Jonah and Pastoral Excellence
The following is excerpted from a sermon by UMC Bishop Sally Dyck, delivered November 2006 at the Minnesota Annual Conference Gateways Retreat in St. Cloud, Minn.
Since I came to Minnesota, the conversations we’ve had about pastoral excellence have always been a little uncomfortable. Excellence is a word that seems “over the top” for many. Who among us can claim excellence? It’s certainly an aspiration rather than description of our ministries.
At the beginning of one such discussion last year, when I posed the question “What are you excellent at in ministry?,” you were silent. Silence is not a bad thing because it can give time for truly reflective responses. But someone stood up and said, “Well, we’re shy about saying what we’re good at.” In other words, excellence seems to connote bragging or boasting—neither of which we wish to promote.
Some lobbied for us to use the phrase “pastoral effectiveness” instead of excellence. Effectiveness has to do with accomplishments and even quantity. But excellence has to do with quality; a goodness above all others. I have grown to appreciate “excellence” because it is a quality that exceeds our abilities, skills, effort, limitations and even tenure. Excellence means we’re not in this ministry on our own; God’s presence, power, and guidance inspire our effectiveness.
The word “excellent” is found in the Scriptures in the writings of Paul, who refuses to boast except in the Lord. He uses the word in the midst of one of the most conflicted churches known to Christendom: the one in Corinth. You know the passage: 1 Cor. 12:31b. It follows the list of functions, skills, and gifts within the body of Christ. Paul finishes the list by saying, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.” I interpret that to mean that beyond gifts and skills, ministry has a depth and quality that surpasses our human abilities. It reminds us that excellence requires God’s presence and love.
As a result of our discussions last year and as an outgrowth of my reading of the Scriptures this year, I’d like to take a different tack and look at pastoral excellence through the ministry of the prophet Jonah. As Eugene Peterson says in his introduction to the book of Jonah in The Message:
“Jonah is not a hero too high and mighty for us to identify with—he doesn’t do anything great. . . . We find Jonah as a companion in our ineptness. . . . Even when Jonah does it right (like preaching, finally, in Nineveh) he does it wrong (by getting angry at God). But the whole time, God is working within and around Jonah’s very ineptness and accomplishing his purposes in him.”
Jonah is an anti-hero instead of a super-hero like Paul, who might intimidate us. Jonah is almost comical and yet engaged in a dramatic personal relationship with God and a prophetic ministry with people, not just in Nineveh, but all along the way.
Unlike other books of prophecy, Jonah is about the message and the prophet. Scholars indicate that people of ancient times didn’t sit around wondering if it all happened as it said—whether the whale was a big fish or something else, for instance—but would laugh uproariously at the twists and turns of the story of this hapless prophet. We would do well to dismiss all historical criticism as well as biblical literalism for a few moments and enjoy the text as it relates to our topic.
Setting the Context of Ministry Today
The story begins with God’s call to Jonah. As The Message phrases it, God tells Jonah to get “on your feet and on your way.” God called Jonah to go to Nineveh but Jonah—like many United Methodist elders when called by their bishop or district superintendent—was not interested in going to Nineveh. He wanted to go to Tarshish. He wasn’t rejecting God’s call, but defining it for himself.
Just what or where was Tarshish? Commentaries say it may have been Sardinia, Carthage, a city in Spain, or a geographical metaphor. Tarshish is described in 1 Kings 10:22 as the place where Solomon’s ships would bring in exotic luxuries: gold, silver, ivory, monkeys, and peacocks. It was perhaps a “far-off and sometimes idealized port,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (pp. 518-19) suggests.
Tarshish is the “perfect” church! Our dream church! It is the church where . . .
