Restoring Kingdom Builders

Today is my 100th blog post!  I’d like to celebrate by telling you a story about the second pastor I worked for.

He was a tall man with loads of charisma.  He wore colorful shirts, loved to crack jokes, and had a thing for Star Trek.  I enjoyed listening to him speak, either from the pulpit or in private.  He was primarily an evangelist who had spent a lot of time traveling and speaking at revival meetings.  We got along well.

But it was soon evident that he wasn’t getting along with the Church Council, the church’s governing body.  At first, I only heard his side of things, but it wasn’t long before the Council’s view started to leak out.

The pastor told me that the church couldn’t grow because of the way the facility looked.  The facility was 90 years old and looked it.  There were cracks in the exterior church walls as well as the parking lot.  Some rooms hadn’t been used – or cleaned – in years.  Trained in the Robert Schuller style of church leadership, the pastor believed that the entire campus needed to be renovated before the church could attract new people.

However, there were two different perspectives on the Council.  One group – headed by the chairman – was ruthlessly legalistic, criticizing the pastor for every little thing he did wrong.  In all my years of serving Jesus, I’ve only met a few church leaders whose salvation I’ve questioned – but I did question his.  He was just plain mean.  I’ll never know how he became chairman.

Another group on the Council was more spiritually-oriented.  They wanted the pastor to feed them from God’s Word and lead them in a biblical manner.  They also wanted the pastor to work a full week.  (He only came in 6-8 hours a week at the church office.)

The pastor told the Council that if they requested his resignation, he would give it to them.  They eventually requested it.  He countered by quoting “Touch not the Lord’s anointed” from the Old Testament and promising the Council he would meet them in a business meeting to settle matters.

I was only in my second year of seminary, but I knew things were about to get ugly.

It was a tough situation for me.  On the one hand, I liked the pastor a lot, and thought that some people were exaggerating his faults.  On the other hand, the pastor didn’t seem to work very hard, almost as if he’d stopped trying.

When the business meeting was announced, I felt sick inside.  It should never have come to that.

Both sides began campaigning.  Since the church rolls hadn’t been cleaned up in eons, people invited their long-gone friends to show up at the meeting and vote their way.  One party traveled four hours just to vote.

The pastor assumed that it would take a huge vote to remove him from office – either 2/3 or 3/4, I don’t remember.  He was confident that the opposition lacked the votes to oust him.

The district minister came and talked for a few minutes, but most people didn’t even hear him.

When the vote was taken, there were 63 votes to remove the pastor and 54 to retain him.

The pastor believed that he had carried the day.  However, the moderator declared that the pastor had been officially removed from office.  As it turned out, the constitution was so poorly written that it didn’t specify the percentage of votes necessary to remove a pastor.  The last paragraph stated that in those areas where the constitution didn’t designate a percentage, any vote would revert to a majority.

The pastor was angry.  He verbally castigated those who voted against him.  The next day, he knocked on my office door and told me, “There are some very evil people running this church.”  I did not disagree with him.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

The church survived.  The district sent over an interim pastor who had a big wart on his nose but who loved Jesus.  I worked with him for a while until I was called to serve at another church.

Although they later changed their name, there is still a church on that property.  I visited it several years ago.  Churches are incredibly resilient.

I share this story because I know what it’s like to be in the middle of a big church fight – and it’s disorienting for everyone involved.  Even though I wasn’t the target, the whole experience resulted in heartache and the severing of relationships.

To be honest, the entire conflict was bungled from top to bottom.  That was the church where I learned how not to do things.

One of my primary goals with Restoring Kingdom Builders is to teach pastors, governing boards, and lay people biblical ways to correct and, if necessary, remove a pastor from office.

When these situations are handled well, it’s because the leaders patiently followed Scripture rather than business practices or the law of the jungle.

When these situations are bungled, it’s because Scripture was ignored or violated.

For the sake of our Lord Jesus and His kingdom, Christian leaders and churches must do better when they have a conflict with their pastor.

Thank you for reading my blog today!  In case you’ve missed some articles, there are 99 of them waiting to be read.  And you can subscribe to the blog so it will come directly to your computer or cell phone as soon as it’s published.

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On to the next 100 articles!