I’m not naïve. I know that people have short memories. Most churches will have a few cruel members who feel a pastor should receive starvation wages just because he is God-called.
The remedy is not to punish the preacher or even ask him to open his financial statement, but for spiritual leaders to show some backbone, to stand up and publicly address the subject with appropriate Scriptures. “The laborer is worthy of his hire” comes to mind. And, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor” (1 Tim. 5:17-18).
And when the mean-spirited ones persist, they should be visited by a couple of gutsy leaders who will answer their questions, then insist that they stop their disruptive behavior. But the pastor should stay out of it. Protect your pastor from certain ones in the church.
I had an idea for an attendance campaign in our plateaued, stagnated church (which was still recovering from a split a few years previously). The Sunday school classes would have inspiring goals and bold strategies and, at the end of the campaign, at least two teachers would be rewarded with Holy Land trips—exciting rewards for those who teach God’s Word. The more I thought this through, prayed over it and talked to our staff, the more convinced I was that this would generate a great response, and we would blast our stalemated church off the launching pad into some exciting growth.
The deacons shot it down.
One man in particular, often positive and supportive, but occasionally unpredictable, took it upon himself to scuttle “such outlandish and unnecessary payoffs for teachers doing what they ought to be doing all the time anyway.” I walked out of the meeting disappointed, but determined to go forward with a smaller campaign. (The results from which were uninspiring.) Adding to my pain, that deacon would later refer to this as a moment when he saved the church from my extravagance and foolishness.
I know pastors who have had their dreams and hopes shot down by leaders who shared neither their vision or faith. Suck it up and go forward, I encourage them. Do not pout; do not take your marbles and go home. Be the adult in the room, and go forward. If you have to weep, do it in private.
Moses had not planned to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, but was intending to cut straight across the Sinai peninsula and occupy Canaan. The unbelief of his massive congregation, however, sentenced themselves—and therefore their leader—to four decades of misery and wanderings. Like him, we pastors do what we have to do.
Through much tribulation and heartache we enter the kingdom, Paul and Barnabas told the early believers (Acts 14:22). In the world you will have tribulation, our Lord said. “But take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
These things hurt, and nothing is going to change that. But we should take the long view. “This momentary light affliction …” (see 2 Corinthians 4:17 for the rest of this promise).
[How to get back up when ministry knocks you down]
3. Scars are par for the course.
The Magna Carta of our assignment is found in Matthew 10:16-42. The Lord’s disciples, he said, could expect to be misunderstood, mistreated and abused. Their enemies would sometimes be the most religious people on the planet, persecuting the righteous even in their houses of worship (Matt. 10:17). Even members of their own families (Matt. 10:35-36) would oppose them. Anyone entering the ministry should do so with eyes wide open, knowing full well how things could go.
God’s workers can be naïve, wear rose-colored glasses and be blindsided by the opposition. Surely, we think, serving the Lord’s people will bring an unending succession of joys and accomplishments. We blindly go forth from seminary into our new church expecting everyone to act like Christ. Because we love them, no doubt they will love us. They will follow us because our motives are pure and we seek only to bless them.
And then reality sets in.
Before the moving van is unloaded, we learn some members have decided they would not like us, would not follow us and would work to undermine whatever we attempted. They did this without even knowing us, without hearing us, without giving us a chance.
Why do they do this? Why can people be so harsh and unloving toward the servants God sends to his churches?
Something our Lord said keeps hammering on my soul. It’s from John 15: “They hated me without cause,” Jesus said.
We may expect the world to hate us, Jesus said, because we are not of the world. But we are not blindsided by that. We were expecting the unsaved world to ignore us and some even to oppose us.
But surely not the good people.
Here is what Jesus said:
“All these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me.” And He said, “They have done this in order that the word may be fulfilled that is written in their Law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’” (John 15:21, 25)
Many of the leaders of our churches do not know God. They do not believe in Jesus. They do believe in some things. Just not in him.
They believe in having nice churches and doing good things and having fine programs. They believe in 10,000 things, but they do not know God or believe in Jesus.
If they did—and this is the telling clue—they would shiver in their shoes at the prospect of causing pain and suffering to those called to serve the Lord’s congregation. They would read Matthew 10:40 and Luke 10:16 and feel that in entering the church they have taken ahold of chained lightning.
4. And then, the Lord sends someone to heal the hurt.
They are usually not power-people in the congregation, and they may not have a clue about what the pastor and his family are having to deal with. But the love of the Lord Jesus is so precious within them that an hour in their presence makes it all worthwhile.
Here is a note from my journal, penned in a low moment in the difficult church:
“Today I had a letter from Aline Williams in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Says husband Burt (age 80?) died November 7 at 10 p.m. Said he prayed for us every morning at the breakfast table. We had not seen them since we left the church at Columbus, Mississippi, six years earlier. They were members of the church there. Aline said, ‘His love for you never failed. His health failed. His body failed. His eyesight and hearing failed. But not his love.’”
I read that even today and weep. Thank you, Father, for such precious people who are the very embodiment of the love of Christ and faithfulness to his cause.
I want to be like Burt Williams. I want to love and give and serve even when the news from the doctor is discouraging and I feel awful. I want to pray for brothers and sisters in Christ whom I have not seen in years but who are still out there serving and trying to make a difference.
The battle scars are not excuses. They are just that—battle scars.
“One will say to him, ‘What are these scars between your hands?’ Then he will say, ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’” (Zech. 13:6)