How to use discipleship as an antidote
Criticism and complaining can be an event or a lifestyle. If they’re a lifestyle for many of those in your church, then consumerism is the likely problem and discipleship with Jesus is the answer.
Pastors often encourage immaturity by failing to cast vision for the beauty of apprenticeship with Jesus. They reduce discipleship to church attendance, occasional acts of service, tossing money in the offering plate, and being nice to people. Or they cast some vision about discipleship, but they don’t provide a coherent plan to actually do it.
Sometimes, dependency is driven by the congregation. They see a pastor as a preacher who merely provides a weekly moment of inspiration. There is a natural tendency for the congregation to respect professional ministers—as professionals. They have more training, experience, and so on. But respect can move into idolatry and passivity.
Or sometimes, it’s a dance between two equal partners. There can be a complete lack of vision within the church’s culture, starting with leadership but running throughout the church. As they looked to make dramatic changes in their church, co-pastors Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken said:
“We had to decide how to manage the tension between the message of self-denying discipleship and the reality of a congregation full of highly trained consumers…confronting consumerism, prioritizing spiritual formation…[we] broke an unwritten contract we had with our congregation…we provide people with programs and weekly services that satisfy their religious needs and preferences, and they continue to attend and support the church with their time and money…We discovered that people weren’t necessarily coming to church to be formed in the image of Christ… More sobering is the extent to which we had oriented the church around the concerns of those who were minimally interested in being apprentices of Jesus.”
Bill Hull put it this way: “Equally tragic as the trivialization, abuse, and waste of the pastor is the trivialization, abuse, and waste of the entire body of Christ. It takes two in order to make this waste work: a pastor who will be the generic pastor and a congregation that will accept it.”
The causes are many, but the results are equivalent. If you find yourself surrounded by “holy complainers,” reconsider your ministry model and the place of robust discipleship in your efforts.
Excerpted from Enough Horses in the Barn by Kurt Sauder and D. Eric Schansberg (Further Still Ministries 2017).
Photo source: istock
More on Conflict & Criticism
- Unique problems grow you uniquely (by Richard Blackaby)
- They tried to quiet Charlie Kirk—but the gospel still speaks (by Bob Russell)
- The power of an unoffendable heart (by Tom Crenshaw)
- How did Jesus deal with animosity? (by Chris Bolinger)
