Pastors behaving badly

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4)

Over the past few months, there have been all kinds of “megachurch pastors behaving badly” stories in the news. One pastor was revealed to have bought his way onto the New York Times bestseller list. Another pastor was shown to have staged baptisms in order to manipulate more people into getting baptized. And there have been all kinds of other embarrassing shenanigans that have brought shame on Jesus and His church.

Every time I read one of these stories, I thank God that I did not experience the kind of meteoric rise in church growth and worldwide fame that these pastors have experienced in their young lives. I know that if I had experienced what they have, such worldly success would have brought with it all kinds of pressures and temptations. There would have been the belief that God was blessing me and my ministry, and that therefore anyone who criticized me was working against what God is doing and would need to be silenced or cast out of the church. There would have been the pressure to keep the momentum going towards bigger, better, more growth and greater numbers, a pressure that surely would have led to the temptation to act in questionable ways out of the belief that the ends justify the means. And there would have been the belief that I was in some special class of Christian, a real superstar in the kingdom of God.

I know this is true because the seeds of all of those temptations have been there for as long as I’ve been a pastor. I remember back in 2007, when I was a 31 year-old who had only been pastoring NewLife for one year, I reached out to a colleague of mine who was also a young, local pastor, and suggested that we put on a conference for the next generation of church leaders – a “Church Next” conference. After all, we surely knew where the church needed to go, much better than those old pastors using outdated methods and out of touch with emerging generations. Looking back now, of course, I can see that idea for what it really was – an ego trip, a desire to bring more glory to my own name, not God’s.

But God, in His wisdom, chose not to give me the kind of worldly success achieved by those megachurch pastors. Instead, He chose to bring me through church conflict, personal struggle, and countless leadership failures. He showed me over and over that I had a lot to learn, a staggering amount of sin and worldliness that needed to be refined out of me, and that I needed to be brought to a place where I realized that He was working for good in spite of me, not because of me. And so, again, I thank God for the struggle, for the failures, for choosing not to give me great numbers and increased influence.

One of my favorite verses is John 3:30. In John 3, John the Baptist’s disciples tell him with concern that the people who used to follow him are leaving him to follow Jesus. They obviously expect him to be upset. But instead John tells them that this is right, and says in John 3:30, “He must become greater; I must become less.” The struggles and failures that I have experienced as a pastor have made that verse a reality for me. I am nothing apart from Him. All that is good in me is because of Him. And so I will not steal the glory that is due to Christ alone. He must become greater; I must become less.