‘Tis the season for funerals.  Over the past few weeks, my family and I have been to three visitations/funerals:  two for relatives of Jackson Heights members, one for the infant daughter of some friends of ours.  The two men who died were not Christians; our friends are Christians, very much so.

The differences between the first two and the last one were striking.  What, after all, does one say at the funeral of an irreligious man?  You look backward.  You have to.  You talk about what a good friend and coworker he was.  You talk about the memories his children have of him.  The songs you play are half religious (like that country & western song about going to heaven and petting a lion, which I had never heard before moving to Tennessee and now have heard quite a bit), half not.  Then the funeral is over, and you are left with your memories.  That’s it.

It’s different if you’re a Christian.  Admittedly, these were folks we knew better than we knew the others, but we talked to them for nearly an hour.  We certainly talked about memories, but we also talked about meaning.  We grappled, as Christians do, with understanding the work of God in a fallen world.  We talked about what it means to be a person of faith in a time of despair.
  
We talked too about their daughter in the present tense.  From her perspective, now is much better than a month ago was.  We anticipated a tomorrow that would be better for all of us, not least because we will see her again.  We will.

Between these two spiritual landscapes, a great chasm is fixed.  Mourning with hope is no fun.  I’ve grieved for my parents and my daughter that way.  However, it is infinitely preferable to mourning without hope.  It is much better to grapple with the meaning of tragedy than to be forced to admit that tragedy has no more meaning than anything else.

I know that my friends will grieve incessantly for months and periodically for as long as they live.  Some wounds do not completely heal this side of Jordan, and we should not expect them to (or worse, expect the wounds of others to).  Our society’s discomfort with sorrow is part and parcel of its refusal to confront the grim realities of life under the sun.  We know better, and we should be wiser than that.

Neither, though, should we deny or disparage the comfort that we have been given.  Christians are blessed with many gifts.  The right to mourn with hope is one of the most precious.
 

Let me give you a list of some of the men in the brotherhood whom I most admire.  Max Dawson.  L. A. Stauffer.  Mark Russell.  David Maravilla.  Andy Diestelkamp.  These men (and others like them), in addition to having a blameless character, are also preachers who have worked with the same congregation for several decades.  Max, for instance, began with the Dowlen Rd. church in Beaumont, TX, in 1978, the same year I was born.  

I don’t have to know anything else about you.  If you’ve been in the same work for 40-plus years, you’ve been doing something right.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve continued to reflect on Terry Francis’s series of posts about preachers being treated as hirelings.  The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if part of the problem is that preachers act like hirelings.  

Recently, I ran across a quotation that urged, “Work like you own the place.”  Obviously, no man can own a church belonging to Christ, but there is still a difference between a hireling, even a hard-working hireling, and an owner (or, to use the John 10 language, a good shepherd).  Back when I worked for Wal-Mart, I worked hard until the managers told me I could go home, but I didn’t stick around to lock up.  Hirelings don’t do that.  Owners do.

In the same way, I suspect there are subtle differences in the behavior of a preacher who is determined to remain with a congregation, come what may, as opposed to the preacher who says in his heart, “If worse comes to worst, I can always find someplace else to preach.”  If you know you are going down with the ship, you’re going to work a lot harder to keep the ship from going down.

I think this is particularly true when it comes to relationships with brethren.  Most preachers who have been preaching very long have accumulated their share of stories about shoddy treatment by members of their congregations.  However, none of these stories occur in isolation.  

Sure, there are so-called brethren out there who are eaten up entirely with malice.  However, I don’t think that most Christians who sin against preachers are like that.  Instead, I think they are generally good people whose relationship with the preacher somehow gets caught in a death spiral.  Those situations give the devil an opportunity.

Yes, ordinary Christians bear their share of responsibility for failed relationships with preachers, but preachers often do too.  It’s easy for preachers to focus on the sin, and get all righteoused up about being sinned against, while overlooking the years of folly and neglect that allowed sin to flourish.  Complaining, “It’s not my job to cater to everybody in the church,” is simply another way of admitting, “I am a hireling and act like it.”

I do not mean to suggest that preachers who leave their congregations for another work have sinned.  Far from it!  However, if we don’t want to be treated like hirelings, we need to quit thinking and behaving like hirelings.  If we want commitment and genuine relationships from the leadership and the congregation, we first must show that commitment and build those relationships ourselves. 
 

