Category Archives: Church Leadership

Something we know about the church’s troublemakers

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I’m reading my journal from over 20 years ago and being reminded of a lot of things–the grace of God and His sovereignty, the sweetness of many of God’s people, and also the sheer hypocrisy of some.

After I left one church under a great deal of duress, the business manager of the church and I had lunch together one day.  This is from my notes written that night. I’m eliminating the names, because identifying these people would serve no purpose. Many of them have gone on to their (ahem) just rewards and what’s done is done.

What the business administrator said was stunning.

“You’re no longer the pastor, so I’m telling you this now. So many of the people who worked against you gave almost nothing to the church. If (the chairman of the personnel committee) tithes, then he’s on welfare.  And (assistant pastor) gives zero to the church. Not a dime. And his wife a piddling.”

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12 things I tell the deacons

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No one is more surprised than I that the Lord has me leading all these deacon training conferences and retreats these days. (I’ve done five so far, with two or more to go. A couple had to be canceled for various reasons.)

I love deacons and treasure the relationship with quite a few from the six churches I served over four decades.. My oldest son is a deacon and served as chairman of our church’s group the last two years.

However….

I carry a few scars from battles with deacons.  I encountered a dozen or so along the way with mental health of the worst kind, some with stunted and deformed theology, and one or two who thought they were rightfully entitled to rule over the universe.   This website carries some forty or more articles written on the ministry of deacons over the years. Frequently, those painful experiences and harshest collisions produced the  best lessons and, of course, the most interesting stories.

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Let’s get ‘er done, church!

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(If we wait until we can do everything perfectly, we will still be sitting here when the Lord returns. Let us be up and doing.)

“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men” (Colossians 3:23).

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

A minister who was interviewing for a position on the staff of my church said, “If I come as your (whatever the position was), I would not make any changes for the first year, but spend that time building relationships.”

That was it for me.  We have work to do, I thought. Relationships are good, but they may be built and must be maintained in the midst of doing the work the Lord has given us.

Stephen Dill Lee, well-known Confederate general who later became the founding president of Mississippi State University and served as a deacon at nearby Columbus’s First Baptist Church, once resigned from the church’s deacon board. He said, “When I was in the service, my approach was always to charge, charge, charge. Go forward. But these deacons don’t want to do anything.”

The minutes of the deacons from those years, the early 1900s, indicate that some prevailed upon General Lee and he agreed to stay on. Then, he chaired the church’s building committee that tore down the 1838 sanctuary and built the 1908 edifice which still stands.  He was a get ‘er done leader.

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Why we must have denominations (of one type or the other)

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A pastor in New Hersheybar emails me. “Pastor McKeever, I read your articles. We need your help.  We are a struggling community of small churches trying to get established, trying to get financial support, trying to get our ministers educated. Can you come help us or send cash?”

Well, maybe it’s never worded exactly like that, but that’s the gist.

How to know.

Is this guy for real, and is this a genuine opportunity to make a difference for the Kingdom of God?  Or is this fellow preying on the (so-called) rich Americans who in addition to having lots of spare cash also have zero discernment?

I tell him to contact our International Mission Board at www.imb.org.  If we do not have missionaries in his country, we surely have a department with responsibility for his part of the world and someone in that office will be delighted to hear from him.  Maybe someone there will know somebody who can assist him.  And once in a while, we have a “representative” or “consultant” (as they are frequently called these days) living right there in his village.

Usually, that’s the last I hear from this fellow. Whether I discouraged him or exposed him is hard to know.

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When the church gives sanctuary to its enemy

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“I came to Jerusalem and learned about the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, by preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God; and it was very displeasing to me. So I threw Tobiah’s household goods out of the room. Then I gave an order and they cleansed the rooms….” (Nehemiah 13:7-9)

My story starts with a dream. It ends with someone else’s dream.

As a rule I don’t dream, and when I do, I usually attach no importance to it. (Good thing the kings in the Bible called for Joseph and Daniel to interpret their dreams; had they summoned me, I’d probably have said, “Dreams are just your mind trying to settle down from a stressful yesterday. Go back to sleep.”)

One hour after waking up, the Lord showed me what this dream meant.

In the dream, I was in a hotel room. As I entered the bathroom, I spotted a hole in the wall. Inside lay a huge boa constrictor, curled up.

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Myth: Some people like church dull.

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“Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new….” (Isalah 43:18-19)

Let me tell you two stories, both sad, the first more than the other.

James and Cissa are leaving their church.

