The Two Stupidest Criticisms I Heard About My Pastoral Ministry

Over my 21 years of pastoral ministry I heard many criticisms of me, the church, and my ministry. Some of them had merit, others did not. But there are two that stand out as the stupidest criticisms of all time. Some details have been changed to protect the stupid.

1) A couple in our church were having marriage difficulties. One day the man got arrested for threatening his wife.

While he was in jail the wife called me a few times seeking help. One time she asked if someone could mow her lawn. I arranged for someone to mow her lawn. We had several discussions on the phone about the “situation” involving her husband.

When the husband got out of jail he found out that the wife had talked to me. So he came over to my house. When I saw his SUV pull up in the driveway I went outside to meet him. I had three small kids in the house and figured it would be best to keep him outside.

He parked behind our car that was in the garage. He proceeded to go off on me and my ministry, rolling through his list of reasons I was an idiot. I knew his whole deal had nothing to do with me and was more his own guilt and self-justifications. I did not respond much at all. Just stood there and listened to his rant.  

When he exhausted his list, he made up one more problem. He pointed to my seven year old Toyota Camry in the garage. “Pretty nice car for a pastor,” he said. “Must be nice.” I just laughed because seriously a Toyota Camry? Meanwhile, his brand new SUV was parked right behind it! Unreal.

This happened about 10 years ago. The guy is now dead. The Camry still runs fine. My son just got it stuck in a snowbank this afternoon. But yeah, a Camry is too nice of a car for a pastor. A classic moment in my illustrious career.

2) A person who attended our church sporadically for a few years used to go around to churches all over the state asking for money. She had an alleged handicap, which prevented her from working but did not prevent her from asking churches all over the state for money.

I had many unusual moments with this individual, including her asking my recently widowed grandma to give her my grandma’s house since that’s what Jesus would do and also once made veiled threats to kidnap my kids.

Anyway, I, who have an actual handicap, am not able to drive because I am legally blind. I would often ride my bike for transportation, many of those places had to do with my job. I’d visit people and go to meetings and all sorts of stuff via my bike. Everyone in the church was well aware of this arrangement. I received a letter from this woman once that said, and I quote, “I saw you on your bike again. You seem to do that a lot. Must be nice to be a pastor where you can play all week.”

So, there you have it. Two of the stupidest criticisms I received as a pastor.

Now I know that everyone receives criticism in their jobs and general life, but I gotta tell ya, being a pastor sure brought out the stupid criticisms. Finding fault with a pastor is necessary for many people to assuage their guilt. They have to prove they are better than you to buttress their spiritual superiority. People can’t just leave churches, they have to be better than the people they are leaving, especially better than the pastor.

Every pastor has heard completely stupid criticisms of their ministry. The thing that always blew my mind was that there were plenty of legitimate criticisms people could have thrown at me! But they skipped those ones and made up ones that weren’t even remotely factual.

Fun stuff. Good luck out there pastors! Fight the fight. Do well and prepare yourself for the stupidest criticisms possible because they’re coming.

___________________
If you want to hear more about my completely stupid ministry, I wrote a book about it. CLICK HERE to get a copy, because I went through the trouble of writing it!

How Should Churches Select a Pastor?

This is not an easy question to answer. Well, no, actually, it is easy to answer. The problem is that the answer is not easy for most to do.

The biblical model appears to be that a local congregation should raise up their leaders. There are entry level tasks a person can do in church. If they show themselves faithful, then they can be a more official deacon. If this stage goes well, then the elder role is a possibility.

Paul’s biblical qualifications for pastors and deacons should be the main criteria. Here is the first problem people run into: the Pauline qualifications are all moral character issues. There is no way you can know this about anyone unless they have been in the church for a while.

Here is a second problem: not all churches agree with the deacon and elder roles of church government (I have no desire to argue this issue incidentally).

Here is a third problem: there are many people who don’t like Paul’s qualifications. They are awful male sounding! Pastors’ kids have a bad reputation. According to Paul, a pastor who doesn’t have his kids in subjection shouldn’t be a pastor. The whole “husband of one wife” deal, is this divorce and remarriage or polygamy (I have no desire to argue these issues incidentally)?

