40% of Pastors Want to Find a Different Job?

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All right, well, welcome back to another week. I hope you had a good weekend, good Lord's Day yesterday. Let's jump right into it.

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But before we do, two quick announcements. Number one, I will be at a free conference this weekend,

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Saturday, March 12th, 3 to 7 p .m., and also Sunday, Sunday morning.

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I don't think the conference is on Sunday, but we'll obviously be at church. But in any case,

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I will be there. We'll be talking about resisting tyranny and wokeness. It's gonna be me,

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John Harris, and Joel Webben from Right Response Ministries. The location is

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Christ Fellowship Church in Taylor, Texas. And I am really looking forward to this.

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My speech is, speech, presentation, whatever you wanna call it, is called

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Practicing Everyday Obedient Defiance. And it's gonna be about protesting and how to protest like a

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Christian. Also, I'll be getting into some trouble about the trucker convoy. Yeah, if you can see my,

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I was showing some people my subscriber analytics. It's so funny. So, you know, normally I just, I gain a few subscribers, whatever.

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Very rarely do I lose subscribers. But I started talking about the trucker convoy. Instantly, there's a crater.

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And then I start talking about Ukraine, and instantly a huge crater. It's just so funny. But at least, at the very least, you know,

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I'm not likely to lie to you in order to avoid losing subscribers. In any case, I will be doubling down for sure.

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That should be fun. It is totally free. And I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Now, one other announcement.

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My kids are upstairs playing like it's their job, which I guess it kind of is. So if you hear some noise, this is the only time

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I could record, so I couldn't really avoid it. In any case, let's jump right into it today, because I think my video today is gonna be really good.

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It is about this whole kind of poor me. It's hard to be a pastor.

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Don't question your pastor. Don't send him mean emails. You know, stuff like that. And you see this with Big Eva all the time.

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They dedicate so much blog space to this concept. They dedicate so many tweets to this concept.

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It's just like, oh, your pastor's job is hard enough as it is. And we've seen an uptick in this kind of content lately, because I guess there was a

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Barna study that a few people kept sending me that said something like 40 % of pastors over the last year or so have considered quitting their jobs, because it's so stressful.

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And we've seen people go to the media to talk about how difficult it is to be a shepherd and how their sheep are just so unruly and their sheep like Sean Hannity more than they like them.

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And it's just disgusting to me. It's all disgusting to me. But we're getting a lot of content about how you shouldn't challenge your pastors.

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I'm in a complete disagreement. We need people to challenge their pastors more, much, much more, not less.

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But let's jump into it today. So I wanna start with a thread from Rhett Burns.

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Rhett Burns is a fellow Fight, Laugh, Feast guy, solid dude. He writes for the magazine. He writes for the blog as well.

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I did the newlywed game competing against him and his wife. We lost. Good guy, good guy.

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And I wanna read this thread that he posted to Twitter, because this honestly, this makes me so happy because so many people are getting it and it's just more people get it every single day.

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And I wanted to just read this to you and make a quick comment to start us off. So Rhett says this on Twitter.

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He says, "'Remember, their double standards are not hypocrisy "'but hierarchy.'"

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All the recent catchphrases. Listen to black voices. That's not a helpful tone.

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Romans 13, trust the government, unity! They have not been offered in good faith but are political rhetorical power moves.

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The sooner evangelical conservatives grasp this, the more sense things will make. The sooner we grasp this, the sooner we can stop losing.

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Quote, we should really listen to black voices. Hey, cool, check out this new documentary Chocolate Knox made by what standard?

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No! We should give up our power and seat at the table. Hey, great idea,

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Dr. Akin. Speaking of, J .D., what do you think about stepping aside so we can have our first black

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VP? J .D. Greer, of course, rides his unprecedented white privilege to an unprecedented third term.

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Okay, but now that Lytton is too busy reconciling races, can we have Lee Brand? Nah, best I can do is white rice.

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If you don't get these jokes, that's okay. This is all what would appear on the surface as moral hypocrisy.

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On the one hand, they want to elevate black voices. On the other hand, any time there's a black voice that actually has a firm grasp on the scriptures, they're like, no, no, no, not that one.

