to be cozy with God, for he is a big God and his ways are beyond us.

6. Enthusiasm is a choice

My fifth dark moment no doubt contributed to my sixth. Most dark benchmarks have the potential of destroying one’s life. And in the blackness of the earlier one, I made a choice that led to moral failure, which resulted in the loss of my life’s work.

After I resigned as president of InterVarsity, Gail and I moved to our New Hampshire home for almost two years. One Sunday morning, sitting on the edge of our bed, I flipped the television to Robert Schuller, who said, “Today I’m going to talk about enthusiasm.”

What else do you talk about? I growled to myself.

But as I listened to Schuller, I realized how unenthusiastic I had become. I had lost my zest for life. Schuller said enthusiasm was a choice, not the result of good circ*mstances around us. It was the energy created when God is in us.

As Schuller’s words sank in, I asked God, “Is it possible for me to get my enthusiasm and vision back once I’ve lost it?”

Unshaven, I walked into the living room, with my worn-out bathrobe and hair standing on end, and said to Gail, “I have an apology to make.”

“What’s that?”

“It occurred to me this morning that for the past couple of years, if there has been any enthusiasm in my life, it has been coming from you. I’m telling you before God that this morning, I’ve resolved to become an enthusiastic man again. You’ll see it.”

I dedicated the next several days to beginning my quest, and the enduring question that emerged was “If God allows me to live for thirty-five more years, what kind of man do I want to be in my seventies and eighties?”

I remember saying to God, “Whether I return to ministry again is not important. What’s important is that I live my life for the next thirty years before you in integrity and enthusiasm.”

About the same time Gail and I stumbled across a line from Oswald Chambers: “If God allows you to be stripped of the exterior portions of your life, he means for you to cultivate the interior.” After reading that, we made a decision to pray consciously for our friends. Today, rarely do we get up in the morning and not pray for the friends we’ve been given.

My quest for enthusiasm, my decision to be an old man with integrity, and our decision to pray for our friends—these became the steps out of failure. They laid a track for our future.

Perhaps the darkest moment taught me that even my worst moment had latent within it the hope of liberation. I’d been given a fresh opportunity to reframe my faith in Christ, to renew my marriage, and to discover my real friends.

When I add up all the dark moments of my life, I see in every one that God had a message for me. I can now say as Pilgrim did as he crossed the river: “I’ve touched the bottom, and it is sound.”

Gordon MacDonald is pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts.

1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.

Encouraging evangelism

Mitch McDonald, pastor of Foothills Baptist Church in Yuma, Arizona, is changing his perspective on evangelism:

“For a long time, we’ve believed the problem was ‘how-to.’ After several years of teaching people how to share their faith, we’ve come to realize that the main problem is ‘want-to.’ Now our focus is more motivational. As members hear testimonies from people whose lives have been changed, they’ve begun sharing their faith—in some cases, without having the formal training we still offer.”

Massive soul search

In NetFax, Leonard Sweet comments that in America, “there is a massive soul search going on.”

Sweet writes, “People are seeking experiences, not meaning and purpose so much, but experiences of transcendence, of soul … God is hot everywhere … not Jesus, but God.” (For a complete copy, call Leadership Network at 1-800-765-5323.)

Reconciliation resources

Through Promise Keepers and other groups, pastors have increasingly become interested in racial reconciliation. But it’s hard to find Christian, street-smart help with reconciliation’s gritty issues. One strong source is Reconcilers Fellowship, which sponsors a magazine, website, fax service, and conferences. Call 601-354-1563; write P.O. Box 32, Jackson, MS 39205;

Power of the ordinary

In his essay The Twelve Men, dealing with the British jury system, G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Whenever our civilization wants a library to be catalogued, or a solar system discovered, or any other trifle of this kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing around. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”

It puts a new spin on the much-maligned committee.

E-mail no-nos

Contributing editor Bob Moeller alerted us to several e-mail addresses pastors should not have:

peoplepleaser@yes.com

churchsplit@conflict.com

itsajob@burned.out

hippastor@hatehymns.com.

Resident outsider

David Coffin, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Malinta, Ohio, writes that as pastor of a small, established, rural church, “I am the resident outsider.” This is both painful and productive.

Painful: “This can have a lonely dimension to it … I sometimes envy the connectedness to the land that many families within my congregation cherish … “

Productive: “I am called to see a bigger picture whenever I preach, teach, do pastoral care, or interpret current or political events. I represent the ‘otherness’ of God, which has no vested interest or blood-related ties to the local happenings of the area.”

A Pastor’s Legacy

As this issue headed to print, we learned that Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, one of America’s most respected preachers and educators, had suffered a fatal heart attack. Leadership had been arranging an interview with Proctor, who helped found the Peace Corps and was senior pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem from 1972 to 1989.

Proctor’s greatest influence, however, may have been as a teacher and leader at several universities and seminaries. A list of his students reads like “Who’s Who among African-American Churches.”

Dr. Gardner C. Taylor concluded Proctor’s funeral service by noting he died “with his sword unsheathed and his armor still in place,” and that “he went directly to see the King with the stain of battle still on his garments.”

