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Archive for the ‘Pastoral Termination’ Category

Heaven is Watching

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Board, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination on March 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

What’s wrong with this picture?

When I was fourteen years old, my family attended a church where we really liked the pastor.  He was a good preacher and liked to sing so much that he sometimes put on a robe and sang with the choir.  On occasion, he’d even end a message by singing a song like “He Could Have Called Ten Thousand Angels.”  (A good song, by the way.)  In my mind, I can still hear and see him singing it more than forty years later.

After that pastor resigned to became an executive at a Christian college, the church quickly called a new pastor – maybe too quickly.  To be honest, our family didn’t like the new pastor very much.  The previous pastor had curly hair while the new pastor had a crew cut.  The previous pastor came off as very loving while the new pastor seemed a bit harsh.  The previous pastor’s personality was safely predictable while the new pastor’s was unknown and so erratic by comparison.  The previous pastor had supervised a well-liked church staff but the new pastor abruptly fired a popular, long-standing staff member (who happened to be a single woman) soon after he took office.  The firing did not go over well with a number of key people in the church.

The whispering started.

Somewhere along the line, I became aware of conversations that others were having about the new pastor – the sort of discussions that remained private inside my own family.  These conversations were just “in the air.”  Since my family was far removed from the church’s inner circle, I’m not sure we knew much about what was really going on – we just knew we didn’t like the new pastor.

Why not?

Well, for starters, he wasn’t the former pastor.  That wasn’t his fault, but it was a fact.  The congregation needed time to process their grief in losing their old pastor, but someone (foolishly, in my opinion) insisted that the church call a pastor quickly (probably out of anxiety).  This guaranteed that the former pastor and the new pastor would be unfavorably compared, and the former pastor (who was becoming a saint in some eyes) completely outshone the new pastor (who couldn’t compete with a ghost).

In addition, he fired a popular staff member.  She had been a fixture at the church for years.  She had a host of supporters.  She was intelligent, funny, strong – and, as I recall, a bit brassy.  Maybe she needed to go, I don’t know.  But to fire her so soon after taking office backfired on the pastor.  I didn’t know any of the facts, but I sided with her.  Why?  Because I knew her a little and liked her – but I didn’t know the new pastor at all, and, truth be told, I didn’t like him.  My dislike of him wasn’t based on anything substantial – it was just an impression from hearing him preach.

And, of course, since our friends didn’t like him, neither did we.  While this is the lamest reason of all, it happens all the time in churches.

Eventually, the new pastor resigned in the middle of a heated business meeting.  He moved to the East Coast and, as often happens with pastors who go through such experiences, he left pastoral ministry for good.  He became a Christian counselor and did some writing – and one of the articles he wrote gave his side of the conflict.  (This was probably 25 years ago.)

After I read his article, I felt ashamed.

However small my participation – and at 14, I didn’t have any church clout – I saw what can happen in a church when a group of people make up their mind that they don’t like a pastor.

And that’s what it all comes down to most of the time: whether or not we like a pastor.  And when we don’t like him – or we feel he doesn’t like us – we feel free to destroy him.

It makes me want to weep, not only for my own evil heart, but for the entire Christian community.

This is why Paul writes what he does in 1 Timothy 5:21.  After laying out clear instructions for receiving charges against a pastor/elder, Paul expresses himself in the strongest possible language.  Please read it several times and slowly:

“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.”

Paul says that when the leaders/people of a church take action to correct a pastor for misconduct, all of heaven is watching.  Since the Father and the Son and angelic beings are scrutinizing the way that church leaders/people handle charges against a pastor, the accusers/investigators need to do everything God’s way. 

And then Paul adds two phrases that are nearly identical: such correction is to be done “without partiality” and never “out of favoritism.”  In other words, it’s immaterial whether or not we like a pastor when people make accusations against him.  We must use impartial biblical principles in such situations.

But how often is that done?

Not very often.  Rather than using biblical principles, the three primary ways that pastors are corrected in churches are (a) business practices, (b) church politics, and (c) the law of the jungle.

While it’s helpful for a church to know the best business practices for correcting executives/employees, the phrase “these instructions” in 1 Timothy 5:21 does not refer to secular company policies, but Paul’s directives in verses 19 and 20.  In fact, since Paul wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, biblical directives must trump business practices every single time.

If a staff member or board member is being corrected for some offense, the pastor is usually able to provide a biblical perspective on how to handle matters.  But if the pastor is being corrected, business practices are usually substituted for biblical directives.  Why?  Because a pastor is usually accountable to a board, and board members fall back on what they know best: business.  But in so doing, they ignore 1 Timothy 5:19-21 to their peril, the very thing Paul warns against in verse 21.  When pastors utilize biblical principles during conflict while boards fall back on business practices, the chasm between the two groups will grow even wider – and little will be resolved.

In such situations, Christian leaders also resort to church politics.  Before engaging in biblical correction, leaders try and anticipate what might happen if they make certain decisions.  They guess who might leave the church if they discipline or terminate a pastor – and how many.  They obtain a membership roster (in a church governed by a congregation) and try and guess who might vote which way.  They enter into discussions with former pastors and denominational executives and key staff and opinion makers in the congregation to insure they have their support if a showdown occurs.  While some of the above ideas have their place, we must remember that Paul said to “keep these instructions without partiality.”  He said nothing about playing politics.

Then there’s the law of the jungle.  In the absence of using any biblical counsel regarding the correction of spiritual leaders, the leaders/people of a church may degenerate into immature nastiness and pettiness.  Leaders resort to power tactics.  Individuals make anonymous phone calls or send anonymous notes embedded with threats and demands.  Mass letters and emails are distributed to people in the church who don’t even know what’s going on.  Some people call the pastor names, make exaggerated claims against him, and engage in “the politics of personal destruction.”

