Sometimes You Just Need to Disappear
The best pastoring doesn't happen in the office.
Gordon MacDonald
April 1, 2003
Often I think of an inn-keeper my wife, Gail, and I met in Vermont. Everything about him seemed unusual: his dress, his use of language, the ambience of his inn. He aroused my curiosity, and I began asking questions. I learned that Jack Coleman had been the president of Haverford, a well-known college. Later on, he had headed a prestigious educational foundation. Now, in semi-retirement, he ran an inn. Then I learned that he had acquired the life-long habit of regularly disappearing for short periods of time. He simply dropped out of sight. Presumably some assistant (or relative) knew where to find him, but the rest of the people in his world didn't.
When he resurfaced (perhaps ten days later), he would tell how he'd worked as a shoe-shine man at a railroad station or as a worker on a garbage collection team. Once he bussed tables at a fast-food location. Why?
"Because," he said, "in my line of executive work, it's easy to lose touch with the larger, very real world of common people. And once a leader loses that touch, a growing ineffectiveness seeps in. You forget where the real action of life is centered."
When I was young in ministry, I spent about six months traveling every weekend to churches where I would lead seminars on creative forms of evangelism. The economics of the time forced me to stay in the homes of church members. Men (in particular) would talk with me in great candor about their attitudes toward faith and the church. Frequently, coffee in hand, their after-dinner conversation would turn to their pastor.
"We love our pastor," I'd hear. "But truth be told, he has almost no comprehension of what life looks like for me from Monday to Friday. It shows in his sermons and what he asks of people."
One man told me, ...
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