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Whatever Happened to Satan?

Posted in Church Conflict, Current Church Issues, Fighting Evil, Please Comment! on June 15, 2011| 3 Comments »

Have you been hearing anything recently from major Christian leaders about Satan?

It recently struck me that ever since my wife and I moved to Arizona, I can’t recall any mention of the enemy in any message that I’ve heard, much less any message about the devil.

He has suddenly become as unpopular as hell.

Maybe there’s a good reason for that.

Years ago, I learned that whenever I planned to present a message about Satan – and it wasn’t a regular occurence – a bunch of weird stuff would happen right before the service.  The microphone wouldn’t work, or the sound would go out, or a key participant in the service would suddenly fall ill.  It was inevitable.  I’d still give the message, but it felt like I was running uphill.

And that’s how I felt last Monday when I tried to make my last point on the blog about Satan.  Suddenly, the formatting went haywire.  I wrote the entire point, quoting both the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther, but things became so messed up that I couldn’t present it to you.  It became so frustrating that I resolved to wait until today to finish.

Satan is real.  We shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about him – as C.S. Lewis said, that would please him greatly – but we shouldn’t ignore him, either.  There’s a lot of stuff going on in this world that can only be explained if there is a devil.

If you haven’t done any reading about Satan, but you’re willing to work up your courage and do so, I recommend Michael Green’s classic book I Believe in Satan’s Downfall.  Green is both a scholar and an evangelist – a truly rare combination – and he writes both eloquently and passionately about the one who forments mischief and evil behind the scenes in both our communities and our churches.

Twenty years ago, I was involved in launching a new church in Silicon Valley.  Our core group settled on a warehouse at a key intersection.  But we ran into all kinds of problems, especially with the city planning commission.  They refused to issue us a conditional use permit to meet there, even after we signed a lease.

So we appealed to the City Council and called for a special day of prayer and fasting.  John, our outreach director, created a one-page flyer on a Macintosh computer encouraging everyone in the church to pray for “our building, God’s will, God’s power, and unity.”  When John looked at the flyer on the computer screen, all the words were right side up.

When he printed the flyer to hand out to our people, the word “Pray” was upside down while all the other words were right side up.

No matter what John did, he could not get the word “Pray” to print right side up.

We eventually handed them out that way, and some of our people freaked out because they had never seen any supernatural mischief before.  But to me, this was an indication that what the devil didn’t want us to do was to pray.  In other words, he had laid out a plan of victory for us.

During this time, Ephesians 6:13 became my go to verse:

“Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”

We did try and do “everything.”  Along with several of our board members, I talked to other pastors, Christian leaders, attorneys, planning commissioners, and City Council members in our city, along with the Mayor.  One of the Christian leaders, who is well-known in the Bay Area, told his attorney to distance himself from our situation because he predicted we were going to lose.

But when our appeal came before the Council, we won an incredible 7-0 vote and received our conditional use permit – the first church in our city to ever go into the light industrial area.

I didn’t know it at the time, but we had situated ourselves smack in the middle of the devil’s territory.  No wonder he fought us so hard the entire time we were there.

Years later, I learned that the intersection where our church was located was a haven for drug dealers.  And across the road was a massage parlor that, like the House of the Rising Sun, ruined many a poor boy.  (As our church was getting ready to relocate from that intersection, a man called to ask me to do whatever I could to close down that massage parlor because, he said, it had ruined his life.)

During our whole time together, the church stayed united against outside forces that tried to assail us – and they were continually trying to do so.  I have never been in a church that was so effective at winning lost people to Christ – or a church that endured so much external suffering.

We were successful in defeating the devil time and time again, but he was relentless, and in the end, he and his minions wore us down.  When our church was forced to relocate five miles away, I knew I was going to need a long break away from church ministry.

After years of putting it off, I finally did a series on controversial social issues, including homosexuality.  The night before I planned to give that message, all hell broke loose in my home and in our church.  In fact, it was so bad that I typed out a resignation letter because I felt too weak to deal with the assaults anymore.  (However, I never gave it to the board.)

The next day, I did give the message I had planned to give, but only after making peace at home.  I have never, ever sensed spiritual warfare like I felt the 24 hours before I gave that message.

And the truth is, I never want to feel that way again.

But when we invade the enemy’s territory, we never know what’s going to happen to us.

Twice in Ephesians 6:13, Paul encourages believers to stand.  By contrast, the devil wants us to run and hide (like Jesus’ disciples did the night before He died), or to deny Him (like Peter did), or to hang (like Judas did).

But Jesus wants us to stand.

The only way we can stand against Satan is to do it together.  The strongest pastor in the world cannot fight the enemy by himself.  Even Paul ended this passage by telling the Ephesians, “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.  Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should” (Ephesians 6:19-20).

Let me make four quick points about Satan:

First, he is real.  He tried to take Jesus’ life as an infant through King Herod the Great.  He battled Jesus in the wilderness, infiltrated His disciples through Judas, and was behind most of the events in the final 24 hours of Jesus’ life.  Jesus said that Satan exists, and that should be good enough for us.

For an interesting take on Satan, read the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s song Man of Peace.  They ring true.

Second, he hates God.  Most of the hatred directed against God in our country doesn’t come from the ACLU or a certain political party or candidate or from godless late-night comedians.  The hatred originates with Satan.  He influences people to hate God and even injects thoughts into their brains, but as many Christians have pointed out, godless humans are not the real enemy, but victims of the enemy.

Third, he hates God’s people.  So he deceives and destroys – often among Christians – so that he can divide us and negate our united front to the world.  I have noticed recently that many younger evangelicals view older Christians as their enemies, embracing the culture while condemning other churches.  When any of us succumb to this hatred, we are doing the devil’s work for him – and we are all susceptible to it.

Finally, he has been defeated.  We all know this – we just need to be reminded.  He cannot overthrow God, or undermine Jesus, or take out the Spirit – so he focuses on frail humans like us.  But I love the way the writer to the Hebrews puts it:

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

Jesus’ death defeated Satan.

Let’s let Martin Luther have the last word in A Mighty Fortress:

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;

Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing;

Dost ask who that may be?  Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth, His name, from age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

Amen?

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Blessings on Your Church

Posted in Current Church Issues on June 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

In my last post, I asserted that all believers want the same thing for their churches.  We all want God’s blessing, whatever that looks like.

When God is blessing a church, people come to church expectantly, everyone senses the presence of God, people value right relationships, and spiritually lost people find the Lord.

But how can a church secure that blessing, especially when it often seems elusive?

First, all the top leaders need to be walking with God.  If the pastor is walking with God, but the board chairman is not, that’s a problem.  If the youth pastor is walking with God, but the lead pastor is not, that’s an even bigger problem.  Galatians 5:16 says it well: “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”  But when the pastor, staff members, and board members are all living by the Spirit at home, at work, and at church, the Lord has already started pouring out His blessing on that church.

To me, the measure of a leader’s spirituality is his or her willingness to put aside their own personal agenda and to submit themselves to God’s agenda for their church.  When every leader is fully surrendered, the church will begin to gain an unstoppable momentum.

