Even though I once went shopping with Paul Newman...

submitted to Leadership Journal
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Even though I once went shopping with Paul Newman, I never set out to be a pastor to household names.

I have had to ask forgiveness for being a pastor who sometimes parades and secludes himself like a rock star.

Even though I once prayed for and with Ray Bradbury, I never planned to become a spiritual advisor to famous writers.

I have had to admit the vice of acting as if my ordination papers entitled me to be treated like one.

Even though I once received actor Dack Rambo--as he was dying of AIDS--into my pastor's study; shedding tears as my heart broke with the news, I never imagined becoming spiritual advisor to movie stars.

I have had to repent for pigeonholing AIDs victims as lepers, including tossing out the glass Dack drank from that day.

I am no star. Just a pastor wishing he'd become a better one to whomever God brings across his path, and into his life and church.

Which is why a recent return to a classic Leadership Journal article-- by someone who is a household name for many of us in ministry: Gordon McDonald--somehow summoned those three encounters with the well-known from my memory banks.

More on those three intriguing stories later.

That startling wake-up and shake-up call of an article from the May 2004, "Pastorable Moments"-themed issue (Thank God for online archives at christianitytoday.com; or in my case, a stalwart refusal to toss out, or give out, any archived issues of LJ) was penned by a seasoned pastor to pastors.

If I dare to even claim to be a pastor to everyday people, let alone to pastors...or ever again to the rich and famous, I find myself needing to re-read, and re- heed, these startling pages afresh every year or so.

McDonald's piece is a fictional (but far too true) depiction of two life-changing days from a busy large-church pastor's journal and life. One convicting vignette:

In the grip of that day's schedule, Richard bumped into a woman standing at the receptionist's desk. Not recalling her name, he offered his generic, "Hey, how're you doing? Being taken care of?"


She was supposed to say, "I'm fine. Good to see you, Pastor. So appreciated the sermon last Sunday," and then allow him to move on. But she didn't.

"Pastor," she said, "I was so hoping I'd find you here. Do you have a few minutes?"

Honestly? No. The finance people were waiting to talk budget with him, and the PDA showed only 45 minutes to the next chirp. Richard ratcheted up the charm.

"You know, I'm afraid I don't. Why don't you see if my assistant can get you on the calendar for later," he said, half-knowing it wouldn't happen. The next open slot for appointments with church members was two or three weeks away. She could meet with one of the pastoral care people, he was sure.

When will people get used to the fact that senior pastors in large churches can't get into unscheduled conversations? Soon he was into budgeting, the encounter forgotten.

Three days later Richard's assistant informed him that a church member had taken his life. When he heard the name, he recalled the woman in the reception area. She was the dead man's wife.

When he saw her at the funeral parlor (his guilt induced the visit; he normally didn't attend wakes), Richard learned that she had come that Monday seeking counsel about her husband who'd been out of work for six months, was drinking, and seemed unusually withdrawn. She'd thought that, maybe, if the pastor called him, it would lift his spirit.

"He always admired you and hoped that he could one day have a talk with you. But everyone knows how busy you are," she said as they stood by the open casket.

"Everyone," I hope no one can say tome, "knows how busy you are." That indictment would be devastating to the demands that I...and only I...sometimes place on myself.

"Pastor Dave! Pastor Dave!," the excited employee of the thrift store (where I had stopped on my way home from a busy day to shamelessly feed my addiction to used books)
enthusiastically called out to me. "It is so good to see you; your sermons have changed my life!"
I had no idea who this gal was, only that she was obviously from my former church, which was far too large for me to know most attenders (I had since moved on to pioneer a new church). I was not even getting a hazy, 'Oh yeah, she sat in the 22nd pew in the second service,' but I was thrilled and humbled that the Lord had used me in her life. She still vividly remembered sermons I had almost forgotten, or written off as failures.

Every preacher needs those moments.

But here's the point and pain:

She and I both knew we had never personally met (At least I don't think so; which is central to my dilemma). But I intuitively knew that if I ventured something like an apologetic, polite, and half-true (read:"lying through my pastoral teeth"), "I'm sorry, I'm not remembering your name," she would respond with confusion; maybe even offense. Of course, her reasonable (!) argument would go, the senior pastor knows all the sheep by name; he or she is endowed with omniscience by mere virtue of their high and holy calling! I copped out with the same lame line, and switched-on charm, that Pastor Richard offered up in McDonald's article: I avoided naming her name.

I have a hard time imagining Pastor Jesus doing that.
In fact, he once claimed that a shepherd knew his sheep by name.

Big gulp.

I am certainly aware that the senior pastor of a church over a certain size simply can't do that, and there are surely ways to manage that lack of omniscience. But for me, it was a defining moment; even a decision that I did not want to pastor a church that large again. At the very least, I cut a deal to seek real relationships, so that I would never stand by a coffin in regret , as the fictitious Richard had.