How petty can Christians get?  When my dad was a pastor, one of the charges leveled against him before he resigned was that he left a church party early on a Saturday night.  What was wrong with that?  (When I was a pastor, I tried not to plan anything on a Saturday night so I could be my best on Sunday.)  My father was charged with going home to write his sermon when he was simply going home to review it.  But when certain people don’t like a pastor, they will invent things and exaggerate incidents to discredit his influence in the eyes of others.

And all the while, Paul says, heaven watches – and weeps.

I once read that when Abraham Lincoln was a young man, he saw a slave being whipped unmercifully.  He told himself, “Someday, I’m going to hit that, and hit it hard.”

For decades, I’ve watched pastors and churches suffer irreparable harm because biblical principles were ignored when it came time to correct a pastor.

Like Lincoln, I want to hit that hard.

Christians speak rightfully of social justice.  (Read the Book of Amos for an eye-opening view of God’s feelings about civil and religious injustice.)  But what about ecclesiastical (church) justice?  Should we not care about righteous behavior both outside and inside the church?

And since pastors serve as the link in a church between heaven and earth as well as between a church and the culture, should we not be doubly conscientious in how we treat them, especially if and when they are charged with wrongdoing?

Paul thought so, enough to write 1 Timothy 5:19-21.  Who will teach this text to God’s people?

I hope you will.  Read it.  Understand it.  Memorize it.  Share it.

There’s even more to say about it, and I will endeavor to do that next time.

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When to Correct a Pastor

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination, Ten Most Viewed Articles on March 2, 2011| 6 Comments »

In his book Clergy Killers, Dr. Lloyd Rediger writes about the phenomenon of church members who attack their pastor with the intent of destroying him.  While many (if not most) Christians have never met someone like that, let me assure you that these kinds of people are sprinkled throughout the Christian community.  (I have met more than my share.)  They are usually people with deep-seated personality disorders.

But Dr. Rediger writes about “killer clergy” as well, and although there are far more “clergy killers” than “killer clergy,” there are pastors who inflict damage on their churches.  In my last article, I mentioned pastors who are narcissistic, overfunctioning, lazy, non-attentive, and too nice as examples of the kinds of leaders who can cause trouble in a church.

If you attend a church where you suspect that a pastor is causing trouble, what can you do?

It all depends on what we mean by “causing trouble.”

1 Timothy 5:19-21 gives a congregation and its leaders the right to correct an elder (or a pastor; see verses 17-18)  if he sins in such a way that he dishonors the Lord or harms Christ’s church.  Please note that this passage deals with acts of sin.  It does not cover:

*a pastor’s personality.  Although they are definitely in the minority, a small percentage of pastors can be thoughtless, obnoxious, rude, dominating, or insensitive.  I have met a few of them, and maybe you have, too.  I’m always amazed at how some pastors are able to stay in the ministry with such glaring personal weaknesses, but this is not the kind of behavior that Paul is talking about in 1 Timothy.  In fact, Paul himself could be rather rude and insensitive at times.  (Read Galatians 1:8-9 and 5:12 in case you’ve forgotten.)  If a pastor occasionally displays his unattractive side, you may choose to avoid being close to him or serving alongside him, but that doesn’t mean he’s violating 1 Timothy 5:19-21 and should be disciplined or terminated.

*a pastor’s style.  I have seen a huge change in pastoral leadership style since I was in seminary.  I was trained by scholars and pastors from the builder generation.  These professors passionately taught God’s Word and believed strongly in biblical accuracy, yet they themselves were usually modest individuals.  But much of that has changed today.  Many of today’s pastors pride themselves on knowing the culture more than the Bible (and I am not exaggerating).  They refer to the Bible while teaching but do not necessarily expound it.  And many of today’s pastors are publicly brash rather than humble.  When it comes to change, they won’t wait a year or two to get to know the people and the community (like we were taught to do) – they’ll institute changes during their first year that pastors from previous generations wouldn’t institute until years later.  Given the fact that our culture is increasingly secular, and that Generation X is largely unreached, maybe we do need to accelerate the pace of change in our churches today.  But should a pastor be attacked or destroyed because he has a different leadership style than another pastor?  1 Timothy 5:19-21 refers to clear-cut sin, not a pastor’s leadership style.

*a pastor’s liberty.  When I was in seminary, we students were expected to limit the use of our Christian liberty.  The implication was that we did not want to cause another believer to stumble by emulating our lifestyle.  So many students were careful about the movies they saw (if any), some did not drink any alcohol, and some only listened to Christian music.  These particular behaviors may have been frowned upon because some of the seminary higher-ups didn’t engage in these activities or because many older people in our churches didn’t either.  We pastors were expected to be distinctive from the culture so we modeled a Christlike life.  But all of that has changed today.  Today’s Christian leaders enjoy their liberty to the hilt.  They not only see movies, they feel comfortable seeing anything and everything.  They not only drink, they revel in it.  And they feel comfortable listening to any kind of music or watching any TV program that’s out there.  Several years ago, a seminary professor friend told me that incoming students are now required to take a course on morality because they don’t know right from wrong.  I’ve felt for a long time that some boomer pastors and many buster leaders value being cool over being godly.  While some of today’s pastors may have gone too far in enjoying their liberty, Paul isn’t referring to such behavior in this passage.  Just as some Christians could eat meat sacrificed to idols and some could not, so in our day some pastors feel uncomfortable engaging in certain practices while others have no problem with it.  Much of it is just generational.

