7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Pastors – response

Dan wrote an interesting and lengthy comment on the original article, here’s my response:

Hi Dan, thanks for your helpful reflections, my responses in italics

But first, the original article:

These are the 7 habits of the most highly ineffective pastors in America today:

1- Preach and go home. Let someone else do the pastoring. That’s what “Associates” are for.

2- Follow what the bigger churches are doing. Why go to the trouble of listening to God’s voice? Just copy what the big-guys are doing. It’s bound to work, or at least put more butts in the seats.

3- Start a building fund. Nothing says, “Ineffective” like a pastor who pussy-foots over controversial sermon topics in order to keep those pledges rolling in. Don’t forget the basketball courts!

4- Act as if your church is the best in town. Ignore those other churches as much as possible, unless you need to refer to them in the negative (see #6).

5- Use people to your own ends. Find gifted, passionate people and get them working as soon as possible. Don’t be afraid to overload them, they’ll tell you when they’ve had enough, but then you can probably still give them a few other things to do by teaching them to “delegate”. There’s a reason 10% of the people in church do 90% of the work…it’s pastors like you!

6- Lift your Church status by putting other Churches down. If you must address the fact that there are other churches in your area, make sure to make yourself look good by pointing out the ways you’re not “like them”. Works like a charm and keeps their butts in your seats doing nothing rather than in some other pew across town doing nothing. Think about it. (see #3).

7- Encourage “Pulpit Evangelism”. You’re the expert. You’ve got that seminary degree and those lay people are not equipped to preach the Gospel to their friends. They’re likely to screw it up. Rather than waste time teaching them, let them bring the lost to church so you can put that degree to good use. The last thing you want is to make your people believe they can do this without your expertise.

In today’s American church what matters is being successful and being successful means putting butts in the seats. Pastoring, caring for people, and being a servant to all takes valuable time away from attracting large crowds and making your services more entertaining for the masses.

To be an effective pastor, learn these 7 habits and do the exact opposite. Care for people, listen to God’s voice, don’t get distracted by building issues, bless other local ministries, empower your people (don’t exploit them), teach more of your people to be disciples and then to make disciples. Multiply yourself and duplicate your ability to teach, train, encourage, disciple and serve others.

Source: Keith Giles is the author of the new book, “The Gospel For Here Or To Go?” and he also publishes a free, weekly e-newsletter called [Subversive Underground]. Find out more at keithgiles.com. As a free resource I’ve made my book, “The Gospel: For Here or To Go?” available as a free PDF download over at my main website (http://www.keithgiles.com/).

Dan commented, and my responses in italics: 

1) Not all pastors are “gifted” in counseling. Nothing wrong with delegation when there are others who are higher “EQ.”

Agreed but I think the point here is a certain eschelon of pastors who no longer have meaningful interaction with people in terms of care or pastoral counseling. In other words, when a pastor leaves behind the role of shepherd and takes on the role of CEO.

2) Some churches are in cooperative fellowship with “bigger” churches and many times the “bigger” churches assist smaller churches in getting started when they do not have the resources to do so.

Agree, but I think this point is about the phenomenon of off-the-shelf Christianity. Large mega-church pastors package up the secrets of their success, and pastors from small churches flock to these conferences or spend lots on buying the flatpack resource to try and reproduce the success of the larger church. Behind this phenomenon is an assumption that all churches are supposed to replicate large churches. This seems to be the default assumption about the direction of many churches: to grow bigger. Maybe God wants your church to stay small and fulfill an altogether different role?

3) Economics is a part of stewardship and our duty as Christians to have dominion over the earth. Plus, many “controversial” topics are peripheral issues to the next generation (e.g., is 5.25 disk better than 3.5 disk?).

4) There is nothing wrong with churches that focusing on growing from the inside-out. No need to waste time wondering what other churches are doing when there is plenty of work to do “in-house.”

I think this is more about ignoring other churches and eschewing the opportunity to collaborate in a kingdom way rather than a ‘build my brand’ way that so many churches use.

5) If anything, Christians these days err on idleness than over exertion. And the reason why 10% do all the work is because they need more training in discipleship or “delegation.”

I think pastors are good at finding good people and exhausting them, sometimes never to return to ministry lest they be burned out again. I agree that pastors are extremely poor at effective delegation.

6) The distinctions between churches is not necessarily all about “denigrating” other churches. Many times it is about truth, about a certain way of interpreting Scriptures, about what each local community believes as “essentials” of faith. These will impact how one conducts worship, how one does God’s will, and ultimately how one views God and others. These “differences” do matter even if one does not see the “practical” value of Truth right away.

There are plenty of Christians who have made it their life purpose to police and hound other believers who think differently to them. They live online, they live in our neighbourhoods. They spend very little time proclaiming the truth themselves, and all of their time pointing out perceived falsehood in other believers. I have plenty of burn scars from such blowtorches. It is an industry. Just get on with proclaiming the Gospel and leave these people to God.

7) The pulpit is where the Word impacts the community. The community relives the spoken Word in through interaction with one another in praise, worship, dinner, activities, and what not. And maybe if one took spiritual health as seriously as physical health, one would care a little more about degrees. Dividing the Word of God is no joke.

This is a big call here to define a box and flowchart within which the Word impacts the community. I agree that preaching has an important part to play but is just one of the ways in which the Word impacts the community. Pastors imagine their sermons to have more importance than it is due sometimes. This point goes to the heart of ‘cop-out evangelism’. Instead of seeking to communicate the Gospel themselves, people call me up to let me know that so and so [a family of friend] is coming to church on Sunday and they hope the sermon is going to be ‘relevant’. In other words, “you’d better get this person saved!”.