When I went to Hebron Baptist Church in 1981 their average pastoral tenure was about 12 months, and it had been that way for many years. After I had only been there about six months I learned that some of the leadership assumed I would soon be leaving them for a better church which was the term they were using. No one could have guessed I would stay there twenty years.
A challenge I had was to convince the church how deeply I cared about them. After all, if your family was abandoned every 2-3 years by someone it would be very difficult for you to believe them when they said they loved you. And, in the smaller church, it is very difficult to accomplish very much until the pastor has built relationships with people, and the basis for such relationships is trust and a belief that this person truly does care about us. It took me about seven years to build such trust because of the self-esteem the church had over having been abandoned by so many pastors over the years.
There are legitimate reasons to leave a church to accept a call to another one. There are also many illegitimate reasons. I cover both in my book The Bivocational Pastor: Two Jobs, One Ministry
, and I also discuss the benefits of remaining in your church for an extended period of time. The benefits for the pastor, the pastor's family, and the church are many and should be carefully considered before making a hasty decision to seek a new place to serve.I once read that many years ago a pastor wrote in his diary, "This morning I prayed hard for my parish, my poor parish, my first and perhaps my last, since I could ask no better than to die here. My parish! The words can't even be spoken without a kind of soaring love...I know that my parish is a reality; it is not a mere administrative segment, but a living cell of the everlasting Church."
What a beautiful expression of love by a pastor for the church he was serving! This is the kind of love each of us should have for the place where God has called us. This is also the kind of love the smaller church desires from its pastor. Does this describe the love you have for your church? If so, have you told this to your congregation? They would love to hear it.
2 comments:
My comment is actually a question, I hope that is ok.
What steps do you suggest when the Pastor of a church has hurt people in the church but the Diaconate won't deal with it openly.
Thank you for your response.
Tough question but an honest one. The scenario you describe has happened too often in the church. I think there are two factors that need to be considered. One, did the pastor truly hurt people in the church or are people upset they didn't get their way? I have seen times when pastors were almost brutal in the way they treated some people, but I've also seen times when people were offended over the slightest perceived offense.
If the pastor did hurt people and the leadership refuses to deal with it publicly then Scripture gives the steps that are to be taken. First, you approach the pastor. If the pastor refuses to listen and address the issue it is taken to the leadership. Sometimes they want to sweep such things under the rug to avoid conflict in the church, but that never works. If they refuse to address it, the offended parties should insist on meeting with the pastor and the leadership together to address the problem. As a judicatory leader, I refuse to meet with individuals or deacon boards to discuss a problem they have with the pastor unless the pastor is present. You can't solve a problem if the cause of the problem isn't part of the conversation. I would go into such a meeting and share how the pastor hurt me without being mean-spirited or ugly about it, but at the same time staying firm as to the offense and the hurt it caused.
Finally, there will be some churches where the leadership simply will not address such things (which is a reflection of their failed leadership). In such cases my advice would be to leave. Such a church that cannot discuss these types of issues as responsible adults is not a healthy church and one I would not want to be involved with. This is a short response, but I hope it's helpful.
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