(This reminds me of a story.  Four years ago, Kim and I visited Moldova, the poorest country in Europe.  We stayed in the home of a pastor and his wife in a small village, and although we talked with them a lot, it was mostly about missional and churchy matters.  On our last night there, I happened to mention to the couple that I had brought along an iPod with a lot of songs on it, and the missionary told me he had once been in the US and had heard a song by Creedence Clearwater Revival called “Long As I Can See the Light.”  He wondered if I had the song on my iPod.  As it turns out, I did.  When I played it for him, he was in seventh heaven.  I left the iPod with him and his wife along with some Logitech speakers.  When we returned to their village three years later, that iPod (Classic) was still working and provided the music for the church’s pizza parlor – but somebody had added Tammy Wynette songs to it!  I assure you – I didn’t do it!)

If a church is run like a business, its leaders/members can discipline or terminate a pastor for any reason, including the fact that someone doesn’t like his personality, style, or liberal use of Christian liberty.  But if a church is to be run on the basis of the New Testament, its leaders/members should only discipline or terminate a pastor for violating Scripture.  His personality, leadership style, and Christian liberty may be discussed at different times and eventually negotiated, but he should not be immediately dismissed because he’s just being himself.

When Paul writes that “those who sin are to be rebuked publicly,” what kinds of “sin” does he have in mind?

I believe that Paul is referring to a clear violation of a biblical directive.  Pastors should not commit homicide, or engage in sexual sin outside marriage, or steal from the offering plate (or anywhere else), or lie about matters.  They must believe in the basics of the Christian faith (like the authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, Jesus’ death and resurrection) and teach the gospel to believers and unbelievers alike.  Based on New Testament teaching, I would say the two primary sin categories that apply in this passage are immorality and heresy.  (And, once again, not a pastor’s personality, style, or liberty.)  Paul writes that pastors/elders “who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning” (1 Timothy 5:20).  I will talk about how this is to be done in my next blog.

Thanks for reading!

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Innocent Bystanders

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Church Conflict, Forgiveness and Reconciliation among Christians, Pastoral Termination on January 11, 2011| 3 Comments »

Have you ever looked back on your life and wished you had taken a different path than the one you chose?

Humanly speaking, I should have turned down the first invitation I received to become a pastor.  After graduating from seminary, I was ordained by my home church.  A few months later, I was invited to speak at a small church in Silicon Valley.  I was in my late twenties and the church was mostly composed of seniors – not exactly a recipe for church growth!

In the five years that church had been in existence, I was their fourth pastor.  The previous pastor was forcibly terminated after he became angry at a church bowling party.  If I had to do it all over again, I would have contacted him and asked him directly why he had been fired.  At least I would have gotten both sides of the story.

But I didn’t contact him, the church called me as pastor, and I accepted.  Before long, my family of three left Orange County for Santa Clara Valley.

Those were the days when a pastor was still expected to do home visitation, so every Thursday night, one of the deacons and I visited people from the church- only there weren’t many people in the church.  So the deacon suggested that we visit the people who left the church when the previous pastor was fired.  Not a good idea.

Sometimes we’d set up an appointment, other times we’d make cold calls.  The people we visited tried their best to be polite, especially when the deacon introduced “our new pastor” to them, but the whole exercise was a colossal waste of time.  We’d stay for an hour or so, but it was obvious that none of the people we visited ever intended to return to the church.

Why not?  Because they liked the previous pastor and the church board had fired him.

Those poor people looked lost.  They didn’t sound very enthusiastic about their faith (if they ever did) and they weren’t very excited about going to church (if they were going anywhere at all).  When the board fired the pastor, they ended up damaging a lot of people who viewed the pastor as someone special in their life.  And while this may sound borderline heretical, that pastor represented God to them.

Yes, some pastors are too incompetent to be in the ministry, and yes, some eventually disqualify themselves by their sinful lifestyles and harmful actions.  But if a pastor must be released from ministry, the way he’s released will indicate whether (a) he and his family, (b) his church friends, (c) new believers, and (d) new members continue to follow Christ and/or continue attending any local church in the future.

Last Saturday down in Tucson, a lone gunman tried to assassinate a member of the United States House of Representatives.  While she is still clinging to life (and we pray for her complete recovery), we sadly realize that his actions did not just damage his target, but harmed many innocent bystanders, entire families, and even our whole nation.  The assassin may not have intended to harm others but he did so all the same.

I beg you: if you are ever involved in the termination of a pastor or staff member – either as a board member or a church member – make sure the process is done biblically, graciously, slowly, and redemptively.

That’s why I’m starting our new ministry Restoring Kingdom Builders.  One of my goals is to educate as many Christians as I can about the devastating effects of forced exits on pastors, their families, and the congregations they leave behind.  We as Christians can handle these situations so much better than we do.

I would appreciate your prayers for our new ministry.  And if I can answer any questions for you about church conflict or the forced termination of pastors, I would be happy to do so.  May the Lord richly bless you!

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Detecting The Enemy’s Work

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Current Church Issues, Fighting Evil, Pastoral Termination on January 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

How can we know when the devil is responsible for conflict in a church?

I asked that question over lunch many years ago to a worldwide expert on spiritual warfare, Dr. Ed Murphy, who wrote the massive book The Handbook for Spiritual Warfare.  Dr. Murphy was a professor of mine both in college and in seminary and had been supported as a missionary by my home church.

His answer?  “That’s the $64,000 question,” he replied.

James seems to indicate that conflicts originate in our sinful nature.  He writes in James 4:1-2: “What causes fights and quarrels among you?  Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?  You want something but don’t get it.  You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.  You quarrel and fight.”  Paul appeals in the name of Christ to his spiritual family in Corinth and pleads “that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought” (I Corinthians 1:10).  Neither James nor Paul indicate that Satan is involved in every conflict, whether it’s between a husband and wife, parent and child, or pastor and staff member.  Many conflicts – perhaps most – arise out of our stubborn desire to get our own way.