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That's a white man in black disguise. We'll get to that in a minute. Hmm, you said put black voices and put them in leadership.

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How about we send up the bat signal for Votie Bacchum? No, not that one. He has white beliefs.

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Why, ah, the mind blows and stuff like that. Here's another one. Go with the government, brothers,

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Romans 13. Hey, Putin is a civil magistrate. How about we Romans 13 Vladimir Putin?

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Defy tyrants. Posty be gentle and lowly?

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Yes, you are a dirty, demonic Republican Party worshiping family idolizing late supremacist

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Trumpist. You see, like the rhetoric doesn't match what they say you should do. They're so concerned with their tone, but on the other hand, they're calling you every name in the book.

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And so here's what Rhett says to sum this all up. All of these are rhetorical power moves designed to neutralize and control conservative action.

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Rhett says he's willing to grant some well -intentioned folks wield these weapons unwittingly. So they don't know what they're doing, but they still wield these power weapons.

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But the person who doesn't know he's playing with a loaded gun is the most dangerous person with the loaded gun.

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So all Rhett is saying here is that all these things that seem, you know, we like to point out their hypocrisy and stuff like that.

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Rhett gets it, he gets it. It's not hypocrisy. It's a power play. They're serving their

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God. The reason why they don't recognize Putin as a

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Romans 13 submit to Putin is because they're in the middle of a revolution.

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It's a power play. They're trying to manipulate you. The reason why they say elevate black and brown voices, but they would never even acknowledge knowing me is because it's a power play.

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They're not actually telling you the truth. They don't wanna elevate black and brown voices.

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They want to elevate voices that are saying the same social justice paganism that they're saying.

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It has nothing to do with their skin color, even though they say it does. And the thing is, this is not surprising because all of these ideas, these social justice ideas, these, you know, feminism ideas, all of this stuff, it's all satanic and Satan is the father of lies.

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He doesn't care what's true. I saw this really great cartoon. It comes from Owen Benjamin, which, you know, listen,

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I'm not endorsing everything that the guy says, but this video is so right. It's like everyone here acts surprised when the father of lies tells a lie.

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And it's like, stop being an idiot. He's a liar. So of course he's lying.

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He doesn't care what the truth is. He will, the best line in this cartoon, it's like a two minute cartoon.

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I'll share it. It's a good cartoon. It's actually really good. He says, I will say anything to get you to do anything.

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He will say literally anything he can to deceive you and trick you into doing horrible things and promoting horrible things.

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So if he has to tell a lie, like let's elevate black voices to get you to elevate paganism, he'll do it.

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He'll do anything. It doesn't matter. So anyway, all that to say, there's only one way to recognize this.

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There's only one way out of this. Like Rhett Burns gets it. He gets it. A lot of people are starting to get it. And he starts to say in this thread, he's like, the sooner conservatives get this, the sooner we're gonna stop losing.

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And I agree with him completely, but here's what it's gonna take for conservatives to start getting this, right?

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They're gonna have to start, I'm sorry. They're gonna have to stop being such pansies, right?

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They're gonna have to stop being such sissies. And the reality is that a lot of pastors and people in leadership and evangelicalism are completely ill -equipped for this.

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They're not ready for this and they'll never be able to do this because a lot of evangelical pastors, the thing they fear the most is not

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God. It's not the Lord's judgment or anything like that. What they fear the most is the media's eye turning to them and calling them racist or calling them sexist or calling them a jingoist or a fascist or a

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Christian nationalist. That's what they fear the most. They fear the insults of men.

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They fear it more than God. They fear it more than God's judgment. They do not kiss the sun.

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What they kiss is all the people that could potentially call them racist one day. In any case, so that's my premise.

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We can't do this unless the right people start getting these jobs. Now, here is what I wanna talk about today because this mentality of Big Eva, this poor me, it's hard to be a pastor.

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So many pastors were gonna quit last year. Oh, just support them. This whole attitude is going to yield more losing, more bad results, and it won't ever get us to the point where we start to understand these catchphrases for what they are, lies from Satan, in order to get you to do horrible things.

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Here's what Jared C. Wilson says. He says, hey, you know that email you wanna send to the pastor outlining your plan for how to improve the church?

