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Archive for January, 2011

Nobody Knows

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Burnout and Depression in Ministry, Healing After Leaving a Church, Pastoral Termination, Personal Stories, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2011| 10 Comments »

One of the best-kept secrets in the Christian world involves the forced termination of pastors and staff members.  There are few books published on this topic (Why I Stayed by Gayle Haggard being an exception) because they don’t tend to sell and because the issue deals with the dark side of the church – not exactly great marketing material for the Christian faith.  Occasionally a story is published in a journal for pastors, but that’s about it.

Most pastors prefer to keep quiet about what happened to them because there is a stigma attached to pastors who are forced out of their positions, whether the pastor was guilty of sin or innocent of wrongdoing.  In addition, those who have experienced this particular malady find that few people really want to hear their story, which involves a lot of angst and anger.  Pastors need to tell their stories to heal, but often can’t afford to pay a counselor and usually have no idea where they can turn for assistance.  The truth is that almost nobody knows how much a forced-out pastor has to suffer except their spouses, ultra-loyal friends and family members, and a handful of counselors.  But since our best statistics indicate that at least 1,300 pastors are forced to leave their pastorates every month in this country, thousands of qualified and gifted pastors are suffering quietly but intensely all around us.

When I tried to do my own study on this issue many years ago, I was castigated by several denominational officials who believed I was trying to cause trouble.  But I just wanted to know if the denomination tracked the victims of forced termination (they didn’t) and if they had any ministry to help those who went through this awful experience (they don’t).  It always seemed ironic to me that while denominational leaders encourage pastors to take risks so their churches will grow numerically, if those risks don’t work out, and the pastor is forced to leave, those same denominational leaders end up distancing themselves from that pastor.

More than a year ago, I was given a choice at the church I had served as senior pastor for nine years.  I was told by key leaders that 95% of the church was behind my ministry and that only a small group stood against me but that it would take five years of fighting to deal with the determined opposition (which was assisted and validated by a party outside the church).  A pastoral colleague with a strong personality urged me to stay and fight, but the conflict had already taken its toll on my family, so I elected to walk away and keep the church as unified as possible.

When that happened, I didn’t know – and few Christians do – what such an experience does to a pastor.  Here’s a partial list:

*You feel like a pariah, not only in the body of Christ, but in the culture at large.

*You try visiting churches but find you can’t sing the praise songs because you wonder how good God really is.

*You realize that many of the people you once counted as friends in your former church have turned their backs on you.

*You discover that some of your best friends don’t want to be around you because they’re weary of hearing about the pain you’re experiencing.

*You find yourself becoming increasingly isolated from others because you don’t know where you fit anymore.

*You have no idea how to answer the question, “So what do you do for a living?”

*You find that you cannot function without anti-depressants.

*You no longer know who to trust among family, friends, and ministry colleagues because too many people have already flipped on you.

*You hear wild rumors about why you really resigned even though they’re patently untrue.

*You wish you could truly reconcile with those who hurt you but realize you will probably never see them again, so …

*You do your best to forgive them, but there are times when you can’t seem to let things go.

*You are forced to leave your community because you don’t want to run into those who have conspired to destroy your life and ministry.

*You cannot find another church ministry – even when you’re healed – because most search teams won’t consider a pastor who was forced to leave a church, regardless of the reasons.

*You cannot bear to attend Christmas Eve or Easter services at another church because those were your favorite services at which to preach – and you wonder if you’ll ever have that opportunity again.

*Your spiritual gifts are sitting on the shelf, atrophying day by day.

*You regretfully un-friend anyone from Facebook who is married to – or friends with – one of your antagonists.

*Your marriage becomes either stronger or strained, depending upon the care you gave it before termination.

*You feel like God is through with you … but you still have to earn a living.

*You discover that you are vastly unqualified for most secular jobs due to your pastoral training and experience.

*You find that you can’t share your faith because you aren’t very excited about it anymore.

*You praise God for anyone who sends you an email or a card because it means you haven’t been totally abandoned.

*You honestly wonder if God still loves you.

*You learn that those who conspired to push you out of the church are proud of what they did.

*You discover a vast underground network of other pastors who have been through the same experience – and that the template used to force them out is the same one used to force you out.

*You become aware that the people who tried to destroy you aren’t your real enemies but that they were simply instruments of the enemy of your soul.

*You aren’t suicidal, but like Elijah under the juniper tree, you wish God would just take you home.

*You left your community with your house underwater financially, and because you were forced to sell at a loss, your credit has been decimated.

*You find that if you’re going to survive financially, you have to start all over in a different profession – and that starting over is more difficult than you ever imagined.

There’s more I could list – a lot more – but you get the picture.

When the average person loses a job, they still retain their friends, their church home, their career, their house, and their reputation – at least initially.  But when you’re forced to leave a church as a pastor, you may very well lose everything I just mentioned overnight – and the accumulation of all those losses is absolutely overwhelming.

That’s why my wife and I are launching a new ministry called Restoring Kingdom Builders.  Even though I’ve researched this area of conflict for years – and did my doctoral work on it – I had to actually experience the pain firsthand to truly be qualified to help others.  Rather than becoming bitter about what happened to us, we hope to take what we’ve learned and use our experiences to prevent these situations from happening to others.

