Page 4651 – Christianity Today (2025)

Several years ago I heard a sermon illustration I thought was great for demonstrating determination. I decided to use it. Here’s the story: On the last day of the 1956 Olympic Games, Austria had yet to win a gold medal. Its only hope was in a young Austrian named Johann who had entered the rapid-fire pistol competition. His teammates weren’t disappointed. As he fired his last shot, he gave his country their single gold medal.

When Johann returned to his homeland, his country gave him a warm welcome and a huge parade in his honor. Tragically, only a few weeks later, his right hand, his shooting hand, was blown off in an accident.

But this didn’t stop Johann. After his body had healed, he walked out the back door of his home one day with something stuffed under his shirt. His wife noticed the bulge and followed him to a place where she saw him loading a pistol, holding it between a tree and his leg. Shot by shot, he emptied the pistol with his left hand and reloaded. After months of this daily practice Johann became proficient. Almost miraculously, he went to the 1960 Olympics where his determination paid off for himself and his country as he won a second Olympic gold medal in the pistol competition.

Isn’t that a great story?

If only it were true.

When I heard this story about Johann, I was so impressed I decided to learn more. In an Olympics book, I found, to my surprise, little of what I had heard in the sermon was accurate. The man’s name wasn’t “Johann” but Karoly Takacs. He wasn’t Austrian but Hungarian. The years he won gold medals were not 1956 and 1960 but 1948 and 1952, years in which his country won not one gold medal but ten and sixteen, respectively. And his right hand wasn’t blown off between the Olympic games but during World War II, after he’d won the European championship.

I was amused after I learned the truth about “Johann,” so I called the pastor who had preached the recorded sermon and told him what I’d discovered. After we had a good laugh, he told me he had gotten the story from a well-known preacher, who in turn had received the story from a nationally known writer and pastor. Who knows how many people have been impressed and inspired by an almost entirely fictional man named “Johann”?

But telling half-true or untrue stories to our congregations can threaten our integrity. Accuracy is critical also because our listeners will remember illustrations far longer than our sermon points. I have created a checkup to ensure my illustrations stay healthy:

1. Am I inserting myself into someone else’s illustration?

A cartoon showed several church members giving three large volumes to their pastor. The caption: “Pastor, since you’ve been with us for a year now, we wanted to give you a copy of your biography that Mrs. Smedley has put together from all that you’ve told us about yourself in your sermons.”

To take someone else’s personal experience and make it yours is theft. If you find someone else’s good personal illustration, don’t say that it happened to you. Attribute it accurately, and it can still be effective.

2. In the illustration, is someone described as “a member of my former church”?

This phrase may irritate present church members, who tire of hearing about people in “that other church.” It also broadcasts this message: “I’m telling this story about something confidential a former parishioner told me. If you confide in me, I may tell your story at my next church.”

Just say, “I once knew someone who. . .”

3. Should this illustration be checked for accuracy?

Some illustrations are like investments: If they seem too good to be true, they probably are.

For years I’ve enjoyed using an illustration about the introduction of Coca-Cola in Korea, to show how easily we can misunderstand one another. I found the story in a sermon magazine, which said that when the soft drink was first introduced, the company wanted to use Korean letters and words which sounded as much like “Coca-Cola” as possible, so they used “Ko Ke Ko Le.” However, sales were flat because that set of Korean words means, “Bite the wax tadpole.” So Coca-Cola changed the name to “Ko Kou Ko La,” which means, “May the mouth rejoice,” and sales increased.

I planned to use this illustration recently, but because we have a number of internationals as members, I decided to confirm it. When I showed the two Coca-Cola names to a Korean member, she informed me that neither set of words means anything in Korean. On bottles in Korea, “Coca-Cola” is “Ko Ka Kol La,” which means nothing but sounds just like Coca-Cola.

I won’t be using that one anymore.

4. Will this illustration be sensitive to people in the congregation?

It’s simply good manners to be sensitive to gender, age, and ethnic group. The phrase “little old lady” will turn off at least some older women; so will “girls” when talking about women. One man in my church told me how offended he was when he read in our local newspaper about an “elderly man” who was listed as 65, just his age!

5. Will this particular congregation relate to the illustration?

Do most of your listeners read Vogue or People? Do they watch professional wrestling or public television? Do they prefer jazz or country? Every church is different, so some illustrations will work better than others.

If you have a story about a king, you might make the character a ceo, a business owner, or a union boss, if the illustration can be adapted. Your listeners will be better able to put themselves into those stories than stories about people from another age and setting.

Relate also to local people, events, and places when possible. For example, if a member of your church has overcome cancer and gives permission to use the story as a sermon illustration, that will have great impact.

6. Is this illustration too detailed?

Early in my preaching ministry, I thought the only good illustration was a detailed illustration. If I told about a day in May, I would describe the weather, the color of flowers, how much rain had fallen during the month, and more.

What adds impact are relevant details. One of my favorite sports stories is about Glenn Cunningham, a student at the University of Kansas who set an American record for the indoor mile run in 1932. What makes him even more remarkable is that at age 8, his legs were so severely burned that his doctors said he would probably never walk again. Yet with hard work and perseverance, Cunningham became a winner.

The details make the story better than just, “A young man once won a record in the indoor mile run even though his legs were burned as a child and doctors told him he might never walk.” Details do have an important place if they’re the right ones and they aren’t too numerous.

7. Am I clearly differentiating true and imaginative stories?

Sometimes we add unsubstantiated details to true stories: “As David gathered the stones to fling at Goliath, he gathered the smallest from the stream, knowing that even one of these, aimed by God’s unerring hand, would be enough to knock down the giant.” These kinds of details can alter a story’s substance (and make the story saccharine).

However, imagined details that don’t change the substance of the story can help listeners. I recently heard a Bible teacher tell the story of Hosea buying back his prostitute-wife. The only biblical description of this incident is in Hosea 3:2-3: “So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, ‘You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you.'”

This teacher embellished the sparse story this way: “Imagine Gomer, Hosea’s wife, standing on the auction block, about to go to the highest bidder. Dressed in rags. No makeup or pretty clothes to attract men as she had done before. Looking at the crowd of bidders and seeing the grinning faces of men who’d had her. But then among the crowd she sees the face of her husband she’d abandoned. Imagine how stunned she would have been to see him come for her, his rightful wife, to buy her back with all he had. All for one woman who had rejected him, left him, and been with her many lovers. How can he love me so much? she must have thought.”

I liked this illustration, in spite of the license the teller took with the story. He has brought a simple transaction to life by dramatically portraying the important scene-yet he never presented his version of the story as if it really happened. He asked us only to imagine his version, and that exercise painted a beautiful picture of God’s grace.

Wayne Harvey is pastor of First Baptist Church in Sanford, Florida.

