I came to the office this morning with no plans to prepare and release
another iteration of this blog. However, I find myself profoundly concerned about
the state of the gospel ministry in the USA. Therefore, I beg your indulgence
of a 70-year-old pastor who has served in two churches for 42 years and having
just celebrated my 35th year in my present pastorate.
A little personal background is to understand best what I am about to
propose. I spent most of my life growing up on Indian reservations in different
parts of the United States, my father working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs
in the US Department of Interior for more than 35 years. Leading up to my
enrollment in the United States Air Force Academy and subsequent graduation
from engineering school at Oregon State University, I had observed at close
quarters, among various tribal leaders US congressional leaders, the subtle and
not-so-subtle nuances of ambition.
Little did I realize when I came to Christ a
year after graduating from engineering school that I would trust Christ as my
Savior and become a member of the Baptist Church. How surprised I was to
observe ambition on full display in the two churches I was involved with before
becoming a pastor. Then, at my first pastorate, I saw ambition on full display
once more. The displays of ambition were easy for me to see since I had grown
up observing the displays of naked ambition by bureaucrats, Congressional
delegations, and in tribal politics all across America. There was very little
display of ambition in my pastorate, but there was a lot of ambition on display
during church pastors’ fellowship meetings.
The most brutal display of ambition I ever saw
was during the struggle for control of the Bible college I had enrolled in and
graduated from before entering the pastorate. Though I am on good terms with
men on both sides of that struggle, my interest in the political ins and outs
of pastor’s fellowships has since been very guarded. I have pastored two
churches without ever making an application to a congregation to become their
pastor. I distrust ambition, especially my own.
My real involvement in preacher’s meetings
resulted from a group that met from time to time, apparently for the express
purpose of one or two pastors of larger churches to tell pastors of smaller
churches how they ought to do ministry. The pastors of smaller churches were so
profoundly offended by such arrogance and presumption that they stopped
attending, resulting in only nine or ten pastors bothering to gather.
As a member of this dwindling group, I decided
to exercise my privileges by encouraging a group of pastors to attend and by
nominating the pastor of a very small church to a position of responsibility.
True to my suspicion, a pastor of a large church attempted to dissuade the
small church pastor from accepting the nomination, arguing that the
complexities involved in the position were ‘too difficult’ for him to
understand and the expenses to attend the national meetings were too great for
his church to absorb. Nevertheless, he was elected and served in his position
faithfully.
During that same meeting, I was nominated by
several pastors for another open position of responsibility. I declined. After
the meeting, the pastors strongly rebuked me for rejecting the nomination. My
reason was that I do not trust ambition. However, several years later, a
significant group of pastors approached me and urged me to allow them to place
my name in nomination, and I was elected unanimously. I was unanimously re-elected
for two subsequent terms.
Before my election to the leadership position,
the fellowship meeting typically saw nine or ten pastors in attendance. While I
occupied my elected position, we never saw fewer than 75 pastors in attendance.
Things seemed to be going well if being elected and re-elected unanimously is
any indication until I received a phone call from the national leader.
He asked me several questions before informing
me that six pastors who had not attended a single meeting during my tenure were
planning what he called “a floor fight” at the national conference. When he
said there was going to be a skirmish, I told him there was not going to be a
skirmish. When he asked me how I knew that, I responded by indicating that I do
not trust anyone who is ambitious and that I think anyone who would fight for a
position such as the one I held was foolish.
I went to the national meeting with my
resignation in hand. I handed one copy of the resignation to the national
leader and a second copy of the resignation to the fellow who was demonstrably
ambitious and likely the author of the plot to disenfranchise me. I have been
happily disassociated from that dying group from that day to this.
Is it clear to you by now that I have a
distaste for ambition? I was not ambitious to become a pastor. I was not
ambitious to secure my second pastorate. I was not ambitious for an elected
leadership position with a group of pastors. And I am certainly not ambitious
at present. I have for 42 years gloried in serving God in the most exalted
position available to any man, that of pastoring a Baptist Church. It doesn’t
get any better than that.
However, over the years, I have noticed
something among Baptist pastors that bothers me. The older I get, the more it
bothers me. What bothers me is a functional hierarchy among Baptist pastors,
whereby some pastors display a profoundly unscriptural eagerness to yield to
and to kowtow to other Baptist preachers. There is no Scriptural warrant for
this.