This couple is one you want in your church. Pastors would, please pardon the expression, kill to get them. They are young parents, beautiful, committed, sharper than you and me combined, and talented.  They have hearts for serving, a willingness to hang in there when things go bad, and a submission to leaders even when they disagree. And they tithe.

But after years of frustration in their church—a congregation that is dead-set on dying, even when the Lord planted them in a thriving community and sent them several dynamic couples like James and Cissa–they have finally received the green light from the Lord. It’s time for them to find another church.

I hate, hate, hate this for their church. The decision-makers brought it on themselves by refusing to connect with their community, by ignoring members who wanted to do something innovative, and by their commitment to the church of yesteryear. The community they’re trying to reach existed during the Eisenhower years and hasn’t been seen since.

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When leaders are afraid to lead

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“Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you….” (Jeremiah 1:8).

A friend asked me, “Why is it taking our church so long to get a new pastor?”

I said, “Because your search committee is afraid.  They know that certain members of your congregation are quick to pick apart any minister who isn’t like (a previous pastor, now in Heaven). And they don’t want to take that chance.”

What would you say if I told you most leaders of our churches operate from fear?

You would wisely ask me how I know and where I got such information or arrived at such a conclusion. And I would admit that I do not know this for a fact, that it’s something I’ve come to believe from observing churches and their leaders all these decades. Furthermore, as a pastor for over four decades, I am well-acquainted with the practice of operating from fear.

For instance….

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The dumbest thing we pastors do

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We preachers sometimes torture the faithful with our complaints about the unfaithful.

We don’t mean to do that.  It’s just something that happens, usually as a result of our frustration.

Listen to the typical pastor or staffer addressing the congregation:

“A little rain never hurt anybody! And where is half our congregation?  But oh no, they couldn’t make it today. They had no trouble sitting through the ball game yesterday in freezing temperatures! Or playing a round of golf in the rain. But let a little sprinkle drop out of the heavens and they can’t make it to church today!”

Or this one:

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What I needed as a young preacher

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At 73 and no longer pastoring churches, I’m going hither and yon to preach as the Lord leads and the invitations arrive.  It’s a satisfying life, the kind of retirement (if you insist on calling it that) I would have dreamed of had I known such was available.

Observing my host pastors as they lead the congregations, I remember so vividly experiencing the same life they know with its delights and demands, its burdens and blessings. My heart goes out to them.  (In case anyone wonders, I do not arrive at a church handing out advice to host pastors, acting as some kind of inexhaustible fountain of wisdom to these good men. I come to do whatever they ask–to teach or preach or train, draw my pictures, or tell my stories–and if the Lord chooses to turn it into more than that, well and good.)

And frankly, looking back over my own lengthy pastoral ministry, sometimes my heart aches for the young McKeever, the pastor I was in my late 20s and 30s.  I wish I could go back and give that eager young man a good pep talk, a needed bit of advice, a big hug, and a swift kick in the pants.  The young Joe needed all of these at one time or other. (A few friends who have stayed with us from all those years will read this and smile and think, “At last, he gets it.”)

1) I wish I could tell that young pastor (which I was) to quit living and dying by the numbers from each Sunday.  You know about those numbers–our attendance today, what the offerings were, did we have any additions, and how all this compares with last year.

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Beating the pastor-blues on a Saturday

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(I’ve worked on this piece for several weeks, can’t get it right, but keep coming back to it. Maybe I’m having trouble because the subject itself is depressing. A friend of mine, Dr. Larry Kennedy, once wrote a book he titled “Down With Anxiety.”  I loved Larry–he’s long in Heaven now–but could not help but think the title itself was a downer.  At the moment, I’m almost through reading George Orwell’s first book “Down and Out in Paris and London,” a little paperback novel in which he tells how it felt to be desperately poor in the 1920s in those major cities. I am so ready to be finished with this book and to watch a Marx Brothers movie or something! Anyway, on this Saturday, for what it’s worth, I am sending this little article on its way with a prayer that it will connect with someone who needed its word.) 

Saturday is the worst of all possible days for a preacher to be down emotionally. He is about to tackle his heaviest assignment of the week–to stand before the flock and declare the counsel of the living God–and for that he will need all the strength and energy he can muster.

To prepare himself for tomorrow’s challenge, he needs his faith intact, his vision clear, and his confidence strong, and he needs it today, Saturday.  He needs to be free of pain if possible, free of worry if practical, and free of stress if that is achievable.

But what if he has the blues? What if the preacher is down in the dumps, is sad, feels something called an angst, which I take to mean a free-floating anxiety?

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