Pastors...We're not really a big deal

I began my pastoral ministry in 1981 in a small rural church where I served for 20 years. I left that church when I accepted a ministry position in our judicatory where I served another 14 years. Since retiring I'm been privileged to serve as the Transitional Pastor for two wonderful churches. During all those years of ministry I have taken my responsibilities very seriously. However, I have not taken myself very seriously. Despite what some pastors believe about themselves, we are not really that big of a deal.

One of the things I have stressed in pastor conferences I've led is that from the moment we begin our ministries we are departing pastors. Whether we leave the church vertically or horizontally, if the Lord tarries, we will leave. Another will take our place. Unless we are the founding pastor of the church, there were pastors there before us, and there will be pastors there after us. If we begin to think that the church is dependent upon us we need to remember that cemeteries are full of indispensable people.

We have seen in recent years numerous accounts of well-known pastors who have fallen into various types of sins and had to leave the ministry. I don't pretend to know the reasons for their moral failures, but one common reason is that they began to believe their press. They felt entitled to the affair. They felt they were entitled to more money. They felt they were entitled to mistreat people. People had placed them upon a pedestal because of their accomplishments. They surrounded themselves by people who covered for their indiscretions "for the good of the church." When pastors begin to believe they can do no wrong they are walking on very slippery ground.

An advantage that bivocational pastors might have is that on Monday we return to our regular jobs. No matter how great (or badly) our service was on Sunday, on Monday I returned to a 40-hour work week in the factory. It's hard to get too prideful as a pastor when on Monday morning you are on the assembly line mounting fuel pumps on diesel engines coming down the conveyor belt.

It's critical that we take our responsibilities to our congregations seriously. Our churches deserve our best efforts whether it is in our preaching, our pastoral care, our leadership or any other aspect of pastoral ministry. But, at the end of the day it's important to recognize that it is God who is the head of the church. We are His undershepherds; He is the Great Shepherd. Hopefully, we are seeking His guidance as we prepare our sermons. It is His vision for the church that we should seek. The people who make up the congregation we serve are His people, not ours. We are called there for a season, and when our work is done another will take our place.

I love pastoral ministry and will always do my best no matter where I am called to serve. At the same time, I refuse to take myself too seriously. I have a role to fulfill during my time here on earth, but one day I'll be gone and a new generation will take my place. I'm really not that big of a deal.

A missionary mindset

In yesterday's post I addressed the entitlement mindset that runs rampant in today's society. We also looked at how that same mindset impacts our churches in a negative way and prevents us from fulfilling our mission in the world. Today, I want to look at the mindset that should be seen in our churches.

We spend a lot of time focusing on church membership. Churches are concerned that people are not willing to join their churches as members. This is really the wrong thing to worry about.

Church membership is all about rights and privileges. If I am a member of the country club I can go there and play golf or use their pool or tennis courts. I can attend dinners and parties there because I am a member, and with membership comes privileges.

As a church member I am entitled to certain privileges. I may get free weddings for my children or a free funeral when I die. I can pick out the styles of music we'll have in our services and when those services will begin. I get to vote on things that happen in the church because I'm a member, and with membership comes privileges.

Is it not time to stop seeing ourselves a merely church members and begin to see ourselves as missionaries? Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit has given gifts to every believer to be used in ministry, but many church members are not involved in any ministry that uses their gifts.

No matter how gifted your pastor is, he or she can only be in one place at one time doing one thing. What if your church had 50 people who saw themselves as ministers? Now, you would have 50 people in 50 places doing 50 things. Would you rather grow your church by addition (1+1) or by multiplication (50X1)? I am full agreement with the individual who said that our baptism was our ordination into ministry. It's time that every Christian develop a missionary mindset and abandon the entitlement mindset.

Along with that, we need to stop seeing our churches as merely churches and begin seeing them as mission stations that have been placed in the midst of a rapidly emerging pagan culture. Our society is rapidly growing worse as it abandons the biblical foundations upon which it was founded. The church has been called to be salt and light in the midst of darkness, and we now live in a very dark time that is only going to get darker. If we are going to ever have an impact on the 21st century we are going to have to become missional in our thinking, and that is going to be a much different mindset that many of our churches now have.

I believe God is now raising up an body of believers and churches that will have this missionary mindset. Those who want to continue in their entitlement thinking will fade away into insignificance until finally "Ichabod" is written above their door. Each of us can choose which mindset we will have.

The entitlement mindset

Recently, while on vacation, I witnessed a young boy of about eight years old screaming and crying because he had not been the winner of a costume contest. This kid had lost it! He was out of control. To make things worse, his mother just sat there letting him act out in public. I mumbled to my wife, "There's a kid who's going to know a lot of disappointment in life," while she was trying to get me to be quiet.

Children are now being raised by helicopter parents who hover over their kid ensuring that he or she never falls down, always wears a helmet, never hears the word no, and gets everything his or her little heart desires. On the sports field everyone gets a participation award, and schools put smiley faces on homework instead of grades. We wouldn't want to hurt their self-esteem. They may not be able to read their graduation diploma, but at least they'll feel good.