In McDonald's article, a retired pastor drops by Richard's office unannounced with unsolicited words of wisdom for Richard...and us (How sneaky of Gordon McDonald):

"Richard, this isn't about large or small churches...it's about resisting the temptation to lose touch with real people with real issues. If ministry has become all about programs, you'll dry out."

Ouch and amen.

"Well, I've got to get back to work," the thrift store employee smiled, "but I just had to say thank you."

I should have; could have thanked her by name at that point. But I am sure she escaped without the revelation that though my sermons were practical, I was clueless.

I hope you're reading, whoever you are, for I have now gone back to work, and it was your sermon that changed my life. In the sovereign timing of God; by a Spiritaneous set-up, you 'randomly' ran into your former pastor, and informally and effecively pastored him. Pastorable moments, indeed.

"Jesus had to go through Samaria," John 4 notes.

Uh, no he didn't.

Not geographically he didn't, but theologically he indeed had to, if he were to keep his divinely decreed appointment with the Samaritan, and surprisingly pastorable, woman at the well.

And so it is with you and I, if we are to be shepherds truly led by the Spirit into the Samarias, thrift stores, and serendiptous pastorable places we are God-beckoned to.

Last week, I found my car almost driving itself.

No, don't call a psychiatrist or a mechanic.
That was too string a phrase, I don't want this experience to sound spooky or overly mystical, as if I was carjacked by The Almighty.

Even though I essentially was.

It just felt--in naturally supernatural way-- that I was being prompted to turn in a certain direction.

I guess I had prayed that morning to be in the right place at the right time.

Which is likely why I had (thankfully) no appointments the next hour.

Or so I thought.


It was simultaneously freaky and freeing to wonder where I was headed. I pulled into a mall I hadn't been to for months, if not years (It was in a Samaritanish neighborhood). I got out, and creatively mallwalked.... wandered and wondered prayerfully and carefully around, rather. Of course, my imagination and hopes ran wild: maybe a depressed and lost person would eagerly run up to me with "What must I do to be saved?" or a zillionaire would appear: "I've been praying about which church to give my fortune to, can you help?"

My walk was not that eventful.

As I was about to give up and head back to the car, scratching my head, I heard....... my name being called out from the food court.

It was a parishoner from my current congregation...a dear friend whose name I knew, this time. So with reckless joy and exuberant curiosity, I called hers out in return.

I knew (and you can predict) exactly what she would say next; and precisely how I would reply.

To her quizzical, "What are you doing here!?," I slyly smirked and managed something like "Well, would you believe God sent me here to see you.?"

She was not suicidal or sick, but she was eating lunch all alone, and studying for an exam, and in need of some encouragement and prayer in that clearly pastorable moment.

As promised, I'll weave back into my opening stories. For in each one, I was being taught and prepped for mall moments like that.

You'll recall the rumor that Paul Newman and I went shopping together. I confess; that statement, "Paul Newman and I went shopping together," though literally true, was a teaser. I was all by myself, walking in an open field, in between sections of an outdoor food market in my (and Paul Newman's) old stomping ground of Connecticut. Suddenly, right in my path, headed toward me, with no fanfare, Joanne Woodward, bodyguard or papparazi, was Paul Newman. As we passed, he flashed his trademark smile, and yes, I couldn't help but notice his equally-reported ice-blue eyes. We had a delightful and friendly conversation.

"Hello." I calmly offered.

"Hi there," he smiled warmly.

Paul Newman continued on his way, and I on mine.

He was very real, and inevitably smaller than life.

It was one of my first reminders that all people, no matter how larger than life onscreen or in church, are still mortals who walk on terra firma like the rest and best of us.
Upon Newman's death a few years ago, I read of how painful his cancer was, and how, despite the ever-enthusiastic personality that I encountered that day years ago, certain experiences in his past had plagued him; doubts and fears that he may have had no pastor (but me?) to cross his path, and process with.

A decade later, in my second pastorate, a leader in our body phoned me, and asked if I had time to offer the prayer at the Friends of the Library meeting that she was on the planning team for. I am sure she was half-expecting me to say no to such a trivial and token-sounding request. I might have even been about to do so, but suffice to say her casual qualifier secured my yes: "Oh, by the way, the speaker on the program that day will be the Ray Bradbury; he's a fantasy writer, I don't know if you've ever heard of him."

"Heard of him!? I grew up on his books; I've probably read them all, " I gushed.

Uh, that's not what I said...aloud, anyway.

When the day came, I was blown away with Bradbury's grace and humility, as well as his wonderful talk (a challenge to recapture the gift of imagination). But what I really remember is that during my invocation... praying of course with one eye open, to see if my hero had eyes closed (he did)... is the heartfelt amen and hearty agreement of one of the twentieth centurie's most respected writers with the prayer of blessing I prayed over him.