In the Lord’s church, there are many workers who toil in obscurity, never getting the recognition they deserve for their efforts and faithfulness.  Of them all, though, the wives of preachers may well be the most neglected and overlooked.

This begins with the higher standard to which preachers’ wives are held.  In theory, they are no different from any other sister in the congregation.  In practice, there are as many expectations for their conduct as there are for the conduct of their husbands. 

These expectations first appear during the preacher-interview process.  I’ve never had a discussion with a congregation in which my wife didn’t come up.  In the secular world, questions about a prospective employee’s spouse are irrelevant and possibly illegal.  In the church, they’re central to a congregation’s assessment of a man. 

Additionally, an eldership or men’s meeting may well want to interview the preacher’s wife before they make a decision (the elders at Jackson Heights certainly interviewed Lauren before hiring me).  At the least, the women of the congregation will want to get to know her before the church brings her husband on.

During a preacher’s tenure with a congregation, the relationship between the church and the preacher’s wife is as much employer-employee as it is familial.  Other women can get away with not teaching Bible classes and otherwise being active in the work.  Just let the preacher’s wife try that!  The other members of the congregation often feel at liberty to comment on the way the preacher’s wife spends her money, styles her hair, and trains her children.  What’s she going to do, get mad and leave? 

Outside the assembly, she is expected to be warm, hospitable, and everybody’s best friend on demand.  Woe betide the preacher whose wife gets the reputation of being stuck up!  Frankly, in a lot of ways, the work of the evangelist’s wife is more difficult than the work of the evangelist.

Some women have the right blend of gifts and determination to meet the demands of this quasi-job with cheerfulness and grace.  Both Shawn and I are blessed with wives who fit naturally into this challenging situation.  We freely acknowledge that Genesia and Lauren make us twice as effective as we would otherwise be.

Other women, though, find that they have married into a position that they neither desired nor are suited for.  Some of them become embittered by the expectations.  I can think of more than a few preachers’ wives who, as the saying goes, look like they were weaned on a sour pickle.  Though I don’t think that bitterness is appropriate for any Christian, I can certainly understand how they got there.

Perhaps more common are the preachers’ wives who gamely soldier on, who play the part of the bubbly extrovert at tremendous emotional cost.  They love their husbands and love the Lord, but each passing week adds to their burden of psychological stress.  In many instances, this stress eventually manifests itself in serious illness.  Such women deserve our sympathies and prayers. 

Indeed, all preachers’ wives deserve our consideration.  It certainly would help if we remembered to treat them as sisters rather than employees.  If we wouldn’t make a comment to another woman in the congregation, we probably shouldn’t make it to her either.  What’s more, we don’t have the right to expect more from her than we do from anyone else.  If she’s an employee, give her a job description and put her on the payroll.  If not, don’t treat her like one! 

Honestly, I don’t have a lot of optimism on this score.  I think the double standard for preachers’ wives in the church is so deeply rooted that a stick of dynamite wouldn’t blast it out.  However, it will help if we at least acknowledge the double standard and extend grace to women who don’t live up to it. 

Let’s hear it for preachers’ wives, then, who bear up nobly under the burdens of a thankless and demanding work!  Whether they excel or struggle, we ought to pray for them.  For that matter, we ought to pause to encourage and thank them.  They’re human beings too, and they universally appreciate a kind word.  I’m certain that on the day of judgment, their sacrifices will be remembered and honored.  The least we can do is to remember and honor them too.

We live in a world that seems to get busier every year.  Houses are more expensive.  Commutes are longer.  Jobs are more demanding.  Children’s activities are more time-consuming.  As a result, there are tens of millions of Americans who have every minute of every day scheduled for something. 

Lots of important things suffer as a result of this lifestyle, and children are at the top of the list.  For years “quality time” has been the parenting buzzword.  Maybe you only ever talk with your kid for 10 minutes a day on the way to soccer practice, but with enough wisdom and effort, you can make that conversation Meaningful.

However, quality time doesn’t seem to yield the results that a lot of parents want, particularly when it comes to religion.  It’s no secret that young people have been leaving the Lord’s church in droves.  They might be headed to a great college and a great career, but they don’t seem to be headed to heaven.  Sometimes, this happens despite everything that parents can do.  More of the time, it happens because of what parents didn’t do. 

In this increasingly perilous environment, parents are increasingly looking to outsource religious instruction to the church.  This is, after all, consonant with modern parental strategy.  You don’t teach your son to play soccer.  You pay to put him on a soccer team, and the coach does that.  You don’t teach your daughter to play the clarinet.  You pay for music lessons, and the music teacher does that.

