Church & Ministry

I have had an on again-off again relationship with Gordon MacDonald. As a young associate pastor in the mid-eighties I read his best seller, Ordering Your Private World (which is still in print). A couple of years later I read his book, Renewing Your Spiritual Passion. Although it was twenty-five years ago, I vaguely remember spiritually profiting somewhat from those books, although if I were to re-read them now, I might have a different opinion. However, the fact that he has admitted that he was involved in an extra-marital affair while writing those books kind of soured me on him. I did not read his Rebuilding Your Broken World or anything else by him. (That may be more of a reflection upon my former Phariseeism than his restoration.)

Gordon MacDonald has been a pastor and author for more than forty years. He has also been the president of a couple of well-known parachurch organizations, and is currently an editor at large for the magazine Leadership. He and his wife of almost fifty years live in New Hampshire.

This book first caught my eye a couple of years ago when it came out in hardback. I skimmed it a couple times at the bookstore, but didn’t want to pay the hardback price. However, when I eventually saw it in paperback, I plopped down my money. I am glad I did.

The subtitle of this book is “What to Do When the Church You Love Tries to Enter the 21^st Century.” It is a fictional tale told in the first person. MacDonald writes as a pastor of an imaginary New England congregation of a few hundred people. The church has had a proud history and is part of an unnamed denomination. The sixty-ish “Pastor MacDonald” has been at the church for several years and has overseen the last of a series of changes designed to attract younger people. Not everyone is on board with these changes—especially the aging “boomer” generation. Plus, there are more changes on the horizon. A proposed $150,000 initiative to upgrade the sanctuary’s technology did not get the expected congregational approval. This has brought the change issues to a head. Also being debated is a proposed name change for the church.

The following is reprinted with permission from Paraklesis, a publication of Baptist Bible Seminary. The article first appeared in the Summer ‘09 issue.

Why learn Hebrew and Greek?

I want to address just one facet of the question in this essay. The primary purpose of Baptist Bible Seminary is to train pastors. We have made a deliberate choice to focus on only one narrow slice of graduate-level biblical-theological education. I am thinking first and foremost of the pastor when I think of the place of the biblical languages in the curriculum. In its biblical portrait, the central focus in pastoral ministry is the public proclamation of the Word of God. There are certainly other aspects of pastoral ministry, but it can be no less than preaching if it is to be a biblical pastoral ministry.

How does preaching relate to the biblical languages?

I have some serious concerns about the state of the pulpit these days. My concern could be stated fairly well by adapting the wording of 1 Sam. 3:1 and suggesting that biblical preaching is rare in our day, and a word from God is infrequently heard from our pulpits. Some of today’s best known preachers echo the same sentiment. John Stott, for example, says that “true Christian preaching…is extremely rare in today’s Church.”¹

As those who stand in the pulpit and open the Word of God to a local congregation, pastors have the same charge as that with which Paul charged Timothy: “Preach the Word” (2 Tim 4:2). That is an awesome responsibility. The apostle Peter reminds us that “if anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God” (1 Pet 4:11).

By James Rickard. Reprinted with permission from the Baptist Bulletin Jan/Feb ‘09 issue. All rights reserved.

In the mid-1960s as a young accountant, I began helping my pastor prepare his state and federal tax returns. I was surprised at his meager salary, lack of fringe benefits, and inability to provide financially for his future. His family lived in a church-owned parsonage totally controlled by the church; they couldn’t even paint a wall without committee approval. It was a large farmhouse that was difficult to maintain and expensive to heat. I remember visiting that parsonage and finding his wife in tears over the frustration of living under those conditions. And I remember thinking, This is not right. Little did I know how that experience would begin to sow the seeds for the Stewardship Services Foundation, a ministry that would allow me to devote my energies to counseling pastors regarding finances, helping them prepare their personal income tax returns, and teaching church boards how to structure pastors’ salary packages within the limits of IRS tax law. As a result, in 1977 the Stewardship Services Foundation ministry was born.

A church board needs to know about salary packages and their proper application in the budget process. The most important issue when it comes to this subject is the board’s attitude—a proper understanding of the salary package issue and the desire to meet the needs of the pastor’s family with a spirit of generosity.

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