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Maybe think about not sending that, chief. By the way, tone problem here. So let's just give this tweet the benefit of the doubt.

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This is the best case scenario, right? What he's talking about here is an email from a divisive person, someone who's trying to cause problems.

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So the heart is in the worst possible place. Let's just give him the best case scenario, right?

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It's a divisive person. His heart is not in the right place. He's trying to cause trouble. And the outline that he's sending the pastor is something that he secretly started sending to other people first.

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So you can tell he's trying to cause division. And it's all this stuff that's just a bunch of nonsense.

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Like it has nothing to do with actually legitimate arguments, nothing really biblical. It's just like nonsense.

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Like, you know, we should really do the passing the plate at the beginning of the service instead of the end of the service, because then people won't feel guilty and things like that.

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You know, just stuff that's inconsequential, right? And I don't mean that it's necessarily inconsequential, but stuff that's debatable, right?

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Oh, you know, we should really, you know, consider taking out the stained glass windows because stained glass windows come from Catholicism and we don't want to give the impression that we're, you know, nonsense, right?

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Let's just give him the benefit of the doubt. So it's an email full of nonsense. The man is clearly divisive.

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He's been organizing a secret coup in the church. Like the worst possible person sending this email is sending it, okay?

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And I think that if you view it that way, you can get, this is the best case scenario for this pathetic, sissy, you know, wimpy tweet, right?

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Okay. So is this the way to handle this, right? Is this the way a pastor should handle it?

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Should they go online and complain about how you shouldn't do this and how a pastor's job is so difficult and write a whole blog post about it and stuff like that?

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The answer is no. The answer is no, because here's the reality. If a pastor can't navigate someone sending them an email and do it in a way that's biblical, do it in a way that's teaching and do it in a way that brings church discipline to bear if it's necessary, right?

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Like if a pastor can't navigate this controversy where a congregant is sending you an email full of nonsense, full of stupidity and just completely divisive, right?

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If you can't navigate that, then there is no way you're gonna be able to navigate this.

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None. If you can't stand under the scrutiny of a divisive person, a regular

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Joe in the pew, a normie, how are you ever gonna stand against the scrutiny of CNN or MSNBC when they decide to turn on the

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SBC? If you can't figure out how to counsel people that have potentially been fooled by a divisive person with an email full of nonsense, how are you gonna counsel someone who all of a sudden comes to you and is now shilling for global homo and has all of these things and is willing to use the weight of MasterCard and Visa and PayPal and all this against you?

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The reality is that this is the minor leagues. This is the minor leagues of controversy and you need to get these reps in in order to stand against the big deal, the big leagues, right?

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And the reason why we're failing at some of this stuff, Romans 13, you know, standing up against the government, not the reason why so many churches shut down their church just because Caesar asked you to is because we spent decades not getting our reps in with stuff like this because we had credible pastors that write for gospel coalition telling us that it's actually not your job to do this.

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In fact, it's the sheep's fault for being sheep. It's not the shepherd's deal.

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It's the sheep are bad sheep. You see, the shepherd doesn't need to get his reps in. The sheep need to become better sheep.

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This is so disgusting and no wonder we're in the sorry state that we're in.

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We can't possibly hope to stand strong against this stuff if we can't stand strong against this stuff.

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You see, this is the reality. Pastors need to get their reps in just like any profession, just like any man in general, they need to get their reps in.

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Let me tell you what got me thinking about this the other day. Actually, this was just yesterday. So one thing that the boys in our church have been doing lately after Sunday school, but before the worship service, is they've been arm wrestling in like the downstairs area in the fellowship hall.

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So the boys will get together and they'll arm wrestle and the boys are not all the same age, right?

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And so there's this one kid who wins pretty much all the time, right? He's the oldest kid. He's the tallest kid.

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He's the strongest kid. And he just knocks them down. You just, all of them, right?

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But the kids still do it. They enjoy it. And what they don't understand is that they're actually getting their reps in.

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And what ends up happening is now there are some of these other boys that can start to win a little bit, right?

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So they'll, this guy will knock them down, knock them down, knock them down. He doesn't get it that he's getting tired, right? He's getting fatigued.

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And so this one guy goes, all right, let's do it again. Let's do it again. And I'll never forget this one.

