Clergy Killers and the Preacher's Family

            A friend of mine who works at a Bible college told me PK’s are about 3 or 4 years ahead of their non-PK peers when it comes to ministry.  Most guys entering the ministry have a pretty steep learning curve about living in the ministry.  PK’s have lived it all their lives.  Another friend of mine, who was formerly a minister but left the ministry to be a councilor said, “Preacher’s kids are the first round draft picks for the church.  But when they see their dad being beaten up by churches, they decide they don’t want to go into the ministry.  When that happens, we not only lose future ministers, we lose the best future ministers.”

            As we look at the effect of clergy killers, the most painful aspect for me personally is the effect it has on the children and spouse of the minister.  I have to admit that I am tempted at this point to go into a very personal expose of what happened to my children at the hands of dysfunctional church people.  If I were to identify my single greatest failure over the last 30 years, it is that I did not protect my children adequately.  If I had it to do over, I would do a few things differently.  (We have four kids.  I will give four examples, but many more are available)

·      When my daughter complained that they didn’t do much Bible study I should have told the youth leader, “My child’s spiritual well being is too important for you to waste the opportunity!  The valuable time set aside for discipleship will not be spent on idiotic games and trivialities.  Your job is not to recover the awkward years of your teens and try to be cool.”

·      I would tell an individual, “My daughter doesn’t need to apologize to you.  You are in the wrong and that is all there is to it.”

·      I would tell the mother of a spoiled brat, “You son was misbehaving and my daughter, as a nursery volunteer, was keeping him from being a bully; she will not apologize to you or your son.”

·      I would tell another person, “You sent my eight year old son into a dangerous situation because you thought you could tell him what to do.  You, sir, are an idiot, and if you ever do something like that again I will have you arrested.”

In each case, for the sake of ‘peace’ in the congregation we opted to have our children be the bigger person and we gave way.  I was wrong and I regret it deeply.  I am very close to my children, but I know that my failure to protect my children from unhealthy people in our churches has negatively impacted their faith.

            If I have at this moment the privilege of addressing young ministers with young children, let me offer you some broken hearted advice.  Always choose the side of what is right.  If you kids are in the wrong, discipline them appropriately.  But if dysfunctional people are victimizing them even in the smallest way, defend them. You will be better off looking for a job because you were fired from a hellhole church than looking at regret years later.   And these four crazies didn’t get better because we capitulated. In fact, they got worse because of the capitulation.

            It is not just the PK’s that suffer.  The silent, suffering award may go to the pastor’s wife.  Being a PK, I saw early the presumptuousness with which congregations treat the minister’s wife.  I know of no other industry where it would be acceptable for an employer to, in the hiring process, inquire how the spouse can help the company.   The preacher’s wife is seen as a free employee, one that is often treated poorly.  My wife was “asked to serve” in the music department in one church I served. Her job was to select the music, play the piano and help with special music.  One Sunday she replaced the “Doxology” with “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty”.  An elder’s meeting was called to discuss this breech of protocol, and my wife was informed, in no uncertain terms, that she was not to make changes to the worship service without the approval of the elders.  Being both humble and holy she said nothing and continued to serve.  In hindsight, I wish I had stood between my wife and those cowards in the elder’s office. 

            Many ministers serve the church like a workaholic in hopes of keeping the critics quiet, all the while neglecting his wife.  Many a minister’s wife feels that the church has become a mistress to her husband, who gets all his best.  The matter is complicated by her feelings that if she complains about the church’s demands she is rejecting God, and is some how unholy.

            A minister must not allow his employment with a church to wreck his marriage.   I recently read that 77% of pastors felt they did not have a good marriage and 38% of pastors said they were divorced or currently in a divorce process!  This is a complicated issue and one that will not be resolved in this essay.  But I would like to offer a suggestion that my wife and I use.  It has empowered my wife’s confidence and has taken the insecurity out of her relationship with the church.  My wife has my permission to turn in my resignation at anytime she wishes, for any reason she wishes.  I have told her, “If you see that this job is hurting us, hurting our family, our faith, or doing damage in anyway, you have my permission to turn in my resignation.  Please let me know you are doing this, but you have that right.”  Tell your board that you wife can end the job and it will have a profound effect on the way they treat her and your kids.  Trust you wife; she is most likely a great treasure.

