Love at Second Sight

This January has been a family emphasis in our congregation as we’ve launched a new generational ministry initiative.  This past Sunday we devoted our attention to marriage.  I preached a sermon for those who have been married awhile called Love at Second Sight.  (I’ll put a link below if you want to check it out.)  The gist of the sermon encouraged couples to keep plugging away at marriage and provided some ways to do it.  It’s a sad, sad thing when a marriage loses its fire for a season and husband or wife decide they should just chuck their marriage for a stab at it with someone else.  Isn’t it wiser not to look so much for the right person to marry as it is to work to become the right person once you are married?  We talked about stuff like that in the sermon.

But like all sermons, I have to leave some things out that could have been helpful.  In my preparation process I came across a poem by Ella Wheeler Cox that describes so vividly the way a marriage dies, particularly the way a husband drifts apart from his wife.  It’s called "An Unfaithful Wife to Her Husband."  It’s powerful.  It’s emotional.  It’s too often the truth.  Read at your own risk:

Branded and blackened by my own misdeeds

I stand before you; not as one who pleads

For mercy or forgiveness, but as one,

After a wrong is done,

Who seeks the why and wherefore.

                                                          Go with me,

Back to those early years of love, and see

Just where our paths diverged.  You must recall

Your wild pursuit of me, outstripping all

Competitors and rivals, till at last

You bound me sure and fast

With vow and ring.

I was the central thing

In all the Universe for you just then.

Just then for me, there were no other men.

I cared

Only for tasks and pleasures that you shared.

Such happy, happy days.  You wearied first.

I will not say you wearied, but a thirst

For conquest and achievement in man's realm

Left love's barque with no pilot at the helm.

The money madness, and the keen desire

To outstrip others, set your heart on fire.

Into the growing conflagration went

Romance and sentiment.

Abroad you were a man of parts and power—

Your double dower

Of brawn and brains gave you a leader's place;

At home you were dull, tired, and commonplace.

You housed me, fed me, clothed me; you were kind;

But oh, so blind, so blind.

You could not, would not, see my woman's need

Of small attentions; and you gave no heed

When I complained of loneliness; you said

"A man must think about his daily bread

And not waste time in empty social life—

He leaves that sort of duty to his wife

And pays her bills, and lets her have her way,

And feels she should be satisfied."

                                                                             Each day.

Our lives that had been one life at the start,

Farther and farther seemed to drift apart.

Dead was the old romance of man and maid.

Your talk was all of politics or trade.

Your work, your club, the mad pursuit of gold

Absorbed your thoughts.  Your duty kiss fell cold

Upon my lips.  Life lost its zest, its thrill,

                                                          Until

One fateful day when earth seemed very dull

It suddenly grew bright and beautiful.

I spoke a little, and he listened much;

There was attention in his eyes, and such

A note of comradeship in his low tone,

I felt no more alone.

There was a kindly interest in his air;

He spoke about the way I dressed my hair.

And praised the gown I wore.

It seemed a thousand, thousand years and more

Since I had been noticed.  Had mine ear

Been used to compliments year after year,

If I had heard you speak

As this man spoke, I had not been so weak.

The innocent beginning

Of all my sinning

Was just the woman's craving to be brought

Into the inner shrine of some man's thought.

You held me there, as sweetheart and as bride;

And then as your wife, you left me far outside.

So far, so far, you could not hear me call;

You might, you should, have saved me from my fall.

I was not bad, just lonely, that was all.

A man should offer something to replace

The sweet adventure of the lover's chase

Which ends in marriage.  Love's neglected laws

                   Pave pathways for the "Statutory Cause."  

If this strikes too close to home, someone in your marriage needs to raise a hand, call time, and focus on getting that thing back together.  It will be worth it.  I can tell from more than 36 years of experience that love at second sight is even better than the first time around.

