Grace, Forgiveness, and Jerks Who Leave Churches

PAIN-IN-THE-NECK PEOPLE LEAVING THE CHURCH: I’m sorry we ever came to this church.

ME: Apology accepted.
@FailingPastor

Of all the people who have left my church, not one of them has ever apologized.

Maybe that shouldn’t surprise me. People who leave churches always do it for high sounding spiritual reasons. Part of the fun of tearing apart the pastor is to make yourself feel spiritually superior, above the lowly ones you are leaving.

But I mean, think about it, is it possible that every single person who has left my church (and there have been many) was innocent? Is it possible that none of them ever did anything wrong to the church? Is it possible that only I made mistakes?

I have apologized to pretty much every person who has left my church and had a civil conversation with me about it, usually after calling them repeatedly or just showing up at their house because they weren’t going to initiate the conversation.

Which is another point: why is it that so many leave without saying anything? Is this a guilt admission that they know they weren’t perfect in the situation?

I don’t know. I probably spend too much time thinking about people who don’t think about me.

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Volunteers and Other Terrible Things

The worst idea in all Church History is having everyone take their chair and put it on the chair rack themselves.
@FailingPastor

Churches are always looking for volunteers. My church is not.

I have given up on asking for volunteers. The people most wiling to volunteer are frequently also the people least likely to be able to perform the work for which they volunteered. Volunteers are generally people who think they can do the job. The only people who think they can do a job are people who don’t know what the job is.

Cynicism makes up much of this opinion, but experience has informed it as well.

When we needed more volunteers for our kids’ ministry, we would throw out a general appeal. Terrible people ended up filling those roles. We had pregnant unmarried women, people arrested for drugs and drunk driving, and people who hated every minute of being there and merely agreed due to our guilt-ridden pleas.

I eventually cancelled the kids’ ministry due to the terrible level of “leadership” we were providing kids. I was hoping this would reform the leaders. Nope, they just got mad, left the church, and blamed my pathetic leadership.

Church buildings are maintained by volunteer work. I’m amazed more church buildings have not burned to the ground.

Chair carts are all the proof you need. If you tell a group to fold up their chairs and stack them on the cart; the leaned over, stuck together, facing every which direction mass of chairs, kind of on the cart, that will result will make you cry. Half the cart will be taken up by leaned over chairs, which makes others lean their chairs up against the cart rather than on the cart. This defeats the entire purpose of having a cart for chairs, people.

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Pastors and Politics

THEM: Pastors should voice more political opinions.

ME: OK. Most Republicans and Democrats are going to hell. You should tell them the Gospel.
@FailingPastor

We’ve had some contentious elections in our country lately. People are wound a little tight.

During the last big “most important election of our lives” season, a lady in church told me she was thinking she wouldn’t come back to church if she had to be around people who disagreed with her political views. She then told me that it was my job to tell them how to vote. Yup, it was my fault they were following their parent’s traditional political line.

She did skip church for a few weeks, but when her guys won the election she came back. Several months later she told me how much she loved our church and how she would, and I quote, “never think of leaving it.”

I stay out of politics. The only time politics enter my sermon is when I mention how I stay out of politics, or when the Bible passage at hand tells us to respect government authority, or when an issue that is in the Bible passage I’m dealing with has a modern political angle everyone is fired up about that has to be addressed.

I don’t tell people how to vote. I don’t tell people to vote even. I make no mention of civic duty, nor do I pledge the flag in church or anything. I’m all for the separation of church and state and do my part to keep it real.

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Christians Don’t Want The Truth, They Want The Happy

If people only knew how well they were not hiding their problems.
@FailingPastor

One of the perks of being a pastor is that you know the truths of people’s lives. OK, that’s not even close to being a perk; it’s one of the massively depressing cons of the ministry.

Everyone attempts to put on a good face. Facebook allows people to give the manicured, happy Christian spin on their lives. Yet we know the pain behind those smiles, behind those Christian clichés that are spouted by seemingly happy people trying to make others happy.

It amazes me how persistent people are in maintaining their happiness while their life crumbles around them.

Several people going through divorces have said it was “God’s will that they get divorced” and the other guy they were seeing is a much “godlier man.” This was God’s convoluted way of bringing about “His will.” I’m always confused how divorce, which is not God’s will, is part of how God makes His will happen. The amount of sin being blamed on God to maintain our happiness will come up on Judgment Day.

People are hurting. This is one reason why pastors are depressed: we know the pain that people are going through. On top of that, we also are met with the complete indifference most have toward addressing that pain biblically. Most will maintain a happy Christian veneer on their pain instead of dealing with it.

Several divorcing couples had at least one spouse who refused to talk to me because they didn’t want to hear “all that Bible stuff.” So they went on their way, finalizing their divorce and telling their Christian friends it was “God’s will” and “all things work together for good.”

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Serving People Who Despise You and Other Perks of Being a Pastor

Pros and cons of loving people:
Pros: Loving
Cons: People
@FailingPastor

One of the bits of advice I heard when I was considering pastoral ministry was, “Love the people.”

That sounds common sensical and is very true. It is also very difficult.

It’s easy to love the idea of people. It’s easy to love people when you assume they will be so grateful for your life-changing sermons and advice that saved their marriage and helped them raise great kids.

But when people call you during supper to warn you they will leave your church “unless” you bow to their demands, love gets tougher. When people yell out disagreements at you during your sermon and invite people to their house afterward to inform them of how dumb the pastor is, love is hard. When old timers from the church invite you over for dinner, only to find out it’s an ambush so they can stand over you and lecture you about how you are ruining “their church,” love gets hard. When you are accused of being legalistic the same week someone leaves your church because you don’t enforce enough rules on the people, love gets confusing along with hard.