You know as well as I do that Revelation
chapters two and three not only dispel any possible notion of a universal, invisible
church (which is why the Savior communicated directly to the angels of the
churches) but displays the equal footing and equal standing of the pastors of
those seven churches before Christ. Does not history show us (those who read
history anyway) that trouble was brewing when pastors began treating another
pastor as if he is somehow superior? How do you think the Bishop of Rome came
to be the Roman Catholic Pope? Yet we see this dynamic developing right before
our eyes.
Like you, I have been appalled and dismayed by
pastors’ responses across our country to the Covid–19 lockdown mandates. That
said, I recognize that each pastor of each congregation is accountable to God
and not me for his decisions and actions related to his compliance with edicts
handed down from on high.
What is profoundly troublesome is the silence
and utter lack of leadership from those who posture themselves as leadership
gurus and men who charge fees to gullible pastors, only to be told, “You need
to do ministry the way I do ministry.” Really? Do we have the same spiritual
gifts? Do we have the same educational background and life experiences? Are our
congregations comprised of the same types of people? Yet the seminars and
courses that I have attended or read over the years never include such caveats. And that is not to mention that in my state, the
only leaders that I ever took note of in the first few months of the lockdown were
the pastors of huge Calvary Chapel congregations. Where were the Baptists?
At this point, let me remind you of two
things. First, I don’t trust anyone ambitious, and I don’t think you should
either. Whether it’s an ambitious church member who tries to climb over other
church members for position or advantage or ambitious pastors who seek to
assert themselves over other pastors based solely on their marketing skills
successes.
Second, I am a Baptist. I am a real Baptist. I
have written an almost 500-page book that is essentially the most comprehensive
Baptist ecclesiology ever printed. I also had the privilege of helping Gary Long
(Particular Baptist Press, Springfield Missouri) organized the Baptist History Celebration
13 years ago in Charleston, celebrating the founding of the Philadelphia
Baptist Association, the fountainhead of almost all Baptist activity in the
Americas. Boy, did I learn a lot during that time.
I mention these things only because I believe
New Testament church polity is Baptist church polity. Among Baptists,
therefore, a hierarchy of any kind is a historical anomaly. Pastors are peers, and anything that detracts from that is
unscriptural.
I have no interest in spending the remainder
of my time on earth with pastors who believe in a hierarchy and practice a ranking
when engaging or interacting with other pastors. Neither do I think pastors
have any business subjecting themselves to an ambitious pastor who postures
himself as an expert, demands money from those who would hear what he has to
say, and then tells them how to conduct their ministries. It was better for
such a person to get off his high horse, humble himself so that he stands eye
to eye with his peers, and write a book for them to read, reflect on, and
critique.
These things said, I have learned from reading
the minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association that pastors need
fellowship. They needed fellowship then, and we need fellowship now. But our
fellowship is not fellowship unless it is fellowship with peers. It does a pastor little good to pay money so
that someone can tell him what to do. Better for that pastor to spend time with
peers who seek to minister to one another in a scriptural and wholesome
fashion.
If you agree with me so far, perhaps you will
agree with what I’m about to suggest. I believe pastors of churches need
fellowship and that we are harmed and our ministries are done a disservice when
we do not engage in peer to peer fellowship with other pastors of like faith
and practice. To that end, I would like to suggest that we gather on November
17th at 4:00 PM for an afternoon of fellowship capped by dinner. I
will call it Pastors
As Peers. The name says it
all. If you are interested in attending, let me know by phone, text, or email.
May God bless you, preacher. As church members exhort one another according to
Hebrews 10.25 (without lording it over one another), so might we encourage each
other, cultivate existing friendships, and make new friends.
God bless you. Pray for our country in this
upcoming election. Feel free to pass this on to any pastor who might want to attend,
only make sure I know they are coming
Pastors As Peers
meeting #1 agenda
“The Encroachment
Of Feminism”
1.
The Millennial Trend
2.
The Pre-Christian, Christian, Post-Christian Dynamic
3. The
Anecdotes
4. The
Spiritual Problem
5. The
Solution
Dinner @ Calvary Road Baptist Church, 319
West Olive Avenue, Monrovia, CA