1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.

One of the most powerful acts you can make as a church leader is simply to state what you believe. What foundation you stand on.

Even if spoken quietly, words of conviction convict. They rally followers. Anger opponents. (One pastor recently joked that Leadership should devote an issue to the theme, “Convictions & Resumes.”)

However, such words of principle work in humble ways, too, bringing calm, stability, and purpose.

These words can’t be faked, for each must be something you are willing to sacrifice for. And each must point out the road for followers to take.

Even if spoken quietly, words of conviction convict.

I know this sounds lofty, but it has down-to-earth application for a ministry. As you state clearly what you believe about your ministry, you will help the people involved in it.

For example, here are some beliefs I listed for our Leadership team. I include these not because they’re the most brilliant examples of stated ministry beliefs but simply the ones I know best. (As a bonus, they give you insight into our work.)

I believe that building the church is the primary work of God in this world and its only hope.

I believe strong churches come only through the influence of strong leaders.

I believe that strong church leaders need practical, honest, encouraging, and biblical resources to do their work well.

I believeLeadership Journal is a sacred trust. We must steward well its reputation and above all the trust placed in it by pastors and Christian leaders. To do that, we must keep it biblical, candid, encouraging, respectful, well-written, spiritual, practical, funny, risk-taking, and truly helpful.

I believeLeadership’s best days are ahead and that Leadership can be and will be as fresh and revolutionary as when it first appeared.

I believe our greatest foe is entropy, whether from success or fatigue, that keeps us from aggressively and creatively meeting readers’ needs. We battle entropy through prayer, listening to readers until we know them better than they know themselves, taking risks, and focusing on what we do best.

I believe that Leadership is more than a journal, that it is a relationship with church leaders, a way of providing the practical, honest, encouraging, and biblical resources they need. Therefore, we have permission and encouragement to develop audiotapes, books, CDs, newsletters, or anything else that helps pastors be faithful and effective.

I believe that your [Leadership’s staff members’] prayers, hard work, and creative thinking are needed to accomplish Leadership’s share of God’s work in this world.

These statements don’t cover everything. For example, our specific theological beliefs are captured in a separate document. Nor do they tell us what should be on Tuesday’s to-do list. But they do help us in tangible ways; they set attitudes and define the perimeter of activity.

Peter Senge, author of The V Discipline, says that one of the most important tasks for leaders today is to provide conceptual leadership—”helping people make sense of what’s going on around them … and making people feel that complicated and challenging things can actually be done.”

As a church leader, you know that complicated and challenging things need to be done. Do your people feel they are possible?

One small but significant way you can help them is to write your leader’s credo, a simple statement of what you truly believe.

Kevin A. Miller is editor of Leadership.

1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.

In my work with congregations, I have found ten recurring triggers of anxiety:

1. Money. Follow the money trail, and I’ll show you the anxiety.
2. Sex and sexuality.
3. Styles of worship.
4. Old and new—old leadership/new leadership, old curriculum/new curriculum, old members/new members.
5. Internal vs. external focus. Do we give more to foreign missions or to our own programs?
6. Pastoral leadership style.
7. Staff conflict.
8. Growth and survival issues.
9. Sudden death of a child. I’ve seen pastors lose children to sudden death, and all of a sudden the system is in an uproar against the pastor. Why? Because the pastor is functioning at a lower level, and the most dependent people in the system can’t tolerate him or her functioning at that lower level. They poke and push to get the pastor to function at a higher level.
10. Trauma or transition. For example, a pastor who retires after thirty-five years, a pastor who leaves because of sexual misconduct, or a town that loses a major employer.

—Peter Steinke

1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.

Jeffrey Black, former rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri, knows the pain that child sexual abuse can cause a church. In May 1993 a 15-year-old parishioner came forward and indicted the church's music minister for molestation. The minister confessed, and the church terminated him after seventeen years of service.

Although the boy chose not to file legal charges, the incident tore deeply into the congregation's spirit. Nearly fifteen families left the church, and those who remained felt anger, confusion, and mistrust.

"It was damaging to everyone and extraordinarily sad," Black says. "It took a lot of ministry to deal with this. We developed a clear policy about sexual misconduct and put our staff through extensive training on these issues."

No one likes to think about sexual abuse of children. But the potential damage to the child and to the church—not to mention the possibility of wrenching lawsuits—has caused many churches to take steps to protect its children.

Based on interviews with pastors, abuse-prevention experts, attorneys, denominational officials, and insurance companies, here are important practical steps to minimize the risk of sexual misconduct and to keep your church's children safe. The good news, writes attorney Richard Hammar, is that "church leaders can take relatively simple yet effective steps to significantly reduce the likelihood of such an incident occurring."

1. Develop clear policies

A vital first step is to develop clear, specific policies. "Churches need a clear policy that says you can't work here if you are going to act this way," says Elizabeth Stellas-Tippins, program specialist for the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence. "This itself is a strong prevention mechanism."

