A Letter From A Pastor

An excerpt from a letter to Slice from a pastor...


"I remember serving as an associate pastor in North Georgia where I served under a godly pastor who is now with the Lord. I distinctly remember him being questioned by the pastor search committee. “Can you tell us how many people you baptized in your last church?” The soon to-be pastor said, “If you will tell me how many people look like Christ in this church I will tell you how many I baptized in my last church.” They sat silent. At that moment God starting teaching me that it was His business to save and it was my business to be holy and share Him. It was not my business to bring the masses in and have membership and baptism campaigns."

Image: Baptism of Christ c. 1473 Fresco Sant'Andrea a Brozzi, San Donnino

How To Treat Your Pastor

This is an 'anonymous layman's' advice on how to treat your pastor:

1. Fling him into his office. Tear the “Office” sign from the door and nail on the sign, “Study.” Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the flock of lives of a superficial flock and a holy God.

2. Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through. And let him come out only when he’s bruised and beaten into being a blessing.

3. Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks, and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence. Bend his knees in the lonesome valley.

4. Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God. And make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets.

5. Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit. And make him preach the Word of the living God!

6. Test him. Quiz him. Examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, batting averages, and political in-fighting. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day—“Sir, we would see Jesus.”

7. When at long last he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he does not, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and digest the television commentaries, and think through the day’s superficial problems, and manage the community’s weary drives, and bless the sordid baked potatoes and green beans, ad infinitum, better than he can.

8. Command him not to come back until he’s read and reread, written and rewritten, until he can stand up, worn and forlorn, and say, “Thus saith the Lord.”

9. Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for celestial wisdom. And give him no escape until he’s back against the wall of the Word.

10. And sit down before him and listen to the only word he as left—God’s Word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward, until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity.

11.And when he’s burned out by the flaming Word, when he’s consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he’s privileged to translate the truth of God to man, finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-edged sword in his coffin, and raise the tomb triumphant. For he was a brave soldier of the Word. And ere he died, he had become a man of God.

Image: Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew. 1308-11. Tempera on wood panel.

When Has Authority Gone Too Far?

The original article can be found here. I am posting this as part of an effort to think through and study this issue. May we all be Bereans.

When Has Authority Gone Too Far?
by Jon Zens

Jesus Christ rules His churches by the Spirit through His Word. The churches have authority to act according to Christ's Word. The common notion that authority belongs to a segment of the church (the "pastor," the "session,"the "board," etc.), rather than to the whole church cannot be sustained by the NT.

It is from this misconception that wrong ideas of authority flow. Several propositions follow that will seek in brief compass to crystallize critical matters regarding authority in the church.

1. The church has authority to act on Christ's Word (Matt. 18:15-18; 1 Cor. 5:1-13; 6:1-8). If reconciliation is not effected at lower levels, offenses must be brought "to the church." The elders are certainly a part of that process, but they are not the process itself. The idea that "take it to the church" really means "take it to the elders" is not based on the NT.

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul does not chide the elders for not taking action, but rather confronts the whole church. We have no reason not to believe that Corinth had elders. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul assumes that the church has the ability and resources to work out its internal problems.

2. Elders recognized by the people are responsible to equip the flock for ministry, lead them into maturity, teach and apply the Word; are accountable to God for their oversight; and are to exercise their care of the flock after the servant-pattern of Christ(Acts 20:28; Heb. 13:17; Eph. 4:11-12; 1 Thess. 5:12; 1 Pet. 5:1-3).

3. A mammoth problem exists because the "office of pastor" has been separated from NT eldership, and an authority has been attached to it that is unknown in the NT. "The Minister" concept has no denominational boundaries--it is everywhere assumed. "The pastor" doctrine presupposes and perpetuates the clergy/laity distinction, as a "Reader Survey" from Leadership magazine illustrates:

In 1904, I.M. Haldeman asserted that "Bishop and Elder do not exist today... The Pastor is a Gift to the Church." Abraham Kuyper said that "the Reformed allege that the office of the Word is a separate office which demands its own preparation and its own unique gifts." The Puritans believed that "a minister's authority derives from his office... None can preach with authority 'but who is in office'."

This "office" is totally different from being an "elder." It has a "call" that other elders apparently do not receive. It has training (seminary) not required of "elders." Men leave their families for it. When they "enter the ministry," they become "the leading officer of a congregation."

Brethren, as long as we assume that "the pastor" fits the following job description, problems of authority are inevitable.

[The pastor is] like the cerebellum, the center for communicating messages, coordinating functions, and conducting responses between the head and body... The pastor is not only the authoritative communicator of the truth from the Head to the Body, but he is also the accurate communicator of the needs from the Body to the Head... he edifies the Body.

Christ nowhere assigns such tasks to one man. The fact that we think He does is the source for many of our problems.

4. Perverted authority is often subtle, but Christ's sheep are able to sense its tentacles. If a church atmosphere causes people to walk around with a dark cloud over their heads (no joy, Gal. 4:15), to feel like they are being "watched" and "kept track of," and to feel like they can't talk or do things without "checking in" with the leadership, etc., there is probably an authority problem.

Some marks of perverted authority:

1. the claim of direct authority from God, rather than testing things by the Word;
2. the command is to "submit to me," rather than "I will serve you";
3. the method of leadership is to "order" people around, rather than to appeal for them to do the right things;
4. there is a dominating, "pushy" drive instead of a dependence on God to direct;
5. there is a sense of control, rather than a sense of support;
6. a gift is exploited so that others are made to feel dependent on it;
7. there is an inflexibility--"don't question me"--"don't touch the Lord's anointed";
8. there is unapproachability and intimidation--the "aura" around the leader keeps the followers in "awe";
9. there emerges an organization built around a man and his peculiar emphases instead of around Christ and His Word;
10. there will be cyclical challenges to the authority figure (which are immediately and forcefully purged);
11. there is more concern for maintaining the authoritarian structure than there is for caring about the people in it.

As you think about your own experience, it is apparent that "cults" do not have a monopoly on these tragic attributes. They too often permeate the structures of "Christian" groups and churches.

Image: Luther preaching in Whittenburg