Joel Rainey leads the Engagement Team for Evangelism and Missions at the Mid-Atlantic Baptist Network. He is on the adjunct faculty of two seminaries, and the author of three books. He blogs at Themelios, where this was originally posted.
The role of pastors is clear in Scripture: “Equip the saints for the work of the ministry.” (Ephesians 4:12) But unfortunately, some pastors confuse equipping for enablement.
Primarily, this is caused by fear on the part of the pastor. Proverbs 29:25 warns us that “the fear of man is a snare.” But often, that fear doesn’t look like fear. Sometimes it looks quite courageous. Sometimes it appears as though the pastor is working himself to death in service to the church, when in reality he is doing all the work because he fears a lack of control. Sometimes it appears the Word is proclaimed in an uncompromising way, when in reality the pastor is just trashing people not in the room to make those who are in the room feel as though they have no sin from which to repent. What follows are some ways I’ve seen pastors enable dysfunction in their churches.
- Throwing Red Meat to a Crowd Rather than Feeding God’s Word to the Flock. Let’s face it. Most of us who preach know where our “Amen corners are, and we know what to say to make them noisy.
Homeschool enthusiasts love it when you attack the public school system. Prophecy addicts long for you to spend every Sunday expounding on some cryptic passage from Revelation. Hyper-Calvinists can’t get enough discussion about “historic Baptist thought.” Conversely, those who think Calvinism is the doctrine of antichrist shout loudly in response to a pastor who dismisses the whole discussion with a single, broad-brushed reference to John 3:16.
The issue here is that our people all have their pet subjects, and if we want to stay on their “good side,” all we really need to do is discover what those passions are and focus on them when we are in the pulpit. Problem is, this approach never produces genuine disciples, because when you give inordinate focus to a few subjects, you fail in your duty to teach “the whole counsel of God.” (Acts 20:27)
Another issue that arises from using the pulpit to simply throw out “red meat” for the crowd is that, strangely enough, you never seem to get around to actually preaching to the people who are in the room. It’s always what’s going on “out there,” or “those people” who are the cause of the problem. In the process, our people are reinforced in their own pride and never move significantly forward in the process of becoming more like Jesus.
To be sure, I’m not suggesting that you should never speak of how your people should educate their children, or how Biblical prophecy should affect our Christian walk. I’m simply suggesting that it takes absolutely no courage to stand in a room full of conservative, heterosexual, “red state” attendees and blame the homosexual community for all that is wrong with our culture. It takes very little temerity to appeal to surface-level exegesis in the attempt to get your people all bent out of shape over those evil Calvinists.
And to stand in the pulpit, week after week, and do nothing but condemn the people “out there” is more like the practice of a Pharisee, and less like a New Testament pastor who follows Jesus by getting to the heart of the real issues. Judgment, the Apostle Peter says, begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). If you genuinely preach the whole counsel of God, what you feed your people won’t always taste good to them.
- Hiding from Hard Subjects. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it 100 times from a pastor. “We don’t address THAT, because THAT would get us off mission.”
On the surface, I understand the sentiment. Our preaching and teaching can easily become unbalanced if we focus too much on what we might think are “secondary issues.” Still, too many pastors simply avoid hard subjects altogether. What this teaches our people is that when the pressure is on, its OK to take the easy way out.
But struggle is part of the Christian experience. When a baby dies, when a spouse is diagnosed with a terminal disease, or when some other unspeakable tragedy occurs, people need to be already armed with a solid understanding of providence and sovereignty. They need to have already wrestled with the tension between divine providence and human freedom in a way that brings them toward greater intimacy with God BEFORE these things happen in their lives. If that means the pastor has to occasionally “go deep” on a subject like providence, so be it!
Likewise, when a child struggling with homosexuality “comes out” or a businessman is faced with the choice between keeping his integrity or keeping his job, the truth of God’s Word from the pulpit should be in the minds of all who are involved so that hard issues can be faced in a way that honors Jesus.
