Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Conflict with Church Antagonists’ Category

Antidote for a Common Virus

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists on June 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

My wife and I just returned from a weekend trip to Southern California for a family wedding.  Because we drove 375 miles each way, I was concerned before the trip even started about traffic jams.

I hate traffic jams.

And I hate feeling trapped.

Evidently a lot of people agree with me because, whenever traffic backs up, people start doing weird things, like driving on the shoulder, or changing lanes incessantly, or getting off at the nearest off ramp (even when it doesn’t help at all).

Fortunately, we didn’t encounter one traffic jam while driving: not leaving Phoenix at rush hour, not on Highway 60 near Riverside (always a pain), and not on Highway 91 (thank God for toll roads!).

Because traffic jams make me anxious.

Anxiety occurs everywhere you find people: in medical waiting rooms, before school exams, and yes, even in churches.

Some events that cause anxiety in a church tend to bring everyone together, like the death of a prominent leader, a national catastophe (like 9/11), or a local natural disaster.  Since we cannot prevent or manage these events, we turn to each other for comfort and support.

But other events that happen in a church raise the anxiety level, like the introduction of an unpopular change, a steady decline in attendance, or the resignation of a popular leader.  Since many churchgoers believe these events could have been avoided, they react in the following way:

They complain.

And the ones who complain the most are the ones who can handle anxiety the least.

Meet Marie.  She’s been attending your church longer than anybody can remember.  Nearly everybody views her as a sweetheart.

But life hasn’t gone well for Marie in recent years.  She’s had problems with her relationships, jobs, finances, and body.  In fact, she’s suffered a lot – and doesn’t feel she’s deserved most of her maladies.

So she lives with a high level of anxiety.  Everywhere she goes, she hopes to find peace and understanding, but it usually eludes her.

But there is one place where she usually finds comfort and rest: at church.  When she experiences the loving acceptance of God’s people, Marie relaxes and basks in the beauty of Christ’s body.

However … it doesn’t take much for Marie to become anxious, even at church.  She becomes upset when the leaders try and introduce any kind of change.  She feels pain when she doesn’t know what’s going on behind-the-scenes.  And if the pastor says the wrong thing during a message, she’s ready … to complain.

Not just to her husband, but to her friends, to her small group, and to her ministry colleagues.  Marie is a chronic complainer.  And though she has her positive traits, her complaining – if left unchecked – could destroy her church.

The Bible has a lot to say about complaining, and it can be summed up in one word: don’t.

Sometimes the Bible also calls it grumbling or murmuring.

In Numbers 14:2, we’re told that “all the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, ‘If only we had died in Egypt!  Or in this desert!'”  God’s people complained because they were afraid to enter the promised land due to the giants the scouts had seen there – and they were particularly upset with their two leaders.  (Numbers is full of stories of God’s people complaining about God, their leaders and their conditions.)

In I Corinthians 10:10, Paul warns the church at Corinth, “And do not grumble, as some of them did – and were killed by the destroying angel.”  This incident is probably the one in Numbers 16 where 14,700 Israelites died after Korah’s rebellion.

In Philippians 2:14, Paul warns the church at Philippi: “Do everything without complaining or arguing …”  Evidently this church had a problem with both practices, especially the feuding women Euodia and Syntyche (see 4:2-3).

And Jude 16 refers to false teachers who are “grumblers and faultfinders” who “follow their own evil desires” and “boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.”

You won’t find complaining commended in Scripture.  God doesn’t like it.  Why not?

First, complaining demonstrates a helpless attitude.  When I complain, I am saying, “I don’t like this situation, and I can’t do anything about it, either!”  But many times, we can do something – we just don’t want to do it.

Not long ago, my wife and I encountered an unpleasant situation at a church we were visiting.  It made us feel very anxious.  Complaining wasn’t going to make anything better.  We had two choices: leave the campus or stay and bear it.

We made a choice and stayed – and no longer felt helpless.

Second, complaining becomes contagious.  Have you ever seen a focus group on television?  At first, when the group is asked a question, the initial speakers seem respectful and positive.  But as soon as one person begins to complain, the dam breaks and others begin complaining as well.

In fact, church consultant Peter Steinke believes that complaining in a church may be compared to a virus in the body.  The virus travels through the body trying to find host cells.  If the host cell receives the virus, it replicates it and then spreads to other cells.  But if enough host cells resist the virus, it cannot spread.

We pastors are good at condemning the practice of complaining from the pulpit, but we also need to encourage those who hear complaints to resist them rather than receive them – because once a person receives a complaint, they tend to spread it to others.

This is often the point at which a church becomes unhealthy.

Third, complaining demonstrates a lack of faith in God.  There is often a permanency about complaining.  We act like life will never get better.  We say things like, “This church will never grow,” or “I can’t stand the music,” or “The pastor’s messages are getting worse and worse.”  But if God is involved, can’t the church grow?  Can’t the music get better?  Can’t the pastor start touching your heart?

For this reason, complaining factors out the Holy Spirit and factors in the flesh.  However, if we would turn our complaints into prayer, we’d see God do more and we’d gripe a whole lot less.

If you struggle with complaining, let me share four quick remedies:

First, speak directly with the person you’re unhappy with.  If you thought the pastor’s joke was tasteless, find a way to tell him, not five friends after church.  If you didn’t like that girl who was running through the worship center after the service, talk to her, not to everybody but her.

However, there is at least one exception to this rule.

If your pastor announces a policy, and you don’t agree with it, then either speak with him or those who put together the policy.  In fact, if a board created the policy, it’s perfectly acceptable to speak with the board member you know or like the most as long as you go on the record.

So if it’s a matter of personal sin, talk directly to the person who sinned.  If it’s a matter of policy, talk to any one of those who created it.

Second, talk to a friend outside the church.  There have been times when I’ve felt very strongly about an issue but (a) I wasn’t entirely sure I was seeing things right, or (b) I needed some additional perspective.  So I contacted someone who didn’t know the players and shared my concerns with that individual.  I would then incorporate as many of their suggestions as I could.  The advantage of this approach is that you’re not spreading the virus of complaining throughout your church.

Third, increase your prayer life.  Incessant complaining is often a telltale sign that a person has all but stopped praying.  If we took more of our complaints to God, we’d have fewer things to complain about with others.

Finally, learn to keep quiet.  Some people are more expressive than others, but you don’t have to give a running commentary on everything that happens to you in life – especially at church.  Just learn to muzzle your mouth as King David says (Psalm 39:1).

A few years ago, my daughter and I went to church at a famous cathedral in Scotland.  If my wife had been with me, we would have talked about the service afterwards, so I thought I’d take the same approach with my daughter.  As I started to make a comment, she assertively told me, “Dad, I don’t want to hear it!”

So I kept quiet.  (But it was killing me.)

May I encourage you to do two things about this post:

First, if complaining is a problem, take positive steps to eliminate its hold on your life.  You’ll be much more joyful – as will everyone around you.

Finally, choose not to receive other people’s complaints unless you can take action.  If you can’t, then send them to someone who can address their concerns.

If everyone in a church followed these steps, the virus of complaining would never plague us again.

Read Full Post »

Dealing with Dysfunctional Church Leaders

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Please Comment! on May 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

My professors never said anything about this issue when I was in seminary.  Over the years, I only recall reading one article on the topic.  And yet it’s one of the biggest sources of conflict in any church – especially for pastors.

What should a pastor do when a church leader is highly dysfunctional?

