I recently dedicated four posts to the question of “Why would a good God send us a bad pastor?” (Click here for the first of the four.) I followed it up with a post on how to recover from a “bad pastor” and what a church member should and should not do if his church has what he feels is a “bad pastor” at the present time.
But in all fairness, there are many pastors and former pastors who feel that they were good pastors who were somehow cursed with trying to lead “bad churches.”
As with the earlier articles, I’m going to use the term in a totally subjective way: a “bad church” is a church which the former pastor sees as having been a bad church. Only Jesus Himself – author of the seven amazing letters to churches found in Revelation two and three – can perfectly assess any congregation, and He does so constantly.
In our very imperfect world, we’re all making a constant stream of flawed judgments (I Corinthians 4:1-5). May God help us to see churches – and even more importantly – ourselves, as He sees them!
With that said, let’s get started. My prayer is that this material will be thought provoking, helpful, and maybe even healing.
Possibility #1 – Maybe it just “happened.” With only slight modifications, I’m going to copy and paste what I wrote earlier on this subject:
“Our stove just quit working, our snowthrower is broken and our car’s exhaust system just went bad. God wasn’t ‘in’ these things and maybe He wasn’t involved in my ‘bad church’ disaster either.”
Very simply: I don’t buy it. The actual teaching of Scripture is that the One who sees every sparrow fall to ground (Matthew 6:26, 10:29-31), the one who is “behind” every icy blast of every snowstorm (Psalm 147:16-18), the One who allowed Satan to “have at” Job (Job 1), did not let your disastrous pastorate “just happen.” At the very least He knew what would happen, He allowed what would happen and He cared about you as it happened.
Not every church teaches the full-fledged Biblical truth on this subject, but every church should teach it. I’ll probably mention our Old Testament friend Job again before I’m through with these posts, but let’s bring him onto the stage right now.
Job and his friends all knew enough to “blame God” for Job’s suffering. God was totally and intimately aware of every moment of Job’s physical, mental and emotional torment. He, in fact, “pre-authorized” it. And He loved him, which implies, in and of itself, that He was involved with the details of his life.
So let’s dispose of this explanation right away. Your painful pastoral experience didn’t just happen; in some way, shape or form, God was in on it.
Possibility #2 – Maybe you didn’t do your due diligence.
In my posts for churches, we considered this possibility as well. Just as churches often fail to assess their pastoral candidates as carefully as they need to, pastoral candidates tend to do the same thing.
In fact, for first-time pastors (rookies), whether they are young or old, failing to check out prospective churches carefully is par for the course, and I’m guilty as charged.
Whether the problem is: our hubris, our over-active imaginations, our susceptibility to flattery, our eagerness to get out there and save the world, our poverty and school debts, our eagerness to prove our worth to some real or imagined person like a father, a mentor or a seminary professor, or some combination of the above, we pastors often – especially in our first pastorates – fail to discover the facts before we say “yes.”
Coupled with that is ignorance regarding the need to ferret out the facts and the know how to actually do it. Eventually we learn things like: talking to former pastors of the church, talking to other pastors in the area, studying the “pastoral history” of the congregation, chatting with denominational leaders, asking trusted friends and mentors regarding our suitability for pastoring that particular church, asking to see constitutions, by-laws, financial and attendance records, pastoral ministry descriptions, etc.
And there’s also the problem of relying on our subjective impressions regarding the Holy Spirit’s leadership. I’m not denying that He leads; I’m suggesting that we’re often amiss with our perceptions of His leadership.
And then there’s our naivete regarding pastoral search committees. I don’t want to be the one to say that they lie to pastoral candidates, but their propensity to misrepresent their congregations to desirable candidates is well known.
Sometimes pastoral search committee members themselves are ignorant about the true nature or condition of their churches. Sometimes these good folks are operating on a very subjective, “feelings and impressions” level.
I’ve seen search committee members “fall for” candidates on the basis of: physical appearance, place of origin, accent (anything from the British isles is a premium while a southern accent is a detriment in the northern tier of the United States), educational background, family pedigree, perceived preaching style (based on one sermon), attractiveness of family members, perceived interest in one doctrinal area (especially eschatology), etc.
And then there’s our lack of self-knowledge, but we’ll tackle that below.
This begs the question: Does any pastor-church courting ritual really uncover all the necessary facts? Probably not. As in marriage, no matter how carefully you court your man (or woman) you’re still going into this thing with a lot of ignorance. There has to be at least a degree of faith, a modicum of risk, a tad of adventure and a rock-solid commitment for this thing to actually work.
By the grace of God, some of us stay married for a long time and some pastors and churches stay together for a long time as well.
Possibility #3 – Maybe you were simply a bad match for the church.
In my first post in this series, I wrote about a relationship counseling incident in which I counseled the couple to get as far away from each other as possible, as quickly as possible, before somebody got hurt.
I followed up by relaying the story of a young pastor with a bent for outreach and evangelism who found himself frustrated by and frustrating a church which wanted a sheep-tending, home-visiting pastor.
Stories such as these are much more common than we’d like to think. There are many good pastors (and I do mean goodpastors) serving good churches (and again, I do mean good churches) with whom they are seriously mismatched. Nobody lied; nobody tried to be deceitful; they were simply flocks and shepherds who wanted very different things.
As things deteriorate, the pastor’s frustration grows and shows in a scowling temperament and angry sounding sermons and the church’s frustration leads to gossip, tense board meetings and contentious congregational meetings. But none of the folks involved are actually “bad” people; they’re just mismatched people.
Under #2 above, I hinted at but didn’t quite name the word “delusion.” No one can deceive us as effectively as we can deceive ourselves.
And as preachers we do the same thing. I’ll get personal. I thought I could be a church planter when I was profoundly ill-suited to the task. I had no idea how introverted I actually was. I saw myself as a much better leader than I actually was. I saw myself as a better preacher than I actually was. In my head, my singing voice still sounds like whoever I’m trying to sound like. My wife knows better.
And that brings us to the solution: Besides taking some tests and inventories (there are dozens of them and they’re all helpful) we especially need to hear from those who know and love us best. Your wife’s estimation of your gifts might be quite accurate. (I said “might,” for some spouses are as deluded about their spouses as their spouses are.)
Your mentor’s view of you can be very helpful. An honest word from a friend can save you years of heartache. The opinion of a denominational leader is often informed by the ability to see the big picture – for these people are constantly observing the entire forest, not just the trees. Besides that, denominational leaders are often well-aware of the strengths and weaknesses of both pastors and churches and frequently benefit from Holy Spirit guidance.
So, was it really such a bad church or is it possible that you didn’t do your homework (just like in school) and/or you were simply, seriously mismatched with a not-so-awful congregation?
Next Week: More reasons why our good God may have led you to a “bad church.”