            Finally, ministers suffer from the work of clergy killers.  In my last church, the stress was off the charts.  I went to my doctor with chest pains and found that my heart was in excellent condition; I was not in danger of a heart attack.  I was sort of disappointed.  I realized I had developed a ‘holy’ death wish.  I could never take my own life, but if I died of natural causes, I would be out of the misery at work and I could go to heaven.  (If you are feeling this way today, please call a qualified councilor TODAY or if need be call me, 352-548-4837)  At about this time my wife told me I was turning into a wraith.  She said, “You are like Frodo after he got stabbed on Weather Top; you are fading away.  I barely recognize you any more.”  With her support and help, I got out of a sick church.

            Many ministers know they need to get out, but are so deeply wounded that they can’t see a way.  A colleague of mine who works with wounded clergy related a story of the profound length a minister would go to in order to escape.    He related the case of a minister who was caught in sexual misconduct.  As they worked together to unpack what transpired the fallen minister finally said, “I couldn’t quit the ministry; I had to be thrown out.  I knew that if I (here he referred to his specific behavior), I would be fired and could never go back to any church, any where.”  One wonders how many of the 30% of pastors who said they had either been in an ongoing affair or a one-time sexual encounter with a parishioner were really about wanting a way out.  I am not condoning or making excuses for sinful behavior.  I am saying that a minister under attack by clergy killers is capable of some very dangerous and destructive behaviors.  I am also saying there are better options.

Next week, we will look at what might be done to curb the destructive power and attacks of clergy killers.  

Clergy Killers hurt their own churches.

My original intent was to write a short essay about ministers suffering at the hands of unscrupulous people in their congregation.  But as I wrote, talked and corresponded with preachers, it grew into three essays; Pervasiveness of Clergy Attacks, The Effects of Clergy Attacks and Possible Solutions.  But, after additional conversations and questions, it has grown again.

Today, I want to begin to look at the implications of the crisis in ministry caused by those who attack their ministers. Hoping to deal with this issue in a single essay, I concluded it would be better to have a few short essays in a series. 

After looking at the effects of clergy killers, we will talk about what might be done to help this situation at a personal, congregational, and Kingdom level.  I will also offer a resource page of websites, books, and organizations that can help preachers in crisis.  

“Frozen by the Fear in Me”

Violinist Lindsey Stirling and vocalist Lizzy Hale in their song “Shatter Me” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49tpIMDy9BE) seem, in many ways, to be singing about life in ministry:  Feelings of being trapped, of being set on a pedestal and expected to perform, of being on the verge of shattering, and of being frozen by fears. Forgive me if I am being overly dramatic, but for the minister in the midst of an attack those feeling are very real. 

Last week, we took a look at the staggering loss of ministers as we looked at the numbers, but now let’s look at it at a more congregational level, specifically, what the effects are of clergy killers on their individual congregations.  What does it mean for congregations when their ministers are driven off/and or out of the ministry?

Congregational Impact

I once served a congregation experiencing rapid growth.  That growth was not well received by some of the founding members.  We were bringing in the “wrong kinds” of people.  One of these people was a young, recovering, drug addict.  He relapsed and his relapse created a very minor ripple for the church.  At a meeting called by the founding core, one bitter elderly lady said, “We don’t want that kind of person in our church.”  That mean-spirited dysfunction can be redirected toward the minister. When antagonists learn they are able to oust a preacher they don’t like, the congregation can be held hostage to the will of a vocal minority. The church can even become an extension of the dysfunctional personality of the antagonist.  Given enough time and control the church will eventually exist to suit the whims and desires of those people.  Anytime a person or group is able to assert their will by force of power the church will begin to morph into the image of that person or group.  This pattern, once established, will have four results. 

The first result is the church will likely develop a high turnover rate in ministry.  I talked with one minister that reported a turn over rate that averaged 26 months for the senior minster.  This average included three ministers that stayed between 6 and 10 years each. A few ministers came and went in as little as 18 months.  Speaking of the same church, another preacher told me, “Every preacher has left that church under a cloud of firing, forced resignation, or the realization his days were numbered.”  The church was called, “The Church of the Blessed Revolving Door.”   I suspect you know these kinds of churches.

