Thursday, January 14, 2010

Church Carpetbaggers


Every pastor experiences them – carpetbaggers. A group of people shows up at your church, fifteen-to-twenty in size, and they appear to be such wonderful people. Almost immediately the church experiences a positive impact. Within a few weeks or months they start getting involved. The new energy is refreshing.

These people press their way into the pastor’s world. With gifts, invitations, and kind words they befriend the pastor and his family. They gain entry into the pastor’s heart with enthusiasm and goodwill. “This church is so wonderful; your sermons are so powerful” they gush. They jump into ministry roles, get the pastor and church resources committed to new programs, and seem to be an answer to prayer.

Then, just when you think the church is on the verge of something big, they pull out - en masse. The pastor is left dumbfounded and bewildered. Their sudden disappearance cripples the church with the pain of rejection and the false start of new ministries.

As they leave you hear words like, “God is leading us to take another path” or “We feel led of the Spirit to join another church” or “God told me to leave.” Whatever. God is not within a million miles of those claims. It's usually relational conflict that they are unable or unwilling to resovle that leads them to the next church.

In truth, these people are nothing more than recreational church hoppers who flit from place to place when it suits their convenience. They wreak havoc on every church they become a part of through their pilfering, making them insensitive carpetbaggers. Through their actions the body is Christ is not built up, instead the bond of peace is destroyed. Their perpetual habit of bouncing from church-to-church promotes division and enables strife to go unreconciled.

This is a pattern of behavior that must be exposed and corrected. To allow it to go unchallenged, or to pretend it did not happen, is to become party to it and only perpetuates this sin.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Right on Target Pastor and we pray that they will truely fall in love with Jesus and stop the crippling of the Church.

Old Milltown Storage said...

So long as we stay focused on reaching Sam and Pam God's work will be done here at PCC. Some people just don't get it! Renae said in here blog she was preparing a meal for 70+ young people this past Wednesday. That pretty amazing Work if you as me!

Anonymous said...

It is AMAZING what can be accomplished in ANY church when people bind their GIFTS together to accomplish the mission of the church. I'm SO thankful that rather than being a well-rounded leader myself I've been able to recruit people to have a well-rounded ministry team. And UNITED we get the job done! When we WORK faithfully AND prayerfully doing that which we're PASSIONATE about, the church - ANY church - can become an UNSTOPPABLE FORCE getting God's work done TOGETHER. You, too, have done that in PCC's Nursery ministry . . . that's what I'm talking about :-D

--Renae & the YOUTH CREW