We all have our dysfunctions, don’t we?  There are areas in our lives that just don’t work.  It could be that we experienced trauma in our childhood or pain in our recent past, and we’re just not very good at handling certain issues.

Many years ago, a church I led hired a contractor to do some remodeling for us.  The contractor turned out to be a crook.  The board had to hire a lawyer.  It got nasty.

For months after that experience, if I sensed that anyone was even remotely cheating me out of money, I became very upset – even if it was just a store clerk handing me the wrong amount of change.  It took a while for me to heal, but I eventually did.  During that time period, I was dysfunctional in that one area of my life, but that didn’t mean I was unhealthy overall.

However, some people never heal from their hurts, and they in turn have a habit of hurting others.

So granted that “we all have our issues,”  how should a pastor handle a dysfunctional leader?  Notice that I didn’t say anything about a dysfunctional attendee (because everyone needs to feel safe in a church).

Instead, I’m talking about people who cannot communicate properly, have consistent problems with authority, engage in highly inappropriate behavior, and seem blind to the way others respond to them.  In a word, dysfunctional people are unpredictable.

And many of them are experts at maneuvering their way into leadership positions.

Dysfunctional people have a way of making their entire ministry dysfunctional.  Rather than advancing the cause of Christ, they cause such consternation that their overall impact damages others.

Let me give you an example.  I once supervised a staff member who could not write a coherent sentence.  This person would submit a newsletter article to me but it was such a mess I couldn’t publish it.  Someone had to rewrite it for publication, and since I served as editor, the responsibility fell to me.

For a while, I asked the staff member to do the rewriting, but his second attempts were usually no better than his first ones.  So I rewrote his article, gave it to him, asked if he wanted to change anything, and then submitted it for publication.  While this system tied me in knots, it was the best we could do at the time.

But after a while, he started to become upset with me.  Since he didn’t see anything wrong with his articles, he thought I was being way too critical – but we could not publish something that made him, his ministry, and the church look bad.

While I really liked this person, he carried that same attitude over into his ministry.  He was going to do what he desired and no one – not even his supervisor, the pastor – had the right to dictate otherwise.  Yet what was normal for him was abnormal to others.

Should I have let him remain in leadership?  While I wanted to think about his well-being, I also needed to think about all those people that he was adversely affecting.

Since I have always tended to give staff members more chances than they deserve, I let him stay until he resigned.

In another situation, I served with a woman who had a bleeding heart.  She was very intelligent but always gravitated toward wounded people.  If I yelled out to our leaders, “Let’s take the next hill for Jesus!” I’d focus on making the hill while she would stop and help the first casualty.  It’s safe to say she had the gift of mercy.

Remember when the OJ verdict came down?  It happened on a Wednesday morning.  That night, at our midweek Bible study, I made a passing comment about the verdict.  Most people were tracking with me, but this woman said, “But why did you think he was guilty when his own mother believed in him?”

After the service, this woman trapped me in the church kitchen and ranted at me for at least ten minutes.  Whatever hostility she had bottled up inside of her came pouring out.  I thought pots and pans were next.

Here’s where this gets tricky.  What was the real reason that she came unglued?

It may have been that she saw her husband or her father or her boss in me, and because she couldn’t tell them how she really felt, she unloaded on me.  Pastors are usually perceived to be safe people who won’t hurt back.

But she led an important ministry in the church.  A lot of people looked up to her.  Should I have let her stay in leadership?

She later apologized.  I forgave her.  We both moved on.  And she stayed at the church and continued in leadership.  But it wasn’t an easy call.  It never is.

Let me share a few thoughts about pastors and dysfunctional leaders:

First, sometimes a pastor inherits dysfunctional leaders from his predecessor.  Whether it’s a staff member, a board member, or a ministry team leader, a new pastor usually comes to a church with many leadership positions already filled.  Since the previous pastor chose them, these leaders sometimes feel entitled.  As time goes by, the pastor tries to determine which leaders are healthy (and effective) and which are not.  The healthy ones get to stay.  The unhealthy ones either need to be marginalized or removed – or else that entire area of ministry could go up in smoke.

Second, the pastor needs wisdom to do this well.  For example, he can wait for the ministry to go into decline and then die.  He can then bury it, wait a while, and restart it with a new leader.  Or he can offer the leader another position in the church (usually one where they can’t cause much damage).  Or he can call the leader into his office (possibly with a witness) and gently but firmly remove the person from office.  But if he does this:

Third, the pastor may face a backlash.  The dysfunctional leader probably won’t understand what the pastor is saying.  He or she may interpret the pastor’s words as personal rejection.  Then they’ll contact their friends and begin to lambast the pastor (proving his judgement right).  While every pastor wants peace in the church, allowing dysfunctional individuals to remain in leadership can ultimately lead to church wars.

I’ve had this happen so many times.  After you make your decision, you know what’s coming.  The former leader and their friends may form an unofficial coalition and mount a counterattack against the pastor, or withhold their giving, or leave the church altogether, encouraging others to join them.

If the pastor can just wait it out, the whole situation usually blows over in a couple of months.  But as these scenarios become more difficult over time, a pastor may stop making the hard calls and allow unhealthy leaders to remain – but he’ll have more problems down the road if he does.

Fourth, some people will applaud the pastor for his courage.  Many years ago, I needed to remove someone from leadership who had only been there a few months.  By doing this, I was admitting that I had made a mistake in choosing this person in the first place, but it was evident they just weren’t working out.  After I made the decision, a top leader came and asked, “What took you so long?”  It quickly dawned on me that other leaders were seeing what I was seeing and were just waiting for me to eliminate the dysfunction – and when I did, they gained new respect for my leadership.

Finally, it’s better to have no one than the wrong leader.  For the church’s first 18 years, Don Cousins served as Bill Hybels’ right-hand man at Willow Creek Church.  As the church grew into the thousands, the leadership team could not find the right person to lead their Jr. High ministry.  While they searched, many families left the church and went elsewhere, but this did not sway the leaders.  They were determined to wait until they found the right person for the job.  They believed that if they acted out of anxiety and placed the wrong person in that position, then (a) kids and families would leave anyway, (b) it would take up to a year to remove the person, (c) then they’d lose people who liked the Jr. High leader, (d) it would cost them a severance package, and (e) they’d have to engage in the whole search process over again.

In the end, they waited two years to find the right person, but it was worth it.

After a whole night in prayer, even Jesus chose a leader who didn’t work out: Judas.  If our infallible Savior selected a leader who was unhealthy, we can expect it will happen to pastors as well from time-to-time.

What are your thoughts on this issue?  I’d love to hear them!

Read Full Post »

Ready! Aim! Preach!

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor on April 27, 2011|

Do pastors ever intentionally target specific individuals in the congregation when they preach?

Yes.

And in the process, they also provoke conflict.

When I first started preaching, I was only nineteen.  When I prepared a sermon, I was just trying to put together some coherent thoughts based on the Bible so I could fill the half hour or so I had been assigned.  It wouldn’t have dawned on me to scold anyone in particular from the pulpit.  I had a hard enough time just trying to make sense.

As time went on, I became more issue-oriented when I preached.  If I detected a topic that wasn’t being addressed in our church, I’d talk about that.  My thoughts were centered on content, not people.

But that all changed when I became a pastor.

I was 27 years old in a church where the average age was sixty.  (Doesn’t sound so old anymore.)  When I stood up to speak, I looked out on a congregation of … 30-40 people.  I quickly got to know them all, and I didn’t like some of them.  (You wouldn’t have, either, but that’s another story.)

