Category Archives: Church Conflict

Three things a pastor cannot do (and should not try)

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The best thing about being a pastor is you’re able to make such a difference in people’s lives for eternity’s sake.

There are so many great aspects to the ministry, things you can do which were not available to you until the Lord thrust you into the ministry.  People trust you, they hand you the key to their lives (in a sense), they receive you  into their homes as an honored guest (almost a family member from the first), and they listen to you as though yours was the voice of the Father.

That’s a heavy load.

However, there are limitations. Just because people trust you and hand you a trainload of esteem and truckloads of trust does not mean you can do everything you would like. There are some lines you should not cross, some fences you need to respect.

The no-no’s everyone thinks of first might include prohibitions such as these:

…Not to preach longer than 45 minutes (25-30 is best). Who made that rule? No one. But unless your name is Spurgeon, it’s probably a good one to observe.

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Word-wrangling: A new rodeo event for preachers?

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“Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.” (II Timothy 2:14)

I’m not sure most of us preachers fully believe the scriptural command to avoid word-fights.

After all, aren’t some words worth wrangling over?

“Wrangling about words” conjures images of cowboys at the corral trying to tame a bucking theological term that won’t hold still.

It’s an interesting translation of the Greek logomacheo, with the logo meaning “word” and macheo referring to fighting.  “Wrangling” is as good a translation as any. Maybe “wrestling,” or simply “fighting over words.”  (Logomacheo is found only here in the New Testament, but the noun logomachia, found in I Timothy 6:4, is translated “disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth….”  A little free information there. )

Be that as it may, many of us preachers do love to argue about words.

Wonder why that is.

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That little outpost of 1950 inside your congregation

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In Brazil, there is a community of Alabama and Mississippi rednecks.

Really.

Okay, that needs a little explaining.

These are descendants of Southerners who migrated to South America right after the end of the Civil War. They call themselves “Confederados,” and according to Americans who have traveled there to study them, they sound like they’re all from Georgia.

The September 2013 issue of “American Civil War” magazine says as many as 20,000 southerners left the devastated southern states beginning in 1866 and continuing over the next few years.  Most settled in Brazil, although  some returned home, but those who remained accommodated themselves to their new culture, new language, etc., while making sure that their descendants grew up bi-lingual and with an appreciation for their southern heritage.  The city of Americana in the Brazilian state of Sao Paolo is 200,000 strong (not all of them Confederados, of course).

One member of their group says, “We’re the most Southern and the only truly unreconstructed Confederates that there are on Earth.  We left right after the war, and we never pledged allegiance to the d–n Yankee flag.”

As a citizen of the wonderful United States of America, I respond, “That’s your privilege, but you ought to get down on your knees every night and give thanks to Almighty God that the USA came together and has stayed intact. Imagine what Hitler and Stalin would have done in this world had North America been made up of a bunch of tiny, independent, competitive, argumentative nations instead of the United States becoming the leader of the free world!”

Anyway, as I was saying.

These transplanted southerners call to mind the Amish people inside our own country who maintain traditions and customs of former times.

Many a pastor knows what this is like.

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How to discriminate against “those other people”

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“You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly…. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:15,18)

This is not a good story and I apologize in advance.

In between my sophomore and junior years in college, I worked the call-in desk for the Seaboard Railroad ticket office in Birmingham.  Located downtown on 20th Street South, this was an attractive office with pleasant people.  The year was 1960 and during the hey-day of Jim Crow laws. The police commissioner in the city was named Bull Connor, a man destined to make headlines a couple of years later when he turned the fire hoses on blacks (and maybe a few whites; I’m not sure) protesting the harsh laws and customs in our city..

My job was taking reservations over the phone.  My instructor, a pleasant fellow named Andy, said to me, “Now, we have a little system here.  It goes like this.”

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Parasitical goings-on in church

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Have you ever heard of an insect called an ichneumon? Me either. But George Will wrote about it in his syndicated newspaper column this week in analyzing why Detroit declared bankruptcy a few days ago.

The ichneumon insect inserts an egg in a caterpillar, then the larva which hatches from the egg proceeds to gnaw the insides of the caterpillar. Eventually, it has devoured almost every part of the worm with the exception of the skin and intestines, while it carefully avoids injuring the vital organs.  The ichneumon seems to know that its own existence depends on the life of the insect on which it feeds.

George Will writes that government employees’ unions have been living parasitically on the city of Detroit. They were not as smart as the ichneumon insect, he says,  because they ended up devouring their host.

One way the Holy Spirit calls my attention to lessons He has placed in front of me is I find the story (the article, the fact, whatever) fascinating. If I cannot get it out of my mind, if it will not go away, if it keeps returning to bug me, then  all the signs are present.

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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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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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Making war seem like fun?

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Lately, my son Neil and I have been slugging our way through a couple of heavy books on the 1863 Vicksburg campaign in the Civil War.  When we finally figure out what happened and where and who did what to whom, we plan to spend a couple of days in the area walking the battlefield park.

Winston Groom, known to most as the author of “Forrest Gump,” is a well-respected writer of historical stuff including “Vicksburg 1863,” the second of our books (the other being Jeff Shaara’s “The Chain of Thunder”).  What makes Groom’s book a tad more enjoyable is the stuff he occasionally drops into the narrative. Like these, for instance….

ONE. Rebel General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a case study in a hundred things–ego, confidence, brilliance, foolhardiness, etc–caught up with Union Colonel Abel Streight near the Georgia line. Flying a flag of truce, Forrest invited Streight to surrender.  At the time he did such an outrageous thing, Forrest was out-numbered over three to one.

Streight agreed to surrender if Forrest could convince him that he had a completely superior force.

Forrest was ready.

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