Charlatans (Pt. 1)

People to avoid on your journey with Jesus

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. -Ephesians 4:14-16

People inside of the church should be held to a higher standard. Those outside of the church know this instinctively. Those inside the church often forget.

One Sunday, when I was the associate pastor in a big-steeple church in South Carolina, I watched two visiting parents enter the sanctuary with their children about 10 minutes before the service was to begin. From my chair next to the pulpit, I saw them choose an empty pew and get themselves and their children situated. Just minutes before the call to worship, an older couple hobbled down the aisle with scowls on their faces. They were long-time members of the church. They arrived at the same pew where the visiting family was seated and told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to move. These visitors had the “gall” to sit in their seats. Shocked by the demand, the family quickly gathered up their children, and as the organist began the prelude took the only open seats left, off to the side and further back. The long-term members sat in their center seats satisfied that decorum had been restored. The family never visited the church again.

I wasn’t the only one who saw what happened that Sunday. However, everyone who saw it had the idea that we were supposed to be nice to the people already committed to the church. So, we made excuses for this older couple’s behavior. “They are set in their ways,” we told ourselves as if the frequent practice of unkind behavior somehow excused it. We felt sad for the visiting family. But we didn’t feel like there was anything we could do.

Christians have gotten the whole “nice” thing backwards. Time and time again Jesus showed mercy and understanding to people outside of the church. He saved his harshest comments and warnings for those inside the church. For example, he once was heard saying:

‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” -Mt. 23:13-14

It is almost as Jesus held the church to a higher standard.

The church is meant to be a community that facilitates our journey with Jesus. But one of the reasons the Western church is in such decline is because congregations fail to look at themselves squarely, warts and all, in the mirror. We continue on our busy schedule of worship and committees, of increasing attendance and income while avoiding the real issues of the gospel. I’ve been complicit in this. But it is time for us to speak the truth to each other in love.

This post is a continuation of the “four questions” we need to ask about the church.¹ In this article we are introducing the second question; “Who should we avoid?” This may seem like a strange question, even an un-Christian question. But knowing who to avoid in our journey with Jesus is essential.

Paul puts it this way:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. -Romans 16:17-18a

As I think back on my 20+ years of experience as a pastor, I see four categories of people in the church whom Paul is describing; four types of people that we should avoid.

1. People who believe the church exists for them.

2. Conflict-Avoiding pastors.

3. Egoists.

4. Angry Influencers.

We’re going to spend the next few posts in this series, looking at each of these categories one at a time.

1-Avoid people who believe the church exists for them.

When I began as the solo pastor of a church in Los Angeles, it was clear that our congregation had entered into a slow death spiral. Many people within the church knew that staying on the same path would mean a slow and painful demise. I was brought in to bring the congregation back to health. Many churches recognize that they are dying. In desperation, they bring in new and younger staff hoping that the church’s fate will change. But this doesn’t mean the church is willing to change. Change is hard for any human community. It is even harder for a church in steady decline.

By the time I started my work with this congregation, I’d worked long enough inside the church to understand this. The best advice I had been given was to start small with an easy win approved by the leadership of the church. So after gaining the agreement of the church board, I changed the back of the church bulletin one Sunday. But as it turns out, that act wasn’t small and it wasn’t an easy win. I had stepped on a land mine that had been carefully placed by the very people in the congregation who believed that our church existed just for them.

Many traditional church bulletins use the back page to list the church’s leadership. Our list had expanded to include every elder, deacon, and former deacon who was still alive, as well as many of the staff, the choir director, and even an unpaid voice coach for the choir. There were more people on the back of the bulletin than in church some Sundays. So, the lay leadership and I decided that it would be nice to change things up a bit and encourage the congregation with a passage from the Bible instead. By the time the bulletins were printed, plans for retribution were laid. Minutes after I pronounced the benediction that Sunday the explosive went off. It began with people surrounding me during the coffee hour and giving me a piece of their mind. Their upset continued to be expressed in various forms and all kinds of innovative ways over the next couple of weeks.

It took some time to discover who had so expertly planted the land mine. It turned out to be an elder who had befriended me in my first few weeks at the church. After voting “yes” on the bulletin change with all of the other formal church leaders, he went home and started calling other influential people in the church to tell them what we had done. Further digging revealed that the octogenarian choir director was deeply offended when she heard that her name would not be on the back of the bulletin and the voice coach was incensed. Many in the church, especially the choir members, sided with those who were upset. They felt that the director and the voice coach had been so selfless in their service to the church that they deserved to be respected with their names on the bulletin every time we gathered to worship God.