1997 © by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

—Let the preacher beware of subtracting from his effectiveness by harboring cherished personal sins

—Good sense says: Be neither an immobile statue nor an animated caricature

—Speak not too loudly or too softly. Shout and offend the refined. Speak too low and fail to be heard

—Don’t foster the suspicion that you are preaching another’s sermon and have not had time to assimilate it yourself

—Take care not to bombard people with words that have no meaning for them. Following Paul’s advice, prefer five words with understanding to ten thousand in tongues

—Speak to the heart, not just the ears

—Strive to please God, not men

—Be careful of saying anything about those, especially, who are absent; avoid preaching against anyone unless the total welfare of church and people, or the culprit’s own spiritual needs, demands it

—When necessary, speak fearlessly. Speak the truth without dissimulation. Proclaim the Word of God with faithfulness

—Let inexperienced preachers try out voice and gestures before speaking; on trees and stones, preferably. Get your friends to criticize you. Don’t despair! Keep on practicing

Excerpts from T. Waleys, De modo componendi sermones. . . cited in R. C. Petry, Preaching in the Great Tradition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1950), pp. 60-61.

1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

Books trendmeisters, speakers on the pastoral circuit-all proclaim, prophetlike, “The culture we minister in has changed. We live in a postmodern world.”

Uh, what’s a postmodern world? Is that where people read Wired, drink double cappuccinos, and buy alternative rocker Alanis Morissette’s hot-selling CD?

Postmodernism is a throw-away word that means everything and nothing. J. I. Packer, theologian at Regent College says, “Postmodernism is a word that has never secured a dictionary definition. Different people use it in different ways.”

Postmodernism is, in short, a hackneyed word ill need of definition.

Mother of all negation

I fondly recall a silver-haired woman in a church I served. She never met a new idea she liked. She criticized everything, was never for anything. Her contribution (if that’s what you call it) was negation.

She shares much in common with postmodernism, which is a reaction against something. It’s the mother of all negation. Postmodernism, a phenomenon of Western culture, is defined best by what it’s not. “The only agreed-upon element,” says Packer, “is that postmodernism is a negation of modernism.”

Modernism, which began roughly in the 1700s and allegedly ended in the 1950s, is the cultural outlook that put its faith in optimism, progress, the pursuit of objective knowledge, and science. Packer says, “Modernism … assumed that it was in the power of reason to solve all the world’s problems and to determine what anybody needed to know.”

Most “isms” have a bad reputation, and so does postmodernism. Packer says unflatteringly, “The heart of postmodernism is parasitic; it has no life of its own, [it has a life] only by a denial of what other people believe.”

Modernity spurned

In addition to being known for what it’s not, postmodernism has a few distinctives. Here are just two:

First, postmodernism doesn’t put much stock in the progress of humankind, that things will be getting better anytime soon. Modernity believed science would save the world. Today, science by no means is dead; it still rules in the universities. But the postmodern outlook has nicked it.

“Postmodernity is suspicious of science to a certain extent,” says Roger Olson, professor of theology at Bethel College. “It’s saying, ‘Science is good as long as it stays where it belongs-investigating the empirical realm.’ “

Another distinctive that gets a lot of press is the postmodern notion that all truth, even to some extent scientific knowledge, is biased and socially constructed. That is, truths are relative and depend on what one’s culture regards as truth. The forefather of this view is Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Nietzsche said humans have no access to reality, that everything is a matter of perspectives. “In fact, [Nietzsche] claims there is no ‘true world,’ ” writes Stanley J. Grenz in A Primer on Postmodernism. (Was anyone really surprised to learn that Nietzsche went insane?)

Other contemporary academicians, such as French philosopher Jacques Derrida, watered Nietzsche’s ideas and devised a method of sorts-deconstruction-to show how all truth is like Play-Doh; you can make anything you want with it. One purpose of deeconstruction is to show there are multiple meanings; there is no one right interpretation of any text.

Several years ago, I picked up one of Derrida’s books, The Ear of the Other, which deconstructed a passage from Nietzche. I couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters. Derrida’s prose is a series of non sequiturs. He’ll say one thing and then say its opposite in the same sentence—the alleged postmodern writing style. He plays with the reader, as if to say, “See, Stupid, language is malleable and can be construed in any number of ways.”

Postmodernism has gloomed on to many disciplines of the academy-history, art, English, philosophy. Take history, for example. Deconstruction flaunts the meaninglessness of trying to uncover the “truth” of some past event. What happened at the Battle of Bunker Hill? The question is considered fruitless; one can understand only a little about why the eyewitnesses chose to record what they did.

Niagara’s flow

Postmodernism isn’t just chatter by university professors in a smoke-filled faculty lounge. In the last two decades, this outlook, or intellectual mood, has become as diffuse in popular culture as smog in Los Angeles.

One expression of postmodern culture is the way in which most Americans equivocate on the issue of truth. “People are sitting loose to the idea that truth might be important,” says Packer. Most tend to sidestep the issue: “Live and let live.” Relativism is usually implicit; it’s explicitly revealed by people’s broken lives. Olson says, “Pastors see this concretely lived out in the complicated lives of their parishioners.”

Packer says, “The flow of postmodernist, Western culture is like a kind of Niagara Falls beating on top of your head, telling you, ‘What 1 feel is all that counts because what I feel is all there is.’ “

Another concrete expression is syncretism. It’s fashionable to add, for example, a dash of Zen Buddhism and a dash of Native American religion to one’s nominal Christian or Jewish beliefs. People tend to downplay theological differences-“Who can really know the truth anyway?” they say.

Still another expression is a pervasive cultural pessimism, a darkness felt in alternative rock music and seen in popular art, including movies such as the recent “Leaving Las Vegas,,, the “real life” love story of a prostitute and an alcoholic. Much of the darkness is couched in apocalyptic, ecological language: “The Planet is in trouble.” The pessimism is also detected in a crippling cynicism of politicians and the political process, revealed in the voter apathy in the recent presidential election.

Objective opportunities

Pastors rightly bristle at postmodernism’s cavalier dismissal of absolute truth, given that Christianity rises or falls on the historicity of Jesus Christ. There’s not much to cheer about in the claim that everything is relative, that nothing is secure. It seems a short step from there to nihilism. And it certainly doesn’t seem like much of an improvement on modernity.

In Can Man Live without God? Ravi Zacharias, a Christian apologist, recounts his tour of the Ohio State University campus. His tour guide began singing the glories of the Werner Center for Performing Arts, which Newsweek called “the first deconstructionist building.”

In the building are staircases that lead nowhere, into empty space. Pillars hang suspended from the ceiling. The architectural theme seems to be a series of geometrical non sequiturs. Zacharias writes, “The architect, we are duly informed, designed this building to reflect life itself—senseless and incoherent—and the ‘capriciousness of the rules that reflect life itself.’

“When the rationale was explained to me, I had just one question, ‘Did he [the architect] do the same with the foundation?’ “

Uh, probably not. This is just another example of postmodernism’s parasitic nature; without the life of modernism, there could be no postmodernism. Much of postmodernism and the culture it is creating should be mocked for the silliness it represents.

