Church With No Lampstand
"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 ...
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