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This was just the other day. He's about to lose, right? And then he just gives one last effort and he wins.

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And it's like, he got his reps in and now he's stronger and he happened to catch this one, this guy, this kid at a time when he, you know, was a little bit more tired and he was able to win.

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Now, probably next week, it'll be a little bit easier and things like that, but he was getting his reps in, right? That's the point.

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And so over time, we know that the more reps you get in, the stronger you're gonna be. I mean, this is what weightlifting is all about, right?

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You start off, I started weightlifting again. I used to when I was in college, but I started weightlifting again last year and I keep a book of, you know, my reps and stuff like that.

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And the reason I keep a book is cause I wanna see the progress, right? Cause you won't necessarily remember the progress you're making unless you see it in black and white.

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And it is ridiculous how much stronger I am after a year of lifting weights.

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And it's like, man, like, was I really that weak a year ago? And you look back and it's like, yeah, you really were that weak.

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Cause if you remember when you wrote this number down, you were, you were, you had, you had lifted to failure. And now it's like, man, that's like, that's nothing.

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You know what I mean? You get your reps in and it's hard. And at the time you deal with it, but then it prepares you for heavier weights, right?

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That's the point. And so the reality is when, when, when, when, when these pastors like feel like they can go to the pagan media or even the gospel coalition media, but I repeat myself, when they feel like they can do that and complain and whine about what is a normal duty.

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This is one of your primary duties to counsel people in your church that have issues or don't understand what a church is or, or, or, or, or, or have problems with, you know, certain passages and things like that.

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You should relish these opportunities. You shouldn't go to social media to complain about them because these are your reps.

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You got to get those reps in. How are you going to counsel a marriage where the wife is distraught because her husband's decided to try out homosexuality?

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How are you going to navigate that complicated, you know, those emotions, stuff like that there when you can't even accept an email that has a few criticisms about your church or how to improve it?

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I mean, grow up. Honestly, like this, this, it's hard to put into words even what

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I'm thinking about this because it's just so apparent to me that this is one of the primary roles of a pastor when they're counseling their flock.

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Like you can't counsel someone who has a 10 -point plan of how to improve the church and it's all full of nonsense.

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Remember, we're giving this guy the benefit of the doubt. He's talking about an email full of nonsense because let's just face it, a lot of the emails that he's talking about are not full of nonsense.

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Some of them are actually full of very good stuff and that's even worse to go to the pagans and to go to your social media and to complain about stuff like that when it's actually legitimate stuff, right?

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See, pastors are complaining about, not all pastors, so don't hear me saying that, but some pastors, especially gospel coalition, evangelical leaders complain about God giving them opportunities to get their reps in.

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And it's disgusting and it's no wonder we're in the sick state that we're in. But here's the reality.

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Like I said, these emails, a lot of these emails, I know about these emails. Guys, people ask me what to do about their situation when their pastor is starting to say stuff like, oh, we must elevate black voices.

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We must elevate black voices. And then they say, okay, cool. So, you know, I was listening to this Votie Bacchum sermon.

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He's like, no, no, no, he's white. He's got white beliefs. And all of a sudden, the person in the pew is like, huh?

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And they're like, what would I do about this? Like, my pastor is talking like some of the most vile racists

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I've ever heard in my life. Now my pastor's talking like them. What do I do? And the thing is, this is the reality.

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They have decades of people like this telling them, don't send them that email. Don't send them that email.

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Don't even set up an appointment. It'll discourage them. And we need to encourage our pastors.

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You know what? We don't need to encourage our pastors to continue this completely unbiblical aversion to any kind of conflict.

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We don't need to encourage that because this is the thing. Like, people that are in your churches,

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I'm talking to pastors who have this impulse to complain about their sheep or that their sheep are too difficult or things like that.

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Those sheep, they have conflicts in their everyday life every day, right?

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At work, I've got conflicts that I have to deal with. There's people that have issues.

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And there's just one guy that I've partnered with for work. And he's one of the best recruiters that I've ever met in my entire life.

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And he consistently will challenge me on things.

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He'll say, hey, here's what you should do. Here's what you should do with this particular client or this particular candidate and things like that.

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And it'd be really easy for me to take offense and be like, I'm a 20 -year recruiter. Who is this guy?

