Criticizing Preachers

As we have finished our ReFocus process here, one of the initiatives we developed was a “Sunday Service Excellence Team” that reviews our services and evaluates everything from the PowerPoints to the sound quality to the sermon presentation. That last part, sermon evaluation - has been particularly key as we do team-preaching.

 One of the issues that we’ve had to struggle with is the very nature of evaluating a sermon and the effect that has on a preacher. One of the lessons I had to learn while at my former church was

1) Don’t criticize a preacher within two hours of the sermon’s end; and

2) Don’t get “in the head” with silly stuff before a preacher gets into the pulpit.

I’ve tried to help the team understand the nature of preaching: that preachers get up there, pours out their souls, “leaves it all on the field,” and always gives ‘A’ level effort. After giving a sermon, the preacher is raw, spent, and frequently still running on adrenaline. That is exactly the *wrong* time to offer critique or challenge. But it is exactly the time when people feel compelled to do so.

Right here - I have to again beg the pardon for violating these rules during my time at my previous church. My pastors there helped me to understand and gain sensitivity to this matter of how to better express love and respect for the preaching ministry in the moment. They helped to understand that in the abstract and now I understand it experientially. I appreciate their patience with me.

 So we are going through this issue. It is hard.  I remember being ticked off by critique I received days after the “preach.” BTW, this is the first place I’ve heard the word “preach” used as a noun (as in, “That was a mighty good preach you did there, pastor”). Criticism of a sermon is an intensely personal thing. Most people who haven’t done it regularly do not understand this dynamic. Attempting to separate the message from the messenger, it seems to me, is a fool’s errand in the realm of preaching. All that to say that there is a real tension in evaluating and bringing critique to a sermon in both encouraging excellence and encouraging loving relationships.

 Of course, one of the ways to deal with this (as I’ve come to realize) is to understand the danger and mentally steel myself against the nonsense comments that can come afterwards. I was briefly toying with the idea of just exiting the sanctuary through the door that happens to be near the pulpit and going to my office to de-compress after preaching. That is not a good idea. But …

That got me thinking. I remember hearing of a former pastor at a previous church that would preach his sermon and then disappear right after the service. At the time, I interpreted the story to say that this guy didn’t have enough of a pastoral heart to interact with his flock during after-service mingling time.

 But now I wonder. I wonder if the ethos of that church - back in that day - was less loving and more critical. I wonder if that guy was acting out of emotional self-protection by getting the heck out of Dodge before some “well meaning” person told him - again and for the umpteenth time - about how he was a failure as a preacher because of some little inconsequential fault or disappointment. A pastor can only take so much of that before they start to hate the sheep that keep biting at him. So maybe that guy - to keep whatever pastoral heart he still had - ran away from the dangerous “post-preaching molestation time" as a self-preservation strategy.

I don’t know if that was the case at all. But I do know that criticism of a sermon right after delivery takes on greater force than the criticizer probably intends. Call me immature or not tough enough or inexperienced or whatever. But as I’ve looked into this with other mature, tough, and experienced pastors – they all tell me the same thing: criticizing a preacher after the sermon is very hurtful. Of course, let’s not forget that there are people who do want to hurt.

Anyway, all of that to say that I have learned that to keep my energy (and, yes, even my defenses) up until I’m done greeting and mingling with folks after a sermon. 

Pastors, Maturity or Elitism?

“But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready…” 1 Corinthians 3:1-2

Spiritual elitism is a subtle sin. It is sin because a significant component of elitism is pride. Pride, said one of Christianity’s greatest thinkers, is the first – maybe even the root – sin.

One of the factors that brought me into vocational ministry in mid-life was a season of spiritual renewal that started about ten years ago. Several things converged together to create a storm that re-awakened my love for Jesus, my desire to serve him at a greater level, and to sharpen my biblical-theological understanding. In summary, my spiritual life ramped up.

As I entered into this new ‘neighborhood’ of faith, I had to realize that not everyone around me was in the same place. I had to fight the idea that I was in a “better” spiritual place than my other friends. In fact, one of the minor frustrations that some of my other pastoral mentors have admitted to is a relative lack of faith in their congregations and even in church leadership. Certainly, your average spiritually-healthy full-time vocational pastor should be more spiritually mature and is committed to living a life of faith in service to Jesus than most of his congregation. But that can be frustrating. The pastor says: ‘I see the blessings that can come into your life if you’d trust God more fully, but you don’t want to really do that.’

I wonder if Paul was a similarly frustrated: “I’d really want to get you folks to a greater level of maturity, but you are acting like babies. Since you aren’t ready to go further, I can’t treat you like grown-ups so that’s why I treat you like babies.” Ouch.

Now I think there is a distinction between understanding that your spiritual journey is a bit farther down the road than some others of your friends, and the sin implied in thinking that you are better than those who haven’t travelled as far. Paul was also careful to recognize this sin – especially in the context of church leadership – when he refers to Proverbs 16:18 (‘Pride goes before a fall’) in his first letter to Timothy (3:6). And again, Paul says this to every Christian when he warns us to understand ourselves rightly (Rom. 12:3) – not too high or too low.

