On Having Difficult Conversations (Pastors Talk, Ep. 237)
How do you have difficult conversations? On this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman offer guidance on how to prepare to have hard conversations and how to start that conversation. They emphasize the importance of cultivating a culture of trust within your church as well as learning to make space for those who disagree with you. They conclude by discussing how some of the most difficult conversations Christians may have will be when sharing the gospel.
- Preparing for Difficult Conversations
- How to Start a Hard Conversation
- Cultivating Space for Difficult Conversations
- Sharing the Gospel May Be the Most Difficult Conversation
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, this is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
This is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
Welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches, learn more at 9Marks.org. Mark, just yesterday I was out in Kansas City and doing a podcast with Jason Allen on his podcast, Preaching and Preachers, and he wanted to talk about hard conversations.
It was an enjoyable conversation, a helpful conversation, I think, but I just thought, I’m going to steal that idea. And I figured I could pay for it by advertising Jason’s, Preaching and Preachers, go check it out.
And now I’m going to steal that and say, hey, let’s have a conversation about hard conversations. Hopefully a little easier than a typical hard conversation.
Mark Dever:
Is this just going to take everything that you said in that one with Jason?
How Often Do Pastors Have Hard Conversations?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, no, this is the one where you’re going to do the more talking. I want to know what you think about the conversation. How often would you say as a pastor, you have a hard conversation?
Mark Dever:
Oh, in some sense, every day.
Mark Dever:
Okay. Give me a list of hard conversations. Like, what are we talking about here?
Mark Dever:
A brother or sister has a problem that they feel deeply and they want help with and there’s nothing you can really do.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. What else?
Mark Dever:
Someone needs to be confronted over something they’re doing that’s unhelpful to others.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Yeah. Or sin generally.
Mark Dever:
Sure. Sure.
Jonathan Leeman:
Other things?
Mark Dever:
Someone has attempted something that’s just not working and somebody needs to evaluate it and that person is finally you.
Jonathan Leeman:
How often, okay, do you say you’re having them almost daily? How many times per week are you delegating a hard conversation either to a staff member to an elder or to our friend? Brother, I think you really need to go talk to them.
Mark Dever:
I don’t think I did to delegate those. I think what happens is if there were like four of us who were involved, then generally the person who’s closest to the one that needs to be spoken to will be doing that conversation.
Jonathan Leeman:
I remember a hard situation came to our elders at Cheverly and it was exactly that. I knew the person the best and I was chosen for that very reason.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I mean, sometimes you don’t choose the person who knows the person the best, but generally you do. You’re trying to think through who is going to most likely be heard with the most charity.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Yeah. And trust.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Trust is a big deal.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Preparing for Difficult Conversations
Jonathan Leeman:
In those conversations, how do you prepare for them? You personally?
Mark Dever:
Oh man, I probably don’t prepare particularly. Usually, I prepare just by being a Christian and being a pastor and loving and praying for that person, instructing that person over the months or years.
There might occasionally be a conversation I’d have to prepare for, but that would be just reviewing some facts, making sure I’m understanding the particulars, get them right. But that’s rare, I think.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you pray?
Mark Dever:
Certainly that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you sometimes consult with people first?
Mark Dever:
Well, if it’s a kind of the elders want me to do this, yes, that’s happened. If it’s me just talking to this one person about what’s going on, probably not much of that. Maybe one other person who’s involved with them, but probably just as often my judgment.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, maybe this is a little bit off-topic, but I remember you saying one time, you’re going to visit somebody in the hospital, but you’re about to go into the hospital room, but you’ll check at the nursing station and say, hey, anything I should know about how they’re doing. And that is a picture of you in my mind, kind of hunting, gathering data before you go in and minister.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I mean, that shows how long I’ve been a pastor. I don’t know when HIPAA and everything started coming in, but I know I was visiting the hospital in Salem, Massachusetts in 1982.
So over 40 years ago. And I was certainly treated very differently by the nursing staff there than I’m treated these days.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you mean going in as a pastor?
