Dealing with doubt

 Even the strongest of Christians may have times of doubt. Billy Graham tells the story of a period in his life when he began to question some things he was preaching. At a conference he was asked to lead early in his ministry he walked into the woods near the conference center and began to ask God if the Bible was really true. After a period of time he rose to his feet absolutely convinced that the Bible was true, his faith was true and his calling was to preach the truth. Perhaps his most famous line after that experience was "The Bible says...."

Studies find that nearly 60 percent of young people leave the Christian faith after their 15th birthday. A number of reasons have been identified, but one of the major ones is that no one is willing to answer their questions. They may have serious questions and doubts about Christianity, but they find their church is not a safe place to ask those questions or express their doubts. One 17-year-old girl told me that was the case in her youth group. She asks a lot of tough questions and spends much time reading her Bible, but she said when she asks questions in the youth group she is either ignored or given simplistic answers that really do not answer her questions. Unfortunately, this is too often the case.

Churches must be a safe place for people to ask their questions. No person should be made to feel ashamed for expressing doubts about their faith or for asking questions. In fact, questions should be encouraged for they show the person is thinking critically about Christianity, and answering the questions may help them solidify their faith.

There are two warnings when we attempt to answer people's questions or address their doubts. One, we don't want to make up answers when we don't know the answer. Young people are especially tuned to such answers and can see through them. It's far better to admit that we don't know and we will attempt to find the answer and respond to them at that time. There will also be some questions we will never be able to answer, and we need to honestly admit that. Here is where the faith factor of Christianity comes into play. But, we don't want to fall back on that response too often. There may well be an answer to the question that we can find with a little research.

The other warning is that we need to understand the purpose of the question. As someone has said, behind every question is a questioner. We need to know the questioner so we can understand what is behind the question. If a six-year-old child asks, "Who made God?" that is a much different question than if it is asked by a university biology professor. In the first case, the child is probably asking out of genuine interest. In the second case, the question may well be asked as a challenge to Christianity or being asked because the professor is honestly seeking God and needs answers to some of his questions. Our answer would be the same in both cases but would need to be framed differently. It's important to know the questioner and the reason behind the question before answering.

Jesus asked a lot of questions, and He was not afraid of questions. We need to be like Him. Don't be afraid of questions but respond to them truthfully, biblically and with grace.

Ministry challenges today

In 2021 I published an e-book titled Is Your Church Ready for Ministry in the Coming Decade? It had been a few years since I had published a book, and I didn't realize how much the publishing world had changed. It was nearly impossible to find a publisher willing to look at any book that did not come to them from an agent, and it seemed many agents were more interested in the author's social media followers than in the content of a book. I finally gave up and released it as an e-book with Amazon. Of course, the problem with that is that same year 2.3 million self-published e-books hit the market. It's easy for these books to get lost in the shear volume of available books.

I wrote this book because pastors and churches are facing new challenges as our society continues to change. Ministry today is much different than when I first began as pastor in 1981. While there is nothing new under the sun, the issues people now face are much more in the open than they were in the recent past. The church is constantly being challenged to address issues that previous generations of pastors never had to face. If we are to speak a word of hope to our culture we must understand these challenges and think about how to best address them.

The book contains chapters on several of the bigger challenges facing today's church. Issues such as racial reconciliation, mental illness, poverty, addictions, suicide, sexual issues and many more are included in the book. I tried to bring some of the latest studies into the discussion of each topic and show how the church can speak to the issues lovingly and, at the same time, be true to what Scripture teaches.

I seldom promote my books on this blog because that is not the purpose of this site. However, like I said earlier, so many e-books are published each year they can easily get lost in the crowd. This book sells for only $6.95 and is available on your Kindle devices. If you think it might be helpful to your ministry you can find it here. Thank you.

Why do people attend a church for the first time?

 Sam Rainer recently shared on his Facebook page research done by Church Answers to determine what would be a reason someone would begin to attend church regularly. It mostly goes along with previous studies done over the past few years.

