Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea To Pastors for Radical Ministry

John Piper

 B&H Publishing Group, Nashville: 2002 (286 pages)

I have to admit that the first few chapters were a rollercoaster ride for me.  I bought the book with one expectation, the first chapter met that expectation, then the second two went another direction altogether.  Piper opens with:

We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry.  The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet….Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry. (pg 1)

I was excited to read a book from a veteran pastor analyzing the current state of professional ministers, and the details of how the prophetic role of pastor is incompatible with the professional mentality of a CEO.  But that is not what Piper wrote.

His next few chapters began to deal with a few of Piper’s pet theological issues and how important they are to the life of the church.  If you have read Piper, you know he has a handful of themes that run throughout his preaching and writing, and honestly, a couple of them wear thin for me after a little while.  For example, Piper is an ardent traditionalist/compatibalist when it comes to male/female roles, and though I disagree with some of the justifications of his position, I don’t mind reading his mind on the issue.  But when he managed to squeeze that into several of his chapters while citing his own works on the matter, it got a little old for me.

But once I got over my initial shock about the purpose and direction of the book, I settled into a wonderful and incredibly lucrative read.  This book is not an analysis of professionalism versus pastoring, it is a work of pastoral theology.  What kinds of things should be important from behind the pulpit, and what kinds of lifestyles are necessary in the lives and careers of pastors?  The chapters, which average a very readable nine pages long, have titles like, “Brothers, Consider Christian Hedonism,” “Brothers, Let Us Query the Text,” “Brothers, Read Christian Biographies,” and “Brothers, Our Affliction is for Their Comfort.”  Piper’s book is essentially a call to action; a call to have pastors regain their prophetic role before Scripture and before God, and to live lives that may become their congregations’ comfort and guide.

There is an oddity or two to the book.  The one that sticks out to me occurs in the pull-quotes that open each chapter.  Most books that contain these cite other authors than the one writing the book to make their point.  This one, however, cited John Piper probably 80-90% of the time.  So Piper was quoting Piper to help make Piper’s point. 

The book is very well-cited.  In fact, it is a wealth of resource material on several issues.  For example, he encourages pastors to read biographies of Christians who have made a difference in this world.  He has a chapter specifically devoted to that issue in which he provides several good possibilities, but then it is evident throughout the rest of the book that he has read a lot of them himself, and he cites them often.

Overall, the book’s value lies in its break from the standard fare of pastoral leadership.  Piper is not at all concerned that we are competent professionals (as his opening chapter makes abundantly clear).  He is concerned that we present the glorious truths of the Gospel to our congregations and that we live lives that reflect those truths.  And, in my opinion, in a world that just doesn’t know what a pastor does (but which is abundantly clear on what CEOs do), his call is a necessary one if we are to regain—in the eyes of God and in the eyes of our congregations—the uniquely biblical role of pastor.

Confessions of a Reformission Rev: Hard Lessons From an Emerging Missional Church

Mark Driscoll

Zondervan, Grand Rapids: 2006 (207 pages)

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up this book, and I honestly didn’t expect that much from it.  I was pleasantly surprised by the book—not because my expectations were so low, but because it really was a helpful and useful book for a pastor trying to wrestle with the deepening and broadening of the church.  Driscoll’s sarcasm was an unexpected treat.  I am sarcastic a little too often, and it was fun reading his take on the world.  As with all hard humor, though, it was great when I agreed with it, and it was frustrating when I didn’t.

But humor aside, Driscoll has a handful of extremely important things to tell pastors (and church leadership in general).  To begin with, church is about Jesus.  We can put on dazzling shows, mimic models working half-way around the States, or disband the whole thing in favor of house churches, but every adaptation needs to be about Jesus.  Pastors and churches grow in the right ways when we preach Christ and him crucified every week no matter the topic or text.  A church without carefully defined and followed theology is like a grocery store that only sells Hostess cupcakes.  People will get a sugar high coming, but the crash is not far away and they certainly won’t grow.

In addition, churches need to define or discover why they exist and move in that direction.  As so many church leadership books tell us, that sometimes requires hard decisions.  But as Driscoll reminds us, churches are guarded by shepherds that are supposed to tend for and protect the flock.

