The Top Three Weirdest Reasons People Left Our Church

People leaving churches is understandable. Sometimes it’s good for them and sometimes it’s even good for the church. I’ve never thought everyone should be happy at one church, options are good.

I get it when people leave a church I’m pastoring. I’m often fine with it even.

Except when they leave over something that didn’t even happen.

Now, I will grant the point that people who leave over things that didn’t even happen are generally not very helpful members of the church to begin with. They are people who are looking for an excuse to leave, so they make something up so they feel better about leaving.

I get why certain kinds of people do this. It’s still highly irritating though.

There are three examples I remember that top the list for people leaving over things that never happened.

The first was a couple who left because in a sermon I told them they couldn’t raise their hands during singing.

Get this, not only did I never say this, they never once raised their hands while singing before or after I allegedly said this! I was a young pastor at the time and this was the first time this imaginary offense thing happened to me. Blew me away.

The second was a mother who left because I told her that her kids couldn’t take Communion. Again, I never said this. I remember the conversation. I’ve had multiple parents ask me if they should let their kids take Communion. My answer is always the same:

“I don’t know. You’re their parents. Do you think they understand the Gospel and what’s going on with the bread and the cup? If you think they understand it, then let them do it. If you don’t think they understand it, then don’t let them.”

This sounds reasonable to me. Apparently she heard this as me saying “No! Do not let your kids take Communion in my church, sweetheart!”

The third one was a lady who left because we didn’t like single mothers, so we alienated her and didn’t support her. This one Is just, I don’t know. Here’s my main sticking point: She was married the entire time she was at our church! I remember this because her husband was huge and fit and played outfield on our church softball team and was awesome!

But apparently totally reveling in having her husband on our church softball team was too much for her single-motherness to handle, so she left.

I don’t know. I get it and at the same time do not get it at all.

I hope the next time a person who wants to leave my church and is just waiting for a reason to leave, just asks me. I can give you about 21 reasons to leave our church. There’s no need to make stuff up.

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If you want to know more of my fascinating thoughts about church, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. It includes 9 tested and true tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50!

A Theory About People Thinking My Sermons are Angry

I’ve had opportunities to preach in a couple churches steeped in Easy Believism (apparently the Lord will only allow me to preach in such churches). They think people are saved by “saying the prayer,” and as long as a person said The Prayer, they are saved and don’t have to bother with any growth.

The latest church I’ve preached at have several church leaders that have said multiple times that you can be saved and then murder people every day for the rest of your life and still be saved.

I’m no advocate for people losing their salvation. I am an advocate for salvation is being crucified with Christ, buried with Him, and raised up with Him to newness of life. No longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me.

Murderers will not inherit the Kingdom of God (Galatians 5:21). We know that no murderer has eternal life in him (1 John 3:15). Seems pretty straight forward.

Anyway, that’s one example of many of this church’s teaching.

Teaching Easy Believism leads to massive apathy. There is no energy directed at spiritual growth. Why would there be? The church leaders tell everyone they are saved and fine, take it easy. No worries.

So, when I get my shot to preach in these places, I endeavor to stir them up a little. Philippians 3 and the last part of 1 Corinthians 9 have been my texts the last few times. Run to win. Reach forward to the prize of the high calling in Christ.

While preaching such things, I get a little excited. I want people to see the depth of the Gospel’s provision, the Lord’s love, and the way awesomer life following Christ rather than following the flesh.

It gears me up because realizing such things transformed my life and faith. I want others transformed by the Gospel as well.

Without fail, after my imploring, beseeching, and stirring people up to follow Christ with some zeal, my emotions will be interpreted as anger.

I can confess that anger is not the emotion I’m going with. Yes, there is some frustration preaching in a church overrun with bad teaching and apathy, but frustration is not my main emotion either.

It’s a desire to call them to something better, something that’s sitting right there, been fully provided by Jesus Christ. Just go get what He offers, people!

Typically, the people who think I’m angry are often the ones I’m most concerned for. It’s like they have no idea what to do with such emotion in a sermon. They think everyone is saved, what’s the big deal? “There’s nothing wrong with us, must be something wrong with that guy preaching.”

My emotions are interpreted as anger; when in reality I’m begging and imploring that very person to use the Gospel’s provision.

After a half hour of explaining how they should forget the things that are behind and press toward the mark, run to win, etc. all they come up with is, “What’s wrong with that guy?”