    To grow spiritually                    32%

    Someone invited me                  22%

    God told me to go                      20%

    Spouse wants me to go              17%

    Other                                          16%

    Life crisis                                    16%

    Family connection                      15%

    To meet new friends                    13%

    Preaching quality                        10%

    Good music I like                        10%

    Programming for children            7%

Notice that the bottom three are often the things churches think will draw in new people. What their study found was that these things may cause transfer growth from other churches, but are not the primary attractions for unchurched people.

Another question asked in the research was why people attended the church they currently attend, and the number one response was because someone invited them (41%). Other studies consistently find that the ones most effective in inviting others to attend church is not the pastor, but friends and family of the one being invited.

When I served as a Resource Minister I often heard complaints that the church wasn't growing, and the pastor was usually the one blamed. I heard it so often that I finally began to push back and ask the one complaining how many people he or she had brought into the church. The answer I usually received was...none. As I pointed out to one person, their pastor had been at the church for two years; they had been members there for three decades and yet not one person attended that church because they had invited them. Our meeting ended rather quickly at that point!

Church growth is the responsibility of every member. I am not familiar with a single study that does not find that a large proportion of people would attend a church if someone they knew and trusted invited them. We can, and should, do everything we can to make the church attractive to first-time guests, but if we expect them to show up we have to invite them. There's nothing wrong with having a first-rate youth and children's ministry. There's nothing wrong with having a worship service that will allow people to experience God. Certainly, our preaching should be theologically sound and relevant to the needs of people, always pointing them to Jesus Christ. But, if we are not inviting people to our churches, none of these things will matter.

Who will you invite to your next service?

Questions from yesterday's blog

There were some good questions raised after yesterday's blog appeared about my meeting with a church to help them transition from having a fully-funded pastor to a bivocational one. Let me try to respond to a couple of those questions.

One person asked if a current fully-funded pastor can remain as pastor if the church does transition to having a bivocational pastor. This is the plan of the church I met with Monday evening. Much of this depends on the pastor and the congregation. In some ways, this pastor will have an advantage as he has been at the church for some time and has developed a lot of trust with the congregation. If the church called a new pastor, it would take some time for this trust to develop. I have found that trust is a key element in a church that is required to make anything change possible. This pastor is willing to go bivocational, and I believe has already found another job. From his comments he also seems aware of some of the challenges he will face. I am hopeful that it works out well for him, his family and the church.

There are other times when such a transition will require calling a new person. I have met with fully-funded pastors who resented being asked by the church if they would consider going bivocational. Such people will not transition into that role well. Some felt bivocational ministry was beneath them. Others believed they did not go through seminary to become a part-time pastor (their words). With such negative attitudes, it's unlikely that they will transition into a bivocational role. In such cases, it's probably best if they move on and the church seek a bivocational minister to lead them.

A second question asked was about some of the hardest changes the church should expect. Two immediately come to mind. One is that the church may feel like they have failed and develop a poor self-image of themselves. Many smaller churches, especially those that were once larger ones, can develop serious self-esteem issues. They may feel God has abandoned them, wonder what they have done wrong, begin to blame pastors or others for the decline and struggle to see anything in their future. It's important that pastors of smaller churches address self-esteem issues with their congregations and help them get some wins under their best so they can begin to feel better about themselves.

A second challenge will be managing the expectations of the congregation. There will be some in the congregation who will still expect the same level of ministry from the pastor as he or she provided when they were fully-funded. That's why I emphasized to the church I met with that they would have to communicate over and over again to the congregation what the church now expected from their bivocational pastor and to protect him if persons began to demand more. As I told them, my experience has been that if those expectations are not controlled that the transition to bivocational ministry failed in every situation in which it was tried.

The transition to bivocational ministry

Last night I was privileged to meet with a church and pastor who are transitioning to bivocational ministry. To my knowledge, this church has always been served by a fully-funded pastor so this is a major transition for them. The pastor is agreeable to the change, and, I believe, has already found other employment. I was asked to come in and discuss what the transition will look like and what problems to avoid. I was very impressed with the questions people asked and the desire of the church to be fair to the pastor and his family.