These people were ultra-fundamentalists, hyper-critics who wanted the church to go back in time three decades.  The music reflected that, as did the way the church was governed.  I grew not to like some of those growling faces when I got up to present the Word of God.

So when I prepared a message at home – and I spoke three times a week – I’d say to myself, “So-and-so really needs to hear this point.  I will tailor it to her specifically.”  Then I’d go to church and let it fly.

Only much of the time, whenever I aimed a portion of the message at someone … they didn’t show up!

For example, whenever I got on people for not attending church on a regular basis, I was saying that to people WHO WERE ALREADY IN ATTENDANCE!  (The people who weren’t there never heard the message anyway.)

There were other times when I’d say something for the benefit of one person, and I’d look out, and they’d be asleep, or talking to someone, or not paying attention, and I’d realize that I had just wasted my time.

And, of course, even if they heard me loud and clear, they probably thought I was talking to someone else, not them!

So it didn’t take me long to learn that preaching to one person was a colossal waste of time.  Maybe it was therapeutic for me, but it didn’t do anything to visibly change the person I was “aiming” at.  Besides, how would I even know when my missives had hit the mark?

One of my preaching mentors – and he was definitely old school – advised me to target specific people in the congregation when I spoke.  He did it, and he felt he had success with it, but after a while, I could not bring myself to do it anymore.

I should have learned from the last pastor that I served under as a youth pastor.

The pastor was gone one Sunday.  At the end of the service, some kind of praise anthem was sung, and a few people raised their hands to the Lord.  As I recall, some of those people were in the choir.  Handraising was not done at our church.  It was a practice imported from those divisive charismatic churches, and we weren’t about to become charismatic!

So when the pastor returned home, he was informed – probably by those same people from my first church – that handraising occurred in our church last Sunday!  Oh my!

So what did the pastor do?  He prepared a sermon for the following Sunday about controversial issues in the church, ticking off some examples … and then mentioned handraising.

Uh oh.

That was strategic product placement, wasn’t it?

Suddenly, the congregation was divided.  You were either for handraising or against it.  No middle ground.

Those against it stayed at the church.  Those for it began making for the exits.

Years later, I had breakfast with the pastor.  We got to talking about his handraising sermon.  He told me candidly that he never should have highlighted that issue.  He said, “People just wanted to express their love for the Lord.”  And he was right.

As the years went on, whenever I prepared a message, the faces of certain people would naturally flit through my brain.  It happens to every speaker.  We don’t want to speak to a mass of people, but to individuals.  And it helps if we speak to certain individuals, not those we don’t like or those we think are stuck in sin, but those who are hurting.

As I worked on a message, sometimes I would write down the names of a few people in the church on my worksheet, not because I wanted to “nail them” with the message, but because I sincerely wanted to help them advance in their walk with Christ.  I would ask myself, “What kind of applications would free them to live for Jesus?”

As the congregations I spoke to increased in size, I no longer tried to aim a message at any one person.  Why aim at one when dozens more needed help?

But from time-to-time, I believed that God wanted me to say something that I knew might offend certain people in the church.  Although I’d ask the Lord what He wanted me to do, most of the time, I said it anyway.  I subscribed to the philosophy of teacher extraordinaire Stephen Brown:

When in doubt, say it.

Why?  Brown believed that would usually be the most interesting and memorable part of the message.  And while many pastors try not to offend anyone in their message, my top two spiritual gifts are teaching and prophecy.  The gift of prophecy leads me toward saying the hard thing rather than shying away from it.  But I always tried to do it with grace rather than with rancor.

In fact, my preaching philosophy comes from John 1:17: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”  I tried to preach the truth with grace.  Rather than bind people, I wanted to liberate them.

Our pastor speaks to several thousand people every Sunday.  His applications seem to be aimed at the congregation as a whole.  He has a big enough staff that they can handle the problem situations.  And if he’s having problems with a church leader, he’ll probably call them into his office during the week and deal with the situation in private.

That’s the way it should be done.

So do pastors sometimes aim part of a message at certain individuals in a church?

My guess is that the younger the pastor, and the smaller the church, the more it’s done.  But the older the pastor, and the larger the church, the less it’s done.

Let me conclude with this thought: while pastors can be controversial when they preach – just teaching what the Bible says provokes controversy in our culture – they should never deliver a message in anger or aim a message at a particular person.

When a pastor gets worked up, he raises the conflict level in his church.  When he remains calm, he brings the conflict level down.

This Sunday, listen carefully to your pastor’s message.  If part of his preaching seems like it was aimed at you, he didn’t do it on purpose.  He may not even know you.

That’s the Holy Spirit.

Read Full Post »

The List

Posted in Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination on April 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

One of my favorite Peanuts comic strip series involved the time that Lucy (in her psychiatrist role) decided to help Charlie Brown overcome his faults by highlighting them all.  She obtained a camera and began taking pictures of everything he was doing wrong.  Then she invited him to her house and displayed his faults on slides.  After several weeks of this torture, poor Charlie couldn’t take it anymore.  He let out a blood-curdling scream after which Lucy told him, “Wait until you get my bill.”  In the final strip, after lamenting Lucy’s huge charges, Charlie turns toward us and says, “And I still have the same faults.”

How would you handle such an assault?

Pretend you’re ten years old, and one day your mother gives you a list of 22 shortcomings in your life.  How would you deal with that?  Try and improve?  Or give up on life?

Imagine you’re nineteen and your boyfriend or girlfriend claims that the 17 faults in your life constitute the reasons why they never want to see you again.  How would you survive such rejection?

Surmise that you’re twenty-eight and your boss says you’re fired.  When you ask why, he details 13 ways in which you were incompetent.  How would you avoid spending the next two weeks in a mental hospital?

Most human beings are emotionally fragile, no matter how confidently we present ourselves in public.  Psalm 103:14 says that the Lord “knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”  Dr. Archibald Hart believes that you have good self-esteem if you don’t hate yourself.  Studies repeatedly show that the vast majority of Americans – as many as ninety percent – struggle with accepting themselves as they are.  (Donald Trump excepted.)

Yes, we’re stronger than we think, and yes, criticism can ultimately help make us better people.  But the way someone criticizes us can either destroy us or heal us.

If someone is trying to heal us through criticism, they will bring up our faults one at a time.  Over the course of a lifetime, we all learn about our weaknesses from a variety of individuals: parents, siblings, friends, teachers, employers, spouses, and even children.  This pace allows us to receive our faults and work on them over the years.

But if someone wants to destroy us, they will dump all our faults on us at once.  Sometimes this is cruelly called “clearing the air” or “gunnysacking.”  This is what happens to many pastors when a party in the church becomes determined to expel him from their midst.

Let me be the first one to say that pastors have their flaws – some of them personal, others related to their profession.  Most pastors work on their flaws by enlisting the power of God’s Spirit to change them.  A small percentage of pastors – usually those with personality disorders – are blind to their faults and blame others for all their problems.  These are the pastors who cause major problems in ministry.

Pastors have just as many flaws as anybody else.  Nowhere does the Bible say that those who teach Scripture have entered a sinless state.  In fact, pastors may be just more adept at covering up their faults.  The smaller the church, the more people know about their pastor’s marriage, finances, children, hobbies, relationships – and faults.  While this makes the whole pastor-people relationship ultimately healthier (because we’re all trying to live in community together), it can backfire overnight if some party uses this proximity as ammunition against the minister.

I am not talking theory.  This happened to me in the second church I served as pastor.