It’s important that we discern the real source of a conflict so that we know best how to resolve it.  Jesus’ words in Luke 17:3-4 indicate the best way to resolve an interpersonal conflict: “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.  If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”  Jesus states that rebuke + repentance + forgiveness = reconciliation.

While we have all experienced interpersonal conflict, and know how to resolve matters in most cases (though we often lack the courage), devil-inspired conflict is very, very different.

In the midst of a knockdown, drag-out debate with the Jewish leaders in John 8, Jesus attributed their attitude toward Him to “your father, the devil.”  Beyond supernatural discernment, how did Jesus know that His enemies had aligned themselves with the enemy?  Boldly and confidently, Jesus says:

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.  He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

This is the single greatest statement in all of Scripture on the work of Satan, made by the single greatest authority on spiritual matters.  In short, the devil is “a murderer” and “a liar.”  That is, Satan specializes in destruction and deception.

The Jewish leaders were trying to destroy Jesus.  They hated Him so much that they wanted to kill Him.  He knew it and deliberately attributed their hatred to Satan.  And because those who want to destroy another person will use any means necessary to accomplish their goal – including blatant lies – Jesus attributed the malicious charges of the Pharisees to Satan as well.

Peter, who may well have witnessed this very debate, wrote in 1 Peter 5:8, “Be self-controlled and alert.  Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Over the past several weeks, I’ve seen a large coyote trotting through our backyard on two occasions.  (None of the backyards have fences.)  This morning, while driving home from an errand, I saw what might have been the same coyote walking through a neighborhood near our house.  (I pulled off the road to watch him.  He split.)  What is that coyote doing?  “Looking for someone to devour” (like a rabbit).  While that coyote doesn’t frighten me – my four-pound dog Tito barked at one and made it run last summer – a roaring lion gallivanting through my neighborhood certainly would!

But notice Peter’s language: the devil is seeking someone “to devour.”  He is in the job of destroying Christians.  While he destroys believer’s bodies all the time through terrorism and martyrdom, he also tries to destroy Christian movements and churches by targeting spiritual leaders (like Jesus, the apostles, missionaries, and pastors).  And what’s saddest of all is that sometimes Christians are the perpetrators of that very destruction.

Let me confess: I have known some Christian leaders I don’t like.  Some are interpersonally cold.  Others never listen to anyone’s voice than their own.  A few just care about money.  A handful are massive hypocrites.  But I would never, ever take action to destroy them or their ministries, even if I had likeminded allies.  That’s doing the devil’s work for him.  That is what he wants.  Remember, the Pharisees and Sadducees believed they were doing God’s work by arranging for Jesus’ execution when all the time, they were just putty in Satan’s ugly little hands.  Their hatred for Jesus caused them to form an alliance with Satan.

In addition, Satan aims to deceive people into believing lies.  His arsenal includes innuendo, exaggeration, speculation, rumors, misinterpretation, false accusations, and outright falsehood.  Jesus asked His countrymen’s leaders in John 8:46: “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?”  They couldn’t.  But because they wanted to destroy Jesus, they eventually chose to deceive people into believing that He was guilty of three capital crimes: blasphemy against God, desecrating the temple, and sedition against Rome.  Jesus was executed on trumped-up charges and behind them all was the forked tongue of the deceiver himself.  Satan’s lies were parroted through the mouths of religious people.

If Satan uses destruction and deception to eliminate Christian leaders – and he hasn’t changed his template in twenty centuries – how can twenty-first believers defeat his attacks?

First, seek restoration rather than destruction.  When Christians lie about a leader to get rid of him, that’s Satanic.  When believers “play politics” to kick out a leader, that’s Satanic.  When believers charge a leader with unproven charges to force him to resign, that’s Satanic.

Before Christmas, I was sharing the story of the way I was forced to leave the last church I served as pastor, and the person with whom I was speaking, a long-time Christian leader, interrupted me and said, “That’s Satanic.”

The biblical way to handle a sinning or ineffective leader is to gently encourage that person (Galatians 6:1-2) to repent of any known sin (1 Timothy 5:19-21) with the purpose of “winning” them (Matthew 18:15-17) or “restoring them” (Galatians 6:1) to spiritual health.  While the New Testament clearly permits “kicking out” believers from a church, it is only to be done when those same believers have been sinning and repeatedly refuse to repent (Matthew 18:15-17; Titus 3:9-10).  The New Testament knows nothing about destroying a leader’s reputation or lying about him just to force him to leave.

Second, seek truthfulness instead of deception.  Christians, who believe that Jesus is “the truth” and that “the truth will set you free,” can sometimes become the purveyor of lies.  If we like someone, we are slow to believe anything negative we hear about them.  If we don’t like someone, we are quick to believe the dirt.  The better way to handle rumors and speculation is to go to the source about an accusation and ask him/her about its accuracy.  If possible, ask the person for evidence that they’re telling the truth.  Sometimes it takes just one phone call to dispel a rumor.

But more than anything, be determined to tell the truth in every situation and to every person.  I know that’s what our parents taught us to do, but it’s amazing how Christians have a hard time doing just that sometimes.  The best way to combat lies is with the weapon of truth.  Tell the truth, over and over and over again, and watch Satan run!  Lie and he’ll move toward you.  Be truthful and he’ll scamper away.

One of my mentors was forced to leave his church as pastor, but before he left, he told the congregation that he would vigorously defend his character and his ministry.  (And he had an attorney friend in the church to make sure that happened.)  Pastors, when people lie about you and you leave the record uncorrected, who gains?  Not Jesus.  Not the kingdom.  The enemy does.  And he not only seeks to harm you, he seeks to harm that church as well.