Too often, pastors avoid these subjects, or worse, they oversimplify them in a way that ignores the difficulties of applying one’s faith during hard times. Enabling your people in this way is a treasonous act of denying them the tools necessary to think and act for themselves in a way that brings glory to God. Sure, there are more “practical matters” to attend to, and those should be addressed as well.
Additionally, every subject that is dealt with by a pastor should be connected to the larger purpose of lifting up Jesus as the center and circumference of Scripture and our faith. But if God’s Word addresses it, then we are bound by our calling to address it as well.
- Doing the work rather than sharing the work. Maybe its motivated by guilt. Or maybe its motivated by a desire to control every ministry. Whatever the motivation, workaholism on the part of the pastor steals time from his family, and steals opportunities for service from his people. Doing anything (or worse, having your wife do anything) simply because ‘no one else will do it’ enables the church in its current state of laziness and consumer-driven sin.
Furthermore, answering every phone call, making every visit and personally responding to every need means you never equip the church to do these things and are personally worn to the point where you eventually do nothing well. The late Adrian Rodgers said it best: “The pastor who is always available is rarely worth anything when he is available.”
- Making the church about you. This is, by far, the hardest statement in this post, but its true. Pastor, the church is not about you! Its about the body of Christ, and your validity in holding the pastoral office is tied inextricably to how well you serve the people God has put under your charge.
When you act, you should do so with their best interests in mind.
In too many evangelical traditions including my own, the “celebrity culture” has produced many men who believe the church is there so that they can advance themselves. Regrettably, I’ve encountered a few pastors who make decisions that affect the entire church based solely on how they will personally be affected. In the worst cases, this behavior manifests itself in a pastor who uses the pulpit to get out all of his pent-up frustrations, which is the pastor-congregation equivalent of spousal abuse. Pastor, you serve the bride of Christ, and one day, you and I will stand in front of Him and answer for how we have treated His wife while she was in our care!
I’m convinced that codependency is a real issue with many pastors and churches. Rather than empower and bless each other, they use each other in a way that spreads dysfunction throughout the body, and destroys any hope of that local church being faithful to her call. When a pastor simply gives the people whatever they want whenever they want in an attempt to keep his job, or be complimented, or to advance himself, such behavior is not service. It is enablement. To be sure, pastors by themselves cannot change this scenario. But men, we can, and we must, resist the temptation to confuse equipping with enablement.
The fear of man is a snare. (Proverbs 29:25) Resist it, and serve your people well as a result.
Re: The Hard Subjects: I am reminded of the time, when I was asked to preach a sermon on Psalm 137:9, “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” My response at that moment was, “Well, that will take some time to examine and consider.” I did preach on that text sometime later. I am thankful that the Lord had been leading me to address other difficult issues like Roms.9:13 and election and predestination. Rather than say any more on the text, I will simply point out that a translator of William Ames’ Marrow… Read more »
Joel,
That’s a hard hitting post that needed to be explained just the way you explained it. I believe you are right on. I also believe it will not do one bit of good. There is no backbone in today’s preachers. Money is number one, standing against sin is somewhere way down the line. It too seems to me that all sin is out there and hardly any sermons for sin in here.
We certainly don’t want to offend anyone, do we?
I don’t think that’s the goal of preaching, no. I think it often is a natural result as a sinful person encounters a Holy God: we feign offense as a matter of clouded reason due to the depravity of sin.
Jess, you need to get out more. Your assertions about preaching today are unfounded and untrue. Maybe you’re watching too much TBN.
Dale Pugh, I strongly disagree with you here. I’ve had the opportunity to visit around sixty churches, seventy to be more accurate. I’ve heard folks ask one another what the preacher was talking about. I would make it a point to ask someone what the preacher was talking about, all I would get is a I don’t know. These folks are your average membership that would say they didn’t know what the preacher was talking about. Today’s preachers will talk for thirty minutes and not really say anything that will take hold in ones heart. I kid you not, Dale.… Read more »
Certainly sounds like you have your finger on the pulse of lousy pastors, Jess.
