We’re all vulnerable.

Everyone who walks in the church door can be helped or hurt in what happens during the next hour. Whether saint or sinner, preacher or pew-sitter, oldtimer or newcomer, child or geezer, everyone is vulnerable, and should be treated respectfully, faithfully, carefully.

No one in the church family is more vulnerable than the pastor’s wife. She is the key figure in the life of the pastor and plays the biggest role in his success or failure. (Note: I am fully aware that in some churches the pastor is a woman. In such cases, what follows would hardly pertain to her household.)

And yet, many churches treat her as an unpaid employee, an uncalled assistant pastor, an always available office volunteer, a biblical expert and a psychological whiz.

She is almost always a reliable helper as well as an under-appreciated servant.

You might not think so, but she is the most vulnerable person in the building. That is to say, she is the single most likely person to become the victim of malicious gossp, sneaky innuendo, impossible expectations, and pastoral frustrations.

The pastor’s wife can be hurt in a hundred ways–through attacks on her husband, her children, herself. Her pain is magnified by one great reality: she cannot fight back. She cannot give a certain member a piece of her mind for criticizing the pastor’s children, cannot straighten out the deacon who is making life miserable for her husband, cannot stand up to the finance committee who, once again, failed to approve a needed raise or the building and grounds committee which post-poned repair work on the pastorium.

She has to take it in silence, most of the time.

It takes the best Christian in the church to be a pastor’s wife and pull it off. And that’s the problem: in most cases, she’s pretty much the same kind of Christian as everyone else. When the enemy attacks, she bleeds.

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Pastor, your church is about to receive a major blow.

My friend Barry Allen of Louisville knows about churches and finances.  Barry, who heads up the Kentucky Baptist Foundation, had this to say recently in The Western Recorder:

“It is likely that thousands of churches and ministries will (join Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in going) bankrupt within the next decade or two.”

Why? Barry says the major factor is that the older members in every church are the heavy givers. “Did you know that people over age 75 give four times as much of their income as 25 to 44 year olds?”

He said, “Although older members account for only 19 percent of the membership of churches in the USA, they give 46 percent of the donations.”

In case you haven’t been paying attention, that generation is dying off at an alarming rate.  In fact, through the estates they leave behind, Barry says they will be passing 41 trillion dollars of wealth to their children, grandchildren, and other heirs–as well as to the government in taxes.

The effect of this generation of heavy givers leaving the scene, Barry says, will be like a tsunami clobbering our churches.  He adds, “Most churches and ministries are unprepared.”

That should give you something to think about today!

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“Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices” (Colossians 3:9).

“Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 12:22).

Lying is almost unforgiveable in a pastor.

1. Do not lie to us about your resume.

If you say you went to school there or pastored that church, we want to believe you.  If you earned a degree, say what it was. If the degree was honorary, but not earned, say that also. What you must not do is give the impression you attended a school which you did not or served a church which you did not serve or possess a degree you  don’t..

Why would anyone lie about their resume? Obviously, to enhance their prospects for a job. But any position acquired as a result of a falsehood is worthless in the long run.

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