Wednesday, August 1, 2001
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Wednesday, August 1, 2001 |
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Today's pressures of the work place include the ministry By REV JOHN HATCHER Twenty-five years ago, the average U.S. pastor was under less pressure than today. Today, every month, 1,300 U.S. pastors are fired or forced to resign. Nearly 30 percent of ministers have been terminated at least once. In a decade, 40 percent of today's pastors will be in another line of work. Seventy percent say they have no close friends. The numbers don't improve at home. The divorce rate for U.S. pastors is up at least 65 percent in 25 years. More than a third admit to "inappropriate sexual behavior" with church members. Eighty percent say their work has a negative impact at home. One in three goes even further, saying the pastorate has been a "hazard" to their families. These are impressive and tragic facts about the state of the person in charge of shepherding the souls of America. What's more impressive and more tragic, hardly anything is being done about it. Although mainline denominations have set up an office to deal with minister relations, only a few cases ever present themselves. It's not something you want to take to your peers and certainly not your superiors. Some individual churches have set up special committees to handle pastor/parish relations. Usually, however, they act as a committee to invite the pastor to leave. It's usually accepted as appropriate practice to ask the minister to uproot his family and cope with a load of rejection. It would be unthinkable that members of the congregation adapt to a new style of leadership or, God forbid, uproot their families and find another church. In the words of the chairman of the committee that axed me once, "John, you are a scapegoat." And that's it. Far too often the pastor is the scapegoat for the failures of the congregation. Today, ministers deal with the scourge of comparative shopping. First, individuals see different kinds of "big" church on television. It could be Rod Parsley's weekly revivalistic services with thousands in attendance. It could be Robert Schuller's Hour of Power with his famous Crystal Cathedral. It could be Fred Price's well-dressed congregation numbering in the thousands looking at their pastor on huge screens. The average church shopper enters the real world of an average church house thinking the folks at Little Georgia First Methodist Church can put on a kicking service like Fraser Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He's disappointed because the choir is not as full and as powerful. There's no high tech stuff in little church. The pastor's microphone is the most advanced technical equipment and it doesn't work half the time. Bottom line, small-church pastors face higher expectations as their flocks ask to receive the same variety of services as mega churches. It's a buyer's market. The plain truth is that the average minister just can't produce what T. D. Jakes and Charles Stanley and Eddie Long can produce. The television has changed the standard of what church should be like. Church shoppers are looking for a church like they see on television. Fifty years ago, the U.S. pastor did not have to deal with such nonsense. But it's the nonsense that makes sense to church shoppers. What would happen if congregations decided that the New Testament would become their model for church rather than the big church on television? Just because a church is big doesn't make it right or right on with the Word of God. If you receive nothing more from this column, perhaps you will begin to appreciate the pressures and expectations placed on all pastors, especially yours. Perhaps you can begin to pray for your pastor unlike most church members. Perhaps you can be a little more caring and sympathetic to your pastor and his family. Take it from someone who knows, they could use it. As a disclaimer. By no means should my column be interpreted saying that big church pastors are not under fire, under pressure, and under the gun. They have multi-million dollar budgets that must be subscribed by volunteer givers. They have multiple staff members who require intense supervision. They, too, have a family and all too often it's a family in a glass house.
The Rev. Dr. John Hatcher is pastor of River's Edge Community Church in Fayetteville. |