- Everyone has been on an Emmaus or Cursillo walk;
- People bring their Bibles to worship and follow along with the preacher;
- It holds the community’s regard as central to its survival because of the church’s helpful outreach programs;
- Small groups sprout up like dandelions in the spring;
- Everyone knows their gifts and uses them for the good of the church;
- Growth is occurring and money is not a problem;
- The pastor either owns her own home or the parsonage is fabulous;
- The people never fight or have conflict and always hold the pastor in high regard; and
- It’s a “far-off and sometimes idealized” appointment. It’s a dream place where no one lives.
There is no Tarshish. Tarshish is the Church of Lake Wobegon, where all the people are strong disciples, good at looking and reaching out into the community, and above average in their spiritual walk with Christ. Although Tarshish doesn’t exist, that doesn’t keep us from wanting to go there. But excellent ministry doesn’t happen in Tarshish. It happens in Nineveh.
Jonah paid the fare to Tarshish and jumped on a ship headed toward what he thought was the perfect place for ministry. What’s the fare we pay to live in our dreams? Frustration at a congregation that doesn’t grow? Unhealthy and unholy habits that keep you from being your best, even excellent, self? Reluctance and resistance are in all of us, just like Jonah. Learning, growing, and being stretched don’t always feel comfortable.
Jonah jumps on a ship, and soon the ship is in a huge storm, threatening everyone’s life, including his own. It even says that God sent the storm and the ship was about to break to pieces. Everyone was afraid. Sailors were running about, trying to keep the ship from falling apart. They called upon their gods for help.
On this great ship called the Church, don’t we spend a lot of time running around in fear, calling upon the gods of church growth, leadership management, gimmicks, and techniques to save our ship?
A “perfect storm” is threatening the Church, especially mainline churches like ours. In Resurrecting Excellence, L. Gregory Jones and Kevin R. Armstrong comment (p. 161) that the Church faces the perfect storm of “shrinking membership, aging buildings, [and] unhealthy but long-living clergy” (p. 161). The result is a church of highly anxious, if not fearful, clergy and laity. It feels as if everything from our own faith to the local church to the denomination to the integrity of Christianity threatens to come apart at the seams!
The sailors’ reaction to the storm was to find someone to blame. They drew straws—a method of determining blame that is probably as good as our own—and Jonah drew the short straw. So they began to grill him: “Confess. Why this disaster?”
In the perfect storm of the church today, we too are quick to assign blame. Everyone claims to know the “cause” for the Church threatening to come apart.
What or who is your favorite “cause?” Who or what do you “blame”? Here’s a few possibilities to get you started:
- Bishops and other church leaders
- The appointment system
- Apportionments
- Cultural wars
- Sexuality debates in the church
- Declining birth rates among members of mainline denominations
- Recreational opportunities that keep people busy elsewhere on weekends
- Discretionary income that is spent on everything but the church
- Lack of spiritual discipline
- Lax membership requirements
- Clergywomen and the feminization of the church
- Conservative evangelicals
- Liberals
The sailors “threw everything they were carrying overboard to lighten the ship.” To achieve pastoral excellence, what do we leaders need to throw overboard to lighten the Church’s load? How can we pare down to the essentials of what it means to be church? Are we asking ourselves, “Why church?” These are basic, “zero-based” questions that call us back to the essentials of being Church.
Ministry of Body, Mind, and Spirit: In the Belly of the Whale
But what does Jonah do in the perfect storm? He goes down into the hold of the ship and takes a nap! Like Jesus with the disciples in the storm, Jonah sleeps. Does it mean he doesn’t care? Is he in denial about the danger to the ship?
Maybe he’s exhausted! Aren’t we all exhausted trying to do what we do with fewer resources and greater pressure to produce more, more, more?
Jonah says, “The storm must be my fault!” He tells the sailors that he worships the one true God. When they ask what he was done to anger his God, Jonah confesses that he is running away from what God wants him to do. Even these pagan sailors know you don’t intentionally set out to tick off your god. Jonah tells them to throw him overboard. Get rid of him and they’ll get rid of the storm. But they have compassion and don’t throw him overboard.
So Jonah does the noble thing; he sacrifices himself. Is this what God wants from us?
