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My Favorite Christian Songs, Part 2

April 25, 2011 by Jim Meyer

I recently shared with you five of my favorite contemporary Christian songs (I went back and added video links to each song in the previous blog):

Number 10: “Little Pilgrim” by Love Song

Number 9: “A Rose is a Rose” by Susan Ashton

Number 8: “Asleep in the Light” by Keith Green

Number 7: “Irish Day” by Iona

Number 6: “My Glorious” by Delirious?

My song choices are a bit dated, not because there isn’t some great Christian music out there today, but because I haven’t been exposed to it.  (I’m taking recommendations.)  So I tend to stick with the artists who have put together the soundtrack to my soul.

Let’s continue the countdown to:

Number 5: “Two Sets of Jones'” by Big Tent Revival

I know little about this group, just that they wrote a story-song that has touched my heart for the last 15 years or so.

When I pastored a church in Santa Clara, our music team was supposed to present a performance song (or two) every Sunday morning.  One Thursday night at rehearsal, the song that was selected to follow that Sunday’s message just wasn’t coming together, and nobody knew what to do.

Four people got their heads together and suggested that the song “Two Sets of Jones'” be played over the speakers with the four individuals playing two couples while doing a pantomine to the song.  I knew nothing about this until I was done preaching the following Sunday.  The music started playing – the song was totally new to me – and the acting began.  It was phenomenal.  The congregation was deeply moved.  (Multi-sensory presentations always bring an additional dimension to any song.)

The song contrasts two married couples named Jones: a wealthy couple without the Lord, and a poor couple with the Lord.  The song is done in a country-folk arrangement with great simplicity and power.  When I heard the song come onto Christian radio several years later, I had to pull off the side of the road.  Too many tears in my eyes.

Original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omMDWcAaW88

Number 4: “Falling at Your Feet” by Bono and Daniel Lanois.  Unless you’ve purchased the soundtrack to the film Million Dollar Hotel – and most of you haven’t – you’ve probably never heard this song.  Of all places, I heard it playing one night at a bar (I was eating there) inside the International Terminal at San Francisco Airport.

Behind an unconventional melody, the song’s Dylanesque lyrics list a variety of items in the universe: everyone who needs a friend, every face spoiled by beauty (great line), every prisoner in the maze, every eye closed by a bruise … and all are “falling at your feet.”  Who does the possessive pronoun “your” refer to?  The last few lines make it clear:

In whom shall I trust

How might I be still

Teach me to surrender

Not my will, thy will

Jagger.  Springsteen.  Madonna.  Eminem.  Britney.  None of them would ever sing “not my will, thy will.”  (Bono sings “If it be your will” in U2’s song Yahweh as well.)  Even though Bono lives by the motto, “I reserve the right to remain ridiculous” (and sometimes succeeds), U2’s songs move me deeply in my spirit like nobody else’s.  The Beatles made me tap my foot and sing along.  U2 makes me want to go out and change the world – pausing at times to worship Jesus.

By the way, you can’t find the version of this song with Bono on iTunes – only on the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack.  While neither one of these live performances measure up to the studio version of the song, you can at least get an idea of how the song goes.  By the way, Daniel Lanois is a great music producer who has been involved with U2 for decades – and an incredible artist in his own right.

Bono and Daniel Lanois live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieax3GWgqlk&feature=related

Discovery Gospel Choir version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjD2AKBymDQ&feature=related

Number 3: “The Days Are Young” by Chuck Girard.  The founding member of Love Song (the first great contemporary Christian group ever) struck out as a solo artist with his self-titled album in 1975.  While he was recording it in the LA area, the adult youth leaders from our church invited Chuck to sing and play at a Christmas banquet for our youth group in Santa Ana.  As I recall, Chuck continually declined, but they were persistent, and Chuck and his wife Karen finally agreed to come.  (Kim and I got to sit with the Girards at the head table and we talked during dinner, but Chuck didn’t recall it when we spoke with him a year ago.) Chuck played nine songs for us, some of them from his new album, including “Sometimes Alleluia.”  The performance was taped onto a cassette.  I ended up with it but loaned it out so many times that I have no idea where it is today.  When “Sometimes Alleluia” ended up in our hymn book a few years later, it was a sign that contemporary Christian music had finally come of age.

This song is on Chuck’s free-flowing worship album called Voice of the Wind.  Right after it came out, I began having all kinds of abdominal pain (unrelated to the album), and after visiting the doctor for some tests, I had some potentially serious symptoms and thought I might have a life-altering condition.  Before going to bed at night, I would put this CD on, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to hear these lyrics wedded with a brisk, joyful melody:

And the days are young

And the days are clear

And I feel you holdin’ on to me my Lord

And I can chase the wind

And I can dance and I can sing

And I can smile again

And the days are young

Those are hopeful lyrics when you’re not sure how many days you have left!  (BTW, I ended up having a painful condition but not a terminal one.  It’s possible the abdominal pain was caused by inadvertently hearing a Michael Bolton song somewhere.)

By the way, have you ever noticed how many influential Christian leaders/singers have “Chuck” as their first name?  Colson, Swindoll, Smith, Girard – and my favorite of all, Chuckie Spurgeon.

iTunes preview: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/voice-of-the-wind/id162098147

Here is:

Number 2: “Seize the Day” by Carolyn Arends.  On her first album, I Can Hear You, this Christian singer-songwriter from Surrey, BC (spent three nights there a few years ago) writes about how we should invest every moment of our lives doing what matters most, no matter what the critics say.  I love the chorus:

Seize the day

Seize whatever you can

‘Cause life slips away just like hourglass sand

Seize the day

And pray for grace from God’s hand

And nothing will stand in your way

Seize the day

This song came out in 1995, the year of our twentieth wedding anniversary.  My wife and I had talked a lot about taking a trip to Europe to mark the occasion, and as the date got closer, I threatened to back out for various reasons.  My wife told me she was going whether I went or not, so I decided to “seize the day” and go – and I’m glad I did!  It’s a short life, as James 4:14 reminds us, so we need to live life to the fullest.  Pursue those dreams you’ve been putting off – you may never get another chance.

This was the song I asked to be sung at our final Sunday in our former church.  It was done very, very well.  Carpe diem.

