Pastoral Leadership for Manhood and Womanhood
304
Pastoral Leadership for Manhood and Womanhood
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Overview
As the shepherd of the flock, a pastor has many responsibilities–few as great as leading and training families. The pervasive attitude and beliefs of the world have only added stress and confusion to this task. Sixteen highly regarded men and women help bring clarity and guidance to this important issue. They tackle practical topics such as how and why to preach on biblical manhood and womanhood, putting the Internet to use, church discipline, small groups, and handling domestic violence. They discuss the personal applications within the pastor's marriage, and they examine the biblical views of ministering to singles, homosexuality, leadership and submission, and much more. This compilation is thorough, potent, and a must-have for any pastor's library.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781433516313 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 01/03/2003 |
| Series: | Foundations for the Family , #4 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 717 KB |
About the Author
Wayne Grudem (PhD, University of Cambridge; DD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is research professor of theology and biblical studies at Phoenix Seminary, having previously taught for 20 years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is a former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, a member of the Translation Oversight Committee for the English Standard Version of the Bible, the general editor of the ESV Study Bible, and has published over 20 books.
Dennis Rainey is the executive director and co-founder of FamilyLife. He is also the daily host of the nationally syndicated radio program Family Life Today.
R. Kent Hughes (DMin, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is senior pastor emeritus of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hughes is also a founder of the Charles Simeon Trust, which conducts expository preaching conferences throughout North America and worldwide. He serves as the series editor for the Preaching the Word commentary series and is the author or coauthor of many books. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, and have four children and an ever-increasing number of grandchildren.
Daniel L. Akin is the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
C. J. Mahaney is the senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville. He has written, edited and contributed to numerous books, including Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology; Don't Waste Your Sports; and Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God. C. J. and his wife, Carolyn, are the parents of three married daughters and one son, and the happy grandparents to twelve grandchildren.
David Powlison (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a teacher, a counselor, and the executive director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He is also the senior editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling and the author of Seeing with New Eyes, Good & Angry, and Speaking Truth in Love.
Paul David Tripp (DMin, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a pastor, author, and international conference speaker. He is also the president of Paul Tripp Ministries. He has written a number of popular books on Christian living, including What Did You Expect?, Dangerous Calling, Parenting, and New Morning Mercies. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Luella and they have four grown children. For more information and resources, visit paultrippministries.org.
Edward T. Welch (PhD, University of Utah) is a counselor and faculty member at the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He has been counseling for more than 35 years and has written extensively on the topics of depression, fear, and addictions. His books include When People Are Big and God Is Small, Crossroads: A Step-by-Step Guide Away From Addiction, Running Scared: Fear, Worry and the God of Rest, Shame Interrupted, and Side by Side. He blogs regularly at CCEF.org.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Pastor's Marriage
R. Kent Hughes
I was born in March 1942 in Los Angeles — the same month that a Japanese submarine shelled the oil fields of Santa Barbara. That was about two hundred years ago; at least that is how I feel whenever I look through my March 1942 copy of Life Magazine and see the way people dressed and the military technology of another age. I have vivid memories of the 1940s: my father's death when I was four years old, the 1948 Rose Parade, the 1949 Billy Graham Crusade in a huge tent on the corner of Washington and Hill Streets in Los Angeles. The images of the young, slender evangelist lit by the spotlights and the cowboy Stuart Hamblin singing "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" are fixed forever in my memory.
I was in high school in the 1950s, but I didn't find "my thrill on Blueberry Hill" like many of my suntanned friends, because Christ found me in 1955 just as I was beginning high school. I was a young man, but I knew I had come to Christ; I knew I had been delivered. An event that further shaped my life took place in 1956 and made the cover of national magazines. It was the death of five missionaries in Ecuador at the hands of the primitive Auca Indians. Jim Elliot's quote, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose," became the ideal for my life. I wanted to serve the Lord. In 1958, at age sixteen, I preached my first sermon. It was on Jonah and the whale — "God Has a Whale of a Plan for Your Life" — a sermon of dubious wit and doubtful quality. But just the doing of it established my pastoral persona.
Robin Williams's famous quote about the 1960s, "If you remember the sixties you weren't there," aptly captures it for many of us graybeards, and smiling we nod our assent. But I was there and clearly remember the sixties because I was doing youth ministry instead of drugs. I also happily recall those years because I met and married my lovely wife, Barbara, in 1962, and we spent the next decade in sandals and bell-bottoms and youth ministry. Our four children came during our first seven years together. Definite church growth!