“Clericalism” is a term that describes the hyper-focus on clergy in the midst of the perfect storm in which we find ourselves. When the Church becomes overly anxious about its survival, it focuses on leaders—pastoral leaders.
Clericalism causes us as clergy to think that if we just sacrifice ourselves, the perfect storm will be calmed. Plenty of lay people would gladly oblige. The disturbing part of this story is that Jonah’s sacrifice is effective. It says that the sailors were “impressed, no longer terrified by the sea, but in awe of God. They worshiped God, offered a sacrifice, and made vows.” Jonah’s sacrifice inspires the sailors, just as clergy sacrifices inspire some people. But it’s not sustainable ministry. Nor does it support a sustainable or excellent faith for lay people.
A more excellent form of “sacrifice” is needed. I prefer the word “discipline.” Jonah’s sacrifice was self-destructive. His self-destruction left no one to guide those on the ship to a sustained faith. Pastoral excellence requires sacrifice that is healthy and holy, that brings life to us as well as to others. A more excellent form of “sacrifice” is needed: living in holy, healthy habits.
Jonah was thrown into the sea, plummeting as far as he could go in the chaos of his life. He hit bottom in the belly of a fish, the opposite of everything Jonah set out for in his idealized dream of Tarshish. But the belly of the fish was the very place that saved his life and his ministry: it was the beginning of his healthy, holy habits.
Although Jonah hadn’t prayed when the storm came, now he prayed as never before. In his book Under the Unpredictable Plant, Peterson describes the belly of the fish as the place of askesis, from which we get the word “ascetic.” This doesn’t mean denial as much as discipline to become an excellent athlete or a mature, excellent disciple.
Askesis, or discipline, is a voluntary disaster, says Peterson. We don’t wait to have the heart attack before we start practicing healthy physical habits. We don’t wait to lose our faith before we start praying and grounding ourselves in the spiritual disciplines. We don’t wait for the disaster to happen to us, but we take disciplined steps to create a new reality for us: a new physical, mental and spiritual reality. It’s creative sacrifice, not destructive.
Excellence comes through healthy, holy habits or practices. It doesn’t mean you are as thin as a rail. It means you eat right and exercise, caring for the body that God gave you. It doesn’t mean that you read your Bible only to prepare a class or produce a sermon, but that you read for your soul. The result will be that the sermon is more soulful. It also means that we understand that healthy, holy habits of body, mind and spirit are an ongoing process, a journey, a “moving on toward perfection,” toward becoming the child of God that God created us to be.
But excellence is not just about you and your self-care. Wholeness of body, mind, and spirit will make your ministry more excellent when you lead your congregation to find ways to grow in health and wholeness. Lay people and neighbors in the community are longing for leaders to show them how to put spiritual, physical, and mental (and also relational) disciplines into their lives.
Professional Development: Do What I Promised I’d Do
In the belly of the fish, Jonah got his groove back; his passion for ministry. It was sharpened on the disciplines of the spirit. In the belly of the fish and through the School of Healthy, Holy Habits he attended there, Jonah worships God and calls out in praise and thanksgiving for what God has done in his life. He gets his passion back and he’s ready to do what he “promised he’d do”! Remember the words of the hymn: “O Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end.”
God called Jonah a second time. He experienced a renewal of the call. As Jones and Armstrong say in Resurrecting Excellence (p. 83), “a profound sense of personal calling is necessary but not sufficient to sustain pastoral leadership over time.” To be called isn’t enough; the call must be sustained through its renewal and the re-tooling of our skills to do what we “promised we’d do.”
Once Jonah received a renewal of his call, he headed for Nineveh, obeying God’s orders to the letter, and walked into the city and began to preach. His preaching was effective and people responded because his call was renewed. He had re-tooled himself to go to Nineveh, as opposed to Tarshish. He let go of his dream of the perfect appointment and allowed God’s vision to work through him.