Link to video: http://www.fbchsark.org/media.php?pageID=6

Link to manuscript:

http://storage.cloversites.com/firstbaptistchurchhotspringsarkansas/documents/Love%20at%20Second%20Sight.pdf

The Only Resolution That Really Matters

World War II began in September of 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland.  Because of an alliance agreement with Poland, England was drawn in to the conflict immediately.  Would England be able to withstand the eventual onslaught of Nazis?  No one knew.  In his broadcast to the nation on Christmas, 1939, King George IV quoted Minnie Louise Haskin’s poem: 

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the new year,

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied, “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into  

     the hand of God.

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!”

Not a bad poem for a new year, huh?  While we make our plans and set our goals, not a one of us knows with certainty what the year will hold.  Like most years, it will likely be a mixed-bag of blessing and trouble. 

So how about this?  Instead of making a handful of resolutions most of us will abandon before January rolls into February, let’s make one resolution only: to walk with God in 2014.  Other than goals about weight loss and exercise programs, doesn’t this resolution cover most everything else?

• Walking with God will take us to places of forgiveness and restoration in our broken relationships.

• Walking with God will take us into places of service to those in need.

• Walking with God will carry us to church, to worship and fellowship with the people of God.

• Walking with God will help us join Jesus in His mission on this earth.

• Walking with God will take us deeper into His word.

• Walking with God will enable us to face our trials with the confidence that God is with us, God is for us, and nothing can separate us from His love.

• Walking with God means that even when I sin there is grace and forgiveness and the joy of another chance.

• Walking with God means my failures won't be final because God will continue the work He's begun in me until Jesus comes again.

• And walking with God will open us up to receive with wonder those serendipitous blessings God will drop in our laps along the way—blessings we never saw coming and might have missed if we were in too much of a hurry to accomplish our many goals.

 So I’m making one resolution this year: walk with God in 2014.  Minnie Haskins got it right.

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the new year,

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied, “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into  

     the hand of God.

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!”

Yes it shall!

May God Have This Dance?

It was a first for me.  A lady broke out in dancing during a worship service.  It was January, 1986.  I was in Jamaica on a mission trip.  I was sitting in the church worshiping with the people, waiting for my time to get up and preach.  And suddenly, during the singing, a lady got up and started dancing.  Having been either a Presbyterian or a Baptist for my then 29 years of life, I can honestly say no one ever got up to dance during worship—not even once.  Well, I do remember a kid getting up and wiggling around during the song service in a Baptist church one time, but he wasn’t dancing; he had to go to the bathroom.  Nope, I’d never seen dancing before in worship.

         

But this Jamaican lady cut loose.  It wasn’t a frenetic jig, and she never jumped a pew.  It was more of a rhythmic movement, up and down the center aisle of the little church, twirling and swaying and raising her hands to God in praise and thanksgiving.  It almost had a ballet feel to it.  And there was nothing forced about it either.  You could tell it came from someplace deep inside her heart.  “So what’s with the dance?” I whispered to the Jamaican pastor who was hosting us.  He kind of shrugged his shoulders, as if her dance was the most normal thing in the world, and said, “She just does it when she’s thankful.”

Hmmm.  I couldn’t help picturing worship as a lodge dance.  God is in the stag line, and this Jamaican lady approaches Him and asks, “May I have this dance?”  And she dances with God a dance of gratitude and praise.  Well, I’m not much of a dancer myself.  There’s not a Fred Astaire bone in my body.  I’m not sure I could do a thanksgiving dance to God.  But I can express my gratitude in other ways: words of thanks, kind deeds paid forward for the kindness God has shown to me, generosity in giving for the bountiful gifts God has given me. 

This is Thanksgiving week.  Take time to count your blessings.  Find ways to express your gratitude to God and others.  Even if times are not the best for you right now, you are blessed far more than you realize.  As G. K. Chesterton wrote in a brief poem:

Here dies another day

During which I have had eyes, ears, hands

And the great world round me;

And with tomorrow begins another.

