Last night at our Sunday evening service, our senior pastor/ministry coach said this:
"I am realizing that most of what I was taught in seminary were simply ways to manipulate and control others. It had very little to do with servanthood. I was taught how to get people to do what I wanted, and we called it ‘leadership’."
I think it must be a huge struggle to have one’s career and paycheck directly tied to the monetary success of a church. To take out all of the spirituality and view this like a business, it is intersting to think of the value proposition a pastor must provide as CEO of a non-profit organization. The fund raising, and the return on investment due to the investors. I have seen many churches but I have never seen an established church whose full time leadership have escaped these realities. So often this leads to what your lead pastor was describing. I have seen it in so many pastors. But the problem doesn’t lie soley with the pastors but with all of us that work against true leadership -we require that “leading” be in a direction we are comfortable with and that we see clear and immediate value in that leading (our return on investment). Shame on us.
It is AWESOME that God is working in your pastor to grow past that -evidence that your church is blessed to have him.