A church policy manual should include definitions of sexual abuse, standards of conduct, guidelines for screening and training workers, and procedures to follow if an incident is reported. (For information on how to write policies, see "Where to Learn More" on page 103.) Be sure a lawyer reviews policies before you implement them, since state laws vary on employment and reporting obligations.

2. Screen workers carefully

As youth organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters have toughened their screening of volunteers in recent years, pedophiles have scurried to other agencies, including churches, to find children.

For a church, it's painful to think about screening potential Sunday school teachers and youth leaders. It takes time; it takes money; it can cause hard feelings; and it can reduce the number of willing volunteers when most churches need every one. But the fact is, churches are legally responsible for volunteer workers. Careful selection and supervision guidelines must apply, especially with positions that regularly work with children. "Negligent hiring" and "negligent supervising" are the two main issues battled in church sexual misconduct cases.

Have applicants for a paid or volunteer position complete an application. (Screening procedures should also be completed retroactively for current staff.) For most paid positions, churches already ask for employment history, description of prior church service, and professional and personal references. But it's important to add specific questions about criminal record, particularly convictions for sexual abuse or molestation. Finish with a statement for the applicant to sign, certifying that information in the application is true and complete and any falsified information may lead to rejection from employment. It is also important to verify the applicant's identity with a driver's license, since offenders often use pseudonyms. (For details, see "What to Ask Before You Hire" on page 102.)

Contact all references, preferably in writing. Note information you tried to secure but could not verify or obtain. Be sure to maintain confidentiality of all applications and records. Restrict access to these files to only a few individuals who legitimately need the information.

When you interview the applicant, ask an associate to participate, to give you additional opinions on the candidate.

Many states now require a criminal records check on all child care workers. Most local police departments and state bureaus of investigation will run a criminal records check for about $10. Often these checks cover records only within a particular state, however. Private nationwide screening companies will run interstate checks for approximately $50. Or contact a local day-care center to find out who handles its background checks. In most cases you need a person's consent before you can conduct a criminal records search, so include an authorization form in the application process.

If an applicant has a criminal record for sexual or physical abuse, you might still allow him or her to work in some church ministry, but don't permit work with youth or children. A person's conversion is not a defensible position in the courts.

One of the easiest screening methods—and one that doesn't cost money—is to require volunteers to be associated with the church at least six months before they can work with youth or children. This policy gives the church additional time to evaluate workers and can ward off persons who desire immediate access to children.

But does such screening unnecessarily offend potential staff members and volunteers? "Some people get offended," admits Dee Engel, director of children's ministries at Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, California, "because I press a little harder than they think I should in the screening process. But I don't think you can be too careful. You have to protect your kids as well as your teachers."

Engel participates in a network of children's pastors from nearly a dozen area churches who warn each other of potentially troublesome volunteers and workers.

"One man became irate when we wanted to screen him," says Joan Whitlock, director of children's ministries at Wheaton (Illinois) Bible Church. "The next week I discovered his name on a list of convicted pedophiles I received from the police department. If [our church] didn't have its screening process in place, we might have let him work with children."

3. Set supervision guidelines

You can minimize the risk to your church's children, and the risk to your church of being sued for "negligent supervision," by implementing approaches like the following:

—Arrange for at least two adult supervisors with minors during church-sponsored activities. The two-adult rule applies in changing areas and restrooms and even if only one or two children are present in the nursery.
—Have adults present with teenage volunteers, since the law doesn't allow screening on anyone under age 18.
—Develop a "claim check" system in large nurseries so children are released only to a parent or guardian with the appropriate claim check.
—Install windows on the doors of classrooms and other rooms occupied by young people.
—Have church leaders randomly visit classrooms and areas of church buildings that are isolated from view.
—Provide an adequate number of adults to supervise youth events, especially overnight activities. "The highest risks," writes attorney Richard Hammar, "involve male workers in programs that involve overnight activities."
—Educate workers about appropriate behaviors between adults and children and encourage them to report potentially harmful situations. "Sometimes in church we assume another person would not dare cross a sexual boundary," says Stephanie Anna Hixon, executive director of the United Methodist Church's General Commission on the Status and Role of Women. "We don't need to create paranoia or unhealthy suspicions, but we need to be aware and show a high standard of care."
—Train all staff and volunteers at least once a year in recognizing signs of abuse; also review your policies and procedures.
—Post a copy of your state's Child Abuse Reporting Law in a conspicuous place in your child care and youth areas. To obtain a copy, call your state's Child Protective Services Agency.

4. Check your insurance

"We are experiencing an alarming frequency of claim reports," says Hugh White, Brotherhood Mutual Insurance's vice president for marketing. "People are not reluctant anymore to sue churches, and the courts are taking the issue very seriously."

Companies like Brotherhood Mutual and Church Mutual offer separate sexual-misconduct liability coverage, with annual premiums ranging from $100 to $500, depending on the size of the church and programs offered (nursery, Christian school, etc). Or you can add the coverage to your policy. Brotherhood Mutual offers a discount for churches who screen their workers.