Back in the early 1990s, I was involved in the biggest project of my church career.  Our church sold its property and used the proceeds to begin a ministry to unchurched people.  Because the vision required divine power, every one of our leaders was completely sold out to Jesus.  Although we were tested like we’d never been tested before, we constantly sought and received divine guidance, and it paid off big time.  As tough as it was at times, I’d never trade that experience for the world.

Second, the top leaders must all support each other.  Walking with God must translate into walking alongside one another.  The board chairman must get along with the pastor, who must get along with the associate pastor, who must get along with the other staff members.  The leaders may have genuine disagreements about certain issues – that’s healthy – but they need to openly and honestly talk them through and arrive at consensus.  God longs to bless leaders who all stand together.

But when the associate pastor forms an alliance with several board members, or a couple of staff members continually undermine the pastor, God withholds His blessing from that church.  When Miriam and Aaron began to criticize Moses because of his new wife, Israel’s wilderness leadership team became fractured, and God’s people stalled until the Lord dealt with Miriam specifically.  Numbers 12:15 tells us that “the people did not move on till she was brought back.”  Division in the ranks affected progress on the ground – and it always does.

Third, the entire congregation understands and supports their unique mission.  If the pastor has one agenda for a church, several board members have a second agenda, and a faction in the church has a third agenda, God’s blessing on that church will be short-circuited.  While there are various ways for a church to discern its mission, once it has been written down and announced, God’s people need to get behind it.

When they do, it’s amazing to watch what God does!  But when there’s grumbling and complaining and internal sabotage, the fulfillment of the mission will either be slowed or stalled.

In one church I served as pastor, the congregation unanimously decided to construct a new building.  It was exciting to watch people share their input about the building and give sacrificially for its construction!  But a handful of people tried to undermine the project from within, and although they were unsuccessful, they did slow down the momentum enough to mess with our timetables.  The Lord overrode them and the building went up anyway, but every congregation seems to have its ecclesiastical saboteurs.  While the leaders may choose to listen to their ideas and feelings, the leaders cannot allow them to set the church’s agenda.

Fourth, the church makes prayer a priority.  In Christian churches today, there is little public emphasis on prayer anymore, and frankly, I don’t get it.  When the staff meets, they may share for an hour but pray for five minutes.  When the board meets, they may dispense with prayer altogether except for a quick opening and closing prayer.  When the leaders fail to take prayer seriously, it spills over into the rest of the congregation – and God will not bless that church.

Prayer is simply asking God for His intervention.  When a church fails to pray very much, they are implicitly saying, “God, we don’t need Your help at all.  We can handle things by ourselves.”  And God will let that church handle matters on their own and pull back His supernatural power.  But when the pastor and staff and board take prayer seriously, the practice has a way of becoming contagious and natural throughout the rest of the church.  I’m always cheered by how often the early church talked to God and received incredible answers.  For example, in Acts 4:29, God’s people prayed, “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.  Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

He did.

Finally, a congregation has to want God’s blessing more than anything else.  Many of us assume that if God is going to bless our church, then we’re going to grow numerically, or purchase more land, or add some staff, or have bigger offerings.  While these may be signs of God’s favor, can’t the Lord bless in other ways as well?

Sometimes relational unity is a sign of God’s blessing.  Other times accurate biblical teaching is a sign of God’s blessing.  Still other times it’s how quickly a congregation can raise money for a great need.  Proverbs 10:6 tells us that “blessings crown the head of the righteous …”

Whatever He does, and however He does it, it is crucial that from time-to-time, we stand back in our churches and marvel, “Wow, look what the Lord has done!”

When we’re confident that He’s responsible and should receive all the credit, then we know He is blessing our church.

It’s the greatest feeling in the world.

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What We All Want from Church

Posted in Current Church Issues, Please Comment!, tagged , on June 8, 2011| 2 Comments »

When I was a pastor, there was one thing I wanted for my church more than anything else.

It wasn’t increased attendance, or above-the-budget offerings, or even mass conversions.

I wanted the blessing of God on our church.

It’s possible to manipulate people into coming to church and giving – at least for a while.  But the divine blessing cannot be manufactured by humans.  It can only come from above.

Whether they articulate it or not, most Christian pastors want the Lord to pour out His blessing upon their church.  God’s promise to His people in Ezekiel 34:26 sums this up well:

“I will bless them and the places surrounding my hill.  I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing.”

Some of us used to sing this chorus in church:

“Showers of blessing,

Showers of blessing we need,

Mercy drops ’round us are falling,

But for the showers we plead.”

What does God’s blessing look like in a local church setting?

First, the people come to church expectantly.  They aren’t forcing themselves to show up; they want to be there.  They arrive as early as they can, greet their friends in Christ, look around for guests they can minister to, and sit down early to focus upward.  They don’t cross their arms and inwardly say to their pastor, “Tell me something I’ve never heard before.”  Instead, they eagerly await the worship time and prayerfully look for God to speak to them.  I like the way Dr. Luke puts it in Acts 2:43 when he says that “everyone was filled with awe.”

Second, everyone senses the presence of God.  D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones served as the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for decades.  He was such a great biblical expositor that I’ve read his entire eight-volume commentary on Ephesians and loved every minute.  When he came to the United States, he would visit various churches, and sometimes when a pastor would get up to preach, he’d look out at the congregation and see Dr. Lloyd-Jones sitting there – and he’d want to trade places instantly!  Lloyd-Jones was asked once what he looked for when he heard other men preach, and he said that he wanted to sense the presence of God.  What a profound answer!

When God is blessing a church, people sense His presence in the music, in the message, and in everything else.  They sense that God is present and that He that He is comfortable in that particular location.  When God appeared to Jacob at Bethel, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.  How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17).

Third, people value right relationships.  When I was a youth pastor, I took various youth groups to retreats in mountain cabins.  As we all drove up the mountain, the group would become fractured as students insulted other students and formed exclusive cliques.  But by Saturday night, a few students would become convicted about how they were treating their peers, and they would break down and ask for forgiveness.  This made the ride down the mountain more joyful and unifying, and at least for a little while, the students would experience God’s blessing in abundance.

If only the adults could learn from the youth.

Young people aren’t very good about hiding how they really feel about anything, including the other kids in their group.  But as those young people become adults, they learn how to mask their true feelings as they interact with people they don’t like.  So it’s possible for two Christians to be cordial to each other in the church patio and turn around and verbally knife each other in the back as they drive home from worship.

Sometimes these kinds of relationships are what prevent God from blessing a church.  If we could learn the practice of keeping short accounts with each other, God’s presence would become clearer and His power would become greater in our midst.

And let me be honest here: oftentimes the greatest relational problems are buried inside the leadership of the church.  If we want God’s blessing, we have to humble ourselves and seek restoration with those with whom we serve.

Finally, spiritually lost people find the Lord.  When God is blessing a church, unbelievers come to faith in Christ in a natural way.  It’s not because the church launches an evangelism campaign, or because they hold an evangelistic crusade, but because believers are sharing their faith with their unbelieving friends and inviting them to church.  The Lord obviously blessed the first church in Jerusalem, and as the people loved God and each other, we’re told that “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

As a pastor, I always sensed God’s blessing when people were becoming Christians, but wondered what was wrong when we went for weeks without a single convert.

What are some of the other indications that God is blessing a church?  What have you seen?  I welcome your comments!

