When I was taking classes at Fuller Seminary for my doctoral degree, I went out early some mornings and ran around various parts of Pasadena.
One morning, I ran across the bridge over the Interstate 210 Freeway and jogged into the parking lot of one of Southern California’s most prestigious churches.
The door to the worship center was open, so I looked inside. It was huge!
The senior pastor of that church had taught me when I attended Biola. He later did a weekend retreat for my youth group.
But several years after I peeked inside that sanctuary, that pastor – an absolute master teacher – was forced out of his position after fourteen years of ministry.
The news made the local newspaper, which quoted an attorney from the congregation. Although the attorney held no official office, he represented “old money” … and the old money people didn’t like the pastor making changes without their approval.
As I recall, more than 4,000 people attended that church, yet a relative handful of disgruntled individuals were able to push out their pastor.
I have seen statistics that indicate that regardless of church size, it only takes seven to ten people to force a pastor to resign. Other studies say it takes a mere eight to twelve people.
How can such a small group of people determine a pastor’s future?
I don’t claim divine authority for what I’m about to write, but let me take a shot at answering this question:
First, that small group contains at least one determined bully.
In my second staff position, a mean-spirited man was the chairman of the church council … and his wife was the church secretary … so this man’s wife reported to him everything that was going on in the office.
She didn’t like what the pastor was doing … and her husband didn’t, either.
And since the pastor didn’t do what this couple wanted, they decided they wanted him to leave.
Before long, the chairman convinced the rest of the council that the pastor had to go … and the pastor was voted out of office by the congregation.
This man paid me … the only staff member besides his wife … scant attention. But when he finally did speak with me … only via telephone … he came off as a dominating and demanding figure.
In fact, he was downright scary.
The others on the council were typical churchgoers: nice, kind, mild-mannered, well-intentioned … but their personalities were no match for the chairman.
If the bully hadn’t been the chairman, he would have hounded whoever else was chairman to do what he wanted … so it was easier just to let him run the council.
The pastor … who also had a strong personality … was the only person in the church to challenge the chairman.
But ultimately, the pastor was voted out of office.
My guess is that embedded within the typical group of seven to twelve individuals is at least one person whose personality is so intimidating that few if any Christians will challenge that person to his/her face.
And yes, the bully can be a woman.
But if a church has two or three leaders who are vocally supportive of the pastor’s ministry, such a bully probably won’t challenge them and may leave the church instead.
Second, the bully takes advantage of the natural niceness of Christians.
Let’s say you’ve been invited by a church leader named Hank to a restaurant after the Sunday service.
When you arrive at the restaurant, you’re surprised to see nine other individuals from the church there with Hank.
Hank begins by saying, “Many people are concerned about the changes our pastor is making at the church right now. I’ve called this group together to see if we can stop the pastor from making these changes.”
If you don’t question or challenge Hank right then and there, you may never be able to do so.
Many years ago, I met with a group of pastors for lunch. The talk turned to the leaders of our district. The consensus among the pastors was that those leaders were making our district the laughingstock of the denomination.
One pastor said, “If you want to, I know how to get rid of the leaders.”
I instantly spoke up and said, “I don’t want anything to do with this.”
That ended the discussion.
And that’s exactly what someone … maybe you … need to say to Hank.
But if you and the others hesitate, Hank will lay out his case against the pastor, and the longer group members remain silent, the harder it will be to stop Hank.
And the more danger your pastor … and your church … will experience.
Years ago, Dr. Archibald Hart taught me that Christians need to learn to be assertive without being aggressive.
We need to learn to share how we really feel without getting angry.
But since many Christians equate being assertive with getting angry, we remain silent when we should speak up … and find ourselves subject to manipulation.
Before Hank’s group gains momentum, somebody needs to stop him.
Would you?
I once heard about a board that decided to take out their pastor. There was only one problem: the pastor’s biggest supporter was also a board member.
So the board waited until that supporter was out of town and then they voted out the pastor.
I have a folder an inch thick about that situation. It was nasty.
Third, group members feel they are carrying out a special assignment.
The bully makes people feel they’re important because only a few churchgoers have been invited to the meeting.