If churches got rid of all pastors who did not meet Paul’s qualifications, you’d have many job openings. I think this is fine, but the many churches that would have no pastor would not.

And here is a fourth problem: few pastors would be interested in doing things this way as they like to jump around to greener pastures. It’s not very dignified or impressive to stay in your little local church you grew up in. Most churches that managed to get a biblically qualified and biblically faithful pastor would run em out of church quick anyway!

Most churches today exist to ease the guilty conscience of their pastors and their parishioners. We keep busy doing things that look impressive. All our busy must surely mean we’re serving the Lord. It takes hard work to live by and teach biblical standards, few pastors have the time or desire to do so. And the lovely parishioners will not endure sound doctrine but prefer teachers who will scratch their ears.

So, there are at least four sticking points so far! Issues that churches fight and have fought over for years. Denominations have been formed around these disagreements.

Everything is a mess.

We’re not even trying to use Paul’s qualifications for church roles anymore. Oh sure, a few churches seeking pastoral candidates will throw it in the list of their requirements, but it is basically lip service.

Pastors are hired more on educational degrees and past success growing a church.

Instead of raising up leaders in local congregations to serve that same congregation, we’ve hired out our training to seminaries.

I went to seminary. It prepared me none at all for pastoral ministry.

Using a degree to prove qualifications works ok in the world, but the church is not the world. Yet we’ve completely bought into the world’s system on this issue.

Then we’re shocked so many pastors are awful.

I am not shocked.

The Bible gives us the recipe for a healthy church. Churches do not follow the Bible’s recipe, but cook up their own and then gag on the disgusting pottage they created.

There is a better way: God’s way to build God’s house. Unfortunately, no one really wants to build God’s house God’s way. We mostly want an institution we’ve built for our own ends.

OK, whatever, do what you want. Don’t let the Bible stop ya. You will reap what you sow. Have a nice time. Go back to tweaking seminary classes and being busy in a church and hiring according to your preferences. I’m sure you’re pretty close to the winning recipe.

_____________

The opinions expressed in this article are one reason why my church was small! If you’d like to know more ways I shrunk my church, CLICK HERE to get a copy of my new book, because you too want to fail at being a pastor, don’t you?!

How to Overcome Bitterness and Resentment Caused By Church Pain

Many have been hurt by the church, or more specifically, by creepy people in the church.

This shouldn’t shock us. Churches have people in them and people, by nature, do evil things. We’re all arrogant jerks from time to time, some more than others.

But I think in church we have high hopes. Maybe we let our guard down a bit. Maybe we forget that our enemy the Devil is seeking whom he may devour and church is a fantastic staging area for his attacks. If Satan can mess with churches, who knows what fallout that can have?

I was not naïve going into ministry. My dad was a pastor and I lived in his house for 18 years watching churches beat him up. My grandfather, my mom’s dad, was a pastor and I saw what ministry did to him. I went in knowing what was going to happen.

It was still unreal!

Knowing you’ll be rejected does not diminish the actual pain of being rejected. In some ways it seemed to make it worse. Until I personally received rejection from church people, I assumed my dad and grandpa probably to a degree deserved it! I, however, who know everything and am way more betterer, do not. But then it happened to me too.

I was deeply frustrated, angry, and bitter about my church experience, both as a kid growing up in a pastor’s family and as a pastor myself for 21 years. There is a lot of pain. I still tear up over it and I’ve been out of pastoral ministry for over two years. The pain is still right there.

Part of the pain of ministry is knowing the lives that fell apart in front of you, their souls heading right to hell, and there was nothing that I did that prevented that.

I know all the theology about some plant and some water and God gives the increase. I know God is the one who works in people, not my efforts. I know. I know all that. And it still hurts to watch people you love and care for reject truth and destroy their lives and possibly their souls.

I have plenty of pain and bitterness from the church. How does a person get over such things? Where is the relief? Here are some points to consider.

1. We follow Jesus Christ, the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He cried over Jerusalem, He wanted to gather them, but they would not be gathered. Ministry, if done right, will hurt. The soldier who signs up for duty, knows it’s going to hurt. It’s not a shock when it does. It’s the “fight of faith,” not the picnic of faith. Ministry will hurt you and hurt you deeply. Embrace that. Come to terms with it. Understand it’s part of the deal. This has helped me let go of the more dangerous side of pain: resentment, vengeance, bitterness, and anger.