“””When someone can sit through a sermon who has been unfaithful to their wife or husband without any conviction something is wrong.””” Last time I checked it was the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, not the preachers. Also, if one applies your criteria to the Apostle Paul, he’d be a lousy preacher. One man fell asleep and then out a window as a result of Paul’s preaching. I guess, Jesus was a pretty lousy preacher because after three years of daily preaching to the disciples, they had a habit of falling asleep at prayer meeting, and were no where to… Read more »
“”” plain simple truth”””
Can you sight a passage that says preaching the truth should be “plain and simple.”
I see nothing “plain” nor “simple” about the truths Paul calls mysteries and psalm writers call “glory.”
Jack,
My friend, nothing you have said is exactly the truth. Yes one fell asleep during Paul’s preaching, but only after many hours of preaching.
The disciples fell asleep because of along day and fatigue overcame them.
Finally, if we cannot make scripture simple, it’s only because we haven’t studied it well enough, and we don’t know what we are talking about.
Jack,
I can sight many passages for the plain simple truth. John 3:16, Woman at the well, need I go further?
Jess, I didn’t think I would convince you that what the Bible teaches is far from the simplistic way you approach it.
After a few years of watching you post I doubt anything I could say would change your mind about how terrible preachers are.
By the way, Jesus did not commend the disciples for falling asleep after a long day’s work. But, I would want you to let facts stand in the way of a perfectly good opinion.
Jack, Jess never lets the truth get in the way of a strongly held opinion. I guess we should just accept his well-informed thoughts as the verified gospel on all things church related. His logic and hermeneutic are stunning.
Actually, my anecdotal experience aligns with Jess’. Neither his 60 churches nor my 15-20 allow for any broad generalizations to be made but I was grealy surprised to fin such little biblical preaching in the 15-20 SBC churches I vivitd after retiring. The pastor would hang a string of stories under a perfunctory reading of a passage; he would attack the political outrage du jour and toss in a scripture or two; he would skip the sermon and do a special day service; or, he would read a verse and then do some dramatic, red-faced screamer word-by-word of his thinking… Read more »
You should take a trip and come visit us in far western Missouri. The guys I run with in our association have different delivery skill levels (is there really such a thing?), different styles, and different education levels, but the main goal is to exalt Christ to his people by giving them his word. In fact, I’d have zero issue telling anyone to check out any of their churches because the word/gospel/bible is proclaimed and taught without compromise. 🙂
So I would have stated prior to actually getting around to visiting in my area. There seems to be a different idea of what a ‘biblical’ sermon is among the brethren.
It’s pretty simple really – the point of the scriptural text should be the point of the sermon otherwise you’re not preaching you’re just talking.
Tarheel, I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard big SBC guns quote a text and then blast off in a completely different direction. This has filtered down to the ordinary pastor who is trying to hack it in an average sized church.
That’s only number one.
Number two: pastors who don’t know how to pray in public. Hint: It’s not meant to be a sermon recap where you tell God what he knows.
Number three: pastors who are the most pathetic, inept readers of Scripture one can imagine.
I don’t have a wide experience of different churches, but I’ve certainly seen stuff like this. If a person hollers, the sermon is “powerful”. Railing against gays and the government (when the other side is in power) or the mainstream media (how I hate that term) is another surefire winner.
Parents, read with and to your children.
Oh William – I know you are right absolutely I’m not disagreeing with what you’re saying on this.
I do think however – this is changing with the younger generation.
(I don’t know if I should duck after making that statement Or not!!)
Bill Mac – I absolutely despise cheerleader “preaching” looking for the Amens are the cheers – I’m not a cheerleader!
Another thing that bothers me is when I pastor says “I should’ve got an amen on that one” – or as I’ve seen a couple of times where the pastor will go down to the front row (which is empty of course) and shout amen and then quip about “if y’all won’t do it I will”! I hate that!
