Restoring Kingdom Builders

Back in the 1960s, a new kind of doll hit popular culture: the bobblehead.  The first such dolls produced were of baseball players Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Roberto Clemente.  Later in the decade, dolls were produced of The Beatles.

As a kid, I distinctly remember bobblehead dolls of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had the best promotions in all of sports. The head on the bobblehead is oversized and, connected to its small body by a spring, continually nods.  The doll never says “no” but always says “yes.”

The only bobblehead I own is of former Oakland A’s pitcher Vida Blue, and I’ve been looking to give it away for quite some time.  If you want it, you can come over to my house and claim it.  (I met Vida Blue in Anaheim in 1972, the year after he won the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in baseball.  I asked him to pose for a photo.  He stuck his tongue out at me.  I still have the photo.  But you can’t have the photo.  It’s precious.)

Anyway, I digress.  The reason I bring up bobbleheads is because some Christian leaders resemble them.  Just as the bobblehead constantly nods its head in approval, so too these leaders always seem to agree with the other leaders around them.

Where can one find Christian bobbleheads in a church setting?

They can be found almost anywhere that decisions are made: on the programming team, among adult youth leaders, on any ministry team, and on the church board.  Especially on the church board.

Church boards – whether they’re called elders, deacons, servant-leaders, or the Board of Directors – usually have lots of decisions to make and not much time to make them.  I’ve attended several hundred board meetings in my time (violins, please) and one of the constant themes is that “we’ve got to hurry up and get out of here by 9:00 pm” or whatever time is set.  (11:00 is more like it.)  The chairman introduces an issue, board members ask questions and discuss it, and the board eventually comes to consensus.

When the issue is relatively insignificant, this approach works well.  But the more an issue impacts the entire church family, the more time the board needs to take in deliberation.  It’s irresponsible for a board to make a quick decision, for example, over changing the times of the services or borrowing money to construct a worship center.  The greater the impact on the entire church family, the longer the board needs to take in making a call.

This principle is especially relevant when it comes to two issues: hiring and terminating the head pastor.  Let’s talk about the latter decision.

Every month in our country, 1,300 pastors are involuntarily terminated from their positions.  Some deserve it, being guilty of incompetence, immorality, or stubbornly refusing to repent of wrongdoing.  But in the great majority of cases, the template goes like this:

One board member has it in for the pastor.  Let’s call him the gunslinger.  For a year, he tries to wear down the pastor through controlling tactics, insinuations, harassment, and a lack of support.  He privately makes his case with the other board members between meetings in the church parking lot, during private meals, and at “secret meetings” in a restaurant or someone’s  home.  The gunslinger can’t seem to find anything the pastor does right and concludes that the board must “shoot him” to save the church.  When questioned about the propriety of such an undertaking, the gunslinger produces a Wanted poster with a list of charges against the pastor (and often his family) that indicate the pastor has to go, the sooner the better.  It’s never the quality of the charges but the sheer quantity that ultimately persuades the other board members.

If you’re wondering about how in touch with reality I am, let me quote from Guy Greenfield’s book The Wounded Minister:

This person “will lead a campaign of attack on the minister.  This person is not trying to give constructive criticism.  Even if some valid points are offered, his goal is nothing short of control, no matter what it may cost the minister or the church.  The antagonist is so full of rage that he feels compelled to attack the ‘enemy’ (the minister) until he is destroyed (terminated and eliminated from the scene).

This person probably has a ‘God-problem.’  He feels some deep-seated anger toward God, for some reason out of his past experiences.  Because it is difficult to show anger directly toward God, the pathological antagonist chooses the minister, the ‘man of God’ as his target.  Sometimes this anger is guilt-driven (possibly due to some hidden sin, such as an extramarital affair, for example).  His antagonism is an attempt to move the spotlight off his own sins and onto another.  Therefore the attack is a smoke screen to cover his own moral indiscretions … His stated reasons for opposition are a ruse for his own hidden agenda.  What he really wants is power, control, status, and authority.”

How does the gunslinger get away with his diabolical plan?

A while back, I bought a DVD collection of the classic TV show Bonanza.  The collection contains more than 30 episodes of the show from the first several years, all of them very, very good (even though they’re not remastered.  But what do you expect for $6.99?)  In some of the stories, there’s a bad guy who wants to kill Pa or Hoss or Hop Sing, but he never tries to go gunnin’ for them by himself.  He’s always got some not-so-bright “boys” who are willing to do whatever he tells them to do.  No matter how bad his plan is for stealing Ben’s cattle or grabbing some Ponderosa land or stealing Little Joe’s girl, the boys are in the background nodding their heads.

In other words, they’re bobbleheads.

Church boards have bobbleheads, too, or else the gunslinger couldn’t get away with anything.  They fail to realize that just as the gunslinger has been working on the pastor for a long time, so too he’s been working on them.  Greenfield again:

This person “tends to attract certain followers.  Without them, the antagonist’s efforts would fizzle.  He usually does not have the courage to go it alone.  He needs followers to bolster his campaign against the minister.  My antagonist was calculating in his enlistment of a small band of followers.  Each had a personal ax to grind with regard to what was happening in the church.  Each had a reputation for being a severe critic of former ministers.  All but one was a natural follower in personality makeup.”

In other words, they were bobbleheads.

Greenfield goes on:

“Four others were enlisted to join in this effort.  They began to hold secret meetings at Jim’s home on Wednesday evenings (at the same time the congregation was scheduled to hold midweek prayer meetings at the church building).  So Jack won over five men and their wives to concur with his accusations, none of which was true.  All of these men were deacons [board members].  Then, one by one, a few of their longtime friends, nondeacons, were persuaded to see things at church their way.”

The bobbleheads on the board kept nodding their heads in time with each of the gunslinger’s accusations.  They nodded so much that it became trendy to do so around town … er, the church.  Soon others began to “do the bobblehead” as well.  Greenfield concludes:

“In a few months, they knew they could count on at least 30 church members to vote with them regarding the minister’s future.  In the final showdown business meeting, they were able to muster some 50 members to vote with them.  There were some 135 members who voted to sustain the minister.  These were not good odds for future unity and fellowship in the church.  Therefore, I chose to take early retirement.  My health was too fragile to continue living with this kind of stress.”

The gunslinger never has to actually fire a shot at the pastor.  Just the threat of a shot causes most pastors to head for the high grass.  “C’mon, pastor, draw!”  But most pastors aren’t trained to shoot, especially at church leaders.  The gunslinger knows this and figures that even if the pastor tries to shoot, he’ll fire blanks – or wing the associate pastor.

Greenfield then asks the question that I’ve often wondered about.  Maybe you have, too.  “Now why would a handful of malcontents, led by a pathological antagonist, be able to enlist followers in a crusade based on a combination of falsehoods and half-truths?”  In other words, how does the gunslinger enlist bobbleheads to his cause?

If you have some ideas, I’d love to hear them.  I will share my own ideas next time.