Yet there may be some things we can learn from it. Postmodernism has rightly shown us that all ideas, beliefs, and convictions about life-even science-do arise in a context. Postmodernism has stuck a needle in the ballooned arrogance of the Enlightenment. Science and technology, we’re learning, are not God.

That’s not to say, though, that all truth is socially derived, a matter of one’s perspective. Theologian Roger Olson distinguishes between objective knowledge and objective truth. There is no such thing, he says, as objective knowledge; no one can speak or write without a perspective. Everyone has a point-of-view. “We don’t arrive at knowledge of God in a purely rational path,” says Olson. “The Enlightenment project tended to ignore perspectives; it turns out, there’s no escaping perspectives.”

However, there is objective truth, says Olson, which exists in the person of Jesus Christ and in the Word of God. And that is what Christian preachers, says J. I. Packer, should focus on: “Who and what is Jesus Christ? Is he a reality with a saving status?”

No doubt postmodernism will only elevate the importance of Christian preaching. The church may be the only venue left where truth is proclaimed confidently. And it’s certainly the only place where those seeking something more than the cold, rational world of modernism can explore the deep mysteries of God.

William Willimon, professor of Christian ministry at Duke University, has said, “The good news is, we are entering a period in which the old, modern world view is losing its grip. People are wandering and exploring. We ought to be there to say to them, ‘The world too flat for you? Okay, we can help you with that. Your life an impenetrable mystery to you? We love to talk about that.’

“Secularity, our old enemy, is in big trouble.”

Postmodernism, for all its confusion, seems just one more opportunity for the church to do what it does best-be the church.

David Goetz is senior associate editor of Leadership.

1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

Civility

Percentage of Americans who:Think incivility is a serious problem: 89Think mean-spirited political campaigns are to blame: 73Think rock music is to blame: 67Think talk radio is to blame: 52Think their own behavior is uncivil: 1

U. S. News & World Report (4/22/96)

Family

Percentage of mothers of children under age 3 who are not in the workforce: 46Percentage of mothers of children under age 3 who are employed part-time: 19

U. S. News & World Report (7/1/96)

Percentage of U. S. children living apart from their biological fathers in 1960: 17Percentage of U. S. children living apart from their biological fathers in 1990: 36Juvenile violent crime arrests in 1960: 18,000Juvenile violent crime arrests in 1990: 118,000

Utne Reader (Sept.-Oct./96)

Confidence

Percentage of people who have great confidence in the military: 64Who have great confidence in the police: 58Who have great confidence in organized religion: 57Who have great confidence in the presidency: 45Who have great confidence in the justice system: 20

Emerging Trends (Vol. 18, No. 4) Princeton Religion Research Center

Religion in America

More than 65 million adult Americans attend a Christian church service ina typical week. There are fewer than 8 million Jews in this country. Mormonshave plateaued at about 5 million people. Muslims account for less than 2million, while agnostics and atheists number almost 25 million adults.

The Barna Report (Vol. 1, No. 2)

Self-image

Percentage of women age 35-44 who would not likely consider plastic surgery “to improve their looks,” even if money were no object: 68

USA Today (6/18/96)

Percentage of people in an Adweek poll who said they’d rather be rich than thin: 82

Men’s Health (Jul.-Aug./96)

Smoking

Percentage of children who recognize Mickey Mouse: 91Percentage of children who recognize Joe Camel: 91Number of cigarettes Americans smoked in 1984: 600,000,000,000Number of cigarettes Americans smoked in 1994: 486,000,000,000Number of Americans who die each day from smoking: 1,300.

Office on Smoking and Health, cited in Smart Money (9/96)

Work

Percentage of major U.S. companies that routinely test new employees for illegal drugs: 81Percentage of positive tests: 1.9Percentage of work places that have been the site of an act of violence: 33

American Management Association (4/96); Men’s Health (Jul.-Aug./96)

1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

This issue of Leadership is dedicated to helping pastors understand and minister within today’s shifting culture. The theme comes in two parts:

I. Change outside the Church.

You may find the interview with futurist Faith Popcorn, The Church’s Ten-Year Window (p. 22), both troubling and hopeful. Popcorn has no particular interest in Christianity, but surprisingly, she suggests that rampant cultural disillusionment is an opportunity for the church.

One major cultural shift in the last forty years has been the intellectual mood change from modernism to postmodernism. Leadership senior associate editor Dave Goetz explains it and its implication for ministry in The Riddle of Our Postmodern Culture (p. 52). Certainly one repercussion of postmodernism is a hyper-skepticism; in Why They Struggle to Believe (p.40), four religious seekers talk frankly about their objections to the gospel.

But how much should pastors really care about trying to understand the culture? Not too much, says Will Willimon in This Culture Is Overrated (p. 29). “In leaning over to speak to the modern world,” Willimon writes, “I fear we may have fallen in.”

II. Change inside the Church.

Since so much is changing outside the church, many people resist change inside the church. In Helping a Settled Congregation Move Ahead (p. 61), pastor John Beukema identifies seven steps to the future. Popular consultant Lyle Schaller busts the myths of bringing about change in the church in You Can’t Believe Everything You Hear about Church Growth (p. 46).

Yet one thing will never change. In The Power of Mere Words (p. 32), contributing Leadership editor Craig Brian Larson argues that more powerful than any technology are the words of a faithful preacher. God’s Word is truly changeless and eternal.

-The Editors

1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

On September 21, 1996, Henri Nouwen died of a heart attack in Hilversum,The Netherlands. Nouwen was a Catholic priest and psychologist, best knownamong Protestant pastors for his book The Wounded Healer.One of Nouwen’s themes was living our brokenness under God’s blessing.In one interview, Nouwen said, “Many people … don’t think they are loved,or held safe, and so when suffering comes they see it as an affirmation oftheir worthlessness. The great question of ministry and the spiritual lifeis to learn to live our brokenness under the blessing and not the curse.”In 1982, Leadership published an interview with Nouwen and Richard Fosteron what it takes for church leaders to know God. Founder and chair ofRenovare, Foster has written, among other books, Prayer andCelebration of Discipline. After hearing of Nouwen’s death, we rereadthe interview and were moved by its timeless and timely wisdom on the spirituallife. We offer it again in memory of the wounded healer.

Where are you currently in your spiritual journey?

