Recovering From A Pastor Disaster

The parsonage was empty…again…  This time it was left a little dirtier and messier than it was a year ago.  It looked like somebody had departed in a hurry, and they had. The rookie pastor’s first year with the church turned out to be his last year with the church. 

He loaded the moving truck in anger, and his wife wasn’t any happier.  The kids were bewildered. Bobby, age 8, had been asking for a puppy all year; this time mom and dad promised he would get one, after they got moved into their shabby old rental back in their hometown.

The church board gathered with just a tad of relief, a lot of sadness and even more confusion. “So, whadda we do now?” Deacon Johnson asked no one in particular.  “I suppose we’ll have to start another search committee,” Deacon Jones finally replied.  “I can’t imagine who’s gonna be willing to serve on it,” Deacon Smith added dryly.

………………………………………………………..

 It’s a sad picture isn’t it?  And it’s all too common.

I’ve just written four posts on the question: “Why would a good God give us a bad pastor?”  Here are the twelve possible reasons we explored together:

1. Perhaps it “just happened.”
2. Maybe it was because you didn’t do your “due diligence.”
3. Maybe he was a good man who was a terrible match for your church.
4. Perhaps it was because your church was bad and God gave you the pastor you deserved.
5. Maybe you were being given a very specific “lesson.”
6. Maybe you needed a rough leader to bring about needed change.
7. Perhaps he wasn’t seriously flawed; perhaps he was seriously mistreated or mis-handled.
8. Maybe you and the pastor were being refined and improved.
9. Perhaps you were given a strange and painful way of glorifying God.
10. Maybe God was showing you your dependence on Him.
11. Perhaps God was pruning your church.
12. Maybe God allowed this to draw you closer to Him and each other.

In the next few weeks we’ll explore what you might be able to do if the “bad pastor” is still serving your church as well as some reasons why God might send good pastors to bad churches.

But first, we need to face the dilemma the board members were confronted with above: what to do next, as a congregation which has just concluded a “pastor disaster” experience.

1. Pray honestly.

This is a great time for church people – especially the leaders – to get real with their prayers. This is not necessarily a time for you to feel ashamed of yourselves but it’s not a time for boasting either. A “gospel relationship” has ended in an unhappy, unfortunate way, so let’s put aside the Sunday morning “happy talk” for a while and tell God how we really feel.

• When God slew rebellious Israelites in the wilderness, Moses and the congregation mourned (Numbers 14:1-3).
• Ezra confessed to being “appalled” by the unfaithfulness of the Jewish exiles (Ezra 9:4) and eventually, the crowd joined him in weeping bitterly (Ezra 10:1).
• After the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, the whole church was “seized” with “great fear” (Acts 5:11).
• James 4:9 says that some churches need to grieve, mourn and wail.

If you’re relieved or even happy that your bad pastor is gone, please keep this to yourself. This is not how pastorates are supposed to end. The Devil is rejoicing at your misfortune and a few people in your town might be smirking as well.  Let’s leave the celebrating to them.

We, as God’s people, should be sorrowful and determined that this doesn’t happen again.

2. Behave well.

As church leaders, your mission during the demise of a bad pastor, or in any other crisis, is to “keep your head” (II Timothy 4:5) and to do the right thing again and again.

I remember an elder meeting when one distressed brother was reporting how some who had left our congregation were spreading nasty misinformation about our leadership team. “What are we going to DO about it?” he asked in alarm. We turned to Psalm 37 and read:

“Do not fret because of evil men…Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture…Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him…”

The above is a just a sample of the wonderful promises and exhortations of this Psalm.  It is worth your careful, prayerful consideration. Bottom line?  Do the right thing at every juncture. In time, God will bless you for it.

3. Trust God.

Your church is in a tough spot. You could say that it’s in “the pits.” But it’s in the pits with God so it’s not such a bad place to be.  Learn some lessons. Do some growing, together, as a leadership team and as a congregation.  God has better days ahead for you. You can trust Him.

I could take you to visit some flourishing churches next Sunday, which, a few years ago, were languishing. God is still in the church revitalization business. It’s still possible for your church to become a really great church.

4. Examine your hearts.

“Search me, oh God, and know my heart; test me, and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”  Psalm 139:23,24

“A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.” I Corinthians 11:27b

If it’s right to examine our hearts and invite God to examine our hearts before we partake of the bread and wine, it’s certainly time to do the same when our bad pastor has just driven off.

Were you blameless in all this?  Wonderful.  I’m happy for you. But most church leaders are a little less than blameless when going through a church kerfuffle. We’re not particularly awful folks, we’re just human.  And human hearts are bundles of mixed emotions and confused motivations (Jeremiah 17:9-10, I Corinthians 4:1-5).

I left my second unsuccessful church planting adventure believing that I had ended the relationship with the church in a blameless manner.  It took about five years for me to realize that I actually could have done it much better.

Do not assume that because you didn’t physically attack your bad pastor during “that meeting”  that you handled yourself perfectly. You probably didn’t. God understands and forgives lavishly, but your part is to be willing to face the facts about your own heart.

5. Assess your current situation carefully.

By all means, if you have a denominational leader, a consultant or simply a wise “friend of the church” who can help you sort things out, call him immediately, because you’ll probably need some helping in assessing your church’s actual condition. Questions to get answered:

• How are our hearts and our consciences? Do we need to repent?
• Do we know what went wrong?
• Were there criticisms or complaints leveled at us by the bad pastor which had some validity to them?
• Do we need a thoroughgoing assessment conducted by an outsider before we move forward?
• Are there ways in which our bad pastor actually helped us?
• Did our bad pastor make changes in our church which needed to be made or are we going to revert back to being exactly what we were before he came?
• Do we need mediation between two or more factions in our congregation?
• Are we clear and united on the purpose, mission, values and vision God has for our church?
• Does our board need training, especially on the topic of pastor/board relationships?
• Do we need to work on how we resolve our conflicts and process our complaints?
• Do we need an interim pastor to help us calm things down and straighten things out?
• Are we actually ready, emotionally, to call a new pastor and go onward, upward and forward, or would we be tempted to make a “rebound” new pastor choice?

6. Be careful about the “we got our church back” syndrome.

I’ve written about this before in more detail than I can go into here.  Suffice it to say that if anyone in your congregation is using this phrase, it’s something you need to look into carefully.

It never was your church, of course. It belongs to God who purchased it with the blood of Christ (Acts 20:28).   You may have worked hard in it for thirty years – good for you – but I bet you haven’t shed your blood for it. For more on this subject see: God doesn’t offer stock options.

7. Learn your lessons well and go forward into the future: older, wiser, more careful and more prayerful.

Whether your church was blameless or brutal during your bad pastor experience, there are certainly lessons you can learn now. God can and will use the entire experience – however unfortunate it was – to make your church better in the future

I would suggest that your church’s leadership team – or better yet – your entire congregation, could walk prayerfully and carefully together through the twelve reasons shared in my last four posts. If this sounds scary, let me also suggest that you could do this with the help of a neutral outside moderator.

Don’t waste your sorrows. You can get bitter through this or you can get better through this. I recommend “better.”

As I often tell churches when conducting “journey wall” exercises, during which a congregation’s history – including the good, the bad and the ugly events – is mapped out on a long piece of table paper on a wall: just as you as individuals don’t have to repeat the mistakes of your adolescence, your church doesn’t have to repeat the mistakes of its own adolescent past.  God forgives, teaches, strengthens and revives.

Learn your lessons well, and go forward into the good future which your Heavenly Father has for your church.

Next Week: What you can do if your “bad pastor” is still serving your church.