If you’re in a church, and you’re unhappy with your pastor for some reason, refuse to harm him or spread lies about him.  Instead, pray for him.  Encourage him.  Do something tangible for him.  Expect nothing in return.  If matters don’t change after a while, refuse to say, “This is my church!  He needs to leave!”  Instead, you quietly depart and begin searching for a church where you can fully support the minister and the ministry.

The greatest thing Peter ever said was that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Jesus attributed Peter’s insight to “my Father in heaven” (Matthew 16:16-17). But maybe the worst thing Peter ever said followed Jesus’ prediction that He would eventually be killed: “Never, Lord!  This shall never happen to you!”  Jesus immediately told Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”

If God could speak through Peter one moment, and Satan could speak through him the next, then you and I need to be on our guard so that the enemy does not use us as well.

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Nobody Knows

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Burnout and Depression in Ministry, Healing After Leaving a Church, Pastoral Termination, Personal Stories, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2011| 10 Comments »

One of the best-kept secrets in the Christian world involves the forced termination of pastors and staff members.  There are few books published on this topic (Why I Stayed by Gayle Haggard being an exception) because they don’t tend to sell and because the issue deals with the dark side of the church – not exactly great marketing material for the Christian faith.  Occasionally a story is published in a journal for pastors, but that’s about it.

Most pastors prefer to keep quiet about what happened to them because there is a stigma attached to pastors who are forced out of their positions, whether the pastor was guilty of sin or innocent of wrongdoing.  In addition, those who have experienced this particular malady find that few people really want to hear their story, which involves a lot of angst and anger.  Pastors need to tell their stories to heal, but often can’t afford to pay a counselor and usually have no idea where they can turn for assistance.  The truth is that almost nobody knows how much a forced-out pastor has to suffer except their spouses, ultra-loyal friends and family members, and a handful of counselors.  But since our best statistics indicate that at least 1,300 pastors are forced to leave their pastorates every month in this country, thousands of qualified and gifted pastors are suffering quietly but intensely all around us.

When I tried to do my own study on this issue many years ago, I was castigated by several denominational officials who believed I was trying to cause trouble.  But I just wanted to know if the denomination tracked the victims of forced termination (they didn’t) and if they had any ministry to help those who went through this awful experience (they don’t).  It always seemed ironic to me that while denominational leaders encourage pastors to take risks so their churches will grow numerically, if those risks don’t work out, and the pastor is forced to leave, those same denominational leaders end up distancing themselves from that pastor.

More than a year ago, I was given a choice at the church I had served as senior pastor for nine years.  I was told by key leaders that 95% of the church was behind my ministry and that only a small group stood against me but that it would take five years of fighting to deal with the determined opposition (which was assisted and validated by a party outside the church).  A pastoral colleague with a strong personality urged me to stay and fight, but the conflict had already taken its toll on my family, so I elected to walk away and keep the church as unified as possible.

When that happened, I didn’t know – and few Christians do – what such an experience does to a pastor.  Here’s a partial list:

*You feel like a pariah, not only in the body of Christ, but in the culture at large.

*You try visiting churches but find you can’t sing the praise songs because you wonder how good God really is.

*You realize that many of the people you once counted as friends in your former church have turned their backs on you.

*You discover that some of your best friends don’t want to be around you because they’re weary of hearing about the pain you’re experiencing.

*You find yourself becoming increasingly isolated from others because you don’t know where you fit anymore.

*You have no idea how to answer the question, “So what do you do for a living?”

*You find that you cannot function without anti-depressants.

*You no longer know who to trust among family, friends, and ministry colleagues because too many people have already flipped on you.

*You hear wild rumors about why you really resigned even though they’re patently untrue.

*You wish you could truly reconcile with those who hurt you but realize you will probably never see them again, so …

*You do your best to forgive them, but there are times when you can’t seem to let things go.

*You are forced to leave your community because you don’t want to run into those who have conspired to destroy your life and ministry.

*You cannot find another church ministry – even when you’re healed – because most search teams won’t consider a pastor who was forced to leave a church, regardless of the reasons.

*You cannot bear to attend Christmas Eve or Easter services at another church because those were your favorite services at which to preach – and you wonder if you’ll ever have that opportunity again.

*Your spiritual gifts are sitting on the shelf, atrophying day by day.

*You regretfully un-friend anyone from Facebook who is married to – or friends with – one of your antagonists.

*Your marriage becomes either stronger or strained, depending upon the care you gave it before termination.

*You feel like God is through with you … but you still have to earn a living.

*You discover that you are vastly unqualified for most secular jobs due to your pastoral training and experience.

*You find that you can’t share your faith because you aren’t very excited about it anymore.

*You praise God for anyone who sends you an email or a card because it means you haven’t been totally abandoned.

*You honestly wonder if God still loves you.

*You learn that those who conspired to push you out of the church are proud of what they did.

*You discover a vast underground network of other pastors who have been through the same experience – and that the template used to force them out is the same one used to force you out.

*You become aware that the people who tried to destroy you aren’t your real enemies but that they were simply instruments of the enemy of your soul.

*You aren’t suicidal, but like Elijah under the juniper tree, you wish God would just take you home.

*You left your community with your house underwater financially, and because you were forced to sell at a loss, your credit has been decimated.

*You find that if you’re going to survive financially, you have to start all over in a different profession – and that starting over is more difficult than you ever imagined.

There’s more I could list – a lot more – but you get the picture.

When the average person loses a job, they still retain their friends, their church home, their career, their house, and their reputation – at least initially.  But when you’re forced to leave a church as a pastor, you may very well lose everything I just mentioned overnight – and the accumulation of all those losses is absolutely overwhelming.