Henri Nouwen: I’m in one of the most difficult periods of my life.At times I’ve felt my spiritual direction to be clear-cut; right now, however,everything is uncertain. When I came from Holland to the United States, Ibecame a diocesan priest, a psychologist, and a fellow at the Menninger Clinic.I joined the faculty at Notre Dame, taught in Holland, and came back to teachat Yale Divinity School. People started to respond more and more to whatI had to say, and that led to an increasing sense of “Yes, I obviously must have something to say.” I shouldbe happy.But these past months I’ve come face to face with my own spiritual abyss.None of this success has made me a more saintly or holy person.Last semester I traveled all over the world and spoke to large audiences.All this created a sense of having arrived. Yet my inner life was preciselythe opposite of that. More and more I felt that if God has anything to say,he doesn’t need me. I found myself experiencing two extremes at the sametime: high affirmation and great darkness.Richard Foster: Back in my earlier years of coming to God, I was veryintense. I once spent three days fasting and praying. After doing so, I feltan urging to call a man I had confidence in for his spiritual guidance. Helived quite a distance, but I called and asked him if he would come and prayfor me. He came, and I was all ready to place myself before him and let himminister to me.Instead, he sat down in front of me and started confessing his sins. I thought,I’m supposed to do that to you. After he finished, and I had prayedforgiveness for him, he said, “Now, do you still want me to pray for you?”All of a sudden I realized his discernment. He knew I had thought of himas a spiritual giant who was going to set me right. Only then did he placehis hands on me and pray for me.

What made you believe so intensely that you needed to find God?

Foster: Desperation. Not so much for me at first, but for people Isaw who needed help. Later, I began to feel how very much I also needed God.Although the hunger is deep to spend time in solitude, many of us feeltrapped by the demands of ministry.Nouwen: I’m like many pastors; I commit myself to projects and plansand then wonder how I can get them all done. This is true of the pastor,the teacher, the administrator. Indeed, it’s true of our culture, which tellsus, “Do as much as you can or you’ll never make it.” In that sense, pastorsare part of the world.I’ve discovered I cannot fight the demons of busyness directly. I cannotcontinuously say “No” to this or “No” to that, unless there is somethingten times more attractive to choose. Saying “No” to my lust, my greed, myneeds, and the world’s powers takes an enormous amount of energy.The only hope is to find something so obviously real and attractive thatI can devote all my energies to saying “Yes.” In effect, I don’t have timeto pay any attention to the distractions.One such thing I can say “Yes” to is when I come in touch with the fact thatI am loved. Once I have found that in my total brokenness I am still loved,I become free from the compulsion of doing successful things.Foster: After I finished my doctorate I went to a tiny church in SouthernCalifornia that would rank as a marginal failure on the ecclesiasticalscoreboards. I worked and planned and organized, determined to turn the churcharound. But things got worse. Anger seemed to permeate everyone: theconservatives were mad at the liberals, the liberals were mad at the radicals,and the radicals were mad at everyone else. I hated to go to pastors’ conferencesbecause I didn’t have any success stories. I was working myself to death,but it seemed to do no good.Then I spent three days with my spiritual director. Toward the end of thattime he said, “Dick, you have to decide whether you are going to be a ministerof this church or a minister of Christ.”That was a turning point. Until then I had allowed other people’s expectationsto manipulate me and my own expectations.

You both talk about receiving spiritual guidance from other people. Howdo you describe a spiritual director?

Foster: Spiritual directorship is a Christian idea. It means havingsomeone who can read my soul and give me guidance in my walk with Christ.Many churches call it “discipleship.”Nouwen: The church itself is a spiritual director. It tries to connectyour story with God’s story. To be a true part of a church community meansyou are being directed, you are being guided, you are being asked to makeconnections.The Bible is a spiritual director. People must read Scripture as a word forthemselves and ask where God speaks to them.Finally, individual Christians are also spiritual directors. The use of anindividual person in spiritual direction has as many forms and styles asthere are people. A spiritual director is a Christian man or woman who practicesthe disciplines of the church and of the Bible, and to whom you are willingto be accountable for your life in God. That guidance can happen once a week,once a month, or once a year. It can happen for ten minutes or ten hours.In times of loneliness or crisis, that person prays for you.

How does a pastor find such a person?

Foster: This is itself a great adventure in prayer. I ask God to bringme someone, and then I wait for the salvation of God to come.My first director was an older woman who worked nights in a large hospital.Six days a week at eight in the morning, the end of the night shift, we mettogether to learn about prayer and to share our experiences with God. Webegan to learn what it means to walk with Christ, and the experience wasa wonderful one for both of us.

But many pastors don’t feel there’s anyone they can turn to.

Nouwen: If you are seriously interested in the spiritual life, findinga spiritual director is no problem. Many are standing around waiting to beasked. However, sometimes we don’t really want to get rid of our loneliness.There is something in us that wants to do it by ourselves. I constantly seethis in my own life.A spiritual director is not a great guru who has it all together; it’s justsomeone who shares his or her sinful struggles, and by doing so, revealsthere is a Presence who is forgiving.Foster: In a pastorate in Oregon, I realized I needed people to helpme. In a dozen ways, I said, “Folks, I love you, and I need your help. Iwould love it if you would come to my office not just when you have a problemor when you are angry. Come any time and give me a booster shot of prayer.”People began to stop by for ten minutes or so and pray for me. Grinning,they would say, “I’ve come to give you a booster shot of prayer.” I’d geton my knees before these people in an act of submission and let them prayfor me.Nouwen: Richard, I like the idea of asking people to come pray foryou, but for some congregations that might be a little too explicit or formal.The first thing for me to communicate to people is that I would really loveto know them. In other words, I say, “Listen, come and tell me what is happening.Drop in. Interrupt me.”I’m always running somewhere, and I need people to say, “Stop! You didn’tnotice I was trying to say something to you.”

But how do you cope with those interruptions?

Nouwen: What I’m talking about is having a spiritual attitude thatwants to be surprised by God. We crowd our thoughts with so many agenda itemsthat we don’t take time to listen to God. God doesn’t just talk to me atthe end or at the beginning of a project, but all the time; he may have mechange directions in the middle.The minister in one sense is a useless person, useless in that he or shecan be used at anytime by anyone for anything. I was talking yesterday toa priest in Philadelphia who said, “I’m so worried about the summer; I’ma white priest in a black neighborhood. What do I do?”I replied, “Be sure to walk the streets. Make it clear that you are there.You don’t have to talk all the time; just hang around. Tell the people youdon’t want anything. Act totally useless, waiting to be with them and lovethem.”

How is love best communicated?

Nouwen: I remember a student whose father was never able to expressaffection to him. The boy decided to become a minister and came to divinityschool. I was one of his teachers. Even though others think I’m a good teacher,he told me, “I never enjoyed anything you were saying. I came to class, andI left it.”I tried to be interesting, but he couldn’t hear an adult male tell him anythingbecause it reminded him of his father.Once when he was feeling sick, I was biking around one evening and suddenlyrealized I was near where he lived. I decided to drop in. I said, “I’ve beenthinking about you today. Are you feeling better?”He said, “You came to see me? You thought of me?”I touched him, put my hand on his hand, and said, “I love you, I really do;that’s why I’m here.” And I meant it; I really felt it. Later, he told mehe’d cried for several hours; he had never heard an adult male say, “I loveyou.” He added, “That taught me all I wanted to learn.”Foster: One day I had a strong feeling to call a parishioner who isa college chaplain. I said, “John, I didn’t call you to ask you to do anything.I just wanted to say ‘Hi.”On the other end, there was a deep sigh of relief. He said, “I’m so gladyou called.” Then he began to share a deep inner need. One of the greatestexpressions of love is simply to notice people and to pay attention to them.Nouwen: If you really want to know God, go to his people. Go to yourbarber and talk about God. Tell the carpenter about what you’re experiencing.Take time to read the lives of the saints. They always knock you off yourfeet because they tell you the preoccupations you have aren’t the ones youshould have. Get in touch with those women and men who did crazy things likefalling in love with God.Foster: I agree. But don’t let your experience get behind your reading.Rather than read twenty books on servanthood, get the idea, and then servepeople. Some of us have experimented with this little prayer: “Lord, leadme today to someone whom I can serve.”Also, pastors should take spiritual retreats. Moses did, Elijah did, David,Paul, and Peter did. Jesus took time to retreat.