William, I really appreciate what you are saying here. When I was a pastor in my middle twenties I was really off track in my preaching. I would simply use a text to preach against everything that I was against that week. An older pastor started visiting the church where I was pastor and he eventually joined. We became very close and when he felt like he had the liberty to do so, he had a conversation with me about my preaching. It changed my life and preaching and I love him for it. As a matter of fact he… Read more »
Tarheel, I call them “fishermen” although what they are fishing for isn’t men, it’s a response from the congregation. I hate to see a pastor, or anyone at the front of the church, fishing for response, especially when his presentation has been either theologically light or considerably less than convicting, as though begging the congregation is what it takes.
Tarheel: I do think however – this is changing with the younger generation. I know plenty of older guys who “preach the word”… but with us younger guys, I think in part it might be that we’ve seen the power of example, both positive and negative. Negative: we’ve seen the word not preached, but things like what’s been listed above, and the resulting disciplemaking ineptitude of biblical illiteracy. Positive: we’ve seen some older guys / fathers in the faith who are truly dedicated to preaching the word and not their pet ideas masquerading as “the word” and have seen the… Read more »
Mike and Jim agreed.
I did not mean to imply that there are not older men who are preaching the word – there certainly are.
It’s just that so many of the younger guys I see coming out of seminaries and Bible colleges (into our churches) are so committed to expository preaching and I do think an overall paradigm shift is being made towards textual expositional preaching which I think is a good thing.
Our church is almost entirely free of old-timey Southern Baptist influence. By that I mean we don’t really have that type of culture in the church. No real ameners, not a lot of shouting, no amen-fishing. We have a few hand-raisers but we just pretend we don’t see them. 😉 Our last few pastors have not been from the South and we don’t hire southern evangelists to preach revivals. Maybe it’s not a Southern thing, maybe I just associate it with the South from my experience.
Speaking of evangelists a buddy of mine who pastors a church in new England were talking just yesterday about our common disgust for so many of the tactics of evangelists today. The Amen fishing in the cheerleader mentality is pervasive. We talked specifically about the tactic of – while extending an invitation – (which neither of us object to in principle) counting down to action. For example saying: “okay everyone I’m extending an invitation and I’m going to count from 0 to 3 and when I get to three – move – immediately – don’t think about it just move… Read more »
I can’t say I’ve ever been to a Baptist church in the North, so I can’t really say. But for whatever reason the tendency to manipulate decisions has seen its way to places worldwide. We were spending a couple of days in a rural location in India. We had two evangelistic services and a women’s conference as well as some door-to-door in a nearby village. The area where we were doing the services already had a strong Christian presence, but I was slated to preach the gospel on the first night there. It’s good to preach the gospel even to… Read more »
I love expository sermons, but as far as delivery styles I prefer Southerners over Northerners and I also listen to a lot of African American preachers. And I really don’t like the attitude that it’s okay to be boring as long as the sermon is expository.
I agree, John –
Good thing no one is arguing that sermons should be boring. 🙂
Hollering is wrong, amening is wrong, blah blah blah but everything is cool as long as put a smiley face after the comment….:-)
The smiley face was specific to my attempt at humor by saying we pretend we don’t see the hand-raisers, given the SBC’s antipathy towards anything charismatic-ish.
I think he might be referring to my 🙂
We talked specifically about the tactic of – while extending an invitation – (which neither of us object to in principle) counting down to action. I’ve honestly never heard of this. I don’t think boring is good, and I don’t think Southern is bad. I joined an SBC church as a new Christian in the early 80s, and at that time it was very Southern-ish. Pastors were southern transplants, revival preachers were southerners. Over the years we have just shed that, not deliberately. It just changed. I don’t dislike amening. Who dislikes affirmation? But I don’t like amen-fishing. I don’t… Read more »
Bill – trust me, it happens.
And I agree with everything you just posted.
Guys I totally overreacted on that one. I’m sorry.
No worries – John!
I’m just glad I have never overreacted on this site.
😉
Mike, I think William needs to get his retired backside out of his easy chair and come to western Missouri and Iowa to hear some good preaching!
Amen, hallelujah, Brother Dave! 😀
We could tag team on him and call it discipleship.
