Vol. 2, No. 2 - February 1994

Tragedy of the Professional Clergy

WARNING!!! The Surgeon General has determined that professional pastors are an endangered species. Please be kind to them. By Dan Trotter... If you have been reading NRR for very long, you will notice that we have been using some very uncomplimentary terms to describe the American organized church: the commercial church, the mercantile church, the Christopagan church. We do this to distinguish the true church of Jesus from the ecclesiastical system which has, quite frankly, become a monster. There is a big problem in being so rough with the American church system: American churchianity is so ingrained in our minds and our culture, that to attack it is tantamount to denouncing motherhood and besmirching the honor of God. In the movies we see pulpits and brides and grooms and church dinners on the grounds at Walton's Mountain, and how could anybody say this is monstrously wrong? And to compound the problem, the overwhelming majority of believers in the church system are wonderful, fine Christians. How can we attack what they hold so dear? But there's a bigger problem: not to say what needs to be said about the gross accretions to the simplicity of Jesus' body is to condone the unforgivable. It is to admit defeat, and to tell our children that they will never have a chance to experience the simple joy of knowing Jesus face to face and heart to heart, and of knowing, loving and serving their Christian brothers and sister unhampered by the cold institutionalism of the post-Constantinian church. We have to say what we believe, and even if we don't directly attack the system church, we implicitly attack it when we state what we do believe: you can't say you don't believe in professional clergy, seminaries, church buildings, etc., without someone taking offense. People identify so much with church traditions that Jesus never heard of, that they take personal offense when you try to point out to them that perhaps they should consider leaving. Consider the following letter... Dear NRR: ...I notice a sort of self-satisfaction creeping into the articles and the letters exemplified most especially by the article by Keith Anderson, "it would have been far easier if none of us had ever set foot in a traditional church building...so much needs to be unlearned." Let me admit to my bias first of all. Mea culpa. I am a minister in one of those dreaded institutional churches. Let me further state that I would love nothing more than that my congregation were more spontaneous and alive during the services. And yes, I would even love to have the laity take turns preaching. I don't have all the answers and would love to hear if others do. However, we in the institutional church are not all bad either. There is a lot of service to the needy as well as nurturing and love that goes on in many congregations. From the tone of some of the letters and articles in your publication, there is just as much hubris in house churches as in Rome... Can't we all get along? Can't we...have a variety of ways to worship God without tearing down our sisters and brothers who have chosen another way? Can't we support and nurture ministers who have chosen to work within the confines of the institutional church without making them feel like pariahs or heathens? I am not eager to have yet another publication from another group which seeks to build itself up at the expense of others. Let there be peace on earth--and let it begin with me. --Littleton, Colorado This letter is fairly typical of the thinking of many. Let's examine its lapses in logic and in fact. "When House churchers point out that things in the system church aren't in the Bible, we are accused of not loving people. It's crazy!" First, notice how house-churchers are attacked by this letter- writer as "self-satisfied," as exhibiting "hubris," as not being able to get along with one another, as tearing down sisters and brothers, as making traditional ministers feel like pariahs and heathens, as building themselves up at the expense of others. Now, that's some pretty first-class, down-home name-calling, especially from somebody who wants peace on earth to begin with him. And notice something else: the attacks are personal, not theoretical. And yet when house churchers attack a system, not by using ad hominem arguments, but by using tight, consistent logic, and by pointing out that those things that are done in the system church aren't in the Bible, immediately we are accused of not loving people. It's crazy. It is a shame that we have to try to prove to people that we don't think professional clergymen are pariahs and heathen. We don't. We just think professional clergymen are unscriptural, that's all. At the risk of sounding full of hubris, I ask you: where are professional clergy in the Bible? Show them to me, and NRR will shut down tomorrow. But to say that professional "ministers" are unscriptural is not the same thing as saying they are terrible people. Let me quote you directly from NRR, Vol. 1, No. 8: "I have nothing but sympathy for pastors, because there is no group of people on earth who are more abused and mistreated." Does that sound like we think professional pastors are heathen and pariahs? The letter from our anonymous correspondent states that "we in the institutional church are not all bad either." Well, of course institutional Christians are not all bad. Who ever said they were? NRR certainly hasn't. This letter is so typical of the defense mechanisms people use when confronted with the truth of radical New Testament Christianity. They turn the debate into a personal spirituality contest: our people are just as spiritual as yours. Folks, the argument isn't about who's better than anybody else. The argument is about which way of church conforms with Jesus' will best, which way conforms with the Scripture best, which way will increase the opportunity for face- to-face communion between God and those in whom He dwells, which way will present the beauty of Jesus Christ to a sick and perverted world. That