Why am I allowed two?

Why am I allowed two, indeed.  Don’t let this week pass without expressing thanks.  Give thanks to others for sure, but remember the source of your every blessing comes from the kind and gracious hand of God.  So I have but one question for you in this Thanksgiving season: May God have this dance?

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,

and his steadfast love endures forever!

(Psalm 136:1)

Bigger

Has it really been fifty years?  I was in second grade at Meadowcliff Elementary School in Little Rock when I heard the news.  The last bell rang.  It was time to walk home like I did every day.  A school crosswalk guard—a sixth-grader, I think—broke the news to the little bunch of us waiting to cross the street.  “They shot the President today,” he said.  “Kennedy is dead.”

“What?  Huh?  The President is dead?”  I was in second grade.  I didn’t know what to make of it.  When I got home, our babysitter was glued to the TV, watching events unfold.  She had been crying.  It was all the discussion at supper too—a kind of deep and pervasive sadness lay across our home like winter’s heaviest blanket.  And even to a second-grader, the world seemed different somehow.

Funny, isn’t it, how some things linger in our memory?  So many of life’s experiences pitch a little tent in our memory, and somewhere along the way, maybe in the night, maybe when we’re sleeping, we never notice that the memory of that experience folds its tent and tiptoes away, forgotten forever.  But for some reason the memory of Kennedy’s assassination didn’t pitch a tent in my memory.  It put down pilings, laid a concrete foundation, and built a brick home.  That memory wasn’t going anywhere.  That memory was staying put.

In reflecting on this 50^th anniversary of JFK’s death, I’ve visited that memory yet again.  Like any 50 year old home, that memory is showing some signs of wear.  The door is a bit weathered; the windows could use a good cleaning; the landscaping is a little ragged.  I don’t see things quite as clearly as I once did.  But in spite of its age, that old memory is not going anywhere.

And I think I know why.  On November 22, 1963, the world got bigger for me.  In my little second grade way, I suddenly realized that life was bigger than my family and my neighborhood and my elementary school.  Life was bigger, the world was bigger, than playing army in the woods, riding bikes in the neighborhood, and watching The Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound, and Captain Kangaroo on television.  I was a citizen of a bigger world than all of that.

And it’s not that I was completely naïve to bigger things at that tender age of my life.  I distinctly remember being home with the mumps and watching TV coverage of John Glenn’s orbit of the earth.  And my own home was not a happy one: my mom and dad fought a lot—loudly and with slaps and rolling pins now and then.  I remember lying in bed, having a hard time going to sleep, worried sick that when my dad got home, another fight would break out.  But that was local.  That was my home, my life.  In a sick and twisted way, that was my “normal.”

But when Kennedy was murdered, that seemed so much bigger.  Flags were at half-mast.  Everybody talked about it.  The TV showed long lines to view his body, and there were tears, tears, and more tears.  I even saw grown men cry, and in 1962, before men were taught to “get in touch with their feelings,” that was no common sight.  Gloom hung in the air like a thick autumn fog.

Of course, time didn’t stand still for long.  Time marched on as it always does.  And that decade would see an escalation of war in Viet Nam, two more high profile assassinations (Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy), protests, and race riots.  And to top off the decade, in July of 1969, Neil Armstrong took his “one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind” when he set foot on the moon.  All of that was big stuff too.  All of it made an impact on a growing boy like me.

But by the time I caught those punches, I guess I was toughened up enough to roll with them.  Not that they were easy to take, but not a one of them knocked the wind out of me like the news of that crosswalk guard: “They shot the president today.  Kennedy is dead.”  That’s when I realized the world was a bigger, harsher, more dangerous place than I’d ever imagined.  And maybe that’s why across these five decades, I’ve always had a fascination about that tragic event.

