Qualifications of a pastor: the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
Stuart Briscoe
Dwayne and Virginia Wilson represent only one kind of well-intentioned dragon, albeit a complex and durable species. Many other kinds have been sighted within the church — some merely nuisances, others serious threats to church life.
Before looking specifically at two of the most common tactics of dragons — personal attacks and plays for power — it might be helpful to catalog some of the varieties inhabiting the church. All of the following have been reported by working pastors.
The Bird Dog. Four-legged bird dogs point where the hunter should shoot. The two-legged Bird Dog loves to be the pastor’s eyes, ears, and nose, sniffing out items for attention. “If I were you, I’d give Mrs. Greenlee a call. She has some marital problems you need to confront.” Or, “We need more activities for the youth.” Or, “Why doesn’t the church do something about …”
Most pastors respond to Bird Dogs by saying, “The Lord hasn’t said anything to me about this, but it sounds like a good idea. Obviously you’re concerned, and that’s usually a sign the Lord is telling you to do something about it.” Those genuinely concerned will take up the challenge. Genuine Bird Dogs, however, will grumble, “That’s your job, Pastor. I’m just calling your attention to something important.”
Of particular bother is the Superspiritual Bird Dog. This purebred strain is more likely to point out things that always leave the pastor feeling defensive and not quite spiritual. “The Lord has laid on my heart that we need to be praying more for renewal.” Who could argue otherwise? Or, “We need to develop more discipleship and maturity within this congregation, wouldn’t you say, Pastor?”
These people like to give the impression they have more spiritual perception than anyone else. “It’s more irritating than threatening, but it always shakes my confidence,” says a pastor in Virginia. “I find myself questioning whether I really have the mind of Christ, whether I’m fulfilling my pastoral responsibilities as I should. Especially when I’m tired and feeling overwhelmed already, this kind of person really gets me down. I don’t need more Bird Dogs. I need more shooters.”
The Wet Blanket. If you’ve heard the phrase “It’s no use trying,” you’ve probably spotted the Wet Blanket. These people have a negative disposition that’s contagious. They spread gloom, erase excitement, and bog down the ministry. Their motto: “Nothing ventured, nothing lost.”
A pastor in upstate New York describes one such obstructionist couple, who live next door to the church. Since it’s a yoked parish and the pastor lives twelve miles away, this couple informally oversees building maintenance. “Last winter, I called them each Wednesday afternoon to turn on the heat in the church building for prayer meeting that night,” the pastor recalls. Inevitably, the couple would refuse. “We don’t need heat,” they would argue. “It’s too expensive, not enough people will show up, and those who do can sit for an hour in their coats.”
In business meetings, they exhibit the same attitude toward any step of faith. “We tried that before, and it didn’t work” is a familiar refrain. Because of their intimidating personalities, people are reluctant to vote against them.
The Entrepreneur. Just the opposite of the Wet Blanket, the Entrepreneur is enthusiastic. He’s the first to greet visitors at the church and invite them to his home. Unfortunately, in addition to being enthusiastic about the church, he’s equally eager to sell them vitamins, bee pollen, or car wax.
“We were losing people because they felt victimized,” says a minister in Wisconsin. “It got so bad I had to mention in a sermon that we can’t make each other the objects of our enterprise. We also had to put a notice in our church directory that this list is not to be used for business activity.”
Captain Bluster. This is the person who comes from the union steward school of diplomacy and speaks with an exclamation point instead of a period.
He (or she) is right, and everyone else is wrong, and he doesn’t mind saying in the middle of a church business meeting, “I don’t like what you said.”
“All our salaries are out of line; pastors are paid too much these days!” said one such dragon in a business meeting with the pastor’s entire family present.
This kind of person is a steamroller who flattens anyone in his way with his overwhelming certainty that his is the only way to do it. Negotiation is a dirty word; compromise unspeakable.
If this person is on a church board that has settled a sensitive issue privately, but he wasn’t completely satisfied with the decision, he’s likely to bring it up again in a congregational meeting because he enjoys the fireworks.
The Fickle Financier. This person uses money to register approval or disapproval of church decisions. Sometimes he protests silently by merely withholding offerings.
“I can always tell when I’ve made an unpopular decision,” says one Maryland pastor. “Missions giving goes up, the general fund scrapes bottom, and it’s usually right before the quarterly business meeting. They think they’re punishing the pastor.”
Others, however, because of the amount of their giving, realize their money means clout, and they directly manipulate people and programs.
