Wineskins Featured Author Sean Palmer recently triggered a tsunami of Internet page views with his article “It’s You, Not Me: Why More & More Ministers Are Leaving the Churches of Christ.”
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Increasingly, ministers of all stripes are sharing with me their desires to get out of Churches of Christ. I currently serve a non-traditional church, so I suspect I hear more of this than most people. Still, ministers say, “I’m pretty sure my next church will not be a Church of Christ.” Of course, as long as there have been ministers, there have been ministers complaining about ministry — the pay, the stress, the feelings of inadequacy, lack of recognition, and unfair expectations, but this is different. People aren’t talking about leaving ministry, they’re talking about leaving ministry in Churches of Christ.
As young men and women break-up with Churches of Christ, they are not saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.” They’re saying, “It’s you!” The hidden distress inside the church is not merely that she is losing younger people, we are also losing younger ministers – if we are developing them to begin with. More and more, universities are reporting fewer and fewer young men and women training for ministry, most opting, instead, to work with or begin non-profit charities.
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Women’s roles, leadership, and traditionalism are the three rationales I hear most frequently from ministers flirting with changing denominations.
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Read the full article to get the full shot-to-the-solar-plexus impact.
Sean’s blog is The Palmer Perspective. He speaks with greater authority than most bloggers on this subject. As he says, “I currently serve a non-traditional church, so I suspect I hear more of this than most people.”
It’s great to hear the perspective of someone who understands us so well and yet has chosen a different path. After all, if he’s right (and I don’t doubt it), this is a perspective those of us who remain in the Churches of Christ desperately need to hear.
Wow.. did you read the comment section of his blog? Pretty much as expected.. Lots of people expressing their appreciation for his “courage” to speak the truth…(Has leadership so restrained open dialogue that it now takes “courage” to disagree) and then the retort of the CoC hardliners which is to attack the person and integrity of the individual and restate the author’s wording so that they can argue against it more effectively.. same ole same ole…
The internet and particularly social media such as this has opened up the church doors to new ideas and understandings.. No longer are people limited to the teachings and pontification of the local church leadership.. People get online and read.. They see arguments that make sense. They see others who have the same concerns and they identify. From seeing the comments on the guy’s blog, it’s pretty clear that the leadership in many churches doesn’t listen very well.. They speak and expect to be heard and obeyed. That’s oppressive in many respects.. and apparently people are rebelling in droves. Leadership needs to learn to listen… While there are still people to listen to or there won’t be anyone listening to them.. They’ll be preaching to the choir… wait..
In my college CoC at Ohio State University, the elders rarely interacted with the congregation. Many elders’ children were a mess. Yet the elders held tight control over the church. The preacher was the “head” elder and enjoyed the control the elders had over the church. When our campus group started having baptisms and started growing, the members complained because the sleepy little church was becoming too dynamic for the average member. I marveled about how excited, new campus Christians, were a threat to the leadership. Needless to say, most students moved on to other churches who were accepting of youthful enthusiasm. Since then, this CoC has returned to deadness and mediocrity, and the elders are happy again.
In some churches, a few people or families control the elders either though large donations, multi-decade friendship or familial bonds. The preacher can quickly become a puppet. Also, preachers have to quickly learn who really calls the shots. (Oftentimes, it is a secret.) Hence, even if the congregation likes the preacher, but the rulers do not, the preacher is often forced to leave. Sadly, many do not have well-written, negotiated employment contracts with any protection for themselves nor does it appear that many ministers had a disinterested attorney review said contract.
This is one time where denominational hierarchies have an advantage by mandating a standardized “call” that does offer protection for the minister/pastor, e.g. severance pay, health insurance, etc.
The internet has definitely led to more transparency about topics such as these although courage is still required to speak out on topics like these.
Of course, when he thinks “Churches of Christ” he (as well as most others) has something completely different in mind than what God has in His mind when thinking “Churches of Christ.” (Same thing could be said for the word “Minister.”)
Most of these articles have one thing in common. They “explain” a social reality while missing the most important factors. Revelation 2 and 3, those chapters which indicate why JESUS himself might/will leave a church address such matters.
I love the title, simply because at first I thought it was me. But when I took the time to listen again to voices of the church, I realized what was being said and taught was a hard, non-compassionate, unmerciful doctrine. Not the doctrines themselves, but what we made of them. We took beautiful truths like baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the songs that were supposed to be of the heart and made them into weapons and cries of war. Peace was seen as weakness, mercy was viewed as aiding sin, and grace was solely within the boundaries of “the Lord’s church”.
Good points have been made regarding the internet. The good I believe it has done is to help us see that there are no demons in diversity. We might as well admit it; diversity was viewed by us, especially those of us in the South, as the filth that lay on the bottom of the pit of hell. If people were different, especially in thought and beliefs, somebody had to be wrong; and according to us, that was everyone but us. There was no room or patience for diversity and imperfection, which are actually integrals of existence; but we were the experts at claiming, or should I say pretending, to be perfectly one.
I find it interesting that Sean Palmer does not say that these ministers want to go with the progressive movement within the CoC; they want to leave. But that would be a good discussion for another time.
Romans ch 6 at verse 1 says ” What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means!” RSV translation.
As to what John wrote above about peace, mercy, and grace, I have heard the above verse skewed so badly that I wanted to walk out. Grace was derided as just a license to sin. Thus grace was removed from the vocabulary. To not hear about or be offered grace and/or mercy makes it rough, and we not even gotten to absolution and atonement.
I am from the Belton Temple TX area. Where the writer is a minister. While this phenomena is not unique to the churches of Christ it is indicative of a larger problem in institutionalized Christianity in the west. A whole bunch of us went to ACU as Bible majors none of us are in ministry now we are in our late 30s. The last thing is institutionalism. We hate instiutionalism.
Joe,
I really hope you only meant paid, full-time or part-time preaching ministry. I cannot imagine how a Christian can follow Christ and not be a minister.
I left full-time preaching as a paid worker over 20 years ago, but have never left the ministry of the word or of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You see, I did not view ministry as getting a paid position somewhere, but rather as noticing and following up on opportunities to serve others and so bring glory to Jesus and our Father and the Spirit at work among His people. Those opportunities begin at home and in the neighborhood and just about every facet of life. For a while there I even had a ministry to my Doctor when I was going to see him nearly every month when it wasn’t every week. Also, how could I ever justify not supporting with my actions and experience the local ministries of the saints? I have given time, money, prayer, and any number of other resources God has placed within my control to serve others. That doesn’t make me special. It makes me an unworthy servant who cannot help continuing to serve because God called me – whether any congregation wants to call me or not.
So I really hope you didn’t mean that your group of ACU Bible majors stopped participating in ministry, but perhaps just in paid preaching.
Grizz