That’s when the world got bigger for me.  When did it get bigger for you?  Pearl Harbor?  The moon landing?  The Iranian hostage crisis?  The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan?  September 11, 2001?  When you saw the pictures from the Hubble Telescope?  Or maybe it was when some missionary came to your church and showed you slides of pictures you’d only seen in the National Geographic in your school library?  I’m convinced this happens to us all somewhere along the way.  Some crisis, some overwhelming event or image awakens us to the fact that we are small and the world is a large, wonderful, and even frightening thing.

That’s why I’m so grateful that along the line, I ran into something, uh, Someone, who is even bigger.  How much bigger?  Big enough to speak worlds into existence, to fling stars from His fingertips, to ride storms, and to use the earth as a footstool.  Big enough to take on sin and defeat it’s penalty in Jesus Christ who became “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:2).  Big enough to take the worst evil that can happen in the world and redeem it, reshape it, bring some good from it all, and one day, the last day, destroy evil once and for all.  God is bigger all right.  And while that comforts me in this big old world of danger and trial, one thing comforts me more: God is even big enough to hold a person like me in the secure and sturdy palm of His good hands.  And whether you're a second-grader or 80 years old, that, my friends, is plenty big enough.  

Pastoral Tenure, Part 2: The Blessings of Tenure

This is the second of two posts about pastoral tenure.  In Part 1, I reflected on the things that have helped me stay put in one place for a long time: my first pastorate almost 14 years; my current pastorate more than 18 years.

In this second post, I want to reflect on the blessings of tenure.  While there are blessings in any length of pastoral tenure, longer tenures bring different blessings.  And when I feel like I’m getting a bit stale or bored or feel the urge to flick the switch to auto-pilot, when I get itchy feet and ponder what it might be like in some new place, I count the blessings of tenure—some general and some very specific.  But even the more general blessings I cite come with names and faces. 

These blessings of tenure were brought home to me in two recent events that happened one on top of the other. 

First, I received a letter from a social worker in a local hospital who thanked me for coming to the hospital to support a family who’s loved one died in the ER.  She wrote, “You are a highly respected and dedicated professional in our community and bring healing with you wherever you go.”  Of course, when I read that line I checked the envelope again to make sure that note was addressed to me.  But that reputation doesn’t happen in one year or three years or five years.  Tenure helped make that happen.

And the second event happened at the wedding of a young woman who grew up in our church but has lived away for a number of years.  It was my honor to help officiate this wedding in Little Rock.  One of her bridesmaids was another young woman I’d watched grow up in the church.  I prayed with the bridal party just before the ceremony, and the bridesmaid said after the prayer: “I still find your voice so comforting, bringing back warm childhood memories.”  Another blessing of tenure.

Those are specific things that just happened.  Here are a few of the general blessings of tenure I enjoy:

·         I get to unpack all my boxes.

·         I have time to teach “the whole counsel” of God’s word, rather than just my hobby horses or the same 200 sermons over and over again at first one church and then the next.  This forces me to read and study and stay fresh.  I like that … most of the time.

·         I get to see that God redeems my bloopers and blunders and mistakes and sins.

·         I get to see the lost person come to Christ for whom some in the church (including me) have been praying for years.  In fact, I get to see answers to lots of prayers that have been faithfully prayed for years.

·         I get to know my people over time and on deeper levels.  I get to watch young ones grow up and older ones age.  I get to watch new Christians grow in their faith, and I get to witness older Christians mature in their faith.

·         I get to perform the wedding for children I baptized and sometimes baptize their children too.

·         I get to see firsthand how stories turn out: Does the young person make it to the mission field?  Does the young couple wanting children so desperately finally get one?  Does the troubled marriage get restored?  Does the prodigal come home?

·         I get to see some of that Romans 8:28 “good” that God works in the terrible things that happen to our people.  More often than not, that “good” doesn’t show up till years after the crisis.  I get to see some of that and it builds my faith.

·         People in the community view me not just as the pastor of First Baptist Church but as part of the Hot Springs community.

·         Will God use my preaching and teaching to shape and form a congregation to look more like Jesus?  I get to see.