But what they don’t see is that the bully chose each person because he’s confident they’ll support and implement his/her agenda.
The bully wants to use the group as a base of operations. He can’t take out the pastor by himself. He needs others … even if they say or do very little.
My first few months in my last church ministry, I noticed that someone I’ll call Charlie taught a Sunday School class … and that it was constantly growing.
Charlie openly bragged about how large his class was getting … even to me. I became concerned that Charlie was going to use his class as an operational base to increase his congregational power.
After doing some investigative work, I learned that was precisely Charlie’s modus operandi in two previous churches … before he openly challenged both pastors.
And I remain convinced that Charlie was going to challenge me because he felt he could control those fifty people.
Most church bullies make each person in their group feel valuable. They will:
*listen to and agree with their complaints against the pastor.
*invite members’ spouses into the group (even if they aren’t believers).
*mix social events with their plotting.
*make group members feel, “Only we can save this church.”
*pay members more attention than the pastor does.
And most of the time, that’s really what’s happening. While the pastor may have a congregation of hundreds or thousands, the bully has a congregation of ten or fifteen or perhaps twenty people … and by showering them with attention, he can persuade them to do what they wouldn’t normally do.
I survived an attempt to remove me as pastor thirty years ago. The bully recruited people who weren’t prominent in the church.
After he pulled the group out of the church, two group members died … and their families asked me to conduct their memorial services.
I assumed that since they joined the bully’s group that they hated me, but they didn’t. They joined the dissident group because they were made to feel special.
Fourth, the group has to secure at least two top leaders to be taken seriously.
If the bully is a board member or a staff member, then he just needs to secure one other board member or staffer to gain credibility.
People can easily write off one leader who goes on the attack. It’s much harder to write off two or more leaders.
When two or more leaders begin to criticize the pastor openly, some churchgoers … especially those without much experience in congregations … may quickly choose to believe them because they assume they have inside knowledge others lack.
The bully usually looks for three kinds of allies among the leaders:
*The key player in bringing down the senior/lead pastor may be the associate pastor.
If the associate is not 100% loyal, then taking down the senior pastor may be the way for him to get more money … have more say … or become senior pastor himself.
From all the stories I’ve heard over the past eight years, I’d say the leader most likely to turn on the senior pastor is the associate.
I believe that if it can be proven that the associate was involved in trying to take out an innocent senior pastor, the associate should be banned from church ministry for many years. Trying to remove your superior is a far worse offense than almost anything an innocent pastor has done.
*The bully sometimes tries to recruit former board members who still attend the church.
These board members may have their own ax to grind against the pastor.
The most frequent complaint they have is that they used to be board members, but after the pastor came … and they termed out … they were not asked to serve again.
In my last ministry, a man had once been chairman of the church board. When I came to the church, he was no longer on the board … I don’t know why.
When I became senior pastor, I didn’t think this man should be a board member because he missed too many Sunday services. How could he make informed decisions about the church’s future when he was rarely around?
Besides, his wife had a reputation as a first-class gossip.
But later, this man became a key player in forcing me to leave … and I wasn’t surprised.
If I could do it again, I’d make the same decision. Placing him on the board would have been a political decision, not a spiritual one.
*The bully primarily looks for allies on the church board.
I believe that when at least two board members conspire together to target a pastor for removal, they often get their way.
A church board needs to be 100% behind their pastor. A board can survive one dissident, but usually not two.
Remember what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:7? He said:
“Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?”
If the bully is on the church board, he doesn’t need to persuade the entire group to get rid of the pastor … he only needs to convince one or two others.
And if they add a staff member like the associate pastor, who will stop them?
If they sense other board members are with them, they may call a special board meeting, or go into executive session after a regular meeting … and make sure the pastor isn’t invited.
If they sense other board members aren’t with them, they will try to persuade them outside of official meetings. And when they sense they have enough support, they’ll make their complaints in an official board meeting … and then:
Finally, the group operates in such an aggressive manner that they’re confident they won’t be challenged.
And this is really why such a group gains power out of all proportion to its size.
They use the following tactics:
First, they verbally attack the pastor personally.
