BOOK REVIEWS: MASTERING MINISTRY series, copublished
by Leadership, Christianity Today, Inc., and Multomah Press.

This is the best series of handbooks for the beginning
and experienced pastor I know. They are simply written, so that
busy clergy may ‘read while running’. They are unencumbered with
footnotes or bibliographies, although key books for further reading
are mentioned here and there. These are manuals for pastoral practitioners
rather than ‘practical theologians’. Although American, there
is little that is not transferable to other cultures (every country
has a counterpart to the IRS!). And the authors were chosen well,
as I can testify having counted half a dozen of them among my
special friends.

MASTERING TRANSITIONS (Ed. Bratcher, Robert Kemper
and Douglas Scott, Portland, Oregon: Multnomah, 1991) begins with
the assumption that pastoral moves are ‘difficult, even scary’
for pastors, their families, and for churches. Transitions aren’t
easy. The chapters I found particularly useful relate to The Forced
Termination (there’s a burgeoning literature on this painful subject),
Harnessing Your Church’s History, and The Shadow of Your Predecessor.
The questions a prospective pastor may ask the search committee
is the best list I’ve seen. Some samples from its store of practical
wisdom: # Don’t leave just because a larger church is interested
in you. Most pastors are not going to end up in a large church.
# Have an hour’s questions to ask the search committee. # One
way to determine the pastor’s salary: find the mean or median
salary in the congregation. # If the pastor’s family does not
own a home of their own, buy one, live in it or rent it, or arrange
for the church to contribute something each month which together
with an amount from the stipend can be invested in a Tax-Sheltered
Annuity. # Have a performance review with the leaders annually,
asking (1) what had been most meaningful to them in the church
in the past year, and (2) what they would like to see happen in
the church. # Don’t let the search committee dissolve until you’ve
been in the church a year. ‘These people were my first and most
significant contacts with the church. I’ve known pastors who felt
abandoned in the new church after the search committee disbanded.’
# When called to leave a church, offer multiple reasons: members
will understand at least one of the reasons and so better accept
the decision to move. # Recognize the needs of the pastor’s family
to engage in the experience of closure. # Before moving, ask members
of the future church to jot down how they felt when they first
arrived in the church and district, and share favourite places
or pieces of information. # Draw up a Ministry Description or
covenant/contract so that no one will be able to say later ‘But
we never agreed to that!’ # ‘In each parish I have served I have
planted a tree as a sign of our beginning.’ [In the planting ceremony
I say] ‘… My prayer is that this tree will bloom for many years,
and that even after I’m gone, you will think of this time, as
I will, with grateful hearts.’ # ‘Before I ever preach I try to
worship first in the pews of the sanctuary… As I sit, I notice
how the service sounds from the pew…’ # Invite parishioners
over the your home in groups of four or five couples (but include
only one disgruntled couple each occasion!). # After you announce
your resignation, work like a healthy duck, not a lame one!

MASTERING CONTEMPORARY PREACHING (Bill Hybels, Stuart
Briscoe, Haddon Robinson, Leicester, England: IVP, 1989) is about
the practice of preaching rather than its theory. You won’t find
much here about homiletics, exegesis and all that. The best chapter
is Stuart Briscoe’s ‘Dealing with Controversial Subjects’. The
best quote is Bill Hybel’s: ‘I [live] with a sanctified terror
of boring people or making the relevant Scriptures irrelevant.’
The scariest insight is also Bill Hybel’s: ‘When we started the
church, maybe 5 percent of our congregation was made up of people
who were so badly wounded they were dysfunctional… [Now it’s]
probably 15 percent.’ The best story is about what happened on
one of Bill and Lynn Hybel’s wedding anniversary celebrations.
The best sermon intro. is also Bill Hybel’s: ‘We talk a lot around
here about the fact that you matter to God. That’s right, and
that’s true. But let me ask you this: Does God matter to you?’
The best warnings against preaching irrelevance come from Haddon
Robinson: ‘While the preacher talks about absolutes, right and
wrong,’ one man said, ‘most of us deal with grey situations.’
Robinson quotes some good advice from Spurgeon: the people in
the marketplace cannot learn the language of the academy, so the
people in the academy must learn the language of the marketplace.
Finally this warning from Stuart Briscoe: ‘Churchill said a fanatic
is a person who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject!’
Buy it, however many years you’ve been preaching: you’ll be enriched!

Rowland Croucher