I remember years age, my late Pastor Ken Kreger sitting at a Coffee Shop late one night after one of our church Board of Directors meetings opening up to me in order to teach me a valuable lesson that he had learned from the Holy Spirit about the dangerous potential in Christian ministry to develop a double-standard that was contrary to the heart and core-purpose of Christ’s church.
It was a long day at the church office. There was articles, news and mail to read, bills to pay, schedules of upcoming events to think about and schedule, a sermon to prepare for the upcoming Sunday with research on this week’s passages and topic, building and ground issues to resolve, and ministry goals to evaluate and monitor. The last of the church office hours now whining down, when the church phone rang. It was a member of the church and he said that he was experiencing difficulties in his life and had some questions on the biblical response that he should use spiritually. The member expressed that he were extremely frustrated and needed to talk to him. He asked if he could explain the details of his situation for discussion, pastoral counseling and prayer.
Pastor Kreger told the member that he had a long and very stressful day, that it was late and he was tired; that he was just closing up the church office and about to leave to go home for dinner. He asked if he could call the member back the next day because he was completely exhausted and the member graciously agreed to postpone the conversation and counseling, so hung up and continued to prepare to leave for the day.
Then, the church phone rang again. He picked up the phone and it was another member. He asked Pastor Kreger if had had time to discuss a significantly large contribution to the church, gets his ideas on ministry needs and hear where the sizable funds could be best utilized. He sat and explained all the areas of the church campus that could be improved by such a generous monetary gift. There were many repairs that could be made, church school material that could be purchased for the children’s, Youth and Adult Sunday School, it would definitely help the church budget also which was currently in a deficit (in the Red), and could go towards the new Playground equipment that they were hoping to install in the near future. They discussed all the great things that could take place from the money and caught up on each other’s family, what they had been doing lately and vacation plans for the summer. They had a great conversation for over an hour and hung up excited about the call.
Then, that “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit spoke to him: “What did you just do Pastor? It was a stern rebuke from the Lord. The word “pastor” in defined as: A minister of the gospel who has the charge of a church and congregation, whose duty is to watch over the people of his charge, and instruct them in the sacred doctrines of the Christian religion. The Holy Spirit exposed how he failed as a pastor, refusing to take notice of, honor, or deal with the first member’s concerns and spiritual distress for expressed, lack of time, personal exhaustion from a long day, and dinner waiting at home, then completely abandoning every excuse that he just gave in order to talk to another member for over and hour on all sorts of topics because he was going to give an extremely large monetary gift to the church. Pastor Kreger was immediately convicted of his hypocrisy in ministry, putting money before the spiritual well-being of one of the church members under his care as a pastor. He had to stop and examine his pastoral priorities against the Word of God and his duty as an under-shepherd for Christ – the Good Shepherd. The trap of all pastors is the three temptations of (1) Buildings – an over-focus on church property improvements, (2) Money (an over-focus on church offerings and gifts), and (3) Attendance (an over-focus on increasing and maintaining church membership), because if not in balance and controlled, these element of church operation become distractions that can and will deprave the primary objective of Christ’s church – ministering to spiritual needs of the members and reaching the world for Christ with the Gospel. What did Jesus do?
It was a wonderful story, which was a lesson that I’ve never forgot in ministry. And I pray that it is a story that enlightens your own Christian walk and helps you avoid the pitfalls that we can stumble into if we do not stay aware. Keep the Main thing the main thing.
In God We Trust.
In Christ, Brian
No comments:
Post a Comment