The 1970s were church-planting years. The greatest thrill of my life was establishing a new church. It was also one of the hardest times in my life. Barbara and I have chronicled it in our book Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome. I was involved in the new work for about six years, and in 1979 we moved to Chicago. Our twenty-three years of ministry at College Church in Wheaton have been times of immense change. I've changed too. My over-the-ears haircut has gone the way of my seventies bell-bottoms. My hair has faded to a Mr. Rogers gray. I need glasses to read my watch. And when I bend over to tie my shoes, I look around for other things to do since I'm already down there!
Barbara and I have been married for more than forty joyous years, with thirty-eight years devoted to ministry. I've done it all — junior high, high school, college, assistant pastor, senior pastor, and senior citizen. We've had our share of troubles and joys in ministry. I've seen it all — the ups and downs; the disappointments and triumphs. And in it all, the joy of the Lord is my strength (cf. Neh. 8:10).
Ministry has been a wild and wonderful ride. I am a happily married man. My four grown children love the Lord, and my eighteen grandchildren are in process. I have a terrific wife whom I love with all my heart. My children love me, and I love them. The bottom line is: Our marriage and family have flourished amidst ministry.
CHALLENGES TO MINISTRY MARRIAGES
Nevertheless, there are pastor-centered challenges to marriage. Ministry is consuming. It's time-consuming. I've always been busy with staff meetings, responding to messages, prayer meetings, business meetings, appointments, counseling, and sermon preparation, not to mention weddings and funerals. Life is busy. That can be difficult on a marriage. But not only is the ministry time-consuming, it is also all-consuming because it is so demanding. Whether you're in a large or small church, you must learn to go to your left like a good basketball player. You'll never make the team if you can only dribble and shoot with your right hand. Likewise in ministry, you can't say, "I only do preaching" or "My gift is administration." You must do it all — and do it well. The pastor must be a Renaissance man. This can be a great thing as you develop into a well-rounded person. But the downside is that it is so demanding.
The ministry can become a mistress. You can become married to the church. In terms of that marriage relationship, you can become a very ugly man — a preoccupied man who may sit down at the table with your children but be somewhere else. Believe me, the ministry can be seductive, especially if you're deriving your self-worth from what you do.
Early on, when I was both in ministry and seminary, my wife saw that I had become so preoccupied that I often was somewhere else, distracted, as my children sought my attention. Seeing enough she confronted me: "I don't mind you're being gone so much. I can handle that. But when you're here, I would really like you to be here." She suggested that I needed some professional help. I was insulted and angry. But after I cooled down, I realized she was right. During the second counseling session, the counselor, a minister himself, observed that I was attempting to establish my self-worth by my performance as a pastor. He assured me that given my mind-set, whatever I achieved, I would never find satisfaction. The answer, he said, was to establish my worth apart from the ministry. That was the best personal advice I've ever received. Today I define myself by my relationship with God and with my nearest and dearest — not ministry. Sometimes my ministry is up, and sometimes it is down. But my self-worth is not tied to my professional vicissitudes. And more importantly, I am not for the most part a distracted husband or grandfather.
Ministry can also be authenticating or de-authenticating. Ministry can be authenticating if your life matches your teaching. John Piper likes to say that by preaching he "saves" both himself and his congregation every week. How so? Listen to Paul's words to Timothy: "Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers" (1 Tim. 4:16, NIV). When the preacher's lifestyle and his teaching match, a deep authentication takes place. But if you're not measuring up to the things you say, you can become like the train conductor who after years of announcing "All aboard to Albany. All aboard to Chicago. All aboard to St. Louis" began to imagine that he had actually been to those places. The ministry has huge potential for dissonance, disjunction, and hypocrisy, and for turning you into an ecclesiastical buffoon if you don't appropriate the truths you preach. And this can wreak havoc on the ministerial marriage.
The pastoral ministry can be a lonely occupation. You may be a gregarious soul, but there are probably very few people in your congregation who understand what your life is like. There's a sense of loneliness in that. You carry the responsibility and burden, but it's not like that for your congregation. You're vulnerable. My outgoing wife admits that with the children grown she sometimes feels lonely when she comes to church and has to look for someone to sit with. It is possible to have a sense of isolation and alienation in a busy ministry that darkens your most intimate relationship.
