A fairly new pastor talked with me on the phone yesterday after I called him. He sent me an initial text message that said, “I had my first family ever send me an email that said they are leaving the church.” I called him because after twenty-three years of full-time ministry I knew he probably needed a word of encouragement.
When You Love People, It Opens the Door Up for Great Hurt
Your pastor loves you. Your pastor’s wife loves you. Their children may love you as well. In the average-size church in America, you know your pastor and your pastor knows you. Your pastor knows your concerns, heartaches, and pressures. Furthermore, he would do whatever needed to be done to serve you.
That’s typical.
Your pastor gets up and tries to do personal Bible study, read, pray, and begin his day. He goes all day balancing the demands of church as an organization with pastoring all the people in the church body. His day may include anything from running by Sam’s for supplies, to a hospital call, to a meal with someone, to a quick repair on the church building, to whatever. Every day can be different and almost every day is demanding. He runs all day.
He goes to bed at night with your church, your needs, your story, and a whole bunch of stuff still on his mind. Yes, he plays with his family, talks with his wife, and plenty of other things. Yet along the path, you are still back there. Your prayer requests are still on his mind. Your concerns continue to be his concerns.
Why?
Because he loves you and seeks to serve Christ and you well.
Hurting People and Selfish People Often Potentially Hurt People
Although your pastor may not be on your mind, your church building may not be on your mind, other church members and their concerns may not be on your mind, or how to pay the church bills may not be on your mind, all those things and more are on your pastor’s mind. He lives and breathes the church of God and the people of God.
Of course that is not the case for you.
When a hurting member lashes out at a pastor, it is personal even when it is not.
As a selfish person chooses self over the body of Christ, it can feel very personal.
When a member leaves to go to a different church with better programs, an accompanying sting goes with that announcement.
I could add line after line of these circumstances. Although a pastor can reason through someone’s hurt and selfishness and preferences, that may make it less personal but there is still hurt.
Why does it hurt? What makes it personal? Why does it matter to the pastor if someone leaves the church?
Because the pastor and his family live their lives to serve Christ and people. Even when no one else is thinking about the church as an organization and the church as individual people with real concerns and real problems, the pastor and often his family are.
When people leave a church then, even though most of the time it is not over a personal reason with the pastor or his family, it still has potential to hurt, potential to create spiritual problems, and potential of hurting the church body.
Every time someone leaves, the church could get hurt. There will be other members who wonder why – even though a pastor can’t say why if he knows. There will be other members who quietly question what is going on. Other church members also miss the ones who have left as well. All these things impact the church.
Who is thinking about this and cares about it more than most? The pastor and his family.
Therefore, when someone chooses to leave, the pastor bears the weight of these concerns. He is concerned simultaneously for the souls of the people who left, the souls of the people who stay, the souls of his family, and his own personal soul. These are the people impacted by an individual decision to leave.
These Issues Were on My Mind as We Talked
Don’t get me wrong. I do not believe you can’t leave a church. People do it all the time. My friend on the phone yesterday got his first taste of the heartache that goes along with ministry. There will be many more to come. (And possibly why so many people choose to leave ministry or even worse.)
As we talked, these were the concerns I had for him. As I got off the phone and went to bed, I prayed for him, his wife, his children, and his church.
Why? Because even when it is not personal to the pastor and not wrong for the leaving individual, for the pastor and his family who have sacrificially loved, served, hoped, and cared for these people who left, it matters. The more people you love and serve, the greater the opportunity to be hurt along the way.
Will you pray for your pastor? His wife? His family?
Will you pray for this pastor I talked with yesterday? His wife? His family?
Please pray – not because your pastor is asking since most pastors will not – but simply because you better understand the difficulties of being a pastor to people. Your pastor and his family are sinners and sufferers who seek to love and serve well individuals just like you who are also sinners and sufferers. That combination leaves plenty of room for Satan to attack the pastor, his family, the church, and you as part of the church. At the end of the day, we all want to love Christ supremely and others sincerely. We desire God to be glorified. Prayer helps.
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