Mark Dever:
Yes. I was told every, yes, treated very respectfully and you know, given any information and they would talk to me like, you know, this has just happened.
This is likely they, you know, yeah. They talked to me in a way that allowed me to maximize being able to help the patient in a way. Now, they seem to be disgusted at my presence often.
Jonathan Leeman:
But I think the principle still applies. I feel like I’ve seen you and I’ve seen others. You’re going to go have a tough conversation with somebody. Hey, anything I should know? I mean, it’s hard to give an actual example, but…
Mark Dever:
Yeah, certainly. You know, if you’re talking to somebody who is in a, at a crucial crossroads and everything’s not going just swell in their lives and you’re having to tell them something that they’re probably not going to want to hear, it’s certainly good as much as you can to know the circumstances that they’re finding themselves in.
And to understand this is a part of what constellation in their lives. So you can speak as empathetically and carefully as possible.
Can People In Ministry Avoid Hard Conversations?
Jonathan Leeman:
Can someone be in ministry who wants to avoid hard conversations?
Mark Dever:
I think most, almost all pastors want to avoid hard conversations. If you don’t want to avoid hard conversations, you probably shouldn’t be in the pastoral ministry. Having said that there has to be a willingness to and an ability to have those hard conversations.
And if you’re not going to do that If you’re just going to be peacemaker, you can call yourself, then you definitely should not be in the pastoral ministry because you’re just going to let the boats go along with the sort of current of the river, which will be downstream sort of towards some disastrous waterfall.
So you just, you don’t want to do that. You want to, you have to be able to lead the boat to row against the current. And if you can’t do that, including willingness, to bring on conflict, not that you’re looking for it, but… You just assume that it’s going to be there to bring on conflict in your own church in order to lead them in a good direction.
How to Start a Hard Conversation
Jonathan Leeman:
I remember one occasion in which I was going to confront, not confront. I wondered about an area of a brother’s life and I had known him for a while and had never inquired into that area. And I told you beforehand, cause you knew him and you knew the situation.
And I said, any advice for me on how to have this conversation in which I’m going to make some inquiries? And you said, do it first thing over your lunch. Don’t wait till the end of lunch, do it at the beginning. First thing. Why did you give me that advice?
Mark Dever:
Well, because you don’t want all the rest of your conversation to seem inauthentic. Like you’re just humming and hawing and trying to, you know, get, get your way in. So you can ask what you really want to talk about.
Cause that it makes the relationship seem fake to me. It feels better. I’m not saying it has to be literally the first thing out of your mouth, but probably pretty close to it. If you’re talking to a friend and you want to have a difficult conversation. Then you can go on and have all the other conversations you want to really after that.
Jonathan Leeman:
And in some sense, let the time relationship recover from that confrontation or that difficult question or whatever the thing is. Have you ever worked with another elder or maybe a junior staff member who relished these conversations a little too much?
Mark Dever:
Not that I can think of. I mean, I love working with people though, who do have the ability to have direct conversations. So, uh, I was in Kansas City with you recently, and I had a great time seeing a good friend of mine who had worked for me before.
And he reminded me of a trip we’d been on together like 15 years ago and, uh, dude who’d become a grumpy old man. And he said to me, now listen, I love you, but listening to you, he didn’t say quite that. Cause I asked him and he said, no, but you’re, you’re walking over in that neighborhood.
So you gotta be really careful not to become the grumpy old man. And I, you know, reflecting back at some of the things I said in Kansas, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, there’s that, the way I said that. Yeah. So that was a good word.
But I mean, there’s a brother who was saying something that was contrary. One of the first things he said to me when we were alone, so I could tell he was trying to be faithful to his own thoughts and to me to kind of get that out there and then sort of just enjoy the relationship after that, which I so appreciated.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Sounds like he handled it maturely and perfectly. And I’m grateful to hear it. Sounds like you’re responsive.
Mark Dever:
Well, I hope so. I mean, we’ll find out stupid idiot. Sorry. Did I say that?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Right.
Mark Dever:
See if I ever talk to him again. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I really appreciate it.