·         My leadership gains gravitas and my viewpoint gains weight with every passing year.

·         Early on in my ministry in Hot Springs, a number of folks said, “I hope you’re here to do my funeral.”  I have been here for many of them—373 of them to this point.

·         I get to be with many of the same people through the various seasons of their lives: birth, graduation, marriage, divorce, surgeries, crises, moves, promotions, victories, sickness, dying and death.  I get to do a lot of weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice.  I get to be their pastor.  It’s so gratifying to hear someone tell me, “I remember when you were there for us when mom died … when the baby was sick … when we played for the championship … when I lost my job … when our marriage was falling apart … when our son was arrested … when the doctor said the cancer was gone …” and a hundred other things.

And I’ve only been here for 18 years.  I’ve got friends who’ve stayed a lot longer than that.  And they tell me the blessings just get deeper and better as the years go by.  If a critical key in pastoring a church is developing relationships, tenure gives relationships room to grow and season and develop.  And as you can tell in my list, relationships are at the heart of almost every blessing. 

Dr. John Faw­cett was the pastor of a small church in Wainsgate, England, and was called from there to pastor a large, influential church in London in 1772.  He accepted the call and preached his farewell sermon.  The wagons were loaded with his books and furniture, and all was ready for the departure, when his parishioners gathered around him.  With tears in their eyes, they begged him to stay.  His wife said, “Oh John, John, I cannot bear this.”  Fawcett replied, “Neither can I, and we will not go.  Unload the wagons and put everything as it was before.”  His decision was greeted with great joy by his peo­ple.  And in commemoration of the event, he wrote the words of this hymn:

Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts in Christian love;

The fellowship of kindred minds

Is like to that above.

Before our Father’s throne

We pour our ardent prayers;

Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one

Our comforts and our cares.

We share each other’s woes,

Our mutual burdens bear;

And often for each other flows

The sympathizing tear.

From sorrow, toil and pain,

And sin, we shall be free,

And perfect love and friendship reign

Through all eternity.

The blessings of tenure!

Pastoral Tenure, Part I: How I Stay Put in One Church

[This is the first of a two part series on pastoral tenure.]

When pastors get together for some kind of group experience, the convener usually opens discussion by asking the pastors to share their name, the name of the church they serve, and how long they have been there. Having recently sat in a group like that, I had the opportunity to say, “My name is John McCallum. I serve at First Baptist Church, Hot Springs. And I’ve been there for over 18 years.”  

I don’t know who’s more amazed by the length of my tenure: my colleagues or me. My situation is made more intriguing by the fact that though I’m 57 years old and have been a lead pastor for 31 years, I’ve only served two churches in that time frame. What makes this so interesting to pastors is that (according to a 2011 Barna report) the average tenure of Protestant pastors is only four years.

So some of my pastor friends scratch their heads over it and ask how I manage to stay so long in one church. 

The first thing I say in response to this question is, “No pulpit committees.” Chances are pretty high that if no other church ever asks you to consider becoming their pastor, you’ll stay right where you are. And honestly, that’s been the case for me. In 31 years of pastoring, I’ve only had serious conversations with two pulpit committees, both of which contacted me in the first church I served, and  one of which was the committee for the church I’ve now served for 18 years. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I suspect it helps that I made a decision at the beginning of my ministry that I would never initiate contact with a church that was looking for a pastor. I wouldn’t send an unsolicited resume, and I wouldn’t ask a friend to do it for me. I’ve always figured that was God’s business and sure as I tried to make something happen, it would end badly. This posture certainly limits opportunities. And the lack of opportunities to move elsewhere has surely helped keep me in one place for long periods of time. That’s the first reason for my long tenure.

