There is a little book which has somehow found its way into a position of prominence far outdistancing its actual value and usefulness as it emerged upon the scene in the conservative reformed ghetto we seem bent on constructing. The book deals with the subject of ministers and their detractors. The book (a highly impractical and abstract fluff piece really) purports to analyze and comment on the ever-increasing censoriousness toward their pastors which exists among our church’s leaders and congregants. Their solution? Pastors need to just roll over and take it across the backside, as though that is the sum total of what Christ did. (Btw it isn’t…) Enduring persecution for righteousness is indeed the right course, but most of us already know that – how about addressing the real problem? It’s easy to see why this book has gained popularity: it reinforces the tacit disdain for ministers cultivated and tolerated among the unregenerate money-obsessed American church.
The primary author casts a long and imposing shadow, and as I dare to find fault with his booklet, I also acknowledge that he is is an impressive servant of God – no doubt – but he really ought to stay in his own lane. Ecclesiastically, his advice betrays a strikingly inadequate understanding and lack of sympathy with the guys who wear the boots on the ground. When it comes to the church as it is – the often frustrating toxicity which most of us regular guys experience in American P & R churches, he and the boy co-author of this book betray a mentality which is out of touch. They seem unacquainted with the usual church context which is most common among our churches: Working single staff in struggling, relationally fractured barely solvent churches full of disenfranchised reformed refugees and axe-grinders. The vast majority of these pastors have no one to share the really hard work with them, being saddled with the dead weight of incompetent wife-dominated elders who are more concerned with their position and reining in the pastor’s zeal than their actual calling to tend, feed, protect and lead the sheep. (Bryan, Stu, Al, Miles, Craig, Ron, Jon, Rocky and Lance: I am NOT talking about you.)
And to whom do these pastors have to turn? Presbyteries full of cowards unwilling to ask probing questions, hiding behind imaginary jurisdictional difficulties, callously throwing one after another of their number under the bus. It is rare to find an elder willing to actually share the hard work with their pastor, let alone allow themselves to learn from him. Typically, pastors do not mind the hard work, or even being the only one doing it, but what kills ministers and churches is an eldership more worried about the happiness of big givers and their own relatives.
The authors seem to have no idea that the vast majority of our pastors serve without access to a secretary (or a pool of student groupies to co-author their books) or anyone else to whom they can afford to pass on the more tedious and unnecessary tasks. They are usually afflicted with a corps of elders who scandalously lack any practical skill or teachability, and who have been elected according to their popularity or profession rather than for their spiritual maturity and love for Christ. In my denomination elder incompetence (not ignorance) is epically deep and widespread. Nowadays I just assume an elder is ill-trained and unskilled until I see him prove otherwise. I’m not saying it is the elders’ fault – many of the ministers of my denomination tend to act more like idle brains on sticks than those called to train men for the actual WORK of ministry, keen to discuss the virtues of beard oil, or their favorite burley blend they smoke, or their extensive bourbon or IPA collection than they are to talk about and follow their Savior. Is this harsh? I don’t care; it’s simply true.
What is most maddening about this book is the immense and exceptionally blithe carelessness with which both men responsible for this nonsense serve up their pablum. The book is not actually helpful because the authors wrote it for the wrong audience. The book should be redone, and entitled, “Where have all the elder-men gone?” The authors have not only failed to understand their proposed audience, they have directed their book at the wrong audience. Easily the most unqualified, uncharitable, and incompetent men in our churches are to be found primarily among those who are elders, not pastors.
What may be worse, the authors assume that there is a single pastoral temperament. Their book allows nearly no diversity from the pastoral model which requires that the pastor is to carry out his duties in a manner roughly equivalent to a doormat. But there is one thing these two men soft handed men do get right: a clean conscience deflects all but the most malicious attacks. In our churches, it’s a shame that people are led to project their inadequacies upon the pastor; if they are suffering, it’s because the pastor is harsh, if they are abused, the pastor allowed it; if they are lax in their piety, it is because the pastor’s preaching is not challenging enough, or too long, or too challenging. Complaints and criticisms are usually taken to the elders, and rarely taken to the pastor directly. Elders who like to be important become willing undermining conspirators, (hmmm, oh yes, it’s a concern, I’ll talk to him) – piously entertaining the carping harpies and wimps assuming the pastor is the problem. We can always outlast the guy, after all, we’ll ignore him and abuse him and make him sell his house (again) and move his family (again) – ‘this is our church,’ you know. (and yes it IS theirs – cuz it’s certainly not HIS) Where is the rare man – the elder who will actually stand up for their pastor and have his back when he undertakes the hard work of shepherding those difficult cases, even when he makes mistakes? What is so sad about the condition of things is that there are elders who actually seem to delight in receiving and watching the men of God forced to go.
And now our denomination’s General Assembly has asked that we fast and pray for the Lord to raise up men to be pastors. But are we praying to change why we have a shortage of willing men to undertake the work? Are we asking God to change the culture of abuse and denigration within our (somewhat fascist) ghetto’s walls? What will change? Will we pray for a ceasing of the preening self-congratulation? We are shrinking, you know, we need humility and change. Without repentance and reorientation in the Christ-ward direction, if we are simply asking for more laborers without admitting why the Lord has withheld them from us, we will be asking for more pastors, yes…but ostensibly for more pastors whose elders will throw under the bus, more pastors for callous congregants to abuse, more pastors for the ignorant to disrespect, more pastors for the broken American church to destroy, lie about and persecute.
You all go ahead, but you’ll be praying for the wrong thing here, fellas.
Musings from WinDSwept Junction 
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