Enter Into Hard Conversations with Humility
Jonathan Leeman:
Any advice on how to step into these conversations? I mean, I guess I got a few things in my head, but…
Mark Dever:
With humility, realizing that you could be wrong like I was in this situation. I mean, sometimes that’s not, that’s not a possibility, but many times realize that you could be wrong. What you’re wondering or the way you’re construing something.
Yeah. With real love for the person involved and affirmation of that love with real esteem and appreciation for the good that’s there that you see. You know, I think I see Paul doing that with the Corinthians at the beginning of First Corinthians when he notes God’s work among them and then brings all of his many and substantial criticisms to bear.
But it’s in the light of that relationship that they know his value, his, his esteem for them, and of God’s work. Yeah, I think it would be very clear, and very specific. Vague criticism is super unhelpful.
Jonathan Leeman:
Give me an example of that.
Mark Dever:
Oh, you know, Jonathan, you’re just not as kind as you used to be. Really? What do you mean? Oh, I don’t know. He just, he used to be so kind, and now you’re just, you just don’t seem as kind anymore. I mean, that’s really unhelpful.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s tough. Yeah. I don’t know what to do with that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
Whereas, you know, when, when this friend mentioned the grumpy old man to me, he didn’t have to do anything else. I immediately thought of a few examples of things I’d said publicly and the way I’d said them in the last couple of days, I thought tick, tick, tick, tick.
Now, you know, I immediately think, ah, but I said these other things too, all of which is true, but especially for people who don’t have a relationship. Yeah. You gotta be thinking about that. So when we bring news to somebody of our perspective on something, unless it’s just an on-off switch, I saw you steal this money from the church offering plate.
Unless it’s something as clear as just on-off as that. If it’s a judgment call, you’re not being merciful, you’re not being kind, you’re shading the truth here. Then we have to be prepared for them to maybe honestly see things a different way.
And the difficult conversations that may involve us in pushing back and evaluating negatively something that they evaluate positively. And those are awkward conversations.
Jonathan Leeman:
Is it good to pose things as questions? To me, it looked like this. Am I understanding things correctly? It looks like it’s felt like you were pretty severe with your wife.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, probably usually. Yes. There may be exceptions, but probably usually, yeah, that’d be a good idea.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Do you find this as much of elder work? I find most elder work is, is teaching it’s praying and it’s more positive conversations. I find corrective conversations as an essential, but a minority part of being a pastor.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think that’s well said. And if you’re not making a habit of offering more encouragement. You need to slow down and your corrections. I think I think you want to have a habit of, of, you know, it’s kind of generic cliched advice, but you know, you talk to parents, you know, make sure every one word of encourage, one word of corrections mashed by 10 words of encouragement.
I think there’s something to that as well. And in our pastoring work, you want to be characterized by encouragement.
Mark Dever:
I was speaking to an old friend recently and I gave him some really wise corrections about something. Uh, and then like a minute after I did it, I, and it wasn’t that important stuff either. It was pretty, pretty minor.
And it was in the sea of a whole bunch of sort of really good stuff. And I just thought, idiot, why did I do that? There’s, there’s, he wasn’t asking you how to improve that. Why on earth did you tell him how he could have improved that?
Jonathan Leeman:
Why did you?
Mark Dever:
Because I wanted him to know how he could improve that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Why was that wrong to tell him how to improve it?
Mark Dever:
Uh, cause I think it could discourage him. I don’t know.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you do less correction to get older?
Mark Dever:
No, I think I’ve always been actually pretty careful about correction. So whenever you see me do it randomly, I’m in my head. It happens like a hundred more times than that. I remember I remember one intern… Oh, constantly. You don’t want to know what’s going on.
No, this is the heavily edited version that comes out. I had one intern who were doing a final evaluation walk and said, you know, I’m really disappointed in one aspect of the internship. I said, what’s that?
And he said, well, I thought I was going to, you know, hear you really fry people in intern discussion. And he said I don’t think I’ve heard you do that once. And I said, yeah, I don’t think people usually learn a lot by being sort of dressed down.