That’s why my wife and I are launching a new ministry called Restoring Kingdom Builders.  Even though I’ve researched this area of conflict for years – and did my doctoral work on it – I had to actually experience the pain firsthand to truly be qualified to help others.  Rather than becoming bitter about what happened to us, we hope to take what we’ve learned and use our experiences to prevent these situations from happening to others.

Now that you know a little more about the repercussions of forced termination on pastors, what can you do to help restore them and their families to ministry?  Let me know what you think.  Thanks!

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Disgraced or Graced?

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Healing After Leaving a Church, Pastoral Termination on December 22, 2010| 3 Comments »

While reading the Christmas story again last week, I was struck by a phrase in Matthew 1:19.  After Mary was discovered to be pregnant – presumably with another man’s child – Joseph her fiancee had several choices to make.

Because he was “a righteous man” – a man who thoroughly kept the Mosaic law – he intended to break off their betrothal because she had been sexually unfaithful to him.  According to Deuteronomy 22:23-24, Joseph had every right to not only “divorce” Mary but also to insist that she be stoned in order to “purge the evil from Israel.”  Scripture seems to indicate that most men in Joseph’s situation would have had Mary executed.

But Matthew tells us that Joseph was guided by a different spirit.  The ex-taxman writes that Joseph “did not want to expose her to public disgrace” so he decided to “divorce her quietly.”

He did not want to expose her to public disgrace.  How unlike our culture.  How unlike our media.  And sadly, how unlike Christ’s church.

I’ve been reading Gayle Haggard’s book Why I Stayed recently.  As you may recall, Ted Haggard was the pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs – a mega church of 14,000 – as well as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals.  Some unflattering news surfaced about him a few years ago, and Pastor Haggard resigned from both his positions.  Many women – even Christian women – would have left Mr. Haggard at that point, and would have been biblically justified in doing so.  But Gayle chose to stick it out with her husband, thus the title of the book.

The story of her relationship with Ted makes for fascinating reading, but I was far more interested in the latter half of the book.  Gayle describes the way that prominent Christian leaders, the church’s governing board, and their friends treated them during this time, and although she maintains a gracious, non-vindictive spirit throughout, the same cannot be said for the believers involved.

The Haggards – including Gayle, who was innocent of wrongdoing – were treated in a humiliating way by the church they founded in the basement of their home.  Within a week of their departure, all traces of their ministry at the church had been purged.  People who knew them were interviewed so as to find more “dirt” on them.  Both believers and non-believers were able to say anything about them they liked but the Haggards were not permitted to reply.  They were even told they had to leave the state of Colorado which meant that their children had to leave behind their friends and schooling.

No matter what they did, it was eventually misinterpreted.  No matter what they said, it was flagrantly disregarded.

Pastors are fond of preaching on the fact that God can use anyone, even a liar like Abraham, a murderer like Moses, an adulterer like David, and a hothead like Peter.  But let that same pastor fall into sin and he will be tarred, feathered, and blogged about ad infinitum, often by people who are his own teammates.

Phil Keaggy, who has long been my favorite Christian male artist, co-wrote a song with Sheila Walsh called “It Could’ve Been Me.”  The song always makes me think and can bring me to tears.  (The song is found on the CD Way Back Home and is available on iTunes if you’re interested.)  After describing the fall of a Christian leader, Keaggy’s powerful chorus nails each one of us to the wall:

But it could’ve been me,

I could’ve been the one to lose my grip and fall.

It could’ve been me

The one who’s always standing tall.

For unless you hold me tightly, Lord,

And I can hold on too,

Then tomorrow in the news

It could be me, it could be me.

Just four chapters after Matthew 1, the grown-up Jesus said in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).  When Mary “fell” – which is what Joseph thought until the angel enlightened him – Joseph chose mercy over vindictiveness.  Mary’s pregnancy undoubtedly caused her to lose her local reputation as a virtuous woman.  It might even have ended her chances of ever marrying anyone.

But although we now know the back story, neither Joseph nor the folks in Nazareth did at the time.  A modern love story would probably tell us that Joseph married Mary anyway, but as a keeper of the law, he couldn’t bring himself to do that … until God told Joseph that Mary was not only his soul mate but also the mother of the promised Messiah.

When pastors are forcibly terminated from their churches, they suffer many losses: their jobs, their income, their houses (in some cases), their careers (potentially), their marriages (sometimes) and most of their church friends.  And though they’re almost always innocent, their family members suffer those same losses.

But just like Mary and Ted Haggard, they also lose their reputations, whether the charges made against them are valid or not.

I find it ironic that pastors, who are conduits of God’s grace to scores of sinners throughout their ministries, cannot find that same grace when someone accuses them of wrongdoing.

May I urge you, not only at this Christmas season, but in every season of life, to be gracious toward every sinner who comes into your life, whether it’s a woman pregnant out of wedlock or a pastor who has been forced to leave his church because our Lord Jesus Christ suffered public disgrace that we might become recipients of His grace.

That’s why II Corinthians 8:9 is my favorite Christmas verse: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”

May God give us the ability to treat wounded Christian leaders with the same grace that Christ has shown us … because only grace can lead us home.

Merry Christmas!

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Why Care About Pastors?

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Healing After Leaving a Church, Pastoral Termination, Personal Stories on December 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I grew up in a pastor’s home and viewed it as being normal.  While my family was at church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night – in addition to cleaning up the facility most Saturdays – I liked my life.  Even though I was a PK, I had a great childhood.  Church was home.

Until I was nine years old.  One Sunday night, after the evening service, my parents put me and my younger brother and sister to bed.  Shortly afterward, the phone rang, and my parents scooped us out of bed and took us to the home of the head deacon.  We three kids were placed in the room adjacent to the living room.  My brother and sister fell asleep quickly, but I could hear what was being said through the wall.  As I lay there in the dark, I heard the leaders of our church – some of whom taught me Sunday School – verbally crucify my father.

