Scripture Reference: Acts 15:6-41; Galatians 2:11-14

Why are so many pastors leaving the ministry? The reasons are legion: lack of sufficient living expenses, insufficiency of privacy, general apathy (“malaise,” as the late President Jimmy Carter called it) of the congregation, and unreasonable expectations about how to make the church grow.

With so many pastors today either burned out, washed out, thrown out, or found out, and so many congregations either dead, declining, or divided, it is evident that the church today is a church in extreme conflict due to stress.

Just Looking at the Top of It

I’ve done my best to help serve in churches throughout my long past and the more I know of and see churches in trouble, the more I feel like the two bumpkins at the rail of a troop transport, gazing at the Atlantic for the first time.

“Man, look at all that water,” said one. “Far as you can see in any direction. Nothing but water.”

“Yeah, and that ain’t all,” said the other. “You’re just looking at the top of it.”

Most people have no clue as to the depth of the conflict that is taking place in many of our churches. We are just looking at the top of it. What you see in the news or hear in your congregations are just the tip of the iceberg unless you take the time to research the situation. The day and age in which we are living today doesn’t help the situation either.

Often this conflict in the church spills over into the minister’s marriage and disrupts it and thus his family harmony, also. At any one time the legal personnel are dealing with hundreds (if not thousands) of divorce cases across the United States, alone. Yet that is just the tip of it and doesn’t take into consideration denominationally supported foreign missionaries. That’s frightening, really frightening!

Conflict and the emotional debris it leaves behind is an inescapable part of life in this day and age. We can never fully eliminate it. We can only hope to manage it and use it constructively.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.