Uh, you can have a specific disagreement. That’s fine. I said I think generally people don’t change that much. I think what you want to do is figure out given what they’re like, how can you best use them? How can they best be placed for God’s kingdom?
So given that, you know, you don’t want to make a cello player, a trombone player, you know, he is a cello player. So how can he be best positioned to be useful? And so that’s more my work, I feel, is trying to observe really carefully and appreciate who somebody is and then try to encourage them in that usefulness.
Jonathan Leeman:
Maximize the good.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Not because I’m scared to have those other kinds of conversations, but because generally, the strengths are going to be along the lines of what the Lord’s made them to do. And I think there’s something in us that we know we’re supposed to take up our cross and follow the Lord.
So we just assume that if way A is easy and way B is hard, we probably are supposed to do way B if we’re serious Christians. And I don’t think that’s accurate. I think that’s sometimes the case, but I think there’s a sort of legalism in that that is not…
Jonathan Leeman:
The harder way is better.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. It’s not understanding that the Christian freedom that we’ve been granted and the wonderful liberty we have to enjoy the life that the Lord has given us.
Jonathan Leeman:
To commend you brother, I do feel like you do a good job of maximizing the good. I think that’s certainly true. And I think I’ve told this story before. One brother complained to me about how you were managing another brother because of certain weaknesses in that brother.
And I said, Mark’s really good at living with somebody and their limps and limping along with them and doing what they can, what he can to manage them towards. Where they’re strong, even though that limp is always going to be there.
I think that’s typical of you. I see that in you maximally. At the same time, you do it correctly. There’s no doubt about it.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. And sometimes too much.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I think typically you correct well. And that’s why I think this is a worthwhile conversation.
Mark Dever:
I don’t think I often avoid a difficult conversation, at least not self-consciously.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, no, you don’t.
Mark Dever:
And that’s pros and cons to that. Yeah. I think a lot of pastors, more often tend to avoid it. And so as I listen and give counsel, I’m often in the position of trying to have them have conversations rather than not have them.
Fear of Man Versus Fear of God
Jonathan Leeman:
Fear of man versus fear of God. That’s a huge part of this, right?
Mark Dever:
But it’s certainly part of it. I don’t want to take away the real questions about what is wise, and what is good. I think those sincere questions are there. Sometimes I can imagine a brother feeling like I’m willing to spend and be spent.
I genuinely am not sure what’s best in this situation. We had a great example in an intern discussion recently of a friend who gave the example of someone in a former church slandering the elders.
And in considering that both in his paper and a little bit in the conversation today, it can be a genuine question like how do we best respond to this sin? Sometimes the best thing may be to directly correct. Sometimes that could make things worse.
Now, can fear of man hide in that kind of question? Of course, it can. But before the Lord, if you’re really not being governed by fear of man, I just want to leave space for pastors to have real questions about, hey, three of us could look at this situation and come up with three different ways with honor and good conscience of dealing with it. So I don’t want my particular answer in a pastoral situation to be wrongly prescriptive to other believers.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, I’m not suggesting that fear of God versus fear of man means that’s always, yeah, it gives me the courage I need to go, but no, I think what I’m saying instead is fear of man [correction: fear of God] allows me to think more clearly. More objectively about what’s best for this individual in this situation. Maybe it is to speak a word, maybe it’s not to speak a word, but the point is fear of man is not clouding my vision such that I’m gonna lean in too hard or run away or…
Mark Dever:
Certainly, the more you can see the fear of man dying, the clearer your vision will be.
Including Encouragement in Hard Conversations
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Do you always couch a criticism or confrontation with an encouragement?
Mark Dever:
I would say do I always intend to? Probably not, but either often to generally. But probably not always.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s generally a good idea.
Mark Dever:
It is certainly generally a good idea. It’s certainly generally a good idea to relate to somebody largely positively so that even if you’re going to move to excommunicate a person, they know you love them and they know that you seem good things about them, you know, but that this, then this, and this is just, it does not go along with faith in Christ.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Typically, of course, confronting somebody when they know you love them and they trust you is easier. Trust is in many respects gasoline that allows the car to move, right? Capital to spin down that you can have.
