Five years ago today, October 24, 2009, I attended a board meeting at the church I had served as pastor for ten-and-a-half years. The meeting began with a surprising and shocking announcement.
Within fifty days, the senior pastor (me), associate pastor, outreach director (my wife), youth director, and all six board members resigned. Many others eventually left the church – some quitting church altogether – all stemming from the announcement made at that meeting.
When something triggers my memory, I mentally and emotionally relive that day.
Although I was not guilty of any impeachable offense – and my conscience has been clear on that for five years – that meeting ended up catapulting me out of a thirty-six-year pastoral career.
Because I want to prevent other pastors, church leaders, and congregations from experiencing something similar, I wrote a book about that fifty-day struggle called Church Coup: A Cautionary Tale of Congregational Conflict, published by Xulon in early 2013.
With the benefit of time, formal training, personal study, and conversations with Christian leaders, I’d like to share five cautions for Christians to observe when their pastor is under attack:
Caution One: if you have a personal grievance with your pastor, follow Scripture before you do anything else.
If you’re upset with your pastor personally, don’t tell your friends, pool grievances with others, or seek to have the pastor removed from office.
Instead, follow Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:15: “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”
In this case, your pastor is your brother.
Personal conflicts with a pastor sometimes spread to the entire congregation because Jesus’ followers fail to obey His directives.
At my wife’s preschool, she tells children who are fighting, “Use your words.” She has them sit down at a green table and discuss their differences between themselves. She tells me that so far, in every single case, the children have successfully worked matters out. They share feelings, say “I’m sorry,” and walk away with matters resolved.
Can Christians learn from preschoolers?
If you do speak with your pastor about a personal grievance, and you’re not satisfied with his response, you can follow Jesus’ steps in Matthew 18:16-17 and 1 Timothy 5:19-21.
But most people who have a personal grievance with a pastor never speak with him directly. Instead, they share their feelings with others – which is how Satan starts firestorms in churches.
Please: if you won’t discuss your grievance with your pastor personally, then let it go … or leave your church.
But above all: follow Scripture.
Caution Two: you don’t know the real story until you’ve heard the whole story.
I watched the news several days ago about the shootings at the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. Some of the initial reports (there were two shooters, one shooter was a member of al Qaeda) proved not to be true. We’ll learn more about what happened with each passing day.
When a pastor is under fire, the initial accounts you hear may not be true. If you believe and distribute those reports without solid evidence, you may be responsible for spreading rumors that will hurt people and damage your congregation’s soul.
The only way to know the whole story is to:
*exercise patience
*wait for an official investigation
*hear all sides of the issue
*discount anyone who intends to hurt or punish the pastor
During a conflict, it’s tempting to adopt the viewpoint of your friends so you’ll fit in. After all, if you disagree too strongly with their views, they might freeze you out from their inner circle.
But if you jump on the “kick out the pastor” bandwagon, you may later be viewed with suspicion as someone who overreacts. It’s far better to wait for the truth to come out – and that may take months.
Fifteen days after our conflict surfaced, I sat in two meetings of the congregation (totaling three-and-a-half hours) and did not say a word in my own defense. I suppose many people assumed that I was guilty of the charges because I did not respond to them.
But the consultant who was present that Sunday had advised me not to say anything in the meetings, and I promised him I wouldn’t. If I had spoken up, I could have exposed the entire plot and decimated my critics, but I didn’t. In fact, I never said one word in any public church meetings in my own defense.
And then I waited more than three years to tell my story in writing.
I wonder … how many people waited for the whole story to come out before hardening their opinions?
Caution Three: insist that church leaders use love first, and only use power when love doesn’t work.
My only secular work experience was at McDonalds, where I worked two (long) years as a teenager.
When the management at McDonald’s wanted the crew to do something, they used threats.
If we stole food, they promised to fire us. If we stole money, they said they’d prosecute us.
The managers at McDonald’s used power to keep their employees in line, but love wasn’t part of their modus operandi.
However, when I began serving in church ministry, leaders used love to keep staff members in line. When I messed up, someone spoke to me directly. They aimed for restoration. They forgave me when I admitted mistakes. They would only resort to power if their attempts at love failed … and with me, love always worked.
