My first pastorate was a small Presbyterian church in Coalinga, California, located in the San Joaquin Valley in the central part of the state. Previous to that I had served two terms as the managing director of the Forest Home Christian Conference Center in Southern California, and a year and a half as an assistant to the man who had led me to Christ in the Lynwood Presbyterian Church in Kansas City, Missouri.

The little church to which I was called in Coalinga was a thriving church. The pastors before me had been effective in their ministries. I inherited an ideal situation. Most of the officers were committed Christians, the Sunday morning and evening services were well attended, there was a large group of teenage young people, the benevolence budget was unusually high for the size of the congregation, and there were simply no serious problems in the church.

For the first year and a half my ministry there was a very happy one. As I went along with the momentum, God blessed and the church grew. We saw many young people commit themselves to full-time Christian vocations. But as I became better acquainted in the community outside the church, I began to realize that relatively speaking our community was unreached for Jesus Christ. It was a proud, prosperous little city. For the most part, the people were good people— conservatives, respectable, and moral. I can remember, for example, how they boasted that they could go away for a whole summer on vacation and never lock the door of the house. Or they could leave the car on the street overnight with the keys in it without fear of it being stolen. Coalinga was isolated from other cities and pretty much insulated against many of the problems outside. Generally, the people in the community seemed to be getting along quite well without the church. There were fourteen churches in that town of approximately 6,000 people. I began to feel that there was no way for the church to grow in that community— that there were simply no needs there.

One morning at a monthly breakfast I asked our ministerial group to estimate the number of people all of the churches in the community were reaching. I was shocked when we estimated that we were reaching only a little less than ten percent. Most of the leaders in that community were among those who were not involved in the life of any of the churches. I began to feel that the church was way outside the mainstream of life, that important public decisions were being made without any instruction from the Word of God or from the church as such, that the community was running well without spiritual insights and nurture. This led to a feeling of uselessness, as though clergy were important only as maintenance men for an ecclesiastical organization. It seemed as if we were spinning around in a little eddy unattached to the mainstream of life. I began to feel unnecessary as a pastor and longed to do something that people needed.

As I prayed about this it was as if God said to me, "Why are you so sure that this community is getting along without the church— without the Word — without Me? What have you done to find out about this?" This led me to begin what I now call the ministry of listening. I devoted several days a week simply to moving from office to office, shop to shop and out on the oil leases and large farms which surround the city— just being visible and available. Men became used to my presence where they were putting in their daily work and I was soon able to visit with them on their jobs. In a matter of weeks nearly everyone I talked to revealed some sort of need in is life or in the community which, with my orientation, I knew only Jesus Christ could meet.

Then came the next step; how does one communicate Jesus Christ to those people outside the church? How does one help them to see their need and then show them that Christ can meet that need? One book, which has a great influence on my life, given me shortly after my conversion to Christ, was Every Member Evangelism, by Conant. Long before I entered the pastorate, therefore, I understood that the work of the ministry belonged to the members of the church, not simply to the professional evangelist or pastor, and that the task of the pastor or evangelist was to equip all the members of the church for the work of the ministry. I understood that if a community were to be reached for Jesus Christ that community could best be reached when every member of the congregation of the local church was an evangelist, a witness wherever he was during the week. The only trouble with this, as I reflect now upon my thinking in those days, is that I assumed that everyone led to Christ by members of my congregation or everyone I led to Christ would naturally become members of the church I pastored. We would grow and meet the criteria for the successful church.

Now there were two pressures on me as a pastor. One was the pressure of the organization— the pressure of increasing the membership of the church, increasing the budget, (especially the benevolence budget) and, though subconsciously, looking forward to the day when we would require a bigger building to house the growing congregation. The other pressure was external or outreach. Here was a community that needed Christ. The way to reach that community was through the local congregation as the pastor equipped them for this mission. Although I was not particularly aware of it at the time, subsequent experience made me realize that my attitude was crassly commercial. The real pressure was building the institution. After all, this was the way to "succeed" as a pastor. So the outreach was to enlarge the institution. It was impossible to escape this pressure because this was my way of thinking about the church and it was the conventional way and quite acceptable.

I think I was genuinely concerned for the salvation of men in those days. However, that concern was subordinate to the building of the institution. Though I did not realize it then, I had a "hidden agenda" — an unverbalized goal or purpose which I was bound to communicate to those I was attempting to reach. And it must have diluted the congregation's incentive for outreach. At any rate, the congregation did not move as I thought it should and my pressure upon them increased. I still labored under the illusion that my motive was mission but hindsight makes it embarrassingly clear that my primary goal was the record I had to make as a pastor when the annual report was due. I was trying to mobilize the congregation to help me achieve my goal.