They have no place in their theology for impassioned pleas. They’ve already concluded they’re saved. There is nothing more. They said The Prayer, when they die they go to heaven, take it easy, man!

If you have no concern for your soul, you don’t know how to react to someone who is concerned for your soul.

It reminds me of Ezekiel crying out to the people to obey the Lord. No one listens. Instead they listen to the false prophet’s message of “peace, peace. You’re all fine, don’t worry about it.”

Ezekiel begs them, implores them, beseeches them, no doubt using emotion, and no one hears, leaving Ezekiel to cry out to the Lord, “Then said I, Ah Lord God! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables?” (Ezekiel 20:49).

For me, this was the hardest part of being a pastor—having more concern for peoples’ souls than they appeared to. They are already done. They are good to go. “Why are you so worked up, don’t you know we’re already saved?”

You hang around a church long enough you see the end of these people and you see the fruit their lives produce, and it isn’t spiritual fruit. You beg and plead and preach and convince and do whatever you can to help them wake up.

“What’s wrong with that guy? Why’s he so angry?”

Sigh. It’s the burden of the Lord. All day long His hand is stretched out to a disobedient and gainsaying people. Those same people look at God and say, “Why’s He so angry all the time?”

It is frustrating, but it’s also nice to know I’m in good company.

Either that or I’m angry, I guess.

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If you’d like to hear more of my experience pastoring a church in what I thought was a biblical manner, 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!

The Peacemakers Might be Destroying Your Church

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” The next verse in the context says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.”

That seems odd. Why a persecution warning after telling people to be peace makers? Seems like persecution is the opposite of peace!

The Beatitudes are descriptions of Christ’s character, and should be the character of those who follow Christ. These are not stand-alone statements; they go together and hinge on each other.

Think about it, “blessed are the peacemakers” was said by Jesus Christ who said, “I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” Seemingly everywhere Jesus went He destroyed the peace. Most pages of the Gospels have Jesus arguing with someone. Then they killed Him.

“Blessed are the peacemakers” gets quoted in isolation. Many think that making peace is the major thing we do. Peace at all costs. Unity is The Goal. The heretic is the one who makes people uncomfortable and brings controversy.

If local church leadership emphasizes peace and unity above all else, bad things will happen.

Christians should not intentionally cause problems; they should create and maintain peace, but there are qualifications on peace. “As much as depends on you, live peaceably with all.” It doesn’t all depend on you.

I don’t walk into rooms thinking about causing problems. My nature avoids conflict. I do not enjoy arguing with or confronting people.

But I’ve also learned that argument and confrontation is occasionally necessary.

There was a time in my pastoral career when I rested on peace, which meant–avoid trouble makers. They took more and more, and hurt more people. I cowered and hoped they’d go away.

Keeping peace with bad, destructive people will ruin the church.

I remember the first time as a young pastor confronting one of the jerks in the church who thought he ran the place and was actively causing division. I was scared the whole time. I shook for two hours afterwards.

It was one of the best things to happen for the church though.

If I had maintained peace with this guy, the doctrine of the church would have been destroyed, or the people in the church would have been divided and a huge fight would have ensued.

Church splits are often the result of church leadership not rooting out problems before they blossom. This often occurs for the spiritual sounding reason of “keeping the peace.”

Avoiding problems, confrontations, and bad people doing bad things in a church, is not keeping peace; it’s dereliction of duty.

The unity the church is called to is the “unity of the Spirit” and the “unity of the faith.” If people aren’t in the faith and don’t have the Spirit, you should not be united with them. Come out from among them and be separate.

Peacemakers will often get persecution. Standing for righteousness, confronting false teachers and deceivers, will get you pushback. Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets know this. Any pastor doing his actual job knows this.

Consider it joy when you receive persecution for pursuing righteousness (which is the only thing that will bring true, lasting peace), for they did the same thing to the prophets.

Being a peacemaker ultimately means doing all you can to help people be at peace with God. This happens through the Gospel (which is an offense, by the way). But once that is dealt with, peace with other people becomes possible.

Peace through any other means is merely human effort and schemes to keep an organization together. Usually it’s just fear of people.

The church needs better.

Shepherds don’t make peace with wolves.

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5 Annoyances With How Christians Talk About Spiritual Gifts

Love is the theme of 1 Corinthians 13. About 75% of the time I’ve heard 1 Corinthians 13 mentioned is in the context of marriage. Seemingly every wedding has it read, which is fine, it’s the most redeeming aspect of most weddings.