Next time, I’ll discuss what the leaders of a church can do to secure the Lord’s blessing.

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Afraid of Church?

Posted in Church Conflict, Current Church Issues on June 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Several years ago, my former church held a social event on a Saturday evening.  We enjoyed great food, crazy games, and gondola rides on a lagoon behind the church campus.

During the event, I met a woman from the neighborhood who came from the Czech Republic.  (She wanted a boat ride but wasn’t attending the event.)  She had experienced some tragedy in her life and told me her story.  After a while, I suggested that she might visit our church sometime.  She seemed to consider the idea.

I carefully led her over to the stairs that rose up to our event center.  The closer we got, the more panic she felt.  Although I was very gentle with her, she wanted nothing to do with being inside a church.  She became extremely anxious and exited the building as quickly as she could.

She was afraid of church.

Like her, many others are also afraid of church.  Some are afraid to set foot on a church campus.  Others are afraid to enter a worship center.  Still others are afraid of Christian music.  And lots of people are afraid of preaching.

Why is this?

For starters, some people have never attended church in their lives – not for a wedding, or a funeral, or a children’s program, or a worship service.  While some people almost pride themselves on never darkening the door of a church, the very thought petrifies others.  But one day, they can’t avoid it any longer.  Their daughter is getting married, or an uncle passed away, or one of their kids has a role in the Christmas program, and the event is held at a church.  They don’t see a way out of the situation, so they go … with all their defenses up.

Is there some kind of event that you’ve never attended and it makes you nervous just thinking about it?  Maybe you’ve never attended a rap concert, or a city council meeting, or an indoor arena football game, and you have no desire to go because you don’t know what will happen if you do.  That’s understandable.

That’s how many people feel about attending any event at a church.

Next, some people have suffered traumatic experiences inside a church service.  Some churches used to exclude non-members from communion, either asking them to leave or asking them not to partake of the elements.  Feeling excluded feels unsafe to some.  On the other hand, I once attended a church service where everyone was expected to leave their pew, walk forward, and kneel around the altar – something I did not want to do.  (But I did it only because I felt coerced.)  The whole experience shook me up because I did not want to embarrass myself in front of scores of strangers who already knew what to do.

Some people don’t sing at church because they never sing anywhere else.  Other people freeze up during the greeting time, either because they want to remain anonymous or because they don’t like to shake hands with strangers.  And a lot of people hate it when a preacher yells about anything because it reminds them of an abusive stepfather or boss.

Shouldn’t such people just “get over it?”  They’d like to, but remember: while going to work is a necessity, going to church is purely optional.  And if the leaders of a church – however well-intentioned – create experiences that make people feel uncomfortable, those people may choose to stay home from church for a long, long time.

Next, some people expect that a church will be a safe place – and if it isn’t, they’ll just stop going.  I believe that a pastor who preaches from Scripture should be able to talk about any issue from the pulpit, even tough social issues like abortion or homosexuality.  However, if a pastor does it without sensitivity, he can unintentionally slash the hearts of those who feel guilty about their past conduct or those who struggle with their present behavior.  The pastor would say he’s being “faithful to the Word of God” and prophetic in his presentation, but if he condemns sin without offering grace, many people will just stop going to that church.

Because he wanted to reach unchurched people, Robert Schuller believed that a pastor shouldn’t deal with controversial issues from the pulpit, that those should best be left for classroom discussions.  But Bill Hybels, who also championed reaching unchurched people, was comfortable dealing with any and all issues, including cultural hot potatoes.  The key is to proclaim the truth while making people feel safe at the same time, because if they don’t feel safe, they won’t come back.

I am not talking about compromising the gospel or avoiding difficult topics.  Most Christians want a church to explain its position on issues from Scripture.  This adds to their knowledge and helps them explain and defend their faith in the marketplace.  For example, if a pastor never talks about abortion, how will most of his people obtain a Christian view of the practice?

But if a pastor becomes so incensed about abortion that he starts screaming and yelling, he may run off women who have secretly had an abortion even if they have already repented.

Finally, some people are afraid of God – and maybe they ought to be – and identify God and church in their mind.

Why bring all this up?

My wife and I experienced a horrible trauma 18 months ago.  The trauma was inflicted by Christian people that we loved and cared about.  We had to move to another state to start the healing process.

To be honest, we didn’t want to attend church anywhere for a while.  It felt dangerous to us.  While we did take a few Sundays off, we eventually began visiting churches, but some of them did not feel like safe places.

At the second church we visited, the pastor raised his voice about an issue, and I sensed he was addressing some critics.  But it still felt uncomfortable.  As my wife and I were walking on a sidewalk toward the parking lot, a couple tried to go around us and forced us off the sidewalk.  (That wasn’t nice.)  And let’s not even talk about how so-called Christians behave in a crowded parking lot.

Forget being seeker-sensitive – some of these churches weren’t even believer-sensitive.

You’re probably wondering, “Jim, aren’t you being nitpicky about this stuff?”

No, I’m not.  Here’s why.

There are millions of people in the United States who believe in God and who already like Jesus Christ – and yet they aren’t yet Christians.  We can blame them all we want for their unbelief, but when they do finally visit a church – maybe after years of avoiding one – what kind of experience do we give them?

We act like they’re not even there.

Maybe they’re not afraid of church as much as we are afraid of them.

A pastor friend once told me about a time that he went up after class to speak with one of his seminary professors.  My friend said, “I appreciate what you taught us: teach the sheep and love the sheep.”  The professor said, “No, I said love the sheep and teach the sheep – and in that order.”

If our churches are going to be safe places to hear a dangerous message, then we need to learn to love people before we teach them.  They need to have a positive experience from the church parking lot to the nursery to the children’s rooms to the church lobby and into the worship center.  They need to have a positive experience inside the service, from the songs to the greeting time to the offering to the message.

But I’m seeing a disturbing trend today.  Too many churches are becoming in-grown.  They don’t seem to want guests to come so they don’t expect them to come, either.  The emphasis is on spiritual formation – which is fine – but to the neglect of reaching lost people for Jesus Christ.

So when people finally do show up – and it may have taken them months to work up the courage – we simply aren’t ready for them.  Nobody greets them.  Nobody talks to them.  Nobody even notices them.

So when the service is done, they slip away as fast as they can – all the while even more determined not to go to church anywhere.

After trying a church, they’re even more afraid of church.

Many years ago, I learned this adage: most people will give a church only one chance.  If a church treats their guests well, they may be able to reach them for Jesus.  If the church neglects their guests or makes them feel unsafe, they will probably never return, and may write off Jesus and His people in the process.

It takes courageous leadership to make a church a safe place.  There are churches that do this and do it well, and they don’t compromise their message in the process.  And the leaders do their best to involve everyone in the church in reaching people for Christ.

But they have learned to love people for Jesus before they teach them about Jesus.  And in so doing, they have earned the right to be heard.

How about your church?  Is it a safe place for hurting people – even those who have experienced trauma in their lives?

If not – in the words of Jean-Luc Picard – make it so.

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What’s Great About Church

Posted in Current Church Issues, Personal Stories, Please Comment! on May 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Most of the writing I do on this blog concerns pastor-church conflict issues, although I try and write more for lay people than anyone else.  By necessity, this means that I’m focused more on the dark side of the church, and it’s hard to think about that all the time.

