Interview
R. Kent Hughes
by Art Azurdia
(Continued from page 1)
AA: Kent, what were some of your initial preconceptions of the pastoral ministry that have been reconfigured after several years of experience?
RKH: I don’t know if I would say that my preconceptions were radically reconfigured, because I cut my teeth and did my journeyman work under a fine pastor for a decade. While I was a junior high, high school, and college pastor, I watched and learned from a fine pastor.
I worked under Reverend Verl Lindley. He was a Fuller Seminary graduate of the early 1950s when Carl Henry, Gleason Archer, Wilbur Smith, Harold Lindsel, and Edward John Carnell were there. It was quite an array, so he had a great background and was a wonderful man. Because of his influence, I understood that preaching is a character profession and that your ethos, what you are, is very important. I understood about a type of leadership that wasn’t perfunctory but led by example, a leadership that was patient for change. I think I demonstrated that in my twenty-seven years at College Church. I was very patient in moving the ship ahead, so to speak. I learned that kind of long-range attitude, loving my people and being especially caring for my colleagues. I’ve always argued for the best pay possible for my staff and I’ve always honored them. I’ve never treated them as if I’m better because I’m the senior pastor and they are the sub-pastors. I viewed us all as equals. In fact, I think you could say that at any given church, the guy who is working with the junior high may have a greater theological influence in the lives of his people than the senior pastor. So, it’s important to understand those kinds of things.
AA: Were there any significant surprises or lessons learned in the last few years of your pastoral labors?
RKH: I do think that I have a great optimism for the power of the gospel to save people and change lives. I also, after having preached to the same people for twenty-seven years, understand there are people who can sit week after week under your preaching and never change an iota, which is a dangerous thing for them. They don’t change their theological opinions and they don’t increase in godliness. In fact, they may go the other way. To sum it up, I believe in the power of the gospel, the power to change lives. I’ve seen people who have, as Christians, had long-term bad relational habits revolutionized and changed. But I’ve also seen others that sit under the word with no change. I think of Charles Simeon, after he preached for fifty years at Holy Trinity, falling down in his pulpit and weeping for souls that had remained unconverted though they sat under his ministry for half a century. The radical power of the gospel is the only hope but people can so harden themselves that they can’t hear the word of God. I didn’t find that to be any easier after forty years of ministry. I didn’t find that preaching got easier. I didn’t find that leadership got easier. I didn’t find that vision got easier. And I think I did well at all of those things. But I found them just as hard after forty years as at the beginning.
AA: Are there current trends related to pastoral ministry that arouse concern in you?
RKH: While I spent at least twenty hours a week in sermon preparation, I think it’s the specialist trend that concerns me the most. And so it could be: “I preach, but I don’t do mercy and I don’t do administration and I don’t do counseling.” Or: “I do counseling, but I don’t preach.” Or: “I do administration and I do vision, but I don’t preach.” I would say specialization is especially pernicious for those that say they don’t preach.
AA: Do you think it’s indicative of something deeper? Is that what you’re intimating?
RKH: Well, I think that a pastor is to be a man of prayer and a man of the word and that “pastor” suggests the existence of a flock. But the specialization that comes from business models says, “Go with your passion and do your passion and don’t do the things that are not your passion.” I don’t think it’s optional for a pastor to say “I don’t do administration.” Now you might say “I’m not good at administration.” But to say “I don’t do it” is not only irresponsible; it represents a type of sloth. One might say “I don’t do visitation.” Perhaps you find it hard to do visitation, but it doesn’t mean you don’t do visitation. So I think there’s a great danger of producing flat-sided business-type pastors that only do a couple of things and then spread other things around. Here’s an analogy: You play junior high basketball. If you’re a good athlete, you can get along by going to your right all the time. Once you get into high school, you have to begin using the left. Once you get into college, you must be able to go to your left as well as your right and you better be able to shoot on the run from the left or the right. Otherwise, you’ll never be anything. I think that a lot of pastors need to learn to use their left hand. They need to learn to go to their left as well as their right. I think every pastor needs to exercise vision. He may not be naturally visionary but he needs to learn to do it. Every pastor needs to be an adequate administrator. Every pastor needs to understand how to do biblical counseling. Every pastor needs to do biblical exposition. Now the great thing about all of that, Art, and I only named a few things, is that it means that a man in a small church can develop into a kind of renaissance man, doing all of those things as a well-rounded NBA player, so to speak.