But the context is not at all about weddings or marriage.

1 Corinthians 12 is about spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 14 is about using spiritual gifts within a church gathering.

The theme of love is brought up in the middle of those chapters.

If you don’t have love, all your spiritual gift does is cause problems.

This isn’t a weakness or fault with spiritual gifts; it’s a fault of ours. We are proud. Pride warps spiritual gifts.

Spiritual gifts are for the benefit of the church, but proud people turn them into, “Hey everyone! Look at me! Look at me!” This causes division and confusion. This is especially true if there are multiple arrogant people who think they have spiritual gifts.

The first three chapters of 1 Corinthians are about division in the church. Pride was the cause. Lack of love and pride go together. Love thinks about other people; pride thinks about me, me, me.

Throughout my years as a pastor there were many needs in the church. I thought of people who could help meet those needs. I asked them to help.

Guess what I heard approximately 98% of the time?

“It’s not my gift.”

Oh gag.

I have some thoughts about the people who say, “It’s not my gift.”

1. People who say “it’s not my gift,” never exercise any gift. They don’t do anything. If a person had a discernible gift that they were using regularly, I’d be happier hearing “it’s not my gift.” But that’s not what happened. “It’s not my gift” was said by those who never did anything.

2. “It’s not my gift” is a most sanctimonious excuse for Christian laziness. The bottom line is that you don’t feel like doing what is needed. Just say that. Just say you don’t want to do it. Be honest. I don’t want to. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the money. I can’t stand those people. Don’t put some fake spiritual veneer on top of you apathy. Don’t spiritualize laziness.

3. Love is the motivation for the use of spiritual gifts. Love thinks about the other person. If you love the people in your church you will look for ways you can help them. Whenever you help someone in the church, that’s you exercising a spiritual gift. People who never find a spiritual gift, are simply people who don’t love people in their church.

4. Paul says to “covet earnestly the best gifts,” which makes it sound like you can get as many spiritual gifts as you want. The idea you are locked into one or two gifts is nonsense. This is especially true if you see many needs in your church. Why not be the person who develops the gift the church needs right now?

5. There’s a notion that spiritual gifts are things we naturally enjoy doing. Spiritual gifts often get confused with natural ability or pleasure. This is nonsense. Spiritual gifts must at some level be spiritual; they can’t just be natural talents or things you were born enjoying. Biblical love includes sacrifice. Love hurts. Yet people in churches seem to think that if my service inconveniences me or costs me something, it must not be my gift. I think they assume people with a spiritual gift just love using that gift all the time and are always happy and free of sacrifice. This isn’t the case. I’d suggest that you know you’re exercising a spiritual gift when you are laying down your life for someone, as Christ did for us, which doesn’t always feel great.

That’s not to say that spiritual gifts must feel terrible. There are people who are good at things, but it must be discerned whether they are naturally talented or spiritually gifted. Lots of good speakers speak in churches, yet the content of their speeches let you know they don’t have the spiritual gift of preaching or teaching.

The proof of a spiritual gift is that people are edified and helped, not whether the person who did it is good at it.

In the end, all the times I was told “it’s not my gift,” guess who ended up doing that stuff? I did. I can attest to you not all these things were my spiritual gift. But I did it anyway because it had to be done I loved the people who needed the help.

That’s not me patting myself on the back. This was hard. It stretched me, but it also made me better at exercising spiritual gifts. I learned a ton and I think was able to help people. I wanted others to get this same great experience.

But I couldn’t get them off their butts to go help.

Spiritual gifts are not determined by you looking at yourself and seeing what your pride thinks you’re good at.

Spiritual gifts are determined by what needs your church has and by how your love responds to those needs.

The church has really messed this issue up and most Christians, instead of seeing spiritual gifts as reason to be helpful, instead use them as excuses to be lazy.

This shouldn’t be so.

There is a more excellent way: LOVE. Love people and spiritual gifts will take care of themselves.

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If you’d like to hear more of my annoyance with how churches are completely blowing it, 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!

Why I Get Depressed When I’m Around Christians (as far as I know)

About 90% of the time I’m around Christians, I’m more depressed afterwards than before.

I said this on Twitter and someone replied, “Either you or they are not doing it right.”

I’m aware of this, and this deepens my depression.

I will fully admit that this experience is at least partially, if not entirely, my fault. I imagine I’m a proud, egotistical, self-righteous, judgmental jerk. I’m saying that honestly. The odds this is entirely the case are pretty good.