Each chapter roughly follows the growth of his church from stage to stage.  Chapter 1, “Jesus, Our Offering Was $127 and I Want to Use It to Buy Bullets: 0-45 People” contains this gem of insight that most pastors and probably all church planters can sympathize with:

So I decided to start a church, for three reasons.  First, I hated going to church and wanted one I liked, so I thought I would just start my own.  Second, God had spoken to me in one of those weird charismatic moments and told me to start a church.  Third, I am scared of God and try to do what he says. (39)

A surprise along the way is that Driscoll is comfortable with the Charismatic gifts.  His reformation theology is also clear throughout the book, so that combination makes for a unique insight into his church world.

From there the chapters move along the growth-curve of the church: 45-75 (ch. 2), 75-150 (ch. 3), and so on up to 4,000-10,000 (ch. 7).  Each step along the way, Driscoll is honest about the successes, stresses and failures he and the church experienced.  As much as the practical insights and structural discussions, I appreciated his Christ-centered theology and ecclesiology.

I decided that being cool, having good music, understanding postmodern epistemology, and welcoming all kinds of strange people into the church is essentially worthless if at the bedrock of the church anything other than a rigorous Jesus-centered biblical theology guides the mission of the church. (78)

He also raises an issue I have discovered in my own journey as a pastor.  It sounds simple on paper, and if you haven’t struggled with this temptation you may not guess how powerful it is.  Pastors and leaders need to be who Jesus called them to be and do the things Jesus called them to do.  We make huge mistakes fitting into someone else’s mold or trying to act and preach like the popular guy down the street.  Churches sometimes put pressures on pastors to be and do certain things that will end up sapping them of vitality and ruin the church.  Sometimes it is a cult of personality or a denomination, but the problem is the same – pastors give into other peoples’ expectations at their own peril.  We all know pastors and leaders end up with things in their portfolios they are not great at or need to learn to love, but, as a matter of priority and gifting, be who God called you to be.

I am not a huge fan of books on church leadership technique.  That is probably why I liked this book.  Instead of a heck of a lot of tips and tricks (though there are a fair amount of organizational details, pie charts and schematics), it is mostly about a set of lessons learned trying to do what God called a pastor to do.

Christianity In Crisis: 21st Century

Hank Hanegraaff

Thomas Nelson, Nashville: 2008 (427 pages)

She sat in my office, about 15 years removed from the trauma, but she and her family were still having a very hard time reentering the church world.  They were committed to Christ, but the wounds were still too deep.  One son was, luckily, too young to feel the brunt of the abuse the church heaped on them, but the other was older and no longer in church at all.  What was the source of all this current dysfunction in their lives?  A church bent on the faith movement’s message had entered her hospital room in the midst of a debilitating illness, pronounced her faithless and sinful, and rejected their participation and engagement with the church.  They didn’t want people too sinful to be sick in their church.

Hank Hanegraaff has updated his classic text exposing and refuting the Faith movement’s movers and shakers for the 21^st century.  To be sure, some of the characters are the same: Hagan, Hinn and the Crouches, but there are plenty of new and popular preachers and teachers out there spouting the “health and wealth” gospel.  I was especially pleased to see Hanegraaff detail the teachings of such popular figures as Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer.  Their message, though maybe packaged a little differently, is no less heretical than their mentors’ message, and no less dangerous.

The book is well organized, and very well documented.  If you are familiar with his work, you know Hanegraaff loves to use acronyms as memory devices.  The overall chapter structure of the book is based on the acronym, F-L-A-W-S, and most of the chapters have acronyms within them.  The reader will not be short mnemonic devices.   

The things Hanegraaff claims these teachers say are so outrageous, the only way to believe it is to see the documentation.  In a crucial early chapter, “Cast of Characters,” the book has over 400 footnotes.  Not only does the book expose the crazy, silly, and heretical things these people have to say, but Hanegraaff does a great job of leading the reader through sound biblical teaching on the subjects the faith teachers so roundly manipulate and destroy.  So it is not just an expose, but a defense of sound biblical orthodoxy.

Hanegraaff’s most radical claim is arguably the central claim of the book: these teachers are so far from the historic Christian faith that they have become cultic in their teaching.  Early on, the book defines what a cult is, relying on historic Christian orthodoxy as a starting point.  But then it follows the claim with several hundred citations and page after page of successful defense of the thesis.  These people clearly represent aberrant theology, and in no way should be taken as credible teachers of Scripture.

