Something to think about

A Conversation with an Unhappy Sheep

Joe McKeever

"You don't like your pastor. What else is new?"

"You say that like there's a lot of it going around."

"It's like a plague. I've been thinking of going back and reading
Exodus where God sent the plagues on Egypt to see if this was one of
them. Frogs in the street, blood in the Nile, unhappiness in the pews."

"Are you dismissing the subject? You're so pro-pastor that you can't
see sometimes a church has genuine issues with a preacher and he needs
to leave?"

"Not at all. I'm just voicing my unhappiness with the whole
business. It hurts to see pastors and congregations at odds with one
another."

"Do you want to hear my side of this matter? Do you have time?"

"I can make the time. This is important."

We sat there in my office quietly for a moment, then I said, "But
first, would you let me tell you something on my heart? This is not
about you or your church, but about the whole issue of the
relationships of pastors and congregations."

"I'm a good listener," he said. "Shoot."

"One of the primary reasons for so much unhappiness in the pews with
the preachers is faulty understanding of what God intends. I've come up
with four half-truths which most church members believe. When we
believe wrong, as you know, we do wrong and no good comes of it."

He was listening well, so I went on.

"Let me name all four. One, the church hires a pastor. Two, the
church can vote him in and can vote him out. Three, his job is to serve
the people. And four, if the congregation is not happy with him, he has
failed and needs to leave. Does this sound familiar?"

He sat up. "That's pretty well how we do it. And you're calling these half-truths?"

"The best way to explain why they are faulty is to turn it around and list the truth, the way God actually meant things to be."

"Four truths to answer the four half-truths?" he smiled.

I said, "Well, five, actually: One, the church belongs to Christ.
Not to the congregation or the denomination. Definitely not to the
pastor and most definitely not to the deacons or elders."

"Okay," he said. "No problem there."

"Second, the pastor's job is to serve Christ."

"Hold it," he said. "I thought his job was to serve the church. Didn't Jesus tell Peter to 'feed my flock'?"

"He did. But in doing that, Peter would be serving the Lord, obeying
Him. There is definitely a sense in which the shepherd is serving the
sheep. But notice, the shepherd does not take orders from the sheep. He
takes orders from the owner of the sheep as to the care and tending of
the flock."

"I need to give that some thought," he said. "But go on."

"You might recall that Paul said, 'We do not preach ourselves, but
Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.'
That's 2 Corinthians 4:5.
Notice that he's your servant, but 'for Jesus' sake.' Which means he
takes orders from Jesus as to how to serve you. That's important."

"Okay. What else?"

"Third, just that point--the pastor is a servant. Not the lord of
the church, not the boss, or ruler, not the CEO or anything else people
come up with. He's a servant. That's the meaning of the word
'minister.'"

He was quiet. I continued.

"Fourth, God chooses and sends the pastor. The choice of the
minister for a particular church is His. We can complicate it anyway we
please--with recommendations and resumes and search committees and
bishops making assignments--but biblically, the Lord calls the shots."

"I'm not sure about that one," he said. "It seems to me He gives us
a lot of leeway to find the guy who fits our congregation best, the one
with the qualifications we feel we need, that sort of thing."

"And that's how we get in trouble," I said. "The sheep do not have a
clue what they need in a shepherd. They do not see the storm
approaching or the danger lurking over the next hillside. Left to
themselves, sheep would always choose the shepherd who caters to their
every want."

"I can tell you don't think a lot of pastor search committees surveying the congregation to see what they want in a preacher."

"Oh, I think a lot of it. I think it is a complete waste of time and
leads the people to faulty conclusions, that the pastor is their choice
and is there to satisfy them."

"What's the fifth 'truth'?"

"You're going to love this one. Fifth, the Lord does not care one
iota whether the sheep approve of His choice of a shepherd. The
shepherd is there at His pleasure, not the congregation's."

"So," he said, "if the congregation feels there is a mismatch
between us and this preacher, tough cookies. Is that what you're
saying?"

"Probably. If there are moral or ethical or biblical reasons for
getting rid of a pastor, the leadership of the congregation should step
up and do the job. It's a difficult task and it's probably going to
make a lot of people unhappy with them, but they are the leaders. If
the preacher absolutely should be removed, they ought to do it."

He was quiet, taking all this in, and a little restless.

He said, "It has to be something big? It can't be that we don't like
his style? Or that he sometimes mangles the King's English? And that
his wife is unfriendly?"

I said, "You folks have lost your way."

"Say what?"

"You have forgotten the church is not a social club. This is not a
popularity contest. The pastor and his wife were not sent by God to be
the congregation's mascots or the favorite guests at the civic clubs.

"The pastor was sent to shepherd the Lord's flock. He was sent to
represent God, to preach His word, and to train the people for being
salt and light in the community.

"The church is not a human enterprise and we are not running a
business. The church was never intended as a democracy where the
majority calls the shots. The church is Christ's body. He is its Head
and we are individual cells in it. We are to obey Him. The way to do
that is to read His Word and then follow it.

"I grant you a preacher should use proper English. It's distracting
when he's preaching and he says 'John and me were visiting the other
day.' But that's all it is--distracting. If he's opening the Word and
telling what God has said, if he is a man of prayer and is sincerely
working to lead the Lord's people, then cut him a little slack, for
Pete's sake."

He didn't say anything.

"It's not just you or your church, it's like an epidemic in our
land. People on the pastor's back because they don't like his sermons,
they don't find his wife friendly, his children are unruly sometimes,
the pastor doesn't give enough respect to the older members, he is
introducing too much change into the church, he uses too much humor or
tells too many stories or doesn't wear a tie. It's enough to drive a
man crazy.

"None of this has the first thing to do with anything," I said.

"The Lord did not send the pastor to make the church happy. He sent
the pastor to make the church healthy and Himself happy. I can't put it
any stronger than that."

I finished, "Sorry for the outburst. You can see I feel pretty strongly about this."

He said, "I still want to talk with you about our church situation
sometime. I grant you that it would be wrong to run the pastor off, but
maybe you could help him do a better job of relating to the older
people."

I said, "If I can, I'll be happy to. Especially since I happen to be in that age group myself.

"Before you leave, could I give you something? This is a verse of
scripture I'd like you to read and think about over the next few days. Acts 20:28 may be one of the most important texts in the Bible for what your church is going through right now.

"Paul is talking to the pastors or elders of Ephesus. He tells them,
'Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among whom the Holy
Spirit has made you overseers. Shepherd the church of God which He
purchased with His own blood."

He agreed to read that scripture several times and think about it.

If he does, I'm confident he will be in for a realignment of his
attitude about the pastor's role in the church. Scripture has a way of
doing that to all of us.

Almost every one of the five points we talked about are found in
that one verse. The Lord owns the church. The pastor's job is to obey
the Lord by shepherding the flock. God chooses the pastor. How the
flock feels about the man God sends at any particular time is
irrelevant.

I called him a week later and we met at McDonald's for coffee. I
said, "Now, let's talk about whatever it was that brought you to my
office the other day..."

Dr. Joe McKeever is a Preacher, Cartoonist, and the Director of Missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans. Visit him at joemckeever.com/mt.

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