Original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lmqtYR5tJo (her first video; sound isn’t the greatest)

Number 1: “History Maker” by Delirious?  These guys have so many great, great songs: “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever,” “I’m Not Ashamed,” “Shout to the North,” “What a Friend I’ve Found,” “God You Are My God,” and so many others.  To me, they’re the house band of heaven, even though they recently broke up (for all the right reasons).  This song, from their first album King of Fools, is the most inspiring contemporary Christian song I’ve ever heard, a true U2-type anthem.  Lead singer Martin Smith belts out the chorus:

I’m gonna be a history maker in this land

I’m gonna be a speaker of truth to all mankind

I’m gonna stand, I’m gonna run

Into your arms, into your arms again

Which Christian doesn’t want to make history for Jesus?  This song perfectly encapsulates that desire in an infectious manner.

Fan video version (but uses original studio song) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce41TInGoc4&NR=1

Willow Creek Church version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loyq_JCjZJY (I was there and met the band members afterward!)

Hillsong London version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C2ckPqvJZU&feature=related

Honorable mention: “I Will Listen” and “How Beautiful” by Twila Paris; “What a Friend I’ve Found” and “I’m Not Ashamed” by Delirious?; “I Will be There” and “World of Mine” from the incomparable Phil Keaggy; “Hold Me Jesus” by Rich Mullins; “More to This Life” by Steven Curtis Chapman; “There is a Redeemer” by Keith Green; “Before There Was Time” by Caedmon’s Call.

I will include my favorite U2 spiritually-oriented songs in a separate list sometime in the future.

Since I love music so much, I’ll put together some more lists in the future.  But I’d love to hear about your favorite Christian songs!

Posted in Christian Music, Personal Stories | 6 Comments »

My Favorite Christian Songs, Part 1

April 22, 2011 by Jim Meyer

Okay, I know that this is supposed to be a blog about pastors and conflict, but I’ve always wanted to write an article about my favorite Christian songs (and artists).  Since the topics on this blog can get kind of heavy at times, I thought I’d lighten it up a bit by sharing with you ten songs performed by Christian artists that mean a lot to me.  I’ll count down songs ten through six today and follow up with songs five through one another time.

I believe that a great song is one that is (a) well-written, (b) authentically sung, (c) powerfully performed, (d) lyrically engaging, and (e) either moves you to tears or inspires you to take action.  Here are ten Christian songs that do that for me:

Number 10: “Little Pilgrim” by Love Song.  Back in the early 1970s, there wasn’t really a genre like “contemporary Christian music.”  Other than Larry Norman and some other stray artists, most of the relevant-sounding Christian music was originating from Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa.  I was blessed to be present in Calvary’s small, original church building on a summer evening in 1970 when Chuck Girard and Tommy Coomes played “Front Seat, Back Seat,” a song they had just written.  I loved the song as well as the artists, and when Lovesong came out with their self-titled album, there wasn’t anything like it in the Christian world.

“Little Pilgrim” is the last song on their second album.  It’s the story of a spritual seeker who looks for meaning in life in all the wrong places …

‘Til you’re resting in the arms of the only one who can help you

‘Til you give your heart and your soul and your body and your mind and your life to the Lord

I heard lead singer Chuck Girard sing this song many times in the 1970s and heard him sing it again last May at Calvary Chapel Phoenix on Lovesong’s last tour.  After the subject of his song wanders all over creation, Chuck ends the song this way:

And it’s a glad thing to realize

That you’re not alone no more

That you found your way back home

Back home

Love Song often ended their concerts with this song.  I wonder how many people came to Christ after hearing it.  It drives me into the arms of Jesus every single time.

Live version, introduction by Bill Hybels: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSsckEGG2Mw

Number 9, Number 9: “A Rose is a Rose” by Susan Ashton.  Although she didn’t write her own songs, Susan Ashton had a knack for choosing great material (much of it from songwriter Wayne Kirkpatrick).  On her self-titled third album, this last song describes a person whose confidence is so shot that she can’t get the jeers of critics out of her ears.  While it’s not explicitly a “Christian” song – God isn’t mentioned anywhere in the lyrics – it’s the kind of thing that a good friend would say to someone who wants to give up on life.

You’re at a standstill, you’re at an impasse

Your mountain of dreams, seems harder to climb

By those who have made you feel like an outcast

Cause you dare to be different, so they’re drawing a line

While most of the song is performed on piano, a killer violin picks up during the first chorus and continues playing throughout the song.  These words in the final verse always touch me:

To deal with the scoffers, that’s part of the bargain

They heckle from back rows and they bark at the moon

Their flowers are fading in time’s bitter garden

But yours is only beginning to bloom

If you’ve never heard this song, check out the sample on iTunes.  It’s worth it.  If American Idol ever discovered it … well, never mind … they won’t.

Fan video version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mftgkJgMrMI&feature=related (voice is speeded up a little)

Number 8: “Asleep in the Light” by Keith Green.  In my mind, this song is like putting the words of Jeremiah the prophet to music.  It’s a scathing indictment of the church of Jesus sung in both an angry and tender voice.  When the song came out, I couldn’t stop listening to it.  One Sunday morning, when I was a youth pastor and had a chance to preach, I read the lyrics during my message because (a) there was no way I would be allowed to play the song in church, and (b) if the song had been done live, I might have been fired.  Why the commotion?  In an intense, passionate voice, Keith Green sings:

The world is sleeping in the dark

That the church just can’t fight

Cause it’s asleep in the light

How can you be so dead

When you’ve been so well fed

Jesus rose from the grave,

And you, you can’t even get out of bed

This song is especially powerful when viewed with the picture that inspired it: a hoarde of people drowning while those on the pier above them leisurely enjoy life, oblivious to those below.

Fan video version: http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=ApuMzfYlcjiy79wG5AfucLdG2vAI?p=keith+green+asleep+in+the+light&fr=my-myy&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8

Number 7: “Irish Day” by Iona.  It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Irish music: U2, Van Morrison, the Corrs, Enya, and Enya’s older sister Moya Brennan, who is a believer.  (I even like “The Unicorn Song” by the Irish Rovers.)  Iona is a Christian group that specializes in progressive rock.  They do something that few other artists do: they sing about the way that the Christian faith came to their country.  This song is about Columba who first brought the gospel to the British Isles.  It’s beautifully played and sung and includes lyrics like these:

Here before my time

Walked men of faith and truth

In a land that was dark

They followed the way

Bringing sweet light

On an Irish day

If you love the Celtic sound, you’ll love this band – which is getting ready to put out their latest CD in a couple months.  They’re touring Europe right now.  I would love to see them in concert someday.