My dad probably should have resigned at that point, but he had founded the church.  It was his life.  He hung on for two more years before he finally resigned.  Twenty months later, he was dead at the age of thirty-eight.

Without its founding pastor, the church lasted for several more years but eventually disbanded.  It’s a good thing my father wasn’t alive to hear the news.  It would have killed him.

There is a part of me that wants to go back in time and help my dad manage that conflict in a different fashion.  Would he still be alive today if he had?  I’m not sure, but I do know this: there are thousands of pastors every year in our country who undergo similar experiences.  The best statistics available indicate that at least 1,200 pastors in America are forced to leave their churches every month.

What happens to them?  A high percentage of them never pastor a church again.  Many of their wives and children stop going to church, some for good.  (One pastor friend told me that after such an experience, his wife didn’t attend church for four years.)  Because pastors have engaged in specialized training and earned degrees that fit them only for church ministry, the great majority of pastors are  not qualified for secular jobs.  But because they feel they’ve been rejected by their previous church, the now ex-pastor struggles with self-confidence, depression, forgiveness, and an inability to trust people – especially Christian leaders.

Thankfully, over the past two decades, ministries have popped up all over the United States that seek to assist wounded pastors.  Some ministries specialize in counseling.  Others have retreat centers where a pastor and his wife can relax, read, and pray, as well as seek counseling.  Still others specialize in church conflict.  An organization composed of clergy caregivers called CareGivers Forum meets annually.  My wife Kim and I attended the latest conference in Wisconsin and were gratified to meet about sixty people who believe that God has given them a special calling in this particular area.  But unless the church of Christ wants to kick gifted pastors to the curb, we need many more ministries for pastors all over the United States.

I recently made a list of all the pastors I know who have been forced to leave their churches.  Besides my father, that list includes my father-in-law, my financial planner, a pastor at my daughter’s church, a pastor at my current church, a pastor friend who went to college with me (and who wrote an article in a major journal about his termination), a church consultant friend, a professor from college, and several ministry mentors, just to name a few.  In fact, according to an article in Leadership Journal from the 1990’s, 23% of all pastors have undergone the pain of a forced exit.

And you can add my name to the list, too.

After being forced to leave a church I pastored for nine years only a year ago, my wife and I were able to attend a retreat the following month in the southeast designed to help the victims of forced termination begin the process of healing.  We thoroughly enjoyed the skills we gained, the encouragement we received, the new perspectives we learned, and the hope injection we received that week.

Because that retreat was so meaningful, Kim and I want to offer retreats for pastors and their wives in the Southern-California/Phoenix area beginning this spring.  Because we believe that God can do a deep and lasting work in the lives of hurting pastors, we are calling our ministry “Restoring Kingdom Builders.”

If you know a pastor or a staff member who has recently experienced the pain of forced termination, please ask him or her to contact me at jim@restoringkingdombuilders.org.  We welcome pastors from all Christian denominations.

Please pray that God will richly bless this new venture.  Thank you!

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Scapegoating Pastors

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination, tagged , , , , on December 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Have you ever patronized a business and become friends with someone who works there?  Then one day, you stop by to see your friend but he or she is no longer there.  They have vanished into thin air.  You don’t know where they went, or why they’ve gone, or how they’re doing.  And when you ask questions of people who should know, they become evasive and don’t reveal anything helpful.

When I lived in Silicon Valley, I received medical care at a clinic just ten minutes from my house.  Two doctors at that facility were very helpful to me: a physician specializing in internal medicine and an allergist.  Within a month, I received separate letters about each doctor, stating that he was ill and would no longer be practicing medicine.  I later learned from a nurse I knew that both men died of their illnesses but I never learned any details.  I just know that I felt their loss deeply.

Something similar happened to me when I first became a pastor.  I attended monthly district meetings with pastors from our denomination, and sometimes I noticed that a pastoral colleague missed several meetings in a row.  When I asked the district minister what happened to him, I was told that the pastor in question had resigned from his position.  While that was usually sufficient information for most of the pastors, I always wanted to know why the pastor had resigned.  In every single case, the pastor was blamed for his departure.  It was never the fault of the governing board, or a disgruntled staff member, or a faction in the church.  No, it was always the fault of the pastor.  That was the talking points answer to the question, “What happened to Pastor So-and-So?”

Then I would call that particular pastor and discover that there was another side to the situation, one that few people would have learned about because they had already bought the talking points.  The pastor would tell me about a powerful individual in the church who had been undermining him (and wearing him down) for months, or about a staff member who had aligned himself with the board against the pastor, or about a group of less than ten people who demanded that the pastor leave the church.  In fact, on occasion the pastor’s critics would align themselves with the district minister without the pastor’s knowledge.  While the pastor sensed that something was wrong in the church, he didn’t think matters were that serious until he was forced to choose between resignation or termination.  After the pastor left the church, he was blamed for whatever problems the church had.

Why was he blamed?  The pastor had left the spiritual community and was no longer around to defend himself.  Some people inside the church exaggerated the number and severity of offenses he had committed and many of those who didn’t know any better believed them.  The leaders who remained in the church were able to spin myths about the pastor that were untrue, but since no one ever checked with the pastor, they assumed the myths were true.  But without realizing it, these people collaborated in trying to destroy the reputation – and any future ministry – of that pastor.

Scapegoating is still alive and well today in churches.  Whenever things go wrong, some choose to blame everything on the pastor.  Let’s blame him for the decline in attendance and offerings.  Let’s blame him for “not feeding me” spiritually.  Let’s blame him for that time he didn’t make the decision I wanted him to make.  Let’s blame him for everything that’s wrong with the church and everything that’s wrong with my spiritual life.

