MINISTER, FUNCTION OF

Most of us have gone to a circus sideshow at some time or at least seen one on TV. One of the common feats of daring under the big top is performed by the man who attempts to get a large number of plates simultaneously spinning on the end of some sticks. Of course, the problem he faces is that just as he gets another plate spinning on its stick, one of the earlier ones begins to waver and appears ready to fall. So the performer has to rush to it and give it a booster spin to keep it going. Back and forth he rushes, trying to add plates and at the same time not let those already spinning fall.

This seems to be an apt illustration of many churches and the role of the pastor in them. Like our sideshow performer, the pastor has figured out the plates he wants to spin, and he looks through the congregation to find who could be the sticks. With great effort, he gets it all going and then discovers that the sticks don’t keep the plates moving. So he has to run up and down from plate to plate, operating programs that the sticks are not motivated enough to keep going on their own.

A comedian once did the spinning plate trick, but with a different twist. He got his plates up and spinning, while his sidekick attempted to do the same. But then he watched his sidekick run around like crazy, trying to keep his plates spinning, while he himself did nothing. Finally the sidekick realized that something was not quite right, so he looked at the comedian’s sticks. In fact he picked one up, and the plate kept spinning. He tipped it over, and the plate kept spinning. You see, the twist was that the comedian had figured out how to make the stick responsible for the plate’s spinning.

How much better is it for the church and its leaders to concentrate on “perfecting the sticks.” That way, as they grow, parishioners become motivated to get involved in certain ministries and take responsibility for services that are on their hearts and interest them.877

Spurgeon graphically illustrated the effect of Christian leaders upon a congregation:

“… as a result of your own decline, everyone of your hearers will suffer more or less. It is with us and our hearers as it is with watches and the public clock; if our watch be wrong, very few will be misled by it, but ourselves; but if the Horse Guards or Greenwich Observatory should go amiss, half London would lose its reckoning. So it is with the minister; he is the parish clock. Many take their time from him, and if he be incorrect, then they all go wrongly, and he is in a great measure accountable for all the sin which he occasions” (C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980], p. 1954).878