The second result is these kinds of churches generally do not make disciples.  A pastor on a short tenure will not have time to develop the relationships that will lead to disciple making.  In two years a minister is still learning his way around the community and the church culture.  In that period of time he may lead folks to Christ and see them converted, but long before they have matured in their faith the church will go through a ministerial transition.  It is somewhat unlikely, that in such a church this new believer will have been incorporated into many discipleship-making relationships.  In fact, this new convert maybe shunned by the antagonist for fear that he may in some way represent a threat.

The revolving door phenomenon can be seen in the cyclic growth and decline of churches.  A church of a given size hires a minister, having said all the right things about growing.  As the church grows, issues develop, often, but not always, around power or allocation of resources for ministry.   Conflict begins to develop, growth stops, and decline begins.  In one example, antagonists withheld their giving and then sighted the decline in giving as indications it was time for a new minister.  Fast forward to the preacher’s dismissal, and those who have come to faith during the departed pastor’s ministry drift away without anyone noticing and the church returns to its original, given size.   The process is begun again, with the right sounding talk about commitment to growth.   If you find a church with a frequent turn over in the senior minister position, you will likely find this cyclic growth.  Eventually, the cycle will flatten with highs not being so high and lows slowly growing gradually smaller.  Eventually, the church will revolve ministers in and out with out any real change in attendance.  This can be the first sign of congregational death.

Third and related to this cyclic pattern is the collateral damage done to new believers.  This is perhaps the most tragic of the effects of the clergy killers.  New believers often have a ringside seat to see the brutalization of a pastor who loved them into the Kingdom of God.  Having seen this, they often leave the church and have a very difficult time returning to any house of worship.  I live across the street from a man who was caught in the cross fire of a clergy attack.  By his own confession, he was a worldly man when he came to faith in Christ.  He became very active in church worship and service.  In the midst of a clergy attack he experienced “Things I never saw, even in the Navy.”  While he still calls himself a Christian, he is completely disengaged from the church and will likely remain so.   It would be wonderful if he were a rarity.  It is my opinion, based on observations, that most new believers who leave the church as collateral damage of the clergy killers never regain a vibrant faith.

Finally, churches will have less experienced ministers leading them.  Most of us will admit that when we entered ministry after graduation, we were not really prepared for the life of ministry.  We were more like college professors than pastors.  Ministry is thoroughly practical and hands-on; an academic setting can never prepare you for the hospital call when the diagnosis is late stage cancer.  That is when you learn by gutting it out with on-the-job training, grace, and prayer.  It took several years of on- the-job training for us to become proficient in the arts of ministry.  Currently, half of pastors will leave ministry as a career within 7 to 10 years, meaning that about the time a minister begins to hit his stride of effective ministry, he will be leaving. 

Let’s use a sports analogy.  If competing worldviews are NFL teams, then Team Christian-World-View is staffed and will only always be staffed by rookies, second year players and only one or two veterans.  Such a team would be crushed on the field of play.  Consider how we in the church are loosing ‘market share’ for the hearts and minds of our people. 

I do not believe the Church will fold because of the attack on ministers.  But I do believe a great many churches will die needlessly and others will loose their effectiveness as agents of the gospel.  I do not believe this is an accident; but rather, I believe the enemy of the souls of men and the church is orchestrating and is pleased with these results. 

For the sake of the church, we need to take action in dealing with clergy killers. 

Next week, we will look at the results that clergy killers can have on the ministry, family, and the soul of the minister.

Clergy Killers

A couple of weeks ago I got a splinter in my finger.  Relative to the size of my body it was almost too small to measure.  Its length, diameter and mass were tiny.  Nevertheless, this tiny fragment of wood, about an eighth of an inch long, buried itself on the corner of my index finger right next to the nail.  It also went in completely making an easy extraction impossible.  For the next few moments extracting this splinter was a major priority.  It was hard to think about anything except dealing with the splinter.  Not only was it uncomfortable, it made doing other things difficult. It weighted less than a millionth of my total body weight, but it was having a profound effect on my whole person.

So it is with the clergy killers. When a minister is under attack it is difficult for him to think of anything else.  The church that is going through the throws of a minister assault is generally not very effective in any of its ministries.  Churches in conflict simply do not make disciples, or impact their community in any positive way.  These troublesome people are called by numerous names, “Well Intentioned Dragons”, “Clergy Abusers”, “Antagonist”, “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing”; call them what you will, they are a growing problem in our churches.