there are wonderfully, radically devoted Christians in the organized church cannot be gainsaid. But I ask you this: what if those same wonderful Christians were in a house church environment? Would they flourish even more than they already have? I think I know the answer to that question. To say that home church Christianity is best, is not the same thing as saying that everyone within the house church movement is without fault. You don't have to be in the movement long to notice two big weaknesses: freedom from the strictures of the organized church gives some house churchers the freedom to be squirrelly. Another big problem is home churchers who have been so maltreated by the professional church that they are bitter. All this is unfortunate, but it doesn't invalidate the truth of what we are saying in NRR. And the fact that you know very spiritual Christians in the organized church doesn't make the American commercial church right and scriptural, any more than Mother Theresa and Madame Guyon make the Roman Catholic Church right. This issue is dedicated to the professional pastor. If you are a professional clergyman reading this, let me preview the thrust of the coming arguments: get out. Please. For your own integrity, for your relationship with your Lord, with your wife, with your family, for your own personal happiness, please get out. It will be one of the two or three best decisions you ever made. NRR has often commented on how absolutely miserable and frustrated the professional church system often makes the average "layman" feel. But the truth is, the church system is just as often frustrating and cruel to the professional pastor. There's a reason for this. God never, ever intended it. It is totally man-made, fleshly, out of the will of God and unscriptural. You can't participate in things that are man-made, fleshly, out of the will of God and unscriptural, and expect to be blessed. You just can't. In an article entitled "Battered Clergy: Today's Stressed Out Pastors Sometimes Find It Hard to Keep the Faith," Associated Press religion writer David Briggs states that "a serious morale problem has developed," and that "at any one time, one in five pastors wrestles with demoralization." The article quotes the Rev. Ronald Weinelt of Rincon, Ga.: "This is really a brutal occupation now." Why is the pastor's profession such a brutal occupation? The main reason is that it is an "occupation." When you work for someone, they are your boss, and you do what they say, or you get fired. So what happens when your boss is a congregation full of spiritually tepid mugwumps, and you're on fire for the Lord? Let's don't kid ourselves here. We all know what happens. The pastor is unceremoniously kicked out on the street with his wife and kids. And because he's spent his time learning how to keep baptismal fonts from gurgling, and how to float church bonds, and how to read architect's plans for the almighty "building," the newly-unemployed pastor isn't trained to work a "secular" job. So he goes, hat in hand, to another pulpit committee, which hires him to visit the sick and bereaved (whom he knows only superficially, if at all), and to get more "tithers" in the church to meet the almighty budget, and to make the church "grow." It's a racket. It's the system. And innocent, idealistic, devout, decent young seminarians are getting screwed by it every day. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be pastors. Not if you love them. Why is the life of a system pastor so miserable? The two chief reasons are money and the concentration of power, the two indispensable elements of the American commercial church. (House churches try to avoid problems deriving from money and the concentration of power by refusing to pay anybody for any ministry, and by refusing to set up one-man pastorates.) Let's talk about money first. You're a pastor at an American mercantile church. You typically don't have two nickels to rub together, because the "board" barely pays you a living wage. Yet, despite your straitened financial circumstances, you are always faced with people's suspicions that you are in it for the money. And why shouldn't people think that? You are getting paid for preaching the gospel. Getting paid. Think about that. Getting paid for preaching the gospel. (This used to be called simony, defined by Webster's as "the act of...selling...things regarded as sacred or spiritual.") It doesn't matter how poor you are financially, or how rich you are spiritually, the system has set you up where no matter what you say, your motives are subject to attack. Are you doing it because you love the Lord and his kingdom, or are you doing it because you need to feed your wife and kids? Aren't you in a situation that is at best described as the appearance of evil, even if there is no evil present? To compound the above messiness, you are faced with another money problem: the problem of raising funds for your church organization. It is a constant preoccupation. In How to Avoid a Church Split, Gene Edwards makes the interesting point that pastors, when they get together, don't talk at all about all those exciting biblical and doctrinal things they learned at seminary; rather they talk about which sheep is going to which church, and why have they left my church. Why are pastors so concerned about where the sheep are going to church? Because the sheep tithe, that's why. And tithes fill the budget, pay the church-building mortgage, and pay the pastor's salary, and keep the "Board" happy. So you, the professional pastor, are forced to play the part of an ecclesiastical panhandler, begging your sheep to be "faithful" with their "tithes." You have been taught fantastic biblical schemes in your seminary about how necessary tithing is to the spiritual happiness of your sheep (despite the fact that tithing is absolutely not even mentioned once in the New Testament church), and so you couch your never- ending fundraising appeals in spiritual phrases: God will accept you, and this church will accept you, if you TITHE. You, of course, have