The following are a list of concerns, complaints, problems, and heart-felt cries of anguish that many Baptist pastors submitted to the question: “What are some of the problems you face being a pastor?”
The results of this anonymous post are chilling. Read and consider how you view and, more importantly, treat your pastor. For the sake of brevity, I’ll only list three of them.
I suppose my problem, or perhaps my heartache, is a seeming lack of understanding my church has of spiritual things, even those things I have taught on. For instance, we recently did a study of the book of Revelation; we spent about four months on it, going through it chapter by chapter, verse by verse. We do it in a somewhat informal setting, to allow for questions and further explanations in difficult areas, (which is, I guess, about all of it). To help, I illustrated many things to give a visual aspect for further understanding, as well as lots of hand-outs to take home, and so forth. At the end of the study, I decided to see how well the information sunk in, so I gave a 12 question quiz. Sadly, not one could even tell me how long the Great Tribulation period would be, with answers ranging from 10-1,000 years. My questions were very basic, nothing hard: Who are the 144,000? How long is the Millennial reign of Christ, (some got this one right)? What do the four horsemen represent? Things like this, that we went over and over.
Some of these folks have been in church for 50 years! What are they doing when the teaching is going on? They come, they sit, they open their Bibles, but nothing seems to get in. Sometimes I wonder why I spend the time when no one hears or responds. Hence, my heartache. Can’t even get them to read their Bibles on their own.
After 27 years of full-time ministry, the thing that troubles me the most is that I have come to the place where I know better than to trust anybody. Eventually, they all will turn on you, even if it is only for a short time, and even if they get right with you afterward. You cannot really rely on anyone. The only thing I trust everyone to do is to eventually betray my trust.
A pastor friend once said that the difference between the church member that loves you the most and the one that hates you the most is…… 10 years.
Pretty sobering, aren’t they?
Remember the words of Paul to his young son in the faith, Timothy:
“The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.” – 1 Timothy 5:17.
This coming year, how about trying to be different when it comes to your pastor? After all, I think we’ve got enough people who love Jesus and hate church. The last thing we need is for those people to be behind the pulpit. Don’t you agree?
