Role Confusion
When I started preaching, I knew I was expected to preach sermons. But what do you get done from Monday to Saturday? Part of that time is devoted to study and sermon preparation, but that’s really a small part of what a preacher is expected to do. What is the role of the preacher? Is he the church’s CEO? Head Coach? Sales Manager (or perhaps the start salesman)? Political backslapper?
I don’t think I understood my role very clearly when I started out in Rosebud. Rosebud was a small town, with a limited business section, so I visited every room in the local hospital about three days a week. There were only about twenty beds. About once a week I walked the main street and dropped by to visit merchants and whoever might be in the store. I also made calls on shut-ins, weak members and those persons we called, “prospects.” Prospects were non-members and non-attenders, whom we believed to be sympathetic to our message.
I really couldn’t figure out my role. Nothing I received in my training had been made clear to me beyond preaching quality sermons. That’s actually pretty important. The church will forgive you for just about anything except lousy preaching. You don’t make much of a difference with one sermon, but the cumulative effect over a long period of time is enormous. That’s one reason why guys who spend a long time with one church are generally for successful than those who stop by to drink a cup of coffee and preach a sermon and then move on. I’m not much of a social gadfly. If I were going to run for political office, I’d have hard time getting very many votes.
I didn’t live up to the expectations of some people, but I had some remarkable experiences at Rosebud. The men encouraged me; the women treated me like a son, and I learned the importance of relationships. With the exception of the teenagers and children everybody in the church was older than me. I picked up on the need to be available for hurting, and I realized that you don’t always have to worry about whether you’re saying the right thing. Once I went to the home of a lady whom I did not know after her husband died. When I told her who I was, she just grabbed me and hugged me. I didn’t really say anything profound. I have to. My greatest gift was presence.
In a small town nearly everyone knows who you are, and they have expectations about your activities and behavior. They may never attend the church where you preach, but they have standards they want you to live up. They may have no intention of maintaining those same standards, but still you are expected to act a certain way. While I was at Rosebud, I consulted a skin specialist in Waco about my psoriasis problem. He told me that direct sunlight would be beneficial to my problem. He said, “You need to get out in the yard every day for about a half an hour wearing nothing but a pair of shorts.” I didn’t say anything, but in my mind I was thinking, "Doctor do you realize that I’m a single preacher in a conservative church in a town of 1700? If I really wanted to become the subject of town gossip that’s exactly what I would do.”
I’m not a good CEO, head coach, sales manager or politician. As I look at the career that Ann and I have enjoyed in ministry it involves two things. (1) We’ve tried to be available for hurting, and (2) We tried to equip people to become all they can be in the service of the Lord.
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