access to the books, and so you know who's being "faithful" or not, and when you see "faithfulness" slipping, you preach another sermon on "faithfulness." Tell me, please, are you concerned about the faithfulness of your disciple, or are you concerned about the budget? Is it any wonder that many, many, many simple Christians are starting to doubt your motives, no matter how pure they may be? The other reason a professional system clergyman is going to have so much trouble finding happiness in the formal ecclesiastical world is the corruption that is caused by the concentration of power. Depending upon which brand of system church the professional pastor is in, the power may be concentrated differently. Sometimes the concentration is in the hands of the single pastor, sometimes in a local board, sometimes in a trans-local ecclesiastical hierarchy. But wherever it is located, it is certainly not in the hands of the lowly "layman," the guy whose "tithes and offerings" are paying the pastor's salary. This leads to several baleful consequences. First, there is the church politics, where the focus is on getting power at the expense of everyone else. It may be the pastor, trying to protect his livelihood from a domineering board. It may be the "elders," protecting themselves from a domineering pastor. It goes without saying, church politics is an abomination, but it is an abomination that every system pastor is going to have to deal with as long as he stays within the system. Second, there is the competition with other ministries and churches. A system pastor's ultimate power comes from how many tithe-payers he can stuff in the pews. Since the system is having a terrible time keeping people in its "churches," (see article on page 4), that means that sheep-stealing is about the only way a particular church can increase the power and security of a professional clergyman. You don't have to be around commercial church pastors long to realize that nothing grieves them worse than tithe-payers leaving to go to another "church." Because the seminary-trained ecclesiastical mercantilist has to spend so much time worrying about money and power, he has little time for people. And even if he did have time, the system rarely allows deep friendships to grow between anyone of the "clergy" and the "laity." For one thing, there is the professional distance that is constantly fostered between the pastor and the people. Titles, for instance. Do you think Mr. Average Joe in the church is going to feel like getting close to His Holiness the Right Reverend John Doe? And besides, Mr. Joe's friends might be in the faction that wants to ditch John Doe. Other things besides titles militate against close human relationships for professional clergymen and the "laity." Everything in American Protestantism is geared to make the "layman" feel second-class and inferior. The pastor is in "full- time ministry." So what does that make the "layman"? A "part- time minister"? Is a part-time minister going to want to be close to a "full-time minister" who knows so much more than he does? Something else that makes it hard for clergymen in the post-Constantinian church to have fellowship and communion with the average working-stiff Christian in his church is the spiritual pedestal upon which the average Christian puts his pastor. The pew-sitting Christian is not interested in being a brother to the pastor; rather, he desires a spiritual guru, a priest to lead him by the nose spiritually, so he won't have to exercise any responsibility and learn how to walk with Jesus. It's very difficult to just be a brother and a friend to someone like that. It's one more reason why christopagan church pastors end up lonely and alienated. I sincerely hope that this issue will not offend any professional pastors who might chance to read it. We are not attacking you. We are attacking a system that is attacking you. We know that the overwhelming majority of you are fine, decent human beings. We just wish you would ditch the ecclesiastical crapola and come meet with us in our living rooms. Church Donations Fall; National Denominations at Risk... So reads a headline in The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C., November 14, 1993. Here are some excerpts: "The American church could go the way of the dinosaur by the year 2048, say two researchers who study donations to religious groups. Sylvia and John Ronsvalle...say that since at least 1968, Americans have given less money to the church each year. If that trend continues, within 60 years, Americans will give nothing to national denominations." Now, wouldn't that be wonderful! MANY THANKS... To all the readers who have sent manuscripts for us to publish. They are all good, and I plan to print them all. It's going to take a while, though. I'm trying to address a particular topic each issue, and unless your manuscript happens to match the topic I've chosen for the issue, I plan to print it after I've exhausted the topics I plan to cover. Please be patient. Thanks. You know you have arrived when you get Billy Graham to say something nice about you. Listen to this quote from Dr. Graham in a pamphlet, "Why House Churches?" printed by the Fellowship of Church Planters, 36 Armory Dr., Warwick, R.I. 02886: "at various church conferences and retreats the emphasis is increasing toward the house church in many parts of the world." The pamphlet goes on to say: "Observers note that the church in China is growing at a phenomenal rate. Mostly the Chinese meet in house churches...there are between 25 and 50 million believers in these house churches... We invite you to join us in this exciting adventure as we walk hand-in-hand with millions of other believers all over the world."

Comments...

You may send your opinions, flames, weighty observations, etc., to

Dan L. Trotter

work e-mail: dtrotter@pascal.coker.edu
home e-mail: dantrotter@yahoo.com

Since 09/30/00 this number of people have ignored the Surgeon General's warning and have read this thing, resulting in gosh knows how much mental and emotional trauma: