“Pastors like people who have problems that are quick to fix.”

A friend of mine told me this on the phone today. His observations of pastors and churches are just dead on. We like people whose problems are quick for us to fix because we like to be fixers. He noted that pastors love it when they can come in and give some advice, fix a problem and then have the people stand up in church to testify.

He’s so right. We feel validated, affirmed, loved by God, and it doesn’t hurt attendance, giving or morale in any sized church.

Another friend of mine told me when he first learned I was a pastor. “Pastors are kingdom builders. They build their own kingdoms.” (I must have the spiritual gift of making friends with people who are brutally honest!)

Mark Noll in his book “The New Shape of World Christianity” notes that part of the contribution of the American church to World Christianity has been this entrepreneurial spirit. We value pastors and church planters that are kingdom builders and generally speaking the leaders that “win” in this game are rewarded with wealth and fame.

The dirty little secret is that in fact pastors can’t fix much, even themselves. We’re show-men (or show-women) playing to a crowd that has a co-dependent stake in the promises we make.

In my sermon Sunday I asked what application people take from a miracle story (Luke 13:10-21). Jesus releases the bound so we should do so too? Jesus fixes problems with miracles so we should do so too? I made a joke about us not doing miracles, but then I suggested that we really can’t release the bound like we imagine we can either.

My friend’s comment spoke deeply to me of the fact that churches are lousy at walking with people in pain through time. We don’t want to be with people in pain because it causes us pain to confess our impotence as fixers and releasers. The pain of others reminds us that we have no special sauce, no pixie dust, no magic words from a holy book to turn bound and broken people into adoring fans in our self-glorification schemes.

Being with people in pain also reminds us that we would rather use people than love them. We are more interested in how their healing can increase our glory than to whether they are healed at all.

To further exacerbate this already dark perspective from what I see of the church/pastor product market most everything written or available encourages us to move in the wrong direction on these issues. (Eugene Peterson being a very notable exception.)

There is little market for pastors who aren’t fixers. Maybe that is why the crowd in John 6 evaporated when Jesus stopped with the free food and instead offered his body and his blood for their consumption. Jesus did so because he knew what we wanted but offered instead what we most need.