Seven Reasons To Not Publicly Criticize Your Pastor

Here’s something that never ceases to amaze me.  Church members sit in their favorite spot in the worship service on Sunday morning.  They pray, praise, sing, listen and, through the words of hymns, creeds, prayers and covenants, they commit themselves anew to following Jesus and loving the brethren.

The service ends, there’s a ten-minute break, after which they return to the same spot in the same room for a congregational meeting.  Within a few minutes, these brothers and sisters are on their feet, angrily criticizing their pastor for offenses which they have not spoken to him about privately.  Something magical happens in these people’s minds during those ten minutes as their auditorium, sanctuary or worship center becomes a town hall, in which the angry voters get the chance to excoriate the leaders of the “other party” who are destroying their community.

By Tuesday, some of these same people think that their pastor should show up at their hospital bedside, ready to minister to them with infinite compassion, as if nothing had happened.

The only thing more amazing to me than this behavior is the way that church leadership teams allow this ungodly scene to play out repeatedly, year after year.

I just read a great sentence in a church constitution.  It said that the individual chairing congregational meetings is “responsible for keeping order.”  Amen.  Brethren, you don’t have to use Robert’s Rules of Order.  It’s not in the Bible.  You can kick “Robert” out of your church and teach your people the following seven reasons to not criticize your pastor publicly:

1. The pastor is your brother in Christ.

As your brother and a member of the same body of which you are a member, you are to treat him with dignity and honor (Romans 12:9,10 and many other passages – see this blog again next week).  The “Golden Rule” says it all:

“So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the prophets.”  Matthew 7:12

 If you were the pastor, how would you feel about your church members criticizing you publicly for issues which you had not discussed privately?                           This should be “case closed,” but I have a few more things to say.

2. Your pastor is the leader of your leaders, all of whom are to be shown unusual respect.

I Thessalonians 5:12,13 is unequivocal:

“Now we ask you brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other.”

“Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work” means that you treat your church’s leaders with greater respect and dignity than you would give to the King of England or the King of Pop or the King of Rock and Roll or the Queen of Soul. Certainly, this precludes denouncing their faults, failures and sins at public gatherings of the church family.

3. If your pastor has sinned against you in some minor way, you are to cover it over with love.

If we’re going to get along, in any relationship, we have to quickly forgive many minor offenses.  Peter paraphrased Proverbs 10:12 when he wrote, in I Peter 4:8:

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

Pastors are human.  Nothing in their ordination process protects them from making offensive, foolish remarks and awkward mistakes. We must forgive them for these minor offenses as we must forgive our spouses, parents or children, or our church family relationships will turn bitter quickly.

4. If your pastor is “caught” in a habitual sin, you are to seek to rescue him from it.

If we love those who are caught up in bad habits or addictions, we seek to preserve their dignity while gently – it means “handling without hurting”- liberating them from their destructive habits. Galatians 6:1-5 says that we demonstrate our true spirituality when we practice this, and it certainly doesn’t exempt pastors from these compassionate interventions.

5. If he has rough edges that hurt people and detract from his ministry, you can talk to him about these matters privately.

In my view, this is an implication of Ephesians 4 (especially verses fourteen and fifteen). Pastors who love God and love people are grateful when saints who value them point out their rough edges, speaking the truth in love.

6. If he has sinned against you seriously, you must start by confronting him privately.

The instructions of Jesus as found in Matthew 18:15-20 seem to be referring to offenses which are too big to simply “cover over with love” (as in #3 above). Jesus is clear: this is not done to get revenge or to get something off your chest or to prove a point (see Ephesians 4:25-32). This is for the good of the person you are confronting and for the sake of your imperiled relationship.  You are to help him to see his fault and it is done “just between the two of you,” not in front of a crowd.

7. God has shown us what He thinks about this behavior.

This is a subject which is worthy of every believer’s serious consideration.  Old Testament stories are not irrelevant tales about a vengeful God who has finally become compassionate. According to I Corinthians 10:1-13 – which speaks of “bodies…scattered over the desert” – we are to take these accounts very seriously.

Two incidents are especially relevant to Christian behavior in public meetings: Korah’s rebellion in Numbers 16 and the venomous snake bite story of Numbers 21.  An important word is used in Numbers 16: insolent.  I looked it up.  It means a “rude and arrogant lack of respect.”

This is precisely what we see in church members who publicly denounce and disrespect their church’s leaders. I Corinthians 3:17, as well as the Lord’s table passage from I Corinthians 11, should dispel all doubts about whether God would still deal forcefully with insolent behavior in Christian churches.

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Here are some suggestions for what you can do with this material:

• If you’re a pastor – Teach this material. It’s in the Bible, right?  So teach it, humbly but boldly.  Don’t apologize for it; you are warning your people because you love them.  Get this in your membership class, because Americans assume that “New England town hall democracy” is the right way to govern every institution until someone teaches them otherwise.
• If you’re a lay leadership team member – Make sure that somebody teaches this material in your church. Maybe it should be you. Many churches allow persons who are unhappy with their pastor and confused about how to proceed to approach lay leaders with their concerns.  These scenarios can have happy endings if the board members are universally and consistently gracious, as well as fiercely loyal to the pastor and each other.  Unqualified, self-serving board members will use these situations for their own ungodly purposes, so the character of those who field these complaints is extremely important.
•  If you’re the one who leads congregational meetings – Make sure your church replaces Robert’s Rules of Order with God’s rules of order. There’s no need to allow people to sin publicly in your meetings. Their bad behavior will get them further entrenched in their own opinions and eventually, give them more to regret.
• If you’re a church member – Get good at genuinely loving, in word and deed, your paid and unpaid church leaders. A single godly, mature individual can have a powerful impact on a troubled situation.  Be that person.