Original studio version: http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGdS4a6bRN2GEA4LdXNyoA?p=iona+irish+day&fr2=sb-top&fr=my-myy&type_param=

Number 6: “My Glorious” by Delirious?  This British band revolutionized Christian music by merging rock with worship.  Their lyrics can be quirky and they sound more like U2 than U2 does at times.  Like Bono’s band, they write soaring anthems that can be sung in arenas – or churches.  Toward the end of their existence, they became impassioned about both missions and social justice issues (sorry, Glenn Beck).

This praise anthem from their classic worship-oriented CD Glo rocks hard but is so fun to sing that I’ll continue to sing it both in this life and the one to come:

God is bigger than the air I breathe

The world we’ll leave

God will save the day and all will say

My glorious!  My glorious!

Sounds kind of like “my precious” but I consciously try to put Gollum out of my mind.

Fan video with studio version http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?p=delirious%20my%20glorious&tnr=21&vid=767831114951&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts2.mm.bing.net%2Fvideos%2Fthumbnail.aspx%3Fq%3D767831114951%26id%3Dd0733f76bc4ebc7ac5a3ca379b0ad3ff%26bid%3Dr%252fgNzSgSRBfA%252bA%26bn%3DThumb%26url%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.youtube.com%252fwatch%253fv%253doE_03DLrlwQ&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DoE_03DLrlwQ&sigr=11aouko0e&newfp=1&tit=Delirious%3F+-%26%2339%3BMy+Glorious%26%2339%3B

Live version (Russia?) http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?p=delirious%20my%20glorious&tnr=21&vid=720196797039&l=276&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts2.mm.bing.net%2Fvideos%2Fthumbnail.aspx%3Fq%3D720196797039%26id%3D3ba385ae3ae12ab6971714571f94235a%26bid%3DMKiTId4SZJtZ5g%26bn%3DThumb%26url%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.youtube.com%252fwatch%253fv%253dHZ1FXkCa6lA&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DHZ1FXkCa6lA&sigr=11a7bvqh3&newfp=1&tit=Delirious%3F+-+My+Glorious

I’d love to hear from you about your favorite contemporary Christian songs as well.  Feel free to share …

Posted in Christian Music, Personal Stories | 1 Comment »

Book Excerpt: Why Jesus Was Terminated

April 20, 2011 by Jim Meyer

The following article is from Chapter 11 of the book I’m writing. The chapter parallels the way that Jesus’ enemies “terminated” Him with the way that pastors are often terminated today. Thanks for reading:

It is my contention that there are a host of similarities between the way that Jesus was cruelly terminated and the way that many pastors are unjustly treated in our day.  In fact, a case can be made that the steps leading to the crucifixion of Jesus are replicated on a regular basis in churches throughout the world.  While some parallels are inexact – for example, pastors lack Jesus’ perfect character and miracle-working power – the unoriginal devil uses the same template today to destroy spiritual leaders as He did in our Savior’s time.  Why change your methodology when it’s been working so well?

In re-reading The Gospels recently, I believe that the single verse that best describes Satan’s strategy in attacking a leader is Mark 14:27.  The night before His death, Jesus quoted from Zechariah 13:7 and told His disciples, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’”  While the devil sometimes picks off a stray sheep or two – and even provokes some sheep to fight each other – he knows that the single best way to slaughter an entire flock is to eliminate their leader.  Without their shepherd, the sheep wander off toward cliffs, fail to find nourishing pastures, and become prey for wolves.

Let me share some parallels between the way that Jesus was mistreated twenty centuries ago and the way that many pastors are mistreated today.

First, the enemies of Jesus were threatened by Him.  Before Jesus came on the scene, the Pharisees and chief priests and elders were the unquestioned spiritual authorities in Israel as well as the undisputed arbiters of Jewish law.  But in one of the first of many clashes with Israel’s leaders, Jesus publicly challenged their authority inside a synagogue on the Sabbath in Capernaum.  Jesus met a man there with a shriveled hand.  Although healing on the Sabbath was considered to be work and a violation of the popular interpretation of the Law, Jesus turned His attention toward the Pharisees before addressing His patient.  Showing His awareness of their presence, Jesus asked them in Luke 6:9, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”  The Pharisees chose to remain silent rather than engage Jesus in dialogue.  After looking them directly in the eyes, Jesus instantly restored the man’s hand to health.

Jesus committed a good deed that Sabbath day.  He cared much more for the spirit of the law than its letter.  While the Pharisees lived by their extra-biblical, legalistic codes, Jesus consistently behaved within the true meaning of God’s law.  In the Father’s eyes, Jesus only did good while in the Pharisees’ eyes, Jesus only did evil.  But who did Jesus work for: the Father or the Pharisees?  He served His Father alone.  Because He could have healed the man on any other day, Jesus’ attitude got Him into trouble with the religious authorities.  They began to worry that He might gradually come to displace them as leaders in Israel.

Jesus not only threatened the authority of the Jewish leaders by spurning their man-made laws, He also threatened their influence via a scathing public indictment (Matthew 23), castigating them for practices like hypocrisy, narcissism, vanity, majoring on minors, and being obsessed with their spiritual images.  And in Luke 13:17, after healing a woman with spinal issues on the Sabbath (once again in a synagogue), the synagogue ruler angrily told those in attendance, “There are six days for work.  So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”  But Jesus did not back down, accusing His opponents of being “hypocrites” who lead their animals to water on the Sabbath while prohibiting supernatural deliverance for hurting people.  Luke concludes, “When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing” (Luke 13:17).

Most of all, according to John 11:48, Jesus threatened their very survival.  After Jesus raised Lazarus, the Sanhedrin concluded, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation,” referring either to Jerusalem itself or the temple.  In other words, if Jesus kept attracting a large following, He might put the Jewish leaders out of business altogether, rendering them irrelevant.  Due to their scarcity mentality, they couldn’t let that happen.  While John the Baptist nobly proclaimed, “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30), their sentiment was, “We must become greater; He must become nonexistent.”

While Jesus and the Jewish leaders contended for the soul of their nation, many pastors and church leaders fight for control of a congregation.  There are people in every church who have been there for years – especially charter members – and who sense that their influence is being displaced as the pastor’s influence increases.  When that happens, it’s not uncommon for these people to band together and strike back.

