Fall 1994

ARTICLE TOOLS

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I am by nature a skeptic. I have my doubts. Some people seem predisposed to accept stories about mysteries or the inexplicable. I'm just naturally skeptical.

I don't believe in Bigfoot or Stonehenge or the Loch Ness monster. I don't believe Elvis is still alive and working as a short-order cook at Taco Bell. I don't believe in any of the JFK conspiracy theories. I don't believe extra-terrestrials periodically visit the earth and give rides on their spacecrafts, partly because they never seem to land in Pasadena and give rides to physicists from Cal Tech; they always appear to a dirt farmer and his wife in Idaho who are missing a few teeth and whose parents are first cousins. I don't believe the budget will be balanced, or that Elizabeth Taylor will stay married this time, or that a stomach belt will melt off pounds and inches while I sleep so I can always retain my boyish figure (though I have hopes).

I have my doubts. I am part of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post-credibility-gap generation. I don't give my trust easily.

This skepticism is not an altogether bad thing. If I trusted every offer that came along, I would have re-financed my house every day for the past two years.

But it is not altogether helpful, either. It gets in the way of prayer. It can create barriers in my intimacy with God. It can corrode my vision for the future. And I don't think that I'm the only one who suffers from it. In fact, I think that those of us involved in pastoral ministry are especially prone to it.

He is a high-profile guy. He has been a successful pastor. Sought-after speaker. Church consultant.

He has the kind of ministry to which people in our profession generally aspire. He is in demand. He is important.

One of the ...

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