Some companies—like the Church Insurance Company, which exclusively insures the Episcopal Church—lay out strict conditions of insurability for parishes. These guidelines include possessing a manual outlining behavior standards, thorough personnel background checks, and awareness and prevention training within six months of employment.

Still other insurance companies are reducing their coverage for child abuse and molestation or even excluding such coverage. It's important to review your church's liability insurance policy to determine whether you have coverage for molestation, and whether that coverage is limited in some way. If possible, add specific children's activities as a rider to your church liability policy.

5. Talk about it

"The most important thing the religious community can do to prevent sexual misconduct is acknowledge and learn about the reality of abuse in the church," explains Stellas-Tippans, from the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence.

Conversations are beginning in more and more churches. "Most clergy and church leaders I know really care about and are in tune with this issue," affirms Chilton Knudsen, who heads the required sexual abuse training for the 150 Episcopal churches and 450 Episcopal clergy in northern Illinois. "Some may feel overwhelmed or may not have much of a budget, but I say to them, 'It's a whole lot easier to prevent than to live through a painful experience.' "

Beth J. Lueders is director of MacBeth Communications in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.

Acceptance

Peter Marshall wrote a little poem worth recalling:

We have the nicest garbage man. He empties out our garbage can. He’s just as nice as he can be. He always stops and talks to me. My mother doesn’t like his smell. But mother doesn’t know him well.

—Calvin Miller on Preaching Today

Delegation

There are three ways to get something done:

1. Do it yourself.
2. Hire someone else to do it.
3. Forbid your kids to do it.

—Homiletics (Jan.-Feb./96)

Explanations

Cubs relief pitcher Bob Patterson described his pitch, which the Cincinnati Reds’ Barry Larkin hit for a game-winning home run: “It was a cross between a screwball and a change-up. It was a screw-up.”

—Wall Street Journal (7/9/96)

Resurrection

A letter came from Health and Human Services to a resident of Greenville County, South Carolina: “Your food stamps will be stopped, effective March 1992, because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if your circ*mstances change.”

—S. Bowen Matthews Wilmington, Delaware

Self-Esteem

From John Maxwell’s book The Winning Attitude:

Two cows were grazing in a pasture when they saw a milk truck pass. On the side of the truck were the words, “Pasteurized, hom*ogenized, standardized, vitamin A added.”

One cow sighed and said to the other, “Makes you feel sort of inadequate, doesn’t it?”

—Ron Willoughby Augusta, Georgia

Seen on a bumper sticker: I took an IQ test and the results were negative.

Wealth

The other twenty million finalists might as well give up. One of the gold-sticker-laden sweepstakes entry forms and magazine sales pitches that show up just about weekly in most Americans’ mailboxes has been sent to God.

American Family Publishers sent its computer-generated entry form to “God of Bushnell,” at the Bushnell Assembly of God, a church in central Florida.

“God, we’re searching for you. You’ve been positively identified as our $11 million mystery millionaire,” the form read.

The fine print showed the Creator was merely a finalist, but the letter encouraged him to try his luck.

“Imagine the looks you’d get from your neighbors … but don’t just sit there, God, come forward now and claim your prize.”

Bill Brack, the church’s pastor, told the Tampa Tribune that he had not yet decided whether the church would enter the sweepstakes. “God already has $11 million,” he said.

—Reuters Limited

What’s made you laugh—and made a point? Send us clean, fresh, funny stories. For items used, Leadership will pay $35. If the material has been published, please indicate the source. Send submissions to: To Quip … , Leadership, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, IL 60188. Contact Us.

1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.

Videos

—”Reducing the Risk,” Church Law & Tax Report, P. O. Box 1098, Matthews, NC 28106; (704) 841-8066; (800) 222-1840; $39.95 ($49.95 for complete kit with audiotape, book, and manual). Or Brotherhood Mutual, P. O. Box 2227, Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2227; (800) 333-3735; $15.95 (kit).
—”How to Protect Your Children’s Ministry from Liability,” J. David Epstein, J.D., Gospel Light Publishers, 2300 Knoll Dr., Ventura, CA 93003; (805) 644-9721; (800) 235-3415; $49.99.
—”Protecting God’s Children,” The Church Hymnal Corporation, 445 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-0109; (212) 592-1800; (800) 242-1918; $6.
—”Hear Their Cries” ($129), “Bless Our Children” ($99, or you may purchase both for $185), Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, 936 N. 34th St., Ste. 200, Seattle, WA 98103; (206) 634-1903; cpsdv@cpsdv.seanet.com; www.cpsdv.org.
—”A Time to Tell,” ($14.95) and “It Happened to Me,” ($19.50) Boy Scouts of America, AV Services, P. O. Box 152079, Irving, TX 75015; (214) 580-2598.
—”Understanding the Sexual Boundaries of the Pastoral Relationship”; $105; Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Communications Office, 226 Summit Ave., St. Paul, MN 55102; (612) 291-4411; (888) 290-4575.