Next, the enemies of Jesus plotted to destroy Him.  It is simply amazing to read how many times in the Gospels we are given insight into the real motives of the Jewish leaders toward Jesus.  While their decisions were made in the dark, they later fully came into the light.  For example, after Jesus healed the lame man at the Bethesda pool on the Sabbath, John tells us that “the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18).  John 7:1 tells us that Jesus purposely stayed away from Judea “because the Jews there were waiting to take his life.” The attitude of the leaders became so well known that some of the people in Jerusalem began to ask in John 7:25, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill?”  Jesus Himself told the Jewish leaders that He knew about their hostility toward Him in John 8:40 when He said, “As it is, you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.”  After Jesus declared that “before Abraham was born, I am!” the Jewish leaders “picked up stones to stone him” but Jesus slipped away from the temple area (John 8:58-59).

Finally, after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, we’re told about the Sanhedrin that “from that day on they plotted to take his life” (John 11:53). They were even so enraged at the miracle Jesus performed on Lazarus that “the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him (John 12:10-11).”  During the last week of Jesus’ life, Luke tells us, “Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him” (Luke 19:47).

The New Testament writers never tell us that anyone at this point was trying to kill Peter, or James, or Thomas – just Jesus.  In the same way, no one in a local church bands together to eliminate the small group director, or the children’s fourth grade teacher, or the office manager.  No, if they go after anyone, a group always goes after the pastor.

When I use the word “destroy,” I am not for a moment suggesting that the enemies of a pastor in church settings wish to kill him as they did Jesus.  While that sort of thing has happened – and I have some news stories in my files as evidence – it’s extremely rare.  It’s much more common for individuals and groups to try and harm a pastor’s reputation, remove him from office, or damage his career.  Rediger writes that “it is frightening, as well as embarrassing, to see how many religious leaders are willing to destroy careers, congregations, and missions in the name of theological cleansing, or whatever the source of their vexation.”  Greenfield ads, “In some cases, the commitment to do harm, to tear down, to destroy could be seen as just short of murder, because the evil actions are intended to kill the leader’s ministry, career, position in the church, and even his health.”

In my mind, it is often very simple to determine which side in a “religious war” represents the devil and which side represents the Lord. In a word, Satan majors in destruction (I Peter 5:8) while Jesus majors in redemption (Titus 2:13-14).

Posted in Church Conflict, Church Coup Excerpts, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination | Leave a Comment »

The List

April 18, 2011 by Jim Meyer

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

How would you handle such an assault?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why not counteract The List with one of your own?

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

Book Excerpt: Rebuilding

April 15, 2011 by Jim Meyer

From time-to-time, I plan on posting sections from the book I’m writing about the conflict my wife and I experienced in our last church ministry. After writing about 420 double-spaced pages (with lots of footnotes to bolster my opinions), I still hope to finish the book soon before inviting friends to review it. Here is an excerpt about the difficulty we experienced – and most pastors and their wives experience – after we left our church and community. Realize that this is still in draft form and not in final form. As always, thanks for reading!

Throughout this process, family and friends encouraged us to “let go” and “move on with your lives.”  It has not been easy to do so.  People wanted us to move on out of their own anxiety or because they saw how much pain we were experiencing. One of the challenges I faced when I moved to Arizona is that I wanted to know why the conflict happened.  When many pastors are forced to exit a church, they are able to put the conflict behind them and move on with their lives, but I found that difficult if not impossible.  My analytical brain could not rest until it uncovered the truth about our sensitive situation. The first few months after we moved to Arizona, I was still angry, but as the months wore on, I was more puzzled than anything.  Why did our opponents do what they did?  Based on the destructive aftermath, it just didn’t make any sense to me.

When Kim’s brother Ian was only eighteen, he was killed by a drunk driver.  Kim had never experienced the death of a close loved one before and it really shook her up.  In a sense, her whole faith was dismantled, even though it was rebuilt even stronger later on.  But there were certain actions that she had to take proactively so that healing could begin.  We drove to her brother’s gravesite at Forest Lawn.  We visited the very spot where he was killed.  Kim flew from San Jose to Los Angeles on several occasions to be with her family as they pursued a civil suit against the person who was driving when Ian was killed.  After Kim had done her investigative work, she was finally able to release the injustice committed into God’s hands, but it took her eighteen months to do so.

I operated on the same basis.  After six months or so, I still had unanswered questions about what happened, so I contacted a few of my friends – some of whom still attended the church – and asked them about certain details.  However, some of them interpreted my puzzlement as bitterness and wanted me to “let go” and “move on.”  While I understood the reason for their counsel, I couldn’t move on until I had most of my questions answered.  After we met with some friends from the church in early August, and after consulting with several Christian counselors who specialize in helping pastors with forced exits, I was finally able to be at peace about the events that occurred eight months after our final Sunday.  Writing this book has also been therapeutic for me because it has allowed me to rid my brain of a host of issues and allowed me to regain perspective. But I still have occasional flare-ups of anger and have come to accept them as part of the healing process.

You can’t short-circuit these kinds of feelings.  It’s like trying to hurry up grief after a divorce or the death of a loved one. You have to drink the cup of suffering dry.  You can only put it all behind you when you’re ready, not when others want you to be ready.  Kim and I would go for a few days and be in good spirits, but then something would remind us of what happened and we’d both go into depression for a day or two.  For example, although we enjoyed marked improvement in emotional health after we passed the one-year mark, we then had to move forty minutes away from our place in Surprise toward Phoenix to be closer to Kim’s work.  The move cost us time, energy, money (we lost a deposit on a rental), and possessions (we broke a few things), and the whole moving event triggered negative emotions that we hoped had disappeared: “Why is this the fourth house we’ve lived in over the past fourteen months?  Why do we have to haul all our possessions around again?  Will we ever be able to buy a house and feel settled?  When will we return to the kind of life we once knew?”

