Lessons learned as a pastor - part #4

Not sure how many more lessons I will write about … I guess as long as I keep thinking of them. Here are some of today’s thoughts.

1.     Trying to make everyone happy means no one will be happy – Being a leader means you will be forced to make decisions that will not always be popular. Let’s be real – some people have the spiritual gift of being grumpy. And with them it doesn’t matter what you do; they will never be satisfied. There will always have been a better way to do it. And the time spent trying to make them happy sends a bad message to the rest of the people. The message received is that bad behavior will be rewarded with attention.

2.     Pastors spend time working with the wrong people – You might be thinking, “Hold on pastor, everyone in the church deserves to be worked with.” The answer to that is both yes and no. Does everyone deserve to be ministered to? Absolutely. But when a new ministry or vision is expressed, I have found there are three groups of people. Those who are ‘all in’ and ready to charge the gates of hell with a water pistol, those who are on the fence unsure if this is a good thing or bad thing, and those who are opposed to it. Typically those people that are opposed fall into the category above as being unhappy. I can’t tell you how many years I neglected those who were ‘all in’ and spent my time trying to turn around the opposition. Here’s what I learned through that. Focus on the people who are in support and are ready to go. They will work on convincing the people who are unsure and soon they too will be on board. And allow the Holy Spirit to work on those in opposition because I recognized, as much as I tried I could never change a heart. 

3.     Not all staff members will be saved and or called - I remember a couple of churches ago having to work with the Personnel Committee to fire a youth pastor. In 9 short months he had charged a home entertainment system to the church card and only reimbursed the church when the financial secretary questioned him about it. He also “grew” our student ministry from an average of 80 in attendance when he arrived, to 40 in attendance 9 months later, even though we opened a start of the art youth building under his watch. He acted inappropriately with another man’s wife on a mission trip to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (another staff member who had been on the trip came and told me about this). And that’s just a few of the things. Unbeknownst to my associate pastor, or myself he had been going around telling people that we were out to “get him”. So when we laid everything out before the personnel committee, a man on the committee that this youth pastor had been talking to on a daily basis said that we were the problem, that we had a “bad attitude”. The committee did the right thing and fired him that afternoon but they put a gag order on my associate and I so people began to wonder if what the youth guy had been saying was true. It took years for some people who we’d been friends with and pastor to for 9 years to finally believe we were acting in the best interest of the church on that day. 

4.     Not all crisis calls have to be handled immediately – We all have various types of crisis calls as pastors. The “Winston has been rushed to the ER in an ambulance” kind that you jump in your car immediately and go. But there’s also the “Pastor, we are having a hard time in our marriage … hard time with our child …” I learned, about 13 years into ministry this principal. When a crisis call comes at night I learned to ask myself, “Is this something they have been dealing with during hours I was at work?” If the answer to that were yes, I would tell them I’m sorry they were having problems and I’d be in the office at 8:00 the next morning if they wanted to come by. People have no trouble calling you away from your family. But if this problem could have been handled by you while you were at work, why deal with it once you are off work and home? If it wasn’t bad enough to call you during the day when it was being discussed or debated, then it can likely wait until the next day.

Again, I’m not sure if these are helpful to anyone but me but I can tell you it is cathartic to write out some things. Someone commented to me after a couple of these blogs that it appeared I had “learned a few things since leaving the vocational ministry.” I responded, “No, most of these things I have known for awhile. I’m just afforded the freedom to be more transparent now. 

Blessed by having been a pastor for 28+ years,

Tom