Eleven Reasons Pastors Are Trusted Less Today

A day does not pass that I do not hear from a hurting pastor. Serving in that role has to be one of the most challenging vocations today. Sure, there are some bad and immoral pastors. But the vast majority of our pastors serve their congregations in a way that honors God and makes a difference in the community.

But both anecdotally and by objective research, we learn that pastors are trusted less and held in lower esteem each year. A recent Pew Research poll found that the favorable view of clergy had declined to 37 percent of those surveyed.

Why are pastors no longer held in high esteem? What is behind the precipitous drop in favorable ratings almost every year? Allow me to offer eleven possible reasons. As you will see, they are not mutually exclusive.

1. The moral failures of a minority of pastors receive widespread coverage. The media loves the sensational stories behind clergy failure. For sure, some stories such as sex abuse should be brought to the public eye. But many people now believe the bad behavior of a few is normative for all pastors.
2. Our nation has marginalized the Christian faith. So it should not be unexpected that leaders in the Christian world are viewed more negatively.
3. Pastoral tenure has dropped significantly over the past few decades. Tenure is up slightly the past few years, but the longer trend is down. Trust is built over several years, not two or three years. Fewer pastors have made it to the point of several years.   Continue at Thom Rainer

Does Your Church Have Policies and Practices to Protect Against Pastoral Failures?

Remember the names Ted Haggard, Eddie Long, and Jack Schaap?  Scandal among evangelical pastors has been so steady that wikipedia has a list of evangelical scandals.

While working on a chapter for an upcoming book, I had the blessing of researching the moral failures of several prominent church pastors.  I say “blessing” because it was enlightening to observe some common dynamics and failures in the scandals.  In most cases, men who should have been disqualified were back in their pulpits or establishing new ministries within months.  In most cases, churches were seriously injured by the transgressions and hurt further by the inadequate efforts at redress.  In all the cases, the offending pastor received more attention and support than the victims of his abuse or deceit.  It was a sobering exercise.

The effects are devastating.  Two researchers at Baylor University have summarized the social and psychological effects of clergy sexual misconduct on congregations .  Studies:

suggest that the results for the offended include self-blame; shame; loss of community and friends if forced to relocate either to escape the community’s judgment or to escape an angry offender who has been discovered or reported; spiritual crisis and loss of faith; family crisis and divorce; psychological distress, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder; physiological illness; and failed or successful suicide attempts.[1]

All of this carnage begins with a process researchers call “grooming.”

Grooming includes expressions of admiration and concern, affectionate gestures and touching, talking about a shared project, and sharing of personal information (Carnes, 1997; see also Garland, 2006). Grooming may be gradual and subtle, desensitizing the congregant to increasingly inappropriate behavior while rewarding her for tolerance of that behavior. Offenders may use religious language to frame the relationship, such as “You are an answer to my prayer; I asked God for someone who can share my deepest thoughts, prayers, and needs and he sent me you” (Liberty, 2001, p. 85). Grooming is essentially seduction in a relationship in which a religious leader holds spiritual power over the congregant.[2]   Continue at Thabiti Anyabwile

Where Sin Is Hatched

No one ever “falls” into adultery. The adulterer’s heart is always shaped and prepared by lustful thoughts before the actual deed occurs. Likewise, the heart of the thief is bent by covetousness. And murder is the product of anger and hatred. All sin is first incubated in the mind.

Jesus taught this truth to His disciples: “The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man” (Matthew 15:18-20, emphasis added).

Jesus was teaching that the real point of the Mosaic law was the moral truth embodied in the external ceremonial requirements. He downplayed the symbolic aspects of washing and abstaining from what is legally declared unclean. Instead He emphasized the moral requirement of the law.

 Defilement, He suggested, is not primarily a ceremonial or external problem; what is truly defiling in the spiritual sense is the wickedness that emanates from the heart. In Scripture, “the heart” is the seat of the whole person—mind imagination, affections, and will. “Heart” is often used as a synonym for “mind.” In these verses, therefore, our Lord was condemning the wickedness of an impure thought life.

Again and again, Christ rebuked the Pharisees for their fastidious observance of the external, ceremonial law and their wanton neglect of the law’s moral requirements. They were utterly preoccupied with appearing to be righteous. Yet they were willing to tolerate the grossest sins of the heart. They thought no one else could ever discover what was really inside them. But our Lord knew what was in their hearts (Matthew 9:4; 12:25). He compared them to elegant crypts, beautiful on the outside but full of defilement and death on the inside.  Continue at John MacArthur

When A Pastor Commits Suicide

“Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Zechariah 13:7)

I am on my way home from the funeral of a fellow Baptist pastor who committed suicide. I got the news on Thursday morning (which explains why my usual Thursday or Friday blog post is absent; I was too deeply affected to do anything). The news came as a shock to me—and indeed to everyone else who knew the pastor. He had been an intern at Kabwata Baptist Church for a few months over ten years ago. He was a very fine man and slightly younger than me. I last met him two months ago when I was preaching at a pastors’ annual retreat. He has left behind a wife and three young children, plus a devastated congregation.

 

When a pastor commits suicide, apart from the emotion of shock there is also a lot of disappointment and dismay. As one member lamented, “Pastor was the one who always encouraged us to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ when overwhelmed by the challenges and difficulties that confronted us. How could he fail to handle whatever it is that made him take his life?” Some people who heard were even questioning his salvation: “Can a Christian commit suicide?” Others found in this the proof that the pastor was a hypocrite all along.   Continue Reading >>>

When a Pastor Falls

When a Pastor Falls

See also Al Mohler