Back in Arizona, Kim and I had to engage in a project we had never attempted before: try and find a church home.  While we stayed home a few Sundays – mostly due to physical or emotional exhaustion – we found the process of visiting churches to be extremely daunting.  We perused church websites to determine which churches to visit, but we went to most of them only once.  Nearly every church we visited had edgy music (which we liked), and the music was usually skillfully played and sung, but we often didn’t feel like singing praises to the Lord.  Many of the songs that were presented were taken directly from passages in the Psalms, but the lyrics included verses that praised God and excluded those verses that expressed doubt or anger (like in the imprecatory psalms).  Believe it or not, the way I felt emotionally, I would have welcomed singing some imprecatory psalms from time-to-time, although I’m sure I would have been in the minority!  It seems like most churches want everyone in the congregation to feel good after the worship time without realizing how some people are feeling before worship starts.  In my view, Christian worship times miss the variety of emotions expressed in the Psalter.  We encourage praise and joy but do not want anything to do with depression and anger.  Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to the music of people like Bob Dylan or Van Morrison.  They know how to express a range of emotion through their lyrics, voices, and instruments.  For months, I’ve been drawn to Bob Dylan’s music because, as I listen to him sing (or croak), it seems like Bob understands what I’m going through, while a great many believers do not.  With a few exceptions, most of today’s Christian music doesn’t acknowledge pain or suffering very well.  I realize that singing psalms of lament won’t necessarily help a church to grow, but there must be a reason why so many people don’t sing during worship times. Maybe in many cases, they just don’t feel like singing lyrics that fail to reflect their present state of mind.

It was also difficult for me to hear other pastors teach.  While most of them delivered their messages in a competent style, at times I was appalled at the interpretations of Scripture that I heard given from the pulpit.  (Doesn’t anyone own or consult biblical commentaries anymore?)  One staff pastor preached on the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20 and had absolutely no clue what the words really meant or how the passage was structured.  Like many pastors, he read the passage aloud and then said whatever he wanted to say about it.  He went straight to application without ever dealing with interpretation.  But more than anything, I’ve had a tough time listening to pastors ignore Scripture while highlighting their own ideas as if what they have to say is more important than what God says.  My wife and I now attend a mega church, not because it’s large, but because the pastor is an excellent preacher and he knows what he’s doing when he teaches.  (It’s a good thing that pastors don’t speak to other pastors on a regular basis.  We can be a tough audience.)

When I first left our former church, I didn’t want to preach anymore.  Over time, I have come to accept the fact that I may never preach again, at least as my primary calling.  Last Sunday, our pastor talked about the recent death of his father, and recounted how whenever he had a conversation with him, his dad always told him two things: love your wife and preach the Word.  When I heard that, I got choked up.  I have always loved my wife.  I miss preaching the Word.

Posted in Church Coup Excerpts, Healing After Leaving a Church, Personal Stories | 6 Comments »

Why Follow a Gunslinger?

April 13, 2011 by Jim Meyer

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

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

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

Let me offer five possiblities:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will you be one of those people?

 

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

Beware of Bobbleheads

April 11, 2011 by Jim Meyer

Back in the 1960s, a new kind of doll hit popular culture: the bobblehead.  The first such dolls produced were of baseball players Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Roberto Clemente.  Later in the decade, dolls were produced of The Beatles.

As a kid, I distinctly remember bobblehead dolls of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had the best promotions in all of sports. The head on the bobblehead is oversized and, connected to its small body by a spring, continually nods.  The doll never says “no” but always says “yes.”

The only bobblehead I own is of former Oakland A’s pitcher Vida Blue, and I’ve been looking to give it away for quite some time.  If you want it, you can come over to my house and claim it.  (I met Vida Blue in Anaheim in 1972, the year after he won the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in baseball.  I asked him to pose for a photo.  He stuck his tongue out at me.  I still have the photo.  But you can’t have the photo.  It’s precious.)

Anyway, I digress.  The reason I bring up bobbleheads is because some Christian leaders resemble them.  Just as the bobblehead constantly nods its head in approval, so too these leaders always seem to agree with the other leaders around them.

Where can one find Christian bobbleheads in a church setting?

They can be found almost anywhere that decisions are made: on the programming team, among adult youth leaders, on any ministry team, and on the church board.  Especially on the church board.

Church boards – whether they’re called elders, deacons, servant-leaders, or the Board of Directors – usually have lots of decisions to make and not much time to make them.  I’ve attended several hundred board meetings in my time (violins, please) and one of the constant themes is that “we’ve got to hurry up and get out of here by 9:00 pm” or whatever time is set.  (11:00 is more like it.)  The chairman introduces an issue, board members ask questions and discuss it, and the board eventually comes to consensus.

When the issue is relatively insignificant, this approach works well.  But the more an issue impacts the entire church family, the more time the board needs to take in deliberation.  It’s irresponsible for a board to make a quick decision, for example, over changing the times of the services or borrowing money to construct a worship center.  The greater the impact on the entire church family, the longer the board needs to take in making a call.

This principle is especially relevant when it comes to two issues: hiring and terminating the head pastor.  Let’s talk about the latter decision.

Every month in our country, 1,300 pastors are involuntarily terminated from their positions.  Some deserve it, being guilty of incompetence, immorality, or stubbornly refusing to repent of wrongdoing.  But in the great majority of cases, the template goes like this:

One board member has it in for the pastor.  Let’s call him the gunslinger.  For a year, he tries to wear down the pastor through controlling tactics, insinuations, harassment, and a lack of support.  He privately makes his case with the other board members between meetings in the church parking lot, during private meals, and at “secret meetings” in a restaurant or someone’s  home.  The gunslinger can’t seem to find anything the pastor does right and concludes that the board must “shoot him” to save the church.  When questioned about the propriety of such an undertaking, the gunslinger produces a Wanted poster with a list of charges against the pastor (and often his family) that indicate the pastor has to go, the sooner the better.  It’s never the quality of the charges but the sheer quantity that ultimately persuades the other board members.

If you’re wondering about how in touch with reality I am, let me quote from Guy Greenfield’s book The Wounded Minister:

This person “will lead a campaign of attack on the minister.  This person is not trying to give constructive criticism.  Even if some valid points are offered, his goal is nothing short of control, no matter what it may cost the minister or the church.  The antagonist is so full of rage that he feels compelled to attack the ‘enemy’ (the minister) until he is destroyed (terminated and eliminated from the scene).

This person probably has a ‘God-problem.’  He feels some deep-seated anger toward God, for some reason out of his past experiences.  Because it is difficult to show anger directly toward God, the pathological antagonist chooses the minister, the ‘man of God’ as his target.  Sometimes this anger is guilt-driven (possibly due to some hidden sin, such as an extramarital affair, for example).  His antagonism is an attempt to move the spotlight off his own sins and onto another.  Therefore the attack is a smoke screen to cover his own moral indiscretions … His stated reasons for opposition are a ruse for his own hidden agenda.  What he really wants is power, control, status, and authority.”