Professional development may include letting go of our own vision for a church and its people and letting God’s vision emerge. How do we help discern the vision and equip the church to fulfill it? How do we get the job done once we discover what it is that God is calling us to do?
Jonah walked into the city and made things happen by preaching the Word. One of the biggest impediments to ministry is the inability to make things happen. That’s a skill. A leader is someone who makes things happen. Power is also defined as making something happen. The power of our church to proclaim the gospel is to make things happen so that others come to know about the love and grace of Jesus Christ.
In her new book Ultimately Responsible: When You’re in Charge of Igniting a Ministry, Sue Nilson Kibbey describes a senior pastor who couldn’t understand why he was unable to get a good working staff team. “After all,” he pointed out to her, “I’m doing the hard work of casting vision and spiritually nurturing the congregation. It shouldn’t be that difficult for them to do the rest!”
Someone suggested that he might need some skill development. He responded “I lead as well as any pastor, I’m sure. I’m not very detailed-oriented, but I have never worried about it much. I expect the staff and leaders around me to accommodate my idiosyncrasies and my individuality. That’s their job. I can’t change any of that; I don’t have time to worry about it”
This same dynamic exists in churches of all sizes and in many of us who feel that we’re the professionals, with the necessary documents and education to be in charge. We take StrengthFinders and spiritual gifts inventories and find out what we’re good at and then we say, “I just don’t have the gift or skill to do that” other task that may be required of us.
If we don’t have the gift or skill to lead in stewardship, our church finances (and perhaps our own) will show it.
If we don’t have the gift or skill to help a congregation discern its vision—decide what it means to be faithful in its place and time—then we keep doing what we did last year . . . usually with the same or worse results.
If we don’t’ have the gift or skill to lead and make things happen by developing strategies to meet our visions, then nothing will happen; the power of the gospel is lost.
Nilson Kibbey remarks, “Many . . . leaders are like this one: they have never taken the time to honestly assess the state of their own leadership style and skills and create an intentional plan for improvement—let alone learn the basics of how to wisely build the teams around them (unpaid or paid).” She comments that this pastor was great at caring for the people and preaching, teaching and painting the vision, but he lacked gifts and skills to make it happen. He lacked the gift of execution!
Throughout the stages of ministry, when we change appointments or types of ministry or sizes of congregations, we need to re-tool our skills through an intentional plan of improvement for the good of God’s people. Pastors need to find ways to truly assess their skills and where they need to improve. Too often we direct our continuing education at what we enjoy and are good at; what we like to do.
But as Nilson Kibbey points out, “as a leader, you give up your rights to choose to invest your time on only the things you care about, and you instead assume the broad mantle of servanthood as you stay faithful to focus on what the team [I would add, congregation] needs from you for them” in order to be effective and excellent in sharing the gospel.
Professional Development helps us to do what we’ve promised to do in such a way that nothing short of transformation occurs in our lives, the church, and the community around us. Leadership writer Max De Pree says: “The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers. Are the followers reaching their potential? Are they learning? Serving? Do they achieve the required results? Do they change with grace? Manage conflict?” Are people’s lives being changed because of our leadership through the ministry of the laity? We’re looking for changed lives, transformation, not just counting numbers.
Contextual Ministry Development: Who are the Ninevites?
Jonah did what he promised he’d do. He went to Nineveh and was highly successful. Who were these Ninevites with whom Jonah was so reluctant and resistant to share the “sheer grace and mercy” of God? Why was he so angry when they listened to him, giving God the chance to change God’s mind about them? How did he manage to convince them of God’s truth in their lives so effectively?
Contextual Ministry Development requires that we always ask: Who are we serving? What makes them who they are? What would compel them to follow Christ and live fully a life of Christ? How can we best share the gospel, especially with those who have given up on us and those who aren’t listening to us anymore? Who are they and what connects with them?
