Transcript
Ben Fallon: Paul, last episode you provided some very helpful instruction about how a church can pastor their pastor. But the sad reality is, and we're seeing this all the time now, that many church leadership cultures are not only lacking in pastoral care for their staff, but they're actually quite abusive. Today's question comes from a pastor and his wife who ask, “What advice do you have for pastors who feel abused or hurt by their congregation or the leadership? How do you discern when it's time to leave?”
Paul Tripp: I am persuaded that a call to ministry is a call to suffer. Jesus makes that very clear when he's leaving. He said, “If they hated me, guess what's going to happen to you?” So, there are a variety of ways that you suffer in ministry so I should not be surprised when difficulty comes.
It's important to understand the nature of that difficulty and to be open to what God wants me to learn and to gain from difficulty. One of the questions I'm asked a lot is, “How do you deal with ministry criticism?” And I always refer to a story when I was a fairly young pastor. I got a lengthy letter from a woman in our church that was very critical and very hard to read. I was very hurt, and I called my brother, Ted, who had preceded me in ministry, and I wanted him just to dress my wounds. And he said, “Do you believe in the sovereignty of God?” I said, “Sure, I do.” He said, “Well, then there's a reason you got that letter.”
If I hadn't been on the phone, I would have slugged him. And he said, “Here's what I think you ought to do. I think you ought to, over the next couple of weeks, read that letter over and over again, and pray that God would reveal to you the things that you should listen to and the things that you should throw away.”
Well, the beauty of reading a communication like that over and over again over several days or a couple of weeks is that, at some point, the initial hurt leaves, and you read more objectively. And in that letter were three or four things that I absolutely needed to hear that absolutely changed my ministry. Now, God doesn't promise that the instrument will always be proper in the way they communicate, and so you want to learn, you want to grow. I've been in contact with pastors who got such criticism from the congregation and began to understand that the ways that they were communicating were just not helpful and changed them in ministry. And so, I don’t want to be so utterly defensive that I can't hear criticism, I can't be involved in self-evaluation.
An element of that, I mentioned it briefly, is I always want to ask myself, “What's the nature of the trial? What's the nature of the hurt? Is it a misunderstanding? Is it something I'm guilty of? Is it a general attitude of the culture that makes ministry difficult?” For example, we're living right now in a highly politically charged culture that makes ministry difficult. People are listening to sermons politically; they're watching their leaders politically, and that's a difficulty. And then I can constantly be asking, “How am I doing? How am I responding to this?” You get to the point where the big question is, “Are there isolated charges of disgruntled people that will never be satisfied, or have I lost the trust of the congregation?” See, ministry in the local church is all about trust. The people in the pew have to look up at this person who's preaching and say, “This is a good man; I can trust myself to the ministry of this man.” If they don't have that, it doesn't work. And so, if I've gotten to the point where trust is so miserably broken down, then that's time to leave.
Or, if I've lost such trust in the people that I feel so beaten down that I can't look people in the eye and I can't lead with joy, then I can't lead. And so, the issue of leaving really is about trust; trust that I can continue to lead this group of people, or have I lost my ability to do that because of their view of me, or because I'm just beaten down to a point where I'm not able to lead in the way that I am called to lead? That is not a decision that should be made lightly. That is not a decision that should be made in secret. That's a decision that needs to be discussed and prayed over and you need advice and counsel over. But there are moments when a particular pastor's usefulness in a particular congregation is over, and it must be acknowledged, and God gives you the grace to move on.
BF: Now, if we could shift the focus of church hurt to someone who's sitting in the congregation, sadly, again, the buzzword ‘church-hurt’ is all too common with stories of people leaving churches in droves because of the lack of gospel integrity and character, not only from fellow congregants, but also from the top down, starting with ministry leaders and elders. So, “What do you make of all this talk about church-hurt?”
PT: So, I do want to talk about the issue of abuse in the church first because, I think this is important to say, as we talk about this hyper sense of culture we live in. I want to say again that, “Every person in ministry is a person in the midst of their own sanctification.” That means sin still lives inside of every leader. It's not yet been fully eradicated; that is in the process of happening. This means leaders in the church are susceptible to give way to temptation. So, we need to acknowledge that the church is not always the safe place that God intended it to be. Leaders are not always the safe shepherds that God intended them to be. We need to acknowledge that there are those in ministry who use their knowledge and their position and their power to harm those that they are called to help–that does happen.
And so, our first instinct when allegations of abuse come should not be to protect the brand or the leaders of the brand. The stories we are now hearing are too dark and too frequent to deny that this is a sad reality in the church. And so, every church needs to have a system in place where accusers are heard, proper evidence is gathered, and proper steps are in place to get the victim(s) the help he (they) need, and to deal biblically with the abuser(s), establishing as a church, as many preventative measures as you can. It's why I believe in denominations. I believe the importance of a “Book of Church Order” that tells us what to do, the steps to follow when these things are alleged. And the evidence says we're not doing well with this. And so, needing to have a system in place to hear accusers, to gather evidence, to deal with the abuser, is just important.
And also, systems that are preventative are necessary. Background checks for people who work in children's and youth ministries are absolutely essential. Those are preventative measures. Getting to know a person well that you're going to give a ministry position to is very important. So, now that sets up my answer to the question.
We do live in a hyper feeling-oriented culture where the most important thing is not what you've said or you've done, but how I feel about what you've said or you've done, no matter if it's right. We're in a culture where people are easily offended. And so, we need to make some distinctions. Loving confrontation in the face of your sin is not spiritual abuse; it's a biblical command! It's actually love. Love that does not speak the truth to you is not love. It falls way below the biblical definition of love.
Another example, lovingly telling you that you do not have the spiritual maturity or the gifts for the ministry position you'd like to be in is not spiritual abuse. It's actually mature pastoral care. Biblical church discipline as laid out in the New Testament is not spiritual abuse. A pastor confronting themes of worldliness in his church is not spiritual abuse. So, we have to make that distinction that there is true sin-based-church-hurt and there's a whole lot of supposed church-hurt that's not church-hurt. It's the church doing what it's meant to do. And that distinction is very, very important. And if we get it wrong on either side, it just makes the ministry of the local church very hard.
BF: Thank you, Paul, and thank you for those listening. We're so grateful for all of the questions and notes of encouragement that are coming in. You can send us your question via email to ask@paultripp.com or online at paultripp.com/ask. Thank you for being such a vital part of the Paul Tripp Ministries community.
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