Mark Dever:
It’s certainly not easy.
Jonathan Leeman:
No. At the same time, you sometimes have to confront people who you know don’t trust you. True?
Mark Dever:
True.
Jonathan Leeman:
What do you do then? Like this guy’s been on the fringe of the church. He’s not happy with the church. He’s not happy with me, but he’s been making trouble. I got to go have the conversation with him.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s, that’s harder because. Or at least for me, that’s harder because I think it’s, I’m less confident that they will understand what I’m saying to them. I think it’s more possible that even if I shoot straight, it’ll hit crooked because I don’t have that context of a relationship. Doesn’t mean you don’t do it, but it’s just, yeah, it’s hard.
Jonathan Leeman:
Something else I feel like I’ve seen you done well, brother, is, and this is picking up on something you said to 10 minutes ago, a single word that I think is worth highlighting is “clearly” You said communicate clearly. In addition to just vagueness of, oh, you know, don’t seem as kind as you used to be.
I’ve found it helpful watching you use as few words as possible, but also concrete words. So I know exactly what you’re talking about as quickly as possible. And it doesn’t take you 15 minutes to kind of motorboat in circles around the thing.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Sometimes Christians seem to think that vaguer is more charitable or more godly. And I don’t think that’s true at all. I think me saying, I saw you speak to Tom with literally a louder voice and what to me seemed an exasperated manner three times now.
So you do the Labor Day picnic. I saw you do that Sunday when the service went really long and I saw you do it in the parking lot when he couldn’t get out and you responded to him. I haven’t seen anything other than that. Everything I’m saying is based on those three incidents.
You know, I think that is much better than me coming along and saying, Brother, I think I’ve just been praying about your temper lately. You know, I’m concerned that your temper might be getting a little short. You know, I think it’s far better to be as specific as you can be. We can’t always be that specific, but I think it’s best to be. Data is good if you have it.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Typically.
Jonathan Leeman:
What do you do when 14 people complain to you about Joe? Do you ever say, hey Joe, a lot of people are really struggling with it? Do you ever speak for others?
Mark Dever:
Oh, I try not to really try, try hard not to. I don’t want to say never that’s hard as a pastor. You just realize like, I know the right way would be to do these 14 steps, make these difficult, unlikely things be pushed uphill and happen.
I know I could just make a phone call and like save everybody a lot of time. And I probably just slough over that way, every once in a while. But generally, no, I try to, I try to make sure there’s good, good form, like make the people do their own work. Yeah. Just keeps everybody’s relationships…
Jonathan Leeman:
Unless you have a direct access point because you witnessed something yourself.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. But even then I have to point out that I noticed it and I thought about it this way which sometimes is not the case.
What To Do If a Hard Conversation Does Not Go Well
Jonathan Leeman:
What do you do if a hard conversation doesn’t go well? Do you have it again since the one else?
Mark Dever:
Well, I don’t know if you’re on the elders when this happened, but I think, I think more than once, uh, my elders have had to instruct me to cease talking to a particular, like Mark, you know, this couple. Don’t ever talk to them again.
Like literally be quiet, shut up, get out of the room. Don’t say anything. Okay. Thank you so much for trying. No, I can think of two times at least that that’s happened.
Jonathan Leeman:
Where the elders said, stop it.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. To me specifically.
Jonathan Leeman:
Who is it with?
Mark Dever:
You mean you want me to name the name?
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m just kidding.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
In general, what do you do when things don’t go well?
Mark Dever:
Probably feel discouraged, pray for them. Wonder if I should be a pastor. I find the most doubt-inducing parts of being a pastor are when I hurt the sheep I’m trying to help. That’s like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. That’s like, ah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Let’s play connect the dots. Connect meaningful membership and have tough conversations. Why meaningful membership helps you to have tough conversations.
