Our Senior
Pastor is in Trouble
When we got our new senior pastor a
while back many were excited, especially our younger folk. They claimed it was “a new day” and pinned their
hopes on the younger of our two candidates who was eventually chosen. When the
new young pastor took over though, his support wasn’t unanimous. Many in our
church wanted the older and more experienced candidate but when the final vote
was taken the younger one won. We all admit that he was the better speaker, but
when he swept in to the church he brought a bunch of his buddies with him and a
bunch of big and costly ideas too.
Our new young pastor hit the ground running. He
immediately launched an aggressive campaign to build a new building calling us
to sacrifice so we could “save the church” for future generations. By the time
we spent the huge money to build the new church our debt had piled higher than
ever in history. He seemed not to care about this reminding us that the options
were “grow or die.” He says if we hadn’t spent all that money we would be
shriveling by now. But many of us worry about the huge debt.
Our fiscally conservative members opposed going into
debt at all—they said we should operate the church on a “pay as you go” basis—and
save up until we had the money to build. But they lost—and the church took on a
huge debt. But begrudgingly they stayed
with the church and paid their tithe. However many of us older folk hoped that
once we had the new expensive church the pastor would turn his attention to
paying down the burden, cutting staff and wasteful programs so we could get out
of debt as fast as possible. He did nothing like that.
Almost as soon as we moved into our new church he
launched a massive new feed-the-poor campaign to start a mission downtown. He called for us to “give ‘til it hurt” so
that we could launch this downtown social program for the poor of our city. His
audacious dream was a huge undertaking costing lots of money we just didn’t
have. His dream divided our congregation severely. Some thought the program was
simply the right thing to do. But many of our own people are out of work
themselves and are not in the mood to give more money to the poor—they think
they need the money themselves. Besides they say that a lot of that money just
will go to more staff to run the operation and will be wasted in bureaucracy.
“But what about us?” they complained. “We are hurting too—why does the church
want us to give ‘til it hurts to help the poor—we’re already hurting ourselves.”
Recently a new underground movement of sorts has
risen up in our church opposing the pastor and his dream for the downtown
mission. They say the pastor is simply biting off “too much too soon.” And he
never asks us older folk for our advice—he thinks he knows what to do and we
should foot the bill. The most radical of this underground group says they
don’t plan to pay tithe at all into the church—saying, “the
Lord’s money is best left with the Lord’s people.” They argue that individuals
know best how to care for the poor—not some complicated big program of the
church. Some of these are now withholding their tithes and offerings saying,
“I’ll do my own giving to the poor.”
All of this is what has got our new young pastor in
trouble. There are other complaints too. Many say he’s arrogant and distant and
though he can give a good speech, he doesn’t understand the principles that the
church that serves best, serves least. A
significant number of our people are quietly saying, “we
chose the wrong one.” They think the 60something candidate we turned down would
have been a better choice.
Now recently the pastor is in trouble with both
sides. His massive and expensive plan for the mission-to-the-poor can’t get
through the board. In our recent election to replace one of the younger board
members who moved away we elected a person against the pastor and in favor of
smaller programming from the church. Now both sides are shooting at the new
pastor.
Some of our people hope this new idealistic young
pastor will simply resign and let things return to normal. Many of the pastor’s
loyal followers are calling him to stick to his guns and “do the right thing
anyway.” Older folk feel cut out of
things. Since he interviewed he hasn’t ever met with us to hear our complaints.
However, just last week he did finally come to one of our fellowships for a
Q&A time. But mostly he scolded us for being selfish and just saying “no”
all the time. He did offer us a few things to pacify us. He wants to “sing more
hymns” and agreed to slow down the process of his new mission-to-the-poor, but
he still insists on squandering huge sums of our money on the dream because it
“is the right thing.”
So far most everyone has stuck with the church even
if they oppose the pastor. But many are only waiting for a while—they know we
vote again on him again in a few more years.
So what do you think?
During the first few weeks, click here to comment or
read comments
Keith Drury February 2, 2010
P.S. For readers who are not accustomed to
reading Keith Drury’s humor columns my own pastor at College Wesleyan Church in
Marion is NOT in trouble—he is doing quite wonderfully. This humorous allegory ponders
possible parallels between a change-the-country new young President Obama and a change-the-church new young pastor.