I could probably chip in $25 or 30 out of our benevolence fund. With gas as cheap as it is, that should be enough. Stocks are up, so his Guidestone funds ought to be sufficient.
I hear hi-tech Dave Miller has an 8-track cassette tape ministry. Just send me your best stuff.
GuideStone, BTW, in spite of record stock market levels in 2014 cut the retirement of those who have all or part of their’s in a variable plan. Guess someone had to work OT to achieve that.
“…to Iowa to hear some good preaching!”
Probably can – so long as he stays out of Soiux City. 😉
Are you saying, William, that you have an 8-track player?
Well, my retro bro…I could get my hands on one if necessary.
This should be developed into a required course in all seminaries. Great article, Joel!
Big fan of this post.
I once had a preacher tell me … when I suggested he preach about giving …. “When I do that, the people who tithe say “Amen” and the ones who don’t get mad”.
Yeah … really.
I agree with this whole article. I tend to preach through books so that I can hit the hard topics as they come. It is fun and exciting to get your amen corner going but in the end we are not feeding the flock if everything we ever say they agree with. Pastors are called to boldly proclaim the scriptures even the tough passages
Same here Andrew. You go through books you hit pretty much everything, whether you want to deal with it then or not.
“””we are not feeding the flock if everything we ever say they agree with.”””
If we preach the truth are they supposed to “disagree” with it 🙂
If they already knew all truth they’d hardly need preachers.
Wow I never heard: “We don’t address THAT, because THAT would get us off mission.” Thanks! I can use that!
Actually I think there was a bit too much preaching for the amens here. 😉
Also, I’m too tired of everybody telling me everything I’m doing wring as a pastor. Lets face it in SBC life, Big churches have compromised and small churches are doing it wrong.
Wring? should be wrong.
Joel, no wonder I think so highly of you.
John
Great stuff, Joel! You need to submit this to Thom Rainer, to see if he’ll add you to his team of contributors.
Joel
Thank you for the great post. Preaching offers some challenges in the digital age that simply didn’t exist before. Today it is harder to focus on someone speaking because our mental processes have been shaped by different mediums. I find however that expository preaching helps serious listeners to get into the text particularly if I am preaching through a book.
Again, thank you for the challenging post.
wilbur
Amen. Great post.
Dale Pugh,
Bless your heart, I’m so glad my thoughts give you something to criticize. You may be a better person because of it. I would love to read your comments on the “Post”.
A young preacher was beginning his ministry in Kentucky.
The deacons were inquiring about the subject of his first sermon.
“the sin of alcohol”
” Don’t, many of our folk work at the distillery”
” OK, then smoking is a sin and health hazard”
” Many of our folk are tobacco farmers”
” OK, I’ll preach against gambling”
“No, this is Kentucky and a lot of our folk work in the thoroughbred racing world”
“Then what can I preach about?”
“Heathen witch doctors. There’s not one of them for a thousand miles”
LAllen,
That is some funny stuff. I think a lot truer than many may think.
Cute story! However, if I can risk a bit of a Jesus Juke, it illustrates the blessing of verse by verse exposition. You don’t just pick topics to either offend or avoid offending. You communicate and apply God’s word to people and when God’s word speaks to a particular topic, you speak to it. I don’t do “topic of the week” messages against any of those issues. Over the 33 years of my ministry, though, I’ve preached through almost all of the Bible and dealt with every one of those topics in the context of a scripture passage. However, in… Read more »
For 2015-16, we’re doing a through the bible series… Have people on a 2 year reading plan, OT once NT twice, and on Sunday I preach a passage from the reading.
Yeah, it’s still a temptation to avoid the tougher ones, but honestly I’m ‘too old’ to worry about what people think in that regard. At 34, people laugh at that comment, but each day: I’m getting older and people are dying without Jesus. If I ever get fired for teaching God’s word then so be it–I’ll trust God as my job security. 🙂
You are doing the whole Bible in two years?
Reading… I’m only preaching a single passage from the reading each week.
I preach long, but not THAT long!