So today, I want to shine the light on what’s great about attending a local Christian church.

While I might have missed a few, I believe that I’ve attended at least 14 different churches in my lifetime: 8 before I became a pastor and 6 afterwards.  Since I grew up in a pastor’s home – and I was in church every Sunday – a safe estimate is that I’ve attended at least 2,500 Sunday morning services, not counting Sunday evening or Wednesday night extravaganzas.

So here’s what I like about church:

First, there is a minimum of one solid hour to focus on God.  The closer we get to God, the more life comes together.  The further we get from God, the more life starts unraveling.  We all know we need to interact with our Creator more often, but the routine intrusions of life can make this challenging.

But when we attend a church service, outside intrusions are largely eliminated.  The phone doesn’t ring (okay, there are exceptions), we aren’t watching TV (although many churches now have monitors), we’ve left our favorite books at home (unless they’re on our Smart Phone), and household chores cannot be transferred to a worship center (thank God!).  While we can sleep, it’s generally discouraged, and while we can read, the Bible remains the preferred literature.

The praise and worship time, the testimonies, any video elements, the various prayers, communion, and the pastor’s message all point us in a heavenward direction.  Even for the best Christians, it’s possible to go 167 hours without looking up too often.  A worship service specializes in a vertical relationship with God – and that’s a very good thing indeed!

Second, you’re hanging around others who also love Jesus.  When I worked for McDonald’s, I was assigned primarily to the grill area.  Although I knew how to cook meat and dress the buns, my primary role was toasting the buns.  One night, while doing just that, I decided to share Christ with Matt, my co-worker who was cooking meat.  I asked him, “Hey, Matt, who is Jesus Christ to you?”  He replied, “One in a cast of thousands.”

I never followed up with him.  I didn’t know what to say after that.

There may have been Christians working at McDonald’s, but I don’t recall meeting any (except the boss’ mother Myrtle, but she wasn’t a co-worker).  So, like most of you, I was surrounded by unbelievers at work.

But when I went to church, there were believers everywhere!  In fact, we assumed you were a believer unless we heard otherwise.  While I was only at church for a few hours each week, it was relaxing and fulfilling to hang around people who believed as I did – and many of those people helped me grow in my faith.  There is nothing in the world like a concentration of Christians in one place.

Third, you make lifelong friends at church.  My first friends lived in my neighborhood.  I met the next wave at school.  And I made a host of friends through playing sports.  But I always enjoyed a deeper friendship with my church friends than any others.

When I was in ninth grade, my three best friends and I were all officers in the Honor Society.  I signed a few hundred yearbooks on the last day of school.

Three years later, on the last day of high school, I signed three yearbooks.  (And I didn’t buy my own, either.)  Why?  Because nearly all my friends were at church.

My good friend Ken invited me to his church and I stayed.  Then I eventually invited our mutual friend Steve.  I met and married Kim, and Steve met and married Janie.  While I haven’t retained all the friendships I made at that church, I have retained many of them, and they continue to enrich my life to this day.

Sixteen years ago, the church held its 40th anniversary reunion.  That night felt like a taste of heaven.  I saw friends I hadn’t seen in more than twenty years, and nobody seemed to remember the bad stuff anyone had done – we only remembered the good.  I’ll never forget one young man who was in my youth group.  He told me that I was the first man he had ever met who was both an athlete and a Christian, and that my example is what kept him following Christ.  (He was married with four kids, as I recall.)  The whole night was like that.  Where else can you find that kind of friendship?

Fourth, church is where we discover and develop our gifts.  As a kid, I read to my class at times, and had a few things I’d written read for me, but I hardly did any public speaking.  In fact, I rarely spoke up in class at all, even when I knew the answer.  But I learned to speak in church.

My first message was on the friendship between David and Jonathan.  It was on a Sunday night in July (when experimentation was permissible).  I did not study adequately for it and really didn’t know what I was doing, but one has to start somewhere, and my church provided a safe place for me to test my gift.  Fifty or so messages later, a church called me to be their pastor.  That only happened because I was allowed to practice preaching on three church families.

The same is true for so many of us who know Jesus.  We first learned to teach kids and run events and sing songs and lead groups and pray with people not at home or at school, but at church.  In the warm, safe environment of God’s people, we tried and failed and tried and failed until we found an area where we had success.  Since it’s hard to experiment in a megachurch that expects perfection, experimenting is best done in the myriad of small and medium-sized churches that dot our land.

Fifth, we are exposed to Scripture and all its wonders.  With its various complexities and ambiguities, many of us still love the Bible.  No book contains more wisdom, or power, or grace.  No book has better stories.  No book possesses such powerful lessons.  From Abraham and Esther through Peter and Paul, where can anyone find such characters in literature?

I thank God for every person who taught me the Bible.  With a few exceptions, I remember them all.  They influenced my life in countless ways.  If you want to attend seminary, you have to have one near you and pay out the nose.  But there are thousands of mini-seminaries all over the world found in local churches.

And while I appreciate every pastor who preached God’s Word, the most influential teachers are the ones who teach the toddlers and the fifth grade boys and the high school group.  They keep the kids inside the church so that the preacher can later reach them as adults.

Finally, church is the source of the greatest music in the world.  I had breakfast yesterday with a dear friend, and he mentioned that George Beverly Shea, the soloist for Billy Graham’s Crusades for so many years, just turned 102!  When he mentioned Shea’s name, I instantly started singing the song he co-wrote with Rhea Miller:

I’d rather have Jesus, than silver or gold,

I’d rather be His than have riches untold

I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands

I’d rather be led by His nail pierced hand

Than to be a king of a vast domain

Or be held in sin’s dread sway

I’d rather have Jesus than anything

This world affords today

Where did George Beverly Shea first sing that song?  In church.  Where did many of us first hear it?  In church.

It’s the same place we heard “A Mighty Fortress” and “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and “How Great Thou Art” and “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” and “Shout to the Lord” and “My Glorious” and hundreds of other great songs.  Unlike Mozart, Bach wrote his masterpieces first for church use.  And so many entertainers got their start by singing in church.  (It would be great if they would go back to church, but that’s another story.)

Those are just a few of the reasons that the local church is so great, but I’ve barely scratched the surface.

What is great about church to you?

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Who Are We Trying to Reach?

Posted in Change and Conflict in Church, Church Conflict, Current Church Issues, Please Comment! on May 23, 2011| 2 Comments »

In my mind, the biggest question facing every pastor and church leader is this one:

Who are we trying to reach?

As soon as a pastor answers that question, nearly everything else falls into place – but his problems are only beginning.

For example, if a pastor believes his church should reach men, that will impact his message themes, the kind of music the church offers, the way people dress, and a host of other decisions.

The church my wife and I have attended for the past year targets men.  They believe that if they reach a man, his wife and their children will also come to church.

So the parking lot attendants are all men.  The initial wave of greeters are men.  (The second wave includes women.)

At yesterday’s service, the pastor talked about what happens to partners after they divorce.  The video testimony during his message was given by a man.

The music style at services is primarily rock with a little pop thrown in.  The worship leaders and band members are always men.  There are always two backup vocalists – one on either side of the stage – and they are usually women.  Performance songs are sung equally by both women and men.

