Pastors Come and Pastors Go

Titus 1:5

Pastors Come and Pastors Go…

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.

Pastors come and pastors go,

But the church remains.

 first heard this old saw in East Texas.  It was used as an excuse to account for the fact that many pastorates in the little country churches were of such short duration.  Upon arriving in British Columbia I was astonished to again encounter this same self-serving religious doggerel.  Whether or not the adage is known to a particular congregation, the sentiment is nevertheless expressed among far too many churches in this day.  It usually excuses the instability of the pulpit.  It somehow finds its way to the fore when the power clique of a given church decides it is time for the pastor to leave; it lends a pious veneer to their thoughtless attempt to intimidate God’s appointed shepherd.

The concept is unbiblical – an insult to the Spirit of God who dwells among the churches and who jealously watches over the Bride of Christ … the church.  To consider pastors to be flotsam and jetsam on the sea of religious life is to disdain those whom God has given as gifts to His church purchased with His own blood [cf. Ephesians 4:11-13].  Pastors are shepherds appointed to guide the flock rather than simply stand idly by while a coterie of power mongers manipulate the Bride of Christ according to their whimsy.

You may be surprised to discover that this temperament which slights God’s shepherd is neither new nor novel, but it was resident among the churches even in the apostolic era.  Paul found it necessary to write Titus who was apparently discouraged at confronting such attitudes among the Cretan churches.  Titus, wrote the aged man of God, let me remind you why you are in Crete.  I began a work there, but it was unfinished.  You are the one who will need to complete what was begun.  You will need to appoint elders in each town.  What is unsaid is as poignant as what is stated.

The Relationship of Pastor and People — The prevailing attitude among religious people appears to view the pastor as a mere employee.  The sentiment of too many churches toward God’s undershepherd seems to be, “We hired you and we can fire you.”  Perhaps that feeling is fostered in part by our income tax laws, which for the purpose of national revenue treats the support given the pastor as income.  Income, in the popular mind, speaks of wages and wages are that which is due because of labour rendered.

It may prove beneficial for you to reflect on the fact that our Lord speaks of the shepherd in terms sharply contrasted to the hired hand.  In John’s Gospel is recorded a discourse the Master gave in which He spoke of Himself as the Good Shepherd even as He spoke disparagingly of the hired hand.  Though the words are clearly applied to our Lord Himself, by contrast they apply to those whom He sets as a shepherd over the flock. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep.  So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.  Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.  The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep [John 10:12,13].

A shepherd is to guard the flock, even treating the flock with harshness should the occasion demand such severe response – for instance when danger is imminent and the need is for haste instead of finesse.  Does God not know the need of His sheep?  And should we not anticipate that He will set over the flock that individual necessary for their spiritual welfare?  The pastor is to be received as one whom God has set in that position of responsibility.  What else does the teaching of the Word mean, if not that?

Paul, writing in the encyclical we have received as Ephesians, states the case in this manner.  It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.  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 men in their deceitful scheming [Ephesians 4:11-14].

The gifted men set within the churches are not to be seen as those who perform all the labours of the church, but they are to prepare God’s people for works of service.  Among those gifted servants are the pastors who are to prepare God’s people for ministry.  The people are to work under the tutelage of the shepherd and not vice versa.  Turn your thoughts to another well-known passage of Scripture which presents the relationship of shepherd and flock.  I speak of the Twenty-third Psalm, of course.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters,

He restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness

for His name’s sake.

Even though I walk

through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

for You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever

[Psalm 23:1-6].

Scope in especially on that fourth verse with me: Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  Perhaps you thought the shepherd carried rod and staff for his own convenience.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Rod and staff are carried for the sake of the sheep.

