“SOME CHURCHES DON’T DESERVE A PASTOR,” an old area minister told me. This fellow served our denomination in placement and conflict management, so he’d seen a lot. As a young pastor, I doubted him. I grew up in good churches.
Looking back, I can recognize there was conflict in the churches of my youth. But none of them split or, as far as I know, destroyed a pastor. During my college years, the pastors and churches in conflict that I observed conducted themselves appropriately— even in the midst of tension. God used the conflicts to advance the discipleship of these pastors and churches.
Following seminary, I worked as an associate pastor with a senior pastor who endured continuous conflict in a church that had a history of bad relationships with pastors. In his gutsy tenure of pure steadfast love, he outlasted many of the troublemakers and straightened many of those who had apathetically condoned the troublemakers over the years. The pastor who followed him has done well also.
So when I entered pastoral ministry, I believed, idealistically, that every religious organization that called itself a “church” and confessed a Christian theology truly was a church and deserved a pastor. I wasn’t too receptive to my older friend’s hard feelings about some of the “churches” he’d worked with.
But I remember, all too well, that when he talked to me about chose “churches,” his countenance transmogrified. His face reddened to scarlet. He winced. His pupils tightened. His gaze shifted from outward to inward, from the pleasant present to some vicious past. It reminded me of listening to veterans describe .the horrors of combat.
He had the look of a soldier flashing back to a war crime: He saw a pastor’s wife crying over her husband’s mental breakdown. He saw a pastor perplexed by a church that cut his salary during a time of 12 percent inflation, while the local economy and the church parishioners thrived. He heard shouts and cries and curses at church meetings bubbling up as though from some deep level of hell. He remembered the cavalier tone of an elder as he recounted without emotion or shame how the last four pastors of that church had left the ministry.
I have never served such a “church,” but I have talked with pastors who have, and now I am convinced that religious organizations do exist that merely call themselves “churches.”
Hell’s chaos
“Churches” such as these disembowel pastors. With words as sharp as knives, they slice open a pastor’s soul until the splaxna gushes out. They rip open the pastor’s racham. They take philos but they can not return it. They only know how to take. They are buckets without bottoms. No matter how much hesed you pour into them, it never hits bottom. They never fill up. They never overflow with love, mission, worship, or joy. Agape is wasted on them.
They come in all denominational flavors. They perjure themselves before the court of heaven when they confess their liberal, middle-of-the-road, or conservative theologies because they believe nothing. They hate God’s anointed. They despise the lordship of Christ, and they despise his ambassadors. They are spiritual anarchists. They are “children of Belial,” the Old Testament term for people of chaos.
The term ben beliyaal is a translator’s nightmare. The King James translators chose the literal route by translating the Hebrew word ben as “son” or “children” but then transliterate the term belial to get “children of Belial.” Modern translations replace the term completely with words from modern English. Generally, the New International Version translates the term as “troublemakers” and the New Revised Standard Version translates it as “scoundrels.” Neither translation does justice, in my mind, to the characteristic of Belial as the power of chaos, anarchy, and death.
The following are some examples of what it means to be one of the children of Belial:
- “But some worthless fellows said [of Saul], ‘How can this man save us?’ They despised him and brought him no present” (1 Sam. 10:27).
- “Scoundrels from among you have gone out and led the inhabitants of the town astray, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods,’ whom you have not known” (Deut. 13:13).
- “Now the sons of Eli were scoundrels; they had no regard for the Lord” (1 Sam. 2:12).
- “Now a scoundrel named Sheba son of Bichri, a Benjaminite, happened to be there. He sounded the crumpet and cried out, ‘We have no portion in David, no share in the son of Jesse! Everyone to your tents, O Israel!’ ” (2 Sam. 20:1).
- “The two scoundrels came in and sat opposite him; and the scoundrels brought a charge against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, ‘Naboth cursed God and the king. So they took him outside the city, and stoned him to death” (1 Kings 21:13).
- “And certain worthless scoundrels gathered around him and defied Rehoboam son of Solomon, when Rehoboam was young and irresolute and could not withstand them” (2 Chron. 13:7).
- “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?” (2 Cor. 6:14-15, NIV).