One of the things I explained to them is that bivocational ministry was the norm for most Baptist and Methodist churches until the 1950s. As people moved west their pastors were typically store keepers, teachers, farmers and others who were not usually trained in theology or ministry but who had a heart for ministry and felt a calling to serve their community. In the 1950s denominations began to move towards a more professional ministry, and churches began to seek a fully-funded, seminary educated pastor to serve their churches.

For the past several years we have seen this shift back to a renewed interest in finding bivocational ministers. There are several reasons for this. There are fewer fully-funded pastors available who are willing to serve in traditional churches. Many churches have shrunk in size since Covid. More and more people find the church irrelevant to their lives and simply no longer attend. A growing number of people claim to be spiritual but are not interested in Christianity. The list goes on, but the bottom line is that many churches are seeing fewer people which also translates into reduced financial support, and this often drives the move towards bivocational ministers.

I explained to this church that the transition will not be an easy one as some people will continue to have expectations of the pastor that he or she can no longer meet with a second job. The pastor relations committee will have to have his back when these complaints arise. There will need to be many conversations with the congregation about what his new responsibilities will look like, and lay leaders will need to fill the gap in the things he can no longer do. This can be a time of growth for this congregation, or any who makes this transition, but only if everyone steps up and uses their gifts to serve the congregation and the community.

Everyone present understood there will be growing pains during this change. It appears there is good trust between the pastor and congregation which will help, but all the planning in the world won't eliminate every problem. There will be times when it's necessary to renegotiate the expectations for both the church and the pastor, but I believe this church has the maturity to do that well. I pray this will be a successful transition.

Fallen ministers

 This morning I read about another ministry leader who had resigned from ministry due to immoral behavior. It seems that few weeks go by that we do not read of a similar instance, many of them pastors and ministry leaders of megachurches. However, the problem is not limited to the leadership of large churches. I have known several pastors of smaller churches, some of them friends of mine, who have experienced similar failures.

I write this blog not to condemn these leaders, but to remind each of us that anytime a person goes into the ministry he or she has a target on their backs. Satan knows if he can ruin the reputation of a ministry leader he can do great damage to the church, to the family of the fallen leader and to the unchurched world who concludes that such leaders cannot be trusted.

Several years ago the Catholic church was under attack for the actions of some of its church leaders. I remember at the time a Protestant leader warning against believing it was only the Catholic church that had such problems with their leaders. He predicted we would soon hear of similar failures within the Protestant churches as well. His prophecy has proven true.

It is a mistake for anyone to think they are above moral failure. Such failures usually do not happen overnight. They are the result of a series of actions on our part and those of others. No doubt some in ministry would be considered sexual predators using their position to lure people into sexual activities. However, I believe that most immoral behavior occurs over a period of time as pastors become more isolated from others and have little accountability in their lives. 

Ministry leaders must protect themselves from such failures in their lives. Mike Pence was criticized as Vice President because he would not be along with a woman who was not his wife. He was following a rule Billy Graham followed many years ago. That rule protected both men from even the hint of sexual scandal, and is a rule I have followed for much of my ministry. Isn't it interesting that those who issued such criticisms against both men have not found it necessary to criticize entertainers, politicians and others who have multiple affairs?

Social media is an area where we must be very careful. I once read that Facebook was the number one cause of divorce today as old flames met each other online and began communicating. It's very important that we are careful about what we say in a text message as it is easy to  be misunderstood even if we didn't mean anything inappropriate. My phone is always available for my wife to look at, and I often just leave it on the counter even when I go out.

As important as it is for ministry leaders to have guidelines in place for their relationships with others, it is equally important that persons in the church pray for their leaders. Remember that Satan would like nothing more than to destroy your pastor. Keep him or her in your prayers that they will be recognize any attack he might send against them and that they will be able to resist every attack.