AA: Did you ever struggle with your identity as a pastor, Kent; that is, really understanding who God called you to be and what He wanted you to be on behalf of His people?
RKH: Actually, I don’t think I struggled with that, but that may be because I wanted to be a pastor from the time I was twelve, so it was part of my persona. I told everybody I was going to be a pastor and I preached my first sermon when I was sixteen. I’ve always had that identity, but I never understood the pastoral persona as defined by a suit and a tie, being a professional. I’ve always understood that my job is to pastor my family, to be a man of God to my friends, and to be sincerely what I am. I am not one person in one place and a different person in another place. I think that all my children would say, “My dad is no different in the pulpit or in a business meeting than he is at home. He is the same everywhere.” So, I haven’t really struggled with that identity. But I’ve never allowed other people to define it for me. I’ve never allowed my congregation to define it for me, though there are always people who attempt to do so. I think that one of the banes of evangelical ministries, especially in small churches, is that the average congregant really has a Roman Catholic view of their pastor as the padre, the local priest. They haven’t been visited unless they’ve been visited by the padre. They can go into the hospital and be visited by the elders and be visited by their friends and if the pastor doesn’t visit they are quick to assume that the church doesn’t care for them. And so what they essentially have is an old Roman view of the pastor as the vicar where there’s a special presence of Christ when he comes. I’ve never conceded to that. But there are people within your congregation who would love to hold you to that. |
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in the United States are probably the most abused sub-culture in the country. What I miss the most is the enforced discovery of having to plow through a new text every week and the sense of wonder and awe that you uncover in the most unlikely places in God’s word."  |
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AA: A colleague recently sent me a statistic that indicated that in the United States fifteen hundred men are leaving the pastoral ministry every month for reasons other than retirement or death. What does that say to you?
RKH: Well, I think that evangelical pastors in the United States are probably the most abused sub-culture in the country. The abuse is really recent historically. It’s always been tough to be a pastor and it’s always been tough to be in a small situation. But now with the business models out there, people don’t want to be part of something that isn’t up and going. And they achieve some of their identity from the ostensible prosperity of the work to which they’ve given themselves. It’s the same thing as going to Costco today rather than the mom and pop store down the street. You may get the service down there at the mom and pop store but Costco is big and it’s happening and it’s overwhelming. It titillates the sensory perceptions. It gives you the material you want regardless of whether you can afford it. That is going on in our churches and I think that because of the media, pastors find themselves abused. For example, a pastor in Wyoming might have a church of 35 to 70 people including a farmer who listens to tapes of prominent preachers on his headset while he’s on his tractor. He comes on Sunday mornings and the sermon doesn’t measure up to the polished and sensational evangelical stuff that’s being served out there. And so, he lingers after the service and hands the pastor the tape he’s been listening to with hopes that it can help his pastor. Historically, a pastor was naturally esteemed in rural America, considered to be the most educated man in town. Certainly, what people heard on Sunday morning was probably more intellectually stimulating than any conversation they had during the week at home or with their friends. They came on Sunday morning and they heard the word of God explained. Now it’s lost in this miasma of communication and sensationalism. And I actually think that Christian radio is a major culprit in this because it creates an appetite for a diet of clichés and entertainment and flat-sided social ethics that only emphasize a few issues. People are dissatisfied when they’re not getting that kind of stimulation on Sunday morning. I also think that what was fare for a youth group in the 1960s is now what happens on Sunday morning in many churches. It’s entertaining pre-digested topical stuff and quite frankly, I think that a lot of what is passed off as hip Christian music is so corny that it’s a turn-off to the unsaved person. The only person who enjoys it is the person who has filled him or herself with Christian media.