The group criticizes his appearance … his car(s) … his house … his manner … his sermon illustrations … anything and everything is fair game.
Some people in a church might think these things, but proper decorum keeps them from saying them aloud. But the small group out to get the pastor vocalizes their criticisms.
Complaining is contagious. Hatred is contagious.
As people openly criticize their pastor, others feel emboldened and add their own grievances to the mix.
Most pastors won’t wilt with this tactic … but they will with this one:
Second, they verbally attack the pastor’s family.
They attack his wife: she works too much or not at all; she’s too prominent at church or too quiet; she’s nice to some women but not others … and on and on.
They attack the pastor’s children: they’re unruly; they’re arrogant; they’re not at church enough; they’re at church too much … and on and on.
The attacks don’t have to correspond to reality. And there don’t have to be many attackers.
The pastor doesn’t count how many people are making the criticisms because he’s too busy ministering to his wounded wife and children.
When a group attacks the pastor’s family, he has one foot out the door.
Third, they consult the church’s governing documents on how to remove a pastor.
If they think they have the required percentage to vote him out of office, they’ll try that.
But most of the time, they just bypass the stated process and try alternative tactics.
Fourth, they pass around a petition to address their grievances.
The petition might call for a meeting so the group can air their complaints. Or the petition might call for the pastor’s removal by the board or in a public meeting.
But everyone who signs that petition will experience a change in status toward their pastor.
In my last church, my wife served for years with a woman she dearly loved.
As the attacks upon me escalated, someone put together a petition and circulated it. The petition called for an investigation into matters concerning me.
It was a confusing time for many people. The woman my wife loved signed the petition. But when she did, her signature ended her relationship with my wife.
Neither my wife nor I ever saw the petition. Our supporters undoubtedly did. And over time, they would tell us, “Those who signed the petition are not your friends.”
When people signed the petition, they were switching allegiances from their pastor to the dissidents.
The group circulating the petition knew that. Those who signed it did not … at least initially.
Finally, they boldly exaggerate charges against the pastor and try to turn others against him … and they usually succeed.
When the pastor’s family is attacked, he has one foot out the door.
But when his integrity is called into question publicly, he’ll start packing his bags.
The only way a pastor can stay under such circumstances is if key members of the staff and board stand up strongly for him and say publicly, “The charges you’re hearing are not true. I know the pastor well and he is the man you think he is.”
But once the charges gain momentum, most churches lack any kind of process or forum for the pastor or his supporters to rebut the charges … and the pastor gets buried underneath an avalanche of lies and slander.
And then so many allegations float into the ether that they can’t be rebutted … and people who were once the pastor’s supporters call for his resignation.
And somewhere during the entire “get the pastor” process, the devil and his assistants enter the picture and not only try to destroy the pastor … but the church as well.
_______________
The small group that opposes the pastor keeps pushing … keeps trying to recruit individuals to join their cause … keeps spreading exaggerated charges … and keeps the pressure on to remove the pastor … because they have gone too far to stop.
And they have sold their souls in the process.
The only way to stop that small group is for strong Christians to say … loudly and publicly … “What you are doing is wrong. We won’t stand for this. You are not only hurting our pastor and his family … you are severely harming our church. We have worked too hard for too long to let you do this. Stop this at once!”
But the reason that small group of seven to twelve people often succeeds is that there aren’t enough strong Christians in our churches to stop them.
Restoring Kingdom Builders 
Should Pastors Be Happy?
Posted in Burnout and Depression in Ministry, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Please Comment!, tagged happiness in church ministry, pastoral burnout, pastoral depression on December 15, 2017| Leave a Comment »
As some of my friends know, I’ve been rummaging through our old family photographs recently and posting some of the more interesting pictures on Facebook.
I’ve been startled by how happy I look in photos from forty and fifty years ago. I had a wide, joyful smile that I exhibited freely and often.
But over time, that smile dimmed … at least, at church … largely because of certain individuals.
This is a group of eight men from my second church ministry. Six have gone home to be with the Lord. George – the gentleman on the far right – is still living.
George and Wendell supported me for years, and when I think of them, I definitely smile.
But three of these men turned against me … and one is my all-time worst antagonist. (Can you pick him out?)