In short, Belial is the power of death, destruction, and utter chaos working in the lives of people. Significantly, although the passage in 2 Corinthians speaks of unbelievers, in the context of the Old Testament, the children of Belial belong to the people of Israel. Virtually all of our churches have some children of Belial. Some persons are characterized by a bitterness that goes so deep that they are quite literally children of Belial. And to the extent that we have participated in party spirit and have sat in the seat of scoffers against other pastors (and which of us hasn’t?), we coo have imbibed of this demonic spirit.
Some religious organizations (which call themselves “churches”) have drunk so deeply at the well of hatred that the entire “church” is controlled by this spirit of destruction. Whether these “churches” can be saved is up to the Lord. He may, in some circumstances, call a pastor to such a “church” with a special gift for delivering it from the legion that inhabits it. That is not my concern here. My point is that Jesus tells us that we must leave such religious organizations (which call themselves “churches”).
Jesus wants us to sow the seed of the Word of God. And he teaches us that in our sowing, some of the seed will fall on the path, some will fall on rocky soil, some will fall into thorns, and some will fall into good soil. This is to be expected. This gospel parable is a source of encouragement. But Jesus does not want us to sow deliberately the seed of the Word into thorns. Some religious organizations (which call themselves “churches”) are nothing but thorns.
Total abandonment
To pastors in these situations, Jesus says, as quoted in the previous chapter, “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you” (Matt. 7:6).
This familiar verse is not a law. It is a proverb. It is wisdom, but even more, it is permission. To pastors who insist on a course of self-destruction (giving their bodies to be burned but without love), it is a command. When Jesus sent out his disciples, he told them, “Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving chat town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them” (Luke 9:4-5). In one region where the Pharisees attacked him vehemently, Jesus simply left: “The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, asking him for a sign from heaven, to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, ‘Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.’ And he left them, and getting into the boat again, he went across to the other side” (Mark 8:11-13).
So Jesus took his own advice.
Paul was forced to abandon religious organizations (which called themselves “synagogues”). Luke tells us:
When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. When they opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” Then he left the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue. (Acts 18:5-7)
Later in Paul’s ministry, some of his disciples and churches developed their own form of Christian children of Belial. Paul warns Timothy:
Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will pay him back for his deeds. You also must beware of him, for he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (2 Tim. 4:14-18)
Sadly, “the lion’s mouth” here is apparently “believers,” persons who fully deserve the Old Testament title “children of Belial.” Based on his experience with so-called Christians, Paul warns Titus, “After a first and second admonition, have nothing more to do with anyone who causes divisions, since you know that such a person is perverted and sinful, being self-condemned” (Titus 3:10-11). Paul is referring to church discipline. But when an entire church is filled with a spirit of divisiveness, the command applies to having nothing to do with such churches.
Finally, in the first of the seven letters to the seven churches, Jesus tells the church in Ephesus, “I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love (agape) you had at first” (Rev. 2:4). He admonishes them to regain their love at all costs because “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Rev. 2:5).
Throughout this book, I have discussed the challenges I have faced in learning to love churches that offered little to commend themselves as objects of love except for this: at the heart of each was the Lampstand. Because of the presence of the Lampstand, all of these churches were genuine sources of light to their communities. However, in the case of the church in Ephesus, Jesus warns that it may lose the Lampstand.
Churches that lose the Lampstand become nothing more than a religious organization (which calls itself a “church”). Such groups do not deserve the love of a pastor. And they certainly do not deserve the chance to trample underfoot that which is holy or to maul God’s pearls.
Many churches are simply difficult to pastor (and that I discuss in the next chapter). But the questions begging to be answered are:
- “How do you know the difference between a ‘church’ and a church?”
- “How do you know when you are throwing pearls before swine?”
- “How do you recognize a ‘church’ whose Lampstand has been removed?”
Lost Lampstand
Jesus tells Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). Indeed, the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church in its gospel ministry until he returns. But the promise does not extend to every particular religious organization (that calls itself a “church”). Ephesus, an alive church, was in grave danger of losing its Lampstand, its share of the Rock upon which the church is built.
Each individual church must beware lest its gospel ambassadorship be taken away. Because if it is, the “church” will despise and destroy ambassadors of the gospel from that time forward. That is unless—by some miracle, which no pastor should take upon him-or herself to perform without specific direction from the Lord—that religious organization (which calls itself a “church”) is restored to gospel ministry.