Financial challenges are endemic to ministry. The March/April 2000 issue of Your Church reports that less than half (39 percent) of churches surveyed conduct an annual salary review for their pastors. Statistics indicate that though seven in ten pastors feel they are fairly paid, 30 percent feel underpaid. Of that 30 percent, 6 percent consider themselves severely underpaid. On average, churches with annual budgets of more than $500,000 give their senior pastors more than twice the total compensation that churches with budgets under $100,000 do. There's a huge disparity in ministerial income. The report went on to say that those who opted out of Social Security are saving less for retirement than pastors in the Social Security system. Early in my ministry I used to claim that the car wasn't mine unless you could see the road through the floorboards! It was difficult in those early years. Finances often do bring severe stress to ministerial marriages.
Along with this, the ministry can be exhausting, and exhaustion often leads to depression. A telling sentence from Paul presents exhaustion at the heart of ministerial depression: "For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn — conflict on the outside, fears within" (2 Cor. 7:5, NIV). The context of Paul's admonition was pressure-induced exhaustion. The same syndrome had earlier afflicted the worn-out Elijah after his victory over the prophets of Baal (cf. 1 Kings 19:4-8). Exhaustion due to ministerial pressures can make a depressive out of anyone. Sometimes it happens to the most sanguine of us. Notwithstanding the solutions that the stories of Paul and Elijah provide, depression is endemic to our people-intensive professions. And the consequences can be very hard on ministerial marriages.
Along with pastor-centered pressures there has come a rise of spouse-centered challenges due to the intrusive values of popular culture. Of late, many pastors' wives view their husbands' ministry as separate from their lives — "It's his job. I have my own interests and goals." Others do not view the ministry as a "call" but merely as a profession like that of a lawyer or schoolteacher and thus reason "He has his profession, and I have mine. They are equally important." And, of course, there is now the culturally required obligation of a woman to pursue her complete, better self as her primary responsibility. Hardly the foundation for a strong ministerial marriage.
And, of course, there are churches that are man-eaters, ecclesiastical orcas. If the pastor is inexperienced or naive, he can be eaten alive and in the process see his most precious relationships devoured. According to a survey by the Hartford Seminary Foundation in the early nineties, one in five pastors is divorced, which nearly accords with the 24 percent average of the general population. The divorce rate was only slightly higher in liberal churches than in conservative churches.
ENHANCING MINISTRY MARRIAGES
I am fond of quoting these lines from Shakespeare both to my wife and to others — about her:
For she is wise, if I can judge of her, And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, And true she is, as she hath prov'd herself, And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true, Shall she be placed in my constant soul.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, II.VI
This is reflective not only of how I feel about Barbara, but of the creational bedrock of our marriage covenant. When Adam first saw Eve he cried aloud in astonished ecstasy:
"This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man."
GENESIS 2:23, NIV
Adam's joyous shout echoes down to the present day, proclaiming the joy and intimacy of marriage. There in Genesis Adam's cry subsided, and the voice of Moses concludes, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh" (v. 24, NIV). Moses' words were divine revelation, and Jesus Himself would quote them as the very Word of God (cf. Matt. 19:5). These words, this Word of God, became the deep well for the Bible's teaching on the covenant of marriage. Here is the theological rationale for my wife being my constant soul.
Married Hearts
To place my wife in my constant soul is another way of saying that she is in my heart and I in hers — perpetually. And here I must suggest some ways to enhance this covenantal oneness.
To begin with, we must have cherishing hearts that publicly treasure The Pastor's Marriage one another increasingly with the years, as Winston Churchill did his Clementine. On one memorable occasion Churchill attended a formal banquet in London, where the dignitaries were asked the question, "If you could not be who you are, who would you like to be?" Naturally everyone was curious as to what Churchill, who was seated next to his beloved Clemmie, would say. After all, Churchill could not be expected to say Julius Caesar or Napoleon. When it finally came Churchill's turn, the old man, the last respondent to the question, rose and gave his answer. "If I could not be who I am, I would most like to be" — and here he paused to take his wife's hand — "Lady Churchill's second husband."
A delightful corollary is honoring hearts, hearts that esteem each other. This can be seen in the unspoken beauty of a couple's glance toward each other or the gentle touch as they pass between rooms. We hear it in the respectful tone of their voices — words that caress. Honoring hearts always speak well of one another to others. There are times when my wife honors me with frank, true, needed words that she would never share with others. As her husband, and pastor of a flock, I know that I am safe in her words, and she in mine.