The pastor announced that softball leagues are beginning for the summer, and you can either play on a coed team or a men’s team.

The dress at the church is Phoenix-casual.  Many people – including men – wear shorts, some year-round.  In other words, men don’t need to get dressed up to come to church.  (That appeals to a lot of guys who never get dressed up for anything.)

When new men visit the church, they relax when they see other men everywhere.  They start thinking, “Maybe the Christian faith isn’t just for women and children after all.”

However, a lot of pastors are afraid to decide on a target group because they know such a decision is inherent with conflict.  And yet if a church tries to reach everybody, it will eventually reach nobody.  No person – or church – can be all things to all people.

Once a pastor decides on a group to target, should he announce that decision to the congregation?  It might seem like the church is excluding entire groups, especially in this politically-correct world.

So if a pastor announces the church is targeting men, some might say, “Then you obviously aren’t interested in women or children!”  And if a pastor says, “We’re trying to reach young families,” some of the seniors might complain, “Then it’s obvious you don’t care about us.”

It’s a dilemma for pastors: if you do target a particular group, then your ministry has more focus and you enhance your ability to grow – but some people also might feel excluded, which can affect their attendance, giving, and morale.

If a pastor can’t make a decision about this dilemma, then his church won’t grow until he does.

But if the pastor doesn’t handle the target thing just right, it can result in a mass exodus – or his head on a platter.

In my second pastorate, there was a couple in the church who came from the Midwest.  They had Swedish roots, and they attended that church partly because it had a Swedish background.

One Sunday morning, the couple sang an old hymn in Swedish – and they did not sing it well.  Who was their target?  People who knew Swedish.  How many people in our church knew Swedish?  Probably a handful.

I thought to myself, “These Swedish songs have to go.”  I’m not sure I ever told anybody that, but I set up a policy that insured that all song selections had to go through me before they were done in a service.

That went for any songs in French, Japanese, and Navajo, too.

But that didn’t make me popular.  In fact, the couple that sang that hymn became the worst church antagonists I had for years.  (However, they have since been surpassed.)

Then I had to discern who we were going to reach.  I settled on young families.  Why?  Because younger people are more receptive to the gospel than older people.  The older a person gets, the more resistant they become to the gospel.  God’s grace can reach down and touch anyone’s heart, but if a church truly wants to make an impact in their community, they usually target younger families.

Once a pastor and his key leaders make that decision, they need to view the entire ministry through the lens of that group.

And they need to make sure that the music style fits their target audience.

The leaders need to ask themselves, “What kind of music do young families listen to these days?”  While most younger people are pretty eclectic musically, most churches can’t produce a variety of genres at a weekend service.  So the leaders also need to ask, “What kind of music can we offer that will attract those families?”

Once that decision is reached, it may exclude the choir, the organ, and the musical saw.

The “worship wars” were fought in the 1980s as baby boomers gradually began to assume the leadership of Christian churches.  Choirs and pipe organs started to disappear.  They were replaced by guitars and keyboards.  While this trend delighted younger people, it upset many seniors.

And this once again created a real dilemma for pastors.  While seniors are often more generous and consistent in their giving, younger people tend to be more stingy and sporadic.  So if a church changes their musical presentations from a choir to a rock band overnight, that move might offend older people without necessarily attracting younger people – and the seniors might withhold their giving or take it to another church.

This is why a pastor needs to bring all the leaders along together in determining which group a church is going to reach.  Because when the outcry comes – and it will – the pastor will need all the support he can get.

Some of you might remember the musical changes that happened in the ’80s and ’90s:

*The songleader (who waved his arms to the time of the music) was replaced by a worship leader (who played guitar or keyboard).

*The organ and piano (sometimes) were replaced by several guitars, bass, and drums.

*The volume was cranked up a lot (to give the service an event feel).

*The words to the songs were transferred from the hymnbook (which caused everyone to look down when they sang) to a video screen (where everyone had to look up to see the words).

*The worship leader often introduced new songs into a service, which meant fewer hymns were sung.

*While the congregation used to sit while singing some songs, now everyone stood for every song.

*The churches whose music hit the target group grew, sometimes rapidly.  The churches that canonized their musical presentations usually remained stagnant, sometimes going into a death spiral.

(Incidentally, I love many of the old hymns.  I have a “Christian Hymns” Playlist on my iPod that includes 175 songs by artists as diverse as Amy Grant, Johnny Cash, and Michael W. Smith.  If we have a hard day, sometimes we play those songs all night.  Hymns are great as long as they aren’t done in a dirge-like style.)

Once a target group is chosen, the following questions become easier to answer:

*What time will our services start?

*How long will our services go?

*How will we structure our services?

*What kind of events will we offer our church and/or community?

*How will we follow up guests?

*What kind of lighting will we have?

*How will we invite people to receive Jesus?

Choosing a target group simplifies scores of decisions just like these for a pastor.  But the alternative is for a pastor to impose his own personal tastes onto a congregation, which some pastors do.

I love the band U2.  For years, I looked for opportunities to sing a U2 song like “40” or “Yahweh” in a service, but it never happened.  (We did manage to play “Magnificent” between services, however.)  And yet if the worship leaders didn’t like the songs, or the target group didn’t like U2, then we shouldn’t have done their songs just because I liked them.

While it might not have worked in that venue, many worship leaders where we attend now love U2, and their songs are played all the time.  (When I heard “In God’s Country,” I knew I was home.)  Playing U2 songs works at this church – but it doesn’t work everywhere.

Someday, people from every race and tribe and culture will surround Jesus’ throne, singing songs of praise directly to Him.  What a great day that will be!

While every kind of person will enter Christ’s kingdom, no church can reach everyone.  A pastor needs to prayerfully consider the group a church is best positioned to reach and then pursue them vigorously.

I’d love to hear from you.  Who is your church trying to reach?

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A View from the Pew

Posted in Change and Conflict in Church, Current Church Issues, Personal Stories, Please Comment! on May 16, 2011| 2 Comments »

Over the past sixteen months, my wife and I have been visiting various churches in the greater Phoenix area.  For ten of those months, we’ve been attending CCV – Christ’s Church of the Valley – a mega church in the northern Peoria area.  CCV knows what they’re doing and does it all extremely well.  We love everything about the church and try not to compare it to other churches that we visit from time-to-time – but sometimes, it’s hard not to do so.

Since all of my pastoring has been done in small and medium-sized churches, I understand them very well and have a good idea of what they need to do to reach the next level.  As Rick Warren is fond of saying, it’s harder for a church to go from 100 to 300 in attendance than it is for that same church to go from 1,000 to 3,000.

Let me share with you five ways that a smaller or medium-sized church can make some simple improvements that will help them reach more people for Jesus.  This is not intended as an exhaustive list but just some things I’ve been noticing recently:

First, station greeters outside from the parking area into the worship center.  Kim and I visited a medium-sized church yesterday and no one said anything to us until a woman gave us our bulletin at the door.  Then after we sat down, the pastor’s wife came and said hi to us.  But we would have felt much more comfortable with a greeting and a handshake before we got to the door.  Even though I’ve been a pastor for eons, I still feel nervous walking up to a new church for the first time.  Strategically-placed greeters help alleviate that anxiety more quickly, and a host of good things happen with guests once they relax.  CCV does this expertly.  We’re greeted by five or six people before we even get to the lobby.

