Ethics in Ministry
By David Sapp, Pastor Second Ponce deLeon Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA
Note: This speech was delivered at the Ethics in Ministry conference sponsored by the Christian Ethics Today Foundation at the McAfee School of Theology, Atlanta, on October 6, 2006.
When as a teenager I first heard the term "ministerial ethics," I wondered what in the world this could be about? Were some ministers unethical? Did they lie to their deacons? Did they steal from their churches? My image of the clergy was so innocent that I could not imagine immoral clergy. (This, by the way, says a lot for my childhood ministers.)
So one day, as a young person aspiring to ministry (we were called "preacher-boys" then), I happened on a book about ministerial ethics in the Baptist Book Store. I scanned the table of contents and discovered to my great relief, that the book was not about ministerial ethics at all, but was rather about ministerial etiquette. It had to do with things like not starting a church in another church`s back yard, how to handle invitations to go back to previous pastorates for weddings and funerals, the necessity of treating your predecessors with respect, and other such regularly ignored niceties.
It was somewhat later when more egregious breaches of ministerial ethics caught my attention. At my summer job at the local bank, I asked my boss about our ministerial customers. "I know they don`t have much money," I said, "but I bet they are among our most dependable and honest customers."
"No," he replied, "they are among our worst clients. Many of them are just careless with their finances, but some are downright dishonest."
That day I began to notice the splashier sins of the clergy, the Elmer Gantry stuff: sins having to do with sex and money. The fact that ministers were supposed to be above such temptations, and the fact that they were such public figures, made their exposure downright titillating. Soon afterward I began to notice less splashy, but perhaps equally harmful sins among ministers: broken confidences, hidden alcoholism and drug abuse, and the ever-prevalent sin of the idolatry of self.
Finally, I became a minister myself. Sitting in the seat of supposed holiness, I learned anew that the serpent "was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God made" (Gen. 3:1). So if it might be bold to offer a few admonitions, let it be known that they come not from any academic or professional expertise, but from long struggle, from wrestling with a devil, and sometimes with an angel who turned out to be God.
Tell the Truth
I did not know at the beginning how hard it was going to be to tell the truth, but it did not take long to find out. I was in college in the sixties, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and I served a small, rural church as a student pastor. I remember like it was yesterday sitting in the living room of a family in our church and listening to a spirited discussion of the race issue. All of a sudden, the lady of the house looked at me and said, "I don`t know how you feel about the race issue. I know a lot of ministers don`t feel like people do about it."
I found myself suddenly choking as she waited for a response. My skin went clammy and my palms began to sweat. All I could think of was being fired from my first church and scorned in the very county where my grandparents were well-known and well-liked citizens. To my great shame, I simply nodded. I arrived back at my dorm room that night feeling like I was Peter and had just denied Christ three times. My convictions on race were strong, but not strong enough. In the face of vested opposition, my courage withered like a dried up shrub.
I soon discovered, however, that while cowards are rarely alone, I had a lot of company, and it included most white Southern ministers. We eventually found our voice, of course; but coincidentally, we just happened to find it at about the same time it became safe to speak.
I learned some other things about truth-telling as well. I learned that telling the truth does not matter if nobody hears the truth. And I learned that in order for people to hear truth from you, you have to be connected to them. Not a single Old Testament prophet hailed from Babylon. They were all the children of some crazy shepherd who happened through your village during last year`s drought. And I also learned that you can`t always tell the whole truth at one time. It makes people gag and they spit it out. And one more thing: you have to say things in ways that gain a hearing. That is part of the responsibility of proclamation.
But the most important thing I have learned is that people simply won`t hear the truth if you don`t speak the truth. "How shall they hear without a preacher?" They won`t hear the truth about race if we don`t speak it. They won`t hear the truth about poverty if we don`t speak it. They won`t hear the truth about war if we don`t speak it. Telling the truth is our moral responsibility.
Know the truth
We cannot tell the truth that we do not know. And yet many of us in ministry know only the truth that we knew the day we were called. We have been too frightened of losing our place in the world to let God teach us anything new.
When I was a teenager aspiring to the ministry, one of the more noted pastors in Georgia came to preach at my home church. One night after the service I was talking with him about my dreams. "Whatever you do," he said, "don`t get a Ph.D. It will cut you off from your people." In other words, don`t learn too much. Don`t burden yourself with the truth that doesn`t play in Peoria. Avoid it like the plague. What he said to me was, close the canon as soon as you leave this church tonight!
The right path, however, runs in the opposite direction. The minister has an ethical responsibility to keep the canon of truth or revelation open for his or her entire lifetime. Barbara Brown Taylor said in Leaving Church that she was more certain in her early ministry than she is now, and more convinced that her task was to help others become more certain too. I suppose most of us were like that at some point, but then at least some learn what once struck us as contradictory: that final certainty is lethal to truth. Final certainty blinded the Pharisees; it condemned Galileo; it cripples the fundamentalists; and it continues to undermine the gospel every time Christians resist the discoveries of science. Once you are certain, once your canon is closed, God can no longer teach you anything. You may still get yourself called to a big church, or you may establish a gigantic ministry, but you will be useless to the Kingdom.