This is an issue that crosses denominational barriers.  We might find it interesting that the one thing held in common by almost all religious groups in North America- liberal, conservative, contemporary, traditional, independent, denominational, Protestant, Catholic-is the presence of clergy killers. 

Clergy killers are nothing new.  Paul had a run-in with Alexander the coppersmith and John was prepared to confront Diotrephes.  But since Watergate, there has been a tendency to idolize the individual or small group that can take down the powerful.  As our society has become more narcissistic, the rise of the clergy killer has followed suit.  It is now epidemic and I believe threatens the survival and ministry of the church in the Americas.

As a consultant, I have worked across the spectrum of American Christianity.  I have some knowledge of what happens in Episcopal/Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of God, Assembly of God, Catholic, and Non-denominational churches.  But my heritage, training, and heart are in the Christian Church and Churches of Christ tribe of the Restoration Movement.  For that reason, I will address this issue from that perspective.  Being a non-denominational fellowship my comments and suggestions may not specifically fit readers of other fellowships, but I believe there are general principles that will be insightful or useful. 

I want to address three points.  First, how extensive is this problem?  Next week, I will offer a few opinions about what are some of the implications for the future of the church.  Finally, I will suggest what we might be able to do about the issue of the clergy killer phenomenon, with a list of resources you might find helpful.

How extensive is this problem?

This rise of clergy killers, combined with the failure to recognize a ministers’ Biblical authority in the face of attacks by sick members and the decisions of some boards to make short term and often money-based decisions in dealing with attackers, has left many ministers suffering in silence and feeling abandoned and alone.  Frequently, the answer to this silent, lonely suffering is to leave the ministry.

Late night calls are usually not good news.  This one came at just after 10:00 PM.  The news, though not unexpected, was sad.  “I was fired tonight,” the voice on the other end of the line informed me, in a tone that was artificially flat and emotionless.  I knew the church this young minister served had a reputation for being brutal to preachers and I knew that he had been having trouble for a long time, so his dismissal was not unexpected. 

After we had conversed for a few minutes, he got around to telling me why he called.  “I’m done with vocational ministry.  I can do more good as a teacher somewhere.”  It had happed again.  A young, promising minister was leaving the ministry.  He was not leaving because of moral failure, rejection of Jesus’ Lordship, or loss of faith.  He made the choice to leave the ministry because of the abusive behavior of a troubled church.  I wish this were the only time I had such a conversation, but it is not.  It is not even the worst of these conversations.

Perhaps the saddest conversation I have had was with George (not his real name).  Sparing you the details, I will tell you he was brutalized in a church coup.  He survived and managed to keep the church from splitting, but at tremendous personal cost.  The church lost several families; unfortunately, those that left were not his antagonists.  So he lived with the reality that at anytime he might face another coup.  He felt he was too old to relocate, too old to start a new career, and too weary for another church fight.  His solution was to exist and do nothing to rock the boat.  He would keep a low profile, and take on no innovative changes or ministry.  He would keep his job till he was able to retire in six years.  The look in his eyes as we talked was the hollow look of a defeated man.  With years of ministry and sermons behind him, he could go through the motions till retirement without much effort.   

These are certainly sad cases.  But two cases do not indicate an epidemic.  Perhaps they were weak, overly sensitive, and needing to grow up.  In both cases, I had known these men for years.  They were good men, solid leaders with tender hearts and gifted to minister.  One served in a near urban setting in an established church, the other in a young congregation in a rapidly growing, outer suburb.   Neither was the sort that would cut and run from a problem.  Their stories are just part of a much larger issue.  How big?

First, let’s take a look at the numbers:

·      Typically, within 7 to 10 years after ordination more than half of ministers will leave the ministry as a career.

·      It is estimated that 90% of ministers will not stay in ministry long enough to retire from ministry.

·      100% of pastors surveyed had a close associate or seminary friend who had left the ministry.

·      89% of pastors have considered leaving the ministry and not just on Monday morning.

·      57% of pastors said they would leave their current position if they had a better place to go, including secular work.

·      77% of pastors felt they did not have a good marriage!

·      90% of pastors stated they are frequently fatigued.