Books and periodicals

—Preventing Sexual Abuse: Activities and Strategies for Those Working with Children and Adolescents by Carol A. Plummer; Learning Publications, 1984; $19.95; P. O. Box 1338, Holmes Beach, FL 34218-1338; (800) 222-1525; (941) 778-6651.
—The Church Law & Tax Report, P. O. Box 1098, Matthews, NC 28106; (704) 841-8066; (800) 222-1840.
—Facing the Issue of Child Sexual Abuse in the Church. For a free copy, contact Christian Service Brigade, Box 150, Wheaton, IL 60189; (630) 665-0630; (800) 815-5573; BrigadeCSB@aol.com.
—Preventing Child Sexual Abuse; curricula for Sunday school teachers ($8.95-$11.95); Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, 936 N. 34th Street, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98103; (206) 634-1903; cpsdv@cpsdv.seanet.com; www.cpsdv.org.
—The Good Shepherd Program: Tools to Protect Your Church by Preventing Child Abuse by William T. Stout and James K. Becker; $199.95; Nexus Solutions, 418 W. Troutman Pkwy., Fort Collins, CO 80526-3681; (888) 639-8788; (970) 225-0112; inq@nexus-solutions.com.

Organizations

—Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, 936 N. 34th St., Ste. 200, Seattle, WA 98103; (206) 634-1903; cpsdv@cpsdv.seanet.com; www.cpsdv.org.
—The Linkup (for victims of clergy sexual abuse), 1412 W. Argyle, Ste. 2, Chicago, IL 60640; (773) 334-2296.
—Stone Gate Resources (counseling for Christian workers struggling with sexual addictions), 3055 Woodview Ct., Colorado Springs, CO 80918; (719) 548-0908; (888) 575-3030.
—Pastoral Center for Abuse Prevention, 225 Tilton Ave., San Mateo, CA 94401; (415) 343-3377.

—Beth Lueders

1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.

When this article appeared in Leadership, exactly a decade ago, readers gave it high marks. Many books and articles on preaching, it seems, are too simple or too complex. Readers told us they appreciated this article by Fred Smith because it applies expert wisdom to the basics. It’s uncommonly wise on the common elements of public speaking.

Every summer you can find advertisem*nts for basketball or football camps where big-name stars, for a fee, will instruct young people dreaming of athletic greatness.

I wonder how much actual learning takes place when an all-star quarterback, who spends most of his time reading and outmaneuvering sophisticated defenses, tries to coach a junior-higher who’s still trying to figure out how to grip the ball with hands that aren’t quite big enough.

Sometimes people learn more, not from the superstars who have long since learned to perform the basics without conscious thought, but from others only slightly further down the road, those who’ve recently shared the same struggle.

Often, I suspect, a similar effect happens to those who want to achieve superstar poise and eloquence in the pulpit. The key is focusing not on the dazzling techniques but on the fundamentals. Improvement comes from concentrating on the basics until we can perform them without conscious thought. We need to focus on the basics and to find pleasure in the step-by-step advance.

Here are some fundamental areas that I find speakers may overlook as they try to improve.

Establishing a friendly atmosphere

To a large degree, the atmosphere we establish will determine how effective our sermon is going to be. Atmosphere is created by both our verbal and nonverbal messages.

I hear a lot of preachers, for instance, who are pretty sloppy in their opening comments. Perhaps it’s because they haven’t thought about them, but the mood they create right from the start makes it tough to benefit from the rest of the sermon.

Most of us know you don’t want to start on a negative note. “I hope you all will excuse my voice this morning. I’ve had a cold all week.”

Or “I really appreciate you all coming on a miserable, rainy day like today.”

Or “Folks, we just are not getting enough people. When I stand up here and look out at this congregation. . .”

What kind of impression do these introductions make on the listeners? Probably not a good one. You’re not starting from their need. You’re starting from your need. And that’s not the way to fill people with anticipation for the Word you have to give.

This is why I enjoy starting with something like “This has been a wonderful week”—people want to know why it’s been wonderful. They’ve had a lousy week. But there are few weeks for which you can’t think up some way it has been good—”I haven’t been sued a single time this week.” And people laugh.

Or “I haven’t had an automobile accident this week, not even a scratch.” Little things like that. And then you can say, “No, really. It’s been a fine week. I talked to some friends on the phone, and I was just reminded of the marvelous gift of friendship.”

This builds a friendly atmosphere. It conveys a feeling anybody can identify with.

People may say to themselves, “Yes, I talked to some friends this week, too. And sometimes I forget how good that is.”

That’s one way to help establish a warm, friendly atmosphere. There are other ways, but the important thing is to avoid opening negatively or from self-interest or insecurity. I want to communicate openness, that I’m here to serve these people.

This setting of the atmosphere, of course, begins before I speak my first word. We can show warmth by our demeanor on the platform. I try to pick out certain people and smile at them. This not only affirms those people, but it also shows the whole congregation I’m glad to be there.

People need to know how you feel before you start to speak. They want to know whether you’re friendly or worried or mad. For me, the most difficult discipline in speaking is going in with the proper attitude. If I do not want to speak, it is so difficult for me to speak well.

Attitude control is essential. I must go up there with a friendly attitude, with a genuine desire to help those people, to give them something they’ll find beneficial.