Now that you know a little more about the repercussions of forced termination on pastors, what can you do to help restore them and their families to ministry?  Let me know what you think.  Thanks!

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Criticism is Inevitable

Posted in Christian Music, Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Personal Stories on January 3, 2011| 4 Comments »

Christian songwriter-singer Chris Tomlin is coming to our church for two concerts several months from now.  For some reason, this announcement took my mind back to the mid-1980’s and a conflict I had with two church leaders over contemporary Christian music.

The first church that I served as pastor met in the cafeteria of an elementary school that was difficult to find even with a map.  We almost never had guests, and when we did, they rarely came back, and I couldn’t blame them.  Few people were looking for a church that was a throwback to the 1950’s, and that’s what we were, at least for a while.

One December Sunday morning, I was out sweeping the walks before our service when a family of four walked toward the cafeteria.  I introduced myself to them and privately thought, “Wow!  Wouldn’t it be something if this family made ours their church home?”  Miraculously, they stayed, even though we had no youth ministry for their daughter and son.

Over time, the man of the house became a member of the deacons (our governing board) and later chairman of the board.  His wife became head of the deaconesses.  We all got along very well.

One Saturday night, our youth pastor took the expanding youth group to a Christian rock concert in a neighboring community, and this couple’s kids went along.  I trusted the youth pastor’s judgment and didn’t feel any need to veto the activity.  After all, the youth group weren’t going to hear Madonna or AC/DC but Christian artists.  What could possibly be wrong with that?

It just so happened that this father and mother had attended a Christian university that believed that all rock music – even with Christian lyrics performed by Christians – was wrong, if not of the devil.  When they found out what kind of concert their kids attended, they became quite upset.

Soon afterwards, this couple gave me a 15-page typewritten document specifying the evils of rock music.  The document was lifted from a book that condemned all contemporary Christian music.  I read the document carefully and made notations in the margins, disagreeing with some points and seeking evidence for others.  Eventually, I bought and read the book this couple used to make their points.  Most of it was way overblown.

I called the deacon chairman, told him I had thoroughly read his document, and asked if we could meet to discuss it.  He asked me point blank, “Are you still going to allow the youth group to go to Christian rock concerts?”  I told him, “Yes.”  I’ll never forget his next words: “Well, then, we’re leaving the church.”  And they did.

I tried to get together with him again, but to no avail.

Suddenly, our church didn’t have a chairman of the deacons or a woman leading the deaconesses.  They were there one Sunday and gone the next.  To compound the situation, this couple’s daughter fell in love with one of the young men in the church and they made marriage plans.  Although this young couple met at our church, neither my wife nor I were invited to their wedding (held somewhere else) even though nearly everyone else at our church was.

I’ve had more than 25 years to reflect on what happened back then, and I don’t know what I could have done differently.  Maybe I shouldn’t have allowed a husband-wife combo to both be in such prominent places of leadership, and maybe I should have thought twice about putting anyone into leadership who attended their particular legalistic school.  But our church was small, and we didn’t have many volunteers willing to serve in leadership capacities.

But there was no way I could have known about their beliefs toward “Christian rock.”  At the time, I listened to Keith Green, Chuck Girard, Phil Keaggy, and Amy Grant, and their music was tame compared to mainstream artists.  For me, reaching young people for Jesus was far more important than legalistic rules, but this was a big issue for them.  What bothered me most wasn’t their attitude toward the music, but that they refused to meet and discuss the matter.  They laid down an ultimatum: quit taking kids to Christian rock concerts or we’ll instantly leave this church.  I wouldn’t, so they did.  I never saw them again.

Pastors make scores of decisions behind-the-scenes of their churches every week, and because they can never know the personal convictions of each person in their fellowships, pastors can’t possibly know how each judgment call will be perceived.  Some of the time, his leadership will be applauded.  Occasionally, someone will take offense at something.  Sometimes he’ll hear about it, other times he won’t.  But criticism of a pastor nearly always gets around.

A pastor’s decisions will both attract people to a church and repel people as well.  In the last church I served as pastor, a woman visited the church on two consecutive Sundays and then wrote me a note on her response card.  For some reason, I did not receive the note until after the following Sunday.  She criticized me for not preaching on John 3:16 every week and said she would no longer return for that reason.  What she did not know is that the next Sunday – which she missed – I did preach on John 3:16 (it had nothing to do with her) and some people received Christ into their lives.  The following day, I received her note.  How was I to take that?

What’s my point?  A pastor has to lead a church the way in which God leads him.  He has to set out a course and stick to it.  When he does – regardless of the direction – he will receive criticism, and some of it will originate from people whom he loves dearly.  And when that happens, some people will leave the church and blame the pastor for their departure.

The only time I’ve ever seen Rick Warren cry was when he talked about all the people who have left Saddleback Church over the years.  Even when some followers reject their leader, a good shepherd continues to care about those precious sheep.

If you’re a pastor, ask God for direction, seek confirmation from other leaders, put your head down, and lead!  Some will leave, but most will follow your leadership.  If you hurt when people leave, it shows you still have a shepherd’s heart.

And if you have a church home, and the pastor does something you don’t like, you have at least four choices: pray for him regularly, support him anyway, speak with him directly, or leave the church permanently.

I trust that the latter option will be your last resort.

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