As a pastor, I served with church boards for twenty-five years, and whenever we had a disagreement, or a board member was unhappy with me, someone would speak to me in love. We’d discuss matters, resolve the issue, and move on. Since love worked, power wasn’t necessary.
But in my last ministry, I ran into a board that began to use power first. They made decisions outside meetings, and then announced them inside meetings without my input or approval. This had never happened to me before.
I believe that a pastor and a church board should work together. If the pastor wants to make major changes, he needs to run them through the board first. If the board wants to make major changes, they need to run them by the pastor first.
But toward the end of my tenure, that didn’t happen. When board members were unhappy with me, no one sat down and spoke with me in love.
Those tactics sent the church into a spiral.
Paul writes in Galatians 6:1, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.”
No power moves are mentioned in that verse. If someone – like a pastor – is caught in a sin, God’s Word doesn’t say to punish him harshly. It says to “restore him gently.”
I never felt any love. I never sensed any desire for restoration. I never heard the voice of God coming through their pronouncements. Instead, I sensed a desire to get even.
It became personal.
The hatred ended my pastoral career and spread throughout the church. It’s been difficult to recover my heart.
Where was God’s grace?
Several months ago, I attended conflict intervention training with Peter Steinke, who works with mainline churches. Out of eleven people taking the training, I was the only person with a Baptist background. At one point, Steinke asked me, “What’s with the Baptists? They seem to see the pastor as being all good or all bad.”
I don’t have an answer for that.
Caution Four: protect the reputation of your church’s pastor and leaders.
I hear lots of stories of pastors who are pushed out of their churches, usually by the governing board.
These pastors – who have devoted their entire lives to serving Jesus – are petrified that their forced exits will end their pastoral careers.
And humanly speaking, they have good reason to feel that way.
I know a pastor who served his church faithfully for more than twenty years. After he was forced to resign, vicious rumors started flying around the church about him.
Six months later, when a church showed interest in him as a pastoral candidate, they nearly dropped him from consideration because people from the pastor’s former church called the search team in an effort to smear the pastor’s reputation.
To their credit, the church called the pastor anyway … but that’s often not what happens. False accusations – which are often feeling-based rather than fact-based – have a way of making the rounds in the Christian community.
Some churches drop a candidate from consideration if they perceive there’s even a hint of failure in his past. And some forced-out pastors are so devastated by assaults on their character that they assume they’ll never secure another church position.
Pastors are not evil. Sometimes they’re not matched well with a church or community. Sometimes they were effective early in their tenure but can’t take the church to the next level. Sometimes they’re burned out and hanging on for dear life, reluctant to share that information with church leaders because they’re afraid they’ll be instantly dismissed.
But should a pastor be chased out of a church if things aren’t going well?
How do professing Christians harm the reputation of their present or former pastor?
*They attribute false motives to the pastor.
*They naively believe every negative thing they hear about him.
*They disseminate those charges through the telephone and social media.
*They spread rumors and innuendos about the pastor without confirmation.
*They conclude that the pastor is so evil that he needs to leave the church … and maybe ministry altogether.
But these “believers” seem unaware of one basic truth:
When a pastor is attacked from within, the church is attacked as well. And the being behind that attack is always Satan.
Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:12, “Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other.”
How does God want believers to act toward their pastors?
“Respect … hold in the highest regard … love … live in peace.”
That’s a far cry from Satan’s strategy: to destroy pastors through deception.
The allegations you spread can ruin a pastor’s life. Do you want that on your resume?
Caution Five: ask God to show you your part in the conflict, and to make things right with anyone you harmed.
Paul wrote to the church at Corinth in 2 Corinthians 12:20: “For I am afraid that when I come … there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.” Those words perfectly describe what happens inside a church when a major conflict breaks out.
But how many people, if any, ever repent for their part in causing quarreling, slander, and disorder?
From all my conversations over the years, I can only recall a handful of times when those who collaborated to force out a pastor later apologized to him:
*Four staff members revolted against a pastor I know. After they all resigned, one staff member sent a letter of apology … seven years later.
*A pastor friend served as an interim at a church where the board had pushed out the pastor. The board chairman stood up in the congregation and confessed his part in the coup. The board later extended the pastor’s severance package.