It also helps to notice how people are sitting and to gauge the emotional climate of the congregation. This affects how you need to come across.

Recently I spoke at a Presbyterian church in Memphis. The 8 a.m. service was about half full. People were sitting in ones and twos and threes. This means I needed to communicate with them individually. The 11 a.m. service, however, was packed, which meant I needed to communicate to them en masse.

What’s the difference? When people are scattered in a sparsely populated sanctuary, they feel exposed. They can’t hide. In a jammed auditorium, people think they’re hidden, anonymous, and therefore as you speak, you can detect a more open response.

So in the 8 a.m. service, I knew I had to be more personal, speaking as if we were standing face to face and having a conversation. In my opening comments, I used the approach I would if I’d just shaken hands with someone. “You know I’m a Baptist. You also know I’m a social climber, since I’m talking to Presbyterians.” I laughed, and they gave a me a courteous laugh. You don’t expect a big laugh out of a sparse audience any more than you would from someone you’re just getting acquainted with.

Then I said a few more personal things, just as if we were still shaking hands. “You know, I was born less than a hundred miles from this place. The town has been kind enough not to put up a sign disclaiming it, even though they haven’t put up a sign claiming it.”

That kind of light humor fits a small audience. I wouldn’t tell a story that requires a big audience in that situation. I just needed to introduce myself with a warm, friendly little greeting.

At 11 A.M., however, with the place packed and with the magnificent choir behind me, I started by turning to the choir and saying, “I wanted to be a singer, not a businessman. And I had everything except talent.” That’s a crowd joke. I wouldn’t have said that to just a few people. But the choir laughed, and the whole church laughed. Then I went ahead and said, “When I found out I couldn’t be a singer, I went into religious music, leading singing.” They, of course, caught the innuendo, and they laughed freely with me, and I was ready to proceed with my remarks. But that kind of humor requires a large audience.

So whether you’re a rookie speaker or a seasoned pastor, and by whatever the technique, it’s important to begin by establishing a friendly atmosphere.

When people are thinking more about how you’re saying something than what you’re saying, your effectiveness is lost.

Encouraging participation, not observation

Another way we all can improve is by remembering that our goal is not simply to have people sit quietly while we talk, but to have their minds actively engaged by our subject matter.

Since I’ve been writing for Leadership, I’ve had various preachers send me sermon tapes. I have to believe they send me their best tape. And I really ache. I’d like to sit down with them and say, “Let’s talk about what you’re doing as a communicator.”

One common mistake is trying to create feelings by overdramatization—by telling sob stories, or getting tears in the voice, or yelling. Listeners quickly realize the speaker isn’t depending on the subject matter to produce the emotion, but the dramatization. And when people are thinking more about how you’re saying something than what you’re saying, your effectiveness is lost.

On the other hand, some preachers are so deadpan, they might as well be reading a recipe or a research report. You’d never guess they thought real people were listening.

In either case, my recommendation is to try more conversational preaching. People listen to it without antipathy. When I raise my voice, people tend to put up a barrier to my increased volume. It’s like that story about the kid who told his mother he’d decided to be a preacher.

“Why?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, “if I’m going to be attending church all my life, I’d much rather stand up and yell than sit and listen to it.”

The minute somebody starts yelling, people mentally distance themselves. Many preachers think they’re doing it for emphasis, but generally it doesn’t work that way. It deemphasizes.

If I want to say something really important, I’ll lower my voice—and people will kind of lean forward to hear what I’m saying. In a sense, you’re putting intimacy in a point by lowering your voice. You’re saying, “This point means something to me. I’m telling you something from my heart.”

By increasing the volume, often the sermon comes across as more a performance than a heartfelt point you’re making to another individual. If you want people to digest what you’re saying, you don’t want them to feel you’re performing.

I don’t want people to observe. I want them to participate, because the whole object of speaking is to influence attitudes and behavior.

How do I encourage participation? Not necessarily by being entertaining. If people are listening for the next story or next joke, I’ve become a performer. I’ve got to be smart enough to know when my material is getting inside them. I may need to make them laugh. I may need a pointed statement. But when they are genuinely listening and understanding, they are participating.

My goal is not to have people say, “Oh, you’re such a great speaker.” Then I know I’ve failed. If they are conscious of my speaking ability, they see me as a performer. They have not participated. My goal is for people to say, “You know, Fred, I’ve had those kinds of thoughts all my life, but I’ve never had the words for them. Now I’ve got words for them.” Then I feel I’ve given them a handle for something. I’ve crystallized their thoughts and experiences into a statement or story and made it real for them. I’ve enabled them to give it to somebody else.

Obviously speakers must do the talking, but you let the audience “talk” too. You talk for them. If I’m making a controversial point, I’ll say, “I can tell by your faces that you really don’t agree with that.” Or “You’re saying to me, ‘That’s all right for you to say, but that doesn’t fit my situation.’ And I agree with you, because all of us are not alike.”

What I’ve done is to say their words for them. They’re thinking, He understands. He’s not trying to poke this stuff down our throat. And they want me to continue the conversation.