In one small church in Oregon, the owner of the local school bus company and his family represented 50 percent of the church’s income. When the new pastor went in for his first haircut, the barber said, “Oh, you’re at the church Mr. Peabody owns.” The pastor couldn’t tell if he was joking. He later discovered he wasn’t.
Mr. Peabody expected the pastor to keep regular office hours and managed to find some excuse to call almost every morning at 9 and again shortly after 11:30 to find out if he was there.
“That was just one symptom of the control he exerted,” says the pastor, who has since left, though the calls continue with his successor. “It was a hardship, but there’s no solution unless you’re willing to stand up to him and risk losing half your funds, a loss I didn’t feel the church could survive.”
On the other hand, a Georgia pastor faced a similar situation.
“In my first church of thirty members, the largest contributor threatened to move his letter if such-and-such wasn’t done. I said, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, but you don’t judge this church — God judges all of us.’ The church wasn’t for sale. It cut the ground out from under him.”
These are just a few of the dragons ministers encounter. There are many others too numerous to mention in detail:
• The Busybody, who enjoys telling others how to do their jobs
• The Sniper, who avoids face-to-face conflict but picks off pastors with pot shots in private conversation, such as the cryptic “Be sure and pray for our pastor. He has some problems, you know.”
• The Bookkeeper, who keeps written record of everything the pastor does that “isn’t in the spirit of Christ”
• The Merchant of Muck, who breeds dissatisfaction by attracting others who know he’s more than willing to listen to, and elaborate on, things that are wrong in the church
• The Legalist, whose list of absolutes stretches from the kind of car a pastor can drive to the number of verses in a hymn that must be sung.
Any of these can inhabit a given congregation.
How do you know a dragon if you see one? You can’t tell by looking. Dragons can be as friendly and charming as non-dragons. Sometimes you can’t even tell by listening … at first. People can criticize, voice dogmatic opinions, tangle with others, and yet not be dragons.
The distinguishing characteristic of a dragon is not what is said but how it’s said. Even though these people are well-intentioned, sincerely doing what’s best in their own eyes, they aren’t quite with you. Often they have a spirit that enjoys being an adversary rather than an ally. They have a consistent pattern of focusing on a narrow special interest rather than the big picture, which leads to tangents rather than a balanced church life.
Theirs is a spirit quick to vilify and slow to apologize. Dragons usually cannot bring themselves to accept responsibility for something that has gone wrong, and hence, they resist asking anyone’s forgiveness.
This spirit, of course, is difficult to discern. It can only be judged by observing the person’s effect on the larger ministry of the church. As 1 Timothy 5:24 says, “The sins of some men are obvious …; the sins of others trail behind them.”
Perhaps the greatest damage done by true dragons is not their direct opposition. It’s more intangible. They destroy enthusiasm, the morale so necessary for church health and growth. People no longer feel good about inviting friends to worship services. The air is tense, the church depressed, and everyone aware of “us” and “them.”
The effect on pastors is equally serious. They sap the pastor’s energy and, just as damaging, goad them into reacting instead of acting.
“The real problem isn’t so much their overt actions,” observes a veteran pastor. “But they divert your attention and keep you off guard even if they never openly oppose you. You find yourself not planning, not thinking of the future, not seeking a vision for the church — you’re just trying to survive.”
If pastors become preoccupied with the dragons, afraid to challenge them or at least too concerned about “fighting only battles that need to be fought,” they often lose their spontaneity and creativity. Change is stifled, growth stunted, and the direction of ministry is set by the course of least resistance, which as everyone knows, is the course that makes rivers crooked.
If the first casualties in dragon warfare are vision and initiative, the next victim is outreach. When a pastor is forced to worry more about putting out brush fires than igniting the church’s flame, the dragons have won, and the ministry has lost.
Habitations of Dragons
Where are the places dragons are most likely to emerge? After interviewing pastors who have survived numerous encounters, a few observations seemed to recur. These warnings are not intended to arouse suspicion or distrust of potential friends. They’re offered simply to help clarify some of the dynamics of potential conflict.
The worst dragons may be, in the beginning, the pastor’s strongest supporters. Often the opposition seems to develop from among those responsible for calling the pastor.
One pastor, now in his fifth church, says, “A wise old minister told me the person most likely to become your severest critic is the person who picks you up at the airport on your candidating visit. So far he’s been right three out of five.”
They’re not always members of the pastoral search committee, but dragons often seem to emerge from among the people influential in calling the pastor.
Why? Perhaps their expectations are greater. Perhaps they are more emotionally tied to the church and feel more of an ownership. Perhaps they feel their leadership threatened by the pastor. Perhaps they’re simply the stronger personalities. Whatever the reason, they often become the loyal opposition, or in some cases not so loyal.
