How to Destroy Pastors

To even dare these things (cutting externals to promote real spiritual growth) never crosses some pastors’ minds, of course. 

Some of them learn to work the system, taking notes on the desires of their congregations and flashing bits of evidence of their churches’ “progress.”  They work hard to make their first church “successful” so that they can be “called” to a bigger church, and then to a bigger church, and then to a mega-church. 

Standing on the stage at the pinnacle of success, they can look at the thousands upon thousands who have come to hear them speak, they can look out over a church campus filled with their buildings, they can think back over their portfolio of numbers and projects, and in all this they can gain some assurance, like Nebuchadnezzar, that there’s something special about them. 

All the glitter also helps them forget about any private failings or nagging doubts about the quality of their ministry.  “Surely,” they might think.  “Surely if there are so many gathered to hear me, then my ministry must be gold, not wood, hay, and stubble.”

On the other hand, of course, many brave pastors are so moved by the Spirit of God that they do dare work against the flesh, and many of them work themselves to the bone trying to lift the congregations on their backs and carry them into the Promised Land. 

They beg, they persuade, they pray, they preach, they lead out by example, and they will receive their good reward from the Lord when they see Him, but their efforts are usually alone—and the fruit harvested is usually not proportional to their labor in sowing and reaping.  Being alone, they often waver between periods of true spiritual progress and true spiritual exhaustion, pulling back at times when the conflict gets too intense.  They wonder why ministry is so hard. 

Sometimes they conclude that the problem is just the particular stiff-necked church that they happened to fall into, so they move to another church, and then another.  In fact, the average pastor’s tenure at a church is about two years, just long enough for the pastor and the congregation to get thoroughly disenchanted with one another.  Not long enough for much enduring fruit.

Other pastors decide that ministry is just too hard period, and they drop out to pursue some other career.  Because they have left what they see as their “calling,” some of them carry the baggage of guilt and cynicism the rest of their days, sitting in the back of someone else’s church only out of an enduring sense of duty to their religion.  Others slip out of church life altogether.  Some have seen enough of godless Christianity to leave the faith altogether. 

If you haven’t met any of these runaway pastors, fugitive youth ministers, or failed missionaries yet, you aren’t meeting enough people.  There are probably some in your neighborhood. 

There’s no getting around the fact that leading a church is hard, even when it’s done right in every way, but the blueprint God gives us for church leadership is drawn up to give leaders every advantage possible.  God’s plan is not to lose three out of every five people who go into the ministry (the data given from several separate studies; see http://www.intothyword.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=36562). 

If He calls them into leadership, leadership is where He intends them to stay.  But that won’t happen without the leaders leading church in a more biblical way.

Chapter 5.6:  A Single Cord Is Easily Broken

Share