Why Did Our Good God Send Us A Bad Pastor? (Part Three)

I’ve heard my share of horror stories about bad pastors. Very few of them are as unfortunate as one I was involved in personally.

Near the end of an interim pastorate, when we were just getting our pastoral search team organized, our church was approached directly by a young man who seemed like God’s special gift to our church.  He seemed to be exceptionally gifted and pleasant. He said that he loved to do all the tasks required of a pastor (though he had not yet served as a “solo” pastor). He checked all our boxes. He was even handsome and had a beautiful and talented wife by his side. We were swept off our feet.

While we thought we were vetting our heaven-sent candidate carefully, I can see now that we chose to ignore a few red flags along the way. Why didn’t he want to talk about his parents?  Why did the senior pastors he had worked for not want to talk about him?

His pastorate was a one-year disaster. He was dishonest, controlling, manipulative and selfish. His wife was just as bad as he was. After a few months it looked like all he had wanted from the church was to get ahold of its building.

An extreme example?  Yes it is, but it’s not an unheard of example either.

In my last two posts I’ve shared six reasons why God may have allowed your church to call a “bad” pastor. [You can find the posts by clicking here and here.]

(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.

Before I share three more possibilities I want to assure you that we’ll end this series with some tips on how to respond if God gave you a bad pastor, and I want my readers who are pastors to know that I’ll follow up this series with some thoughts on “Why Would A Good God Lead Me To A Bad Church?”

 (7) Perhaps he wasn’t seriously flawed; perhaps he was seriously mistreated or mis-handled.

Let’s face it: there are far too many churches which are seriously dysfunctional. Jesus personally threatened to dismantle the church at Ephesus – the church which had received Paul’s magnificent letter! – if they did not repent (Revelation 2:5).

The dysfunction is not always noticeable to the member who’s not deeply involved in the church. Sometimes pastors leave without ever revealing to the congregation how they were mistreated behind the scenes by one or two heartless powerbrokers.

Some congregations are tightly controlled by one extended family which expects the pastor to be little more than their personal servant and chaplain. Other churches are ruined by one prominent bully – with or without an official title – who makes life miserable for the pastor. Other congregations are ruled by boards who feel that their mission is to keep their new, young pastor from ruining the church by changing it to even the slightest degree. Some churches have controls and restrictions on the pastor which prevent him from taking any initiative whatsoever – like the congregation I knew which wouldn’t allow the pastor to travel more than 30 miles from home without permission from the church board.

Sadly, what rank and file church members too often see in these situations, is the pastor (and/or his wife) reacting in an immature or carnal manner – sometimes very publicly – to the treatment he’s received.  Not knowing what has gone on behind the scenes, it’s easy to misjudge the pastor’s behavior.

Before I go on endlessly, let’s just say that it’s possible to believe that God has given you a bad pastor when, in truth, God mysteriously sent a decent pastor to a bad congregation.  I hope it’s not yours.

(8) Maybe you and the pastor were being refined and improved.

It’s unfortunate that pastors and churches can’t get their rough edges ground off in some kind of painless training facility, like the pastoral flight simulator that I’ve written about before.

Fortunately, in our day, many good thinkers and leaders are advocating for alternatives to sending “raw recruits” from seminaries into the crucible of local church leadership: internships, residencies, apprenticeships, years of preparation – including online courses – while serving without salaries in churches or long stints as associate pastors to wise and godly old veteran pastors.

Young churches, likewise, seem to need a few years of “childcare” at the hands of wise and patient older pastors before they’re ready to “take the hill” behind the leadership of young firebrands. Too many churches die of their own dysfunctions within a couple years of the departure of the church planter.

In the real world, many pastors and churches end up knocking the rough edges off each other (as in Proverbs 27:17) in God’s good but painful process of refinement. We definitely need to do this; we always have. The challenge is to do it in selfless love, as in Ephesians 4:15, without any of the strong anger, malice or bitterness we’re warned about in verses 25-32.

We have all, always, needed the training and refinement God promises in Hebrews 12:4-11. I wish that more of this could take place in venues other than what are supposed to be the love-saturated environments (John 13:34,35) of our churches.  Can we at least learn to do this with gentleness (handling without hurting), as Timothy was urged to do (II Timothy 2:24-26)?

Earlier in this series I mentioned the humble board member who confessed that the extreme behavior of their former pastor was met with passivity – which they perceived at the time as their patience – in their board meetings. They won’t repeat that mistake next time.

Here’s another great example. A first-term pastorate ended very badly with the dismissal of the pastor after one year. A wise lady in the congregation, who knew and loved the pastor well, resisted the temptation to leave the church in anger, telling my wife that while the experience was hard it was probably very good for both the pastor and the church.  Wonderful!

(9) Perhaps you were given a strange and painful way of glorifying God.

I will not say much about this. I’m in over my head on this one.

The experience of Paul demonstrates that sometimes God wants to display His strength and glory in the homely and empty vessel of our weakness (II Corinthians 12:1-10). There’s nothing quite so weak, weary and helpless as the church – formerly proud perhaps – which has just suffered the devastation of a pastor disaster.

Stranger still, the experience of Job demonstrates that there are times of suffering through which God wants us to glorify Him by our responses of love and trust. Job never was being punished for his sin.  His idiot friends said that he was, but he wasn’t. The whole messy (and that’s a key word, isn’t it?) affair was simply an opportunity for Job to glorify God with his response. We’re pleased to say that while Job didn’t do that perfectly, he did it well enough for God to be pleased and to bless his servant richly in the end.

Is it possible that this is God’s plan for your church?

Next Week: Three more possibilities