However, these greeters need to just say “hi” or “it’s a great day” or “welcome to our church” rather than do any prying.  Whenever people ask our names, they love to say, “Oh, Jim and Kim!  That rhymes!”  A staff member at a church recently went on-and-on asking Kim about herself and he was practically hyper-ventilating in the process.  “It’s SO GOOD to have you today.  We hope you’ll come back and see us again SOON!”  We couldn’t leave that guy fast enough.

Second, do whatever it takes to have outstanding music.  If I were starting a church, the first person I would hire would be a worship director who could attract people who could sing and play well.  We live in the American Idol age where everybody expects great music and everybody thinks like a critic.  If the music isn’t good, people cringe.  If it is, they relax and might sing.  From what I’ve been noticing, the better the music is, the more the people in the congregation sing.

I realize that there will be days when the music director is gone and the quality of the music will suffer.  But this just argues for the importance of having a deep bench.  At CCV, they rotate the worship leaders, the band members, and the vocalists and spread them all over the stage – but they always have at least two guitars.  Kim and I recently visited a church where the band used a keyboard, drums, and a bass guitar but didn’t have any guitars – and I cringed all through the worship time.

Third, the service can run between 60 and 75 minutes but not too much longer.  If a church is trying to reach Christians, then a service can go on for hours.  But if you’re trying to reach unbelievers, 60 minutes is best, and 75 minutes is as long as you can go if the service is good.

The last two churches that we visited had services that both went 90 minutes.  Again, that’s fine for the people who go there, but if a church wants to grow, it needs to tighten up the service, especially the transitions.  At CCV, every service lasts exactly one hour and you’re left wanting more.

Fourth, avoid mentioning the denomination during the service.  We live in a post-denominational age where people care much more about the quality of the local church they attend and far less about the affiliations that church has with headquarters.  At a service we recently attended, several of the announcements specifically mentioned denominational doings.  Because we aren’t a part of that denomination, the references made us feel like outsiders.

I have a theory: the better a church is doing, the less it mentions its demonination, and the worse its doing, the more it mentions it.  (Or the worse a denomination is doing, the more it asks its constituent churches to promote it.)  Think about it.

Finally, tell us what the Bible means.  Decades ago, I learned this little truth: there is one accurate interpretation of a biblical passage, but scores of personal applications.  One interpretation, many applications.  When the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of Scripture, He did so with a single intent in mind.  John 3:16 doesn’t mean whatever you want it to mean.  It means whatever John – as inspired by the Spirit – meant it to mean.  When I study a passage, it’s not my job to impose my own views on it (called eisegesis) but to take out of the passage what is actually there (called exegesis).

Let me give you an example.  In Revelation 3:20, Jesus spoke these familiar words: “Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”  Who is Jesus talking to in context?  Many people believe that Jesus is encouraging unbelievers to open the door of their lives and let Him be their Lord and Savior.  But Jesus is speaking to “those whom I love” and those whom “I rebuke and discipline” (verse 19) instead.  In other words, Jesus is talking here to believers, not unbelievers – and specificially to believers who have shut Him out of their lives.

We can’t twist Scripture into saying what we want it to say.  It’s our job to discern and discover what the Spirit meant by a passage and only then to apply it to our lives.

Why bring this up?  Because we’re living in a day where too many preachers are coming up with their own thoughts and then scouring the Bible for support.  And in the process, we’re getting borderline heresies and novel teachings that make the teacher famous but cause God’s people to starve spiritually.

The first four ideas above are just my ideas.  Feel free to disagree with them.  Better yet, prove me wrong.  But the last idea is non-negotiable.  Surrender that idea and we’re going to have syncretistic Christianity – and we’re already headed in that direction because many pastors only preach what’s culturally acceptable so they can stay popular.

That’s why Jeremiah is my favorite prophet.  He told the Lord, “Ah, Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak.  I am only a child.”  The Lord replied, “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’  You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.”  After touching Jeremiah’s mouth, the Lord told him, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth.  See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Talk about an impossible assignment!  It’s far easier to build and to plant than it is to uproot and tear down.  But Jeremiah was faithful, and he got a book in the Bible for his trouble.

And that’s where I’m headed right now – to Jeremiah 32.  This is “A View from the Pew” signing off.

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Enraptured

Posted in Current Church Issues on May 13, 2011| 6 Comments »

This morning, I drove out to Surprise for my monthly chiropractic appointment.  While listening to the Nearly Famous Barry Young Show, the host happened to mention the advertised date for the rapture: May 21.  While I was laying on the chiropractor’s table, her assistant also mentioned the Judgment Day date independently of anything I said.  He said that in his town of Wickenburg, there are billboards touting the May 21 date.  Maybe you’ve seen a few of them yourself.

Why do Christian leaders feel the need to make ridiculous predictions like these?

I’ve heard about the rapture since I was a teenager.  When I was 16, one of my Bible study teachers predicted that Jesus would come back within five years.  Jesus didn’t come.

Years ago, I received a booklet in the mail entitled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will be in 1988.  I looked at a few of the reasons and remained unconvinced.  The booklet was written by a man I had never heard of and wish not to remember.  Jesus didn’t come.

I believe in the rapture as taught in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.  It would be wonderful if I was alive when it happens … but I’m not counting on it.

Many years ago, I was invited to teach on a radio program called “The Pastor’s Study.”  I was given some instructions and dutifully showed up in time to tape the show at station headquarters.  I spoke into a microphone for five minutes each time and talked about holiness.  When I was done with the broadcast, I left.

A while later, I was invited back.  When I was done with my talks, I was invited to tour the facilities, and I was taken aback by the reach that this particular radio station had all over the world.  When I was ready to leave, my hostess said, “And that’s Dr. Camping’s office over there.”

I thought to myself, “Camping?  Harold Camping?  I’ve been taping a show on Harold Camping’s radio station?”

Maybe I should have done some research before agreeing to do the show.

Two weeks later, I received a letter in the mail that “The Pastor’s Study” radio show had been discontinued.  I never did find out if the whole show was cancelled or just my talks, but evidently I did something wrong, although I have no idea what it was.

Harold Camping is a strange guy.  He’s almost ninety.  Many months ago, I was doing some channel surfing in a hotel room, and I stumbled upon a man sitting in a chair talking softly to the camera.  This man did some Bible teaching and then took questions from callers.  There was nothing really special about his manner or his answers.  I later found out it was Camping.  Later that day, he spoke at a church service in a school, and that service was broadcast as well.  As the camera scanned the room, I don’t think there were as many as 100 people present.  Harold Camping dominated an entire television channel but I couldn’t figure out why!

Camping has declared that the Church Age is over and that God no longer saves people primarily through a local church.  Since he owns a big radio station, I assume it’s okay for God to save people through the use of radio waves.  But how possible is it that Camping believes the Church Age is over because his church ministry has become relatively insignificant?

Harold Camping is not a biblical scholar.  He has a Civil Engineering degree from the University of California at Berkeley but not from any recognized Christian school of higher learning.  He is not an ordained minister.  While he may know what the Bible says, that does not automatically mean he knows what the Bible means.  He predicted Jesus would return in 1994, and when that didn’t happen, his followers should have walked away from him for being a false prophet.  While some have, others have still chosen to follow him.