How does the gunslinger get away with his diabolical plan?

A while back, I bought a DVD collection of the classic TV show Bonanza.  The collection contains more than 30 episodes of the show from the first several years, all of them very, very good (even though they’re not remastered.  But what do you expect for $6.99?)  In some of the stories, there’s a bad guy who wants to kill Pa or Hoss or Hop Sing, but he never tries to go gunnin’ for them by himself.  He’s always got some not-so-bright “boys” who are willing to do whatever he tells them to do.  No matter how bad his plan is for stealing Ben’s cattle or grabbing some Ponderosa land or stealing Little Joe’s girl, the boys are in the background nodding their heads.

In other words, they’re bobbleheads.

Church boards have bobbleheads, too, or else the gunslinger couldn’t get away with anything.  They fail to realize that just as the gunslinger has been working on the pastor for a long time, so too he’s been working on them.  Greenfield again:

This person “tends to attract certain followers.  Without them, the antagonist’s efforts would fizzle.  He usually does not have the courage to go it alone.  He needs followers to bolster his campaign against the minister.  My antagonist was calculating in his enlistment of a small band of followers.  Each had a personal ax to grind with regard to what was happening in the church.  Each had a reputation for being a severe critic of former ministers.  All but one was a natural follower in personality makeup.”

In other words, they were bobbleheads.

Greenfield goes on:

“Four others were enlisted to join in this effort.  They began to hold secret meetings at Jim’s home on Wednesday evenings (at the same time the congregation was scheduled to hold midweek prayer meetings at the church building).  So Jack won over five men and their wives to concur with his accusations, none of which was true.  All of these men were deacons [board members].  Then, one by one, a few of their longtime friends, nondeacons, were persuaded to see things at church their way.”

The bobbleheads on the board kept nodding their heads in time with each of the gunslinger’s accusations.  They nodded so much that it became trendy to do so around town … er, the church.  Soon others began to “do the bobblehead” as well.  Greenfield concludes:

“In a few months, they knew they could count on at least 30 church members to vote with them regarding the minister’s future.  In the final showdown business meeting, they were able to muster some 50 members to vote with them.  There were some 135 members who voted to sustain the minister.  These were not good odds for future unity and fellowship in the church.  Therefore, I chose to take early retirement.  My health was too fragile to continue living with this kind of stress.”

The gunslinger never has to actually fire a shot at the pastor.  Just the threat of a shot causes most pastors to head for the high grass.  “C’mon, pastor, draw!”  But most pastors aren’t trained to shoot, especially at church leaders.  The gunslinger knows this and figures that even if the pastor tries to shoot, he’ll fire blanks – or wing the associate pastor.

Greenfield then asks the question that I’ve often wondered about.  Maybe you have, too.  “Now why would a handful of malcontents, led by a pathological antagonist, be able to enlist followers in a crusade based on a combination of falsehoods and half-truths?”  In other words, how does the gunslinger enlist bobbleheads to his cause?

If you have some ideas, I’d love to hear them.  I will share my own ideas next time.

Posted in Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Board, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination | 2 Comments »

Book Excerpt: Tough or Tender?

April 8, 2011 by Jim Meyer

After working for more than a year, I am getting closer to finishing the book I’m writing about what happened in my last ministry.  Because I need to spend much of today on the book, I thought I’d share with you an excerpt from a chapter I’m calling “What I Did Wrong.”  In that chapter, I expound upon some mistakes I made that contributed to our eventual departure.  Please pray for me that I will finish the book soon.  A perfectionist is never finished!

My third mistake is that I wasn’t a tough enough leader.  God gave me both an analytical mind and a tender heart.  As a leader, I chose to use persuasion instead of coercion.  For example, whenever a staff member made a mistake, I would sit down with him or her and address the issue as soon as possible, but if they didn’t cooperate, I didn’t know what to do after that.  Part of the reason for this is that I did not have the authority to hire and fire staff, and the staff knew it.  Years ago, a well-known consultant was working with a church I was leading and zeroed in on my inability to make staff members always do what I expected them to do.  He asked me, “Jim, are you a responsible person?”  My answer was, “Yes, I’m very
responsible.”  He asked again, “Does someone only have to ask you to do something once before you’ll do it?”  I told him, “Yes, you only have to tell me to do something once.”  He then concluded, “But Jim, not everyone is like that.”  He helped me to see that I was doing a great job supervising staff members that were just like me but doing an inadequate job of supervising those who were different from me.  I addressed every issue.  I said everything that needed to be said.  But without the authority to hire and fire, certain staff knew they didn’t have to take me seriously.  They could just form an alliance with key individuals or groups in the church as a way of gaining ecclesiastical immunity.

For example, in some churches, a staff member will complain to a board member about the senior pastor and the two will form an unofficial alliance.  So if the senior pastor ever comes to the board to complain about that staff member, or recommends that staff member be fired, the staff member has a built-in advocate.  This happened to me years ago in the second church that I served as pastor.  The church secretary was consistently late to work, and no matter how many times I spoke with her about it, her behavior didn’t change.  When I went to the board to ask for their assistance in the matter, one of the board members circled back and told the secretary that I had talked about her in the board meeting.  This made my working relationship with both parties nearly impossible.

It is my contention that most mega church pastors in America are tough as nails behind-the-scenes.  They may appear to be approachable and vulnerable when they speak from the pulpit or meet people in the patio, but when it comes to the way the church operates, their word is law.  They are the leader and everybody knows it.  Young pastors watch a popular preacher on television or hear him speak at a conference and assume that pastor’s church grew numerically because he’s such a great communicator.  While that may be so, I believe there are many great preachers in small and medium-sized churches as well.  (They have to be good because they are often the only reason that people attend that church.)  But it’s how a pastor organizes the leadership of his church throughout the week that really makes the place go – and most of us never get to see that pastor in action behind-the-scenes on his home campus.  While I can’t prove this, I believe that ninety percent of all pastors are primarily tender people while ten percent are tough guys.  It’s the tough guys that pastor the big churches.  They also know just what to do when they’re attacked from within.