What should happen at a spiritual retreat?

Nouwen: One word: prayer.Foster: I think the Protestant world needs to rethink the whole questionof retreats. I remember preaching a sermon about the need for “tarrying places,”based on Peter’s experience at Joppa, and then adding, “If any of you wantto take a spiritual retreat, I will find a place for you to go.”One individual took me up on it, and I called every retreat center I couldfind in Southern California. Everyone gave me the same story-they had facilitiesto accommodate 500 people, but not just a single individual. As far as Icould determine, Catholic retreat centers were the only places that wouldtake an individual person. Why can’t we build places for this in our churches?Nouwen: That’s an excellent idea. I know of parish houses in Canadawhere the third floor is arranged as a retreat place.Foster: You don’t always have to go away. You can have retreats byarranging a room in your house for prayer and quiet reflection. I know onefamily that has a chair designated as a quiet chair. When someone sits inthat chair, he or she is to be left alone.Nouwen: The discipline of silence has been very important in my teaching.Last semester I offered a course in spiritual direction. One requirementwas that students spend an hour of silence with a selected Scripture passageduring our afternoon together. After that hour of silence, I invited themto come together in small groups and share what they had experienced. Manyrealized for the first time that there is something other than discussion.They would say, “I was impressed that the Lord had something to say to me,and it frightened me when it happened.”

Continued in next article.

1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

Is Dilbert on Your Board?

A New York Times bestseller may explain why church leadership is so tough.

I don’t understand. My lay leaders work in the corporate world and daily deal with technology and change, yet our board just voted down a request for new software and tabled a recommendation to improve Sunday school.

If you identify with this statement, you may need to read The Dilbert Principle: a cubicle’s-eye view of bosses, meetings, management fads, & other workplace afflictions (HarperCollins, $20, 335 pages) by Scott Adams. This humorous book will do more than make you laugh

Scott Adams has created Dilbert, the title character in a syndicated cartoon strip and a runaway bestseller book. This fictitious cartoon character symbolizes pain in the work place. Even Newsweek featured Dilbert on its cover with the headline “Work Is Hell.” The issues addressed by Adams are the anger and frustration of white-collar workers, many of whom show up in church on Sunday

For seventeen years, Adams worked in an office cubicle similar to the one Dilbert occupies and deeply resents. The confining cubicle is one major symbol of the dehumanization in the corporate world. Adams makes a strong case that the corporate way of life is destructive for the employee and counterproductive for the corporation. In an interview with Newsweek, Adams says of his years in the corporate world, “I never once did anything that helped a customer.”

Gallows humor

Most of Adams’s humor is directed at upper-level managers who establish policy without thinking about what it does to the employee. In the chapter, “Great Lies of Management,” Adams lists thirteen that managers tell their employees, including: (1) Employees are our most valuable asset, (2) I have an open-door policy, (3) You could earn more money under the new plan, (4) We’re reorganizing to better serve our customers, and (5) The future is bright

In one cartoon, the manager in a staff meeting is telling three employees, “I have been saying for years that employees are our most valuable asset.” In the next frame the manager continues, “It turns out that I was wrong. Money is our most valuable asset. Employees are ninth.” In the third frame, a balding, nerdy type character with horn-rimmed glasses says, “I’m afraid to ask what came in eighth.” The manager’s dead-pan response is: “Carbon paper.

One of the more provocative chapters, and the source of some good cartoons, is the subject of change. In a telling paragraph, Adams writes, “People hate change and with good reason. Change makes us stupider, relatively speaking. Change adds new information to the universe; information that we don’t know. Our knowledge-as percentage of all the things that can be known-goes down a tick every time something changes.” Change is portrayed as an attempt by those in authority to manipulate and deceive

Recently I asked three friends, who serve in middle management of downsizing corporations, if the cynical attitude of Dilbert reflects their workplace. Each said that cynicism has become the way of emotionally handling the uncertainty of job security. One perceptive fellow said, “Cynicism is gallows humor for those waiting for their careers to be executed. The only energy left in our office comes from anger.

Dilbert at church

What happens when Dilbert goes to church? Our white-collar, corporate cowboys may ride the angry, cynical beast into worship services, Bible studies, and church board meetings. When they attend board and committee meetings all day at work, then hear some of the same vocabulary that evening at church, how do they respond

This could explain why some people are so resistant to change in church. As one frustrated layman told me when his pastor suggested adding a third Sunday school, “I need some place in my life that is not being reorganized.

As church leaders, we may need to look at the culture in which people work before we paint them as enemies of our program. Perhaps we should take seriously charges that sweat shops for the soul and mind do exist, and factor this into the culture of our local church

We are seeing a renewed interest in faith and the work place. At least two religious publishers are promoting faith-in-the-work-place materials. Two secular prophets of career excellence, Stephen Covey and Tom Peters, call people in the work place to establish the “why” before they seek to demand improvement in the “how.” Although certainly not Adams’s purpose, his humor has made me aware that I have not addressed the issue of the call of life in my preaching. There’s more to life than work

Generational cynicism

There is also a generational issue that Adams misses that may have significance for church

Dilbert is obviously a baby boomer, taught to challenge authority. In some ways Dilbert is similar to the humor of the formerly popular television program “M*A*S*H.” In that series the fictional Hawkeye Pierce was always challenging authority, and writers made sure those in authority were painted as self-centered buffoons. The generation Adams represents is the same generation that made “M*A*S*H” one of the most popular sitcoms in television history

It may be that cynicism is more generational than work-related. The rebels of the sixties are now in their late forties and early fifties-the ages of many church board members. Read The Dilbert Principle, and you may meet some of your well-intentioned dragons

Gary Fenton Dawson Memorial Baptist Church Birmingham, Alabama

Portable Seminar

Three new videos from pollster George Barna train leaders about money, vision, and youth.

This meeting is out of hand, thought Pastor Max, leader of a harried knot of elders. We can’t figure out what the youth really want. And now we’re arguing about how to pay for these questionable ideas.