2. Know the Gospel. Jesus came unto His own, and His own received Him not. He prayed, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do,” to those who nailed Him to a cross. Gospel love is about giving yourself sacrificially to others and includes massive amounts of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not easy. Put yourself in light of Christ’s forgiveness for you. Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive others as Christ has forgiven you. Pray for wisdom in truly understanding the Gospel, not just the facts of it, the story, the events, but the actual new life we have in Christ through it. There is no shortcut to ridding yourself of the pain and hurt. Lose yourself in the Gospel and in the person of Christ. It’s no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me. We die daily. We were crucified with Him, buried with Him, and raised up with Him to newness of life.

3. Remember Scripture. Don’t consider it strange when the world hates you, it hated Christ first. Woe unto you when all men speak well of you. Blessed are you when you are reproached and reviled for righteousness sake. That I may know Him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death. If we suffer with Him we will be glorified with Him. All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Read the prophets!

4. Make sure your pain is actually for righteousness sake. Perhaps one reason your experience in church has been terrible is because you have been terrible. This is what makes this issue hard to discuss with a general audience. Some people’s pain from church is because a church rightly exercised church discipline. Our sin leads to a lot of our pain. The fact that you didn’t get your way in a church, not everyone jumped on board with your weird idea, is not persecution! It might just mean you are a sinful weirdo. Consider where the pain is coming from. Sometimes pain is a warning that you’re doing it wrong. Don’t assume your rejection is because you’re so wonderfully righteous! Consider for a moment maybe your own sin contributed. Some of my pastoral pain is because I made mistakes, had bad judgment, or well, sinned. A source for much of my bitterness and resentment about the church is because they failed to make me look good! I wanted to excel at ministry many times simply for my ego. When you get your pride in check, much bitterness dissipates.

5. Christ is supposedly your first love. No amount of stupid in a church should drive you away from Him. The church, the actual people who sit in your local congregation, are not all saved. Your faith is not in people; your faith is in Christ. For some this is empty-headed, “Yeah, no kidding.” But it’s a real point. People who walk away from faith because of the pain they experienced in the church maybe did not have Christ as their first love. And I’m not minimizing the seriousness of the pain that can be experienced in church. There’s some sick stuff going on out there. But Christ didn’t abuse you. People sinned against you, Christ did not. The pain I experienced in church has driven me closer to Christ. I lost all confidence in people and had Him left. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me spiritually, although completely miserable in experience.

These are some points that have helped me. But it still hurts.

There may be some who think all this is weird. They haven’t experienced pain in church. This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe they are in a really good church. Maybe they are oblivious. Maybe they aren’t really loving people truly, just doing actions and busy stuff that look like love, but their heart has been kept back. Maybe they are the ones hurting others. Maybe they are so happy they just don’t see bad stuff. Who knows.

But to the rest of us, those beaten down, those who have contemplated walking away from the church because who needs it? For those who struggle to open their heart again because what will they do next? For those whose hearts drop just walking through the doors of a church:

Don’t leave it. God’s people are in churches. You might have to look harder in some churches, and sometimes you might need to go to a different church. But God’s people are out there. The fellowship of believers, the like-mindedness and peace the fellowship of the Spirit can bring is worth the search and the effort. In the midst of all my pastoral pain, there were always faithful people who loved me and encouraged me, and I hope I did the same for them. They are worth all the other junk. They really are. Hard to believe at some points, but it’s true. You need them and they need you.

There are no easy answers. I have no pithy strategies to enact this Sunday that will take the pain away. But I know the Gospel is all about this issue. If you think the Gospel is only for unbelievers, you got another thing coming!

There is new life in Christ and there is hope. The glories of the new earth will be so great we will not remember anything from this old dump (Isaiah 65:17. Let me just say again: read the prophets!). Eternity with Christ is the only thing that will fully remove all pain, hurt, and bitterness. When we are made like Him when we see Him as He is. Rejoice that your name is written in heaven, press toward the mark, lay hold of eternal life.

Even so, Lord, come quickly.