Is it a pastor’s personality that causes him to be tender rather than tough, or is this the way pastors are trained in seminary?  In his book Clergy Killers, Rediger observes that “… the church today is not training pastors to handle conflict, to support themselves in survival situations, to be disciplined spiritually, nor to be toughminded when their leadership is sabotaged.” Years after graduation, I had dinner at the home of a prominent professor from my seminary and I asked him why pastors weren’t taught “street smarts” in school.  He told me that the accreditation committee was interested in academics for core classes and that many practical ministry matters could only be addressed through electives.  Although I did take an elective class on managing conflict in seminary, there were only eight students in the class.  While I believe that the lack of focused seminary training has something to do with the way pastors wilt in conflict situations, the truth is that most pastors are attracted to church ministry because of their tender hearts which are easily broken when they sense they’re being abused or rejected.  As Marshall Shelley wrote in Mastering Conflict and Controversy, “Politicians are satisfied with 51 percent of the constituency behind them.  Pastors, however, feel the pain when even one critic in a hundred raises his voice.”  This is why I believe it’s imperative for the lay people of the church to be trained and empowered in conflict management.  The pastor just can’t do it all either from a physical or an emotional perspective, especially when he’s the target of an all-out attack.

Posted in Church Coup Excerpts, Personal Stories | Leave a Comment »

Stories I Couldn’t Tell

April 6, 2011 by Jim Meyer

When I was a pastor, I didn’t like to self-censor myself when I preached.  I wanted the freedom to talk about any issue and tell any story.

But there were some I just couldn’t bring myself to tell in church for one reason or another, usually because they made me look bad.

For example, in the second church I pastored, I inherited some shut-ins that I had never met, so I thought it would be a good idea to meet them all.  One morning, I visited a married couple in a nursing home.  The wife couldn’t see and her husband couldn’t hear.  To communicate with the husband, we used a small blackboard.  When I left, I was pretty sure they had no idea who I was.

After a little while, the wife died, and I didn’t hear about it for quite a while.  Her husband sure wasn’t going to tell me, and the family never contacted me – and I didn’t have any contact information for them.

I started feeling badly about some of these shut-ins, so I began praying publicly for “The Shut-in of the Week” during the Sunday service.  We featured a different shut-in every week.  If we had PowerPoint back then, I could have shown everyone who the shut-ins were with a digital photo, but at least we were praying for them.

One of the shut-ins I prayed for continually was the husband who couldn’t hear.  When I came before the Lord, I was passionate about praying for him because I felt so badly for him.  Because I didn’t know how to communicate with him, though, and because I didn’t think he knew who I was, I didn’t make a habit of going to visit him.

One Sunday, after praying for this man again, one of the senior ladies in our church pulled me aside and said, “Jim?”  I said, “Yes, Veronica.”  She said, “You know John So-and-So that you prayed for today?”  I said, “Yes, what about him?”  Veronica replied, “He died four months ago.”

Not good.

There was another older couple in that church, and I tried to visit them every few months, but they were pretty cranky.  Their last name was Brown and the man’s wife called her husband “Brownie.”  His claim to fame is that he used to park cars at the Hollywood Palladium back in the Golden Days of Hollywood.  He showed me all these photos featuring him and movie stars.  It must have been great fun parking those cars and I tried to be as enthusiastic about it as I could.

We said the Lord’s Prayer occasionally at our church at that time, and Brownie came one Sunday when we were saying it.  The next time I came to their home to visit, he said I didn’t say the Lord’s Prayer correctly.  He said, “It’s not ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ but ‘in earth as it is in heaven.'”  (Talk about picky!)  I think we opened up a Bible to see what the proper preposition was, and I was right, but he maintained I was still wrong.

I didn’t want to visit them anymore after that.

But one night, it was Visitation Night, and Kim went visiting with another woman at the church, and they ended up at the home of the Browns.  (If you called ahead on Visitation Night, people would say they were too busy to see you.  If you just dropped in, you had a better chance of catching them off-guard.  It was always a safe bet to see the Browns because they were so old that they weren’t going anywhere.)

Anyway, evidently Mrs. Brown couldn’t see who Kim was, because once everybody sat down, she began criticizing the pastor in harsh terms.  Kim didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  The Browns had stopped coming to church, so it couldn’t have been anything I said in a sermon.  Must have been that mini-argument I had with Brownie about “in” and “on.”

When Mr. Brown died, eleven people came to his service.  I was suprised he got that many.

When I was an adult youth leader during my sophomore year of college, we youth leaders planned a special event: George Washington’s Birthday Party.  We held it in the worship center at our church.  We hid eggs all over the auditorium (I know, it wasn’t Easter, but that was the point) and then gave the kids prizes afterwards.  The best prize?  A brand-new Bible.  The worst prize?  A hamburger from McDonald’s that I had kept in the trunk of my car for a solid week.

That hamburger went on my resume when I later applied to be the youth pastor at our church.  (I got the job.)

But I almost didn’t because of what happened in children’s church a couple years before.

During my freshman year at Biola, all students had to be involved in a Christian service assignment for three hours every week.  I had no clue what to do.  Somehow, I ended up in children’s church.  I knew nothing about teaching kids.

For the first few months, I did okay.  I kind of prepared for the lessons and kind of taught the kids.  Most of the time, I was just trying to control the class (and watch the clock).  My supervisor, whose name was Frank, didn’t appreciate the fact that I would someday teach for a living.

Well, one time, I didn’t have anything prepared, so in a moment of temporary insanity, I brought spray paint to class.  I am not kidding.  Spray paint.  We were going to color in the Bible lesson for the day.  I had been teaching second graders, but now I was working with kindergartners – not that it mattered.

The last thing I remember was a kid named David spraying paint not on the lesson, but all over his new white shirt.  (I’m still amazed that one of his family members is on Facebook with me.)

I got fired from my Christian service assignment.  In fact, I think I was the only kid in the history of Biola to flunk Christian service.  My ministerial career almost ended before it started.  And when I applied to be a youth pastor a couple years later, guess who showed up to make sure I wouldn’t be hired?  That’s right – Frank.

Thank God he got overruled.

See why I couldn’t tell these stories in church?

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Very Good Friends

April 4, 2011 by Jim Meyer

We were very good friends.

We met every Thursday for breakfast.  We’d tell each other about our weeks, especially about the challenges we faced in our jobs.  We shared our private pains and special joys with one another.

Nothing could harm our friendship.  After all, we were both pastors.

My friend was the associate pastor at his church, filling in while the senior pastor was in the hospital for months.  While he had ideas for his church, he didn’t feel right implementing them while his pastor – and supervisor – was incapacitated.  The months dragged on, but the senior pastor just wasn’t given the green light to return.  The church got into dire straits financially and began to spiral downward.  Some of the governing leaders in my friend’s church wanted him to ignore the pastor’s plight and lead the church ahead, but my friend felt that was a breach of ethics.

