When Bad Churches Happen to Good Pastors: Why Pastors Leave and What You Can Do about It by David Frisbie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Churches can be a wonderful place — a family that cares for one another, worships God together, and comes every Sunday to find encouragement and refreshment from God’s Word through the words and actions of a pastor. However, churches can also be incredibly painful places to serve — places where pain is meted out quickly and readily by church members, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. In their book When Bad Churches Happen to Good Pastors David and Lisa Frisbie tackle the difficult subject of churches that hurt pastors.
Using a conversational style, the Frisbie’s sit down with multiple pastors who have walked away from ministry after difficult pastorates in difficult churches and interview them about their experiences. These stories range from hilarious in hindsight to heartbreaking. Along the way, the authors identify different kinds of church issues that can arise and lead to a pastor’s self-exit, sometimes leaving the congregation blindsided and asking what happened.
Each chapter is focused on a different aspect of “bad” churches:
* Fights for power or control within a church body
* Church “dynasties” — families that control the decisions of the church
* Church “bosses” — individuals who have been around long enough or give enough tithe to push decisions in a certain direction
* Conflicts between groups within the church that lead to the pastor being caught in the crossfire
* Churches with wounded pastors who are not cared for spiritually, mentally, or financially
This book is a must read for church boards, denominational leaders, and pastors who have been through the trauma of a difficult church, if for no other reason than to realize that the problems in one congregation are not unique. Across the United States there are churches who cause problems that leave pastors wounded in the process.
The call is clear: the church needs to deal with issues within their own congregations, support and encourage their pastors, and when sin rears its ugly head, face it dead on and deal with it in a biblical, loving manner. Lead pastors need our appreciation and support.
While this book does not cover When Bad Pastors Happen to Good Churches, it does touch on the flipside of the topic and dives deep into what churches can do to strengthen the pastorate and care for the people in the pastor’s family. For churches dealing especially with high pastoral turnover, this book could shed light on the hidden or open problems within the church congregation itself.