*One of my college professors served as the pastor of a megachurch for many years. He was eventually forced to resign, but when a new pastor came, he invited the former pastor back and the congregation apologized to him for the way they had mistreated him.
*A pastor recently told me that someone confessed their part in removing him from office … seventeen years after the fact.
Several years ago, I discovered a place online where the names and photos of nearly all my detractors were visible. They were all connected to one individual who had opposed my ministry for years – Grand Central Station for anyone who didn’t like me. Didn’t surprise me one bit.
Not one has ever admitted their part in forcing my departure.
May God forgive them all.
Although I’m retired from church ministry, I am reaching several thousands every month through my blogs. If you enter the words “terminate pastor” into a search engine, mine is usually the top entry on Yahoo’s first page, and I’m on Google’s first page as well. I reach far more people through writing than I ever did through preaching, which is all God’s doing.
I am content to be where God has placed me.
I know very little about what’s happening at my last church. I refuse to do to others what was done to me. I have never spoken with the pastor. I never visit the website. I only have twelve friends on Facebook who still attend the church, and we never discuss church happenings.
Those were good years, for the most part. I wish the church well.
And I pray that church – and your church – will always know God’s peace.
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Restoring Kingdom Builders 
Six Reasons Why Most Pastors Don’t Preach on Controversial Issues
Posted in Church Health and Conflict, Conflict with the Pastor, Current Church Issues, Please Comment!, tagged Christians and controversial issues, pastors and controversial issues, preaching on controversial issues on July 17, 2015| 7 Comments »
One Sunday morning many months ago, I received a phone call from a layman who attended a church in another state. He had read the following blog article discussing whether pastors should preach on controversial issues and he wanted to talk.
He told me how distressed he was that his pastor didn’t preach on anything controversial and wondered what, if anything, could be done about this problem.
We proceeded to have an impassioned discussion about the reluctance of most pastors to talk about the moral and social issues of our day.
Since the decision to affirm gay marriage in all fifty states by the Supreme Court in late June, I’ve been wondering why so many evangelical pastors have been reluctant to say much … if anything … about this issue.
Weeks ago, I wrote my mentor and asked him if he knew anyone I could speak with about why so few pastors talk about anything controversial anymore.
He directed me to a veteran pastor and former Christian university professor. When we had lunch several days ago, I shared with him some reasons why I felt pastors were silent, and he told me, “You have an article right there.”
So … why don’t most pastors preach on controversial issues?
Let me give you six primary reasons:
First, most pastors are feelers rather than thinkers.
As I mentioned in my book Church Coup, Dr. Charles Chandler from the Ministering to Ministers Foundation states that on the Myers-Briggs test, 77% of all pastors are feelers, while only 23% are thinkers.
This does not mean that feeling pastors don’t think, nor that thinking pastors don’t feel.
But this statistic indicates that nearly four out of every five pastors are governed more by their feelings than their reasoning. I would think this applies not only to their leadership and shepherding duties, but also to their preaching.
Here is an example of a scenario that I faced all the time when I was preparing a sermon:
Let’s say that I’m scheduled to preach on the eighth commandment this Sunday, “You shall not steal.”
As I’m preparing my message, I remember that a man in the church was caught embezzling funds at his work … an “investor” cheated another man in the church out of several thousand dollars … and a high school kid was arrested for shoplifting.
While I certainly don’t want to preach at those individuals … and given the announced topic, they might not show up that Sunday anyway … do I pull my verbal punches because I might say something that causes them pain?
My guess is that the “feeler” pastor will pull his punches. The “thinker” pastor will prepare and preach as if those guilty of theft won’t even show up.
I’m more of a thinker than a feeler … more prophetic than personal … and even though the faces of the “thieves” would flash before my mind during sermon preparation, those faces wouldn’t stop me from saying what I believed God wanted me to say.
But those faces would affect the “feeler” pastor.
Second, most pastors lack the time or motivation to properly research a controversial issue.
I once heard that one of America’s great Bible teachers spent only 6 to 8 hours preparing each sermon.
Rick Warren promised the people of Saddleback in their early days that he would spend a minimum of 15 hours per week in sermon preparation.
