In my many years of familiarity with churches, I’ve noticed that many people in positions of church leadership have no idea what’s going on in their churches.
And let me make clear that the church I was a pastor of was no exception.
I took my role as pastor/overseer seriously and felt the role required utmost attention since I would give an account before God. Souls were at stake and I wanted to be careful.
The people on the church board were mostly checked out though. This was frustrating on several levels:
1) They had no idea what was going on and they didn’t care. They were “busy.” They had zero time for church considerations. Oh sure, they mostly showed up for meetings and said “aye” at the right time, but they spent very little time thinking seriously about what the church was doing.
I remember one month at a board meeting asking them if they prayed about the church. They unanimously said no, not with any regularity. I asked them in the coming month to do so. They said they would. “Aye.” I asked them at the next board meeting if they prayed regularly for their church. They all said “no.”
This broke my heart. I can’t even get them to think enough about the church to take a few minutes a day to pray for it, how in the world are they going to be effective and helpful leaders in the church?
2) Even if a few people are paying attention, no one understands concerns when brought up. The one guy paying attention gets branded as “that guy” who is “always against everything.” After a while that guy isn’t listened to.
For most of the years as a pastor the board of the church was not involved in anything in the church. It was actually a rare occasion when all board members would be at church on a Sunday morning. “Why didn’t you choose more faithful people to be on the board then?” you may ask. There weren’t any others. These were it.
If they are never at church activities seeing what I’m seeing, how are they going to care? “Just do what you want, that’s why you get the big bucks” was actually a regular answer I received from the board. Doing what I wanted wasn’t the point. Having a group of dedicated people in agreement, and having each other’s backs, and ultimately the health and safety of the church as a prime concern, was the point.
I’m in a church now as not a pastor. I have no official authority of any kind in the church. I struggle with this. Not because I want to be in charge! But I do see how the leadership of the church is not really paying attention. There is so much inconsistency and compromise and sloppiness in adherence to biblical standards, it’s rather distressing to me.
I find myself looking up things just out of curiosity, things that make me wonder, “what’s that about?” I find out. Turns out usually there is a reason my attention was pricked. I’ll ask about it from various members of the church leadership. “Oh, I don’t know what that’s about.” One recently said, “I wasn’t paying attention, I just tune that stuff out.”
There are, in my opinion, pretty dangerous things being floated about in this church, yet this seems to not get anyone in leadership’s attention.
I was unable to get a group in my church to actually care about the church; I know how hard it is to do. I do not stand as one who knows how to do it. I don’t know, I couldn’t figure it out. The inactivity of the board was one of the main things that drove me to resign. Obviously I don’t know how to lead.
I’m wondering if my old church and the church I go to now are exceptions or just how it is. From the various pastors and churches I know about, I’d wager that most churches have barely attentive leadership. How else do we account for the sad state of churches in our day?
Even if they were paying attention to church activities, are any of them regularly in the Word as well? Do they even know what a biblical standard is? What exactly is our guide for decision making? Is anyone paying attention to that? Or have we all agreed to not challenge anything so we can all just coast and get by doing the bare minimum?
Our shepherds are not keeping watch by night or day. Wolves are in sheep’s clothing tearing up the flock. Church leadership is “busy.” Not busy overseeing and protecting, but busy nonetheless.
I imagine this will be a deal on Judgment Day.
____________________________________
If you’d like to hear more of my accumulated pastoral “wisdom” that shrunk my church, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. There are 9 tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50!
Failing Pastor 
I admit I attended a liberal seminary to prepare for ministry. Our theology professor warned us that not many people care about the traditional doctrines of Trinity, Incarnation, or Divinity of Christ. Our real challenge is that Fredrich Nietzche said, “God is dead and we killed him.” Also, Ludewig Fauerbach argued theology is actually anthropology of humans projecting their best qualities onto what they call “God.” With this in mind, can we continue studying theology, ministry and biblical theology? While it was sobering, it proved to be reality. Your latest post reminded me of these early days in seminary studies when the PTL Club and Jimmy Swaggart scandals were going on. 😉
LikeLike
Training of pastors is to be done in the local church, not in a worldly system of education, that’s one of the main reasons the church is how it is. Qualifications for church leadership in the Bible are all character and moral in nature. You don’t know this about a pastor through modern hiring practices. The whole system needs undoing.
LikeLike
I the case of mainline seminaries who seek higher education accreditation, I think students who go to seminary with the idea of being trained to be pastors get caught up in the world of academia. Those who can survive through the academic “hoops” successfully, eventually graduate. Being preapred for congregational ministry is another matter. Congregations are not academic institutions. Clergy do not have tenure like seminary factulty do. Academia itself is subject to change with social and political correctness/partisan trends {be they liberal or fundementalist]. I see the future of congregational ministry drifting toward Licensed Lay Ministry as “on the job training.” Also, if the lay minister has another source of income, the congregation does not have a paycheck or medical benefits to hold over the pastor’s head. The downside of this system is accountablity for the respective church’s doctrines, confessions or understanding of the Scripture being hijacked by leaders who stray or wish to create personality cults.
LikeLike
I hear ya. There are no perfect answers as this is not a perfect world and there will always be a pull toward sin and the false. The more we can line up with Scripture instructions, ideals, and qualifications the better though. I am in favor of anything that leads to that!
LikeLike
Pastoral training and accountability is important. Seminaries and church hierarchies keep people from hijacking the message of the Gospel and preaching a message to those with ears that itch for what they want to hear.
LikeLike
I’ve never seen church leadership paying attention to anything.
For some perspective however, I’ve never seen political leadership, business leadership, secular leadership, or really leadership of any kind paying attention and involved. I suspect that is because everybody wants to be the boss, but nobody wants to actually serve. We are self absorbed, conflict avoidant people who don’t like the mess of human interactions. Also, we need Jesus.
LikeLike
This is probably true, but the church has a higher standard, therefore, it’s all the more depressing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Obviously I don’t know how to lead.” That’s not so obvious to me. It seems you have a good grasp on what the problem is and what the solution is. But you can’t force the rest of the leadership to do the right thing. The “busyness” of today’s world is, in my opinion, a tool of subtle seduction of the devil, which is apparently working on many in leadership. “If the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.” (But eventually the busyness leads to sins of omission.
)
LikeLike