Wednesday, March 16, 2016
A LETTER TO THE CHURCH: STOP KILLING YOUR PASTORS
Dear Church,
This letter could easily be considered self serving. I am a pastor, so anything I do to influence the church can be misconstrued as being about be me. That is a symptom of why I am writing this letter in the first place.
Here is the thing, Church, you are killing your pastors.
Pastors, especially those of us that preach, are prone to exaggeration. We use hyperbole to make sure our points are heard. We nuance stories so we can use them for our purposes. We try to turn everything into a teaching moment. All of this is true, but irrelevant, for what I am about to say.
Being a pastor is, for many of us, a death sentence. We don’t know how many years we have until the end, but the end is coming.
The worst part is that we pastors are completely complicit in our destruction. We have participated in elevating the role of pastor far beyond what it was intended to be. In the Bible we have a beautiful picture of a community that engages in the mission of God together. A multitude of leaders, with complimentary gifts, work together to be Good News for the world. They share life together, they share the burden of leadership, they share the burden of providing for the needy, visiting the sick, praying for healing, proclaiming good news, planting churches, hearing the voice of God, and performing miracles.
Those days are far behind us now. Instead we have created a top down leadership structure that elevates one person, far too often a man, into a super role. This one person now carries to burden of being the one to hear from God, establish a vision, equipping the people, raising the money, executing a strategic plan, visiting the sick, proclaiming Good News, launching new ministries, and exhibiting all of the spiritual gifts that are supposed to be present throughout the church.
This role isn’t super-it is stupid. It is a death sentence because no one can do it. There are extraordinary leaders who can do some of these things in such incredible ways that thousands upon thousands flock to follow them. They leave their pathetic and inferior pastors who are merely human to gravitate towards these pulpit rock stars. Of course, those pastors prove to be human too. They crash, they burn out, they have affairs, they say asinine things, they turn into bullies, they buy mansions, and fly on jets, and eventually they die too.
We are complicit because it feels good to be needed. We pastors are given respect, we are told how amazing we are, and we are celebrated for doing our job. It feels amazing. It is an intoxicating and addictive drug. It is a drug that kills us. Eventually we learn we can’t actually be who you think we should be. We aren’t good enough to meet your every need.
It starts with complaints about petty things. Do you seriously have any idea the stupid things that people complain to pastors about?
I didn’t like that song. The music was too loud. The lyrics on the screen were too small. The parking lot was too full. We ran out of coffee. There wasn’t enough food at the potluck. The kids are too loud. A visitor sat in my seat. You don’t do things exactly like we did them 30 years ago, and I liked 30 years ago. You didn’t visit my neighbor, whom you have never met, when he was in the hospital. Those are just things I have heard over the years. Each of us has our own list.
The complaints, the doubts, the politicking, all of it cuts us. Paper cut after paper cut, our strength is sapped and our life flows out of us. Why in the world do we expect any one person to fulfill our spiritual needs? Isn’t that what God does?
It is time to admit it. We have elevated our pastors to the place of idols. We practice idolatry, worshiping the idea of pastors and placing them in the seat of God. We want them to do for us the things that only God can do. They fail us, we reject them, and we kill them. We kill them with stress, unrealistic expectations, anger, judgment, scorn, and shame.
Church, it is time to stop pretending that our way of doing things is good. If we create spiritual fiefdoms where one man rules all as a great spiritual lord then we have created something other than the church.
Next time you think, “I wish my pastor would…”, stop and ask yourself, “What am I willing do about that thing?” Before you offer your pastor a complaint stop and ask yourself, “When was the last time I went out of my way to encourage my pastor?” Before you judge your pastor for something they aren’t doing ask yourself, “Does my pastor get enough rest to be healthy?”
I am so tired of watching my friends and colleagues die. I grieve as they are forced to drag their families through the pain of finding a new vocation or a new community to live in because their church is killing them. I mourn as I watch the church ignore the gifts that given to its laity and wonder why their pastor can’t do it all. I suffer as I continually battle expectations, planted within me my whole life, that I can’t possibly meet.
Church, stop killing us. Please.[From a Pastor]
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