But when we watched him get in the back seat of his car, to be driven home, it hit me.
I had read about the great irony of Ray Bradury: This dreamer who writes of rocket flights to Mars and the fathest reaches of space and time; and had just preached to us of the limitless and fearlessness of imagination, due to having once witnessed a terrible car wreck, was emotionally unable to fly in a plane, even drive a car.

That did not make him less legitimate in my mind, but more.


And Dack Rambo? Though not the mega name Newman was, nor as well-known as Bradbury, Rambo had a recurring role on television's "Dallas, " and starred in several B-movies, such as "The Guns of Will Sonnet."

He is one of those actors where most Americans would recognize his face, if not his name.

Kind of the underside of pastors knowing faces (or pew numbers) but not names.

Dack also happened to live in our town; and to have recently come to faith in Christ, but not before receiving the death sentence of AIDS.

His house was soon shuttered by stigma in our small town.

Townsfolk, in these early days of AIDS, were fearful, and didn't question the self-imposed quarantine.

I mention that this was several years ago, not to justify what I, to my shame, did (dispose of the very glass of water I had given him in my office) in an era when confusion and misinformation reigned, but to pray in front of my readers that I have since learned my lesson:

Everybody and their mother, no matter how famous or infamous; how healthy or wealthy is hugely and only human.

Everyone on the earth, if all truth were told, harbors inarticulable pain, parallel at some point to that of Paul Newman's.

Everyone alive, whether in or out of church, is hallmarked some where in their history, by the equivalent of Ray Bradbury's car crash memory (For some, it was watching heplessly as their parents fought, recalling the nightmare of marriage, career, finances, dreams...or literal cars or planes... crash and burn.

Every soul, whether you know them by face, name (or neither) has been diagnosed with an unspeakable version of Dack's diagnosis, or been labeled with the likes of "leper," "unclean," "divorced," "you'll never amount to anything."

A nameless woman in a thrift store was a literal Godsend to me; even if I didn't even know her as member 589, pew 22. A saint in a foodcourt was sent by the Spirit to make my day as well as hers.

Pastors aren't pastors unless they encounter, and are encountered by, pastorable moments
that significantly reset the trajectory of our motives and realign the metanarrative of our ministry.

I aim now to know as many names and stories as possible, and pray to be willing to let circumstances send me circuitously into thrift stores, food markets and food courts; into sanctuaries, sanitariums and Samarias; as one widely and wildly open to the precious people I will "need to" meet.

I am renewing my covenant to read that annoying and anointed Gordon McDonald article
again and again.

And I had better also ask God and you that I do not do what I did as recently as (blush) today:

I had not yet turned the key in the ignition yet; partly as I was still gathering my books (remember my addiction) after a pilgrimage to Starbucks's (St. Arbuck's). An older, weathered man was pacing on the walkway in front of me, as he talked on his cell phone. I could not help but overhear, and piece together his spellbinding story:

He had just just finished filling out police reports, as his car had been stolen and recovered; the dangerous and wanted criminal who had stolen it had first thrashed, then crashed this man's car.

The rugged caller had just spent his last two dollars (loaned from his daughter) on gas to make the trip (in a loaner car) to the tobacco store next door to the coffee ship; his only solace at this point a cigarette. He swore (literally) to whoever was on the other end of the line that the (expletive deleted) tobacco store was not open yet, so he would have to resort to hanging out and bumming a smoke from a passerby.

At this point, as you can imagine, I was inescapably drawn into this stuff-of-the-movies story.
Yet, I said, I had neither silver nor gold to help out; not even a cigarette.

One can't make stories like this up.

Well, actually you can, and maybe he was.

But what he said next, whether he meant it sarcastically, literally, or as a futile grasp at divine (or snooping pastor passerby) intervention.

"Heck!" he shouted (Okay, he used a more colorful exclamation), in response to his conversation partner. "Tonight!?," he asked, incredulously.... I don't even know if I will be alive tonight!"

And there I was, the eavesdropping shepherd in the car, whose vocation has quite a but to do with...well, wanting all people and all nations to find glorious Hope for being alive tonight, and for eternity, did what I can often default to:

Nothing.

Sure, I prayed.

And I comforted myself by taking note that the crabby old guy didn't look like he really wanted to talk to anyone, let lone a man of the cloth.

But that cantankerous crankand his call to prayer jarred me into reality and realization of two facts:

-Everybody--whether celebrity or charlatan, sheep or goat; whether we know their name/fame or not-- has a story and is thus pastorable at some point in their pain.

-Pastors, of all people, desperately need God to send us real live people, whether superstar or Samaritan, action-film star or porn-film addict..,to pastor us, pray for us, prophesy to us in our (hopfully) pastorable moments. To remind us that if we are to reach people in said moments, we must let God reach, rescue, and recue us in ours.

Maybe I'll see you at the mall.