So, that’s one option, and probably the first one on the list. But for the sake of argument, I’ll pretend there is at least a percentage that might be their fault.

If we grant that possibility, here is my explanation of my depression around Christians.

Also, let me add real quick, that the 10% of the time I’m not depressed around Christians is very real. I am not depressed after a conversation with a Christian where we talk about the Bible and get into swapping verses and thinking together through a question, while we both come up with other verses, and by the end everyone present has been edified and it’s so cool.

This is generally one-on-one style of communication, but I’ve also occasionally had it in a group setting.

Now, to the 90%. Here’s how it goes.

1. Every time I go into a Christian environment, I pray for me, for everyone else there, and anyone who opens their mouth. I pray that we are all edified and brought closer to Christ. This is my sincere desire for every meeting of believers. This is my constant prayer going into any Christian gathering, whether it’s a church service or grabbing lunch.

2. As mouths open, I am routinely shocked by the unbiblical nonsense that almost immediately comes forth. Once one weird thing has been said, I begin praying, “Lord help me to know what to say, how to say it, and if I should say it.” I usually wait, hoping, praying someone else heard it too.

3. Inevitably, the next open mouth will not only not correct the first mouth that opened, the second mouth will dig the hole of unbiblical nonsense deeper.

4. As the unbiblical nonsense is shared, I get a pain in my gut. You know that feeling when you have diarrhea that first time and you’re not sure what’s going on yet? Yeah, that feeling. The physical pain in my stomach increases until I must say something.

5. I carefully and as humbly as possible (not always possible unfortunately) quote a verse and try to steer the conversation back to biblical solid ground.

6. People either stare at me, laugh, argue, or ignore what I said. Rarely ever has anyone taken the bait to actually correct where the conversation is going.

7. I am now the bad guy, the one who made it awkward, the one who is “sowing division.”

8. I leave the gathering feeling terrible about everything. I pray earnestly for the people who said unbiblical nonsense and for me and for the church, and for, dear Lord, please come quickly.

9. Then I go home and hash and rehash what was said. Was I right? Were they really wrong. I look up stuff. I pray. I give way better answers to the imaginary replaying of the event in my head.

10. About two days later I’m over it. Now it’s time to go to Wednesday night church and repeat it all over again.

Let me give you an example I had last year. There was a group of 20 or 30 believers talking about Lot in the context of 2 Peter 2, particularly the verse that said righteous Lot vexed his soul over the wicked conduct of the people around him. I was not the leader in any way and am not a pastor of anyone in the group; I’m just another person sitting there.

About four people opened their mouths on this verse and it went like this:

First Person: Lot shouldn’t have moved close to those cities.

Second Person: Yeah, I heard he should have let Abraham choose first.

Third Person: It’s not right to be vexed in your soul.

Fourth Person: Yeah, it was a sin for him to be vexed; he should have been trusting God.

This verse, which is clearly a defense of Lot even though we like hating on him, was turned into saying the exact opposite point.

This is one of thousands of examples, some more distressing; some less. All annoying.

When you’re the guy who is always throwing cold water on people’s fun pontificating, people get real tired of you. I decided not to say anything about this one. I let it go. I took my diarrhea feeling home with me.

I never know what to do. But whatever I do is wrong. It never makes any difference to say anything anyway. There are times I have to though, and I hate it every time. I won’t sleep that night.

I was on the phone for an hour today with the cable company to cut my cable. After the hour long conversation I felt terrible. Maybe I was rude. Maybe I should have been more patient. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe the best thing would have been to just keep the cable and avoid the whole situation.

So, maybe it’s just me and my insecure introvert awkwardness.

I like to think my sadness over the unbiblical nonsense spoken by so many Christians might have something to do with me being in the body of the Man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief. I like to think it’s me following James’ advice to turn my laughter into mourning. I like to think this response is a good thing and shows my spiritual discernment.

Then again, knowledge puffs up.

Nothing I do ever feels like it was the right thing to do. It’s all very depressing.

I know there are many people who can’t relate to all this. I know “It’s not your job to fix people,” and “it’s not your responsibility.” I know all that. I never said any of that.

I’m looking at it more from the standpoint of judgment day and me giving an account for how well I handled God’s Word (which will judge us by the way) and how well I helped others handle God’s Word too.

