Walt said:
qwerty said:
It's unfortunate due to damaging the name and reputation of many involved, their families, the church, and the name of the Lord.
The church is not the pastor's, and no doubt the devine intervention to put an end to this type of philosophy had prevailed.... As it usually does.
I know of a church that went through this; the member came to me and we had lengthy discussions.
Essentially, they were being taught that they, as ignorant sheep, should not have a voice in the new pastor, and that the old, wise "Man of God" should determine who would lead them because he was the "undershepherd" and could do a better job that allowing the people a choice.
So, he picked out a man and to make it palatable, there was a "vote", but (as I understand it), the pre-voting speech was something like "I, as the current man of God, have determined that this new man is the will of God for this church; you either vote for God's will or against it." --- and to top that off, the votes were not allowed to be secret; they would not count unsigned votes.
Sounds eerily familiar. Makes you wonder if someone has pastors seminars where they pastors learn how to install their own guy for the next guy ?
I was a member of a church for 10 years. Right after but year-long building program, spending well over a million bucks on a facelift inside and outside of the church auditorium that netted an additional 50 seats the pastor decided he was going to leave as he had done all he could & someone younger should assume the helm. He had a HACker for an assistant pastor who was talented musically but really couldn't preach his way out of a wet paper bag, as they say. The pastor decided that the assistant should be the new pastor the yes-men deacons rubber stamped that decision. It was announced that after a Sunday morning service it would be a church business meeting to vote in the new pastor . Not to vote on the new pastor but to vote
in the new pastor. Using Robert's Rules of Order I stood with a point of order and asked if the congregation was going to be allowed to question the assistant pastor about his doctrinal stand, his philosophy of ministry and his vision for the church. The chairman of the deacons was conducting the meeting and the pastor was sitting on the front row directly in front of him. The deacon looked at the pastor the pastor shook his head no then the deacon looked at me and said, "Duly noted, the answer is no." And called for a vote.
Of course as can be expected, the HACker ran off all the Deacons because they had been deacons under the other pastor. He'd run off the choir director, the organ player, the piano player and their families. He had basically honed his sermons down to, "If the members of the church would become
faithful,
committed and
dedicated to what I want to do we could do something here. " He
He had a banner with those 3 words hanging above the pulpit.
When he finally figure it out that he should leave, he demanded months of severance pay and found another church in another part of the country .