So is Jesus coming back on May 21?  Yes, there are lots of earthquakes, and yes, there are false Messiahs, and yes, Israel is back in the land.  But that doesn’t mean that Jesus is coming back on May 21 or this year or even this century.  While I hope He returns today, He may not return for a long, long time.

Just remember:

First, Jesus will return when He deems it right.  He is not obligated by our anxiety, our timetables, or our predictions.  When the disciples asked Jesus right before His ascension if He was going to restore the kingdom to Israel, Jesus responded in Acts 1:7-8, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses …”  In other words, Jesus told His closest followers that they were not to pour their energies into figuring out when He was going to return.  They were to occupy their time with sharing the gospel instead.

Second, setting dates for Christ’s return discredits the date-setter – and sometimes the gospel.  How many times throughout history have Christians predicted Christ’s return, only to have Him be a no-show?  The Millerites sold all their possessions and stood on a mountain waiting for Jesus to return on a particular date – but He didn’t come back.  So they recalculated, and tried it again – but when He didn’t return, their movement imploded.

If Jesus doesn’t return on May 21, I suggest the name Harold Camping be quietly forgotten.  The sad thing is that some people may reject Christ because of his misuse of Scripture and his defiant date-setting in light of Jesus’ prohibition.  However, if Jesus wanted to come for Harold Camping on May 21, I personally would not object …

Third, realize that some Christians chase novelties to seem significant.  Remember the whole “holy laughter” phenomenon in the 1990s?  It started at a church in Toronto that met in a hotel ballroom.  People visited the church and ended up rolling on the floor in laughter for long periods of time.  Gullible Christians (along with some leaders) flocked to Toronto to get in on the spiritual laughing gas for themselves.  But the Bible doesn’t emphasize “holy laughter” at all.  Are we ever told in Scripture that Jesus and His disciples used to hang out in the Temple or someone’s house and roll around the floor laughing?  What does that have to do with living a life pleasing to the Lord?

Being a pastor for nearly four decades, I have seen the competitive nature of pastors – including famous ones – up close.  Most pastors want to gain significance for something.  If they can’t build a big church, or preach to thousands, or write bestselling books, then some are liable to find a little novelty that turns the spotlight onto them.

For Camping, it’s Bible prophecy.  While I can’t diagnose the condition of his heart, it seems as if his date-setting is a way of saying to Christians, “I have a little corner on the truth that none of the rest of you have.  My life and ministry are nearly over, and I’ve had my critics, but if I’m right, I’ll get the last laugh.  If I’m wrong … oh, well, I’ve been wrong before.”  But while we’re debating the merits of Camping’s biblical interpretations, we’re still talking about him – and that makes him a player of sorts, even if he doesn’t deserve it.

When I was in my late teens, several of my friends got married, and I observed a phenomenon I began to call “Meyer’s Law.”  Meyer’s Law states that whenever a couple decides to get married, and they discuss an initial date, they always move the date up.

Wouldn’t it be fascinating if Jesus did the same thing and came on May 20 instead?

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Book Excerpt: Protecting Reputations

Posted in Church Conflict, Church Coup Excerpts, Conflict with the Pastor, Current Church Issues, Pastoral Termination on May 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

There is a plague that continues to make its way through Christian churches in our day: the forced termination of pastors.   The same church board that carefully checks out a prospective pastor over time discards that same pastor overnight.  The same people that act like loving Christians in hiring a pastor act like Satan’s messengers in forcing him to leave.  The same individuals who want a pastor to meet biblical qualifications before he’s called use crass political games to get rid of him.

And when a pastor is forced to leave a church, there are usually people who do their best to destroy his reputation.

This is an excerpt from a book I’m writing about what happened to me – and what happens to my fellow pastors – when a group in the church decides you need to leave for good:

When I first became a pastor in my late twenties, I was shocked at how many pastors in our district were forced to leave their ministries because they were opposed by a handful of antagonists.  As a rookie pastor, I met on a monthly basis with our district minister and other area pastors for lunch, and whenever a pastor was forced to resign, I wanted to know why it happened and how he was faring, especially since some of those pastors were my friends.  The dominant impression I received at those ministerial gatherings was that those ministers were forced to resign their positions because the pastor did something wrong and the lay people – usually the church board – reluctantly handed out the treatment he deserved.

For example, I once heard about a pastor in our district who told his congregation in frustration that they “didn’t give a damn” about a certain issue, but because this pastor used the word “damn” in a public meeting (not a church service), the person who relayed this news to me believed that the pastor had disqualified himself from office.  In other words, if a Baptist pastor can’t control his tongue in public, then he shouldn’t be a pastor at all.  But I wanted to know why this pastor used such strong language in public.  Was this the first time he had ever done that?  What might have caused him to use such language?  When I first came into the district, this pastor took a special interest in me.  One Sunday morning, he called me at home just to pray with me over the phone.  He seemed to be a good man, and if he became so incensed that he used strong language inside the four walls of his church, then maybe he had a good reason.  Maybe a few less than spiritual individuals in the church pushed him over the edge.  But in district circles, we rarely heard about unhealthy congregations.  Instead, the implication was that if a man was forced out of the pastorate, you could trace his departure to something he did or said.  In essence, he was a loser.

So early in my ministerial career, I learned how the district (and by implication our denomination) viewed pastors who experienced forced termination.  In general, the pastor became the scapegoat and was blamed for whatever conflict occurred.  Upon hearing the news that another colleague had bitten the dust, I would call that pastor and let him know that I cared for him.  I would also ask him about the factors that conspired to force him to resign, and every man I called was transparent enough to tell me.  Then I’d ask this question: “How many other pastors from the district have called to express their concern for you?”  The answer was always, “No one has called me.  You’re the only one.”  As I recall, in my first several years as a pastor in our district, seven pastoral colleagues were forced to leave their churches, and every one told me I was the only one to call.  That information broke my heart.  I later did a study of pastors who had served inside our district and discovered that out of sixty pastors that had left their churches, fifty were no longer connected to the denomination.  I felt so strongly about this issue that I wrote an article for our denominational magazine entitled “Who Cares For Lost Shepherds?”

Why don’t pastors seem to demonstrate concern for their colleagues who experience forced termination?  Maybe pastors have enough on their plates inside their own congregations to reach out to their peers.  Maybe some pastors are better leaders or teachers or administrators than they are shepherds and wouldn’t know what to say to a colleague undergoing crisis.  Maybe some pastors just don’t want to become embroiled in another church’s issues.  It also might be true that a lot of pastors know very few of their colleagues.  But my guess is that many pastors don’t want to associate with their terminated brethren because they are stigmatized as losers.  In other words, if you’re a pastor and you’re forced out of your church, the perception is that you are either incompetent, guilty of immorality, or don’t know how to play church politics properly.  There is something wrong with you, not the church, and in rare cases, that’s true.  But it’s not always true.  Jesus wasn’t crucified because He was unhealthy but because the political and religious leaders of His day were spiritually dysfunctional.  Paul wasn’t chased out of European cities because something was wrong with him or his message but because his hearers were hostile toward the gospel.  It’s popular to say, “If the team isn’t winning, fire the coach,” but some pastors have led their churches to growth and yet are forced to leave anyway because the old-timers feel insignificant as the church expands – and they wish to feel powerful once again.  While there are always pastors who deserve termination, the great majority who are forced to leave their churches have not done anything worthy of banishment.  But whether or not a pastor deserves termination, the church board should always treat him with dignity and respect.