Here’s a second: I’ve never pastored a church in a dying community. God has placed me in a growing suburb and in a stable mid-size city at the hub of a fairly dynamic county. I’ve not pastored in a community that regularly witnesses factories close, downtown businesses shut their doors and board up their windows, or has more people moving out than moving in. My hat is off to pastors who serve in dying communities. Those churches need pastors as much or more than the kind of churches I’ve served. But how does a pastor stay for very long in a dying community with a shrinking church and no prospects to see it grow enough to sustain the pastor’s family? Pastoring in more dynamic communities is something I have no control over, but it sure helps tenure.

And so does this: my age. Now this wasn’t always the case. While it’s hard for me to remember that I was once a young man, there was a day when I was in the sweet-spot for pastoral transitions: ages 35-49. I moved to First Baptist, Hot Springs, when I was 38. I still had several “prime” years left for moving elsewhere after I came to Hot Springs, but I just got busy with my work here and the next time I checked the calendar, I was 50. Opportunities diminish after that—especially opportunities for growing churches that are composed of mostly younger adults or are in need of reaching younger adults. Churches are enamored with youth, and I don’t blame them. While age usually means experience and accumulated wisdom, it can also mean cynicism and bitterness too. While age can certainly mean a pastor works smarter instead of harder, it can also mean a pastor decides to put his/her ministry in neutral and coast into retirement. While I have no statistics to back it up, my sense is that a pastor’s longer tenures happen on the back-end of his/her ministry rather than on the front end. Age makes a difference in tenure. At least it has for me.

And so has this: instead of focusing on changing churches, I focus on changing the church I am in. While I’ve only been pastor of two churches, I’ve actually pastored three or four different churches in both places. Churches can change and grow in so many ways: numbers, budgets, spiritual development, additional ministries, additional staff, and, among other things, additional or remodeled buildings that create new or better space. It’s hard for a pastor to get bored when things are changing and popping. The challenge for pastors in these situations is to make appropriate and necessary changes in the way we pastor—what do we take up and what do we give up? This is hard work: sometimes painful, but seldom boring. I’ve been blessed to be in churches that were willing to make changes and grow in different ways. I can honestly say that the quality of the two churches I’ve served and their willingness to change have had more to do with my tenure than my own gifts, skills, or abilities.

Then there is this: I've learned to deal with conflicts quickly rather than letting them fester. Unresolved, festering conflict hurts the church, causes the church to take their eye off the ball, and steals a pastor's joy. It has always helped me to deal directly and forthrightly with the kind of conflicts that hold the potential to disrupt church unity.  God has blessed this. And God has taught me something along the way about church conflict: most people don't have to have their way, but they do want to have their say. Bathe the process in prayer. Treat all people with love and respect. Hear people out. Make a church decision. And move on. This is how God has resolved the few conflicts with which I've had to deal through my three decades of pastoring. And this is a key reason I've been able to stay put in the same church for lengthy periods of time. 

And here's another reason along that same line: I try to remember that things are never as good or as bad as they seem to be in the moment. A wise pastor told me that early in my ministry and it has helped a lot. That sage counsel has helped me maintain an even keel through the many seasons a church experiences. It's helped me not to get too hyped up when good things are happening. It's helped me not to get too discouraged when things are tough. And it's helped me not to fret or stew much one way or the other. This counsel has kept me from premature flight from one church to another (which has its problems too).  

Oh, and one more thing: I make friends with church members. Common pastoral wisdom suggests that it’s not wise to make friends with church members. When I was a young buck, I was told by a number of experienced pastors, “Get your friends outside of the church.” That may be good advice, but that never worked for me. My best friends are church members—have been in both churches I’ve pastored. These are friends with whom my family has vacationed, friends with whom I’ve traveled to Razorback road games, friends who’ve shared our joys and halved our sorrows and who have allowed us the same privilege with them. Here’s how this helps tenure: friends root your heart in one place; friends make it easier to stay and harder to leave; friends add joy to the journey. I’ve never fashioned myself a very good friend, but I’ve sure been blessed with some. If I was to move, I wouldn’t just be leaving a church, I’d be leaving friends.