We were taught in seminary that a pastor should spend 20 minutes in preparation for every minute in the pulpit. That’s a minimum of 12 hours of preparation for a typical 35-minute message. (Some homiletics professors say that a pastor should spend one hour in preparation for each minute in the pulpit, but that seems hopelessly unrealistic to me.)
In my case, I spent an average of 15 hours on every sermon I preached.
But 4 issues each required more than 20 hours of study: abortion, atheism, evolution, and gay marriage.
I studied my brains out for those messages because I needed to:
*know what I was talking about.
*familiarize myself with the various views.
*think through and refine my own position.
*present my material in a biblical and interesting manner.
*address any objections and questions that people might have after the message.
On those rare occasions when I scheduled a sermon on a major issue, I tried to clear my calendar ahead of time so I could devote my best thinking to that message.
Most pastors just won’t … or can’t … do that.
Third, most pastors would rather address spiritual topics than cultural ones.
Last year, I visited a megachurch close to my house.
The pastor was preaching through Ephesians and came to chapter 5, verse 18, which says:
Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.
The first thing the pastor said was, “Now I’m not going to talk about alcohol.”
Alarms started going off in my brain. I might even have said, “What?????” out loud.
If you’re a pastor, you have to talk about alcohol in this verse because Paul’s whole point contrasts alcohol with the Spirit’s filling. Alcohol is a depressant … the Spirit is a stimulant. Alcohol abuse leads to wastefulness … the Spirit leads to productivity … and so on.
I sensed this pastor was comfortable talking about the Spirit, but uncomfortable talking about alcohol.
But the passage clearly says “don’t get drunk” … not “you can’t ever drink anything.”
When the pastor came to the end of the chapter … where Paul compares the union of Jesus and His church to a marriage between a husband and wife … the pastor punted on the whole issue of gay marriage as well.
This is pietism, pure and simple … the spiritual view that all that matters in my life is my relationship with God and my relationships with God’s people.
But what about what’s happening out in the culture?
Many years ago, I gave a message on a culturally sensitive issue, and a man at my church … who was an electrician … thanked me profusely for that talk. He said that now he could speak intelligently with his fellow electricians about that issue.
To me, that’s a major part of what Ephesians 4:12 means by “to prepare [equip] God’s people for works of service” … and I don’t think that service only applies to the four walls of the local church.
In fact, when a believer tries to share his faith in the marketplace, it’s common for an unbeliever to bring up the existence of God … the authority of Scripture … and the latest cultural issue.
If God’s people know how to answer people intelligently (1 Peter 3:15), they’ll be better evangelists.
Fourth, many pastors are afraid they will turn off potential converts by discussing hot topics.
Several years ago, I attended an Easter service where the pastor … who was preaching on Christ’s resurrection … twice criticized the practice of abortion.
That seemed odd to me … especially since there’s nothing in any of those resurrection texts about killing a fetus.
My concern was, “Of all Sundays in the year when you want to focus on Christ alone, this is the one!” His comments turned me off … and, in the words of Neil Diamond, “I’m a believer.”
I once knew a veteran pastor who espoused this “drop in” technique. He believed in discussing a hot issue for just a sentence or two … and then moving on to the main issue.
But for me, I’d rather devote an entire message to a controversial issue and “make a case” for the biblical/Christian position.
I would never just spring such a topic on a congregation. Instead, I’d announce it ahead of time, so that those who didn’t want to hear that message could plan not to attend.
Back in the early 1990s, when I was relearning how to preach, I noticed that Bill Hybels … pastor of Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, the nation’s largest church at the time … never shied away from anything controversial.
In fact, he did a series called “Our Modern Moral Trifecta,” bringing separate messages on abortion, racism, and homosexuality.
Hybels is primarily an evangelist … by his own admission … but wow, did he ever hit those topics hard … and his church was reaching unbelievers in droves!
I believe that every area of a Christian’s life should be lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ: your home life … your work life … your financial life … your citizenship … your sex life … your leisure time … your church participation … everything.
If that’s true, then shouldn’t a pastor be willing to preach about anything and everything as well?
As my friend Dr. Donald Shoemaker says, “Preaching that avoids what is timely is unworthy preaching.”
Fifth, many pastors are afraid they will hurt or offend people in their congregations.
