"AND HE GAVE...PASTORS..."

“And he gave ...pastors...” (from Ephesians 4:11)

In December of 1989, I attended the funeral of Pastor Stanley Washburn of First Baptist Church of Holliston. I’d known Stan for a couple of years as we were each part of a pastors’ small group for support and fellowship. Well, I guess I THOUGHT I knew Stan, but like many other clergy in attendance, I was surprised to learn from one of the eulogies given that Pastor Stan Washburn typically did 1000 “pastoral visits” of church members, shut-ins, and others per YEAR! Stan Washburn died just a few weeks short of his 70th birthday so he’d be almost 90 today. He was definitely the “old school” pastor- like Rev. Alden of T.V’s “Little House on the Prairie”.

Most of today’s pastors are tuned into far more of a business/C.E.O. model of church leadership. Even if they’re not particularly gifted in business matters (and I’m not) it’s something they’re striving for. Pollster and demographer George Barna who tracks all sorts of trends in the evangelical Christian world has concluded that leadership stills are absolutely essential for a pastor. He’s also concluded that a huge percentage of guys (and gals) engaged in full-time ministry do NOT have the proper leadership skills to be pastors and that they really should leave the ministry and make way for those that do have these skills.

I subscribe to a weekly newsletter for pastors which is put out by Dr. James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” organization. The newsletter, called “The Pastor’s Weekly Briefing” typically laments the political state of our country and the tragedies of abortion and gay marriage, but also tends to include materials helpful to the pastor as a husband and father, and includes a lot of materials about current trends in both the evangelical and theologically liberal Church worlds. The lead article of this week’s newsletter is about the results of a recent survey of “megachurch pastors”. The survey was conducted by Warren Bird for “Leadership Network”. 232 pastors of churches of 2000 or more were surveyed. I would guess a lot of lay people would be shocked to learn that only 1% of the pastors surveyed said they consider “visiting members, the sick and shut-in” to be an area of strength for them. Another statistic that will surprise people is that most of these guys (and gals) see themselves as “preacher-teachers”, “directional leaders” and “visionaries” rather than as pastors.

Focus on the Family STRESSES right-wing politics and political activism. I’m sure they were not happy with the results that few of these pastors saw praying for their political leaders as important. When these pastors do pray for others, it’s primarily for their own families and their church staffs.

If you’d like to see the whole newsletter, just “shoot me an e-mail” at revrbaril@aol.com and I will be happy to forward it on to you.

While I found the “1%” statistic a bit surprising, I was not shocked by anything in the survey. True, these were MEGACHURCH pastors, and I’m anything but a megachurch pastor. And, in fact, most Protestant church pastors in the U.S. are pastoring churches of under 300 and many are pastoring churches of under 75. Even so, as I’ve sat in discussion groups and prayer groups with other pastors, I’d say at least 80% have said they DON’T like visiting hospitals and nursing homes, and that they don’t like doing pastoral visitation in general. I will say that I’ve often surprised MYSELF by being very “together” and effective on hospital and nursing home calls, and I credit THAT to the Holy Spirit, because I don’t particularly like them, either! I was also once part of a pastors group where we answered the question of whether pastoring was what we thought it was going to be. EVERYBODY (and it was around 8 guys of various ages and backgrounds) said that it was NOT. I then asked if any of us had grown up in pastor’s homes, and none of us did. I do find that people who grow up in pastor’s homes have much more of an idea of what pastoring is going to be like than do those like me who enter the ministry from a background that’s totally foreign to it.

In the theologically liberal denominations, and now more increasingly in the theologically conservative denominations, more and more of the pastors are female. My experience is that women pastors are far more likely to “like” pastoral visitation and to do more of it. Even so, the women have just as much pressure to “produce” on the “business end” of the church as do men, and probably more so. I’m not sure why we don’t have too many Pastor Stan Washburn types any more. They represent another era. The younger guys going into ministry are even more into the whole business C.E.O. thing than are guys (and gals) my age. The youngest pastors tend to dress casual, wear earrings and maybe tattoos, have churches with blaring rock music, and want to “take on the world”. Frankly, in many cases, they DO so, and quite successfully. But most of these guys aren’t holding little old ladies’ hands in nursing homes while reading Psalm 23 to them.

The “Promise Keepers” organization has been warning for well over ten years that the evangelical church world is in crisis and that pastors are leaving the ministry at an alarming rate. My friend, the Rev. Dr. Dick Germanine is sounding the same alarm and that’s part of why he founded Barnabas Ministries Inc. as a resource for pastors and churches. There is definitely a gap in what the laity is expecting of their pastors, and how pastors view themselves. Most pastors I know laugh at the written job descriptions their churches give them because they don’t fulfill them and couldn’t possibly fulfill them. I don’t have any easy answers to what I’m writing here. Right now, I’m just “throwing it all out on the table”.

What do you think?