If I didn’t love people, if I didn’t care, none of this would bother me. That’s my other justification. It just shows how great my love is for others.

Could be, then again, I probably just want to be right.

I don’t know.

I skipped church for two weeks straight last month and it was the happiest two weeks of the year.

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If you’d like to hear more about my depression caused by pastoring Christians, 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!

Good Preaching Annoys Bad Sinners

I am working my way through the Pastoral Epistles one post at a time. The next section is 1 Timothy 1:8-11, which says that the law is to be used correctly. People who don’t have sound doctrine will always say weird things about the law.

Legalists add to it and constantly bash people into the ground over scruples, most of which can be seen. There’s always an external something you’re supposed to do to conform, and if you don’t show that external thing they pounce on you.

Some go the other way and stretch grace and love so far that it leads to lasciviousness. They find ways to eliminate all law, and often endeavor to explain how we can do all the things the law says we can’t and that God is cool with this.

Both are wrong.

Paul said the law is not made for a righteous person, but for a long list of sinner types. Read the list sometime. It’s in 1 Timothy 1:9-10. He lists 14 sinful types of people and then adds “and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.”

I imagine that includes a lot of stuff.

I’ve often heard people whine that doctrine is impractical and irrelevant; it just gets in the way of unity. It’s just arguing about theories of the atonement or theories of the trinity and other issues that have nothing to do with, like, real life, man.

This is incredibly stupid.

The reason people don’t like doctrine is because sound doctrine always leads to sound behavior. When you’re taught right; you act right. People enjoy their sin, that’s why there’s so much bad doctrine in the church today.

Sound doctrine, according to 1 Timothy 1:11, is in accordance with the Gospel.

There are many warped gospels in the church: Easy Believism, the Health and Wealth Gospel, Universalism, Fatalistic Calvinism, etc. All of these exist because people don’t have right doctrine because they would rather sin and get away with it.

One of the main jobs of a pastor is the preaching of the Word. This preaching should be according to sound doctrine, which will put you at odds with sinners and the sins they enjoy.

Many pastors cave here. They feel the desire to preserve or manufacture unity trumps the teaching of sound doctrine. Some cave because they know their church can’t afford to lose more donors. Some don’t mention right doctrine and wrong sins because they themselves are in bondage to sins.

There are many reasons for preaching bad doctrine and none of those reasons are good.

There is one reason to preach sound doctrine and that’s because God says to do it! I suggest you go ahead and do that regardless of how many people it bothers or how much humility or repentance it might require in you.

People like to sin. If you preach against sin, people will not like you. Tough. Deal with it. It’s the job. If you’re not willing to do that, then get a different job.

Make sure you’re doing it in love though! Some pastors turn into massive jerks here. Speak the truth in love. The desired outcome is the salvation of souls and the edification of believers, not an uber-powerful pastor who slams everyone around.

If you’re not willing to preach the truth in love, then get a different job.

Sound doctrine is what people need. In order to help them get it, the pastor has to have it. Sound doctrine is always shown by righteous living, which is why the qualifications for church leadership are all based on righteous living.

This is a big deal. Get this right.

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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!

Is Your Church’s Leadership Paying Attention?

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.

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The Dangers of Plugging New People into Church Leadership Positions

One time in my pastoral experience I invited a new family over for dinner and asked them how they’d like to be involved in the church. “Would you like to teach Sunday School or work in our youth group?”

Typically I never asked newcomers to get involved right away, but it was a particularly desperate time in our church and I had heard from many others that I needed to “get new people involved right away” if I wanted to grow the church.

So I tried. They never came back to church after that meal. I don’t know if it was because of my question about involvement, or if my wife’s lasagna was repugnant that night, or what.

I was never comfortable asking for volunteers for church work. Typically the worst person possible raised their hand. You can’t very well say you need a position filled and then not fill it with a person who volunteered to fill it.

Usually I asked an individual who I thought would be good at the position to do it. If they said no, I got rid of the position until I found someone who could fill it and wanted to do it.

I eliminated a lot of ministries and ministry positions. No one wanted to do anything really. So we didn’t do much.

I do believe the Bible says to be careful about putting new people in positions of church leadership. Having any sort of spiritual leadership is a serious position. People who take on that role will have added accountability on Judgment Day.

I don’t know if churches consider that enough. Asking some immature person who just wandered into your church to teach kids is not only potentially damaging to those kids, it might add heaps of guilt and chastisement to their life and potentially in God’s judgment.

