Five Scary Trends (Pt 5: Pastor Praise)

This week we have been looking at Five Scary Trends that Could Shipwreck the Church. As I have stated often I am very excited about what God is up to in the American Church and I think the proclamations of gloom and doom in the blogosphere are dead wrong. At the same time in an age of instant reporting of every move a leader makes on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube we have to be incredibly diligent. 

Don't be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what's good. Throw out anything tainted with evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:21,22 The Message)

 So let’s finish with what I believe is the scariest trend of all.

Pastor Praise

I come from a long, long line of pastors. Every relative on my dad's side of the family is either a pastor or married to a pastor. All of them, all the way back to my grandfather. And over the past few years working at Seacoast, Leadership Network and most recently Saddleback I have had the opportunity to meet hundreds of pastors of every size church, from small to giga. My overwhelming feeling about pastors is that most would do anything to see people come to know Jesus, and they are blown away that they get to do what they do. There are egos and bad motivations in the mix, just like any subset of society, but almost all of the pastors I’ve met are good men who have given their lives for the advancement of the Kingdom. 

But there is a very scary trend I see in some churches; treating the Senior Pastor like a rock star. Sometimes this is led by well-meaning church leaders and sometimes it comes from the pastor himself. Tony Morgan wrote a great blog post about what he called the Culture of Honor describing this trend. Unchecked I think this path will lead to disaster for many pastors and churches in America.

The royal treatment takes various forms: private parking garages for the pastor and his wife, live in personal assistants, entourages housed in luxury suites wherever the pastor travels, a personal security team that shadows the pastor wherever he goes on campus. In extreme cases every whim of the pastor is immediately tended to so that he never has to pour his own drink, drop off his own dry cleaning or fly on a commercial airline. 

I don’t want to just throw stones; I know there are good reasons, at least in the beginning, for many of these perks. And as Tony Morgan said there is certainly a biblical mandate for honoring our leaders. Where it falls apart for me is when I see Christian leaders allowing themselves to be treated in a way that Jesus wouldn’t have tolerated. I can’t imagine Jesus demanding his favorite drink be chilled and available at all times, his scroll be carried by an intern, or his security team swarm the instant a crazy started a scene. (Imagine what “guest services” would have done with the Gadarene Demoniac.)

Security is an example of the pastor as rock star trend that is out of whack. After some high profile and horrifying incidents of gunfire in churches, pastors all over the country have employed their own private protection squads. While it is imperitive to make sure the pastor and the congregation are safe, this trend has gotten a little whacky. If Jesus had had some pastor’s security teams he wouldn’t have had to die for our sins. But when Peter tried to play bodyguard Jesus told him to put away his sword and he fixed the damage Peter had done. My guess is that more pastors die every year from shark attacks than from gunfire, but churches spend almost nothing on clergy shark protection. Let’s do a cost versus benefit analysis and be good stewards of what God has given us.

For anyone who wants to chime in about the evil of Senior Pastors, that the Bible doesn’t say anything about authority in the church and that all big church pastors are just ego-maniacs, you’re on the wrong blog. I love pastors and I believe strongly in authority and honor. All I’m saying is that we all need to look in the mirror and ask if we’re living a lifestyle that accurately reflects the attitude of Jesus. Anything that smacks of worship of anyone but the King of kings has to be rejected.

 

Wow, I’m glad I got that off my chest. Now let’s join arms and get back to pointing people to Jesus.

 

Comments

[Jerry Gray]

Great stuff Geoff! I'm reading Tim Keller's book "The King's Cross.". In it he discusses how the geographical center of Christianity seems to shift, unlike other world religions. He points out how it is now shifting away from the US to Africa and other regions.

The question is why? Andrew Walls says this: "There is a certain vulnerability, a fragility at the heart of Christianity. You might say that this is the vulnerability of the cross.".

Keller suggests that when Christianity migrates toward or becomes fascinated with wealth and power, it's message is diluted, it's focus changes and the vulnerability of the gospel is lost in the glare of influence and success, prosperity and celebrity. When this happens the center of Christianity moves. Christianity is always moving away from power and wealth toward vulnerability and humility.

The question for us pastors--the notable ones and the ones who serve in relative obscurity-- is "Am I putting on display the vulnerability of the gospel?". When people inside and outside the church look at me, my LIFE, my actions do they see power, influence and wealth or do they see a LIFE fashioned in the image of the humble, accessible, vulnerable Servant?

Like you, I believe the vast majority of pastors desire to portray an accurate representation of Jesus. The challenge is to be ever aware of the slow and steady gravitational pull of "the pattern of the world".

If the gospel --the center of Christianity--is always moving away from power and wealth, those of us who are charged with Kingdom leadership must be diligent to keep the course.

[Curt Whalen]

Great post. The sad thing is that youve barely scratched the surface of the problem. These men and women use people to achieve their success and leave wounded Christians in their wake. It's unfortunate that these pastors define what makes our modern church successful and that other Christian leaders don't dig deeper into the personal lives of the ones they promote like "rock stars".

[Tim Scott]

Thanks for a great week of insight... Some adjustments are necessary. Love your heart for Pastors and the Kingdom.

[Joel Zehring]

I'm a pastor's kid, and I've belonged to churches lead by senior pastors for almost all of my life. At this point, pastors don't add as much value as I previously thought.

I believe God calls some to be pastors, I just don't think the role needs to be as formal and professional as Pop Christianity almost always prescribes.