Thanks to all of you who responded last week. Your feedback has been so helpful as I consider this big question of who we depend on as spiritual mentors and gatekeepers.
What God and my friend Phil Cooke say about depending too heavily on pastors refers to those sad instances when a pastor goes wrong:
God warns such pastors—"‘Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:1).
Phil Cooke, a thinker and innovator of how Christians do effective ministry today, says—“A crisis does not have to break your church. Rather, it can be an opportunity to strengthen your church to weather the storms” (Church on Trial). He continues, “It’s not IF we’ll have a crisis, it’s WHEN.” Then he goes into great detail how to protect the congregation, mission, and reputation during the crisis.
According to Phil:
“27% of church members leave their faith because of leadership scandals. We’re losing more than a quarter of our congregations because of moral, financial, and other unethical behavior within the leadership of our churches” (see Phil Cooke’s website and search for “crisis” if you’re interested in learning more).
Knowing that God is aware and will deal with the errant pastor gives comfort. And knowing that talented Christian media geniuses like Phil Cooke will help the church somehow survive, adds to our hope. However, what about the poor people who put too much dependence on their pastor and have suffered spiritual damage—or worse, left the church behind—how can we be sure they’re getting more help?
Spiritual Mentor vs Spiritual You
Bottom Line Upfront: It is sad but true that no one cares as much about, nor is more responsible for, your spiritual well-being as you. And yes, that means not even your pastor. Even though most of us have very good pastors, who invest a lot in being good mentors, they are too busy and spread too thin. For the most part, pastors have little or no time to dedicate to ensuring your personal spiritual growth.
The key realization today is that many of us rely too heavily on others for our personal growth. I'm beginning with the most significant issue: excessive dependence on your pastor for your spiritual development.
Last week, when you were asked “who is your spiritual mentor and gatekeeper,” 43.6% of you identified a pastor as your primary or solo spiritual mentor. From this we concluded that a significant percentage of respondents place their spiritual growth in the hands of pastors (43.6%), and many of you suggested in no uncertain terms that you had a strong reliance on pastoral leadership.
Last week, I also relayed the situation in Texas where eight mega church pastors, over a two month period, were discovered in moral failure. These pastors collectively served churches involving over 50,000 congregants. Sadly this week, I saw a report about a pastor who was part of a multisite, non-denominational mega church based in Michigan who was fired and arrested after allegedly placing a hidden camera inside a bathroom.
The mega church’s Leadership Advisory Team sent an email to the congregation saying the pastor admitted to placing the camera. The story is still developing. I later saw in another report that this leadership team is thoroughly searching all of their facilities and taking a further step next week to engage the services of a third-party professional out of an “abundance of caution." (I wonder if they read or hired Phil Cooke to help handle the crisis?)
At the top of this article is a word cloud of the results of survey responses to: “Who is your spiritual mentor and gatekeeper?”
Remember that in a word cloud, the font-size represents greater response. So above, “pastor” was a 46.3% response. In second place, but not very close, was “friends” at 18.2% which shows their important role. Peer-based mentorship is a significant factor in your life. Looking at the word cloud as a whole, we see a mixed reliance on pastors, friends, and family primarily. And some of you reported direct divine guidance with responses like God and Holy Spirit.
What concerns me greatly is that relatively few of you (7.3%) emphasize personal responsibility, which could indicate a pattern of dependence on external guidance from others (pastors, friends and family) for your own spiritual growth.
And why is this over-dependence on others for your own spiritual growth so bad? Because there is one Bible verse that most, if not all, of the mentors you depend on get wrong—and this has a tremendous and devastating impact on your personal spiritual growth.
We’ll talk about that verse next week.