A group of seniors in that church had a Sunday School class.  It was led by a former pastor who felt insignificant.  He began complaining about church practices that he did not like.  His complaints soon went viral, and before anyone knew it, the whole class revolted against the pastor: me.

The class recruited a few others and held a “secret meeting.”  They made a list of all my faults, both as a person and as a pastor.  (My wife said they missed a few.)  They then turned their guns on her and our two children (our son was nine, our daughter six).  They wrote down every fault that came to mind.  Seventeen people against one.

The group then appointed two representatives and scheduled a meeting with two elders.  The intent of the representatives was to present The List to the elders, hoping they would agree with the complaints and terminate my employment.

One complaint was that the wife of our band’s drummer wore short skirts and that I should have prevented her from doing so.  Someone else complained that my wife’s slip was showing one Sunday.  God has mercifully helped me to forget most of the complaints, but they were all that petty.

To their credit, the elders didn’t let the reps read their entire list at once.  After each complaint, an elder offered a response, which took all the fun out of the exercise.

Why would professing Christians sit around and pick at another person – much less a pastor – that way?  Why create The List?

For starters, The List indicates the lack of a single impeachable offense.  If a pastor committed homicide in the church lobby, no one would complain that he doesn’t keep his car clean.  If surveillance videos showed a pastor stealing money from the offering plate, no would would mention that he went home five minutes early last Tuesday.  The List is a confession that a group cannot nail the pastor with any moral or spiritual felonies, so they resort to nitpicking, hoping the sheer quantity of charges will substitute for their lack of quality.

Second, The List is a signal that the group wants to end their relationship with the pastor.  Want to end your marriage?  Tell your spouse every wrong thing they’ve ever done to you.  Want to get fired?  Tell your boss every problem you have with her management.  The List is a prelude to destroying a relationship.  In this case, it’s an admission that the group believes the pastor is irredeemable.  But does Jesus want us to give up on people that soon?

Of course, we have to wonder: rather than “doing the piranha” on a spiritual leader, why doesn’t a group leave the church en masse instead?  Because … if they can force the pastor out, they’ll stay.  But if they can’t, then they’ll leave.  In my case, because the board stood behind me 100%, my critics all left – and formed a new church a mile away.

Next, The List demonstrates a lack of courage.  When Christians sit in a room together and tick off a pastor’s faults, they are silently confessing that they all lack the guts to confront him in private.  Jesus didn’t exclude spiritual leaders from His directives in Matthew 18:15-20 to go to a brother in private if he sins – and a pastor is a brother.  If you believe your pastor has a glaring fault, then talk to him privately, humbly, and lovingly.  When a group gather to create The List, they implicitly confess that they are interested in power, not love.

When a group gets together specifically to demonize one individual, people say things they would never say to the pastor’s face.  Groups that do this are famous for exaggerating the pastor’s alleged misbehavior.  When the pastor isn’t present to defend himself against the charges, then every accusation makes him look guilty.  Who will defend him when the meeting’s purpose is to accuse him?

I once had a teacher at Biola named Mr. Ebeling.  While he could be a cranky old guy, he used to say, “If Christians would just read their Bibles!”  He was right.  Where in Scripture do we find a group of Christians who gather together to detail the faults of any spiritual leader?

Finally, The List demonstrates that people have become malicious.  Revelation 12:10 says that Satan is “the accuser of the brethren.”  He’s the one who continually goes to God and says, “You call Jim one of your children?  Look what he just did!”  (And I keep him quite busy.)  But what does Jesus do?  He defends us.  He protects us.  He may have to chasten us, but He does it because He loves us.  Most of all, He forgives us.  We are His own.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:5 that love “keeps no record of wrongs.”  Christian love does not keep lists of offenses against other Christians.  (That’s what politicians do to each other.)  Love deals with each offense as it happens, never to destroy a brother or sister, but always to bring them back to God.

Here is a project: write down five things you like about your pastor and his ministry.  List all five in an email or note and send it to your pastor.  Better still, send him one commendation per week.  (Remember the wisdom of sharing five compliments for every criticism?)

Why not counteract The List with one of your own?

Read Full Post »

Why Follow a Gunslinger?

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with Church Board, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination on April 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

A gunslinger is someone in a church who wants to “gun down” the head pastor.  Using terminology from the Old West, he’s gunnin’ for the preacher.  The gunslinger can be someone from the congregation, or a staff member, but most often is a member of the governing board.

For at least a year before revealing his true motives, the gunslinger mounts a stealth campaign against the pastor.  He tells others in private: “The pastor isn’t a good leader.  His preaching isn’t connecting.  He’s losing the young people.”  This is just his opinion, of course, but he’ll share it whether the church is prospering or not.

What amazes me is that the gunslinger is able to convince at least two members of the governing board (the proverbial Gang of Three) that he’s right: the pastor does need to leave.  How is he able to pull this off?  How can a gunslinger turn normally rational people into unthinking bobbleheads?

Let me offer five possiblities:

First, the gunslinger “works on” these board members for at least twelve months.  He is relentless with his campaign because he can’t “fire” the pastor by himself.  During this time period, if the pastor slips up once or twice in his leadership or preaching – and he probably will – the gunslinger is there to fire a warning shot and say to the others, “What did I tell you?  He’s not the right man for the job.”  Pretty soon, the board members stop seeing the pastor through their own eyes but through the eyes of the gunslinger.

There are three primary ways to stop the gunslinger at this point: tell him “I disagree with your assessment and don’t want to hear from you anymore on this issue”; break off all contact with him; or expose him to others in the church.  But if you do break off all contact, you won’t know what he’s up to next and he’ll just find another set of ears.  (Of course, if you expose him, he will simply deny everything.)

Second, the gunslinger possesses a forceful personality.  He’s full of confidence.  He seems to know what he’s talking about.  He’ll talk about his experiences in other churches. (“We should have gotten rid of that pastor sooner.  He took the church down with him.”)  He’ll talk about what’s happening at other churches.  (“They got rid of their pastor and now they’re growing like crazy.”)  He sounds like a church growth consultant, right there on the church board!

The problem is that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  Most likely, he hasn’t been to seminary.  He’s not a “church professional.”  He hasn’t read any church growth literature.  At best, he’s an opinionated amateur.  Hold a full-fledged verbal duel between him and the minister and the pastor would mop the floor with him – but the gunslinger never wants to have that debate.  It would jeopardize his power.

Third, the gunslinger makes his followers feel powerful.  In the great majority of cases, a gunslinger wants to destroy a pastor not because the pastor is doing anything wrong, but because the gunslinger wants the power to make decisions.  He will never admit it, claiming that he only wants to serve God and help the fellowship, but he really wants to run the church.  And there is only one person standing in his way: the pastor.  As the gunslinger’s minions gather around him, they too feel powerful.  When the pastor leaves, they will sit at his right and left hands.

But what the bobbleheads fail to realize is that the gunslinger has seduced them into putting their group’s needs ahead of their church’s needs.  When the gunslinger and two of his followers meet and plan and plot, they feel a sense of exhiliration!  They alone know what’s best for the church – but they haven’t consulted with the other 95%+ of the church that loves the pastor and does follow his leadership.  The gunslinger and his boys convince themselves that they are representing the entire church when they are really only representing themselves.

Fourth, the gunslinger befriends his followers.  They may never end up being good friends with the pastor but they can be close with this charming and intelligent person.  The opportunity to be granted power is intoxicating.  Even Christians have been known to sell their souls to acquire a promotion at work.  The gunslinger talks about the way that “we” will plan the future together when the pastor is gone and his followers eat it up.  Being friends with the gunslinger places his followers into his inner circle, a place they don’t ever want to leave.