I’m still coming to grips in understanding this distinction because this is an area where I fall into sin. But I think the distinction is this: a proper pastoral concern for his flock’s relative immaturity focuses on them; but spiritual elitism is self-centered and is much more about the sinner’s reputation, esteem, and ‘position.’

This is where Paul’s frustration comes in: he cares very much for his friends at the church he planted and wants them to enjoy more blessings in Jesus. But they are so distracted by personality cults, ‘toleration’ and moral relativism, dysfunctional conflict, weird ideas about marriage, superstitions, money, church time, spiritual gifts, and a confused understanding about the gospel. All of these problems are preventing many of the folks in the church from living the lives that God wants for them. This is frustrating!

This would be like a parent who watches his children divide up Halloween candy and get into a terrible fight over one piece of Tootsie Roll while completely missing the pile of candy that they each have in front of them. The mature parent doesn’t point out the silliness of their fight because he or she wants to appear wise and morally superior; no, the mature parent realizes that the kids are missing the overwhelming blessings of a sugar-induced coma because of a very minor thing. They want their kids to learn perspective: don’t focus on the little thing, consider the big pile in front of you – especially when the little thing is keeping you from the big pile.

So from this section of scripture, I see some interesting pastoral applications. And my conclusions is this: a pastor has to be just a tad set apart to help people along on their spiritual journey. As Eugene Peterson says: “It is the pastor’s responsibility to keep the community attentive to God.” (Working the Angles, 2).

Deacon of Mental Health? A Proposal.

So I’m taking a Pastoral Counseling course in seminary. Dudes and Dudettes, I am not wired by God to do well in a pastoral counseling situation, nor am I wired by God to really even care. So this course is a challenge, which I welcome.

I welcome the challenge because I know that the reasons for pastoral counseling are profound. People hurt. In our time, most of the people I’ll ever meet are not hungry, or threatened with immediate violence, but they are – having been fully engaged in our fragmented culture – broken, confused, hopeless, and betrayed. If postmodernism emphasizes relational authority, it will be the broken relationships that are endemic to humanness that will plague both those in and out of the body of Christ in the next decades. Broken relationships are just one cause of broken emotional disease that requires healing.

While we are all broken and need the healing which God offers, some of us are so broken that it overtly interferes with our ability to function. We need help. Without getting into the “validity of Christian Counseling” debate; let me just affirm that I believe “Christian counseling” is viable, appropriate, and part of how the body of Christ can bear each member up.

So where does that put the church; especially the local church?? As evangelicals, we like to rightly use the Bible to search for the timeless truths of “faith and life.” This is good! Even more so, we especially like to go to the book of Acts and see the very early (“primitive”) church as a model for how church ought to go for us 2,000 years later.

So, today, I see a need for the church to provide help for people. The church has ALWAYS been about providing help for people. One of the early church’s bright moments was that they were the only group who were, for example, willing to go into a plague-infested city and take out plague-orphaned children and the sick to care for them. The church has, historically, shined brightest when it addresses real needs while it affirms real truth. Need I go into all the history of the church’s battles with dark spiritual forces of superstition and more overt counterfeit spirituality?

We find ourselves today facing plague (AIDS) and famine (general poverty) and the church, after being distracted by attacks on its worldview (world: "Your worldview isn't rationalistic, mechanistic, and control-oriented: Why not?!!" church: "[sigh] OK, here's why our world view isn't IRrational, unpredictable, or sloppy..."), getting back to its business. I am grateful to see the church return, in this way, to its roots.

However, I wonder if there is yet another need that the church can provide. Can the church look out among the emotionally and mentally broken people and see a need; even see that need within its own? I hope so.

How can the church meet such a need? Well, I go back to the book of Acts. How did the very early church meet needs of members? Look at the sixth chapter of Acts. It first affirmed the need: food was not being made available. The church then affirmed that the role of the apostles-elders were to devote themselves to prayer and the word. The church then looked for seven guys, noted for their character, spiritual maturity, and discernment; and then had them look after the needs of the hungry. These, who we now call “deacons,” are the precursors of our care-giving ministries for all the churches we have today.

Hmmm. So we have a new need; we have an old pattern; can we put them together? I suggest that churches might be able to do real good by creating the function of a “Mental Health Deacon.” Is there not a man of discernment, qualified as a deacon, that can facilitate the referral of emotionally or mentally broken members and seekers to Christian counselors and therapists? If not involved with actual referrals, then is able to build bridges of trust between counselors and the church?

For those who are significantly influenced by the teaching ministry of a certain church located in the northeast portion of the San Fernando Valley of California, you won’t even buy into the validity of “Christian counseling.” Reaction to lawsuits aside; that is exactly the point. Most pastors shouldn’t be burdened with a significant counseling ministry. After three to six sessions of about an hour each, if someone needs more counseling, they really need to be referred to a professional. This is so if for no other reason than that of avoiding liability.

But let's not think only of counseling, but of all the aspects of mental health brokenness: "Celebrate Recovery," local chapter of A.A., various support and recovery groups, and all those ways that we can use our theology of general revelation and common grace to help heal broken hearts. Let's not captitulate the care of souls to those who don't theologically "get it."

So my proposal is to recognize the need for mental health care, to be proactive about it, and build referral networks that are under the care and guidance of the pastor and deacon functions.