Late in his life, Thomas Aquinas stopped writing. He quit because he said he could no longer write after what he had seen. So what did he see? We may well never know, but we do know this: His eyes were wide open, and he saw something-some new truth? Some fresh revelation from God? Whatever it was, it made all the difference.
To be ethical, a minister must be committed to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Integrity calls for an openness which is uncomfortable, disconcerting, and endangering to one`s livelihood and one`s place in the community.
Love the people.
I hold to a theological tenet that some of you may think strange. I believe that when I stand before the Father, He will not ask me how many members are in my church. He will not ask me the size of our budget, or the number of our baptisms. I believe He will ask, "How much did you love your people?"
Unless you love them, there is no ministry. Unless you love them, you cannot know the needs of their hearts. Unless you love them, you cannot know how to speak to them. And get this-unless you love them, they will not hear you. In every church I have served, I have noticed a strange phenomenon: as the years pass, the people tell me that my preaching keeps getting better. I have heard this for so many years that it would be easy to be seduced by the lie. I would like to think that I have improved some, of course, but it is not so much the preaching that changes as the relationships. When people know you love them, and when they love you in return, amazing improvements in communication occur.
Simon Peter is the one whom our Catholic brothers and sisters believe was the chief pastor of the early church. In the last chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus asked him three times, "Simon, do you love me?" Three times Simon Peter declared his love. "Then feed my sheep, tend my lambs," Jesus commanded. If you love me, Simon, you must love them.
The word "pastor" means shepherd, and that connotes a tender and caring relationship with a congregation. That concept of the pastoral role has taken a beating lately. Some believe it has no relevance in a post-modern world. Pastors are now seen to be nothing more than preachers and vision-casters. Let someone else love the people. The preacher is to appear on Sunday morning with a word from on high, surrounded by body guards to keep the people away. Or, the preacher may not even show up. He or she may just appear on a giant screen. Someone at our church suggested putting up a big banner outside that says, "Live preaching!"
This model is quite adequate if our goal is to provide religious entertainment or instruction. But it is not adequate if we believe that the power of the Gospel is incarnational. It is not adequate if we believe that Jesus actually died for people. Post-modernism may have made its mark on the world, but it has not changed the reality of love. Philosophies change. Insights change. Trends change. Cultures change. Prevailing mindsets change. Human nature does not change. People still need love. God is still love. And love is still the power which changes lives, and hearts, and minds. The mere invention of video and Power Point can never change the incarnational nature of the Gospel.
Care for the Institution
The pastoral care of institutions has received far too little academic attention, and it receives far too little attention from many of us who are practicing ministers. Much of the moderate wing of Christianity, as a matter of fact, has a strong anti-institutional bent. But despite all of the anti-institutionalism of recent years, institutions are not disappearing. In fact, they are getting bigger and stronger and more dominant. Witness today`s mega-corporations whose headquarters is wherever the taxes are lowest. Witness mega-banks in which your banker is hundreds of miles away. Witness mega-churches where nobody knows your name.
Such realities may well turn many of us against institutions, but Christianity will not and cannot exist for long apart from an institutional setting. Christ himself founded the church, and the scripture calls it his bride. It is the moral responsibility of the minister to care for that institution.
This means that our hands will be dirty, and our souls will be compromised. Sometimes we will be party to institutions that abuse people mercilessly and at times put their own needs ahead of their principles. Yes, institutions are corrupt. That is why they require pastoral care. This institution we call the church is also called Gomer, the faithless bride of Christ! She must be loved and wooed from her faithlessness back to her groom, for He has given everything for her.
There is a word for the pastoral care of institutions: It is "administration." The word ministry is found right in the middle of the word administration. Simply put, administration is one very important kind of ministry. This is because real administration is not about numbers and charts and committees and rules. It is about people. It is not about self-serving ends; it is about taking the love of Christ to the world. Integrity in ministry demands that we take seriously the charge to care for the church-yes, the institutional one.
Minister selflessly
It may seem counter-intuitive, but selflessness is a rare quality in ministry. That should be no surprise of course, for ministry is a profession with unique seductions for the unhealthy ego. What other profession, after all, offers the opportunity to speak with the authority of God to hundreds, or even thousands, of weekly listeners? What other profession confers the opportunity to be the rock people lean on, the confidant they turn to, the sage they seek? What other profession makes its practitioners the constant center of human attention? What other profession offers a weekly, and sometimes daily, dose of doting affirmation from a large group of people? Rare is the person who can manage these temptations well.
So how are we as ministers to overcome the temptation to self-absorption and become effectively selfless? At least three actions are required.
First, we must take care of our selves, so that we have selves left to give. I learned this lesson graphically after my first sermon in my first full-time pastorate. The sermon was entitled Promises, Promises, and in it I made extravagant promises to that congregation. Among those promises was a flowery pledge to give adequate time and attention to my role as a husband and father. I was quite serious about it, and I also hoped it would impress my new congregation.
