Category Archives: Pastors

The pastor considers hiring an assistant. Uh oh.

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I have been an assistant pastor and as pastor, I have had assistants. They can be a great help in time of need.  And they can be a pastor’s biggest headache.

I wish I’d had one in a certain church.  I regretted having one in another.

In his book “The Twelve Caesars,” Michael Grant says these rulers of the Roman Empire were one-man shows for a long time.  Their burdens were heavy and their duties endless.  Most caesars worked very hard, he said.  They desperately needed advisors, consultants, and assistants.  But therein lay a huge problem.  How does one bring on board someone to be his assistant, an up-close and personal consultant, who is in on all the important issues of the day, without him being caught up in all the intrigue, the dramas, the personal animosities and rivalries.  How to find out who is loyal.

An assistant can be the pastor’s best friend; an assistant can do a great deal of damage.

I asked a pastor about a staff member he was having issues with.  “Are you afraid of him?”  He answered, “I’m not afraid of him, but I’m afraid of the damage he can do.”

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When church members insist on their rights.

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“Why not rather be wronged?” (I Corinthians 6:7).

Ask any pastor.

We hear it all the time.  Variations on this theme are endless…

–“All these years we have belonged to this church and given our money to support these preachers, and now when we need him, he’s in Israel on a holy land tour!”

–“I went by the church.  I needed to see the preacher then, not the next day.  And you’re not going to believe this, but he was on his way out the door, headed to his son’s little league game!  And me a member of his flock.  What kind of preachers are we getting these days?”

–“The preacher needs to apologize to me for what he implied in that sermon on Sunday.  I know he was talking about me, even though he used someone else’s name.”

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The former pastor cannot help the new pastor much. But he sure can hurt him.

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“May those who come behind us find us faithful.”  –Steve Green

The pastor who follows me at a church is pretty much on his own there.  Which is to say, there is little I can do for him, other than to pray for him.

The best thing I can do for a new pastor is to have served well during my tenure and done my level best to disciple God’s people, leaving behind a healthy congregation.  But after I leave, there is little more I can do for that church or its new shepherd.

My words of affirmation to the new guy are nice, but nothing more.  My words of commendation to friends in the congregation are basically meaningless since the pastor is on site and they are getting to know him for themselves.  From here on in, he will be having to find his own path, set his own agenda, work out his own relationships with key leaders, and find ways of dealing with those who want to exert influence they do not possess.

I can pray for him.  But there’s very little more I can do.

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The former pastor comes back for a wedding or funeral. Is this okay?

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Short answer: If it’s okay with the Lord, your wife, and the present pastor, go for it.

Smiley-face goes here.

But I’m not into short answers, as you may know.  So, let’s look at the subject…

I suppose I’ve broken every rule and violated every common sense suggestion here. My apologies to every pastor who preceded me and those who came after me.  Wish I’d been more thoughtful and much wiser.  Thank you for always being kind and gracious to one who didn’t always get this right.

The retired pastor comes back to do a funeral.  The former pastor returns for a wedding.

Yes or no?  Good or bad?

That is the question before us today.

As the new pastor of a church in North Carolina, I went over a year without being asked to do one wedding.  As painful as that felt, I understood it.  Young people want a minister whom they know and have grown up with to do their ceremony.  In fact, the only reason I was doing funerals that first year is we had an assistant pastor, an older gentleman who had been at that church a decade or longer, and I was assisting him.

These are realities of pastoring.  The preacher who expects to move to a new situation with no transition period is not being realistic.

That’s the main reason they keep inviting the former pastor back.

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Why do retired pastors hang on to become a problem? I think we know.

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The longtime pastor was given a great send-off.  Lots of honors and festivities, a nice gift, and a couple of plaques for his wall.  Great things were said of him and spoken to him. Only one thing was wrong.

He didn’t leave.

He held on.  He stayed in his house, kept running by the church office, continued inviting church members to his home, kept his ear to the ground to learn what was going on with the new pastor, accepted lots of funerals and weddings, and in general, made a nuisance of himself.

Meanwhile, the new pastor is having the dickens of a time settling into his proper role in the church.  It’s not the ghost of the old preacher that haunts him, but the man himself.  The old guy is everywhere.

Then, as church members called or dropped by to complain about the new preacher, the oldster listened sympathetically.  Their unhappiness confirmed his suspicions that the new pastor would not be as loving, as dedicated, as gifted, as attentive, as compassionate, blah blah blah, as he.

Lord help us.

Our previous article on this website brought up the subject of retired preachers hanging around.  But there’s more to be said on the subject.

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Pastors, someone else is always “on deck.” Do your job, then get off.

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“He must increase; I must decrease” (said by a very powerful preacher about the One who took his place in the minds and imaginations of the crowds).  –John 3:30

Watch how Barnabas acted when Saul of Tarsus gradually moved ahead of him so that their team became Paul and Barnabas.  Acts 13.

When I said we would be writing about retired pastors who stay on to make life miserable for their successors, people began sending me their horror stories.

You don’t want to hear them.  They are too painful.