A tough, tough situation.

I was pastoring my first church a few miles away, and it was slow going.  I was under thirty, most of the people in the church were over sixty, and there were few people in-between.  I was reaching mostly people my age, and when my generation gained as many people as the over sixty group, power struggles began to emerge.  Since the church had booted their previous pastor, I thought I might be next.

Then one day, my friend called to tell me that a leader from his church proposed that our two churches merge.  There were about 80 people in my friend’s church and about 50 in ours.  Their building was paid for while we met in a school multi-purpose room that was scheduled to be bulldozed down by the school district.  We needed a building.  They needed more people and money.

Merger talks began.

Then the senior pastor from my friend’s church suddenly got well enough to attend a few merger meetings.  Somewhere along the line, he just disappeared.

While the boards from the two churches began merger negotiations, my friend and I continued to share how we felt about everything.  We both agreed that we would look for pastoral positions outside of the proposed merged church.  Neither one of us really wanted to pastor it.  I had read that in many cases, merger math is 1+1=1.  In other words, if you put a church of 80 and a church of 50 together, when the dust settles, you’ll have a church not of 130 but of 80.

So my friend began looking around, and a church in the Northwest expressed interest in having him as pastor.  I too began looking around, but the right situation didn’t open up for me.  I did not want to be the pastor of the new merged church.  I wanted to go elsewhere.

The board from our church gave the board from the other church one condition for merging: I had to become the new senior pastor.  The board from my friend’s church evidently wanted me to be the pastor as well – but I didn’t want the job.

My friend accepted the call to the Northwest church, and I was glad for him.  I still hoped I could find another ministry somewhere else.  But in the end, I didn’t.  On October 2 – the deadline set by the new board – I signed an agreement that made me the senior pastor of the new church.

My friend was convinced that “the fix was in.”  He believed that since he found another ministry, I should have done the same.  And I tried.  I really did.

He never spoke to me again.

I don’t think I’ve ever publicly told this story before even though it happened 28 years ago.  Why not?  Because I lost a friend – a good one – and for a long time, just thinking about it caused me great pain.

And I’m sure it caused my friend pain as well.  It’s hard to lose a close friend like that, no matter what you do for a living.

But how can two pastors – of all people – part ways like that?

There’s a story in Acts that many of us have read.  Paul took Barnabas on his first missionary journey, and they also took along Barnabas’ cousin John Mark (author of Mark’s Gospel).  During that initial adventure, John Mark left the two missionaries and returned to Jerusalem.  When the duo planned their second journey, Barnabas wanted to take along John Mark again, but Paul refused, believing that John Mark would probably desert them again.  Barnabas wanted to give his cousin a second chance and was willing to vouch for him.  Paul was the task-oriented leader, Barnabas the people-centered encourager.

Dr. Luke writes in Acts 15:39, “They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company.”

How could Paul – writer of half the New Testament, church planter deluxe, the chief proponent of divine reconciliation – sever a friendship with his mentor and colleague?  Shouldn’t they have hung around and tried to settle their differences before doing the Lord’s work?

When Paul returned to the churches he had planted on his first journey, some of the believers undoubtedly asked, “Hey, Paul, where’s your companion Barnabas?”  I doubt if Paul wanted to explain why his friend didn’t come on the trip.  Barnabas probably received similar queries anyplace they knew Paul.

Later in Paul’s ministry, he had positive words for both Barnabas and John Mark, although the latter doesn’t appear until 2 Timothy 4, the last chapter Paul ever wrote.  But thank God, everybody reconciled in the end.  Yet had Paul or Barnabas died first, they might have never have worked things out.

It’s ironic, but church ministry causes pastors to both make and lose friends.  Pastors make friends primarily with those with whom they serve: staff members, board members, key leaders, and ministry team leaders.  Friendships are forged as believers march together toward a common vision.  During such times, it’s natural to think, “We will always be friends.”

But sometimes disagreements surface between the pastor and a leader.  Sometimes the pastor feels he has to talk to a leader about their ministry and that leader becomes upset.  Sometimes the pastor believes he has to intervene in a leader’s life because he sees self-destructive tendencies.  There are even times when a pastor notices that a ministry is repelling people rather than attracting them and he feels the need to intervene.

When a pastor takes any of these actions, he risks his friendship with that leader.  Why?  Because he has to balance that friendship against Christ’s command to make disciples.

I’m writing about this because when a pastor is forcibly terminated, he isn’t sure he has any friends left in a church.  He knows the governing leaders will put their own spin on his departure and that he may end up being portrayed as someone who is incompetent or unspiritual or even evil.  He then has no idea who or how many people will end up believing what is said about him.  Should he try and approach friends in the church, he may be rebuffed or even ostracized.  The only way he really knows those friendships are intact is if his friends contact him and tell him that their friendship is still “on.”

I know about the loss of such friendships firsthand.  During my last church ministry, I lost some good friends, most of them male.  They chose to walk away for reasons of their own.  While I’ve come to accept what they did, the severance of our friendships hurt a lot.  On the whole, women were much more faithful and understanding.  This parallels the sufferings of Jesus when His male disciples fled but His female friends stayed by the cross and tomb.

Being the pastor of a church is a tough job – and it’s getting tougher.  People all come to church with their own expectations and impose them on the pastor, who can’t possibly meet each one.  For this reason, your pastor needs your prayers, encouragement, and support.

And he also needs friends who – come what may – will stand by him, and stand strong with him, and see him for who he really is: a deeply flawed person called to advance the kingdom of God.

I recently had lunch with a man who has remained loyal to his senior pastor for forty years.  Years ago, this man was the only staff member to stand up for his pastor when the rest of the staff banded together to get rid of him.  That pastor and his staff member have provided leadership to their church which now impacts more than 15,000 people every weekend.  Imagine what might have happened had that staff member not stood with his pastor.

Jesus told His disciples in the Upper Room, “You are those who have stood by me in my trials” (Luke 22:28).  It meant the world to Jesus that in His hour of need, eleven of His twelve disciples still considered Him their friend.

Romans 12:18 says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

Even your pastor.

Posted in Church Conflict, Forgiveness and Reconciliation among Christians, Personal Stories | 1 Comment »

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