___________________
If you want to hear more about my failed attempt to do what I could do help a diseased church, I wrote a book about it. CLICK HERE to get a copy, because I went through the trouble of writing it!

My Failed Attempt to Pastor a Diseased Church

One criticism I hear frequently from Christians is that when a pastor resigns or a church doesn’t grow, it’s because the pastor wasn’t called, or lacked faith, or was doing it in his own power and not the Spirit’s, and other similar things.

In other words, it’s the pastor’s fault if a church doesn’t grow or the pastor quits.

As if the church doesn’t have anything to do with it.

I know good pastors who had churches with problems. Those pastors left in total discouragement. They did a good job. They had good hearts. The church is at least partially at fault.

I’m observant enough to know it’s not always the church’s fault. There are bad pastors who do their job terribly. I am not attempting to justify terrible pastors. My attempt is to defend quality pastors.

I, in my own humble opinion, was a quality pastor! Was I perfect? No, I made mistakes and can list the top ten without too much pause for reflection.

But my heart was right. I was devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word and His Gospel. I preached the Word faithfully. I prayed regularly, visited people, knew the people, and honestly loved the people even if I was often confused about what that love should do. I took stands for righteousness and truth, while doing my best to extend grace and mercy.

I got nowhere.

The church didn’t grow. It shrunk. I earned less per year after 21 years than I did when I began. To all measurable standards of success, I was a complete failure.

Although many miss this, the reason I call myself the Failing Pastor is not because I think I’m a failure; it’s because the church clearly let me know I was. Before the Lord, I did what I thought was right and I’ll let Him judge my ministry. Before people, well, they all let me know what a loser I was.

As I said, it doesn’t take long for me to come up with legit mistakes I made. No pastor thinks they nailed everything correctly.

But I also know my church had issues that more or less made it impossible for anything good to occur.

No doubt some of you are thinking, “Wow, who does this guy think he is?” Let me explain some stuff about the church I was at and you tell me if this church didn’t have issues!

Here are some facts about the church I served for 21 years. All of these things were true of the church before I got there. None of these things were my doing! They were in place before I arrived.

1. They thought the only part of the Bible we had to follow were the epistles of Paul. You could not make any point to them from any other book of the Bible. The Old Testament was right out. The previous pastor even said OUT LOUD that he didn’t think the Apostle Paul understood grace until the last two chapters of 2 Timothy!

2. Salvation was proved by having said The Prayer. That’s it. Nothing else was needed or required. Repentance was out. Obedience was legalism. Faith was simply a mental assent that Jesus did a thing and I like it.

3. Grace was emphasized so much that good works were viewed as being bad. If you did something good, now you had your own righteousness to depend on. It’s better to sin and rely on grace. Should we sin that grace may abound? They pretty much yelled, “ABSOLUTELY, YES!”

4. They determined that baptism and communion were not necessary for the church age. All physical things like that were Jewish and law.

5. They turned grace into legalism. My favorite example is when I wore a tie to church one Sunday a few months into my pastoral career. I was confronted in the hallway, backed up against the wall by the supposed “head of the church,” and told “Why are you wearing a tie? We don’t wear ties here; we’re not legalists.” The irony of that statement has not even to this day ceased to amaze me.

6. They had no board. Church leadership resided in the pastor and his two yes-men. They controlled the money and all decisions in the church and did a fine job lording it over the people. The two yes-men continued to lord it over me when I got there.

7. There were many odd money things going on in the books that I soon discovered upon getting there. Their largest expense of the year was “Miscellaneous.” There was some money laundering going on. It was a mess to sort it out and get it cleaned up.

8. The only thing the church did was a one hour meeting each Sunday. That was it. One hour. Fifty-five minutes of which was the pastor berating the people about his peculiar views of gracish legalism.

9. The previous pastor once preached that he hoped more people in his church would live with each other and do all the sexing outside of marriage so they would know they trusted God’s grace. If anyone disagreed with him, he once said (in a sermon recorded on tape) “you can go to hell.”

10. People on one side of the church didn’t know the names of people on the other side of the church. There was no love, no fellowship, just a worshipping of the pastor with some Pauline verses about grace sprinkled in.