Overall I was impressed with the level of work and research that went into the book, and I was deeply appreciative of the positive apologetic work in the text.  Writing a book doing nothing but excoriating these people would be an easy temptation to fall into, but Hanegraaff avoids it well.

If you don’t know what to make of some of these teachers, you need to read this book.  If you know someone caught up in the false promises and crazy ministries of some of these people, you need to give this book to them.  If you are a pastor, I suggest you read this and make sure you understand what is at stake.  I highly recommend this book.

UnChristian: What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity… And Why It Matters

David Kinnaman 

Baker Books, Grand Rapids: 2007 (220 pages). 

In recent years I have been surprised by conversations I have had with those outside the Christian faith who like the idea of Jesus, but have a problem with the Christian Church. Our culture seems to be a breeding ground for spiritual hankering while fostering trepidation over institutions’ motives and integrity. Why are people suspicious of the Church? What intrigues them about Christ? Have we misrepresented Him? 

Questions along these lines led Barna Research Group’s president, David Kinnaman to research this supposed disconnect between the Church and her founder. UnChristian is the upshot of that research and the desire to help church leaders navigate the waters of representing Christ to a skeptical generation through the activity of the local church. The research project polled 16-29 year olds both inside and outside the church. From those national polls three prominent descriptions of Christianity emerged from those outside the church; Anti-homosexual (an image held by 91% of young outsiders), judgmental (87%), and hypocritical (85%). These ‘big three’ were followed by these other negative perceptions held by a majority of outsiders: old fashioned, too involved in politics, out of touch with reality, insensitive to others, boring, not accepting of other faiths, and confusing (p.27). And, unfortunately only a small percentage of outsiders strongly believe that the labels “respect, love, hope, and trust” describe Christianity (p.27). Startlingly many young (16-29 years olds) Christians feel much the same way.

Four out of five young church goers say that Christianity is anti-homosexual; half describe it as judgmental, too involved in politics, hypocritical, and confusing; one-third believe their faith is old-fashioned and out of touch with reality; and one-quarter of young Christians believe it is boring and insensitive to others (p.34).

Kinnaman broke these findings down into the following six broad topics which are the main focus of this book: Hypocritical (Ch.3); Too focused on getting converts (Ch.4); Anti-homosexual (Ch.5); Sheltered (Ch.6); Too political (Ch.7); and Judgmental (Ch.8). In each chapter Kinnaman shares the data from the polls and then discusses how the Church can respond to these depictions. 

For me, the beginning portions of each chapter are a bit difficult to stomach. It is hard to hear that we could be seen in such a negative light. However, the real strength and value of this book is in Kinnaman’s response to the data. He does not believe Christianity should step back from or water down the Gospel in any way. However, he also insists we begin to reassess how we engage and interact with the culture that surrounds us. He argues:

As Christians, we should pursue both goals: purity and proximity – living in a way that honors God, but doing so in a way that can influence outsiders. What you do and what you learn should provide a lens to understand, interpret, and respond to a morally bankrupt culture (p.133).

I have had several good conversations with people about this book and have yet to find anyone who had an ambivalent attitude towards it. Some people love it and some people hate it. For that reason alone I recommend reading through this book, wrestling with its ideas, and making some conclusions regarding its contents. 

As Pastors people look to us to model the Christian life. Our engagement with the culture around us is on display and we must have a determined and reproducible approach to reaching our world.

Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry 

Ruth Haley Barton

InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove: 2008 (228 pages).

No doubt we have all felt or have had a friend who experienced ‘burn out’ in ministry. For some ministry may even seem to create distance where once there was intimacy. If you have ever felt like the busyness of ministry was interfering in your walk with God, then this book is worth a read. As Barton describes, 

Strengthening the soul of your leadership is an invitation to enter more deeply into the process of spiritual transformation and to choose to lead from that place. It is an opportunity to forge a connection between our souls and our leadership rather than experiencing them as separate arenas in our lives (p.15).

