I’m tired of it.
Tired of pastors trashing other pastors. You aren’t proving a point, you are proving a stereotype. I’m tired of opening up my RSS reader and seeing post after post with poorly veiled hatchet jobs on people who read Scripture or lead differently than you do. I’m tired of seeing 140 characters of jealousy and pettiness from grown men and women of God.
I’m tired of reading and listening to character assassinations by those I disagree with and those I agree with.
How do you think all this looks from the outside? They see a pastor wrote a bestseller about heaven but what happens when the then they see what people are saying on Twitter? What happens when someone does a Google search after hearing some buzz about pastors talking to one another only to find an argument about who was or wasn’t invited? Or they hear about the latest conversation about gender roles?
They don’t see hope or a loving community or truth or light. They see exactly what they expected to see.
You can stop this.
If you are reading this I am assuming that you in some sort of leadership in the local church and you haven’t been doing it for very long.
Please have robust convictions about truth, leadership, and theology. And please don’t be afraid to disagree with someone else. But don’t be a jerk about it.
You should disagree, but disagreement isn’t a good default. If you instinct is to publish these disagreements instead of seeking reconciliation you are part of the problem. Every time you disagree it don’t put it out in the public domain. Besides you might be the one who is wrong.
If you are building a following based on your ability to point out flaws in others, you are not building a community you are building a mob. The mob will be gone as soon as someone with a louder megaphone comes along.
Being a person of criticism is easy but it isn’t helping our situation. As a Rookie Pastor your community doesn’t want you to tell them who is wrong but to lead them into what is right.
Now this isn’t some hippy feel good thing. No, this is what it is a pastor does. You are leading a group of people into something that is closer to the intention for all this. Angry blog posts or tweets of condemnation about theological minutia on things that are at their essence are speculation.
Next time you read something that you disagree with try biting your tongue, giving the other person the benefit of the doubt, and doing what your conscience and your heart compel you to do.
You and I can stop this. Because I know I’m not the only that is tired of this.
If you agree I would love to hear it and would be thankful if you shared this.
If you disagree I would love to hear it as well, just don’t be a jerk about it.
Also I put together a list of practical ideas as to how to actually engage this issue here.
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amen. especially to condemn an entire person in 140 characters is ridiculous.
thanks Ryne, Twitter’s brevity is a strength and a weakness
Josh,
Great post. But do you know why we can’t “stop it”? We American evangelicals can’t stop it because we haven’t acknowledged what I call our hidden papacy: CELEBRITY. We vie for relevance in the public square by aligning ourselves with certain key celebrities. The identity of said celebrities is fluid: Rick Warren here. John Piper there. Rob Bell. Mark Driscoll. Billy Graham. Pat Robertson. Tony Dungy. To be fair, some of our celebrities don’t actually want to be celebrities. A few of them just end up in the spotlight. But whether or not the man (and it’s usually a man) intends to be our celebrity (and sadly he usually does), we’ll make him our celebrity in the same way that the crowds tried to make Jesus a king on their terms (Jn. 6). In this man, we evangelicals want a mediator, someone to symbolize the collective presence of our particular camp (Calvinist, complementarian, hipster, justice, etc.). This person (priest?) will defend our petty causes in public. This person will fend off any and all things that we think threaten our cause. He will take back the public square for us. We evangelicals need this person to, in himself, be our rallying point, the fixer-upper who has the single-dose cure for all that is wrong with evangelicalism. And what’s always wrong wrong with evangelicalism is that the other evangelicals are doing this Christianity-thing the way our camp says they should. And the failure of other camps MUST BE trumpeted because, of course, THEIR FAILURE validates OUR CURE (e.g., the evangelical glee and salivation done over Willow Creek’s admitted short-comings with respect to discipleship a few years ago). Like the John 6 crowd, we want a king…only it’s not Jesus. We want a cure…only it’s not Jesus. We want a priest…only it’s not Jesus. We want to identify with someone…only it’s not Jesus. We want to be typified by something…only its not the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. We want more books, conferences, position papers/statements, seminaries & Bible colleges, sub-theologies of sub-theologies of sub-theologies, and more pet English Bible versions (while many people-groups don’t have their first Bible translation). But we don’t want the kingdom, and we certainly have no time for the King. We want celebrities to fight small, mostly-insignificant battles so that we can distract ourselves from the fact that we’re losing the War that counts in Jesus’ eyes. We are Israel: Wasting time on political alliances and allegiances while God and His prophets are screaming “YOU’RE IN EXILE.” This is why won’t “stop it”, Josh. We’re in exile and we don’t know it. We’re in exile, and our material wealth affords the illusion that we’re not. We think celebrities and their camps will save us. But they won’t. As an American aspiring pastor saddled with the unfortunate moniker of “evangelical” (whatever that means now) Jesus’ assessments on the back-slidden churches in John’s Apocalypse scare me. None so much as Laodicea.
Thanks for your comments and your passion. I too am scared of being vomited in the end.
I think it is natural for us to look to others for leadership and support, so it makes sense that we tend to go to the same conferences and read the same authors. And yes elevating the person to a celebrity status is forming an idol.
When we rally behind one thought or idea and trash someone else we are taking away the humanness in our target. This to me is the problem.
You can agree with a camp but vilifying the other is what bothers me. At the root is either an arrogance of assuming we have arrived or a fear of being wrong, not sure which but both sadden me.
Wow. I’m copying this reply, LexCro. It resonates as hard-to-hear-but-no-less-true. May the King increase your tribe for even in exile He had his prophets.
Josh, I’m so grateful you put this in the conversation. I have been broken by the tweets and blog replies of many against their brothers and sisters. Such disgust. Such vitriole. Whatever happened to “by this will all men (and women) know you are my disciples…” I wonder if there are more than a few who can finish that sentence with a straight face and sober heart anymore.
Thanks for sharing.
Satan loves when pastors trash each other. Outsiders of the Church always point to the infighting that occurs within the man-made walls of Christianity.
Every family has their squabbles, but we all must put our focus on the One who saves, and stop the bickering between pastors and churches.
It saddens me when you have two churches close by, and those pastors don’t know each other.
Is it fear over Theology? Does Pastor X have more Scripture memorized than Pastor Y?
Complete silliness. We are called to make disciples. That’s the what. We need to let the Holy Spirit guide the how.