When Pastors Need A Pastor: An Interview With H.B. London
H.B.
London Jr. is vice president of Ministry Outreach/Pastoral Ministries for
Focus
on the Family. A pastor for 31 years, he now communicates with thousands of
pastors and church leaders each week through “The Pastor’s Weekly Briefing”
(via email) and produces a bimonthly Pastor to Pastor cassette. In his work
at Focus, London serves as liaison to pastors and churches – a “pastor to pastors.”
He recently visited with Preaching editor Michael Duduit.
Preaching:
How did you and Focus on the Family become involved with a ministry to pastors
and their families?
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London:
I was James Dobson’s pastor in Southern California. We were sitting at dinner
one night talking about all the mail that was coming to Focus on the Family,
and he made the statement that there was a certain percentage of crisis mail
that was coming out of clergy homes. He said, “Do you think there’s a way we
can work together on behalf of the clergy family?” Jim and I are first cousins
and only children, so we were raised like brothers — we didn’t know if the arrangement
would work very well or not.
The
end of 1991 we left our church in Pasadena, California and moved to Colorado
Springs. The theme of our ministry became Every Moses Needs an Aaron, which
means that every Moses — meaning the pastor — needs someone to hold up their
arms in the midst of battle — to encourage them, to affirm them.
When
I got there, we did surveys and found several things. We found that, however
you say it, in nearly every pastor there is isolation. They have all these dreams,
and often no one to share them with. They’re lonely. They don’t know whom to
trust. They feel inadequate, because the issues we face today are more perplexing
and complex than we’ve ever had before. As a result of that we’re not always
sure of how to deal with them. And there is a kind of insecurity — the insecurity
that comes from the constituency of the congregation being consumer minded,
saying not so much “What can I do for the church?” but “What can the church
do for me?” They develop an entitlement.
And
then among the pastor’s wives we found similar things, only we found that loneliness
was at the top of the list. Then there was great concern over the husband’s
schedule. There’s not enough time to spend with family so life is out of balance.
We also found that women like to nest. They don’t like to move all the time
but so many pastors move about every two, three, four years, and as a result
of that the wives never really get to put down to build their nest, so to speak.
And we found a great deal of concern about children. What are we going to do
about our kids? What if our kids don’t want to go to church anymore? What if
they see so much contention that they’re turned off by the church and they don’t
want anything to do with it?