Without Question: God Cares About Pastors Too

This isn’t a bitter ex-pastor blog. It might be colored by my personal experiences as a pastor, but I try to write about what matters most to the Lord Jesus—healthy churches that love one another while making disciples.

And so, I choose to ignore the risk of being misunderstood by elders, Senior Pastors, and entitled church members that view authority and submission as control words, because the ways they abuse pastors in the name of spiritual authority overshadow their biblical arguments and proof texts

Sometimes, I find, a biblical argument is a smokescreen. Sometimes, proof texts replace rational discourse. In my world, the small group of pastors I mentor and my list of churches asking for help, we’re coming to grips with issues that have been whitewashed for far too long. And you’ve certainly heard of pastors who “suddenly” announced they’re feeling called to another ministry or need to step away from church, and about their shortcomings being trafficked in the wake of their exit. I don’t want to confuse anyone about my take on this subject

Avoiding the impact of authoritative and wounding church cultures is a privilege that I have because I’m insulated. The dear friends who support my ministry want me to reach out to the pastors those manipulators and bullies are abusing.

God cares about pastors too.

Years ago, I was trying to encourage an embattled pastor who looked off into the distance and wondered out loud, “When did Christians begin giving themselves permission to be so mean to their pastors?”

Before you get all “Ed’s just taking up for pastors because he is one” on me, you should write to one of the pastors I work with and ask them if I’m soft on them. I’m hard on pastors because grace and love never overlook weaknesses and blind spots. But the difference between tough love and abuse is the difference between a scalpel and a chainsaw.

The systemic, cruel, and dehumanizing history of pastoral mistreatment in the American church has and continues to be a crime against the cause of Christ and Scripture’s “one another” teachings. It’s based on a desire of a few to maintain power and the ridiculous expectations of the many about how church works and the capacity of one human being. It’s been amplified by the drift away from communities shepherded by gifted leaders making disciples to corporations managed by talented CEO’s engineering numerical growth and impressive reputations, or sometimes simply because the biblical illiteracy of our time leaves everyday believers so vulnerable to Satanic manipulation. It’s painful to watch and far more painful to experience or to admit that it exists in the churches that we build.

We can’t permit the unloving mistreatment of Christians just because they’re pastors. Unchallenged and entrenched dismissive conduct toward pastors is real, it’s often generational in especially toxic churches, and it’s cancerous.

Statistics stubbornly betray the lie that it is well with the souls of pastors. Fully 50% of pastors admit that if they could do anything else to earn a living, they would. In the last decade, a sad trend emerged. Now, instead of walking away from ministry, some choose to take their own life.

And pastoral abuse is an unwelcome subject precisely because our broken model of church and its terrible effects are very real, extensive and unexamined.

Ecclesiastical muscle memory is powerful indeed, and its assumptions have helped us forget that God cares about pastors too. I’m ashamed of how we got here and want to more powerfully contribute and model how we can love pastors well in grace-based communities that release their giftedness to the benefit of the church and the glory of God.