The key here is to make sure we see the process as a conversation and not a performance. The way I’ve disciplined myself on this is to ask myself if I secretly enjoy the front-and-center role. I believe I’m never ready to speak for God unless I’d rather somebody else do it. No matter how much preparation I’ve done, if at the moment before I stand, I wouldn’t be happy for somebody else to do it, then I’m not ready to speak for God. I’m really going to be speaking for myself. And people will be observing a performance, not participating in the presentation of a clear biblical word.

Ensuring I’m believable

I keep a constant watch on my believability. Unless I can believe me when I make a statement, I won’t make it.

At certain times I can believe me saying something, because I’m practicing what I’m preaching. But other times I can’t, and I’ll cut that part out of my speech. Let’s say I’ve had an argument with my wife before I speak. I will not use an illustration or statement about the marital love relationship because Mary Alice wouldn’t believe me if I said it—and I wouldn’t, either. Even though the statement is absolutely true, I could not say it and believe it.

Now, if I get with Mary Alice and say, “Honey, I was wrong” or “You were wrong” or “We were wrong,” and we resolve the issue, then I can believe me saying some things about marriage. But I won’t ask my audience to believe what I can’t.

For me, this has meant giving up saying some things I would love to be heard saying.

This also affects the references I can make. I have a private love of literature, for instance, that for some reason I’m not able to get across to people. It’s not an area I can communicate believably, no matter how interested I am. Perhaps it’s my southern accent, perhaps it’s just personal style, but I’m much more effective using some of my homespun common sense.

Nor can I, for example, use stories that have sexual overtones. There are people who can use sexual material effectively. I can’t.

I don’t use politically oriented material because I’m not particularly interested in politics. I would laugh at myself waving the flag and making a Fourth of July speech.

I can’t effectively use material that has to do with sudden “miraculous” changes because I’m such a believer in process. While I believe in the miracles of the Bible, I have difficulty teaching people to expect them.

I can’t be an inspirational speaker saying, “You can do anything you think you can do . . . and what the mind can conceive, the body can perform.” That just isn’t me.

Nor am I able to preach effectively on prophecy. While I can listen to others do it and appreciate their ability to do so, I can’t do it believably because I have so many personal misgivings. I would not feel on solid ground. I’d have to quote someone else.

I want to be like Jesus as much as I can, “speaking as one having authority.” Unlike the scribes, who spent most of their time quoting other authorities, Jesus spoke directly. He, of course, had divine authority.

How do we establish our authority? As credible speakers, we’ve got to establish some authority or there’s no reason to listen to us.

You can establish your authority by being a researcher, a Bible scholar, or a collector of scintillating anecdotes. You may have had certain life experiences. But whatever your authority, you have to be careful of extrapolation—taking a principle from an area you know and trying to apply it to an area you don’t know.

Extrapolation is where most speakers show their ignorance, and it undermines their genuine authority.

I believe I’m never ready to speak for God unless I’d rather somebody else do it.

I listen to some preachers extrapolate their knowledge into the business world, and they do it well. Others, however, tell a business story and they reveal how little they know about business.

A friend of mine was preaching and trying to relate to the sportsmen in the congregation, so he told a story about ice fishermen in Minnesota who were sitting in their huts catching muskies.

Afterward a man in the congregation told him, “That was a good story, but they don’t fish for muskies in the winter.” My friend’s attempt to come across as “in the know” only showed the sportsmen he wasn’t.

So I’m careful when I extrapolate. Did I stick to things I know? When people see that I’m pretending to be familiar with something I’m not, that hurts my believability.

Making my voice inconspicuous

Few speakers have great voices, but most have ones perfectly adequate if people can understand the words. But I’ve found people are turned off by preachers who have a seminary brogue, who have developed an intellectual pronunciation, or who preach as if they were reciting Shakespeare. I immediately say, “They’re performing.”

If I’m conscious of a speaker’s voice after listening for two minutes, then the voice has become a distraction. In the first two minutes, people should make a decision about your voice and then think no more about it. It’s exactly like your clothing. When you stand up, if people are conscious of your clothes after once seeing you, there’s something wrong with your clothes. You’re either overdressed or underdressed. You’re not properly dressed to speak.

The same is true of the voice. It should come across as natural. But there’s more to it than that.

The voice should always contain some fire—conviction, animation. Fire in the voice means that the mind and the voice are engaged. There’s a direct relationship between an active mind and an active voice.

If you recite the nursery rhyme “Mary had a little lamb,” you don’t have to engage your brain. Chances are you’ll say it with a sing-song voice. The voice indicates what’s going on in the mind.

In preaching it’s important that the voice be in gear with the mind, that it accurately represent the mind.

For example, if I am not really interested in a point I will leave it out, because my voice will be flat. My voice will say, “This point isn’t important” no matter what my words say. It will tell the audience I’m really not interested. If I try to fake it, those who are sensitive will know it. So it’s counterproductive to try to convince people of a point your voice doesn’t believe.