Healthy ministry marriages demand interceding hearts. The demand for mutual intercession is, of course, heightened by the commonplaces of ministry and because we are public figures who minister God's holy Word and counsel and lead the church. These realities bring unique stresses and heighten our vulnerability. We each need the other's prayers. How heartening it is for your spouse to know that she is prayed for in sensitive detail. There can be few things more elevating than the knowledge that your mate, who loves you as no other does, prays for you as for himself or herself. This kind of prayer will steel a ministry marriage against its uncommon assaults.
The ministry is a serving profession. We serve God and His people. But it is also a call to care for each other with grand serving hearts. Here Dr. Robertson McQuilkin, former president of Columbia International University, has set the standard for all of us who serve God. Dr. McQuilkin is an accomplished preacher, leader, theologian, and writer. But the title that defines him as a leader and husband is servant. At the height of his influence and power, McQuilkin resigned his presidency to take care of his Alzheimer's-stricken wife Muriel, as his God-given duty. And this is what he said in his letter of resignation:
Perhaps it would help you to understand if I shared with you what I shared at the time of the announcement of my resignation in chapel. The decision was made, in a way, 42 years ago when I promised to care for Muriel "in sickness and in health ... till death do us part." So, as I told the students and faculty, as a man of my word, integrity has something to do with it. But so does fairness. She has cared for me fully and sacrificially all these years; if I cared for her for the next 40 years I would not be out of debt. Duty, however, can be grim and stoic. But there is more; I love Muriel. She is a delight to me — her childlike dependence and confidence in me, her warm love, occasional flashes of that wit I used to relish so, her happy spirit and tough resilience in the face of her continual distressing frustration. I do not have to care for her, I get to! It is a high honor to care for so wonderful a person.
Such care, such sacrifice, such nurture ought to especially be at the heart of ministry marriages, so that our lives not only sustain each other but bear witness to the church and to the world of the reality of Christ.
All husbands and wives need to talk, but this is especially essential in ministry marriages — communicating hearts. As longtime pastor and writer Eugene Peterson has so poignantly written, there are men who wall themselves at breakfast behind a newspaper
rather than listen to the voice of the person who has just shared his bed, poured his coffee, fried his eggs, even though listening to that live voice promises love and hope, emotional depth and intellectual exploration far in excess of what he can gather informationally from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor put together.
Certainly both men and women need quiet (especially those in ministry), but if such isolation becomes expected as a right, marriage is impoverished. Enjoy the newspaper? Certainly. But we must always engage each other's souls about what's happening right now, about family, about ministry, about the Word. Indeed this exchange of soul that Barbara and I have developed in our forty years of marriage and ministry is deeper and more exciting than anything else in our full lives.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Pastoral Leadership for Manhood and Womanhood"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Wayne Grudem and Dennis Rainey.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
The Contributors, 9,
Preface Wayne Grudem and Dennis Rainey, 13,
Foreword Dennis Rainey, 15,
I. The Pastor's Personal Life,
1 The Pastor's Marriage R. Kent Hughes, 23,
2 The Pastor's Responsibility for Romance in His Congregation and Marriage Dennis Rainey, 37,
II. The Opportunities Today,
3 The Little Things That Build or Destroy Marriages Danny Akin, 51,
4 Using Small Groups: The Key Strategy for Building Stronger Marriages Bob Lepine, 69,
5 Cultivating a Man-Friendly Church H. B. London, Jr., 83,
6 Single Adults in Your Ministry: Why They Stay and Why They Stray Dick Purnell, 99,
7 Father Hunger Among a Lost Generation: The Pastor's Opportunity Timothy B. Bayly, 117,
8 The Marriage Ceremony: A Cornerstone in Building Godly Families Timothy B. Bayly, 137,
9 Church Discipline: God's Tool to Preserve and Heal Marriages Ken Sande, 161,
III. The Challenges Today,
10 How to Encourage Husbands to Lead and Wives to Follow C. J. Mahaney, 189,
11 Church Ministry to Persons Tempted by Homosexuality Bob Davies, 209,
12 "Someone I Love Is Gay": Church Ministry to Family and Friends Bob Davies, 231,
13 Helping Single Adults Handle Moral Failures Dick Purnell, 247,
14 Pastoral Responses to Domestic Violence David Powlison, Paul David Tripp, and Edward T. Welch, 265,
15 Standing Courageously in Your Home, Church, and Community Paige Patterson, 277,
Scripture Index, 291,
General Index, 297,