If the gunslinger’s followers could discuss this situation with someone objective like a counselor or a spouse or even the pastor, they would discover that the gunslinger is trying to manipulate them for his ends.  But:

Finally, the gunslinger insists on strict confidentiality which adds to the allure.  In other words, The Plan is also The Secret.  No one else in the church is allowed to know what’s going on – not one’s spouse, or other leaders, or even anyone outside the church.  Why not?  For starters, the gunslinger and his followers don’t want anyone rebuking them or trying to talk them out of their nefarious scheme.  They also don’t want anyone to spill the beans to the pastor or his supporters.  For this reason, the gunslinger and his twosome agree that they will not tell a soul about The Plan.

Of course, in biblical terms, they are operating in the dark, not in the light.  There is a biblical process for dealing with a pastor who incessantly sins (found in 1 Timothy 5:19-21, an application of Matthew 18:15-20), but they don’t want to use that process.  Takes too long.  Too cumbersome to apply.  Requires a Bible.  And besides, the process is unpredictable.  What if the pastor actually changes?  What if he leaves but the gunslinger and his boys aren’t left in charge?  The gunslinger can’t take that chance, so all meetings and deliberations are strictly hush hush – until the gunslinger calls for the pastor to meet him and his boys for a private meeting at Dry Gulch.

Does the New Testament ever mention a gunslinger?  Glad you asked.  In 3 John 9-10, John, the apostle of love, writes:

“I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us.  So if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously about us.  Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers.  He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church.”

John doesn’t indicate that Diotrephes is attacking a pastor but an apostle!  Even though John had apostolic authority over the church in Ephesus, Diotrephes refused to submit to John’s authority and verbally criticized John to others in the church.  What makes Diotrephes a gunslinger?  John says that he “loves to be first.”

If the church’s official leaders all left, would they have appointed Diotrephes to be their leader?  Hardly.  Would the people of the church have chosen him?  Probably not.  According to John, Diotrephes lacked official authority inside the church but used his intimidating personality to get what he wanted – and no one seemed to be able to stop him.  It took John, an outside authority, to try and rein in Diotrephes.  A congregation should be able to handle these people.

There is now a growing body of literature on gunslingers (or “clergy killers”) and these people follow a pattern that’s been documented since Judas flipped on Jesus twenty centuries ago.  While some pastors know the template (it’s right there in the Gospels), most lay people do not.  My prayer is to empower thousands of lay believers all over this country to stop the gunslingers and the Gang of Three and prevent their pastor from being carried to Boot Hill in a pine box.

Will you be one of those people?

 

Read Full Post »

Guarding Clothes

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Current Church Issues, Fighting Evil, Pastoral Termination on March 25, 2011| 4 Comments »

Several decades ago, I took a friend to a White Sox-A’s game at the Oakland Coliseum.  (The White Sox won 1-0.)  After the game, while we were stuck in traffic, we both noticed some verbal interplay between a young woman and a car full of guys.  While both parties were in their cars, the guys were yelling at her, she was yelling at them – and there was alcohol involved.  Suddenly, the young woman grabbed a bucket of ice, ran over to the guys’ car, and poured out the ice through the driver’s side window onto the lap of the driver.  She then ran back toward her car, but the guys caught her and began beating her up.

I can’t stand to watch anyone get hit in real life, especially a woman.

Instinctively, I wanted to get out of the car and defend her, but my companion cautioned, “Don’t Jim – she asked for it.”

What would you have done in that situation?

As difficult as it is to watch non-TV people fighting, it’s even more disturbing to watch one-sided combat.  And yet, that’s what Saul of Tarsus did the first time we meet him in Scripture.

The most prominent early Christian outside the apostles was Stephen, “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit … a man full of God’s grace and power” (Acts 6:5,8).  (How many Christian leaders would be described that way in our day?)  Just like with Jesus, some Jewish leaders made up charges against Stephen, incited a mob against him, held a kangaroo court, and produced false witnesses to trump-up charges.  Unlike Jesus, Stephen was able to mount a vigorous defense of his message from the Old Testament, but the verdict had been decided long before he began speaking.

Sometimes it’s hard to read Acts 7:57-58.  Luke mentions five phrases that indicate that the mob had already made up its minds about Stephen’s guilt.  Note the phrases in italics:

“At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.”  If a movie was made about what really happened on this occasion, it would be rated NC-17 – or maybe NC-35.

Here’s what I want to know: why didn’t anybody try and stop the mob from carrying out this horrible action?  It was clearly a miscarriage of justice.  It didn’t honor God.  It couldn’t be explained away.  It was wrong.  But according to the text, no one protested this mob action.

And then Dr. Luke slips in a little phrase at the end of verse 58 to introduce us to someone: “Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.”  Most commentators believe that Saul was more than just an innocent bystander; as Acts 8:1 notes, “Saul was there, giving approval to his death.”

Once again, what would you have done in that situation?

There is no doubt that by not protesting, and by watching the coats of the executioners, Saul’s silent tongue was an indicator that he agreed with Stephen’s guilt, stoning, and death.  I am not saying that Saul could have singlehandedly stopped it.  (Although we don’t know because he didn’t try.)  But somewhere along the line, he made up his mind: Stephen needed to die, and Saul preferred a box seat to doing anything about it.

Saul would feel much differently years later.  In Acts 22:20, while recounting his testimony before another Jerusalem mob, Saul (now Paul) found himself in their crosshairs.  He summed up his actions years before: “And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.”  One can sense the regret in Paul’s voice: “I can’t believe I did that.”

This time, because the Romans were in charge of the proceedings, Paul was able to escape the mob and live another day.  But I wonder how many times he was haunted by the fact that when an innocent man of God was being stoned, he stood idly by without registering a protest.

Why bring this up?

I had breakfast this past week with a Christian leader who started a ministry for terminated pastors many years ago.  As we were discussing the statistics of how many pastors leave their churches every month, my friend told me that the latest statistic is 1,800.  When I did a search online, I discovered that the stats being quoted now are that 1,800 pastors leave their churches every month and that 1,300 of that group are involuntarily let go.  That’s a lot of pastors – and churches – in pain.

While I concede that there are pastors who need to leave their churches, the overwhelming majority of these forced exits happen to pastors who have done nothing worthy of being fired.

And in most situations, either a handful of board members (usually three) and/or a small contingent of opponents (less than ten) conspire together to remove the pastor from office.  And when they do so, they exaggerate the charges against him and offer him no defense.

Here’s what I want to know: why doesn’t anybody protest this kind of clandestine behavior?

When there is clearly injustice being perpetrated, why doesn’t even one board member tell the spiritual assassins (called by some “the gang of three”) to knock it off?  Why don’t they threaten to expose them to the congregation?  Why do so many board members suddenly go silent when their more vocal colleagues plan to do evil?

And if matters get to the floor of the congregation, why don’t more people in the church vocally support the pastor?  Why do supposedly strong believers suddenly wilt like Peter rather than stand strong like Daniel?

In other words, why do good Christians so often end up guarding clothes rather than fighting injustice?

When I was a kid, James 4:17 used to bother me.  It still does.  Our Lord’s half-brother writes, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”

When you know you should protest … when you know God wants you to speak up … when you know you should walk away from the clothes … but you don’t – that’s sin.

In our new ministry, Restoring Kingdom Builders, I want to empower lay people to speak up when it looks like their pastor is being verbally or vocationally stoned.  I want to share with them specific measures they can take to counteract this plague of forcing called, trained, and godly pastors out of churches and even out of ministry.