And then, of course, I won’t have to take any responsibility– nor will any of my friends – for anything that goes wrong.  We can just blame the pastor.

Do you see any parallels to what happened to Jesus in The Gospels?  The Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to get rid of Jesus.  They dispersed their talking points, accusing Jesus of blasphemy and desecrating the temple and sedition against Rome.  In fact, those talking points surfaced the night of Jesus’ arrest and the morning of His trial before Pilate.  No one took any responsibility for what happened to Jesus – not Pilate, not the religious leaders, and not the mob that called for Jesus’ execution.  Jesus was scapegoated for everything even though He hadn’t done anything wrong – especially anything worthy of death.  But when some people saw Jesus on the cross, they assumed that He had committed capital crimes because otherwise why would He be up there?  They didn’t know the back story – that humanly speaking, Jesus had been framed on trumped-up charges.

Unlike Jesus, pastors mess up, and sometimes mess up badly.  I’ve made my share of mistakes in ministry, and sometimes those errors haunt me long after I thought they’d disappeared from my mind.  But as important as pastors are – Paul calls them gifts from the risen Christ to His churches in Ephesians 4:11 – they should never be blamed for everything that goes wrong in a congregation or in a believer’s life.  We need to take responsibility for our part when things go wrong as well.

Because when pastors are unfairly scapegoated, Jesus is wounded again.

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Forced Termination: It Can Happen to Any Pastor

Posted in Change and Conflict in Church, Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination, Personal Stories, tagged , , , on December 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

When pastors reach a certain stage in their ministries – especially if they’ve been in the same church for many years – it’s easy for them to conclude that they are immune from experiencing a forced exit.  If a pastor survives five years of ministry in the same place, he assumes that most of his critics have left and that those who remain are willing to follow his leadership.  So it comes as a surprise to pastors when they have been in a church for more than five years and yet still have to battle for control of a congregation.

I attended a prominent Christian college, and during my junior year, I took a class in The Gospel of John.  While the class met too early for my taste, the instructor – who was teaching his first class – proved to be a master teacher.  (Had all my teachers been as clear and interesting as he was, I would have emerged from college with straight “A’s.”)  The following year, I invited this instructor to lead a winter retreat for our high school and college students, and his insights into Scripture produced changed lives, including the life of my best friend, who eventually became an influential pastor himself.

Years later, this instructor became the pastor of a well-known mega-church, and it didn’t surprise me one bit.  While attending a seminary near his church for a doctoral program, I jogged over to the church one morning and walked into the worship center.  It was one of the most massive church auditoriums I have ever seen.  I could just imagine my former teacher mesmerizing and motivating the thousands of attendees with his careful and practical expositional skills.

The pastor had a large vision for reaching even more people for Christ.  This meant updating the church’s music, spending more money on the worship services, and recruiting more gifted volunteers and employees.  But the pastor ended up resigning under pressure instead.  According to the local newspaper, a small group of the old guard disagreed with the pastor’s agenda for the church.  The group believed that their seniority in the church entitled them to be consulted about any future plans and when they weren’t, they created havoc behind-the-scenes.  When the pastor resigned, he cited “personal character attacks” and “disrespect for his leadership” from a vocal minority in the church as reasons why he departed.  He had been the senior pastor of that church for fourteen years!

I went through a similar situation a year ago.  I believed that God was calling our church to reach a younger demographic in our spiritually-resistant community.  Rather than make sweeping changes, I wanted to add a third service and transition to a multi-venue format while keeping the two existing worship services largely intact.  This new vision would have required edgier music, additional gifted personnel, and generous funding, but even though most of the staff and the worship planning team were behind it, the governing board was not.  It wasn’t long before I left the church as well.

Let me draw two conclusions from the above stories:

First, pastors must pay a price for spiritual and numerical growth.  I recently heard Andy Stanley say that no one person in a church should stand in the way of a church’s ability to follow Christ’s Great Commission.  And yet when a pastor tries to reach more people, he is often met with resistance, sometimes from staff members, other times from a vocal minority (which has another agenda altogether), and often from the official board.   Sometimes the price paid is that those who are obstructing progress end up leaving the church – and sometimes the price paid is that the pastor ends up being forced to leave as well.  When the pastor has finally gone, people speculate as to why he resigned, wondering if he was guilty of moral failure or poor health or burnout, when the real reason is that the pastor’s agenda for outreach clashed with the agendas of other powerful interests.

Second, every pastor is at risk of a forced exit.  If any pastor is safe from being pressured to leave a church, it’s a founding pastor.  Almost every attendee who comes to such a church comes after the pastor was already there and usually because of the pastor.  But given a determined opposition, almost any pastor can be fired or forced to resign.  A pastor friend once told me that he looked at pastors who went through forced termination as losers – and then it happened to him.  23% of all pastors have been forced out of church ministry at least once.  While a distinct minority of pastors shouldn’t be in any kind of ministry, many great pastors find themselves in the wrong situation with the wrong group at the wrong time and end up losing their positions and even their careers.  While this scenario may be a fact of church life, it brings needless heartache to everyone involved.

Thankfully, the instructor I mentioned at the beginning of the article has become the co-pastor of a church.  The other co-pastor was also the pastor of a mega-church and he, too, was forced out of his position due to false accusations and denominational pressure.  God’s will was assuredly done in permitting both men to leave their churches and band together in their new setting, but the way they were forced out was diabolical.

If you’re in a church where the pastor is under fire, let me ask you one question:

What will you do to make sure that your pastor isn’t unfairly forced from his position?

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