Every pastor has dealt with a church boss. Someone who is self-appointed to supposedly look out for the interests of the church. Someone who usually controls the church-purse strings. Someone who always wants the pastor to have little say and will gladly tell him so on any occasion they can find to do so. Any one who has ever pastored has dealt with this kind of individual. You can change churches or denominations, but almost every church has somebody who thinks it's their way or the highway. That's why so many of our churches are suffering today because the church boss has kept who they wanted and tried to run off everybody else.
When I was evangelizing 45 years ago I preached a revival at one church where it was so obvious it was ridiculous how much power a church boss can have over a pastor. My poor friend was down and out, beaten up spiritually, and completely distraught because he had crossed the church boss. My friend had won some new people into the church, but they didn't fit into the plans of the controlling faction of the church. They not only shunned the new folks (who really loved their pastor) and came every night of the revival just to make a scene. I'll never forget being so glad to see that week end. Almost 35 years later I ran into some of those same people who still had the same attitude then as they had 35 years later.
I know that anyone can get a God-complex and completely justify their wrong doing. If we are honest with ourselves we've probably all done it at least once or twice in our lives. Yet it makes you wonder how can anybody get by with that attitude for so long and never be convicted in their hearts that they are wrong. Sometimes even we ministers become bosses instead of leaders and cause our role spiritually to be adverse rather than supportive and don't even realize it. I have dealt with enough of them in 45 years to say I don't ever want that title attached to my name.
I have had to apologize before for saying or doing something wrong and even now if I do something out of kilter I feel the convicting power of God to make things right. That's one of the reasons for my blog the past few days because I have been holding in this stuff for a long time and I believe the Lord wanted me to get this out of my spirit. If I have ever done anyone wrong I am very sorry because I know how it feels to be done wrong and it's not a good feeling. Sadly there are some who will never admit they lied about you or said hurtful things about you. They will never admit that they worked against you or made harmful gestures against your character. I spoke yesterday about this being a litigious generation and I would probably financially be a lot better off if I had pursued legal action against people who lied on me or tried to attack my character. All a minister has is his reputation and if that is ruined, so is he, and there are people out there in our churches that seem to make it their passion to hurt their pastor.
Sadly it's those who feel like it's their obligation to control things or to have their way that usually inflict the punishment. They know if you as a pastor go after them legally it's conflicting with the
scripture so they seemingly get away with it. But there is coming a reckoning day when all of that will be known and the sheep will be divided from the goats. A good sheep will follow it's leader because it knows he/she will not lead them astray, but the goat makes everything his business and wants to do his own thing. Which one are you?
No comments:
Post a Comment