The Trap That Snares Assistant Pastors

I was 30 years old and had left my first post-seminary pastorate to join the staff of the largest church in the state. My title was “Minister of Evangelism,” although some of my closest buddies kept pronouncing it as “Vandalism.”

Once in a while, the pastor let me preach in his absence. It was a heady experience.

The church I had just left ran slightly over 200 in attendance. The new congregation was over seven times that size, and was peopled with an entirely different kind of human beings. The governor was a deacon, a previous governor sat on the front pew, the state denominational leadership could be found throughout the sanctuary, and television cameras beamed the live broadcast across the state.

The first time I preached in the pastor’s absence he had come down with a cold and called me the night before. “Be ready to preach,” he said. “Just in case.” The next morning, his wife called. “You’ve got it.”

That day, a dozen people joined the church.

Leaders told the preacher, “From now on, when you see you’re going to be out of town, there’s no need to bring in guest preachers. Joe can handle it.”

And that’s when it began to happen. That snare that traps all assistant pastors at one time or the other began to be set for me.

One day, I found myself sitting in the office of the editor of our state denominational weekly. He was encouraging me. He liked my kind of preaching. My sermons, he assured me, were more biblical than the pastor’s. More meatier, more edifying.

I floated out of his office thinking I must be one of the best preachers in the state if that veteran leader thought so.

Not good. Not good at all.


Unless the young assistant pastor has his feet firmly planted on terra firma, he can have his head turned by members of the congregation who flatter him. And some of them can be lavish in dishing it out.

If the young man is truly stupid–sorry; don’t know of a stronger way of saying it–he will encourage those who wish to oust the present pastor and install him in the pulpit.

That is a sure recipe for disaster. It has the potential of destroying a young man’s ministry before it gets started. Will it destroy the older man’s work? Probably not. If he is secure in his position and confident within himself, he will carry on as before, hardly noticing the bump in the highway when his juggernaut ran over you.

I was fortunate to be serving under a pastor whose self-confidence was total. Had someone told him I wanted to replace him–which I didn’t–he would have laughed it off.

Over two years later, the movement to make me the pastor of that church got serious. Here’s what happened.

In the middle of the year, the pastor resigned and moved away. And because the people had received my preaching so well, the leadership team came to me with a plan. “We want you to preach every third Sunday, every Wednesday night, and to handle the weekly businessmen’s luncheon.” They explained, “If we let you preach more often, the congregation will start looking upon you as their pastor. Then, when we bring in the new pastor, this could cause friction and you might have to leave.”

I was fine by that. In my third year at that church by that time, I was finishing a doctorate in ministry at the seminary, and knew that soon I would be back pastoring somewhere. I knew in my heart of hearts that this would not be that church.

So, that’s what we did. I preached three times every third Sunday to a couple of thousand people, on Tuesdays to nearly 200, and Wednesday nights to a large crowd. In between, I handled the duties of the evangelism and outreach ministry.

One day, someone informed me a local druggist in the church was circulating a petition to make me the pastor. That was the first I had heard of it.

Paul Moak, chairman of the pastor search committee, paid me a visit.

“Joe,” he said, “Do you believe God wants you to be pastor of this church?”

I said, “No sir.”

“Well,” he said, “We don’t either. But we need you to announce that to the congregation. See if you can put a stop to the petition.”

The next Sunday, just before the benediction, I told the congregation that I had learned of the petition and asked them to please stop it. “The Lord has a pastor for our church,” I said, “but it’s someone else, not me.”

A few weeks later, Moak said, “Would you tell the church that one more time?” I did, and finally ended the drive to make me the pastor.

I have several comments on that event.

a) Had I let that petition go forward, I would have destroyed any respect the church leaders had for me and would probably have been ushered out of the church just ahead of the moving van bringing in the new preacher.

b) Furthermore, the lay leadership of that church was composed of such powerful, strong-willed men that, even if I had become their pastor, they would have eaten me alive. I was far too inexperienced and naive to withstand the pressures some would have exerted.

c) Toward the end of that year, when I announced my move to an outstanding church in another part of the state, the members rejoiced with us and sent glowing recommendations to their friends in our new city. They gave my new ministry a real boost.

In the several decades since all this happened, that wonderful church–the First Baptist Church of Jackson, Mississippi–has periodically invited me back to fill the pulpit. Members have treated me like one of their sons. I have been honored to be associated with such a great congregation, even if for only three years.

That’s my story. Here’s another.

In the early 1970s some of us had a brief visit with a young Atlanta pastor named Charles Stanley. We were attending a church management seminar at a nearby hotel, and one day some of us decided to walk over to First Baptist Church. Stanley gave us a few minutes of his time.

From him and from others in our group, I learned what had happened not long before. Charles Stanley had been an assistant pastor of that church. When the longtime pastor retired, a search committee was formed and began looking far and wide for their next shepherd. However, some in the church wanted Charles to be the preacher.

He himself felt God was calling him to be the pastor.

When his supporters went over the heads of the search committee and brought the matter directly to the members, it split the church. Stanley received a positive vote–I had no idea by what percentage–and took over the leadership. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

In both cases–mine in Jackson and Dr. Stanley’s in Atlanta–church members wanted to make the assistant pastor the senior pastor. In Charles’ case, it would appear to have been the Lord’s will, although that is not for me to say. In my case, it wasn’t, and nothing has happened over these years to change my mind on that.

Over these decades in the ministry I have seen countless impressionable young church staffers have their heads turned by members who think they are a far better preacher than the present pastor. In some cases, they will want to run the preacher off and install the youngster as the number one guy.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, it turns out badly.

It’s almost always a trap, one engineered in hell and built especially according to the specifications of the young minister’s ego. Nothing good comes from it.

Ambition in a minister is an ugly thing.

Do not misread that. Ambition to receive all the Lord has for us, to be all we can in Christ, that’s a good thing. But the inner drive to be somebody, to be well-known, to preach to large crowds, to have public acclaim, to receive major recognition–that is a trap as deadly as any steel snare lying in wait for the wild animal in the forest.

…escaping the snare of the devil…. (II Timothy 2:26)

3 thoughts on “The Trap That Snares Assistant Pastors

  1. Hey Bro Joe,

    I began reading your blog entries a few weeks back. I found them from a link at SBC Voices. I really like to read personal stories in ministry like this one. Thank you for posting.

    Let me ask you a question. Would you mind expounding on this part of your story:

    “b) Furthermore, the lay leadership of that church was composed of such powerful, strong-willed men that, even if I had become their pastor, they would have eaten me alive. I was far too inexperienced and naive to withstand the pressures some would have exerted.”

    I don’t mean to ask you to expose anyone a the church, but to speak on the dynamic of how their strong-willedness and your “naive inexperience” would have been a dangerous combination.

    God bless.

    Stephen

    (looks like I can’t put a blog url here, so look me up at sbcvoices under Louisiana. One of my blogs is called Beyond Outreach)

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