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People Spots
Online Paying the Rentby James W Moss, Sr Pastors need to understand this reality. We pastors are sometimes sheltered a bit from the real world. Lay people go to work. They make a remarkable discovery. The person who writes their paycheck has certain requirements which must be met if the employee is to continue receiving the check. That surely is a strange concept. A person rents a house. Then they never pay the rent. After a time an eviction notice will appear. It shouldn’t be a shock. They should have seen it coming. I have even heard, “How could this happen to me?” I heard someone tell this analogy. A church gives their new pastor 100 poker chips. Every time the pastor does something right, the church gives another couple chips. Every time the pastor goofs they take four or five away. If it is a really big goof they will take more than that. If ever the pastor reaches 0 chips, the church won’t give anymore. The people just pull away. At that point the pastor will flounder and sometimes do some very strange things. However, nothing can be done to save the ministry. It is over. How does a pastor earn chips? It is so simple: by caring for people. Provide quality care for a family when a loved one has died. Provide quality care for a family in crisis. Do a nice wedding service. Paying attention and greeting people as they arrive and leave the church. This kind of care shouts to the church, "This pastor really does love us." Every such incident results in the addition of a few additional chips. Failure to provide such care will cost you chips. Let me illustrate. A pastor was taking vacation at home. A key member of the church died. The pastor refused to do the service. That refusal cost that pastor a ton of chips. That pastor could have done the service and moved the vacation day to another week. Maybe even taken an extra day or two. Another pastor refused to do a funeral because Thursday was his day off. That is simple. Move your day off to Friday. That pastor lost chips. Every time there is an attempt to introduce change the pastor lays chips on the line. That must happen with regularity. But, personally, I wanted the proposed changes to be worth the chips should the effort fail. Any proposed change, no matter how important or how positive it seems, might fail. That failure will cost chips. The bigger the failure, the higher the cost. No one is immune from this concept. Even pastors who have the status of founding pastors can get caught by this. Pastor Harry Smyth had successfully served at Hope Church. There had been many years of solid progress. Harry had a whole room full of chips. But he turned aside from doing the things that had brought success. He stopped listening to the leadership. It took two years, but Harry spent the whole room full of chips. You know the rest of the story. I believe that expectations for the pastor have risen as salaries have risen. Even in smaller churches where the pastor’s package can range as high as 70% of the church’s income, expectations are the pastor will bring in new people. Failure to do so will create tension. The bottom line is to love the people. If you love them, serve them! It will be amazing what you will discover. _____________________ Read about Jim's seminars and books. _____________________ February 1, 2008. Volume
11, Issue 1.
People Spots Online
is prepared by James W. Moss, Sr., and Church Consultants. It is provided as a service by New Life
Ministries, www.NewLifeMinistries-NLM.org.
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