Who were the Ninevites? Nineveh is the opposite of where Jonah wanted to go. As Peterson describes it in Under the Unpredictable Plant, “Tarshish is a dream, a vision, a goal; Nineveh is mappable, has dust and dirt in the streets, is full of the kind of people you don’t particularly want to spend the rest of your life with, and locates a defined task” (p. 123). Tarshish was Jonah’s dream appointment; Nineveh was reality.
Nineveh exists throughout our annual conference. In every one of our communities, about a third of the people are unchurched. They are the “nones” (those who check “none” on surveys of religious preference). It’s not that they aren’t spiritual or didn’t grow up in a church. It’s not that they don’t believe in God or even that they don’t practice spiritual disciplines better than some of us.
Professional development, the equipping of the laity, and a renewed sense of ecclesiology are all essential for reaching the specific localities of our ministry and the people who abide there. The church is changing or being changed by a culture that won’t put up with uninspired worship, undemanding discipleship, and a community of people whose lives look little different from those of the rest of the world.
How do we best present the gospel through our church? What questions do we ask? What do we focus on? What does it mean to be faithful so as to be fruitful? How do we preach, teach, care for people, prepare and lead worship, organize spiritual growth and accountability groups so that the Ninevites will respond?
The church is neither what it was nor what it shall be. We’re in the in-between time, which can be exciting if we pay close attention to the context of ministry and seek professional development and equip the laity with a new understanding of ecclesiology.
Now it’s up to you . . .
Peterson says that Jonah was worse in his obedience than he was in his disobedience. He had an attitude that eventually led to a meltdown. He was an excellent prophet/messenger/preacher/pastor. Yet we know that inside, he was seething—not at the Ninevites but at God. Ministry still wasn’t as he had imagined, even with his successes. Do we have any Jonahs here?
Terry Swicegood said, “The greatest crisis the institutional church faces at the beginning of the third millennium is [one] marked by clergy burnout, drop-out and being kicked out” (from God’s Potters, by Jackson Carroll, p. 159). Jonah was furious, the text says. As Jonah yelled at God, turned and walked away (again), and sulked under a broom tree, he might have been suffering from burnout and a wish to drop out, and God could easily have kicked him out!
Ministry has been called “the troubled profession,” with dramatic increases in physical and mental health problems and family problems. Systemically, clergy are the identified patient of the “perfect storm” in the church today and clericalism results as we put ourselves in the middle of it all and allow the church to do the same.
Ministry is demanding. Clergy don’t receive the same compensation as do others with comparable education. We don’t get to own our own house and make all our own choices about where we live and what we do. (But then, neither do most ministers in the “call” system.) Congregations are in conflict much of the time, and people don’t “ride it out” like they used to. The role of pastor is changing in culture and in the church. Clergy are isolated socially and geographically.
So what do we do? Sulk like Jonah? Be angry at God and burn out, drop out, or act out in such as way that we get kicked out? Or make another choice?
The story of Jonah ends abruptly—like the end of the gospel of Mark or the end of the story of the prodigal son, where we’re left hanging. It could mean part of the manuscript got lost. Or it could mean that since we’re left wondering what Jonah would do (like we wonder what the women at the empty tomb or the elder brother in the story of the prodigal son would do), we have to ask ourselves, what will we do?
This annual conference has an incredible gift in the Lilly Endowment Inc. grant to provide monies, focus, and opportunity to renew our call and ministry instead of burning out; to re-tool instead of dropping out in frustration; and to re-group so that we have support through accountability that helps us not to act out and then get kicked out.
Peterson says in Under the Unpredictable Plant that Tarshish was “the jumping-off place of the world”; the “gates of adventure” (p. 11). Jonah chose the wrong gateway to adventure. Even when he participated in God’s plan to go to Nineveh, his obedience was reluctant and resistant, just as his disobedience had been.
I invite you through the resources provided by this gift to do everything you can to choose this great opportunity and gift; to choose the Gateway to Adventure that leads to a more excellent way.
Sally Dyck is Resident Bishop of the Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.
© 2006, Bishop Sally Dyck