Then I found this photo of some women:
Two of these women were loyal, faithful supporters, including Bonnie on the right side, but three also turned on their pastor. My wife Kim (third from the left) was smiling in this photo, but several years later, she wasn’t.
And neither was I.
This article isn’t about church antagonists … I’ve written plenty of blog posts about them … but about a question I’ve often wrestled with:
Should pastors be happy?
During my seven-year tenure at this church in Silicon Valley, I was not only unhappy most of the time … I was downright miserable.
Our church was the product of a merger. I had read that merger math is 1+1 = 1. In other words, if you put a church of 80 with a church of 50, you’ll eventually end up with a church of 80 … or 50 … but not 130.
There are many reasons for this: a clash of church cultures … differing ministry philosophies … a duplication of leaders (what do you do with two head ushers?) … varied shared histories … and a pastor who suddenly needs to become acquainted with 80 new people … which makes the group he came over with feel ignored.
My first pastorate was in the Silicon Valley city of Sunnyvale. We met in a school, but after two years, the city planned to bulldoze it down for new home construction. We needed a place to go or our ministry would be over.
A sister church (with 80 people) five miles away invited our church (with 50 people) to merge with them … provided that I became the pastor.
I didn’t want to do it, and looked everywhere for another ministry, but at age 29, I had few options, so on the day set as a deadline … October 2, 1983 … I reluctantly signed an agreement.
Our district minister predicted that our church … which averaged 105 people … would have 300 people within two years.
But two years later, most people who came with me from the Sunnyvale church left in anger, and our attendance … and finances … were in free fall.
And as attendance and giving dwindled, I sank into depression.
Every other Monday, I wanted to quit. Most of the time, it’s because the Sunday before didn’t go well.
The smaller churches get, the more people just want to be cared for. There’s nothing wrong with that, but carrying out the Great Commission is not on the frontal lobes of most people.
As the church shrank in size, so did my self-esteem and self-confidence.
By the summer of 1986, I was barely functioning. I was constantly depressed around the house, and my wife finally said, “Jim, you need counseling. I”m going to find someone who can help you.” I told her, “Then find the best counselor you can. I want someone with a string of degrees.”
My wife finally found a Christian counselor with two doctoral degrees. I visited him twice a week for four months. If there was something inside me that was keeping our church from moving forward, I wanted to know what it was so I could make corrections while I was young.
After taking all kinds of tests and discussing matters for hours, the counselor told me:
“You have your problems and idiosyncrasies like everybody else, but you’re basically normal. Your problem is your church. Get out of it.”
I ended up staying, but I wasn’t any happier.
_______________
During my time in that second pastorate, I found a book that helped me survive those difficult days.
The book is called Coping With Depression in the Ministry and Other Helping Professions by Dr. Archibald Hart. The book was published in 1984, but its lessons are equally relevant today.
Listen to Dr. Hart’s wisdom:
“Contrary to what many laypersons believe, depression is a major occupational hazard for ministers. For many ministers, surviving the ministry is a matter of surviving depression. Mostly the depression is not a positive experience. It robs the minister of power and effectiveness and destroys the joy of service.”
Dr. Hart continues:
“It is impossible for anyone who has never been a minister to understand the loneliness, despair, and emotional pain that a large number of ministers must bear. Not a few leave the ministry altogether because of the debilitation of depression. Others exist in their pastorates in an unhappy, dissatisfied, and disillusioned state rather than leave their churches or change vocations.”
I read various parts of Dr. Hart’s book most Sunday nights before bedtime. The book kept me going for years.
Why are pastors so susceptible to unhappiness?
Let me briefly offer five reasons:
First, ministry is often both slow and invisible.
Ministry is slow because people change at a snail’s pace, if at all. The pastor-congregational dynamic usually entails less than an hour on Sundays and is confined to the pastor’s sermon. The people have limited exposure to their pastor and he has limited exposure to their lives. The pastor isn’t like Super Nanny who would stay in a family’s home and advise them on how to raise their children.
In fact, most people don’t want their pastor anywhere near their home!
I can recount many people I ministered to who never seemed to change at all. Maybe God’s Spirit was working in them, but I never saw any visible progress.