Rather than guarding clothes for others, maybe it’s time we say, “Watch your own clothes.  I see what you’re up to, and with God’s help, I’m going to do everything I can to stop it.”

Who’s up for this?  Are you?

Read Full Post »

Who Will Stop Me?

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Fighting Evil, Pastoral Termination on March 21, 2011| 8 Comments »

Hi.  I attend your church.  You don’t know who I am, but I show up nearly every Sunday and sit in the next-to-the-last row on the left side.

And it’s ironic that I attend your church at all, because I don’t like the pastor.  I don’t like his sermons.  I don’t like his kids.  I don’t like the schools he attended and the hobbies he jabbers about from the pulpit.  I just don’t like him – and for that reason, I’d like him to leave.

The right thing to do would be for me to leave the church and attend somewhere else.  After all, at this point I’m not aware of anyone else who feels the way I do.  But I don’t want to leave.  I want to stay.  I want him to leave.

There’s a quick way for me to pull this off: start making accusations against the pastor.  It almost doesn’t matter what I accuse him of doing: sleeping around, embezzling funds, fuzzy beliefs, power plays – you get the picture.

Still with me?

I can accuse the pastor of various misdeeds through (a) a whispering campaign (“Did you hear that the pastor was recently seen …”); (b) a letter sent to select church homes (“The pastor doesn’t believe in the virgin birth!”); (c) a few strategic emails (“The pastor has been seriously overspending funds recently”); or (d) conversations with my friends (“Why does he continually refer to that TV show all the time?”).

Having done this sort of thing before, I know that one or two of my accusations will eventually reach the pastor, and he’ll be very upset.  But I also know my accusations will reach the ears of the governing leaders as well.

And if my charges are taken seriously, no one will come and talk with me.  No one will ask me for the evidence that my charges are true.

The pastor’s supporters will disbelieve the charges immediately.  His enemies (among which I count myself a proud member) will believe all the charges and more.  (We’ve just been waiting for someone to articulate them.)  It’s the group in the middle that I’m aiming for.  I just need to pick off a few to accomplish my goal.

By this time, a few people will add charges to the ones I’ve already made.  It almost doesn’t matter what they are or if they’re true or not.  The board may choose to investigate the charges, but if they do, they will almost certainly not be traced back to me.  And if anyone tries to confront me, I will just do what they do in politics: deny, deny, deny.

My first attempt may not be successful.  The pastor may survive my little campaign.  But if I keep making little charges here and there, the wind will pick them up, and when they get to the pastor, they’ll start to wear him down.

And then one of these days, the pastor will resign due to burnout or stress, or a small group in the church will add to my accusations and formally drive the pastor out.

The pastor will be told by the leaders of both the church and the demonination that he needs to leave the church to preserve its unity, that the church needs to start with a clean slate.

But no one will do anything to me.  I have ecclesiastical immunity.

Nobody will sue me.  Christians aren’t to sue other Christians according to 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, right?

Nobody will confront me.  After the board deals with the pastor, they’ll be too tired.

Nobody will finger me.  In the unlikely event that the leaders launch an investigation to find out who started the rumors, they would probably speak with others long before they got to me.  If I caught wind of their efforts, I’d quietly slip out the back door of the church, wait a couple months, and then return.  Nothing would happen to me.

Nobody will ask me to leave.  After all, I’m allowed to attend services at my own church, right?

And when the church calls the next pastor, if I don’t like him, I already know what to do.

Who will stop me?

Nobody.

Read Full Post »

Petty Christians

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Current Church Issues on March 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Nearly ten years ago, a famous rock star became incensed as to what was happening to music in America.  He remembered when he was a kid and would listen to the radio, enthralled at the personalities of the disc jockeys who spun records and tall tales.  Back then, you had to have a lot of talent to break through the pack and have your record make it to radio.  You had to write a great song, play and sing it well, and keep it up to have a successful music career.

Somewhere along the line, all of that changed.

So in 2002, this rock star put out a CD lamenting what has happened to the music industry.  He sang about “The Last DJ” who “plays what he wants to play”; about “Joe,” the CEO of a large record company who wants a kid “with a good-looking face” who “gets to be famous” while Joe gets “to be rich”; and in “Money Becomes King,” he decries the time when “everything got bigger and the rules began to bend, and the TV taught the people how to get their hair to shine.”

I’m with this rock star 100% on this stuff.  Throughout his career, he has taken on the big boys in the music industry on various issues, even going bankrupt because he refused to budge on principle.

His name?  Tom Petty.

While Tom has chosen to take on some large issues in the culture at times, there are still too many Christians who choose to focus on tiny stuff.  They make a big deal about nothing.

We should stick them with the last name “petty,” too.  Patrick Petty.  Margaret Petty.  Richard Petty.  (Oh, wait,  I hear he’s actually a good guy!)

Why do I mention this?  Because in a world where we’re dealing with earthquake fallout, radiation levels, no-fly zones, and bankrupt states, some Christians choose to focus on some little thing their pastor did or didn’t do.

Look, we all notice things about public people.  We notice their hair, their clothing, and their weight.  We quickly detect the depth of their voice, the accent they use, and the magnetism of their smile.  While we all have our own personal opinions about these matters, it’s almost always beneath us to talk about them with other people.

But that’s exactly what some Christians do.  Let me give you several examples.

*When my dad was a pastor, he received a lot of criticism toward the end of his tenure.  One of the complaints about him was that some people thought he parted his hair on the wrong side.

*A friend once told me that a woman in the church was angry with me.  When I asked him why, he said it was because I didn’t say hi to her one Sunday.  When I asked how many people she had told, he used both fingers to count and said, “Ten.”

*An older believer once became upset with me because I didn’t visit him in the hospital when he had a procedure done.  I told him that I didn’t know he was in the hospital.  He told me that I should have known anyway.

*While studying the resurrection of Christ for a midweek study, I made the statement that Christians could not scientifically prove that Christ rose from the dead.  One of the board members got up from his chair, walked to the door, said, “Then we’re all wasting our time here,” and slammed the door.

*That same board member became incensed with me after a worship service when I mentioned Christ’s death and resurrection in a statement of faith but didn’t mention his burial.

*In a message on Moses, I briefly referred to Moses as a “fogey” when God called him to lead Israel out of Egypt.  A man wrote an angry note on his response card about the use of that word and took offense for every senior person in the church.  I wanted to tell him that I got the idea for the word from a book on Moses … by Chuck Swindoll.

I could go on and on and on, but then I’d be the one who was being petty!

I believe that this “drip, drip, drip” effect of pettiness in our churches is driving pastors out of the ministry.  I recently read a statistic that said that 80% of new pastors are quitting the ministry within five years!  Why?

Undoubtedly some of it has to do with Karen, Daniel, and Mary Petty.

The Pharisees were petty.  They donated a tenth of their spices to the Lord but, Jesus said, “neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy, and faithfulness.”  Jesus went on to say, “You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.  You blind guides!  You strain out a gant but swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:23-24).

Sometimes when our pastor is preaching, I will catch something that he says that isn’t accurate.  (For example, he claimed on several occasions that Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the king of Babylon, when he was actually cupbearer to the king of Persia.)  I might quickly mention it to my wife or discuss it with her after the service, but that’s as far as it goes.  I don’t send out a mass email detailing his mistakes.  I don’t hop on the phone and mention it to friends.  I don’t criticize him within a small group context.