So, yeah, go right ahead and tell me the reason I failed at this church was because of me! I confronted all these issues. I confronted the two yes-men (who left soon after). I preached the Bible. This church who didn’t like the Old Testament, guess what I did? “Take your Bible and open to Genesis chapter 1.” Then I spent twelve years expositorally preaching through the Old Testament. Ha! That still cracks me up.

I did not back down from the church’s weirdness and endeavored to do all I could to rescue the perishing in the church. Several were set free from the false teaching. But most clung to it desperately and fought me for years before leaving in terrible, not very gracious, ways.

I added a Sunday School, a midweek Bible Study, social events, we supported missionaries, which they had never done before. I began a benevolence fund. We did communion regularly and I baptized people. I had a board of deacons and always endeavored to train up more elders. I tried doing church the way the New Testament says to do it.

I fought the fight. I thought it might work. It didn’t. It just slowly died.

Two weeks after I resigned the church voted to cancel all church events except one hour of preaching on Sundays. Right back where it started. They didn’t want a church. I didn’t want to pastor a non-church.

Any charge that my resignation was a result of me not caring, only doing it for the money, not being called, or anything else, is rather humorous to me. I took a diseased church and tried to get the people to heal it. They preferred the disease.

I got out before I got diseased.

That’s my story. Sometimes there are bad churches. I applaud all pastors who are fighting to help those churches become true, legit, New Testament churches. It’s a battle worth fighting, even if in the end you “lose.”

You were at least in the arena fighting it out. There came a point for me where I had to get out. It wasn’t working, nor was it going to. I was done. I tried. The swine won’t get any more pearls from me. I’m out.

21 years, to all appearances, I failed. The church is right back where it started before I spent 21 years trying to help it. I have something to do with the failure, I have to admit I wasn’t perfect. But the Lord knows my heart was in it and I tried to do the right thing.

Fight the fight, pastors! Do the right thing before the Lord and don’t let the goats get you down. The Lord is the ultimate judge of my ministry and I’ll let Him do it and let me know if I failed or not. He’ll do the same for you.

Pastor like you’re standing before the Lord, because some day you will be.

__________________
If you want to hear more about my failed attempt to do what I could do help a diseased church, I wrote a book about it. CLICK HERE to get a copy, because I went through the trouble of writing it!

Why My Current Job is so Much Easier than Being a Pastor

I recently tweeted:

I used to be a pastor and now I am a small business owner.

Owning a small business is a breeze and way less stressful. I know everyone thinks all job problems are the same.

They aren’t. Pastoral ministry was brutal.

This has gotten a mixed response. Mostly the response from pastors who have left professional ministry for another career agreed entirely. Maybe two did not, citing their new job as equally stressful (one is a junior high teacher!).

Current pastors were largely sympathetic, but several told me in so many words what a loser I am. One said he enjoyed his church, but also understood my sentiment.

To clarify the confusion, here is a larger explanation as to why I say running a business is way easier than being a pastor.

1. No one is going to hell if I mess up. And, yes, I know all the theological explanations about how I’m not actually sending anyone to hell. I get it. But still. Do you know how many people have left the church over my 21 years of being a pastor and specifically said it was because of me or what I teach? Try doing it for 21 years in a church sucked deep into false teaching, hearing regularly that my teaching has ruined their life, some have left the faith, others sit at home feeling justified. I even think I was preaching what was right. I take the Bible very seriously. I wasn’t playing games. I know I was speaking truth and correcting false teaching in the church. And for 21 years the overall response was denial of what I taught. There comes a point where casting pearls before swine is done.

2. I know what I’m supposed to do. Business is simple: make money. You can judge how you’re doing by the Bottom Line. Being a pastor has no Bottom Line that is measurable. I know God is the judge and I know if I deserve any reward He is the only one who can grant them. I’m fine with that, it’s the only reason I made it 21 years! But so much of my ministry to people stuck in sin and false teaching, I had no clue what I was supposed to do. I wasn’t the one with the problems. I wasn’t the one doing weird stuff, but I was constantly put in a position to figure out how to best show grace and righteousness with weird people doing weird things. I had no discernable way to measure my effectiveness. This is why churches end up counting baptisms, attendance, offerings, building expansions, etc. It’s a tangible way to prove that “God is really working here.” Is it though? I know discipleship, spiritual fruit, Christ-likeness, and spiritual maturity are the measures, but they are hard to measure in others. Pastors who leave churches assume those who were “doing well” when they left are still doing well. Stick around long enough to see that those you thought were progressing really weren’t.