There is often an unhealed wound, a deep disappointment in the lives of people who have come to believe the church exists for them. They are using the church to fill an emotional void. For example:

• The church secretary who finds a sense of power and control in the position that they don’t have in other parts of their life. Through a long tenure with the congregation, they know where all the bodies are buried. They’ve learned how to use that knowledge to keep the position, regardless of their performance.

• And the performers of the church; choir directors, organists, musicians, choir members, and song leaders who have been unable to make “all the world their stage,” have found an ingenious way to turn their disappointment into a church position that soothes their bruised egos. The church has become their stage.

• Multi-generational church members work to maintain their family’s fading legacy outside of the church by ensuring that anything their parents built in the church will never be taken down.

When people come to believe the church exists for them they can unleash seemingly endless anger, energy, and time to get their way, even if they have to inflict heavy damage on the congregation in the process.

Being “nice” to such people is not helping the church. It’s not even helping them. Overlooking their actions only reinforces their bad behavior. And the truth is, the behavior they express in church is not limited to the church. Their family, friends and co-workers have to suffer under the same behavior. And in all likelihood, they aren’t happy either. The church is a poor substitute for the hole in our hearts.

One day, years after the bulletin incident, I received an email from the daughter of the elder who had lit up the phone tree. It turned out that this man had been a kind of computer prodigy in his younger days. But his work life had become a series of disappointments. He tried to fill that hole in his heart by being the “go-to” guy for certain people in the church. If they didn’t like something in the church they knew they could turn to him for a sympathetic ear. Not only that, but he would be willing to lead some kind of subversive response. But eventually he and his family of 6 had to leave their home in the neighborhood. He tried to move his family into the church. When I told him that city codes did not allow us to house anyone in the church he became very angry. After telling the phone tree that I had taken his keys to the church (which I hadn’t done) he left the congregation. His daughter’s email arrived about two months later. Her Dad, she said, was doing much better now in a new church. He had built healthy relationships with this new faith community and was a much happier person. She ended her email by thanking me for holding firm on their not living at the church. However, within the church, I continued to be chastised by those who felt I had disrespected this man who had given so much to the congregation. These folks were being “nice,” but they weren’t doing this man or the church any favors. For the church is called to a higher standard.

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus…

The church does not exist for any particular person or to prop up anyone’s ego needs. The church is meant to help us grow stronger and more mature in our relationships. This can only happen when a congregation has learned to confront its own bad behavior, especially among leaders and long-term members. When you find a church that “overlooks” the bad behavior of its members, walk away. You have a higher calling. You are looking for a community of Jesus followers who will help you go deeper in your journey by speaking the truth in love.

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Next week we will look at a second category of people to avoid. We should avoid “conflict-avoiding” pastors.

2-Avoid “Conflict-Avoiding” Pastors

Some pastors have made a comfortable office for themselves in their church. They are happy with their weekly routine and their efforts are directed toward keeping the church afloat for the sake of their career.

I had the opportunity to work with a “futures” committee who knew that things needed to change in their congregation their church was going to exist for the next generation. Unbeknownst to me, the committee and the church’s associate pastor had set this meeting without talking to the senior pastor. When they did invite him into our meeting he was passive-aggressive.

“I just want to love people.” the pastor said with saccharine sincerity. His words were few, but they spoke volumes to everyone in the room. It was code for “My highest priority is retiring in three years. I will not rock the boat. There will be no changes before I sail into the sunset.”

If a pastor seeks to avoid conflict above all else, that church can only continue its decline. Avoid them.

A group of vultures has been called “a committee.” Anyone who has been involved in the leadership of the church knows why. For those who haven’t had that experience, a committee is the default response of a congregation to a challenge that confronts them. When the small group is well-appointed and works in harmony challenges are met and good happens. Too often, however, the committee is controlled by one or two people, cowing others with their childish outbursts and unyielding opinions. The committee serves to empower them while sucking the life out of everyone else. Thus the association between committees and vultures. Be wary of the person who asks you to be on a committee. Find out who else is already involved before agreeing to participate. Long-timers, married couples, and crusty people should give you pause. And give special care if you are suddenly asked to be the chair. Find out whom you are expected to include on the committee and why they didn’t want the position.

1. The first question, “What is the purpose of the church?” is discussed in the post entitled, “Now What?”