But some “petty” people inside a church will criticize the pastor for every little thing he does wrong.  It’s almost like they exist to ferret out the pastor’s flubs.  When I was a pastor, there were times when I imagined certain individuals in our chuch singing these words to me (with apologies to Sting): “Every breath you take and every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you.”

What can we do about this pettiness, especially when it comes to our pastors?

First, pray for your pastor more often.  Pray about the big things: his walk with God, his marriage, his fatherhood, his vision for your church, his teaching opportunities.  When you pray about the big stuff, you’ll be calling down the power of God upon him, and you’ll begin diverting your attention away from the small stuff.

Next, if you detect a small flaw in his life, keep it to yourself.  Look hard enough at anybody’s life and you will notice their little quirks and idiosyncrasies.  So what?  We all have them, so we all need to be gracious toward others.  If we start making a big deal about our pastor’s little foibles, others will start doing the same to us (Matthew 7:1-2).

There were times when I was tempted to write out a one-page list of all my tiny flaws (okay, two pages!) and hand it out to certain people in the church so they would know that I knew I had these little issues.  Would that have taken away their fun?  Or would they have started in on page three?

Third, discourage others from focusing on his flaws.  Most people that know me don’t know that (a) I practically get claustrophobic in heavy highway traffic and (b) cannot stand to wait in any line that goes for more than five minutes.  (Just today, I stopped by Target, and when I went to the checkstands, there were three long lines – and I only had two small items.  When they finally opened a fourth line, I should have been asked to be the first person in line, but the guy behind me was asked to go over instead.  I wasn’t happy.  Was I being petty?)

Okay, so let’s say that a friend of yours learns about my weaknesses in these areas, and this person comes and tells you about them.  How would you respond?  Would you say, like in Grease, “Tell me more, tell me more,” or would you shrug your shoulders and say, “Who cares?  I already knew he wasn’t an angel.”  If the latter, chances are good that you won’t be brought too much more gossip.

Finally, start encouraging him in his strengths.  Instead of noticing and publicizing a pastor’s flaws, it’s better to praise him for what he does well.  Reinforcement is a great teacher.  If you like your pastor’s humor, tell him so.  If you like his stories, tell him so.  If you like his applications, tell him so.  If you like his sincerity, tell him so.

Now if you start doing that every week, he’ll become suspicious that you’re no longer being objective, but if you do it every month or so, he may very well keep doing what you like.  While I liked it when someone complimented me verbally about a message after I gave it, I much preferred to receive a note or an email later on because I could keep that written record.  (And verbal comments tended to go in one ear and sail right out the other.)

So don’t be a petty Christian.  Be a pretty Christian instead.  One thing about pretty Christians: they’re never petty.

Read Full Post »

Facing Your Accusers

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with Church Board, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination, Ten Most Viewed Articles on March 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As I write today, I have conflicting emotions.  While I am eager to put down some thoughts on paper that I’ve been carrying around in my head for a long time, I wish I didn’t have to write even one word about today’s topic: pastoral termination.

Why not?

Because in a perfect world, a pastor would be called to a particular church and stay until he retired or went home to glory.

Because in a perfect world, the leaders of a congregation would speak honestly and swiftly to their pastor about any issue they had with him, and after sufficient prayer and discussion, both parties would come to an understanding, resolve matters, and lock arms to continue building Christ’s kingdom.

Because in a perfect world, church attendees would emulate their pastor’s lifestyle, follow his leadership, and obey his teaching.  And if they couldn’t do any of the above, they would quietly leave the church rather than insist that the pastor leave.

But ours is not a perfect world, not even within the hallowed halls of our biggest and best churches.  And when there is conflict between a pastor and the governing board, or the pastor and a staff member, or the pastor and a vocal minority, life inside a church can seem more like hell than heaven.

I know.  I’ve been there – all too many times.

So if a board or a group in a church believes that a pastor needs to leave, what can they do?

Let me begin by saying that the Bible does lay down guidelines for pastoral termination.  More than thirty years ago, I served on the staff of a church where the governing board pleaded with the pastor to make some changes in his ministry, and he warned them to back off by quoting I Chronicles 16:22: “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.”

This pastor viewed himself as an “anointed one” and a “prophet.”  He interpreted the phrase “do not touch” to mean “do not criticize the pastor.”  He hid behind this verse as well as I Samuel 24:6,10 where David told both his men and then King Saul that he would not “lift my hand … against the Lord’s anointed.”  But we need to be extremely careful how we interpret these verses.  Prophets, priests, and kings were all “anointed ones” in the Old Testament, specially called by God to their offices.  We can make legitimate applications to modern-day leaders from these texts provided that we (a) interpret them in context, and (b) compare them with other biblical directives.

In essence, God is saying in these Old Testament verses, “Since I have chosen Israel’s leaders, they should only leave office how and when I dictate.  I will not stand for any assassinations or coups or premature attempts to destroy a leader – especially if he or she is carrying out My orders.”  While God could directly remove a leader (like taking Elijah to heaven in a whirlwind), He sometimes permitted humans to do so (like allowing the sailors to throw Jonah overboard).  But back then, Israel didn’t vote on anything.  They couldn’t vote Saul or Jeremiah out of office.  They could use violence to restrain or kill them, but God did not sanction that solution at all.  In fact, God often allowed very wicked leaders to hold office a long time (like Ahab and Manasseh).

But when we come to the New Testament, God equates pastors with elders (1 Timothy 5:17-18) and then, under the inspiration of God’s Spirit, Paul writes these words to his ministry protege Timothy in verses 19-21: “Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.  Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.  I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism.”

This is the most complete text we have in the entire Bible on dealing with the sinful conduct of a spiritual leader such as a pastor (including staff members) or an elder (including board members).  It applies Jesus’ directives in Matthew 18:15-20 to spiritual leaders.

Anyone in the public eye will receive malicious personal attacks.  Some pastors think, “If I’m really nice, and cool, and sensitive, then no one will criticize me.”  Wrong.  Jesus was perfect yet He was both verbally and physically crucified.  There is a price to pay for spiritual leadership, a price pastors and staff members must pay as well.  No matter who you are, somebody will criticize, attack, and hate you.

Paul knew this (both by studying Jesus’ life and by his own experience), so he told Timothy “do not entertain an accusation against an elder [pastor] unless it is brought by two or three witnesses” (verse 19).  Let me tell you a story that illustrates the right way to do this.

I had been a pastor for about three years when I faced a very painful crisis.  A friend of mine, who had once been chairman of the church board, was our church’s songleader.  (Churches used to sing hymns accompanied by piano and organ and led by a songleader.  He would wave his arms to the music and dictate the pace and volume at which a hymn was sung.)  I had asked the songleader to sing a particular hymn for the next service, but he refused, telling me that no pastor had ever told him which hymns to select.  He threatened to quit on the spot.  It wasn’t pleasant.

Soon afterwards, he called the chairman and came to the next board meeting, bringing along a friend.  The songleader brought along a list of seven complaints he had against me.  He intended to read all seven in hopes that the board would legitimize his complaints, tell me to give him free reign as songleader, and then either reprimand or fire me.  He only had one or two substantive complaints but expanded them into seven and then dumped them all on the board – and me (an approach called “gunnysacking.”)

The chairman, to his credit, would not permit the songleader to read all seven complaints at once.  Instead, he asked the songleader to read the first complaint, and then the chairman asked him what evidence he had to back up his charge.  The chairman then asked me to respond to each complaint.  (The songleader did not anticipate this process.)  After presenting the sixth complaint, the songleader left the meeting.  The next morning, he called to tell me he was leaving the church.  (And he did leave, but his widow later invited me to conduct his memorial service.)

