Six Reasons Why We Struggle With The Coming And Going Of Pastors

The recent home-going of Dr. John MacArthur, senior pastor of Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, California, has reminded us of a perennial challenge which I call the coming and going of pastors.

After twenty centuries of struggling with the coming and going of our pastoral leaders, we’re still not very good at pastoral transitions.

In today’s post I want to explore some of the reasons why we find this so difficult.  Next week we’ll return to the subject and offer some suggestions for facing this challenge.

But first we need to go back in time…

As the dramatically immature Christian church at Corinth, Greece struggled with the “coming and going” of two world-class preachers of the Gospel – the Apostle Paul and the eloquent Apollos – Paul wrote to them with words of rebuke as well as words of encouragement.

The Biblical material is found in I Corinthians, chapters one through four and it’s as up-to-date as this today’s podcasts. Reading these chapters, you can easily imagine the dramatic differences in week-by-week ministry between the first man who served the Corinthian church in a pastoral role, Paul, and his successor, Apollos.

The two of them were in lockstep with their theology, but it looks like their personalities and ministry styles were about as different as they could be. Complicating matters, it sounds like the Apostle Peter (who told the best fish stories on earth!) may have visited Corinth, and it’s just possible that some of the Corinthian believers had visited Judea or Galilee at just the right moment to hear Jesus himself in person (1:10-17 and 3:1-4).

After scolding the Corinthians for their divisions and quarreling, Paul graciously gave the Corinthians three wonderful illustrations to help them understand God’s perspective on the coming and going of pastors (3:5-17). Paul continues his wonderful teaching on the subject all the way through chapter four, where he deals with the heavenly origin of our human differences and the need to leave the evaluation of pastoral ministries to the God who sees beneath the surface of our work to the very motivations of our hearts.

I love this material so much that I’ve written about it in blog posts, books and preached about it in dozens of churches over the past twenty some years. It is a great joy to share Paul’s insights with churches in transition!

So why do churches find these transitions to be so difficult?

1. The problem of our immaturity.

Paul specifically mentions the Corinthian’s sins of jealousy and quarreling (1:10-12 and 3:3,4) but the underlying issue, clearly, was that of worldliness or immaturity (3:1-4). The Corinthians had a lot of changing to do.  They were still far too conformed to the world and had yet to be significantly transformed by the Spirit of God (Romans 12:1,2, II Corinthians 3:18).

My educated guess is that their jealousy manifested itself in the existence of two groups within the congregation: a “Pauline” group and an “Apollonian” group, which were vying for attention, adherents and authority. Their quarreling came next: Paul’s fans wanted a new leader like Paul. The Apollos clan shuddered at the thought.  Maybe they even squabbled over representation on the “pastoral search committee” (if they had one).

Mature Christians would have spotted these sinful tendencies in their own hearts and presented them to the indwelling Christ as proclivities to be hated and despised. They didn’t.

2. The problem of our self-esteem.

We know better than this.  We know that we should be finding our identity in our union with Jesus Christ alone. Our identities as Packer fans, Republicans, Americans, white people, black people, males or females (etc.) are of little consequence and should never be the source of our pride or shame, but that doesn’t keep us from glorying in any of these “minor” identity points when they present us with the opportunity to feel good about ourselves.

Clearly, this was part of the Corinthian problem. In 3:21 Paul forbids “boasting about men” and in 4:6 he mentions taking pride in “one man over against another.”

Twenty centuries later, it still feels good to have a superstar pastor, doesn’t it?

3. The temptation to judge the work and worth of our pastors.

The Corinthians were arrogantly looking at the outward appearance of the ministries of their ministers and making judgments about who was “the best” and who was accomplishing the most for God’s Kingdom. In 4:1-5 Paul simply says, “stop it.” Only God Himself, who knows our hearts, is qualified to judge our work and worth. Paul knows better than to even try to judge his own work; he’ll settle for a clean conscience about what he does and doesn’t do.

4. The factor of our personal preferences and interests.

I believe that our personalities, temperaments, backgrounds and even our spiritual gifts have an impact on both our theology and our pastoral preferences.  We all (I mean, we all) have big opinions about how our pastors should look, dress, speak, socialize, interpret the Bible, drive their cars, cheer for their teams, use their time off, play with their kids, and greet people after the worship services.

They say there’s “no accounting for taste” and the saying holds true in many areas of life. Some of the Corinthians probably loved the “firehose down the throat” teaching style of Paul while others loved the melodious beauty of Apollos’ sermons. This is not now and never was a matter of right or wrong; it’s simply a matter of taste.

5. The mixed blessing of God building unique ministries through unique ministers.

This takes us back to John MacArthur, as well as a host of other world-class preachers and teachers who have completed their life’s work and moved on to glory.

Time and again we see churches of all sizes struggle mightily with how to carry on without their founders or highly gifted or greatly-beloved, long-standing pastors.

This is not a criticism of any pastor or any church; it’s just the way it is.

Specifically, the reality is that servants of Christ are unique creations of God; no two of them are alike.  In God’s sovereignty, some of us are given gifts to a modest degree while others among us are gifted to an extraordinary degree. Time, hard work, godly faithfulness and God’s blessing results in amazing accomplishments, for God’s glory.

As field hand follows field hand (I Corinthians 3:5-9) and as sub-contractor follows sub-contractor (3:9-15) the ministry invariably changes. At the very least, the mega-church led by the mega-pastor will change significantly after that leader’s promotion to heaven.

This phenomenon is seen even more dramatically in God-blessed para-church ministries, which are usually founded and shaped by highly gifted, unique individuals and frequently cease to exist after the departure or home-going of that person.

6. The hard, simple reality of grief and loss.

Grief is the inevitable outcome of loss. When we lose a pastor we love, we’re going to feel it, and it doesn’t feel good. The problem is compounded if he was (1) a wonderful preacher (2) a wonderful care-giver (3) related to us by genetics or marriage (4) used powerfully by God in our lives or our church (5) the first or best evangelical pastor we ever had.

Long-term, grief doesn’t have to hurt us. I wasn’t damaged by never seeing my wonderful fifth grade teacher again after the school year ended. But we don’t like grief and we avoid it like the plague.

So we continue to struggle with the coming and going of our pastors.

Next week: Suggestions and solutions for coping with this challenge.