Years ago, I sat with a pastor friend at a restaurant.  My friend had been forced to leave his former church exactly one year beforehand.  His daughter had been falsely accused of something she hadn’t done and the pastor chose to resign to protect her.  (The truth came out sometime later.)  The “clergy killer” in his congregation was both a church board member as well as member of the trustee board in our district.  Guess whose story got out first?  One year later, my friend had no idea why he had been mistreated so badly.  What had he done wrong?  I gave him a book called Forced Termination by Brooks Faulkner, and after reading it, my friend told me that he now understood what had happened to him.  But how much did our district help him?  According to my friend, they didn’t help him at all.

Several months ago, I was having a meal with a pastor, and I asked him if he knew how an old pastor friend of mine was doing, and this pastor told me that my friend left his church “because he was having some problems.”  The implication was that my friend left because of problems he had, not problems that were lodged inside the church family.  The pastor who told me that my friend “had problems” probably figured I would never reach out to my friend and discover his side of the situation.  Pastoral reputations can be ruined with a few key phrases or awkward pauses.

In my opinion, we can handle these situations much, much better.

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When to Leave Your Church

Posted in Church Conflict, Current Church Issues, Ten Most Viewed Articles on May 9, 2011| 6 Comments »

Every Sunday, millions of Americans discuss what happened after they leave their church’s worship service.

Maybe Mom will say, “I really liked today’s performance song.  The lyrics really inspired and comforted me.”

Just then Bill, the family’s 16-year-old son, chimes in and says, “Yeah, but I didn’t understand the message at all.  That talk had nothing to do with me.”

Then Rachel, the 14-year-old daughter, complains, “Mom, I’m glad you liked the song, but I’m not getting anything out of the youth group right now.  I try to listen, but these two girls are always goofing off and they’re so distracting I can’t hear the lesson.”

Then Bill adds, “Well, I heard it, but I thought it was lame.  I’m thinking about not going back to the youth group – maybe try out a new one.  In fact, my friend Steve has invited me to attend the group at his church and I’m thinking about checking it out.”

After listening to his family’s opinions, John wonders aloud, “I wonder if we should leave our church and look for a new one?”

What are the signs you should leave your church?

First, you can’t support the vision.  Maybe your church pours all its efforts into worship, and you think it should be engaging in evangelism.  Or your pastor is passionate about missions, but you care most about hurting people.  If you can get behind your pastor’s vision for your church, then by all means, stay!  But if you find that you and your church are going in opposite directions, then you should seriously consider leaving or you’re going to be frustrated all the time.

Please don’t say what some people say at this point: “Well, I don’t like the pastor’s vision for this church, so we’re going to make life unpleasant for him until he leaves.  Then we’ll hire a pastor who will do things our way.”  That is the epitome of selfishness and indicates that you think your views are more important than those of your pastor.  Don’t try and manipulate matters so that he leaves.  You leave.  In fact, if you and those who are opposed to the pastor’s vision would leave the church, the church would probably grow a lot more rapidly.

Second, you don’t like the pastor.  I’ve written about this issue before because it’s a huge factor in whether people stay or leave a church.

My wife and I visited a church a year ago where the music was so awful that after ten minutes, she turned to me and asked, “Can we leave?”  I told her, “We’re going to stay to the end,” but after a few more minutes, I wanted to leave with her.  The pastor screeched when he preached.  (He was a “screecher preacher.”)  It was awful.  And then during his message, he complained to the technical people about a hum on the stage and, in my view, humiliated them in the process.  When the service was over, my wife and I practically ran to the car and our tires screeched as we left the parking lot.

I am sure that pastor is a nice man and that many people love him, but his personality and style just didn’t work for us.  Rather than stay and eventually force him to leave, we left and he stayed put.

I believe this with all my heart: if you don’t like your pastor, leave your church.  Why?  Because you will invariably tell someone in the church about your feelings, and then you’ll find people who agree with you, and you’ll be tempted to form a group of likeminded people, and if a leader emerges, your group will try and force the pastor to leave, and it will all get ugly and nasty and divisive.  So when you’ve tried to like your pastor, but you just can’t pull it off, then find a church where you do like the pastor.

But it’s at this point that people say, “But I love the ministry I’m leading.  And I’ve been at this church a long time.  And all my friends are here.”  But the way you feel about the pastor will override all those other considerations – I guarantee it.  Find a church where you like the pastor and can follow his leadership or you will be miserable for a long, long time.

Third, the church is starting to embarrass you.  Maybe you have a new pastor and you find his jokes offensive.  Maybe your worship director sings flat or the band plays every worship song in a disco style.  I’m not talking about occasional mistakes or experiments gone awry.  That happens in every church.

But if you’re consistently cringing to the point where you’ve stopped inviting friends to your church – and you won’t even invite your mother on Mother’s Day – then maybe you need to look around for another fellowship.  You should feel proud of your church.  And when you don’t, consider finding another place to worship and to serve.  And that leads to the next factor:

Fourth, you can’t use your gifts anymore.  Years ago, I was in a church where I sensed that I could no longer teach youth.  That job was reserved for the new associate pastor.  So I looked around for a church where I could teach, and we ended up in one where I already knew  many people.  Before long, I was teaching a high school class, and due to God’s grace, I was eventually hired to be that church’s youth pastor.

A church may be growing, and the pastor’s messages may be top-notch, and your kids may be thrilled with everything, but if you can’t use your spiritual gifts there, you may need to find another church.  If you’re a singer and you can’t sing, find a church where you can.  If you’re a leader and you can’t lead, then look around.

Finally, ask God what He wants you to do.  There are times when we’re sitting in a worship service or standing in the church lobby and the Holy Spirit says to us, “You’ve stopped growing spiritually in this place, haven’t you?  And you really aren’t able to help others grow, either.  You’re stagnating spiritually right now.  I want you to think about leaving.”

Or whenever you think about your church, you either become angry (because you’ve been violated in some way and there is no recourse for reconciliation) or you become depressed (because the memories have become too painful).  When your emotions overrule your thinking, and you can’t see the way ahead, it may be that God is leading you to look for a new church home.

When I was a pastor, I usually tried to encourage people to stay in our church, but there were times when it was better for them to go somewhere else.

One well-known pastor became weary of all the people who attended his church and complained about it, so he obtained brochures from ten other churches in town.  He stood up one Sunday morning and said, “If you want verse-by-verse Bible teaching, then check out this church.  And if you want a choir, then visit this church.  And if you want a certain kind of youth program, then try out this church.”  He left the brochures in the lobby.  As I recall, attendance was down by 700 people the following Sunday, but three weeks later, attendance was right back where it had been.  The church said goodbye to those who were disgruntled and welcomed those who were thrilled to be there.

Maybe we need to add a “Musical Churches Sunday” to our Christian calendar!

What are your thoughts about when it’s time to leave a church?  I’d love to hear them!

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