Resources For Hard Conversations
Mark Dever:
Are we just trying to see how many of your books we can reference now in conversation?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, stop it…
Mark Dever:
Seriously. Rule of Love by Jonathan Leeman. If you haven’t read it, it’s all about this topic.
Jonathan Leeman:
Just trying to nail this.
Mark Dever:
The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, go read the longer one.
Jonathan Leeman:
Trying to pound the drum again.
Mark Dever:
His new book on Authority coming out, finding how you can use your authority for good reasons with love in every situation.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, we keep doing this.
Mark Dever:
Jonathan Leeman, L -E -E -M -A, at good bookstores everywhere.
Jonathan Leeman:
Meaningful membership and tough conversations.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m a pastor. I’m listening to this podcast. I want to learn how to do this better. And one of the things you’re going to say is to have meaningful membership.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I think membership gives you an excuse, gives you a platform, gives you an occasion because you have covenanted with these specific individuals to do exactly this. One of the things that we promise in our church covenant is to admonish one another as occasion may require.
There it is, we vowed before God we would do this. And if we’re vowing to admonish others, that must mean that we ourselves expect to be admonished sometimes.
Cultivating Space for Difficult Conversations
Jonathan Leeman:
Another dot to connect is a culture of humility and transparency among elders. How does that help hard conversations?
Mark Dever:
I think particularly those elders who are involved in the public teaching of the word are often accustomed to being heard and respected for what they say. And I think we, speaking as one of the teaching guys at the church, need to be the foremost at encouraging and happily receiving disagreement, correction, and challenge.
And so even our practice of having a service review at nine o ‘clock on Sunday nights, where we try to practice giving godly criticism and giving godly encouragement and receiving godly criticism and receiving godly encouragement is meant to be a training, especially for the main preachers of the church. So they’ll accept it.
But it’s certainly true of all the teachers and certainly true of all the elders, that anyone who has authority in the church has to be prepared to be told that at least to whoever’s speaking, that use of authority didn’t seem good. And you have to not take that personally like it’s an ad hominem attack, you have to together evaluate, hey, wanting to see this church edified, is this brother or sister, are they representing this accurately?
Do I need to learn from that? Or have they, for whatever series of reasons, misunderstood this? And actually, I think it was probably fine.
Jonathan Leeman:
And just to highlight the one thing you said there, I think it’s so crucial. Modeling, and demonstrating a pattern of receiving correction is crucial. If you don’t have a pattern of receiving it, people are going to have a hard time receiving it from you.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re not modeling that.
Mark Dever:
Well, you’re going to cultivate having different, different people around you. Psalm 141 verse five, I’ve quoted this like five times in the last week. Psalm 141 verse five, let a righteous man strike me. It is a kindness. Let him rebuke me. It is oil for my head. Let my head not refuse it.
Psalm 141 verse five. You know, right now I’m in a very unique period. I said very unique. That’s terrible. Right now I’m in a unique period of my life.
Jonathan Leeman:
Appreciate that.
Mark Dever:
I’m in a unique period.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, I appreciate you’re getting rid of very in front of…
Mark Dever:
But don’t you want to know why?
Jonathan Leeman:
Hey, Mark, why are you in a unique period?
Mark Dever:
Because a week ago today, I had my left eye replaced.
Jonathan Leeman:
Oh, I know where you’re going.
Mark Dever:
And a week from today, Lord willing, I’ll have my right eye replaced.
Jonathan Leeman:
Cataract surgery.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. So right now, or at least the lens of my eye, not my whole eyeball, but the lens of my eye. So right now I’m in the two-week period in my life if the Lord gives me another week and I have this done.
I mean, the only two-week period I’ll ever experience where I have a brand-new lens in my left eye and a 62-year-old lens in my right eye. And I’ve noticed some differences, not just in acuity, which is why the, you know, surgery is being done, but just in the whole color tone. And then, one of the verbs that the doctor used to explain what had happened to my eyes and what generally happens to lenses over the lifetime.
He says they thicken, which I understand, and they yellow, which I think I just thought of as another word for thickened or you know, something like, okay, it gets old. I understand. I look at old things sometimes plastic when it gets old yellows maybe.