How can a pastor tell if a church has lost its Lampstand?
Three criteria come to mind. A “church” without the Lampstand:
- lacks the capacity to accept pastoral ministry that keeps the lamp burning;
- is indifferent to prayer;
- has a long history of raising its hand against God’s anointed (and therefore can no longer bear the presence of the Spirit that anoints pastor and church for ministry).
Churches that lack the capacity to accept pastoral ministry are like sheep chat refuse to be led to pasture; in the presence of food, they refuse to eat.
But when a pastor feeds his sheep with the Word of God, they shall not want. In loving leadership the pastor makes them lie down in green pastures and leads them beside still waters. In prayer and counsel the pastor restores their souls and leads them in right paths for Christ’s sake. When the time comes for the sheep to walk through the darkest valley, the pastor is with them; the rod and staff of God comfort them. In obedience to the command of the Lord, the pastor administers the sacraments and prepares a table before them in the presence of their enemies; he or she anoints their heads with oil; their cup overflows. In giving them the love of God, goodness and mercy follow them all the days of their lives, and ultimately they will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
This paraphrase of Psalm 23 is an idealized picture of pastoral ministry. But, keeping the parable of the sower in mind, the fact that not everyone experiences ministry in this way does not diminish the fact that some certainly do. We mess up plenty. We are often not faithful. But we strive to lead the flock to feed. Our ability to lead to feed is the measure of our ministry. A church is measured by its willingness to be led and fed. A church will receive the feeding of a pastor and will be nourished by it. A religious organization (which calls itself a “church”) will not be led to food and will not eat.
A “church” indifferent to prayer is like a body indifferent to breathing; it is dead. We know from our battles with keeping personal devotions that prayer can become rote and lifeless, but we struggle back. When our spirit is weak in prayer, we gasp for Spirit-like lungs burning for oxygen after time under water. A religious organization (which calls itself a “church”) feels no incongruity, no struggle, and no lung-burning as it proceeds with its pseudo-religious duties without prayer. It does not breathe, but it does not care. It is not alive. Its lamp does not burn.
“Churches” with long histories of lifting their hand against pastors cannot bear the presence of the Spirit chat anoints for ministry. These churches defend their record of starving, boycotting, and firing pastors on the grounds that the pastors were all louts. Some of them were. But these churches forget chat David refused to kill Saul in the cave. David did cut off a corner of Saul’s robe, but even this made him feel guilty: “Afterward David was stricken to the heart because he had cut off a corner of Saul’s cloak. He said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord’s anointed, to raise my hand against him; for he is the Lord’s anointed'” (1 Sam. 24:5-6).
David had another chance to kill Saul, but he refused to allow Abishai to do so. He told Abishai, “Do not destroy him; for who can raise his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?” (1 Sam. 26:9).
“Churches” are judged by God for the way they treat pastors like Saul, just as they are judged for the way they treat pastors like David. These “churches” apparently do not see that when they raise their hand against God’s anointed—by cutting their salary or slicing away at their integrity with gossip—they are slashing at the very Spirit of God who has anointed the pastor. Eventually they will despise the Spirit of God, and as a result the lamp will go out.
It can be many years before a pastor or a denomination comes to the conclusion that a “church” will not take food and is indifferent to prayer. But the record of the destroyed lives of pastors is clear. It is a horrible thing to serve a “church” for several years, struggling for every gasp of air, only to have your face pushed again and again into putrid hogwash. If you dare to plunge your hand deeply enough in it, you will come up with crushed pearls and bone fragments of pastors who have been mauled.
When that happens, get out!
Denominations are beginning, finally, to keep track of “pastors” that sexually abuse parishioners. They offer them repentance and therapy or the door. If they don’t, these religious functionaries (who call themselves “pastors”) will continue to abuse parishioners in every parish they serve. When will denominations have the guts to do the same thing to pastor-abusing churches?
But the line between pastor-killing “churches” and churches that are difficult to pastor can be hard to discern. Such churches may have cut themselves off from pastors, they may have eaten from the Word sparingly, they may pray little, but there may still be hope. The Lamp flickers. Such churches, on the brink of death, still allows themselves to be prayed for. As long as a church allow this, it may be able to be pastored and loved. And through prayer it may be taught again to love the rich fare available to God’s people.
Copyright © 1998 David Hansen
