SECRETS OF STAYING POWER
An interview with Ben Haden
Marshall Shelley and Kevin Miller
July 1, 1986
Races aren't necessarily won by the first runner out of the blocks. Winners are determined at the finish line.
Ministry is also judged not on short bursts but the total impact of a life. As one minister confessed: "I fear lest I end badly." What are the keys to endurance, to breaking the tape after a lifetime of effective ministry?
One pastor who has maintained a vigorous ministry for twenty-three years is Ben Haden. After earning a law degree from Washington & Lee University, owning an independent gasoline distributorship, and serving in the Central Intelligence Agency during the Korean War, Haden became the general manager of a daily newspaper in Kingsport, Tennessee-until he was converted and entered Columbia Theological Seminary at age thirty-four.
At graduation, he became pastor of Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church in Miami, Florida. In 1966, he was chosen to be speaker on "The Bible Study Hour," a weekly radio program originating in Philadelphia and founded by Donald Grey Barnhouse. Two years later, he started his own radio ministry, "Changed Lives."
Since 1967, in addition to having a weekly national television and radio ministry, Haden has been pastor of the 2,400-member First Presbyterian Church in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee.
LEADERSHIP editors Marshall Shelley and Kevin Miller asked him to discuss the secrets of longevity in a demanding ministry.
How does the ministry compare with your earlier occupations? Are the demands of a pastorate easier or tougher than, say, the newspaper business or the CIA?
...
If you're conscientious in ministry, you never get a day's work done. You always see more needs at the end of a day than you recognized at the beginning. So much of what you know, you cannot share with anyone else ...
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