But now I noticed the other day, wow, under the outside of my, when I look out my new eye and I close my other one, everything looks sort of white blue. And when I looked at my old one, it’s this sort of sepia, but it’s a yellow sepia. Everything has this, a white is now I would say, okay, that’s yellow.
And I recognize it now because I have this contrast. I think a pastor, well, all of us, not just pastors, all of us tend to see the world through our own eyes and Ode to see ourselves as others see us. You know, we can do that through the power of loving correction and trying to cultivate this kind of rebuke that the psalmist talks of here.
But in our small, small defensiveness, we often don’t do that. And we’re the losers for that. And one of the things, there are many bad things downstream that happen for us not cultivating, getting to see out of, you know, a new eye or, you know, someone else’s eyes, you know, C.S. Lewis talks about the books of the past are no better than the books of the future.
Unfortunately, we cannot get at them, you know, the books of the future. That’s why you want to read the books of the past along with books from the current age. Not that either head is going to be, you know, inerrant, but you’re, you’re just not going to be likely to go wrong in the same direction.
Well, the same idea for you getting criticism. When I get criticism from my reading, my manuscript, and my sermon from church members on Saturday night, I’m not preaching it, but I read through my manuscript. I’ll read through my introduction.
People respond, read the point one, and people respond. I always tell them, listen, it’s my sermon, it’s not yours. Thank you for your feedback. I’m not going to do that, but have other ideas. Some of them I’ll take and I’ll make the changes, but others of them I won’t. But I’m helped by their willingness to give me all of their feedback.
Jonathan Leeman:
They’re seeing and hearing things you aren’t.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. And that’s valuable for me. And particularly if you’re listening to this, you’re a pastor, you got to be very careful. People want your approval and you’re going to cultivate people who see things the same way you do just very naturally.
So you have to be extra careful to be able to make space for people who see things differently. Now that can go too far. If you have a different philosophy of ministry, then we’re in Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas land. You better just split up so you stop arguing. So you and the egalitarian, if you’re a complementarian, rather than being in the same church and always arguing over this, serve the Lord in separate churches or you and the paedobaptist dude, you know, just like let that separation happen and then cooperate together often.
But you need real wisdom and humility, I think, to constantly be cultivating people who within your same understanding of the word for the gospel and the church in terms of principles will challenge you on how you are dealing with authority in this issue or your questions or criticisms in that issue. When you’re having good friends like the brother who told me, don’t be a grumpy old man.
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark, I think this gets harder with age, honestly, taking our lenses for granted because you’ve learned how to negotiate life. You’ve been down the paths, of these young people, what do they know? I think inertia is in the opposite direction of what you’re saying.
Mark Dever:
I only partly agree with that. I think if you have never acted like this, I think what you’re saying is very true.
Jonathan Leeman:
How do you coach yourself to do that?
Mark Dever:
Sunday evening service review, 9 pm.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, you as a, not just you as somebody preparing a sermon, I mean you as an individual. Cause I do see your heart continually pushing in that direction to go against just taking my perspective, my own perspective for granted. I think that’s hard to do. How do you do that?
Mark Dever:
Well, again, I think it’s hard to start doing that as an old man. But I think if you’re practiced in doing it, there is a trust in the sovereignty of God and a kind of free-handedness about it that I think helps make me genuinely less defensive.
It doesn’t mean I think I’m any less right. I know I’m right. But it makes me willing to hear like, hear this other person doesn’t think I’m right. Maybe I should hear them through because maybe I’m wrong. So I think having come out so well, so many times is an encouragement to keep doing that.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you trained yourself.
Mark Dever:
Oh yeah. I think all of us do that in holiness and godliness. There are things that would have been a temptation to you at age 30 that now at the age, 55?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, me?
Mark Dever:
Is that just laughably wrong for your age?
Jonathan Leeman:
49.
Mark Dever:
Oh, that’s just laughably far from 55. Oh my goodness. That’s six years.
Jonathan Leeman:
Not even 50.
