7 Ways to Hurt Your Church Members

by E.L.

1. View the church as your personal business with the sole goal of becoming "full time." Ignore the needs of your parishioners, and attach salvation to faithful giving.

2. Close all service roles (greeter, singer, teacher, outreach) to anyone who doesn't "look the part." Judge their worth solely upon the way they dress.

3. Be too busy to answer 'silly' theological questions. Direct the saints to books written by David Bernard and N.T. Wright, instead of prayerfully studying the issues out for yourself.

4. Compare your church to every other church in town. Talk about how good they treat their pastors and how you wish your church would love you enough to do the same.

5. Ensure the church celebrates all of your personal life milestones (birthdays, anniversaries, diplomas) and simultaneously ignore all of theirs. Oh, and make sure they bring gifts to each celebration.

6. Refuse to study. Instead, download all of your sermons from the web. Spend five to ten minutes altering the download and then stand and preach the sermon as your own with an authoritative, "Thus saith the Lord."

7. Pastor "the church" instead of people. Look out for the best interests of the system, even when that involves letting some hurting members go without addressing the root causes of the pain.

This writing is the copyright of E.L. and is reprinted on this site by permission. View all of his available articles here.

Page added February 12, 2015

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