Throughout her book Barton uses the life and ministry of Moses as an illustration of the changing dynamics within the life of a spiritual leader. The first five chapters focus on the inner dynamics of a spiritual leader’s life. Here, Barton describes the inner struggles of Moses’ life before he fled Egypt as a young man. She warns,

Only those who have been brave enough to ride their own monsters of anger and greed, jealousy and narcissism, fear and violence all the way down to the bottom will find a truer energy with which to lead. Only those who have faced their own dark side can be trusted to lead others toward the light. This is where true spiritual leadership begins. Everything that comes before is something else (p.44).

Taking responsibility for ‘what lies beneath’ (Ch.2), finding ‘the place of our own conversion’ (Ch.3), and beginning ‘the practice of paying attention’ (Ch.4) helps us acknowledge the essence of who God has designed us to be. Barton believes that after God has given us an understanding of who we are, He then calls us to do something out of the essence of our being (Ch.5). That is, our calling is not a request to do something, it is an invitation to become who He designed us to be.

Chapter 6 through 12 move beyond the inner dynamics of the leader to the daily ventures of leadership within a Christian community. Barton argues that a leader must learn to live within the limits of their calling (Ch.7) and must practice the rhythms they desire their community to move in (Ch.8). One of the most important ‘rhythms’ she wrestles with in chapter 8 is the rhythm of Sabbath in the life of the leader. That is, what does it look like for a pastor to practice Sabbath?

In Chapter 9 Barton introduces the privilege and responsibility of the leader’s intercession on behalf of the community. She paints a beautiful picture of the intercessory ministry Moses had for his people:

There was a special place outside the camp called the tent of meeting which was available to everyone who sought the Lord. But when Moses went to the tent of meeting, it was something of a national holiday (p.145).

Here she argues that intercessory prayer is not simply presenting others needs to the Lord. Rather, it is being present with God on another’s behalf, listening for the Holy Spirit’s prayer for them, and joining with God in that prayer (p.146). 

Chapter 10 deals with the loneliness of leadership and then chapter 11 explores what leadership can look like when done as a community. These two chapters provide the ground work for chapter 12 where Barton describes the process of discerning God’s will as a community for the community. In this case it is not one leader putting forward a vision that everyone else votes on. Rather, it is a process through which the entire leadership of a community searches for God’s direction and then wrestles with the issue until there is agreement as to the direction God is leading.  

Barton brings her book to a close by challenging leaders to ‘re-envision the promise land’ (Ch.13). Here she persuasively argues that at the end of Moses’ leadership, when God allows him to see the promise land he would not enter, he was not crushed because he had already received what he desired most. For Moses, the presence of God had become the promise land. He had experienced and maintained an abiding relationship with God which caused everything else to pale in significance (p.214). 

For me this final challenge and admonishment is worth the entire read. In my life and ministry I hope I never lose sight of true spiritual leadership. I hope I never exchange abiding relationship for apparent success. In the end I simply want to know God and know that I have helped others know Him as well.

Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson

D. A. Carson

Crossway Books, Wheaton: 2008 (160 pages).

Most pastors will not rise to the level of popular cultural figure or even be known outside of their immediate circles of friends, families, and churches.  Most pastors, the statistics tell us, will never pastor a church over 200 people.  Most pastors will not write the books that become best-sellers and send them on national book tours.  And yet, we tend to see those pastors who do achieve these things as our standard – the measure by which we judge ourselves and each other.

If it is true most pastors will never be those things, and that the work of the Church gets done by most of us in our towns, cities, neighborhoods and communities, then we are looking to the wrong set of heroes.

D. A. Carson’s book about the life of his father and mother is an antidote to a success-driven, bigger-is-better pastoral culture.  He tells the story of a pastor who follows God’s call to a surprisingly hard mission field.  His father stayed true to his call to his family and ministry even when things were difficult, as he and his congregation suffered persecution, and when his wife contracted Alzheimer’s disease.  In many ways, the story of Tom Carson is the story of most pastors.  His pastoral career saw its share of glorious moments – baptisms of converts in a land determined to squeeze out the Protestant movement – and difficult years.  His pioneering work in Roman Catholic, French Quebec was long, hard, and his congregations never became “mega” churches.