Throughout the Psalm is an emphasis on what the shepherd does for the sheep, so it is easy to overlook the fact that the shepherd must also be prepared to exercise discipline over the sheep … through force if necessary.  Although the rod and the staff are employed to protect the flock, they are also to correct a sheep when such is required.  Perhaps a leg needs to be broken to keep a sheep from wandering into danger and to bind it to the shepherd.  Ofttimes a sheep will need to be redirected forcefully to keep it moving along the path.  Again, it is sometimes necessary to discipline a sheep by striking it.  The result of this loving imposition of discipline is to insure that goodness and mercy follow the sheep and to insure that they will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Too often the attitude of churches is that of rebellion against the divine order.  The sheep take to themselves the right to tell the shepherd how to conduct his ministry and what he should say and how he should treat them.  If he does not, they will fire him and hire one who will do as he is told.  In this is fulfilled the words of the Apostle Paul.  The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.  Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear [2 Timothy 4:3].

I do not mean to imply that a shepherd should be unnecessarily harsh nor that he may take advantage of the flock with impunity.  The shepherd is under divine orders.  He is to be eager to serve, to avoid lording it over the flock, to be careful to provide an example to the flock.  He knows that he must give an account both for his conduct and for the welfare of the flock entrusted to his care by the Chief Shepherd [cf. 1 Peter 5:2,3 and Hebrews 13:17].  It is not often the shepherd who is unruly when standing firm on the Word.  Frankly, unless you have sound moral, ethical, doctrinal reasons for confronting your pastor, you are in rebellion against the Word of God and against the very presence of the Living God.

The pastor must recognise that he is placed in his position by divine appointment and avoid taking advantage of the flock.  The flock is to recognise that the pastor is set over them by the will of God and resist the impulse to dictate.  There is to be a tender, mutual concern of one for the other.  The pastor is to be seen as integral to a healthy congregation and not as a mere adjunct to be pushed or pulled at the whim of some individual or some committee within the assembly.  The pastor is to shepherd the flock demonstrating an attitude of self-sacrifice for the welfare of the congregation.  The congregation is to receive the direction of the pastor as that given by one whom God has charged with the awesome responsibility for their welfare.  Together, pastor and flock are to advance the cause of Christ through investing their mutual gifts in the body of Christ.

Titus was to appoint elders in every town.  Isn’t it interesting that there is no instruction to the churches to elect elders in every town?  Who elected the pastor of the church at Jerusalem?  We see James functioning in that capacity, but there is no indication that he was elected to the position of pastor.  When the first deacons were selected, the congregation was instructed to choose those meeting divine qualifications, but it was the apostles, functioning in the role of elders just as Peter would later claim, who prayed and laid their hands on them.  Those who are leaders in the church are leaders not because they were elected, but because they clearly display the criteria demanded by the divine architect of the church.  All who function as elders are appointed divinely.  Though I acknowledge that the church must see this display of divine grace in the life of the body, it is not the church which elects pastors.  Instead, it is God Himself who appoints whom He wills to shepherd His people.

The Dangers Resulting From an Empty Pulpit — The aged apostle urged Titus to get on with the great task of insuring that leadership was recognised in each church.  The reason for haste is that an empty pulpit is a source of increased danger for the flock.  Without a shepherd the flock is vulnerable to attack and assault from multiple quarters.  We would expect assault from outside the church.  The atheists and agnostics, the heathens and pagans, those openly hostile to the Faith of Christ the Lord, welcome an empty pulpit since it insures that there is no response to their attacks.

Though the pulpit does guard against attack from outside the confessing church, many attacks against the flock of God come from within the professed church of Christ.  Paul, addressing the Ephesian elders for a last time before his incarceration, gathered them to himself at Miletus.  Listen carefully to these words recorded of his final discourse to them. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.  Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.  I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.  Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.  So be on your guard!  Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears [Acts 20:28-31].

I draw attention to one point in particular and another point in passing.  In passing and to emphasise what I have already said previously, note that it is the Holy Spirit Who makes men elders.  The major responsibility of those appointed by God’s Spirit to be elders is to keep watch both over themselves and over the flock, the church of God which He bought with His own blood.

More pertinent to the point I am making at this time in the message of the need for the shepherd to guard against assault from inside the church, focus on Paul’s words in verses twenty-nine through thirty-one.  Savage wolves were even then prowling about the horizon.  What you may not see since it is obscured through translation is the word savage.  That Greek word is translated in other places by the words heavy, weighty, serious, and more important.  The idea is that those endangering the church would be people deemed important, powerful as the world counts power.  Furthermore, these weighty individuals would arise from among their own number; they would be people accounted as someone within the church.  It was just such people that Paul had withstood throughout the three years he ministered in Ephesus.  An empty pulpit leaves the flock susceptible to these seemingly important preachers and teachers and leaders who are in fact savage wolves.

