A Call To Prayer

This church is about to embark on one of the most difficult tasks any church can do—finding a new pastor. It is a time of danger. Not only can you choose the wrong pastor, but you can go astray in other ways. You can turn against each other. False shepherds can enter and do great damage. You can become obsess ed with internal matters and give up your witness in the world.

On the other hand, it is also a time of great opportunity. The church can pull together in a way that it has never before. You can find greater purpose and direction, become better focused. You can be fed good pastors and preachers who can add new depth and insights, above what I have given you in the past.

One thing, however, must be understood, and understood clearly. You are not without a shepherd. You have the great Shepherd of us all, our Lord Jesus Christ. Neither do you lack shepherds on earth, since you have elders, deacons, and teachers who will step up to the task of being leaders. Too often a congregation sees an interim period as a hold time. If you take the initiative to continue to do the work of the ministry, it can be among the finest days of the church.
Recently, I heard of an experiment to determine the difference between wolves and dogs. All dogs were once wolves but millennia of breeding has produced different traits. Scientists took some food and placed it at the end of a strip of cloth in a cage, in sight of the animal but out of its reach. Both the dogs and the wolves figured this out almost immediately that they could pull on the cloth and get the food to come to them.

Then they tied the cloth down, so it would not budge. The stalked around the cage, trying all kinds of way to get to it. The dog tried once and gave up, looking instead to its master to solve the problem for him. The dog expected humans to find the answer.

