{"id":10936,"date":"2016-07-04T09:38:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T14:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/?p=10936"},"modified":"2016-07-04T09:38:43","modified_gmt":"2016-07-04T14:38:43","slug":"puts-gray-hairs-preachers-heads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/puts-gray-hairs-preachers-heads\/","title":{"rendered":"What puts gray hairs in preachers’ heads"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28).<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Paul was\u00a0naming his burdens and enumerating his scars, after speaking of imprisonments and beatings, shipwrecks and nakedness, he adds\u00a0one that surprises some people:\u00a0the daily\u00a0care of the Lord’s churches.<\/p>\n

It’s every bit as burdensome as the others, believe me.<\/p>\n

Most of us do one church at a time; Paul had them all on his heart.<\/p>\n

A pastor can have 500 wonderful members who appreciate his\u00a0efforts and who\u00a0pray for him daily, but be worn to a nub by a few people with axes to grind\u00a0but with neither scruples nor accountability.<\/p>\n

A pastor friend at the end of his rope told me, “I feel like I’m being stoned to death with popcorn.\u00a0 I’m being eaten alive by a school of minnows.”<\/p>\n

All those\u00a0little nagging things that we laugh at have a way of accumulating, until eventually, they become more than you can bear.<\/p>\n

This is from my journal some years back….<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I had a run-in with a member last Friday.\u00a0 He is a non-practicing dentist.\u00a0 He was upset because his name was listed in the church bulletin as Mister and not Doctor.\u00a0 He said, “I’ve told those secretaries again and again.”\u00a0 So I said to him–<\/em><\/p>\n

a) I will talk to them.\u00a0 b) Mister is always appropriate for any man, from the President of the USA on down.\u00a0 It is never wrong.\u00a0 He said, ‘Don’t lecture me about ethics.’ I said, ‘I’m not. I’m lecturing you about English!’ \u00a0c) It’s your ego that is offended, and this is the main problem.<\/em><\/p>\n

That man and I had a short history of conflict, and this little confrontation–which no doubt I could have handled better–just made it worse.\u00a0 Thereafter, he devoted himself to finding dirt in my past to use against me.\u00a0 He ended up\u00a0concocting a lie–namely, that I was divorced and remarried and had not informed the pastor search committee; not a word of truth to it– and then spreading it.<\/p>\n

Our mission board was carelessly allowing that man to take teams overseas to do medical\/dental work for the Lord, even though the report is he\u00a0had come\u00a0within a hair-breadth of\u00a0being disbarred from his profession.<\/p>\n

One wonders what kind of mature adult obsesses over how his name is listed in the church bulletin.\u00a0 Who cares? and why?<\/p>\n

The man\u00a0suspected I might be a terrible boss and began hanging around the church office to pick up on the scuttlebutt.\u00a0 His suspicions were not without cause. After all, I had fired the secretary who was in place when I arrived and then terminated her replacement at the end of\u00a0a brief\u00a0trial period.\u00a0 The first woman simply refused to do what I asked.\u00a0 I would say, “I need you to keep the door closed between my office and yours so I can get some work done without interruptions.”\u00a0 But for whatever reasons, I do not know, she adamantly refused.\u00a0 After several other occasions when she would not do\u00a0things I asked, once again I was talking with her about it.\u00a0 She said, “Do you want me to resign?” I said, “Yes, I think so.” She began crying that she needed this job.\u00a0 I said, “You really should have thought of that before you decided\u00a0you would not do\u00a0anything I asked of you.”<\/p>\n

With the help of an employment agency, I hired another, but with the understanding the first 90 days would be probationary.\u00a0\u00a0This young woman was attractive and made a good impression, but\u00a0was incompetent.\u00a0 So, after three months, I released her. Before\u00a0clearing out of\u00a0the office, she preached me a little sermon on how to pastor a church.\u00a0 (Naturally, she knew how to pastor a church. She was all of 23 years of age, exactly one-half my age.)<\/p>\n

On one occasion, I had dictated\u00a0a letter\u00a0which\u00a0the second woman\u00a0typed up.\u00a0 Where I had said “new lease on life,” she had typed “newly sown life.”\u00a0 It’s actually funny, although it makes no sense. Why,\u00a0one wonders,\u00a0didn’t she ask if she didn’t understand?<\/p>\n

With the input of the church staff, we asked our wonderfully efficient receptionist to move into my office as my assistant.\u00a0 At first, she was reluctant, having seen two other women fail.\u00a0 She stayed twenty years.<\/p>\n

However, with my third secretary in my first year as pastor, the wayward dentist just knew I must be an ogre to work for and began to hang around, hoping to pick up\u00a0some dirt. One day\u00a0the last one said to him, “Doctor (name), the pastor is a wonderful boss. And I love working for him.”\u00a0 And he never\u00a0returned to the office.<\/p>\n

This, you\u00a0should bear in mind, took place\u00a0in the church office.\u00a0 These are God’s people.\u00a0 We were doing the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

Go figure.<\/p>\n

A friend who\u00a0manages the office for the Northeast Baptist associations in Monroe, Louisiana, gave me a good line.\u00a0 Glenda Suggs said, “Every time we have a new person working in our office, I try to prepare them for the wide assortment of people with whom they will be dealing. I tell them, You are about to see the worst side of the best people.”<\/em><\/p>\n

One day a friend mentioned to me\u00a0“the church’s dirty little secret.”\u00a0 And what is that, I asked.\u00a0 He said, “People can throw a hissy fit in church and they’re never held accountable.\u00a0 But they would never\u00a0throw such tantrums\u00a0in their office or school.”\u00a0 He gave me a couple of examples which formed the basis for an article for our blog. “What I wonder,” he said, “is why do they think they can get by with it at church?”\u00a0 Good question. \u00a0 See “the church’s dirty little secret.”\u00a0(http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/churchs-dirty-secret\/ )\u00a0 It quickly became one of the most read pieces of that year.<\/p>\n

Now, here is the kicker:\u00a0 None of these little things that so harass the Lord’s shepherd weighs heavily on the scale.\u00a0 None rise to the level of serious burden.\u00a0 It’s just the harassment of them.\u00a0 Therefore, no one but the pastor ever knows about them.\u00a0 Were he to mention these incidents to anyone but his wife, they would think he was overreacting, making mountains of molehills, and tell him to “man up.” <\/em><\/p>\n

“The little foxes spoil the vine” is how the Song of Solomon puts it.<\/p>\n

Your church is being overrun by little foxes today, my friend.<\/p>\n

Pray for your pastor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28). When Paul was\u00a0naming his burdens and enumerating his scars, after speaking of imprisonments and beatings, shipwrecks and nakedness, he adds\u00a0one that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict","category-pastors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10936"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10952,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10936\/revisions\/10952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}