I can remember, with deep humiliation now, how I secretly longed to have a larger congregation than the Baptist Church (the largest Protestant church in town) and the envy I felt when I compared their beautiful and more spacious facilities with our meager Presbyterian plant. The sense of competition grew and deepened though I never would have admitted it at the time. I found myself becoming actually jealous because of the success, especially of the Baptist pastor. How I found myself exulting when we established a larger youth group than the Baptist church. And I took great pride in the fact that we were reaching more of the leadership in the high school. (As a matter of fact, that was not because of me; the former pastor had done such a splendid job with junior high and they had now moved into senior high).

This hidden agenda must also have communicated with those I tried to reach in the community. From their point of view they must have felt I was trying primarily to get them into First Presbyterian Church. I worked harder than ever to get the congregation to see its responsibility for reaching into the community and for evangelizing all ages. I'm afraid I exhorted and scolded much more than I instructed in those days of putting undue pressure on the congregation.

This even affected my longing for revival. From my earliest days in the Lord I was exposed to men and women who longed to see revival in the church and I cannot remember when I did not long for revival. This desire for revival was not entirely pure and selfless. Revival would mean an awakened congregation, an awakened congregation would mean a greater outreach in the community, a greater outreach in the community would mean more converts and that would be a growing membership which would eventually require a larger plant and result in a larger benevolence budget. This ambivalence must have infected everything I did in those days.

Meanwhile, something else was happening. I became increasingly aware of the time I had to spend on institutional matters; committee meetings, office administration, mimeographing of the church bulletin, programming, (especially for youth activities), getting young people to camps and conferences, arranging for transportation. This was, of course, in addition to the pastoral duties which I began to believe ought to be shared by the congregation. As yet, I had not learned how to guide them into ministering. These institutional activities were preventing me from being with people.

During my third summer as pastor of the church in Coalinga, I had a life-changing experience while at a Sunday school conference at Forest Home, California. A fresh visitation of the Holy Spirit came upon a small group of us while we were at prayer. This changed my life radically. Subsequently, discussions with those who shared this experience with me led to the discussion that the conventional pastorate was not my calling and that I should devote myself completely to reaching people where they lived daily without the pressures of getting them to join a church. Accordingly a series of deep, thoughtful, prayerful conversations with the session of the church led to my decision. I had their genuine cooperation and approval to resign as a pastor. The resignation was consummated three months later in a very wonderful spirit of love and encouragement. As a matter of fact, the last week in that church I conducted an evangelistic meeting with great blessing.

At that time, I had no plans for the future. It seemed agreeable with all concerned that I remain in the little community and develop a ministry to people where they lived and worked daily. I would devote my time entirely to being with people wherever there was opportunity and to serving them as the need seemed to indicate.

God had other plans. Dr. Louis H. Evans Sr., of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, invited me to be one of his assistants with the understanding that I would be free to develop this non-conventional ministry in any way that the Spirit of God seemed to lead in the Los Angeles area. The agreement was that I would be under no obligation to bring people into the Hollywood First Presbyterian Church. Instead, in the name of Christ and the church I would minister to people wherever there was opportunity and whatever direction they might go so far as church life was concerned as a result of this ministry. This was to be an experiment for one year after which we would evaluate and decide whether or not it was right for me to continue on the staff of the church in Hollywood. The experiment resulted in my remaining on the staff of that church for eight and a half years before moving to Washington, D.C. to be associated with International Christian Leadership (the Prayer Breakfast Group movement which had begun in Seattle, Washington in 1935.)

In the early spring of my third year at the church in Coalinga, the desire to disciple men led to a weekly breakfast group in the church. The reason that the breakfast hour was chosen was practical in as much as the men laid on my heart to disciple were all busy men. Generally their lunch times were taken with business and their evenings were quite often as filled as were mine. The most available time to get these men together was at breakfast. One of the men had to be at work at 8 o'clock in the morning so we decided to meet at the church for breakfast every Wednesday at 6:30. A woman in the congregation was kind enough to come to the church early Wednesday morning and prepare this breakfast for twelve of us. We had committed ourselves to meet together every Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. for three months, which was providential, for I am sure that if we had not, the breakfasts would not have lasted for more than a few weeks.