Now that we've taught little Johnny and Mary that they are entitled to anything they want we should not be surprised at any demands they make. You've probably read about the recent million student march that demanded free college tuition and student loan forgiveness. In their mind, an education is a right and making people pay for their education denies them that right.

 It's a shame they weren't raised by my parents who told me more than once, "Society doesn't owe you anything. If you want something you have to work and earn it." When I got my driver's license and wanted a car all I had to do was get a job and buy it. I wasn't entitled to a car, and nobody was going to buy one for me unless I bought it myself. So, I worked all through high school so I could afford to buy a car. There is a certain dignity to earning the things you want in life rather than waiting for someone else to provide everything for you.

There is a very simple way to avoid student loan debt. We need to be teaching our children is that student loans should be avoided at all costs, and the best way to do that is to work and pay your way through school. Don't lay around all summer playing video games and spend your spring break laying out on some beach. Get a job. Have some dignity about yourself. Go to school part time and pay for your education as you go. That will help you grow up and keep you out of student loan debt. And by the way, you are not entitled to a college education. If you want a college education, then you pay for it.

To help you understand where I'm coming from, I didn't decide to go to college until I was in my mid-thirties. I was married with two children, working in a factory and pastoring a church. Working full-time I could only go to school part time, but that allowed me to cash-flow my education. By the time I eventually finished my education I had three degrees and never borrowed a dime for any of them.

Now that I'm off that soapbox let me say that unfortunately that same entitlement mindset exists in our churches as well. People leave the church because "they are not being fed." They leave because their feelings get hurt. A lady called me once and said she just didn't think she and her husband could attend their church any longer because she didn't like the way their pastor dressed. After 15 years in a judicatory role I should not be surprised at anything I see in churches, but I continue to be surprised at the pettiness and childishness I see in supposedly mature Christian adults.

Until we recognize that it's not all about us our churches are never going to function as God intended. People are going to hell while we argue over the color of carpet we're going to install in the sanctuary and whether or not the daycare should use the crayons in the Sunday school rooms.

In tomorrow's post I'll share the mindset we need to have rather than an entitlement mindset.

Our entitled society

As we look at the various challenges that hinder a church from fulfilling its mission one is the entitlement mentality that so many people have. We see it on the news every night. After decades of government handouts and giving everyone who participates an award we have raised a generation of people who believe they are entitled to anything they want whether they have earned it or not.

Back in the mid-1990s I was still working in a factory. Our local school brought a class to tour the factory and learn about manufacturing. I was the only factory worker involved in meeting this group and leading the tour. Everyone else was in management or engineering. After the tour we gathered for a Q&A session. Most of the students were very pleasant, but there were two boys who thought life revolved around them. Each of the factory people gave a short presentation of what their jobs were and took questions. Most questions were very good except for the ones these two boys asked. When it was my turn I explained a little about what was required to work in a modern factory and then asked for questions.

One of the two boys immediately asked how much I made. Not wanting to answer since it was none of his business I responded that the union had recently negotiated a new contract with the company and new employees would start at about half what we were making. The boy went into a tantrum about how unfair that was. He felt he should be making what everyone else working there made. I was already fed up with his behavior so I fired back with about a dozen questions asking if he knew how to read a set of micrometers, how to set up a Cincinnati drilling machine, and several other questions requiring knowledge and skills we used every day in that plant. He kept admitting he didn't know how to do any of those things. I then looked at him and asked, "Then what makes you think you deserve to earn what those of us who do know how to do these things make?" A senior management person told me later how glad she was I was able to shut him up.

He had the same mentality that those have who are demanding starting wages be raised to $10.00 or $15.00 an hour. If people want to be paid more let them learn new skills that enables them to add value to their employer. Raising people's salaries beyond the value they add to the employer will do nothing but result in higher unemployment. More jobs will go overseas and more companies will invest more money in automation equipment to replace those employees and their inflated salaries.

However, this mentality also impacts the church. Too many church members look at their membership as a guarantee that their every need will be met. Their pastor exists to serve them. The church's finances are to be spent on making their lives more comfortable. They do not see that they have any responsibility to grow as Christians or to be involved in ministries that would serve others.

As a pastor for twenty years and a denominational leader for the past fourteen years I have found that the people who often create the most problems in a church are the same people who add very little value to the church. They have an entitlement mentality that refuses to do anything that will benefit the church while at the same time demanding that the church caters to their every whim.

If the church is to achieve its mission it must stop giving in to these people. Churches don't need people who are going to take up space and do nothing but complain and criticize. We need people who are committed to the mission and vision of the church, people who are willing to work to see that purpose fulfilled. The church needs people who do not see their church membership as another entitlement program but as a responsibility to take the Gospel message to a world that does not know Jesus Christ. Only then can the church begin to make a difference in our world.