Day 186: Implosion!

I want to address those that are wanting to become a pastor on any level (youth, kids, music, senior, etc.). The life of being a pastor is awesome and much of the time working in a church will be very rewarding but I PROMISE you there will be those times. The times where you think working in a factory would have been a more godly place than working in a church.

You will often hear me talk about how I love Radiant Fellowship (current church I pastor) because it is a "controller-free zone." This is surprisingly a rare thing today because of power tripping board members, members or pastors that are pushing their own agenda. There are some cases where it scares the leadership when people begin to think for themselves and see through these hidden agendas. I grew up in a church where a group of people drove the pastor to the point of needing a plethora of stomach meds in his office because of the stress brought upon by controllers (the long term members, the deep pockets, etc.). I have seen pastors completely lifeless and burned out because controllers wanted to push their own agenda. Fact is some churches that think the pastor is leading them is really seeing nothing more than a puppet in the pulpit.

What can happen and I have seen it first hand is when the leadership of a church does not get its way they will self-destruct and end up leaving (voluntarily or voted out) to attend a new church that unknowingly to them they can wreck. These are prideful people who think they know what is best when in fact they are Pharisees who are further from Christ than Marilyn Manson. Proverbs 16:18 says, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." What this means in this case is that all of these power hungry people congregating in once place can only mean you can predict it's future. It is just a matter of time before that place will implode and have to rebuild. Now, in my opinion this can be a very healthy thing because some places may function with the church title on it but they only make people twice the sons of hell that they are, so to implode would not be a bad thing but rather a welcome thing.

Here are words to the wise...if you are starting a new church, do your best to keep it controller free so that the spirit can truly move. Do this so that when you feel the spirit is leading the pastor or leadership team it isn't in fact some cranky board members or controlling members getting their way.