Ministry is also slow because like most organizations, congregations change slowly, if at all. Pastors usually know the direction they’d like the church to go, but they can’t wave a wand and make things happen. Pastors first need permission from the board … staff … key leaders … and often, the entire congregation.
Pastors become absorbed with attendance and offerings because those are visible emblems of success. But changed lives are much harder to measure.
Dr. Hart writes:
“People coming into the ministry from other areas of endeavor often say that it is far more difficult to set standards for evaluating their accomplishments in the ministry than it was in their previous employment. I understand this problem because I experienced a similar one when I moved from engineering into psychology many years ago. My engineering accomplishments still stand – bridges, reservoirs, buildings, and freeways. They are easily recognizable, enduring, and satisfying. But where are my psychological accomplishments? Sure, there are many – healed hearts, homes and bodies. But they are not as tangible and easy to pinpoint as those of engineering. And pastors may find it even harder to identify their accomplishments once they get their eyes off money, buildings, and church attendance.”
When I preached or counseled someone, I knew the Holy Spirit was working … but He didn’t usually make His work evident to me.
Second, I rarely felt like I was done working.
I never finished my to-do list. There was always one more call to make … one more email to answer … one more hospital patient to visit … one more sermon to research.
And if I didn’t do that “one more thing,” I often heard about it.
Many professions involve similar challenges. But for me, as for many pastors, we never felt we could hit the “off switch” on our bodies, minds, or spirits. We always had to be “on.”
For example, in my last ministry, I had to be “on” when I went to the grocery store because I’d always see people from church. I had to be “on” when walking through the neighborhood … when going to the movies (I once sat next to a board member at an Adam Sandler movie) … when going to the mall … or when going to see the Giants or A’s. I saw people from church in all of those places.
I remember one Christmas Eve. We’d held two services at our church, and our family finally went home to open presents and relax. But at 12:10 am on Christmas Day, I received a phone call from security that one of the doors at church had been left wide open after the second service. Security couldn’t reach anyone else … only I answered the phone … so I had the privilege of going over to church to walk through the entire facility and then locking the door … something I did many times.
And that stuff happened all the time.
Third, I carried people’s problems around with me.
My counselor told me my greatest strength … and my greatest weakness … is my tenderness. Wisely or unwisely, I feel what others are experiencing.
While my empathy made me a good pastor, I could not shake off people’s problems very easily.
The larger our church grew, the more varied … and difficult … people’s problems usually became. For example, around the year 2000, three government inspectors were killed by the owner of a factory. The story made national news. The supervisor of those inspectors was supposed to be there that day and would have been murdered along with his colleagues. This supervisor went to our church and had to speak at the funerals of his murdered colleagues. I did my best to minister to him, but his sorrow sent me into despair. How could it not?
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11:29:
Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?
Like Paul, I usually felt what my people were feeling, and carried those feelings around with me for weeks or months at a time … even when I was with family or doing something fun.
Dr. Hart claims that “compassion fatigue” is another term for burnout. If a pastor doesn’t demonstrate care for people, he comes off like Dr. Ellingham on the hilarious British TV show Doc Martin: rude, surly, uncaring. But if he feels people’s problems too deeply, he might end up burning out.
Dr. Hart writes:
“The work of ministry, when it is undertaken with great sincerity and earnestness, is bound to open the way to attacks of despondency. The weightiness of feeling responsible for the souls of others and of longing to see others experience the fullness of God’s gift; the disappointment of seeing believers turn cold and pull away; the heartbreak of watching a married couple destroy each other, unable to utilize love and the grace of God in repairing their broken relationship – all will take their toll on sensitive and dedicated ministers.”
And in the end, they certainly took a toll on me.
Fourth, I never knew who was going to come after me.
Several weeks ago, I ran across a batch of photos taken when the merger mentioned above took place. The photos were closeups of everyone in the church at the time. I forgot I even had them.
This photo portrays Jim and his wife Olive. Jim was the board chairman – and head of the search team – in my first pastorate. Jim believed in me and lobbied hard for me to become pastor. I’ll always be grateful for his support.