Money was more than tight at Cornerstone Community Church, it was squeezed into non-existence. To make matters worse, anger over money propelled the discussion to the church’s overall vision-or lack thereof

Max could have found solace in knowing other church leaders are asking the same matrix of questions. Three new videos by George Barna, president of Barna Research Group, and author of many books on trends in society and church, can help solve Max’s dilemma

Understanding Today’s Teens (Gospel Light, $19.99) focuses attention on what teens say about themselves rather than how the church views them. Using his standard polling and diagnostic tools, Barna displays how the worldview of today’s teen is almost incomprehensible to his or her baby boomer parents. For example, Barna discovered that most teens rank ‘doing well at school’ as a high priority for their lives. Lest parents gloat over that, he adds, “They value high scholastic attainment because it is the only way they will receive love and acceptance from parents.

Unfortunately, he then leaves the viewer to figure out how to respond to that sobering thought

How to Increase Giving in the Church (Gospel Light, $19.99) assumes the viewer is familiar with biblical mandates about money and focuses on the pragmatics of giving trends, tithing, and corporate accountability. Barna points out that Americans give $100 billion per year to charities, and therefore, the church should be concerned where that money is going. He devotes a good portion of the video to analyzing types of givers and how to disciple some of them to new patterns of giving

For example, Barna labels one group of givers as Misers: people who give small amounts, infrequently. Barna says, “To these people, the widow’s offering of two lepta is their role model.” He prescribes a healthy dose of fellowship to help the Miser: “Deeper relationships will help the Miser feel more a part of the ministry.” He then outlines similar prescriptions for Altruists, Investors, and others

The third video, Turning Vision into Action (Gospel Light, $19.99), lays a track for a pastor to “rip people out of their comfort zones.” Barna observes that “visionaries are irritants. . . . [T]his is why they are not initially received very well, but loved later.

Barna captures the essential mandate of visionary leadership with two observations

—A visionary leader must accept that he may be only one step in a larger vision for the church, much of which he will not initiate

—A visionary leader stresses the need to build partnerships with other visionaries of like synergy, whether in the congregation or in the broader Christian realm

Of the three videos, Turning Vision into Action outlines the clearest path to the future, taking the viewer from statistics to starting points to strategy

The three videos are part of a larger series by Gospel Light called “The Leading Edge Church Leadership Series” and will work well for leadership training situations. But be prepared for a “talking head” lecture with no frills (though Barna’s use of statistics helps maintain interest)

These videos will give Pastor “Mad” Max the direction he needs to lead his elders into the future

Michael Phillips Riverside Alliance Church Kalispell, Montana

1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

A pilot and his mechanic kept driving each other crazy. One day the pilot turned his plane into the shop with a complaint, "Unfamiliar noise in engine." The next day the plane was back in service. The pilot checked the log book to see what problem had been found.The entry read, "Ran engine continuously for four hours. Noise now familiar."

One of the greatest barriers to change in the church is becoming so familiar with the "noise" that the congregation no longer recognizes it as trouble. The pastor is often more sensitive to the knocking need for change. How can a pastor help a church hear the need for change and respond?

I have observed seven steps.

Step 1: Commit to the knowledge process

In my first pastorate in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, I was visiting a woman who was a long-time member. At the church for almost a year, I was beginning to feel at home.

The homey feeling evaporated when, with a steely cold New England gaze, she said, "Young man, you are not a Cape Codder, and you never will be a Cape Codder!"

Unfortunately I believed her; rather than committing myself to know the Cape Codders, I withdrew. I did what I was gifted at and most comfortable doing: preaching and leading. But I discovered that my gifts lacked full potency if cut off from people. The intervening dozen years have underscored the value of committing my time and energy to the knowledge process.

In coming to my current pastorate, I publicly promised to spend time with as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. This helped build trust in my leadership. The more people feel they know me and the more I make an effort to know them, the more they will be receptive to change.

I also read every document I could find on our eighty-five-year history. I asked questions of everyone from past church members to the village barber. Now I've even surprised staff and long-time members with information about the church they didn't know or didn't remember.

The time spent in the knowledge process deals with two major obstacles to change. It calms people's fear I will negate their past. And it calms people's fear I will push the church into something that doesn't fit who they are.

Step 2: Cultivate a perception of crisis

It was our first elders' retreat since I became pastor. As much prayer preceded that event as any I'd been part of. We were seeking God for answers to our future ministry, our declining membership, and our landlocked facility in Toronto.

We came to quick consensus that God wanted us to stay in our community. At that point the chairman produced a letter from a neighboring church. "Since we've decided not to relocate," he said, "perhaps this offer is something the Lord wants us to consider." The letter inquired whether we were open to the idea of a merger. The church was affiliated with a different denomination but was in a similarly stagnant situation. Their thirty-year-old daughter church also was included in the proposal, creating the potential of a three-way merger.

Within weeks we began the intense, year-long process of prayer, discovery, and organization. The result was an overwhelming "no" from all three churches, but I couldn't have known the good that would come out of the process.

For years there had been attempts at significant change in our church. When I candidated, the elders told me that if significant changes weren't made soon, the church would die within five years. This dire, and probably unfounded, pronouncement was even made to the congregation. Yet it wasn't until we invested a year in serious merger talks that the congregation finally believed in a potential crisis.

Within four years we had a new building and a new organizational structure. Today the church ministers to four times as many people as it did ten years ago. I didn't plan that particular crisis, but I did learn how important it is for a congregation to perceive crisis if change is to occur.

Crisis may be the only way the congregation will hear the troubling noise in the engine. I'm not advocating that pastors invent crises; just make use of the ones that arise.

Step 3: Craft a consensus

The elders were beginning to initiate change, but we seemed to be spinning our wheels. "Let's have lunch with Ralph," a long-time elder said. Ralph was the last guy I wanted to bring into the situation. He was somewhat self-important, loquacious, lacking in spiritual depth, and, for all his years at the church, he had never held an official leadership position. I knew he had the ear of a certain group, but I didn't think it was significant. The elder convinced me to go.

That lunch was the first of several. Along the way the elder got Ralph to propose ideas I'd recommended and to contribute several I hadn't thought of. Most important, by bringing other key influencers on board, Ralph helped us out of our rut.

"We're going to need money for this," Ralph said. "Don't worry about it. There's more money in this church than anyone knows. Leave that to me." I did.

I learned that winning key people is half the battle in bringing about change. I didn't sense Ralph matured tremendously in the process, but the Lord used Ralph to bring changes that resulted in the salvation and spiritual growth of many others.

In The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner write, "Leaders involve, in some way, all those who must live with the results." Through important periods of change, I have used several methods to involve those who must live with the results.

—Gathering focus groups from within the church to help test and sharpen the issues.—Involving key influencers early in the process, which helps win them over, gives them opportunity to broaden the base of support, and add depth to my ideas.—Presenting written proposals to key people and groups as drafts, starting points for discussion rather than completed documents. Resistance to allowing anyone to tamper with my perfect plan is poison.—Delegating parts of the research process to as many other people or ad hoc groups as possible.—Holding question-and-answer sessions. The earlier in the process and the more inviting of ideas, the better.—Taking every opportunity not to take the credit.