Not every preacher who has airtime on television or who hosts a radio show is sound in the Faith.  Many of them are dangerous in the extreme causing naïve saints to run aground through distorting the truth.  Not every self-important denominational official has the best interest of the local congregation at heart when they speak to the flock.  A pastor must stand opposed to all such individuals exercising discernment as he guides the flock to safe pasturage and still waters.

Again, an empty pulpit invites creation of power cliques opposed to Christ’s will.  Within any church two organisations seem to coexist.  There is the governing structure which is outlined in the bylaws of the congregation, and there is the actual governing structure which represents those to whom the church looks whenever there is a question of how to proceed.  By spiritual design the flock should look to the shepherd; by practise an empty pulpit invites someone else, even though unappointed by the Spirit of God, to effectively act in a pastoral role through usurping that divine position.

An old dictum which is often cited in our day states that nature hates a vacuum.  Any vacuum will be soon filled, even the vacuum of spiritual leadership within the church.  Few people without benefit of divine appointment wish to assume the mantle of responsibility for oversight of the flock, so most quickly and gladly defer to anyone who appears remotely willing to assume pastoral responsibility.  Never have I witnessed the evolution of such power cliques except it resulted in division and heartache eventually.

Among the Chinese peoples where I ministered for a season, I was counselled that within any congregation there will be elders.  The term elder in this case does not refer to the biblical office, however, but instead speaks of those to whom the people defer.  What the elders want will be done and what the elders oppose will not be done.  This is not so very different within other contexts, for power cliques often exercise restraint and control unconsciously, and even benignly.  However, unless the congregation is alert to the danger of illicit authority within the church, great danger can result.

A biblical example of the harm which can result from illicit power base within the church is provided in John’s Third Epistle.  There we are introduced to one Diotrephes, a man who loves to be first [3 John 9].  This man, no doubt under the guise of doing what was best for the church, broke fellowship with the sainted John, gossiped maliciously about those whom God had appointed as elders, refused to welcome the itinerating evangelists and missionaries then moving throughout the expanding world of the church, and stopped those within the congregation who were willing to welcome such men [3 John 9,10].

The first church I pastored in Canada had within the membership a former pastor who had assumed the position of treasurer.  His presence was a curse as he held a strangle hold on the work of the church insuring that only those projects of which he approved would proceed.  When I finally expelled him from the church, giving in the church nearly doubled immediately.  The church went on to prosper without that illicit power which stood in opposition to God’s Spirit.

Another congregation I briefly pastored had a reputation of being a greatly blessed church in years past, but a clique had assumed power.  As one man told me, “There are three people in this church.  If we want something, it will be done.  If we don’t want it, it ain’t gonna’ happen.”  The people, while recognising something was wrong, were not prepared to stand against such arrogance to seek to maintain the fresh winds of the Spirit even then blowing.  Though the attendance of the congregation had tripled within a very short time and souls were being added to the Kingdom of God, the power brokers stood opposed to their loss of influence and the people permitted them to prevail.  That congregation struggles to exist today, though it briefly stood poised to again assume a position of influence for good and for God within the community.

I was blessed within another congregation to witness a movement uniting the people in spiritual labour, and the assembly was growing with fresh faces eager to discover freedom in Christ.  Within the congregation was a gifted individual who could have been a blessing to the people had he so desired.  He told me, “I don’t want any responsibility.  I just want to stand in the shadows and make things happen.”  I warned him that those standing in the shadows were stigmatised as those loving darkness, and such people love darkness because their deeds are evil.  Though multiplied people from the assembly came to me and voiced their displeasure, they felt they could not stand against the power mongers.  How many times did I hear the lament that though an individual considered my course of action right it would be painful for them to follow!