3. No matter what I say, someone will throw back at me some over simplified spiritual point with a Bible verse attached to tell me how wrong I am. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the reason why my ministry didn’t go well and why I resigned is because “You were serving yourself not God.” “You were just in it for the money.” “You were doing it in your own power not in the Spirit’s power.” Hey, it’s possible, I’m human. But I was there the whole time with the Lord. He and I went through it together. I know what I did and where my heart was. One thing I learned after 21 years of being a pastor is to not listen to glib judgments, especially when received from people on the internet. Say whatever you want, but I’m just letting you know that constantly telling pastors the reason they are failing is because they don’t have faith is one of the reasons they are depressed. Are all pastors supposed to remain pastors until they die? Even OT priests were done after 20 years. I know a guy who has changed careers 6 times in two years. No one has ever quoted a verse or doubted his salvation or told him he lacked faith because he did this. Why, after a guy serves for 21 years at the same church, do the judgmental, sanctimonious statements come flying? It’s a bizarre thing. As Job said to his friends, “Miserable counselors are you all.”

4. My family does not have to sacrifice or get steamrolled. The accusations said about me and my family over the years are amazing. My wife and kids went to all kinds of church stuff. They filled in doing things when no one else showed up. They didn’t get paid. I hardly got paid. I couldn’t provide for them as I would have liked. They saw me get pummeled by people. Take shots and come home and just be shattered. They saw the people who slowly stop coming to church and saw the ridiculous things their lives soon brought forth. Pastor’s families see and hear it all. It’s why so many pastors’ kids walk away. Mine have not. I am eternally grateful for this. And from now on they don’t have to see and hear it all anymore.

5. I don’t have to know all the sordid details of every customer’s life. I knew everyone in my church. I knew most of their sins and problems, sometimes because they told me, sometimes because the church is really good at gossip. I paid attention. I knew what was going on with people. I cared for them. I knew things. I’m so glad I don’t have to know everything about everyone I know anymore. Most of what I knew broke my heart. I spent time with people. Communicated with them regularly. I also knew every single problem they had with me, either because they told me or because the church is really good at gossip. It was too much. I simply couldn’t carry on knowing this much about people. I’m not equipped to do it.

6. Guilty people and their dumb excuses have been wonderfully absent from my life. No one lies to me about what they were doing Sunday. No one immediately changes their behavior and speech around me when they find out I’m a pastor. No one tries to avoid me. Even people who left my church in terrible ways talk to me now that I’m not a pastor. It’s amazing. If you want every relationship in your life to be ruined by people’s guilt, then be a pastor.

I guess I’ll stop here. I‘m sure I could keep going, but this gives the general idea.

Running a business is simple in comparison. I know what I’m doing and I know how I’m doing. No one is guilty around me. No one over spiritualizes stuff around me. After a bad day with the business, no one judges me and throws verses at me letting me know my lack of faith is what caused that. I can just do my business without all the weirdness.

And, as many have asked, I am going to church. I get to preach and teach occasionally. I am way more emotionally and mentally able to do such things and have found it immensely enjoyable.

If you’d like more of what my pastoral ministry was like, some more details of how it went, I did recently publish a book about my experience. It’s one pastor’s experience and certainly I hope it won’t be any other pastor’s experience. Perhaps you will find something helpful in it.

CLICK HERE to get a copy because I went through the trouble of writing it!

What People Hear When You Preach

Two people recently told me that they’ve begun attending another church and informed me that, “They preach the same stuff you did.”

One person who told me this goes to a liberal Anglican church pastored by a woman. The other person goes to a Presbyterian church pastored by an angry homeschooling Calvinist man.

These are pretty different churches! Yet both told me that these churches that have little in common with each other, both “teach the same stuff you do.”

Is it possible that I preach the same thing as a liberal woman and an angry Calvinist man? Is it possible for anyone to do that?

So, what’s going on here?