Step 4: Conceptualize the promised land

Unless the pastor can picture the promised land, he may lose the participation of two different groups of people: the "Marthas" and "Marys," patterned after Jesus' friends from Bethany.

"Martha" has taught three- and four-year-olds, or been an usher, or served in the nursery, or cleaned up after church dinners, or written to missionaries, or done the landscaping. Unless I conceptualize the promised land for Martha, she will grow weary. She has to see the priceless value of her labor as it relates to the larger ministry of the church.

In a recent talk to a group of ushers-greeters and nursery workers, I said, "On Sunday morning, you people have the two most important jobs in this church. To visitors, how they are greeted and how their children are cared for will be more important than how I preach. Without your ministry, all these visitors will probably not come back again."

One long-time usher replied, "It's about time somebody realized that."

"Mary" represents those who will not involve themselves without a vision of the promised land. Years ago an extremely talented family left our church. We had a specific plan for change that would enable us to grow and expand. Yet this family kept asking annoying questions: "Why are we doing this? How will these changes help us to accomplish what God wants for us, beyond physical growth? What will our church look like when all this is over?"

It was demoralizing to lose this family, yet now I realize the validity of their questions and the missing part of our plan for change. Our vision was not significant enough. To me it was exciting simply because it was a drastic change from the status quo.

When we do picture the promised land for people, they find motivation.

Once, right before presenting major change proposals, I preached a sermon on Joshua 14: "Caleb offered no excuses that the city walls were too big, his enemy too strong, his people too impossible. … He left a legacy of wholeheartedness. … The question is, What will we leave for the next generation? What great challenge has God called us to meet? What kind of ministry will reach our children with the gospel?"

One result was that an 80-year-old woman caught the vision. "I've been thinking about craft classes," she told me, "as a way of ministering to our community. Would it be all right if I tried to organize something like that?"

A "female Caleb," she envisioned craft classes complete with child care, refreshments, and a simple gospel message. She saw it as an entry point for retired couples, stay-at-home moms, and shift workers. This woman not only understood the ministry picture we had drawn for our church, she also saw how she fit into that picture.

Step 5: Communicate redundantly

As part of a major shift in direction, the elders and board spent the better part of a year drafting changes to the constitution. I preached a series of four sermons communicating its underlying biblical principles. We published a paper that explained what we had done, and why, and mailed one copy to each member. Later we put another copy in every church mailbox. Finally, we scheduled two open sessions for the congregation. The first meeting gave information, restating what was published. The second meeting was open to questions.

At the meeting one man stood and said, "I don't know why you're trying to shove this new constitution down our throats. We haven't even had a chance to talk this through."

After an uncomfortable silence, numerous people responded without being recognized by the moderator: "You should have come to the question-and-answer meetings." "Didn't you read the information paper? It was all in there."

Sheepishly, the dissenter relinquished the floor. The new constitution passed unanimously.

You can't overdo communication. Lyle Schaller says, "All important messages should be sent out on at least five different channels of communication."

Step 6: Clarify criticism

Two of our key younger leaders were presenting ideas for a major addition to our building. They had done their homework and provided charts, conceptual drawings, anecdotes from our history, and energetic enthusiasm. The two had anticipated every question.

Then, right near the end, Sam, a well-respected, fifty-something member, made a speech. In two minutes Sam seemed to undo what had been done the previous two hours.

"We can't afford this," he carped. "Look at how few of us there are. Out of all the people here, look at how many are retired or will retire soon. I suggest we forget this grandiose idea and hold on to what we've got before we lose that."

My mouth hung open. I didn't expect this from Sam, a former board chair. Singlehandedly he delayed further discussion.

Two months later my wife and I received an invitation to attend a party-for Sam's early retirement. Later, after Sam and his wife moved to Florida, I put the two incidents together-his stonewalling and his retirement. I concluded that knowing of his retirement and move, Sam likely felt he needed to protect the congregation from the removal of his spiritual and monetary contributions. I still felt he was wrong, but the incident encouraged me to try to understand why someone opposes a change.

Now, when I encounter opposition to an innovation, I ask the person to help me understand what they object to and why. For example, several people objected when we turned the sanctuary into a multi-purpose room, although it was pure necessity that led us in that direction. I discovered a variety of reasons for opposition.

"What about the flags?" said one veteran of World War II. "We can't have a bunch of basketballs knocking them off the wall."

We eventually found a way to protect this display rather than remove it completely (which I had initially assumed we would do). The other objections were handled, except one, which included translation of a passage from Scripture: "God says my house shall be called a house of prayer, and you have turned it into a gymnasium." We used the objection to highlight the truth that there is no longer any earthly structure that is God's house; the people of God are his building.

This discussion was helpful to everyone except the critic, but we had taken time to answer his criticism. When we voted, he happened to be out of the country; the proposal passed unanimously.

When criticism of proposed change comes, I evaluate: Did I fail to communicate redundantly, to build consensus, or to commit enough time to the knowledge process? This keeps me from being too hasty to blame critics. Once we have tried to understand the criticism and answer the questions, if we are still confident that this is God's direction, it is vital to continue on.

Step 7: Complete all you can while you can

I looked around the table at our focus group. The focus group was gathered in my home, since the church had no facility. The church was preparing to move into a new building, with a new constitution and philosophy of ministry.

Our purpose was to use this group as a sounding board. I excitedly showed them new logos, structural diagrams, and vision statements. When I got into the specifics-schedule changes, program ideas-I hit the saturation point.

"Wait a minute, John," said a young professional woman. "Some of this is just going to have to wait. We can't handle any more change right now. We need time to enjoy our new building and get used to the new structure."

Outwardly I remained calm (I think). Inwardly I contemplated whether we would have to be satisfied with fewer changes than I had envisioned. The window of opportunity would close for a time.

No matter how glorious and spiritually productive the changes may be, a time will come when the congregation cannot take even one more change. Even the most minor adjustments may then be upsetting. So I intentionally planned not to introduce change once we moved into the new building, at least for a while.

The important point is: Do all you can while the window is open.

John Beukema is pastor of The Village Church in Western Springs, Illinois.

1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

—Samuel M. Sherrard is the new president and chief executive officer of Youth for Christ International (YFCI). Sherrard, 55, founded Youth for Christ in Colombo in his native Sri Lanka in 1966. He became executive director of Youth for Christ in Hawaii in 1974 and YFCI Americas area director in 1994. For the past 18 years, Sherrard has also pastored Leeward Community Church in Pearl City, Oahu, now the largest Christian and Missionary Alliance church in Hawaii.