I like to listen to people say certain words. The way people say the word God has always intrigued me. With some people, you can almost feel the relationship. It’s personal. With others, it’s majestic. With others, it’s sharp or brittle. The fact that it is so different among different people means there is a different relationship and the voice is saying what the mind feels.

Sales people sometimes call this quality enthusiasm. I think it’s more than enthusiasm. Sometimes it will be awe or reverence. There are times when the voice ought to halt in reverence before a word. You don’t do that like an actor. It’s just that when the mind halts, the voice ought to halt. The voice is truly a mirror of the mind.

Fire in the voice has nothing to do with having a good voice or a poor voice. Some of the whiniest voices I’ve ever heard come from the best speakers. But audiences will listen to a poor voice, as long as there’s fire, because as soon as the audience realizes the voice is real, they adjust to it.

Using gestures effectively

Gestures have a vocabulary all their own. The Spanish painter Goya charged as much to paint the hands as to paint the face, because the hands are the most difficult of all parts of the body to paint.

Delsarte, back in the last century, studied for several years how the hands show emotion. He got so good at it that he could sit in a park and tell whether a baby was held by a maid or its mother by the intensity of the hands.

I, too, have become interested in what hands say. When I watch a speaker, I watch the hands. I want to see whether gestures are spontaneous or programmed. I want to see whether the spontaneous gestures are repetitious or varied. My friend Haddon Robinson has one of the finest pairs of hands I know. I’ve tried to count the different formations his hands make, and the number gets astronomical. Yet they’re absolutely spontaneous, and they’re in harmony with what he’s saying and with the sound of his voice. He has a large vocabulary of both gestures and words.

One of our former presidents could say something like “You know I love you,” but he would make a hacking gesture. Some psychiatrist friends who used to watch him told me, “His hands tell you how much he really loves you.” You don’t use a hacking motion with a genuine, spontaneous expression of love.

Great music conductors, for example, will often not use a baton so they can communicate more clearly. The orchestra can read their hands better than the baton. The baton can give the beat or the accent, but hands can give the nuance.

Many people will prophesy with their hands. They’ll let you know what’s coming before they actually say it. The hands come alive before the voice does. And people detect this even if they’re not aware of it.

Or you see somebody who points his finger at you like a pistol. You never expect a real friendly statement after that. The teacher points a finger at you and then reprimands you.

I’ve found speakers can’t develop mastery of gestures quickly, but they can give themselves permission to improve. Sometimes people don’t succeed because they’re afraid to try. Any time we want to develop our skills, we start by giving ourselves permission to grow.

With gestures, the key is simply to make sure they’re spontaneous and that they represent the voice and the mind. But give yourself permission to let them vary and be expressive.

Here’s one to start with. If you’re going to be delivering a climactic statement, instead of getting intense too soon, it’s better to relax your body and back away a half step from the audience. Then just before you come into the climactic statement, step toward the audience and straighten up. That way your body as well as your voice projects the message.

Gestures also include giving people your eyes. In speaking, eyes are almost as important as the voice. Everyone knows the importance of eye contact, but the temptation I have is to zero in on a few people up front who are attentive. Maybe I’m insecure, but it’s easier to talk to those people. I have to remind myself not to neglect those out on the wings. Like the farmer who’s feeding the chickens, you have to throw the corn wide enough for everyone to get some. So I tell myself, Remember the smaller chickens on the fringe. I want them to know I’m thinking of them, too.

Remembering my limited knowledge

I remember an embarrassing situation one night at a business meeting with a group of executives.

One man, who considered himself an authority on international oil because he read the newspaper, was popping off about the oil situation and how it could easily be resolved.

What he didn’t know was that another man in the room had just returned from chairing an international conference of major oil companies. After the first fellow finished spouting off, proving his ignorance, this man quietly but effectively showed him to be the fool he was.

I said to myself, I hope that never happens to me!

I left that meeting determined to make sure, in any speaking I do, that I leave open the possibility that someone may be there who knows an awful lot more about the subject than I do. The memory of that business meeting has stayed in my mind and tempered many remarks I’ve been tempted to make.

On the other hand, sometimes speakers are too impressed with who’s in the audience.

The other night I was in a church listening to the preacher when a well-known university president slipped into the sanctuary. The preacher changed his style considerably; I could tell he was preaching for the benefit of this one individual. He went from preaching to giving an intellectual performance, trying to impress with his learning. He seemed to forget the rest of the audience.

I couldn’t be too critical, however, because at times I’ve done the same thing. When some prominent person is present, the great temptation is to speak to him alone. But that’s prostitution. That’s spending other people’s time simply to make a personal impression.

But as I sat listening to the preacher being overly influenced by this university president, suddenly the thought occurred to me, Doesn’t he realize God is listening?

When God is listening, that’s about as big a celebrity as anyone is going to have. And isn’t he always our ultimate audience?

So in the back of my mind, I always try to remember that God is present. And if he isn’t, maybe we ought to dismiss early.

Fred Smith is a business executive in Dallas, Texas; a board member of Christianity Today International; and a contributing editor of Leadership.

1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.