Another pastor, a church planter, observes a similar tendency even in situations without a search committee. “The people who were part of the core, the first four families, were among the first to become disenchanted with me. They saw me as their pastor, and as the congregation grew, one of them told me, ‘These new people don’t love this church like we do.’ And when I inevitably spent less time with the charter members to concentrate on growth, they became sharply critical of me, too.”
Dragons often work overhard initially at befriending you. If you list the people who make an appointment to see you in the first month of a new pastorate and another list of those unhappy with your ministry a year later, you’ll be amazed at the overlap. Often when they first come, they want to “share a personal concern” or let you know “the real situation in the church.” They really want, of course, to co-opt your allegiance for their special interest.
Other times, certain individuals will give overgenerous gifts. “One man in my congregation took me aside and gave me $100 every month. Another offered to buy me a new suit each year,” said a pastor in Des Moines. “I didn’t refuse at first, but then I realized they had a political end in mind. I felt they were trying to own me. I’ve since turned down these gifts.”
People who try overhard to be friends are sometimes genuine, but other times they just want to be in the inner ring, to gain the pastor’s ear, to increase their influence in the church.
Dragons usually compare you to their former pastor. Dragons have invariably had previous church experience, either at another church or in the present church with the previous pastor. Dragons are virtually nonexistent among those for whom you are the first pastor.
One small-town pastor in the Midwest, who counts among his congregation the widow of the former pastor, was confronted by her one Sunday morning.
“I tried to call you this week,” she said. “Your wife told me it was your day off. I’ll have you know my husband never took a day off in twenty-three years of ministry.” The pastor stifled an urge to point out her husband had also died at age forty-five.
The prior experience of a congregation affects churches of every size and denomination. Unless the congregation has been without a minister for a long time, the spirit of the former pastor is very much present. Whether the former pastor was loved deeply or intensely disliked, the congregation’s priorities certainly have been shaped by the predecessor. Some will want a clone; others will want a sharp contrast.
Interestingly, just because people praise their former pastor does not mean they’re going to become dragons. In fact, they are probably not as dangerous as those who’ve developed a habit of criticizing past ministers. They may be revealing their respect for the pastoral position.
“When I first came to Birch Ridge Presbyterian,” says the current pastor, “I got so tired of hearing how wonderful my predecessor, Rev. Becker, had been. They called him Old Brother Beck, and they adored him. But when I had been there four or five years, their loyalties shifted my way. It just took a while to be accepted as their leader.”
If they brag about the former pastor, it may be cause for thanks, not irritation. It’s safer than the members skinning him alive. Members’ attitudes about their former pastor can, in time, transfer to you.
Dragons thrive when the church’s formal authority and informal power structure don’t match. Whenever the church office holders, elected or appointed, are different from the unofficial but widely recognized power brokers in the congregation, dragons seem to multiply.
One Minneapolis pastor who teaches a seminary course in practical theology asked his students to draw a chart of the lines of authority in their home churches. The students all drew neat boxes for various committees and boards with lines running cleanly from one to another. Then he asked them to diagram the real decision-making process. One student turned in a sheet with lots of small circles around the edge connected to one large egg-shaped circle filling the center of the page. The large circle was labeled “Ralph.”
No polity is perfect. Dominant personalities may not be spiritually qualified for church leadership. And no church structure can ever perfectly fit the changing human relationships within a congregation. But stress will come to the extent of the mismatch between formal and informal leadership. One inevitably must adjust to the other.
Dragons are often bred in counseling. Those you’ve counseled, or their family members, frequently become either eternally grateful for your help or infernally gravid with hate since you know too much.
People often seem to resent those who become too familiar with their intimate struggles. In counseling, if the problems are not completely solved, counselees are often uncomfortable facing the counselor later — not only does he know their problem, he knows it hasn’t been solved. When this happens with a pastor, often the persons withdraw from the church physically or emotionally, or else they begin working to oust the pastor.
Even if the pastor maintains a good relationship with the counselee, sometimes family members resent his involvement.
“The wife of one of my deacons came to see me about their marriage difficulties. Her husband refused to admit there was a problem, but his relationship with me became tense because he knew what his wife had been telling me. Eventually he became one of the individuals instrumental in demanding my resignation,” says the pastor, who was forced to leave. “I can’t help but think at least part of the breakdown in our relationship was due to his discomfort knowing I was aware of his marriage problems.”
