Restoring Kingdom Builders

I grew up in a pastor’s home and viewed it as being normal.  While my family was at church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night – in addition to cleaning up the facility most Saturdays – I liked my life.  Even though I was a PK, I had a great childhood.  Church was home.

Until I was nine years old.  One Sunday night, after the evening service, my parents put me and my younger brother and sister to bed.  Shortly afterward, the phone rang, and my parents scooped us out of bed and took us to the home of the head deacon.  We three kids were placed in the room adjacent to the living room.  My brother and sister fell asleep quickly, but I could hear what was being said through the wall.  As I lay there in the dark, I heard the leaders of our church – some of whom taught me Sunday School – verbally crucify my father.

My dad probably should have resigned at that point, but he had founded the church.  It was his life.  He hung on for two more years before he finally resigned.  Twenty months later, he was dead at the age of thirty-eight.

Without its founding pastor, the church lasted for several more years but eventually disbanded.  It’s a good thing my father wasn’t alive to hear the news.  It would have killed him.

There is a part of me that wants to go back in time and help my dad manage that conflict in a different fashion.  Would he still be alive today if he had?  I’m not sure, but I do know this: there are thousands of pastors every year in our country who undergo similar experiences.  The best statistics available indicate that at least 1,200 pastors in America are forced to leave their churches every month.

What happens to them?  A high percentage of them never pastor a church again.  Many of their wives and children stop going to church, some for good.  (One pastor friend told me that after such an experience, his wife didn’t attend church for four years.)  Because pastors have engaged in specialized training and earned degrees that fit them only for church ministry, the great majority of pastors are  not qualified for secular jobs.  But because they feel they’ve been rejected by their previous church, the now ex-pastor struggles with self-confidence, depression, forgiveness, and an inability to trust people – especially Christian leaders.

Thankfully, over the past two decades, ministries have popped up all over the United States that seek to assist wounded pastors.  Some ministries specialize in counseling.  Others have retreat centers where a pastor and his wife can relax, read, and pray, as well as seek counseling.  Still others specialize in church conflict.  An organization composed of clergy caregivers called CareGivers Forum meets annually.  My wife Kim and I attended the latest conference in Wisconsin and were gratified to meet about sixty people who believe that God has given them a special calling in this particular area.  But unless the church of Christ wants to kick gifted pastors to the curb, we need many more ministries for pastors all over the United States.

I recently made a list of all the pastors I know who have been forced to leave their churches.  Besides my father, that list includes my father-in-law, my financial planner, a pastor at my daughter’s church, a pastor at my current church, a pastor friend who went to college with me (and who wrote an article in a major journal about his termination), a church consultant friend, a professor from college, and several ministry mentors, just to name a few.  In fact, according to an article in Leadership Journal from the 1990’s, 23% of all pastors have undergone the pain of a forced exit.

And you can add my name to the list, too.

After being forced to leave a church I pastored for nine years only a year ago, my wife and I were able to attend a retreat the following month in the southeast designed to help the victims of forced termination begin the process of healing.  We thoroughly enjoyed the skills we gained, the encouragement we received, the new perspectives we learned, and the hope injection we received that week.

Because that retreat was so meaningful, Kim and I want to offer retreats for pastors and their wives in the Southern-California/Phoenix area beginning this spring.  Because we believe that God can do a deep and lasting work in the lives of hurting pastors, we are calling our ministry “Restoring Kingdom Builders.”

If you know a pastor or a staff member who has recently experienced the pain of forced termination, please ask him or her to contact me at jim@restoringkingdombuilders.org.  We welcome pastors from all Christian denominations.

Please pray that God will richly bless this new venture.  Thank you!