Those early meetings were exceedingly interesting for all of us. I did not come prepared to speak. The men expected me to speak in as much as I was a clergyman and this is what clergy did. My desire was to study the Bible inductively with the men, to depend upon the Spirit of God to lead us together to discover what He had caused to be recorded in the book of Romans. The first morning we read the first seventeen verses and then I asked the men to comment on what they had read. Absolute silence prevailed. It was apparent that they expected me to tell them what the passage taught, and I was anxious for them to share their impressions. The silence was embarrassing, but we were committed to stay together. Our first day in Romans was not very fruitful, but we had some laughs and we got to know each other a little better and some of the invisible walls that separated us were dissolved. Briefly, at least, we removed our masks and were our real selves with each other. The second week was better. They did not come expecting me to teach a Bible lesson and they understood that we were to read the passage and comment on what we saw in it. The comments were interesting and varied, and as we continued to meet over the weeks it was absolutely amazing the things we discovered together in the book of Romans.

We learned many things in that first breakfast group. First of all, as we sat together week after week, we grew to know one another at increasingly deeper levels. We came to love one another and to really care and be concerned about our brother's spiritual welfare as well as his family and his work. In our prayer times we found ourselves more anxious to support one another with intercessory prayer, not only at the breakfast but throughout the week. Thus this deep, wonderful friendship developed. I learned the meaning of being with men— just with them. It was at this time that the text in Mark 3:14 came to mean much to me. It is recorded that, "(Jesus) ordained twelve, that they should be with him and that he might send them forth." The preposition "with" came to have great meaning for me as I comprehended slowly a significant fact. Jesus Christ loved the masses; the whole world lay heavily upon His heart; He had come to redeem the whole world; His ministry was to be brief. Still He deliberatly devoted much of His three years of public ministry to only twelve men. He was with them under all kinds of circumstances. It was supremely important to Him to be "with" them.

In fact, this was Jesus' theological seminary for the apostles. His strategy was simply to be with them. They grew to know one another, to be patient with one another, to care for one another, to love one another, to support one another, to dare to be critical and to help one another change. All the time they were growing in their knowledge of Jesus Christ. They were not just learning things about Him, but they were learning to know Him, to feel Him, to absorb His attitudes and feelings, to learn by example as well as by parable and precept.

Up to that time I was never with a man unless I had some purpose, either to bring him to some kind of a decision for Christ, to get him to do something for the church or get him to give money to some worthy activity. Now I began to realize that it was important to be with men just to be with them.

I will never forget an experience early in my time at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. There was a man in the congregation whom I admired greatly at a distance. I wanted to know him. One Sunday morning I asked if we could get together. He invited me to his club downtown for lunch on Tuesday. We met a the appointed time, 12:30, and had a wonderful lunch together. At about twenty minutes to two he looked at his watch and said, "Now Dick, I have a 2:00 appointment at the office and have to leave in about ten minutes. What did you want?" I said I didn't want anything; I just wanted to be with him. He got the strangest look in his eye and said to me, "Come on Dick, we're friends— you can level with me— do you want some money for the church? Do you want me to do something? What do you want?" I said, "Honestly, I just wanted to be with you." He was silent for a minute and then he said, "Dick, this is the first time in my life that a preacher wanted to be with me when he didn't want something from me."

Here is that insidious commercial spirit again which so easily communicates non-verbally to people. Even when we want to win them to Christ, they feel like objects to be reached rather than persons to be loved and cared for. They feel like a statistic. As one person put it, "You just want my soul to hang on your belt." Decisions for Christ become a kind of conquest. We find ourselves wanting to report our triumph to our friends, to let them know how many we have led to Christ. Or if our purpose is not evangelism, they begin to feel that the only time we are with them is when we want something from them. Either we need their financial support for some program we are doing or we want them to get involved with one of our plans. In one way or another it seems we are with them to use them for our purposes. We are mobilizing people for our programs and this is exploitation, however worthy our objective. I learned in that first breakfast the deep satisfaction of being with men just for the pleasure of their company.

Something else became quite apparent. As we studied the Bible together and learned to know one another better and developed a mutual concern and sense of support, evangelism happened. Some of the men in that original breakfast had never opened their heart to Jesus Christ but as a result of that breakfast, they met the Savior. They began to grow and without any pressure to make any kind of decision, just in the fellowship of that weekly breakfast, every one of those men developed in his own way into an effective disciple for Jesus Christ.