Here’s how this thinking goes:
“I don’t want to preach that homosexual behavior is wrong because I’m sure there are some gay people in my congregation and I don’t want to condemn their behavior and turn them off to Christ.”
“I don’t want to preach against adultery because I know people in this church who have had affairs and talking about the issue will only bring them pain.”
My first reaction to this kind of explanation is, “Then why didn’t you become a therapist instead of a preacher?”
I recently heard a Jewish commentator on the radio chastise evangelical pastors for not talking about anything controversial, and I thought to myself, “Christians leaders are farming out these issues to Bill O’Reilly … Rush Limbaugh … Sean Hannity … and Michael Medved because we refuse to address them.”
I believe a pastor has to do two things with any controversial issue that is clearly mentioned in Scripture:
*He has to say, “This is where the Bible comes down on this issue. Let me tell you what this means … why God said this … and how doing this will help you in your life.”
I believe it’s helpful for unbelievers to hear a pastor talk about sanctification … how to lead a holy life … so he or she knows what God expects of them if they do come to faith in Christ.
Paul loved to preach the gospel … as he did in Romans 1-11 … but then he talked about how to live a Christian life in chapters 12-16.
We can’t do one or the other: we need to do both.
*A pastor also has to say, “If you’ve crossed the line on this issue, and you’ve confessed your sin to God, He will forgive you … each and every time. But you may also have to repent by changing your behavior. We’re here to help, and here’s the help we provide.”
If a pastor just rips on people who have violated God’s Word, I agree … that’s counterproductive and harmful preaching.
A pastor also needs to tell people how to be liberated from their sins … and if you do that, you can preach on anything.
Finally, many pastors don’t believe that a sermon is the best place to address issues of controversy.
This was the view of the late Robert Schuller. For years, he taught that controversial issues should be addressed in a classroom setting so there could be adequate discussion of all sides.
It’s interesting to me that Blll Hybels’ mentor was Schuller … but that Hybels deviated from Schuller’s practice on this.
It’s also interesting to me that the only time I ever heard Schuller preach in person at the Crystal Cathedral … in February 2000 … he preached on “You shall not commit adultery” … and he hit a grand slam with that message. In fact, it’s probably the best sermon I’ve ever heard on that topic.
So even Schuller … the non-controversial television evangelist … couldn’t always shirk the tough issues!
Here are five brief ways that pastors can wisely address controversial issues in their churches:
*Preach on the ones you feel strongly about. I’ve preached on abortion once in 36 years of preaching. While I abhor the practice, it’s not something that has touched my life personally. But once I preached on the issue, my position became the position of my church, and if anyone asked where we stood, either I or the other leaders could tell them.
*Invite guest speakers to address specific issues. When I pastored in the San Francisco Bay Area, I invited Dr. Philip Johnson from the University of California at Berkeley to speak on a Sunday. His specialty was law and logic, which he used to decimate macroevolution in many of his books. Or if a pastor doesn’t feel comfortable addressing abortion, he could invite a speaker from the local Christian pregnancy center to address his congregation.
*Allow for people to ask you questions in public after you preach. This was the regular practice of Dr. R. T. Kendall from Westminster Chapel in London. When he was done preaching, he arranged for microphones to be set up in the aisles, and people would come and make comments or ask questions after the sermon. I love this approach and wanted to incorporate it in my last ministry, but we could never work out the logistics. But I think people would learn a lot more from a post-sermon dialogue than they would from an exclusively pastoral monologue.
*Create a small group devoted to discussing hot topics. I once led a group where we discussed a different issue every week from a biblical viewpoint. It could be capital punishment one week … Arminianism and Calvinism the next week … and gun control the following week. I led the discussion, but let group members select the topics. This kind of group isn’t for everybody, but it provides a much-needed outlet for people who want to delve into issues with more depth.
*The pastor teaches a midweek class on various issues every summer. For years, I taught a class on Tuesday nights during the summer on hot topics. The class was usually well-attended … people got to make comments and ask questions … and I even divided people up into smaller groups for more focused discussion. If there’s a Bible school or seminary professor in your church who could do this instead of the pastor, that’s fine … but I think it’s important to offer these kinds of classes on a regular basis.
I realize this article has been a bit long, but I wanted to deliver my soul on this topic. Thanks so much for reading!
What are your thoughts on this subject?
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