Paul says a qualification for a bishop is that they are “not a novice” (1 Timothy 3:6). They can’t be new to the faith. Later in 3:10 he says that a person who wants to be a deacon should first be tested.

Now you may think that Sunday School teachers of kindergarteners or leading singing isn’t a bishop or deacon position, but Paul is establishing the point that positions of leadership in the church should be vetted.

The qualifications for pastors and deacons are nothing more than a description of what a mature believer looks like. Maturity in the faith should be an essential requirement for leadership.

I think the testing can be used for smaller, non-leadership roles in the church, things like cleaning, stacking chairs, (Lord knows we need qualified people for that job), greeting, etc. Anyone who joyfully performs these duties should be discipled for opportunities to lead.

Not only does begging new people to get involved potentially compromise those new people and who they might lead, it also reflects poorly on the church.

A church should act like it’s been there. It should have its stuff in order. If you walk into a new church and they are tripping over themselves to get you to do stuff, watch out! Why are they so disorganized and desperate?

Many churches expand their ministries and are forced to plug warm bodies into leadership roles. Anyone will do; we just have to keep the machine rolling.

This will not only destroy the people in the roles and who they are leading, it will eventually destroy the church. Only have ministries you have people qualified to lead. Yes, you will have to cut some ministries. Yes, people will get mad. Yes, Judgment Day will go better for everyone involved.

Church Growth advice is heavy on getting new people working in the church as it forces them to have to show up.

For every example of a church that exploded in growth by plugging new people in immediately, there are probably ten churches that were massively damaged by such a thing. No one writes books about or has those pastors to conferences. Only the winners get book deals.

Be careful out there. As the pastor you are responsible for what’s going on in the church. It falls on your shoulders, if not today, then at least on Judgment Day.

Church is serious business. The new people you beg to do stuff in your church probably go to work during the week. They have bosses that don’t go around plugging new people into skilled positions without some vetting first. And if they do, no one is happy about it!

At least pretend church is as important as the places that employ your people.

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Pastoral Counseling is a Waste of Time

Lots of Christians want pastoral counseling to be a Christian version of therapy. The problem with most therapy techniques is that they never end; they want to keep you in therapy. Although this seems pointless, most people are content to be in therapy rather than solve their problems. A win-win where nothing is actually accomplished.

Through years of pastoral counseling I have concluded that it was a massive waste of time. People don’t want help; they want the feeling that they are being helped. They don’t want the problems to go away; they wouldn’t have anything to talk about then.

The Bible gives us answers. It tells us of a new life we can live, possible through the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit and being a partaker of the divine nature.

With a true spiritual conversion through the Gospel, new life is possible. But it requires knowing God’s Word and some zeal and energy pursuing and doing what it says. It also requires complete desperation, a whole body and soul longing for deliverance. If that isn’t there, then no help will ever arrive.

People like to talk about their problems. They like getting hugs and sympathy. It becomes a drug. If they solved their problems there wouldn’t be any more hugs and sympathy.

The peril of the Christian counselor is to turn biblical counsel into never ending therapy. The counselor feels good because they are busy and “serving the Lord” and “helping people,” and the counselee feels good because they get the hugs and sympathy and the feels of “doing something.”

There comes a point where a person must decide to shut up and get to work.

If this point never comes, then all the counsel and therapy is just wasting time.

Most want a magic solution that requires no effort or life change. If a person does not want to change their entire life, then they have no interest in new life in the Gospel.

Overcoming sin is not a magic trick. There are no secret formulas or buttons that make temptation disappear. Sin keeps coming. We’re told to fight. Not fight for a couple minutes and then take it easy for the rest of our lives; the fight is daily and hourly.

Battling is essential to New Testament concepts of Christian living. Fight the fight of faith. Put on the whole armor of God. Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

If you don’t want to fight sin, the Devil, the world, and your flesh then you are wasting everyone’s time, including your own, talking about your “struggles” with Christian counselors.

Do you want a new life or not? If you do, it’s right there, available through Jesus Christ. But as Jesus said, you must count the cost. Are you willing to do the necessary battle to get it, live it, and benefit from it?

If you don’t want new life, then leave the church and its people alone. Go do your weird stuff. Call up some therapist and whine for the rest of your life. Go for it. Skip all the repeating of happy verses and happy clichés, and keep your favorite sins and your worldly therapy. Just leave off your fake Christianity and be honest.