—The Russian Orthodox Church has taken formal steps to begin a canonization process of Nicholas II, Russia’s last czar. Nicholas, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children were executed by revolutionist Bolsheviks in 1918, the beginning of an atheist Communist reign that lasted until 1991. Unlike the Catholic church, which bases sainthood on holiness or miracles, martyrdom itself qualifies as a condition of sainthood in the Orthodox church.

—The Church of England has appointed its first pub chaplain, 57-year-old layman Colin Shaw. In the unpaid post, Shaw gives counsel to patrons at Cambridge Blue, a tavern in the university city. Shaw, who studied pastoral theology at Cambridge University after retiring, has been a pub regular for seven years..

Copyright © 1996 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

If the name Spiros Zodhiates does not roll trippingly off the evangelical tongue, neither does the man nor his ministry fit the classic evangelical mold. This year the Greek immigrant marks his fiftieth year at the helm of amg International, but Zodhiates has yet to become a household name.

Even evangelical insiders who know him well are at a loss to characterize him. “The American Wild West gone missions,” one missiologist observes finally.

It is an apt description for this 74-year-old Cyprus-born missions maverick who across five decades built the fledgling American Mission to the Greeks into AMG International, which today undertakes publishing (Pulpit Helps and The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible), health services (with hospitals in Greece and India), “newspaper evangelism” (in 20 countries), and church planting (200 congregations in Muslim Indonesia alone).

A study in contrastsMoments after inviting me into his modestly furnished home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Zodhiates the scholar delves into the significance of an important Greek word in the New Testament, then, in the same breath, Zodhiates the evangelist declares a desire “to raise enough money to place a gospel message in Playboy.”

With an earned doctor of theology degree, Zodhiates has devoted his life to studying the Greek language and the Greek New Testament, authoring about 50 books and reference works. Working off his kitchen table, Zodhiates is focusing on his latest project, a word-by-word commentary on the Greek New Testament. He expects to labor on it for the next ten years. “This will be my biggest contribution to the Christian world,” he says, “if the Lord allows me to live that long.”

Another of Zodhiates’s proud achievements is his collection of 50,000 religious volumes. Each page of each book has been subject indexed, a project that a lone worker took 25 years to accomplish. He hands me a tome with yellowed leaves and proclaims, “Of all those books, I have reduced the two most important down to the Greek New Testament and this one.” It is a Greek concordance originally published in 1897 and last reprinted in 1957.

From these two works—and from his native Greek tongue—he is writing his word commentary, using paper and pencil.

Worldwide outreachAMG’s ministry is as varied as Zodhiates’s interests. What started as a soul-winning mission to Greeks is now a multifaceted relief and evangelistic organization that beams Christian radio broadcasts into China, runs 18 child-care centers in the Philippines, mails 6,000 Gospel of John booklets a month in Russia, sponsors and educates 7,000 children in Guatemala, and works in five leper colonies in India. It operates orphanages in Bangladesh and Albania, Christian bookstores in Australia and Spain. In addition to its churches in Indonesia, amg runs a Bible school and a newly opened seminary there.

The list of ministries runs through 50 countries and into nearly two dozen distinct ministry areas, including the mission’s trademark outreach, in which ads presenting the gospel are placed in national newspapers.

Vision-driven, rather than results-oriented, Zodhiates has never catered to the American preoccupation with meticulously credited successes, cleanly defined lines of responsibility, or, above all, measurable results.

“Why try to measure the immeasurable?” he says. “We can never know the effect of our work. The results are for God.”

Instead, this Mediterranean transplant, who after 50 years still speaks with a discernible accent, employed free-ranging methods, which, if sometimes untidy, are reminiscent of early Christian missions.

Accent on creativityThe Zodhiates approach nurtures flexibility, creativity, and ministry balance. It emphasizes reshaping the organization to fit the needs of people as well as using their professional and spiritual gifts.

Whereas other mission organizations “liked to tell where each person belonged, I didn’t,” Zodhiates says. “If you were to come to AMG someday and say, ‘I have this particular ministry in mind, and this is what I believe God is calling me to do,’ I’d shake hands with you, see what your needs are, and then try to meet them.”

The result is a ministry collaboration that has zigzagged around the globe. After coming to AMG in 1946, Zodhiates began to broadcast Scripture studies over the radio and eventually turned those expositions into books, which became the foundation of amg’s publishing arm, which last year grossed $1.6 million.

While delivering 15 tons of the Modern Greek New Testament to the island of Crete in 1949, he was approached by a barefoot girl begging for bread. Moved by the girl’s plight, Zodhiates determined that AMG needed to meet not only the spiritual needs but the physical needs of the destitute in Greece. He began raising funds to provide medicine and food for Greek children. Over the years, amg has supported children in 23 orphanages in that country.

In the 1960s, after an Orthodox priest in Greece brought Zodhiates to trial nine times on charges of proselytism, he refused to be stymied. AMG opened a new outreach to Muslims in Egypt. “My Lord was guided by the need that existed,” Zodhiates explains.

By not following all the standard ways of operating an overseas ministry, Zodhiates was sometimes ahead of his time. From the start he depended on nationals instead of Americans to do AMG’s overseas work. Even today AMG has only 15 North Americans stationed abroad. “His philosophy was that the best way to reach the locals is with the locals,” said Tasos Ioannidis, a 31-year-old Greek immigrant and MIT graduate who serves on AMG’s executive committee.

This entrepreneurial spirit also shows itself in the ways Zodhiates has found to fund his ministries. In 1966, Zodhiates felt led of the Lord to build a hospital in Thessaloniki, Greece. It took ten years to complete it, but today Saint Luke’s admits 1,300 patients a month, with its profits being channeled into AMG’s not-for-profit ministries around the world.

Zodhiates has used this approach on a personal scale as well. In the early 1950s, he borrowed money to invest in a rental property of 24 units. The venture worked, and because of its income, Zodhiates has never allowed the amg board to set his salary above $275 a week or to pay him book royalties.

When other parachurch organizations tended to settle neatly into either evangelistic outreach or relief work, amg tenaciously maintained an emphasis on both. From Zodhiates’s perspective, hospitals, feeding centers, churches in Muslim countries, and newspaper evangelism naturally grow out of each other.

The ministry to children and lepers in India, for instance, flourished when a billionaire shoe manufacturer in Germany heard Zodhiates speak at his church. He began heavily financing AMG’s work in India as well as establishing his own leprosy clinics there.

Overcoming discouragementSince a stroke two years ago, Zodhiates has frequented his office at amg less and less. The day-to-day administration is now carried on by Ioannidis, his son-in-law Paul Jenks, and two others.

But his presence is felt in every office and in every decision made. It is also present on the walls in Zodhiates’s office. One plaque reads, “I will not gratify the devil by being discouraged.”

Hanging nearby is a framed photo of Spiros with a smiling Indian boy in his arms. “The boy has leprosy,” Ioannidis told me. “The photo means a lot to Dr. Zodhiates because, when he held the boy, the boy told him, ‘You are the first person who ever hugged me.’ ” To that child, a little wildness in missions has made all the difference.

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