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.