While I wish my friend would have stayed in the church (I truly loved him), the board did at least five things right during that meeting:

*The accuser presented his complaints against me to my face.

*The accuser was asked to produce evidence for each complaint.

*I as the pastor was able to face my accuser directly.

*I was able to respond to each accusation made against me.

*The board members were able to witness both of us as we discussed the issues.

While the above process is consistent with Scripture (and modern-day trials), it is used relatively rarely today.  Using the same story, let me illustrate how these situations are handled all too often.  (And to make the story more contemporary, I will substitute the phrase “worship director” for “songleader.”)

The worship director is upset with the pastor because the pastor wants the congregation to sing a certain song the following Sunday.  So one night after band practice, the worship director tells a vocalist and the bass player that is he tired of the pastor’s interference in the services.  Seeing how much the pastor’s decision hurts their friend, the vocalist and bass player go home and tell their spouses that the pastor is controlling and domineering.  After the following Sunday’s service, the bass player and his wife go out to eat with another church couple.  The bass player comments, “You know that final song?  The music director didn’t want to do it, but the pastor insisted it be done.  I don’t know how much longer the music director can stay at the church with a boss like that.”

Without the pastor’s knowledge, more and more people in the church begin to whisper that he’s a “control freak” and a “micro manager.”  Within several months, a group at the church begins meeting in secret.  Why?  Because the music director (who is their friend) claims that the pastor has been abusing him, and because an increasing number of people are now complaining about the pastor behind his back.  It’s now open season on the preacher.

The group that meets in secret begins listing all of the pastor’s weaknesses, as well as those of his wife and children.  Then this unofficial group assigns a couple members to meet with a sympathetic staff member as well as a supportive board member.  The group begins to feel exhiliration because they are finally “taking back their church!”

One night, after a regularly scheduled board meeting, the pastor is asked to step into his office.  Three board members meet him there.  They officially ask for his resignation.  When he asks about the charges against him, they rattle off a huge list.  The pastor is devastated.  It’s the first time he’s ever heard about these charges from anybody.

See the difference?  How are these issues handled in your church?

Next time, we’ll explore this issue even further.  Stay tuned!

Read Full Post »

Alliances

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists on January 18, 2011| 4 Comments »

I love the church that my wife and I attend.  It’s the church that I always wanted to pastor.  For example, as Kim and I were walking up to the lobby last Sunday, I told her that I first needed to stop by the men’s room.  Just then, the worship band began playing their opening song, and I heard a familiar guitar riff coming through the speakers outside.  I told Kim, “That’s All Because of You by U2.”  I quickly bypassed the men’s room.  We found seats four rows from the front, I listened to the band play the entire song, and then I quickly slipped out for a moment.

After the service, we went to the information desk so Kim could confirm some details about a missions course she’s taking.  Then we bought hamburgers at the grill outside and watched the Bears pummel the Seahawks on one of five large-screen TVs in the patio area.  While we were eating lunch, kids and their parents were playing football, soccer, and basketball on the fields nearby. (It’s never winter in the Phoenix area.)  Yesterday someone who once attended the church termed it “Church Disneyland,” but I know what they’re doing and why: they are trying to reach spiritually lost people with the good news of Jesus and they’re doing it extremely well.

Our pastor is a truth teller and a straight talker, and I like that.  Last Sunday, he used three Old Testament stories to illustrate that because we have a big God, we need to think big as well, and his message resonated with us in a powerful way.  But for the third time in sixth months, he referred to an incident that happened to him years before, an occurrence that he shared with me privately before I ever heard him mention it publicly.

In the early years of the church, four staff members aligned themselves against the pastor.  I don’t know what their specific charges were but they engaged in character assassination.  When the pastor discovered their plot, he called a meeting of the entire church to expose them, and three of them immediately resigned.  That alliance threatened the entire mission and existence of the church.  The pastor survived, but it took him months to recover his drive and energy.

How often do professing Christians form alliances against a pastor?  Sadly, it happens all too often.  An alliance in a church can take many forms.  As in the above case, staff members can form a group to force the pastor to resign.  Or the governing board can initiate a “church coup” by blocking all of the pastor’s plans (and substituting their own).  Or a group can engage in “secret meetings” where people make a list of charges against the pastor and then issue a series of demands, threatening to leave the church en masse if their demands are not met.

Why do people form such alliances?  They do so because they feel powerless by themselves but powerful when they’re with others.  As they complain to their colleagues/friends/co-workers, they discover people who agree with them and share their agenda.  When they find enough willing participants, they form an unofficial group.  Someone assumes leadership, they begin meeting in secret, and they’re usually willing to use any means necessary to accomplish their goal: take out the top leader.

Isn’t this what happened with Jesus?  I’ve been studying The Gospels and have been surprised at how many alliances it took to execute Jesus.  The Pharisees enlisted the help of the hated Herodians in trying to pummel Jesus with tough theological questions (Matthew 22:15-22).  Judas struck a deal with the Sanhedrin to reveal Jesus’ whereabouts during Passover (Matthew 26:14-16).  Pontius Pilate and King Herod Antipas, who did not get along, initiated a friendship after both examined Jesus (Luke 23:12).  Even Israel (the Jews) and Rome (the Gentiles) had to form a partnership to eliminate Jesus.  Without these “strange bedfellows” – humanly speaking – Jesus would never have been crucified.

Dr. Luke notes several of these alliances in Acts 4:25-27.  After Peter and John were arrested and released by the Jewish Supreme Court, the early Christians met together and asked the Lord for boldness to share the gospel.  Notice the following phrases (italics are mine):

“‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.’  Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed” (Acts 4:25-27).

When I was a pastor, I didn’t mind if a few individuals in the church complained about various matters as long as they spoke to me or another top leader directly and didn’t spread their discontent to others.  I actually welcomed such complaints because there were times when people observed matters that I couldn’t possibly notice.  I always thanked those who had the courage to come and speak with me personally.

But I was always on the lookout for complainers who started to form coalitions.  It is not a sin to feel uncomfortable about something in a church, or to share your concern with a church leader, or even to have a conversation with another attendee about that same matter.  But it is a sin to form a group within the church whose express purpose is to get its own way.  And once the group begins to deliberate, it usually concludes that it cannot get its way unless it first gets rid of whoever is standing it its way – and that person is usually the pastor.

No one can ever detect every budding alliance in a church, but just determine that you will never form or join such a group.

I once met with a group of Christian clergy who were dissatisfied with the leaders of the organization that we all served.  Several of these men began to suggest that we could remove the leaders and “take back” the organization.  While listening to my colleagues talk, I could sense how powerful they felt.  But I eventually spoke up and told my friends that I wouldn’t have anything to do with plotting against the organization’s leaders, even though I was distressed by some of their decisions.  My words of protest threw a wet blanket over the whole discussion, and the leaders never again entertained the idea of overthrowing their superiors.

But I shudder to think what might have happened if I had either agreed with them or remained silent.

If you’re unhappy with your church or upset with your pastor for some reason, choose not to complain to others, even your good friends.  Instead, go to the person you’re upset with and talk to them about the matter.  That’s what Jesus instructed us to do (Matthew 18:15-17).

But you can form an alliance with one party: the Lord Himself.  Go into your closet and have a secret meeting with Him.  Unload your concerns about your church and its leaders.

Because in the long run, forming a coalition with the Father is far more effective – and uniting – than forming an alliance with any of your spiritual brothers and sisters.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »