Notes on continuing reformation at a congregational level

Billy Sunday 'preaching'

I offer the following advice based on sometimes painful experience and the sanctifying process of still trying to live out these lessons once learned.

No reformation can come unless it is truth led. That is to say the force of your personality might sway the decision-making process- you might be able to shout down or persuade your elders to do things your way- but a deep-rooted and lasting reformation in a local congregation only takes place when hearts and minds (both inside and out with the Session) are persuaded by clear teaching showing that the reforms you advocate are important, helpful, and biblical.

2. Reformation will not ordinarily come about in a year, or in two, but may be accomplished in ten or fifteen.  Plan on outliving, out serving, and out loving those who might otherwise be resistant to reform.

3. Connected to this, reformation is not the same as winning a fight. This is critical.

Too often we imagine that since reformation must be truth led, all we need to do is saddle up and win the debates every time. But we are wrong. Change is as emotional an issue as it is cerebral. People are comfortable with the status quo and change is often simply too hard to accept, no matter how persuasive your arguments.  The only solution to this is to both win the arguments and win their hearts. But understand that the latter must precede the former. You must love and serve them and they must see you doing it. They need to know they can trust you. And they need to see this before you begin to change structures or procedures.

4. A pastor who does not visit the flock will have a hard time convincing them that he cares about them, and his preaching will struggle to connect with the real lives of his hearers.

5. Preach all the theology you know. Expect opposition. Take it on the chin. Close your mouth. Examine yourself, your tone, your exegesis, repent where you must, rethink your presentation where you can and keep going.

6. Give special attention to the older members of the flock. This is important not simply because they often have needs that require more attention, but because they are often the guardians of ‘the way things have always been’. Love them well, win them, and you will stand a much better chance at accomplishing long-term reform without generating discontent.

7. Be a teaching elder.  A collegiate model of decision-making is critical. I am not the boss. I am an elder among elders. If we have no consensus we do not proceed, even if it means that my ideas get slapped down.  Now that means, of course, that I must give a great deal of attention to the training and educating of my Session. But it also means that I must work hard at adopting a humble and teachable spirit myself. If reformation is to come to the church it will be as the elders pastor and lead the flock well. I have much to learn from them.  They are crucial in accomplishing the work.

8.  Learn to live with the mess.  I say this especially to younger men and seminary grads. Very often we come into our first ministries flush with enthusiasm for the work and filled with idealistic notions about pastoring a reformed congregation. Nothing in our training has really prepared us to navigate the labyrinth of interpersonal politics and the stubborn refusal to change that we find in established congregations at times. Every hill we climb is one we are tempted  to die on. Not only must we learn to lose the argument often and with good grace, we must learn which arguments to have in the first place.

9. Have confidence in the ordinary means of grace. God will get the work done. Preach the Word, brothers. Administer the sacraments. Pray. Pastor the flock gently, lovingly, and patiently. What you could never do in the first year of ministry you may accomplish after five years as God wields his word in your own heart and in the hearts of his people.

10. Do not preach change, preach Christ. Beware of using the pulpit as a platform from which vent your spleen. Your pastoral care of the flock entrusted to you begins in the pulpit. As preachers we have access to a platform that is easily subverted to fulfil our own church-political ends, but that is to abuse our privileges in favour of our personal agendas. Try to remember that you have been called to preach Christ crucified and to pastor this flock with all its weaknesses and strengths. That is your job, first and foremost. You are not there to fix the organization, or grease the wheels of the committee structures. Of course you will want to work on areas that are not functioning well. But keep the main things the main things.  I must learn to live with almost anything if I might still preach Christ.

11. Who says you’re right? Study the Word. Speak where God speaks. Offer your best wisdom on issues of indifference with humility. Submit to your brothers. The vision the congregation or the Session  has may be ill-conceived in places, but so might yours be. Live with them first. Let the bonds of pastoral love grow between you. Let the means of God’s appointment work their sanctifying influence on your own heart, and on theirs. And out of the bonds of shared life will come an increasingly shared set of convictions, not just about ecclesiology or doctrine in the abstract, but about your congregation and its particular mission in its unique context, and about how best to get that mission done.