Jim was the “songleader” at the merged church at both the Sunday morning and Sunday evening services. He led the hymns. But as he aged, Jim began to lose it. He started selecting the same songs constantly and repeating the same stale stories. (“Can you smoke and be a Christian? Yes, but you’ll be a stinking Christian!”)
One Sunday morning, I asked Jim if he would lead a specific hymn for the Sunday night service. He refused, telling me that no pastor had ever told him which hymns to select. I asked Jim again, and he became angry.
He went to the board with seven complaints about me. For the good of the church, I probably should have sacked him months before, and now he was going after me. He left the church the next day and I never saw him again until I conducted his memorial service.
This stuff happens all the time in churches. Someone draws close to the pastor. The pastor thinks, “This person likes me. Maybe we can be friends.” And a few months or years later, this person suddenly attacks the pastor verbally, or wants the pastor removed from office.
I can tell you story after story of men and women I thought were my friends … people I thought I could trust … who ended up betraying me. In fact, every pastor can tell similar stories.
And it’s hard for a pastor to be happy when he’s constantly wondering, “Which of the people in our church are going to attack me next … and possibly end my job or career?”
Finally, I was too much of a perfectionist to really be happy.
I wanted everything the church did to go well … especially those ministries that required my leadership.
When I first took Sermon Prep in seminary, my professor would critique our sermons after we preached. For years after I took that class, I’d get up to preach on Sunday and hear his voice:
“Don’t look to the left and gesture to the right … your looks and gestures need to match.”
“Don’t tell us that Sandy Koufax was a great pitcher because he threw hard. A lot of pitchers throw hard and get rocked. Koufax was great because his fastball moved. Most people don’t know that, but a baseball fan will.”
“Be careful when you use irony. Most people don’t get it.”
As a pastor, I heard a lot of voices in my head … the voices of professors, and fellow pastors, and critics … especially critics.
And those voices often prevented me from feeling happy. They reminded me that my church wasn’t big enough … that our offerings weren’t strong enough … that I always fell short in some area.
If we had two or three Sundays of declining attendance … or poor giving … regardless of how well I’d written or delivered a sermon … I’d feel like a failure.
Even when our church was full … as in the photo below … I often didn’t enjoy it. Instead, I’d wonder how long the good times would last.
Dr. Hart writes:
“I once asked a surgeon friend who every day made decisions that could affect the life or death of a patient how he handled the responsibility of his work. His answer was most illuminating…. He replied, ‘You come to terms very early in your career with your fallibility. It’s okay not to be perfect and to make mistakes!'”
But when pastors make even a small mistake, there are always people willing to magnify it into something horrendous. It’s as if they’re saying, “Ha ha, pastor, you’re just like the rest of us!”
And, of course, we are.
_______________
My wife and I run a preschool in our home. She runs the preschool downstairs, and I handle business matters from my upstairs office.
The Lord has blessed us significantly, and we’ll do this as long as we’re able.
I’m far happier doing the preschool than I was in church ministry:
*I can see children learn and grow much quicker than I ever did adults.
*My wife and I have our nights and weekends free.
*I only carry a handful of people’s problems around with me … usually those of family members or close friends.
*I no longer worry about people attacking me.
*I’m still a perfectionist about some things, but little bothers me anymore.
But in the end, I’m not sure that the happiness of pastors matters to the Lord.
Moses wasn’t always happy. Neither was David … just read the Psalms. Isaiah and Jeremiah weren’t all that happy. And neither was Jesus.
God isn’t looking for happy pastors. He’s looking for faithful ones. But even when pastors are faithful, there’s no guarantee they’ll be happy. Sometimes being faithful means that you’ll be unhappy.
And that’s not a happy thought to ponder.
_______________
By the way, when I took “The Pastor’s Personal Life” class from Dr. Hart for my Doctor of Ministry degree at Fuller Seminary, I wrote him a note at the end of my final paper, telling him that I believed he was a gift to the body of Christ.
I still feel that way.
If you don’t have a copy of Coping With Depression in the Ministry and Other Helping Professions, I urge you to secure a used copy on Amazon.
It just might save your ministry … and your sanity.
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