In the case of the one person who told me this, they were rarely in church. When they were in church they were frequently staring up and to the right at the ceiling. I can see them in my mind in their typical seat, staring up and to the right. Even when they were there they weren’t paying attention!

The other person is one of those older ladies who think everything is wonderful. She also told me that I preached the same stuff our church’s former pastor did. This is funny because more than half of the people who left my church over the years left because I was not preaching what the previous pastor taught! I don’t think this dear lady has a judgmental bone in her body toward anything with Jesus attached to it.

So, here’s my opinion of what’s going on:

No one is really listening to preaching. People hear what they want to hear. They will either hear what affirms them or offends them regardless of whether the preacher said those things or not.

People are in their own worlds. Over time you will discover the three people who actually hear the real words coming out of your mouth and think about them.

No one else is hearing you. Oh sure, they’ll hear your illustration and the funny story about your dog, but that’s it.

Anglican women and Calvinist men have nice dog stories too. “You guys all preach the same thing!”

No one is listening. Understand that. This will do three great things for you:

1) It will free you up to preach what you believe in your style.

2) It will help explain when people find problems with stuff you never said.

3) It will help explain why people keep saying you preach the same stuff as people who wouldn’t agree with you.

No one is listening. This fact explains a lot of otherwise confusing input! Might as well go for it, they aint listening.

_________________
The Failing Pastor has a new book, How To Not Grow Your Church available on Amazon as an e-book, paperback, or hardcover. CLICK HERE to get your copy because you know you need a smaller church!

How to Make Someone Learn

STEP ONE: You can’t. Just give it up.

That’s it. That’s the only step.

How to Teach Someone has more steps. There is a system for that, but there is no possible way for you to make someone learn.

Learning requires humility. Humans by nature are not humble. Pride is our biggest sin and weakness. Pride causes most sin.

If you’re not humble you will not learn.

The only way someone will learn is if they are humbled.

Typically the only thing that will humble a person is when life falls apart. When the reaping of the actions sown comes. When the eggs hatch. When rock bottom hits.

Life has a way of smacking people in the face. When this occurs, pride will typically step in. Pride will deal with life falling apart by ignoring it, drowning it with mind altering chemicals, blaming others like a good victim, talking incessantly about it to therapists or friends, or doubling down on your actions and concluding everyone else is the idiot.

One would think life falling apart would humble everyone. If you think this, you don’t know humans.

However, there’s a chance that when life falls apart humility will make you honestly analyze yourself and look for ways to learn and make things better.

If this occurs then learning will happen.

And, for the record, you don’t have to wait for life to smack you. It’s possible to learn from life smacking other people!

This is one of the reasons the Bible was written. It’s why there are so many unflattering stories in the Bible about otherwise godly people.

“These things were written for our learning,” Paul says. We learn from the mistakes of others so we don’t repeat them.

You can actually avoid life smacking you by being humble through the example of others, understanding that you are also a fallen human susceptible to the same sin.

But if you’ve ever been in a small group Bible study, you know that when we read about Peter and David and Samson we simply just bash on these guys and wonder how they could be so stupid.

This is a sure sign you will not learn from their mistakes. If you think you’re immune to sin, better than Peter, David, and Samson, then you’re probably setting yourself up for a fall.

You cannot make someone else learn. You can warn them and teach them and yell at them and love them and correct them and pray for them and snatch them out of the fire, but you can’t learn for them.

Watching someone destroy their life further and further is heart wrenching. You want to rewire their brains, to infuse them with knowledge, but they don’t see or hear.

Today, harden not your hearts as they did in the provocation, but humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and He will lift you up in due time.

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is what humility is. Please do this. Your life doesn’t have to keep getting terrible fruit.

That’s what I teach. Up to you whether you learn!

____________________
The Failing Pastor has a new book, How To Not Grow Your Church available on Amazon as an e-book, paperback, or hardcover. CLICK HERE to get your copy because you know you need a smaller church!

The Failing Pastor’s New Book

I am definitely a guy who processes things through writing. This blog and my twitter account have been immensely helpful in helping me process my 21 years of pastoral ministry.

I also began putting together some of my blog posts along with other stuff into book form. My daughter, who is in college for graphic design, made the book look pretty nice and is now available on Amazon.

