Some Thoughts on a 25th Anniversary

Twenty-five years. Easter Sunday was for my wife and me our 25th anniversary.


“Interesting,” someone might say, “since three of your four sons are older than 25. Glad you got around to tying the knot.”


Now did I say it was a wedding anniversary? No, I did not.


But, though I couldn’t have known it fully at the time, Easter Sunday 1985, my first Sunday in the pulpit of the church I still serve, bore witness to a covenant much more akin to a marriage than to a business contract or a casual employment arrangement between preacher and church, each looking for a good deal.


I remember that some of my pastoral colleagues in the city from which I moved were worried about me. They didn’t like the look of the marriage. I was headed to a smaller town and a small church. These were guys in “connectional systems” who, if they did a good job, could pretty much count on some “upward mobility.” I tried in vain to explain that “First” churches in our little group were rare to non-existent. Any preacher in my anti-denomination denomination wanting to climb a career “ladder” would be wise to jump the fence and seek ladders elsewhere. Our “group” of churches had plenty of problems of its own, but an over-abundance of “ladders” was not one of them.


Maybe in a sense they were right. Twenty-five years in a small church “marriage” may indeed spell death to a career. And in that may lie great blessing as both the church and the pastor learn some precious truths and together grow in ways that matter.


Real ministry is more than marketing; the real thing centers on relationship. It starts, of course, with loving the Lord first of all and then building on that divine love in human relationship. Building anything worthwhile takes time.


Relationships can be messy, and the best and the worst in life in a local church centers on the fact that the church is as human as it is heavenly. On any given day or any given moment, it can and does veer wildly off in either direction. And pastors face choices. To be law people or grace people. To be organization people or relationship people. To be bean counters or to be shepherds. And they find out (and this is true in other professions, too, by the way) if their lives are about “calling” or about “career.”


Pastor and author Eugene Peterson warns that in our market-driven consumer society, the last thing the church needs is a pastor who does what spouses who never grow up do: change partners whenever their present spouse becomes ungratifying. “The vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame or fortune.”


If through laughter and tears we’re embracing calling, he’s right, and I still love my long-suffering “spouse.” If it’s just a career, boy, do I need a ladder!






Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

There Oughta Be a Law!

There oughta be a law!


No, probably there shouldn’t.

But I know why we say it.

1) Stuff bugs us.

You can’t have a complete meal in peace because you or the people around you don’t have enough sense to turn off cell phones for ten minutes. Let’s make a law!

You’re driving down the highway but suddenly you find the artery of wheeled commerce clogged by some slow-moving moron camping in the passing lane. There oughta be a law! (Actually, there is.)

2) Legislators like to legislate. Which is why the wise man observed that no man’s life or property is ever safe while the legislature is in session.

People do mean nasty things. So, though we already had plenty of fine laws against crimes like assault and murder, now we have laws against “hate” crimes making it against the law to commit assault and murder while you’re thinking mean nasty thoughts. I wish people didn’t think mean nasty thoughts, but I think having laws against mean nasty thinking is, for a slew of reasons, incredibly bad thinking.

A good many kids are pudgy. So we need laws threatening gray-haired grandmas who bring birthday cakes to school. Ten to fifteen in state prison if it’s a pound cake; fifteen to twenty in federal prison if it’s iced. Granny gets to share a cell with the fellow who brought an assault rifle to school. (And the food Nazis? I think we’re just seeing the tip of the ice cream cone. They’re on a roll! I mean, a rice cake.)

But the mantra is, there oughta be a law!

Okay. May I suggest . . .

There oughta be a law that Christians must attend church more than half of the time. (We’ll start out at a ridiculously lenient level.)

And there oughta be a law stating that, though tithing is a law-predating principle, the new law is that Christians must give at least 7 percent (it’s a sale!) of their income to God’s work (through that church they attend more than half the time).

If, seriously, all Christians attended and gave as if they were really committed to the Lord, it’s hard to imagine the good, the encouragement, the blessings that would flow!

But . . .

I really think a great law for the land would be that no new law or regulation could ever be enacted without an old law or regulation coming off the books. We have enough laws.

And for Christians? Actually, the way of law has already been tried and found to be seriously flawed. It seems that a law that is only written on tables of stone is no cure at all for hardening of the heart. It seems that real life, real joy, delightfully warm hearts, loving deeds, and lives of genuine faith only come by the grace of a Savior and his Spirit living inside.

There oughta be a law!

Actually, no, probably not.




Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.