Dragons often sensed a call to the ministry at one time. Surprisingly, most pastors indicate they do not have as many problems with those currently in Christian work as they do with those who should be in ministry and aren’t.
“I have several parachurch workers, preachers’ kids, and retired ministers in my congregation, and they’re my most supportive members,” says an Illinois pastor. “I’ve learned to lean on them when I need to. They understand ministry and appreciate what the church is doing.
“The problems come from those who’ve sensed a call and haven’t followed it. It’s the frustrated, armchair pastors who want to run the church.”
Another pastor reports his dragon is a former missionary who took a job in the home office and is suddenly away from a direct people ministry.
The only solution? Finding a place where these people can minister directly to needy people.
“We had a young couple who’d committed themselves to going overseas during a missions conference, but they never went,” says the Illinois pastor. “They were a source of dissension until we identified what they were feeling and put them in charge of tutoring some inner-city kids. Now they feel great about the church.”
The old adage “If they have a problem, give ’em a job” isn’t bad if the job is meaningful and especially if it’s in an area where God has called them before. If you can tap the cause of the frustration, help them recognize it, and love them in spite of their abrasiveness, they can be transformed from dragons to highly motivated allies.
These are by no means all the situations conducive to dragons. Nor do these conditions mean dragons will necessarily appear. Many pastors are able to minister effectively in all of these situations without arousing the wrath of their people. It does help, however, to understand the factors at work.
Understanding Dragons
How do dragons get that way? Rarely is it a conscious choice to become beastly. Hardly ever are dragons so bad that they see themselves as dragons. Other than the pathological sadists, not many people in human history were mean because they enjoyed it.
“I have never met a man who wanted to be bad,” writes George MacLeod. “The mystery of man is that he is bad when he wants to be good.”
In the church, most dragons see themselves as godly people, adequately gracious and kind, who hold another viewpoint they honestly believe is right.
Unfortunately, sincerity without self-examination is no excuse. Remember the old joke about the proud mother who thought every member of the marching band was out of step except her Freddy? Even with intense self-examination, not all the factors are self-evident. In dealing with dragons, it’s helpful to understand some of the underlying causes of their behavior.
First, people do battle because they feel so strongly. Emotions are often more powerful than logic. In an ideal world, people who differ would sit down together in faith and good fellowship, and after some friendly debate reach an agreement based on Scripture, sound theology, and calm reasoning. But we know that doesn’t happen. If a person is argued into submission or politically subdued in one area but the underlying emotional need isn’t met, he’ll simply create another headache somewhere else.
When a person complains, “I’m not being fed” or “You’re not meeting my needs,” sometimes it’s out of frustration, as mentioned above, or out of a sense of neglect or isolation.
“I used to have very little patience with these people,” says a Nazarene pastor, “until I noticed I do the same thing. Another pastor, a good friend of mine, accepted a denominational position, and I began to resent him because when he was in town he always seemed to have time for other pastors but not me. I found myself criticizing him, but I wasn’t judging him, I was mad at him.”
In a similar way, the criticism of a dragon may spring more from anger than differences over the immediate subject. And sometimes the anger is not specifically directed at the pastor but at the situation.
“The guy who’s overlooked in his company and has been passed over for promotion five times can make the dirt fly in the church,” says a pastor in Alabama. “I’ve struggled most with people who resist all types of authority, not just pastoral leaders. They’ve never met an executive they liked, and they see the pastor as an executive. They don’t have much control in their jobs, but they’re determined to exert some power in the church.
“It’s taken ten years to get close to these people, and it’s happened as a result of them seeing my failures.”
Second, despite their sincerity, people cannot overcome their human nature. All of us sometimes act out of sheer cussedness, even while justifying our actions to ourselves.
In John Miller’s book The Contentious Community, he compares the church to a children’s choir gathered in the sanctuary to sing praises to God. “Innocence and guile are perched on the edge of the platform, waiting to burst forth in song or shove some unsuspecting freckle-faced being to an ignominious landing three feet below. And it isn’t that Bonnie is innocent and Bobby is full of guile; it is that innocence and guile, the ideal and the real, are coursing through the veins of each.”
Or, as Saint Augustine pointed out with barbed wit, “The innocence of children may be more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart.”
The church, indeed every Christian, is an odd combination of self-sacrificing saint and self-serving sinner. And the church, unlike some social organizations, doesn’t have the luxury of choosing its members; the church is an assembly of all who profess themselves believers. Within that gathering is found a full range of saint/sinner combinations. Ministry is a commitment to care for all members of the body, even those whose breath is tainted with dragon smoke.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