Instruction is the province of experts, so parents want to leave religious instruction to religious experts.  It’s the church’s job to have really good, really thorough Sunday-morning Bible classes.  It’s the church’s job to organize activities, so that your kids can make good friends instead of the trash friends they’re likely to make at school.

There are two problems with this.  The first is time.  Even if you also take your kid to Wednesday-night Bible classes _and_ the monthly teen devotion, 2.25 hours a week is not enough to bring up a child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. 

In fact, only a parent (two parents if we’re following God’s plan) can possibly devote the time to do the job right.  This can’t be an activity.  It has to be a way of life.  If you don’t have the time, parents, you need to make the time.  God doesn’t expect you to live in that house, drive that car, or chauffeur your kid around to 57 different activities.  He does expect you to teach them about Him. 

Second, when it comes to a child’s spirituality, parents are (or at least should be) the experts.  Nobody knows my kid like I do.  Because of shared DNA and shared lives, I know them.  I know the way they think.  As a result, nobody is better equipped than I am to give them spiritual guidance.  No Sunday-school teacher or youth minister, no matter how willing, can step into my place.

It’s very convenient to make the church responsible for the way our kids turn out.  That way, we don’t have to invest much effort ourselves, and if they turn out badly, we can blame the church.  However, no matter how much we might want to transfer the burden of parenting, it remains solidly on our shoulders.  No matter how much we squint, the word “church” will not magically appear in Ephesians 6:4.  The work of training our children is ours.  Either we do it, or we don’t.

Even though I’m out of the Bible-review business, the form of the word of God still fascinates me almost as much as its contents.  As a result, it was with great interest that I read a post about Bibles from my friend and brother Ryan Boyer.  Ryan argued that just as a police officer or other firearm-wielder ought to rely on one weapon, so that they can become completely familiar with all its characteristics and quirks, so too Christians ought to rely on one Bible.

There’s a lot that I like about Ryan’s argument.  First of all, it’s emotionally powerful.  Lots of Bible collectors are Bible collectors because they’ve spent decades searching for that one perfect Bible that does everything they want it to.  Something inside us believes that we ought to have a one-and-only Bible, and I think it’s a mistake to ignore that voice.

Second, there’s much to be said for familiarity with a particular physical format.  Barring some unusual circumstance, I do think it’s wise to make our primary Bible the Bible that we use for daily reading.  An increasing number of studies have found that we better remember what we have read from a physical book as opposed to a screen.  We are physical creatures, and reading out of a paper Bible is a physical act.  The sensation of holding the Bible and manipulating the pages, plus seeing layout in a non-virtual space, helps us remember where passages are.

After having used dozens of Bibles during my Bible-reviewing days, I’ve settled on a primary Bible (a top-grain cowhide Crossway Large-Print Thinline Reference, not that I’m particular about covers or anything) and enjoy having a primary Bible.  However, there are still circumstances in which I turn to a different Bible:

- I rarely-to-never bring my primary Bible home from the church building because I am absent-minded and will end up leaving it at home, which is unhelpful.

- When I'm studying with somebody who is a Biblical novice but wants to use a paper Bible, I will use a Bible with the same layout and page numbering as our giveaway Bibles (the Crossway Large-Print Value Thinline).  That way, I can tell them, "Turn to Page 1152,” even if they don't know Genesis from Revelation.  However, this Bible isn't a wonderful reading Bible for me (the lines are too short), and it doesn't have a lot of the helps I look for in a desk Bible.

- When I'm preparing a textual study of a book, my first step is to read the book out of my six-volume Crossway Reader's Bible.  This Bible is optimized for reading and doesn't have chapter or verse numbers, so that I have an easier time following the flow of argument through the book.  However, it's tough to preach out of a Bible with no chapter or verse numbers!  Lack of chapter numbers also makes it difficult to use this Bible to keep either of my two reading schedules.

Ultimately, I believe (and I know Ryan would agree) that the word of God that matters most isn’t the word of God in our hands.  It’s the word of God in our hearts.  So far as I know, not one first-century Christian possessed a complete copy of the New Testament, but they managed just fine without it. 

That same word still saves us today, and whatever method will best get it inside us, be it a top-grain cowhide Crossway Large-Print Thinline Reference, a different translation for each day of the week, or even an e-Bible on a smart phone, that’s the method we should use.   What we are reading or studying can make a difference.  That we are reading and studying makes all the difference in the world.