How to Not Grow Your Church by the Failing Pastor can be yours today!

I detail the things I did that I thought were biblical that ended up making my church shrink. Not sure if that will happen in every church if these things are done, but it sure did in mine!

The book is short and broken up into short sections. The advice inside might very will ruin your life. But take it from me: it’s totally worth it.

Probably.

CLICK HERE to get your copy. It’s available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book.

My Resignation Sermon

I put a battery in my old MP3 player that I used to record my sermons and found an audio file I don’t remember making!

It was a rehearsal sermon of my resignation from my church. I did it in the quiet of my office with the intent of posting it for the church to hear.

The situation was a little weird as to why I recorded it. My mother was struggling with cancer and the week of my resignation she took a turn for the worse. I thought I might miss the Sunday my resignation was planned for to have to go see her.

I managed to stay in town until then, so I never used this audio file at all, which is why it escaped my memory.

Anyway, for pastors out there who are thinking of resigning or are curious about pastoral resignations, here’s how mine went! I basically said this to the church in person, just a lot more crying and blubbering was involved. I did not record the actual resignation sermon knowing I’d just be sniffing through the whole thing.

It’s over two years later now. I am glad I did not toast the church or go out burning bridges, which I could have done. My flesh would have enjoyed that. But I am grateful that did not occur. You can, or at least I can, hear when I got close!

So, I put this here in the off chance someone is interested. Click here to give it a listen.

How Churches Become Ineffective

Most churches have boiled down their activity and message to an inoffensive middle.

Offensiveness is not always bad. The Gospel, according to the Bible, is offensive. If your church is not offending people who don’t like the Gospel, the Bible, Jesus Christ, and any number of godly things, then your church is ineffective.

The reason most churches are not offensive is because they can’t afford it.

They have mortgages to pay. There are heating and electric bills and general upkeep for giant buildings. Exorbitant salaries for increasingly expanding paid positions must be paid.

As these things increase for a church, adherence to the offensiveness of the Gospel and truth goes out the window.

Some people want more of a thing while other people want less of that same thing. The church, desiring not to lose any cash givers, finds a comfy middle ground where both parties are happy.

Church traditions are merely hundreds of years of doing this.

This is what we’ve always done and this is what we will continue to do because back in 1893 the Jones and Miller families hashed this out until we found this workable solution. Don’t mess with it. This is what people expect. If we don’t give them what they want; they won’t give us what we need: money.

Your church does not perfectly follow the Word of God. If it did, it would be smaller.

Your church knows this, so it has come up with a handy way to make people feel like they are listening to God while scratching ears to get money.

Cynical? Yes. It’s also very true in most cases.

As a pastor, you know what verses your church has no interest in taking seriously. You know you can’t preach on them without losing people. Do you preach on them anyway and take your lumps, or do you compromise? Maybe skip some uncomfortable parts of the Bible?

Why are you doing that?

After years of playing games with people in my church, I began to simply preach what I saw in the Bible. People left. I made a clear statement to the board that I will take pay cuts. Keep doing everything the church needs with money, I will suffer the consequences of my teaching.

I taught what I believed. People left. My salary shrunk. There were many times I could have skipped verses or not preached certain sermons. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk or purposely poke people in the eye (most of the time!), but I was trying to be faithful to the Word.

My church shrunk to the point of non-existence. I’m no longer a pastor. The church is no longer in existence. I find both things to be ok under the circumstances. I tried to correct what the church taught and did with biblical teaching.

People left. People aren’t interested in biblical teaching; they are interested in an inoffensive institution they can use to assuage their guilt.

Cynical? Yes. Unfortunately, also very true.

Try it sometime. Do you have the guts to preach the verses you know your church ignores? It’ll cost you. Is it worth it? Well, you won’t have as much stuff and you’ll have fewer people, but you’ll also have a clean conscience before the Lord.

The church is here to proclaim the Light of Jesus Christ. Men love darkness and hate light. Don’t be surprised when the world hates you, and also don’t be surprised about how much world is currently in your church.

Don’t be an inoffensive, ineffective, worthless church. Proclaim the Word of God, forsake your dependence on worldly things, and speak the truth in love.