Enough is enough. The world is falling apart. It’s time to stand up and fight. The time for self-loathing, angsty whining is over. It is high time to wake out of sleep. Cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

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If you’d like to hear more of my accumulated pastoral “wisdom,” 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!

What Is the Best Way to Help People Spiritually?

I was a pastor for 21 years and was continually around people I had a desire to help, people who were making unbiblical decisions and heading the wrong way. It was heart breaking.

One of the hardest aspects of pastoral ministry for me was the confusion over what I was supposed to do to help people doing crazy stuff.

Helping people spiritually is not easy. The best explanation of it was by Paul in Galatians 4:19, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,”

Giving birth is hard, so I’ve heard! Although I’ve never done it, I have watched it. It didn’t look fun. Getting people to grow in Christ feels like that! Perhaps not as intense into a moment, but it hurts.

Childbirth is natural, like, it’s going to happen whether you want it to or not if you’re pregnant. Getting people to grow in Christ is not natural. Many actively fight against it. Trying to get someone to do something they don’t want to do is gut wrenchingly difficult.

It would be nice if the Bible told us how to do it. It does, but you’ll find it’s not exact to specific situations and people.

The Bible presents a broad spectrum of possible ways you can help people. Here are some examples:

1 Corinthians 9:19-23—Paul says he becomes all things to all people so that by all means he might win some. This seems like he’s saying “do whatever you gotta do.”

Jude 22-23—some people you show compassion to and that works, others you actively go grab and drag them out of the fire. No time for compassion, you just gotta go get em.

1 Peter 3:14-16—be ready for when people ask you. If they aint askin, they probably don’t care to hear your opinion.

Matthew 15:11-14—Jesus tells the disciples that the Pharisees are blind leaders of the blind. He tells the disciples to “leave them alone!” That’s fascinating. They will fall into a ditch, so let em. Some people have to hit rock bottom and you should let em go do that.

Philippians 3:15-17—Paul says God will show people where they are off. It’s not always your job. Leave room for God to lead people.

1 Corinthians 5:5—some people you hand over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. This is primarily talking about church discipline.

So, on one end you do all things for all men to save some, show compassion on some, yank others out of the fire, leave them alone, wait for them to ask, let God show them, and on the opposite end is handing people over to Satan.

Those are quite the options!

So, after 21 years of accumulated pastoral experience and wisdom, what do I think you should do to help people spiritually?

I have no idea.

People and situations are different. I can’t answer specifics, but I’ve at least gained these general insights.

The one theme that runs through the New Testament is that you should pursue righteousness and holiness yourself. If you’re not, odds are they won’t listen to you anyway. And, if you’re not growing in righteousness, it’s debatable that you are the one who is equipped to help anyway.

Before getting all fussy about sawdust in your neighbor’s eye, take the beam out of your eye. Clean your own mess first. There are too many busybodies in Christianity trying to fix everyone.

You’re not everyone’s mom. It’s not your job to fix everyone.

If you are in a place where you think you can help someone, then pay attention. Listen to them. Don’t just judge and lecture without knowing what’s truly going on. Study the Bible. Look at the contexts above to see why they acted this way toward certain people, because there are reasons!

Pray. Really think this over with the Lord. There are no cookie cutter approaches to helping people spiritually. You really need to pay attention to them, you, the Word, and prayer.

Also remember Paul’s warning to consider yourself when dealing with other people and their sin lest you also be tempted. If you struggled with addiction of any sort, maybe you’re not the one to try and deliver others from addiction if you feel tempted to relapse.

Leave room for people to respond to God Himself. Cult leaders make everyone listen to them. God is the enemy at that point. Don’t do that!

Many people obsessed with fixing others actually just like power and the feeling of being needed. It has little to do with helping others and much to do with inflating their pride.

One of the urges to help people or to fixate on the sins of others is to keep you distracted from your own sins. If you’re always the fixer, you convince yourself you don’t need fixing. A guilty conscience often makes people obsess about other people’s problems.

Helping people spiritually is very difficult. If people don’t listen to God very well, I can’t imagine they’d listen to you very well either!

I don’t know how to fix people, but I have figured out this: pray, study the Word, pay attention, listen, pursue righteousness, and consider your own condition first. If you do these things, there’s an off chance you might actually be helpful to someone at some point. But don’t hold your breath!

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If you’d like to hear more of my accumulated pastoral “wisdom,” I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it, because that’ll make me feel better about myself!