About three or four months later, I received a telephone call from a deacon who had taken me a bit more seriously than I intended: "I have a bone to pick with you," he said. My defenses came to full attention. "You have broken a promise you made to us." My body tensed, ready to receive the punch. "You told us you would give adequate time to your family, and you haven`t been doing it."
Oh, the sting of truth! I still remember his rebuke, tendered in love, and I still take it seriously. God does expect that we take adequate care of the human resources He has put at our disposal. That includes our families, and it includes our selves. Many of us stand in pulpits every Sunday, having been too busy to listen for a word from God that week. Many of us visit hospital rooms too rushed to render anything that might reasonably be called pastoral care. We sit at our desks too harried by the minutiae of the day to give any real attention to a vision for the future. As I heard my friend Hardy Clemmons point out recently, most ministers are too tired in any given week to be creative.
The second action may seem contradictory to the first: We need to learn once again to spend ourselves in ministry. After all, this is the model set by Jesus "who loved us and gave himself up for us" (Eph. 5:2). These two polar truths, that we need to care for our selves and that we need to spend ourselves, must be held in creative, and probably oscillating, tension.
Currently, however, ministers seem to have the oscillation fixated on "self-care." A balancing reminder is in order: At some point, ministry demands, and is worth, self-sacrifice. You and I have a calling that is urgent. It will not wait until tomorrow. It will not wait for us to marry a wife or bury a father. It is more important than any other urgency this world may put in our paths. Make no mistake. The Gospel is urgent business. It will not let us go. It cannot be ignored.
We must protect our health, of course. We must observe the Sabbath, of course. We must not neglect our children or our spouses, of course. All of us have heard the horror stories of ministers who tragically cut these corners.
But there is another side to this. We follow a Lord who gave Himself for us, who poured out His life on the Cross, who laid down His life for His sheep. We follow a Lord who taught, "He who loses his life for my sake shall find it" (Mt 16:25), who said "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend" (Jn 15:13).
"Self-care" is a good idea, but it has been used in our day as an excuse for laziness and indifference, for avoiding the very call that God has given us. No one can claim to be His ministers while lounging in palaces of ease. The greatest fulfillment I ever have in ministry is when I am utterly spent, when I have given every ounce of strength I have, and I know I have offered my best in the service of God.
The third action we must take is to maintaining the tension between self-care and self-sacrifice. This is not easy, but it begins in a healthy view of one`s self. I frequently try to get at it by recalling a truth I first learned a long time ago: I am not as good as they tell me I am when things are going well, and I am not as bad as they tell me I am when things are going badly. Over the years, I have been most effective and happy when I have been able to remember this.
Of course, this list of ethical lessons is not adequate to cover the entire scope of even one person`s ministry. Ministry is far too complex and demanding a profession. But no matter how many lessons one might learn about ministerial ethics, none is more important than this: the cost of authentic ministry can be great. After all, the One who blazed the trail of ministry for us, found that His own path led to a cross. The only way to find the courage to follow Him there is to take His yoke upon us and learn of Him.
Like nearly everyone, I have heard prospective ministers express doubts about embarking on a life of ministry because of the magnitude of suffering that it sometimes brings. Thirty plus years down that path, here is how I feel: God forbid that we should ever shy away from ministry because we are afraid that people might persecute us and speak all manner of evil about us falsely for the Kingdom`s sake. God forbid that a cross should repel us.
The biggest crises for me has come late in my ministry rather than early. At the very beginning of my time at my present church, the congregation endured an enormous internal crisis. After what some say was decades of growing division, a large number of members left the church. In the process, some of that group attacked me personally. I could not understand it. They hardly knew me! With unjustified hubris, I thought I was too good a pastor for anything like this to happen to me.
Then one night, I was ambushed by a word from God. Attending a lecture at Mercer University by the well-known Methodist William Willimon, I heard him tell of an experience he had as a young pastor.
The board of his church had rejected a proposal he had made. As many of us have done, he returned home to kick himself all over the house. "You are too new here to have made such a proposal," he said to himself. "You should have framed it differently. You should have discussed it with the leaders in advance of the meeting. You should have . . . You should have . . . You should have." After he finished beating himself, he sat down in his study to work on the following Sunday`s sermon.
Finding his place in his chair, he turned to the open Bible on his desk and looked at his text. The sermon was about the cross. Suddenly, Willimon said, a thunderbolt struck him. "It was as though God said to me, `What part of cross do you not understand?`"
I listened to him carefully as he recalled this experience, thinking all the while about the ecclesiastical shrapnel then flying around my own church. Then Dr. Willimon ended his talk, and friends of mine from all around the room came over to speak. One by one, these colleagues over the years, these friends in ministry, one by one every one of them said the same thing: "He was talking to you."
He did not know it, but he was. He was talking to me. "What part of cross do you not understand, David?" What part?
And I ask each of you, what part do you not understand? There is only one way to do ministry with integrity: "All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give."
