The Casual Christian

There was once an incident with a youth pastor at my church. Staff supervision fell to the associate pastor. The parents of several of the young people complained to him about the behavior of the youth pastor.  The incident was serious enough that the associate pastor saw fit to dismiss the man. For some reason, the senior pastor took exception to the decision and demanded the young man be reinstated. The associate pastor resisted because he knew doing so would cause an uproar among the parents. The senior pastor called the elders and they demanded the associate pastor recant his position. He stood his ground on principle. The elders furloughed him until such time as he should change his mind. They said he had an issue with anger management - that he needed to issue a public apology to the church. Meanwhile, they kept the details of the incident quiet. So all kinds of rumors about the associate pastor began to circulate around the church. 

In reality, what the associate pastor had was not an anger management problem but an audacity problem—he dared to stand up to the authorities when he believed they were wrong. The result was that many people left the church and the associate pastor had to find a senior pastorate at another church because the well had been so poisoned.

That same senior pastor has written a number of Bible commentaries and devotionals and sat on the translation committee for the New English Standard version of the Bible. He is well known in Christian circles and highly regarded in the church. Because he was such a hot ticket, he was able to rule his staff with an iron hand and exercised tight control over the board of elders. He was a self-styled “preaching pastor” and spent most of the week in his suite of offices on the top floor of the church preparing his sermons. He did not fraternize much with people at church. His job was to explore the great riches of the Bible and extract the nuggets that others could not find. He did a terrific job of exposition in a historical context, but he never brought the truth out of the first century and applied it to everyday challenges.

His church was filled with a sort of spiritual intelligentsia—Bible teachers from a well-known Christian liberal arts college next door and leaders of the many Christian organizations around town. I suspect there are more published authors per capita in that church than almost any other church in America, especially since two different Christian publishing houses were represented among the membership. They have plenty of Bible knowledge, but the church hasn't seen significant growth for years.

The same church had a very autocratic elder board. They never allowed the congregation to have input into pastoral searches. On one occasion, I suggested that the chairman of the board consider polling the congregation on what priorities they have for their next pastor. He honestly had never even considered the idea but said he would give it a try. Needless to say, it never happened.

It was common practice at annual meetings to urge members to approve a measure that had the unanimous support of the board. Votes were done by a show of hands, so no one ever wanted to identify himself or herself as a member of the opposition. I considered this very intimidating and said so to the leadership. I suggested voting anonymously by ballot so people would feel free to express their opinions without any coercion. This idea was never implemented, either.

When the pastor retired, I expressed my concerns in a letter to his successor, “A word of advice. Open your heart to the people. Do not hole up in that corner suite of offices and isolate yourself from the members. Get rid of the gatekeeper at the foot of the stairs to the office suite and put a waiting room for visitors upstairs in the room that holds the massive conference table. Don’t use your secretary to screen calls and emails. Send a message that folks are welcome to meet with you. Keep ballots secret at meetings. No raised hands or voice votes.  Then folks won’t feel intimidated if they don’t go along with leadership. There has never been a voice vote that did not go the elders’ way. Stay in touch, stay in tune, and stay accountable!”

Paul was entrusted with a vision of heaven so glorious that God gave him a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble.  Yet he never threw his weight around. He was contrite even when he found it necessary to chastise the Corinthian church for their rebellion. It pained him to think that his harsh words might wound some of the believers. He said, “For out of great distress and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears, not to make you sad, but to let you know the love that I have especially for you” (2 Cor 2:4). This is the attitude of a man for whom love of God’s people surpassed his pride in his ability to exposit the scriptures. Oh that more pastors had such a deep love for their flock and such genuine humility!

From The Casual Christian pp. 67-68