The Church Bizarre - Christianity Today

Even though I was raised in a pastor’s family and went to seminary to train for the ministry, I had no idea what I was in for when I became a senior pastor 13 years ago.

I entered the ministry believing God was going to use me to change the world. Soon I discovered how hard it is just to change the wallpaper in the nursery. I’m still glad God called me to be a pastor, but to keep your equilibrium and enthusiasm in ministry, I offer four reality checks.

Overwhelmed? You’re normal

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed; pastoring is not the same as running a business. On top of the standard problems that come with running any organization, consider the added pressures a pastor faces:

The confusion of revolving hats. In ministry, you constantly have to switch from acting as chief executive officer to acting as a chaplain. One moment you’re an authority figure enforcing church policies, and the next moment you’re a counselor offering prayer and comfort. Sometimes you have to wear both hats with one individual.

During my third year of ministry, one board member was the wife of the church’s former pastor. He was retired, but they were both very involved. The church was in conflict at the time and headed for a split. Lily (not her real name) announced during a board meeting that her husband, the esteemed former pastor, thought it was time for me to leave.

“If he were in your position, he would resign,” she said.

The next day I found myself driving to the hospital to pray for this man and his wife before he went into surgery. Here I was, praying for God to have mercy on the very person who thought I should resign as his pastor! The ministry is full of such paradoxes; loving and leading are inextricably mixed together.

The stress of working with a board. Despite the current talk about the importance of team ministry and how rewarding it is to share decision-making with lay people, I still don’t skip off to board meetings singing “Zip-a-Dee Do-Dah.”

Bill Hybels compares this type of group effort to serving in the military: “I’ve read books about the phenomenal leadership exploits of military commanders such as Napoleon, De Gaulle, Eisenhower, and Patton. Not to minimize their capabilities or the courage that it takes to charge a hill in a time of battle, but I’ve read those stories, and I’ve wondered what it would be like for those leaders to have to work with deacons before they charged up a hill. I wonder how well those leaders would do if they had to subject their plans to a vote involving the very people they’re going to lead up the hill before they lead them.”

It’s tough to get every major decision approved by a group of opinionated lay people. You may have ten years of experience at your church, and yet one person who joined the church a year ago may cast the deciding vote to scuttle your goals. And I have to work through only one board; some pastors have to pass ideas through multiple boards and committees. My sympathies!

The shock of the unexpected. Standard procedures often don’t apply to “real world” ministry. For example, what manual covers these true situations?

During testimony time, a lay person takes the microphone, puts his arm around you, and vehemently declares, “I want you all to know, our pastor is not a queer. He’s not a queer! He’s not a queer!”
A drunk homeless man wanders up to the front of the sanctuary during Sunday morning worship, then turns around to direct the congregation in singing “Let the Walls Fall Down.”
You perform a wedding ceremony, but you accidentally sign the marriage license using your academic title instead of your religious title. When the license is returned to you, you call a relative of the couple to let her know there’s been a mistake but you’ll correct the license and mail it ASAP. She tells you the couple has already split up, and that you should just throw the license away.

One of the frustrating things about being a pastor is never knowing for sure whether people are growing

Bizarre problems pop up with maddening regularity in the ministry.

I often go to sleep thinking, Am I the only sane person here? Am I sane?

Again, as Hybels explains, “The redeeming and rebuilding of human lives is exceedingly more complex and difficult than building widgets or delivering predictable services. Every life in a church requires a custom mold. You don’t stop the line at a factory every time a product comes down. In church work, when you’re dealing with individual, custom-made lives, you stop the line for every life.”

The elusive bottom line. The bottom line in business is dollars and cents. The bottom line in ministry is faith. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” So, naturally, if we want to please God as pastors, our people should be growing in faith.

But it’s not so easy to know whether people’s faith in God is increasing or decreasing. How do you tell if your church is helping people draw closer to God? If they smile? If they clap? If they close their eyes? If they tithe? If they take notes during your sermon?

One of the frustrations of pastoring is never knowing for sure whether people are growing. Yet, as with most areas in ministry, we must trust God for those things we cannot know.

Pedestals are precarious

Don’t get too comfortable when you’re on top of someone’s popularity list; descent is imminent. As Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church, puts it: “One minute you’re a hero; the next minute you’re a zero.”

When the Flatteries (a fictitious name for a very real breed of churchgoer) came to our church, they showered me with encouragement: “We love you, Pastor. You’re so much better than our old pastor.” (New recruits, take note: Never take comfort in being wonderfully compared to all those Horrible Previous Pastors [HPP]. Instead think, Red alert! Red alert! Your turn as an HPP is coming.)

After a year, the Flatteries weren’t so fond of me. The warm-fuzzy distribution center quickly retooled into a faultfinding factory. The Flatteries didn’t like how I served Communion. They took offense at the way people dressed and wanted me to enforce a dress code to make church more respectable.

Their rallying cry was “the holiness of God.” I was lowering the standard, and they felt their calling was to save the church from becoming the next center of Baal worship. Their parting gift to me was A. W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy.

As a pastor you are bombarded with demoralizing criticism and intoxicating praise. Work to stay grounded.

Keep the Big Picture focused

Many people in the church operate like special-interest groups; they have one passion that consumes all their time and, in some cases, their tithe. They view the church—and the pastor—as a vehicle to promote their cause.

A pro-life advocate pressures you to get people in your church to serve as phone counselors. A prison-ministry volunteer wants you to get people to visit lonely inmates. Someone else wants you at a city council meeting to voice your support for Bible clubs on high-school campuses.

All are admirable causes, but it’s impossible for a pastor to give full attention to every good cause while managing his own church’s ministries.

As a pastor, you have to get used to disappointing people. Some may accuse you of not fulfilling your biblical duty, and some may even leave the church because you wouldn’t champion their cause.

The constant pressure I face to involve my church in worthy Christian enterprises reinforces my own feelings of inadequacy. Am I doing everything God wants me to do? Am I letting him down when I don’t get behind all these great ministries?

The truth is, God’s will is for you to accept your limitations, stay true to the overall mission of your congregation, and keep doing what’s best for your whole flock.

God is at work

Just when I’m convinced that I’m not the right pastor for my church, God reminds me that he has a reason for keeping me here.

God’s latest reminder came when I took my car to a local repair shop. Doug, the owner, started coming to church about a year ago. I was thrilled to gain a new member—and a Christian mechanic to boot.

I described my car’s symptoms and handed my keys to Doug, but I could tell something other than carburetors was on his mind. Before I knew it, he was wiping away tears with his grease-stained hands.

“I want you to know how much last Sunday’s service meant to me,” he said. “I’ve been going through a lot lately, and my life hasn’t been right with God. I just want to thank you for that service. I will never be the same again.”

His words soaked into me like water on parched earth. It had been a long time since anyone had gone beyond polite compliments to indicate that I had influenced his life.

God may not use us to change the world in the ways we dreamed in seminary, but he can (and will) use us to draw people closer to himself. And that’s well worth the heartaches and craziness of ministry.

Dane Aaker is pastor of Colton First Baptist Church P.O. Box 787 Colton CA 92324-0800