Being a Pastor, part 1

A few years ago, I had an epiphany. I had one of those moments when the light came on in my head and all of a sudden a lot of things made a lot of sense. I understood why I had become so discouraged at being a Pastor, I understood why there is so much burn-out in the ministry, I understood why so many churches are struggling, and I understood a little better why God called me into the ministry in the first place.

Something that I have observed in churches is that we have seen the declining numbers in our churches and we have hit the panic button.

Don't get me wrong; we need to be concerned about dwindling attendance. I would hope that any church that sees fewer people coming every month would be concerned enough to do something about it.

However, what I have seen churches do is decide that getting bigger is the only thing that really matters. In a way, numbers have become our new God. We never admit this, and yet .... we always have to have more people coming to church, more money coming in the offering plate, more people going on mission trips, more, more, more, and everything else is secondary.

As a part of this, new Pastors are brought into a church and simply told to grow it (without making substantial changes to anything).

Pastors then start working trying to grow the church. They visit prospects, they witness, they come up with all these new programs to draw people in. If these things work, then the Pastor is viewed as a great success (provided they didn't make too many changes).

However, if they don't work, or don't work well enough, then the Pastor is blamed for the continued decline. People get upset, they criticize every move that the Pastor has made (or has been perceived to have made), make his life miserable, and then one day, to the shock of all, a search committee is observed in the morning worship service.

The Pastor goes to another church where he is told (again) that the church is looking for someone with "new ideas" and he thinks, "This one will be different." Except that it usually isn't, and sometimes it's even worse than the one before.

After a while, the Pastor decides that the ministry is not worth sacrificing his family, his emotional well being, and his sanity, and starts looking for a way out. Sometimes, he begins to tell himself, "Why am I doing this? I can do so much more for God and for my church as a regular layperson." Eventually, these thoughts get put into action, and he packs his bags.

(As an aside, if you are a Minister and have been considered doing this, be warned: you cannot serve God by denying His call in your life. I have seen multiple instances of what happens when someone who, like Jonah, has been called into the ministry tries to run away from it. The end result is never pretty.)

What are the results of this Spiritual Rat Race? Now we have not just declining attendance, but more and more churches are shutting their doors altogether. Fewer and fewer people are coming to know Christ, and our country (along with most of the world in general) is going right down the toilet.

If we are going to fix this country, we have to start with the churches. In order to fix our churches, we need to rethink what churches are supposed to be doing, what the Pastors' role in the church should be, and how he relates to his congregation and his Deacons.

And that is where my epiphany comes in. But you will have to wait for the next post to read about it. :)

Context

In order to avoid misunderstanding of some of what I write, you might want to know a little about my background.

1. I am the Pastor of a Southern Baptist church. I occasionally make references to Deacons. In SBC churches, Deacons function as a governing board. In some denominations they might refer to them as "Elders."

2. As I am male, and virtually all of the other Pastors that I have regular contact with are men, I refer to Pastors in the masculine. I am not trying to slight any woman pastor or minister, it is simply force of habit.

3. I am originally from Georgia, while my wife is from Louisiana. This makes for interesting game days when UGA and LSU are playing, or when the Falcons and the Saints are playing.

4. I base my theology on a literal interpretation of the Bible, within its original context. I have no real preference for translations, except that I use the New American Standard the most.

My new Blog

I have a very full life in a lot of ways. I have a awesome marriage to an amazing wife. I have three really good kids. I live at the beach where I pastor a truly wonderful church with a lot of really good, down to earth people.

And yet, my life is missing something. What could that be?

I know!! A blog! It seems that every other pastor has one, and if I don't, then I am out of date, left behind, a technological dinosaur.

So let me turn off my eight-track player and make one.

As so much of my life revolves around church and whatnot, there are all these things running around in my head that, if put together, might even make a book.

The problem is getting them down on paper in a coherent fashion. What I intend to do is write a post on a given subject, open it up to comments, and start refining and fleshing out some of these things.

So, check back here on a regular basis. I've got posts in my head about churches, Pastors, Deacons, Prophecy, Salvation, and snake handling, to name a few. You never know what is going to pop up.