Are you a dog or a wolf? That is the question you must decide. Will you wait till someone else arrives to solve the church’s problems, or will you take the initiative as a congregation and work together to arrive at good solutions?
Fortunately, you do not have to solve your problems by yourselves. You have a Shepherd, your Father in heaven. He will provide you to the solutions you need, defend the church against false prophets, and will provide good teaching and many blessings for the congregation. This is a time when the church can draw near to God, and discover what He has for you. Even so, you must take the initiative to seek His guidance until you find it.
Jeremiah 29:13 says it best “You will seek Me, and you will find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Now is the time to really search for God.
I have seen some churches make a mess of a pastoral search. I have also seen some churches who have done it very well. I think I know what makes the difference.
Those who have done it well have had two characteristics. First, they have not been in a hurry, because they trusted God. Almost immediately people have been asking me for recommendations for pastor. I could tell the hurry in their voices, a desire to get it done. But it is vitally important that you not hurry. Thoroughly investigate every candidate, and carefully read their resumes. Interview them more than once.
One option is to work with the presbytery to find an interim. Things do not have to stop while you are looking. You can go on with the ministries of the church. You can find temporary shepherds who can help you in the process. But whatever you do, do not hurry. Remember that the Lord is your true shepherd. He is the One who does all things. Wait upon the Lord, and trust His timing.
Second, the churches which have been most successful have made prayer their highest priority in the process. I strongly recommend that you begin now praying and fasting for a new pastor. Come together regularly, at least weekly with no other purpose in mind but to pray for a new pastor.
Our church has not often risen very high in the field of prayer. Often, I have heard our Wednesday Night Bible study called “prayer meeting,” even though it is not a time of prayer, but teaching. We have tried to gather together at 9:30 for prayer, until interest in it fell off. Since then, my wife and I have been the only ones coming. So now, this church has no time of group prayer. You need to get together and pray.
Let me tell you about the prayer you don’t need, though. You don’t need a time for coming together and sharing local gossip. You don’t need a gathering time for the super-spiritual. You don’t need a prayer meeting where the people there get resentful and run down people who are not there. You don’t need an “organ recital”—a prayer meeting that focuses on everyone’s ailments. Those prayers are better kept in another meeting, or shared on the prayer chains. You don’t need a time when one person prays where everyone else listens. You don’t formal, repetitive, ritualistic prayers. You don’t need prayers where people think they must speak to God in stilted, unrealistic tone.
You need prayer that is a crying from the heart. You need a time of sharing your grief and joy with God. You need a time when you all listen together to God, and expect God to answer you. You need time of seeking the face of God--really seeking Him, not just going through the motions. In most churches today prayer meetings have died, not from lack of attendance but from a lack of passion among those who attend. The church may be grounded in the Word, but it moves by the Spirit. It may be anchored in truth, but its sails are filled with passion. This church has not lacked for the word, but it has and does lack for the Spirit of God to fill its sails and drive it on to glory.
This is your opportunity to gain that passion. Now is the time experience the winds of the Spirit, and not to let go, until you find them. This church has become becalmed in complacency, adrift on a calm sea with no land in sight and no compass or chart to tell us where we should be. You need to appeal to God for passion and direction.
I do not need to tell you that you need to seek God and to do His will. You already know that. But how? For what purpose do we seek Him and to what depth and dimension should we go to find him? Can casual praying really be expected to change the world?
There are three levels of experience in a quest for God. The first is the level of obedience. Most seek to be obedient to God. Obedience is important. But being a believer is not a matter of obedience, nor is it a matter of morality. Being a Christian is not about doing right or wrong. That is a byproduct of the faith, and not the source of it.
Obedience produces servants, not sons. If all we do is tell people they should go to church meetings, tithe, be nice to each other, and be good citizens, we have not told them anything that is particularly Christians. The Muslims, Mormons, Jews, and even the atheists can do all these things, or their equivalent, and feel good about themselves. Communists, Nazis, and the ancient Romans all valued obedience being public-spirited citizens, and supporting their country. I wish to God they had not! Think of the lives that would have been saved if the Germans or the Russians had not been quite so obedient to their national authority.
We must be more than obedient to the Law. We must also be followers of God’s Spirit. Jesus said “Follow Me.” He did not say “Stay in Galilee and be the best fishermen you can be.” Jesus called them to risk and danger. We who serve the Lord full time know what it means to be called to a ministry. That means sometime in our lives we perceived that God was calling us to do something that others did not. It was a dangerous, difficult road He calls us to do, but the church would not be here is those who were called to the Ministry or the mission field did not go.
Do you think that God only calls some people to ministry, and the rest to be ministered to? Does He call only some to the danger and scandal of the Cross? Are only a few called to seek His unique will for their lives? Or did He not say to all of us “forsake your father and mother can follow me?” You are not exempt from this call. Each of you is called to the ministry.
The greatest weakness of the average church is prayerlessness. The second greatest weakness is the idea that the pastor is the primary worker. Some of you may think that the pastor must do all the visiting, all the preaching, all the counseling, and all the teaching. If you think that, then this church will forever be small and weak. When you become the shepherds, the teachers, the counselors, comforters, and the evangelists, then the church will grow—it cannot help but do otherwise.
Following Jesus is not enough, either. He does not call us just to be followers, but friends. He wants us to be in communion with Him, and experience His presence always.
Many people say they love the Lord, but I say many who say this do not. If we say we love our wives, but we want to lives separately from them, can we truly say to love them. If we love our children, yet choose not to visit them, do we really love them? Love involves a desire to be with them.
Three or four times in my life, I have had the privilege of visiting in A Trappist monastery—once in Kentucky and at least twice in Georgia. It is an amazing thing to meet these monks, who live most of the day in silence, attend worship five times a day, and pray at least four hours every day. The rest of their time is work and sleep, usually without the fellowship of other people. They never marry, the never leave the monastery, they do not watch television or attend sports events. The rarely read the newspapers. But these men are happy—often filled with indescribable joy. If you ask any of them what makes them so happy, they will all say the same thing—it is their freedom to be with God every day, and all day. Even when going about their chores, they have a deep sense of being with God. They practice His presence as the wash dishes, clean toilets, and cook meals. The one thing these men seek from their lives is the opportunity to spend time with Jesus.
These men are Catholic, which means as far as you or I are concerned they live in serious doctrinal error. But can we not concede that they know something about Jesus we do not? Can we not admit that we live in our own particular error—that is, the delusion that we can be a Christian and not spend any time with Jesus?
The pressures of the world have led us away from Him--as individuals and as a church.
The world is looking for God. How can we expect the world to find Him here, if we do not? How can God be here for unbelievers, when we believers ignore Him? God brings difficulties in our lives to bring us to prayer. Let me encourage you to let this difficult time in the church’s life be an opportunity for seeking God as He would be sought, with our whole heart and our whole souls. Let this be a time for prayer. Wage total war on the powers of darkness, until God’s light shines through this place in a constant, steady beacon. I cannot be here to lead you in this, but your officers can be. More than that, God will be with your wherever you go.