Masters, grant to your slaves justice and fairness, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven. – Colossians 4:1 (NASB) 

You might be wondering what the title of this post and the scripture have in common. I hope to make that clear by the end of the post.

Like the Centurion in Luke 7, in all my years of military service there was never any question who had the authority in a meeting. Whether it was a Command and Staff meeting, Training meeting, Commander’s Update Brief, or myriad of other meetings, we always knew who was chairing the meeting and who had the final say about anything brought up.  Sometimes, I was the final say.  Most of the time, the final say rested with one of my superiors.

This is not the case in a congregation that does not have elders. I have nothing against congregations without elders when they are treating everyone fairly.  I grew up in the Church and have spent about half of my life in congregations without elders.  However, that was not by choice.  Almost always it was a matter of location.  Growing up in rural Arkansas and some of my military assignments meant I was going to worship in a congregation without elders.  Having seen both sides of the coin, I much preferred the congregations with elders over the others.  After all, congregations with elders more closely fit the Biblical pattern for the Church than those without do.

My clearest early memories of my time in the Church are from my days in rural Arkansas. We moved to a small congregation of about 30 where my brother and I made up the youth group and my parents were the next youngest in the congregation.  I am sure you can guess the age of the congregation from those two clues.  I found out after being in the congregation a short time that two of the men there pretty much ran the congregation.  They had determined it was unscriptural to eat in the building and everyone else just went along.  Guess it was just as well we couldn’t eat in the building since we didn’t have a fellowship hall or anything like it.  All we had was an auditorium , two small classrooms, and a baptistry.  However, even if we had a fellowship area these two men had already determined it would not be used for a good old fashioned potluck or any other type of meal.

Fast forward almost 30 years. I recently heard of a small rural congregation firing their preacher.  They fired him for an incident that was two months old, that the preacher had confessed to the congregation and asked for forgiveness about, and supposedly had been forgiven.  The background is the congregation does not have the means to support a full time minister.  So the preacher supplemented his income with other work and he had found a cleaning position at the local assisted living facility.  Apparently, a room had not been cleaned properly and there was a confrontation between him and other workers are the facility as to who was to blame.  The preacher lost his temper and was fired.  The preacher went before the congregation, confessed he lost his temper, and asked for their forgiveness.  End of story, right?  Not so fast.

Enter the part time member who is a bully and a loud mouth. This part time member finds out about the two month old incident through gossip in town.  I guess the part timer wasn’t in attendance when the preacher confessed two months earlier.  This part time member doesn’t go to the preacher to find out what happened.  Instead, he stirs up other members of the congregation and wants the preacher fired, for the sake of “the churches reputation” of course.  Then, the part time member is given the opportunity to voice his accusations during a men’s meeting.  He is the loud mouth in the room and has garnered enough support that the men agree to fire the preacher.  Then, to top it off, while the preacher is held accountable for his actions the loud mouth who listened to the gossip and stirred up the congregation is not held accountable for such activity.  Where is the fairness in that?

I do not have all the details so I am not going to say whether it was right or wrong to fire the preacher. What I am going to say is the process was wrong and I am wondering who actually has the authority to fire the preacher in this case?  I find no scriptural authority given to these men to fire the preacher.  If anything, the preacher had more authority (see Eph 4:11+, Titus, and 1 Timothy).  At best they had the same secular authority as an employer has with an employee.  If they had made their decision to fire him on secular grounds of performance it would have been one thing.  However, they didn’t.  They fired the preacher to “protect the reputation of the church”.  Protect what reputation?  Was it the reputation of being a loving and forgiving congregation?  Apparently not.  Was it the reputation of a vibrant, growing congregation? Hardly.  The congregation hasn’t grown in the seven-plus years I’ve known about it.  No, in the end the preacher was fired because the loud mouth in the room was given equal time, even though he didn’t give of himself full time to the congregation.  The fact is, many of the members decided they didn’t like the preacher and if it hadn’t been for this reason then they eventually would have found some other reason to fire him.

Interestingly enough, this same congregation had the opportunity to hire someone else for the job before hiring the preacher they just fired. This someone else was probably more qualified.  He submitted a resume that had a couple of misspellings.  This was an automatic disqualifier for a member of the congregation who wrote a weekly article for the local paper in the next larger community.  After all, they couldn’t hire someone that might write an article for the paper with misspellings in it!  Another fine example of loud mouth leadership.  Funny thing is, instead of preaching for this congregation the candidate went on to do missionary and evangelical work for the kingdom and for a children’s home the congregation that didn’t hire him financially supported, all because of a loud mouth.

Contrast this with the council at Jerusalem in Acts 15. There, the equivalent of the loud mouths (the converted Pharisees) were trying to require the Gentile converts requirements to keep the Laws of the old covenant, even though the Jews themselves could not keep them perfectly.  However, it is clear to me that these loud mouth Pharisee converts did not have the authority to make that call, but that the decision rested with the elders and apostles (v. 6).  Who knows where we would be today if God had not put in place the leadership roles necessary to make such an important decision?

I am blessed in that I serve with no loud mouth elders or ministers. Maybe you are not as blessed, but I hope you are.  If you are not, I ask you to examine your congregation and determine if you are giving to much credence to the loud mouths.  My experience has been that loud mouth leadership is seldom good leadership.  It can give voice to those with the least amount of themselves invested in the congregation, those with very little if any “skin in the game”.  If you do have a loud mouth or two to deal with, I recommend you do so and do it quickly.  You can minimize their influence by finding ways to not give them a voice, such as restructuring meeting times and topics.  Or maybe you need to meet with the loud mouth separately and let them know they are not setting the direction of the congregation nor do they have the authority to do so, in a loving way of course.  If you need to do something about it, I recommend you do it quickly.  It will make your lives as leaders easier in the end.

May your blessings exceed mine today and every day.

-DEM