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Failing Youth Ministry

Our VBS theme this year: “Giving Us your Kid For 10 Hours 1 Week Won’t Overpower Your Family’s Neglect of all things Spiritual.”
@FailingPastor

Most are not shocked when kids who grew up in church leave the faith when they leave mom and dad’s house. I’ve heard statistics that like 80% of church kids leave the faith in their early 20’s.

We’re used to this news and yeah, some people are concerned about it, but most of the solutions to the problem demonstrate a lack of true concern. Usually we just double-down on what we’re already doing.

People are taught Christianity as kids; therefore Christianity is often linked in with “what kids believe.” To be an adult, someone who is sophisticated and a free-thinker, you have to depart from what you learned as a kid.

In today’s climate where atheism and materialism are considered cool and enlightened, kids flee the church. What’s rarely reported on is how many of these kids come back, especially when they have kids. I doubt the number is gigantic, but I know some who left the church for many years in their 20’s who later came back. The world holds out answers; young people try those answers. The world’s answers aren’t good; they tire of them and return to what is solid and helpful.

In all honesty, I doubt any kid is saved. I’m not saying none are, I’m merely saying I doubt they are. Kids don’t know enough. They don’t know the alternatives. All they know is what mom and dad say. They go with that and if mom and dad are playing games with faith, the kids will call them on that, blame the church, and leave what they think “the faith” is.

It is stupid to think that dropping your kids off at church will do the work for you. Kids follow the parents. Kids who leave the church generally have parents who aren’t in church much.

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This Pastor is Done With Doing Weddings

If you’re not doing anything else in a church, I fail to see why you should be getting married in a church.
@Failing Pastor

“Would you do our wedding?”

Pastors rarely hear more terrifying words than these.

I used to do every wedding I was asked to do. But after 20 years of doing weddings and seeing the disastrous results of most of them, couples are now placed in a position of having to convince me to do their stupid weddings.

I have many bad feelings about weddings. Doing weddings is never mentioned in the Bible as a thing pastors do, nor is the church ever mentioned in relationship to a wedding.

I know some hold up marriage as a sacrament and there is good mojo from having your wedding in a church by a “man of the cloth.” But, trust me, the mojo is about as effective as going to the court house and getting a license signed.

I’ve had several couples where neither person attended church, or only one did. Again, at the beginning of my ministry I held out hopes for evangelism and getting people into church. I thought by doing the wedding the Gospel would be advanced and my church would grow.

I told many of them that they didn’t have to pay me; just come to church. They faithfully came to church all the way up to the wedding. Once the wedding was performed, poof! They done disappeared.

But I did all those weddings. They are all divorced now. Evangelistic results did not occur nor has my church grown, in fact, my church has a terrible reputation for marriage now.

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Church Unity is Overrated

I would be more ecumenical if other churches weren’t all filled with heretic scum.
@FailingPastor

If every person in every church were led by the Spirit then yeah, I’d be all for ecumenical fellowship. But that’s not who goes to church. Lots of people go to church and lots of them don’t have the Spirit, even fewer are led by Him.

Thus we need to test the spirits. We need to watch out for wolves in sheep’s clothing. We need to exercise church discipline. There are all sorts of ramifications for being in a fallen world with fallen people in it.

Happy thoughts about unity and fellowship do not override the reality of jerks and heretics in the church. Letting happy thoughts smooth over the differences in faith-practice and doctrinal substance doesn’t cut it for me.

I know, I’m the jerk and it’s guys like me that keep the church divided. Could be, then again, maybe your heresy has something to do with that division too. Hard to say, aint it?

I’ve been asked multiple times by other churches and “Christian organizations” if our church would get together for some ecumenical event. In all honesty, at the bottom of these requests there are two things these people want:

1) They want my church to hand out free advertising for them, and
2) They want our money.

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Hey Christians: No One Cares About Your Diet

All you healthy people that don’t use sugar: your homemade Christmas cookies are not as good as you think they are.
@FailingPastor

There is a segment of Christianity that is obsessed with diet. I’m not saying they are synonymous with the homeschoolers, but there is massive overlap. They are under the impression that we are justified by food alone. Sola Cibus. (I don’t know, I just looked up “What is the Latin word for food?” And cibus came up as the answer.)

Romans 14 and 15 tells us to please our neighbor and do things that edify them. Don’t force your weird scruples on people if it causes problems. I feel that diet evangelists need a refresher course on this passage.

At every casual gathering of Christians there is food. The lady who has to bring her health food along with recipes and detailed reasons why her treats are better than anything else anyone else brought are in violation of brotherly love. They just are.

Furthermore, your food sucks.

No one likes it.

There’s a reason why people like salt and sugar: because food with salt and sugar tastes better. Throw in some butter too, maybe just lard.

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The Ideal Church Board Member

Board members were alarmed at how low attendance was today. Or they would have been, if they had been there.
@FailingPastor

Pastors making fun of their board is as old as pastors and boards. Some of the epic battles I’ve heard about, the total warfare that breaks out in board meetings, are things of legend.

I’ve never had such things. There was one meeting where I and a board member had a disagreement about a person, similar to Paul and Barnabas arguing over Mark. It was almost the exact situation. Voices were raised, but nothing untoward was said. We parted friends.

Other than that, our meetings have been quite civil. The reason for this, in my opinion, is that my board doesn’t really care that much about what goes on in our church. I’m not saying that as a terrible character flaw, they are just busy people and I don’t think church concerns rank that high on their radar of concerns.

I know this because for the majority of my time in my church board members are rarely all at a Sunday service. It’s slightly better now, but still only happens maybe half the Sundays.

You can tell how much your board members care about their church by how often they are around it. Not coming to church is a classic sign that people don’t care about your church or anything you are preaching, doing, or leading.

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