And these are the things that have helped me stay put for way longer than the average tenure of most pastors. I’m not saying that a long tenure is always better than a short one. God calls some pastors to short tenures, often to do hard things that need to be done but make it hard for the pastor to stay. A dynamic ministry of three or four years in one church is probably better for the kingdom of God than doing the same year of ministry twenty years in a row in the same church. My calling has been to long tenures. And if you think God might be calling you to the same, my prayer is that the things that have helped me stay put will help you stay put too.

[Next time: The Blessings of Tenure]

A Prayer for Our Leaders

Each year about this time, our community hosts the Garland County Leadership Prayer Breakfast.  Hundreds of our community leaders attend along with many from our county who serve in elected offices.  It's a nice event.  Craig O'Neil was the keynote speaker: great fun and simple wisdom.  The daughter of one of our judges shared a reading about Jesus that stirred a rousing ovation from the audience.  I had the privilege of praying for our leaders.  Several people asked for copies of the prayer, so I thought the best way to provide that was by posting it on my blog.  "I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people.  Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them.  Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity" (1 Tim. 2:1-2). Here's the attempt I made at doing that this morning.  Would you add your prayers to this one?

****************** 

We praise you, our Father, because you are a great God.  You spread out the heavens like a tent and rest your feet on the earth like a stool.  You can hold oceans in the palm of your hands and spin a planet on your finger.  You are sovereign over the whole wide world.  And yet you take interest in the likes of us.  Not only are you kind to your people, as Jesus tells us, you are kind even to the ungrateful and the wicked.  What a great God you are.  You do anything you chose to do, any time you chose to do it, without seeking the counsel of any of us.  Nothing happens that takes you by surprise.  You know everything there is to know.  You are the one true God.  There is no one greater.  You are God and we praise you.  Your word tells us that you put rulers in their places and that with the puff of your breath you can inflate them to glorious heights or blow them away like a tumble weed. 

So Lord, we thank you for our leaders.  Our hearts go out to them whether they serve in the West Wing, the halls of Congress, behind the bench, the state house, the county court house, city hall, or in superintendent’s conference rooms all over our county.  Thank you for their willingness to serve.  And with the abuse so many of them take, it’s a wonder anybody would want to serve at all. So in this difficult climate, help them to serve well.  Give them strength to serve others rather than themselves.  May the high ideals that moved them to seek office be their beacon while they’re in office.  We ask that you give them common sense and a willingness to work with others, even those with whom they disagree.  Help them to remember that while compromise is always a dirty word when it comes to morality, it’s usually a golden word when it comes to politics.  So Lord, would it be too much to ask that you help all of our leaders seek the common good ahead of personal or party ambitions and the discernment to never confuse the two—so that they might have the courage to see things as they are, the vision to see things as they could be, and the wisdom to bridge the gap?

None of our leaders are perfect, so please give them the courage to admit their mistakes when they make them.  Forgive any stubborn pride that leads them to think they are better or wiser or more patriotic than others.   Raise up in them a spirit of humility that will stir them to listen more than speak, to think of others before self, and to feel a great need to pray about everything.

I suspect, Father, that those of us who have never held office can’t begin to imagine all the voices in their ears: constituents, lobbyists, party bosses, and all the rest—demanding this, expecting that, offering favors for votes.  We pray that in the midst of these many voices in their ears, they may both seek and discern your voice above all the rest.  For you are a God who guides, a God who is ready and willing to provide wisdom when we ask.  Help our leaders to ask … and then to hear your voice and have the courage to follow your lead of doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with you.

And while we get awful frustrated with our leaders sometimes, may our voices, the voices of your people, offer our leaders more than angry opinions, phony flattery, and bitter criticism.  May we offer respect and civility instead.  And even more, may our voices offer prayers in their behalf, just as you have commanded us to do, and just as we are doing today.  Please hear and answer our prayers as you see best, in Jesus’ name, amen.