·      71% of pastors stated they were burned out and they battle depression beyond fatigue on a weekly and even a daily basis.

·      33% of pastors feel burned out within the first five years.

Perhaps most telling

·      23% of the pastors surveyed said they felt happy and content on a regular basis with who they are in Christ, in their church, and in their home! 

Of those who have the great privilege of answering God’s call, of sharing the greatest message in the universe, of working with the bride of Christ, of the study and proclamation of the Word of God, of living in and working in the atmosphere of Divine grace, less than one in four is happy and content.

The church cannot long sustain the loss of her ministers.  We may soon reach a tipping point for the church in America.  As indicated by:   

·      1,500 pastors leave the ministry monthly citing discouragement, failure, and loneliness as some of the reasons.

·      According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for every worker entering vocational ministry, 2.7 are leaving.

            Long before most ministers have enough experience to begin to approach anything near full effectiveness, they will leave the ministry.  But these are more than stories of career changes; these stories represent a dream that has been shattered, a calling left unfulfilled and a life that has been wrecked.  Ministers may suffer silently, but there are not suffering alone.  The church as a whole, the innocents in the congregation, their families, and the lost are suffering with them.

Next week, we will look at some of the implications of what the clergy killer crisis means for the church as a whole.

Politics is a symptom and is not the problem.

I, like you perhaps, have grown weary of the presidential race.  While I prefer democracy, having a king that rules till his death would mean we would not have to endure a presidential election every 4 years and the absence of campaigning would be a real advantage. 

The rhetoric of those running for office convinced my wife and me that to prepare for Easter we would not listen to any news during Lent.  That was such a delight, we have, to a great degree, continued fasting from political news and talk.  This is not anti-left or anti-right; we are equal opportunity fasters. 

After Easter Sunday one day, I tuned in to listen to the political news and talk.  I listened to both NPR and Sean Hannity.  It dawned on me that the problem with our political leaders is they reflect our nation.  They look and act like the people in our America.  Trump and Clinton, for example, are just the acceleration of our nation as a whole.

With our politicians, it is almost as if you took our culture, values, social mores, and world-view and processed them down into a highly concentrated form.   We love our candidate and hate the others because we love ourselves and hate those who might oppose us.  I don’t believe that those running for president are so very different from us.  I believe they are a reflection of us, but in a more intense fashion.  We are pastel, they are vivid; we are mild, they are intense; we are restrained, they are emboldened. 

To quote the song "Cult Of Personality" by Living Colour:

Look in my eyes, what do you see?

The cult of personality

I know your anger, I know your dreams

I've been everything you want to be

While we are quoting, let’s grab a couple from the front-runners.

From Donald Trump we have arrogance in a highly refined form.

"My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure; it's not your fault."

“The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”

From Hillary Clinton there is a certain self-importance that marks her speech.

"If you want to remain on this detail, get your f***ing ass over here and grab those bags!"
(To a Secret Service Agent who was reluctant to carry her luggage because he wanted to keep his hands free in case of an incident.)

"Stay the f**k back, stay the f**k away from me! Don't come within ten yards of me, or else! Just f**king do as I say, Okay!!!?"
(Screaming at her Secret Service detail.)

I believe that our culture is marked by arrogance and self-importance.  A professor of mine once said, “The beauty and problem with democracy is that we end up with the leaders we deserve.”  While I will not support either of these candidates, I do believe they both reflect the contemporary American condition.

Let me be painfully honest; I believe it is the church that is to blame.  Had the church been salt and light in the world over the last 50 years we might find a different America.  In many cases churches and church leaders have been most concerned about self-promotion and building their own kingdoms, rather than building the Kingdom.  As a consultant, I have worked on multi-constituent campaigns in which preachers refuse to participate because they wanted to protect their turf. 

Because the church has failed to live and love as servant-leaders, the world has no example.  Because congregations have been building empires, the world has no counter culture to the culture of self.  Because we have made idols of mega-star Christians and pastors, the world has lost it moral compass.  Philippians 2 tells of the God of the universe becoming a servant and dying on a cross.  That is a humility we almost never see in politics, because we see it so rarely in our nation, because it is too little practiced and taught in the church.

In contrast to the quotes of Trump and Clinton, let’s consider a quote from John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”