Small church pastors are often envious. I was.
But I wasn’t envious of the things small church pastors are accused of being envious of.
Once I was touring another church for possible use for a wedding. They showed me around their new addition with all the new, pretty rooms. At the end of it the tour guide said, “I probably shouldn’t have shown you all that, now you’ll be envious of our building.”
“Nope,” I said. “Not really.”
I never wanted a huge building. Huge buildings cost more money, which require more people, which requires doing things I didn’t want to do to attract people to give us money we didn’t have. I wanted no part of joining that rat race.
Others think I wanted all the fancy programs and the funds to have nice equipment and impress the world. Nope, didn’t really want that either. Programs can be good, but often they take on a life of their own and eventually completely miss the purpose they were begun for.
“I bet you’d like to have all these people in your church.” Is another assumption people make. Not really. My heart was so broken by a small group of people, I can’t even imagine the state of my heart if a bunch of people came.
Which leads me to the one thing I was envious of: spiritually minded people who were growing in Christ.
I’d visit other churches and see some decent, upstanding, biblically minded, spiritually mature, servant of a Christian and think, “Oh man, I wish I had someone like that in my church. I’d give my left arm to have three people like that.”
Or the pastor who had a board that actually liked the church and showed up to it and served it and prayed for it and supported the pastor so the pastor was never out there floating on his own making decisions that everyone will be mad at but no one else will man up and take a stand.
That is what I was envious of.
Actual Christians with the Holy Spirit who devoted their lives to the love and service of the Body of Christ.
I had a couple for a time over the years, but was greatly disheartened by the general lack of enthusiasm for pursuing such things in the majority of attenders.
True, there would be no limit of such people that would satisfy me, I would always want more, because in actuality, that’s sort of the person the church is supposed to be creating.
The Body that edifies itself in love because the members are growing and doing the work of the ministry, is the goal and purpose (Ephesians 4).
If you have a couple of those kinds of people they serve as an example to inspire others to follow their lead. But if there aren’t any, the general testimony of the church is apathy, and people will have no problem following that. Soon the church is filled with apathetic, distracted, shallow people who desire nothing more because they are all busy pursuing earthly things.
I didn’t want a bigger building, larger crowds, more money, or more programs. I didn’t envy those things in any serious way.
I did envy spiritually growing Christians. They are few and far between and when I meet one I think, “Man, I wish you had been in my church.” Where two or three of this kind of person are gathered together things can happen.
I just wanted two or three.
______________________________________________
If you’d like to hear more of my experience in not doing church well, 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 
For me it is the bait and switch game in church. The call committee are the friendly, visionary, and kind people. I am sure they have sincere hearts. Once they rotate off the committees, another group comes in. They are typically the bullies, alligators and mean-spirited people who prompt people to become “None and Done” Christians. They are power players and back stabbers. These people can call in the denomination and have the pastor thrown under the bus. Meanwhile, the nice church people in church passively sit by, watch and smile, … then quietly apologize in the church hallways after the completed meetings away from the bullies. I have learned that good Christian people are indeed fine folks, but will not stand up to bullies or defend the pastor or pastor’s family when attacked. So it is still hard for me to fight cynicism, even once retired.
LikeLike
Oof, yes, been there, done that. Grace tends to get extended at the exact wrong times in the church.
LikeLike
This small church pastor agrees 100% with this post.
Every church I’ve ever attended, there has been a handful of folks that aren’t clergy who you could point to and say “These are faithful people–I should be like them.” Now that I’m a pastor, though, I look around and wonder where those people are–the ones I can look to for inspiration and support. Without them, everyone is looking to me, and if I’m supposed to be the exemplar of faithfulness, then we’re all in BIG trouble.
–Another failing pastor
LikeLike