One old guy refused to vacate the pastor’s office, so the new pastor was given a house trailer as his office until the old fellow died.  Solution: The lay leadership developing a spine.

Another old guy made sure to elevate himself in the minds and hearts of the church members so that his successor would not be able to live up to the standard he had set.  Then, he sat back smiling while people tore the young pastor apart for not doing that very thing.  Remedy:  The lay leadership rising up and speaking the hard truth both to the former pastor (and encouraging him to move his membership) and to the congregation (get your eyes off men and onto the Lord!).  That did not happen.  The younger pastor carries scars to this day.

I am a pastor.  I love pastors and pray for a long list of them often.  I am a friend of pastors and sometimes their counselor/advisor/mentor.  I believe in the role of the God-called shepherd, and I encourage church members to honor their minister and obey Hebrews 13:17.

But that is not to say all preachers get this right.

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Fearmongering: The cheapest kind of preaching

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“Men’s hearts will be failing them from fear” (Luke 21:26).

“Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (I Thessalonians 4:18).

When I was a kid–sometime in the early 1950s–I recall attending a revival meeting with my grandmother in Birmingham.  The preacher scared the living daylights out of everyone with his prophecies about the future, his warnings about Russia and Communism, and his forecasts about what was about to happen.  Later, as Grandma and I walked down those dark streets to her apartment, every plane going over seemed ready to drop an atomic bomb on us.

Scary preaching is foreign to the New Testament.

The great apostle actually thought teachings of the Lord’s return and the believers’ victory over and escape from this world should comfort us.

But listen to the typical prophecy preacher.   So many will use passages about the Lord’s return and the end times to strike terror into the hearts of the faithful.  They speak of the martyrdom of millions of the faithful, of the havoc to be wreaked throughout the world by the Lord’s death angels, of the Beast and the Antichrist and the desolation of abomination.

Matters of which they understand little.

God’s final warning!  The end is near!  Signs of the time!  The Antichrist is alive and living in New York City at this moment.  The United States in Bible prophecy!  Nuclear war predicted in Bible prophecy!

Sound familiar?  If you’ve observed the religious scene for the last 20 years or more, you’ve heard it all.  Turn on the television and you can hear it today.

There’s a reason for this.

Fear-mongering is a well-calculated plan to get religious but ignorant people into their organizations or onto their mailing lists, and then motivate them to open their bank accounts.

After all, fear works. Fear motivates.

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Pastors’ No-No: Overuse of the first person singular

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The fellow who developed something called “My Pillow” wants everyone to know “I did it.”  “When I invented My Pillow,” he says, and goes from there.  You get the impression he locked himself in a garage and didn’t come out until he’d figured out all by his lonesome how to make this new kind of pillow.  He comes across as a solo act.

In the TV ad, he says, “I do all my own manufacturing in my home state….”

The man is in love with the first person singular pronoun.  I, me, my.  A four-year-old saying “I can do it by myself” comes to mind.

And yet, the ads show a lot of people working in the man’s factories.  He is not doing this by himself, whether he realizes it or not.

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How the pastor can participate in community services and make it work.

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“Work for the welfare (shalom) of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray on its behalf, for as it prospers (“in its shalom”) you will prosper (“you will have shalom”). –Jeremiah 29:7

“Pastor, we’re asking all the churches in town to join together for a prayer rally for the election coming up soon.  Can we count on First Church to participate?  And by the way, we’d like you to be the featured speaker.”

Or, “We’d like you to extend the welcome, and set the direction for the service.”

Or “lead the invocation.”

What to do, what to do.  Accepting this will require time that I do not have.  This will be outside my comfort zone.  This will not have any immediate benefit to my church.

Sound familiar?

My two suggestions are: 1) When you possibly can, accept.  It’s good for churches and pastors to work together.  And, 2) whatever you agree to do, work to make it excellent.  You are representing the Lord, your church, and your family.

After being in the ministry for over 55 years, with most of it spent in pastoring six churches, I cannot count the number of community Thanksgivings services, Easter sunrise services, and citywide prayer rallies I have attended.  Today I had a small reminder about the importance of those time-consuming events about which we sometimes wonder whether they’re worth the trouble…

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Speak up for your pastor.

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“Lord, let these people know there is a God in Israel.  And while you’re at it, let them know that I’m your servant” (My paraphrase of I Kings 18:36).

A friend said to me, “Whenever I heard someone running the pastor down, I tell them to pray for him.”   I said, “May I make a suggestion?  While I appreciate your telling them that, a better thing would be to tell them strongly that you disagree, and say why you love your pastor.  They need to hear this.”

Yesterday, when my wife returned from her annual doctor’s appointment, she told me something fascinating.

On her way out of the office, two assistants spoke to her. “Isn’t he wonderful?”  “We have the best doctor in the building.” Bertha agreed.  We love Dr. Paul Vanlandingham.

I found myself wondering what if the church staff did that when people come into the office?  “Don’t we have a wonderful minister?”  “We’re so blessed to have such a godly pastor.”  “The Lord has blessed us by giving us such a spirit-filled leader.”

That sort of thing.

What if the ministerial staff said something similar as they interact with church members and others during the week?

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