In each of these instances cited, the power clique had arisen during an extended absence of pastoral leadership.  A weak pulpit insures the creation of a power clique.  Once such a monstrosity has been born, the church will surrender blessing until that power clique is confronted and removed.  In each instance, those exercising their illicit power would have argued that they were acting for the good of the church; but that which is done secretly is unworthy of the God who dwells in light.

Yet another danger resulting from an empty pulpit is that the flock may lower biblical standards of faith and practise.  Without a firm word from the Lord, the flock tends to substitute the best thought available.  The best thought may be utterly unbiblical, having its origins in the fallen thoughts of fallen society.  It is amazing how much popular theology has found its way into the Church of the Living God with shepherds present.  Without their presence the natural tendency of the flock is to lower biblical standards at an astonishing pace.  It requires incredible courage to maintain the Faith in the face of social opposition.  Mark my words, the church will always be opposed to culture at critical points.  An empty pulpit almost always insures that the congregation will move steadily away from an attitude of humble submission to the Word even as they embrace ever more strange doctrines resulting from following the most strident voice.

In one of the congregations wherein I laboured and which was mentioned previously, I had confronted the power brokers.  At one point during a meeting of the deacons of the congregation the chairman of the church (a great biblical title found in the Book of Hesitations) made a statement which was absolutely mad.  He said that if the Bible was in conflict with the constitution of the church, the congregation was obligated to obey the constitution since they were registered with the government.  The statement in itself was astounding for its ignorance; but even more astonishing to me was the fact that not one deacon present spoke out in objection to his position.

Included among those deacons was the head of a major mission organisation in Canada and a man once greatly blessed of God in music work throughout the nation.  Upon polling these men and discovering that they deferred to their unappointed leader, I apologised for treating them as spiritual leaders rather than the spiritual imbeciles they actually were.  Usually, those unappointed to divine office tend to be unbalanced in their view of doctrine, morals and ethics.  Indeed, the danger to shepherds appointed by Christ is that they may move to a position out of step with the Spirit, but it is a virtual certainty that those who have not received His appointment will both be out of step with the Spirit and they shall soon lead the rest of the flock into error and hurt.

God’s Ideal for the Church — God’s ideal is that each church should reflect the spiritual assembly met at Jesus’ feet.  The church is to be a Body … a living, growing entity reflecting the life of the Spirit.  Thus each member of the body is recognised as having been placed within that assembly by the Spirit of God.  Each member – pastors as well as all other members – has a purpose and a ministry.

The apostolic instruction assumes that the one set apart to pastoral ministry will be well acquainted with the congregation and that the congregation will know the character of the pastor through intimate association.  The shepherd is not an afterthought or one hired by the church, a mere adjunct to the congregation.  The pastor is one with the congregation.  Such a view keeps the pastor from lording it over the assembly and keeps the church from abusing one of God’s gifts to the churches.

One of the greatest hurts to ever be perpetuated among the churches was the segregation of members of the body into pulpit and pew, into clergy and congregation.  The pastor is a member of the body.  The characteristics Paul outlined in the following verses following his admonition to Titus to remain in Crete speak of how a congregation may know whom God has prepared for the role of pastor.  How would a church ever recognise these characteristics without knowing the individual well?

When the people of God accepted the segregation of clergy and laity, they commenced the transformation of the church from a living organism to an organisation; and the consequences of that transformation haunt the churches of our Lord to this day.  Pastors are hired instead of being received from God.  Pastors receive dictation from the churches instead of speaking as the voice of God to the people.  Pastors are ordered to their various tasks by committees instead of sensing spiritual compulsion.  The churches are weakened.  The saints are impoverished.  The flock is scattered.  And the world has yet to see the Bride of Christ stand in power against wickedness in this dark day.

The message is nearly done.  I have delivered a plea to see matters in a spiritual light.  Receive your pastor as God’s appointed gift to provide oversight and to set the spiritual direction of the congregation.  This is not to say that the pastor is infallible, but it is to caution against reacting strongly simply because of irritation.  Search the Word to find the unity which God longs to give through His Spirit.  That unity will be the result of a church which is a living entity with every member received as a precious gift from the Father of lights.  Amen.