One of the more interesting portions of the book to me was the historical setting in which Tom Carson planted churches and evangelized.  The Catholic hold on Quebec for several decades around the 1940s and 1950s was unusually strong, and essentially formed the culture at large.  As a result, it was very difficult for a Protestant work to gain a foot-hold and be free from social and governmental harassment.  Nonetheless, Tom Carson felt a call to this community, and stayed there through many thin years.

The book is loaded with letters and journal entries by Tom Carson revealing the deep pastoral concern he had for those around him, his love for Scripture, and his bouts with depression and feelings of inadequacy.  In these moments, D. A. Carson is objective about his father’s work ethic.  For instance, Tom Carson worked hard until his death (even recording 11-hour days well into his 60s) and always felt he was slothful.  D. A. discusses where this work ethic came from, and the benefits and drawbacks it had.

All in all, this is a wonderful little book dedicated to the kind of pastoral life and call that is more common than not.  Our eyes are on the unordinary, and thus our working lives can become filled with inappropriate visions of success.  Read this book and put your eyes back on your call, your roll in the Kingdom, and the place God called you to be.

The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again

George G. Hunter III

Abingdon Press, Nashville: 2000 (144 pages).

All pastors want what the title of this book promises.  I know we often strain in prayer, buy books, and spend the money necessary to attend conferences that tell us what the culture around us is like and how best it can be reached.  Often those books and conferences are a list of “tips and tricks” and even copy-and-paste solutions from the latest mega-church success.  And this is why I am often turned off by them.

The Celtic Way of Evangelism avoids those things…mostly.  Hunter, who deftly combines missiology with communication theory, intends his book to give us a useful and practical example of a man and plan that converted a completely pagan culture for Christ.

The core of the book presents the life and missionary work of Patrick, and here Hunter shines.  If you are like me, you know very little that isn’t legendary about Patrick.  I thoroughly enjoyed his brief biography, Patrick’s vocational call back to Ireland, and his ensuing missional strategy.  Hunter’s belief is that Patrick’s mission to a pagan Ireland is not that different from our mission to our Western/American culture.

Patrick showed up on Irish soil with a team – a self-replicating team of clerics.  Patrick engaged the kings and tribal leaders in each new territory he and his teams entered, and after either turning their opinion or receiving their blessing, he continued through their territory.  From time to time Patrick had “power encounters” where he overcame the local druid priests through the manifestations of God’s miraculous power.  (Patrick was a Pentecostal!)  And he and his teams established communities very much like monasteries wherever they could where they could become a part of the every-day life of the people around them.

Not all went well for him and his cohorts, however.  Because some of the tactics were not in step with the orthopraxy of the Roman Catholic Church, his efforts were negatively reported by the ecclesiastical historian of the day, the “Venerable” Bede.  As a result, Patrick did not receive the support or recognition he should have in his day, or since.

Not all goes well for the book, either.  While Hunter provides some extremely useful insights throughout most of the book, he falls into the temptation to become overly specific in his application at the very end.  Through the lens of Patrick’s life, we learn of the importance of “presence” within culture, engagement with the opinion makers around us, and the display of God’s grace and power.  These are useful principles that I can apply in Colorado Springs and you can apply in downtown Manhattan.  In the last chapter of the book, we learn about how churches need to become “twelve-step” communities that provide addiction recovery programs for the “least among us.”  We also learn that because of the church’s job on earth, if we are not reaching out to the homeless and poor around us, we are not doing our job.

As he starts his last chapter, Hunter declares, “The typical church ignores two populations, year after year: the people who aren’t ‘refined’ enough to feel comfortable with us and the people who are too ‘out of control’ for us to feel comfortable with them” (97).  I have no doubt that there are churches out there like that, but I am not at all sure that accurately describes most churches.  And it is this kind of generalization that becomes the Achilles heel for most “how-to” church growth books.  Because they are too specific, they just don’t fit me and our situation.

There is nothing wrong with reaching out to the homeless, the addicted and the poor.  But it is a rather narrow kind of application to draw from the powerful principle that is Patrick’s life.  Yes, our churches should reach out to the desperate and the hurting, but they should also reach out to the broken lives in middle-class homes and expensive downtown lofts. 

Where Hunter excelled when he left application up to me, he stumbled when he told me how to apply the principles of Patrick’s life.

Adapted from class notes taken by Ryan.