Mark Dever:
Oh, that’s a big one. Yeah, I think certainly if 49 years old, you’ve been around the block a few times and you’ve experienced something, then you’ve trained yourself in godliness in ways that you have trained yourself out of certain temptations.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, I know, but I’m not as, just last night, a wise daughter said to me, Dad, I feel like you’ve been extra defensive in the last month or two. A teenage daughter who has insights.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s…
Jonathan Leeman:
Just yesterday.
Mark Dever:
That’s true.
Jonathan Leeman:
She’s like in the last month or two, it’s been especially defensive, usually, you’re really good at it, accepting things.
Mark Dever:
I think she’s just learning to take after you.
Jonathan Leeman:
I just kept my mouth closed long enough to like, shut up, Jonathan, shut up. And then just thank you, sweetheart. I will certainly pray about that.
Mark Dever:
That’s good.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s all I can muster.
Mark Dever:
You didn’t dismiss it in your head, did you?
Jonathan Leeman:
I kind of know she’s right, honestly.
Mark Dever:
Okay. This is where I told the story about my friend Glenn at college. He’s criticizing me about something. We’re sitting there in the main dining hall. He’s criticizing me about something. Before I could finish the sentence, I started explaining to him how he was wrong and giving an explanation for what I was doing.
And he looked at me and he just said, shut up. And he didn’t normally talk like that to me. And I said, what? He said, Mark, he said, let’s say that 80 % of the time you’re right. You know, you’re very clever and you’re going to come up with rationalization of whatever you do very quickly.
But let’s say only 20 % of the time somebody criticizing is right. Wouldn’t you benefit from that 20 % of the time? So if you just close your mouth and let the rest of the human race tell you something, you might learn something that one time out of five really serves you well. He turned out to be a good trial lawyer.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I thought that was good advice. Well placed. Shut up. It was really good advice for me.
Sharing the Gospel May Be the Most Difficult Conversation
Jonathan Leeman:
Brother, anything else on this converse topic of having difficult conversations?
Mark Dever:
Well, I think the most, in some sense, what may be the most difficult conversation is the basic call we have to send the gospel out to evangelize. To tell the world they’re going to hell, to tell family members that we love that your eternity because God is good is terrible because you deserve that. That’s the hardest conversation.
And that’s the kind of trope, that’s the image, that’s the routine, that’s the pattern, the type that we as pastors especially want to be accustomed to. And if we can become not inured To the difficulties, but if we can not desensitize, but if we can become confident of the goodness of the message that we have, then I think that should help us in all the smaller things that we’re called to.
Jonathan Leeman:
But it occurs to me, notice how we even defang that one when we say things, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That is a different way of saying it than what you just said.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, which…
Jonathan Leeman:
You’ve offended God and your attorney is gonna be awful apart from him.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, which is why in my sermons, I very often want to present the gospel in less cuddly, animal ways, you know, in less stuffed animal kind of ways. I want to present the gospel with more, you know, fangs, talons, and teeth.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
Because there is the initial condemnation of our spiritual state that I think our day and age is very reluctant to affirm.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, it’s just occurring to me. There’s an ironic parallel isn’t there between the way we talk about the gospel and our willingness to have tough conversations about sin and practices of church discipline in our church.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me just say the archetypical sort of fundamentalist, and I know the archetype is correct. I didn’t grow up in a fundamentalist church, but the archetypical fundamentalist who preaches hellfire and brimstone, I’ll also say that in their churches, from what I can see, there’s a great lack of careful membership and discipline.
So the kind of loving, careful, corrective concerns I’ve often not seen are not often. I have sometimes seen and often heard of not accompanying the kind of hair-raising preaching that goes on. So I think there’s a possibility people can be brave in the pulpit and cowardly in person. And I think that’s not good.
Jonathan Leeman:
Generic cliché just to say, to sum all this up by saying, speaking the truth in love.
Mark Dever:
Ephesians 4:15, do it, man.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Thanks for your time.
Mark Dever:
Thank you, brother.
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Pastors Talk
A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
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