So the book really is about how I live life wisely in light of this one inescapable fact that a lot of really bright, gifted, capable strong, smart, clever, people forget, which is our mortality. It really is a way of talking about mortality and eternity that can kind of sneak past people's defenses. Almost everybody I know wrestles with this stuff or they have a son or a daughter or somebody they love who's too busy or who's a workaholic—wrapped up in the wrong kind of stuff—and they just need to be awakened to what they know really matters.
Preaching: How does that resonate in the life of a pastor?Ortberg: First of all, just for the pastor as a person. All of us are tempted to devote our lives to climbing the ladder. If I'm working at GM or Apple I might keep score—in fact I have a whole chapter in the book about how we keep score—by salary, income, that kind of stuff. With pastors there's still that temptation to keep score by comparing ourselves with other pastors. "How big is my church? What do I get invited to do?" All of that kind of stuff. And none of those things are necessarily bad things; but if they become idols, they can just kill us. I think they're a part of why, for all of us in pastoral ministry, it's easy to feel discouraged, depressed or inadequate if things aren't going well, or pumped up and grandiose if things are going pretty well.
So pastors—as much as anybody, and in some ways even more—need to be reminded not to keep score the wrong way. We need to be reminded of what really matters, that life really is being rich toward God. I know when I first started in pastoral ministry, one of the thoughts in the back of my mind was:
Well, at least one of the benefits is that I will have spiritual maturity thrown in. And of course, none of us do. You don't have to be in the game very long before you realize we all face the same temptations as anybody else. In some ways it is just a little more pernicious because it can be more subtle, or we don't talk about the temptations, or we can't talk about them as openly and honestly.
Preaching: Even as young pastors, we're taught to count nickels and noses. That's how you tell who's winning.Ortberg: Yes, and part of the difficulty is that if I'm pastor at a church and attendance plummets by 90 percent, maybe I am doing something wrong. It's not a bad thing to keep track of that. If people are coming to Christ, that's a good thing to keep track of. And money can do good things. So it's important to be realistic about that stuff. An appropriate awareness of them is good. But they cannot be allowed to dominate my identity, my sense of well being. They cannot become God in my life.
The other thing I'd say for pastors is that as you think about preaching on these issues, we have to find ways to get past people's defenses. In a sense what this book is saying is, "We're going to die, so don't be an idiot." But if you just walk up to somebody and put it that way, they're going to tend to get a little defensive about it. So we have to find ways that we can communicate very basic, deep truths to people who are heavily defended against them.