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Who does he think he is? How about you don't send me that email, chief? It'd be very easy to do that, but I don't do that because the value of someone who potentially can see things differently than me, even if they're wrong, it's good for me because it helps me think through why

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I'm doing the things I'm doing. But sometimes he's right. Sometimes he's telling me to do something that I haven't thought of or that I had thought of, but I wasn't sure it was the right thing.

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And now I'm getting some kind of encouragement to do something that's a little bit outside of my comfort zone.

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And it potentially could help, and maybe it won't, but it could. And so when he messages me and he has these issues or things that he wants to, and they're critical.

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They're critical of me in a certain sense. He always says, hey man, don't take this the wrong way, but, and then he goes into the thing and those opportunities are the times when

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I have a chance to grow, right? Because I haven't got it all figured out yet. I haven't got it all figured out yet.

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But the thing is, and this is the reality. Our pastors are

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Christians too, right? And they're doing their race as well, just like us, right?

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And they have spiritual authority over us. That spiritual authority is limited and we get that, but they actually do have that.

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It's real spiritual authority. And so when you approach your pastors and the reality is guys,

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I know you guys do this. A lot of you guys do this. Probably not all of you, but a lot of you guys do this. You approach them with humility.

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You approach them with an attitude of, you know, hey, I've got some thoughts that are concerning to me.

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You know, let's, can we talk about it and stuff like that? And, but you don't hold back, but there's some respect there, right?

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There's some respect there. And so instead of encouraging people to, how about don't send that email chief?

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How about instead of that, you say, let's do this. Let's do this because I relish the opportunities to not only receive criticism, but also to counsel where necessary, to counsel where necessary, because that's your primary job outside of ministering the word and administering the elements, counseling and teaching your people is one of your primary jobs.

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It's why you have the job. It's what you do for the Lord. In any case, yeah, we're never going to get to the point where we can resist these catchphrases, listen to black voices, it's not a helpful town,

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Romans 13, trust the government, unity, you know, stuff like that. We're never going to be able to resist that if we can't resist a dude sending me an email that's full of nonsense and I need to address it, right?

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Like that's never ever going to happen. You can't skip levels. You have to show yourself faithful in the small things, the small controversies.

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If you can't do a small controversy with someone the biblical way where you're actually having those conversations and you're not whining and complaining as if God's doing something evil to you when you have that controversy, there is no way you're going to be faithful in the big controversies where now all of a sudden you've got to face down Joe Biden's order to close down your church or Trump's order to do the vaccine or whatever it is.

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It could be anybody. You're never going to be able to withstand the pressure then if you can't withstand the pressure of an email with an outline.

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It's so pathetic and quite frankly, this attitude, in my opinion, I said this on Twitter the other day, this attitude of the poor me, it's hard to be a pastor.

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My sheep are so stupid. If only they were better, it'd be easier and I could have my job and I wouldn't have to consider quitting.

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If you didn't have that attitude, then, excuse me, then I don't even think the social justice thing would be a thing because we would never have fallen for this stuff if not for this attitude.

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I think that this poor me, it's hard to be a pastor attitude is 10 times worse than the social justice movement because if we didn't have it, the social justice movement would have been nipped in the bud immediately.

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It wouldn't even be a thing without this attitude. But now we've let that genie out of the box because of this posture of being a sissy, this posture of being just a complete, look, let me say this, the

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Barna poll, 40 % of pastors considered quitting in the last couple of years, right?

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Those aren't exact numbers, of course, but that's roughly what it was. Here's what I have to say about that.

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Either grow up or quit. If you're not equipped to be a pastor, then you should quit.

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I would prefer you grow up because we need as many pastors as we can get, but we need real pastors that aren't afraid of their congregation challenging something they said in a sermon.

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Like that's an opportunity you should relish. That's what a pastor lives for, to do that kind of stuff.

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But so many pastors, and I know this publicly from public pastors, but also privately, they fear their congregation emailing them about something they said on Sunday.

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They fear getting that email on Tuesday. Usually they take Monday off, but they fear that Tuesday email where they're gonna have to now answer for something they said about God's word.

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How are you gonna respond to President Biden when he brings you in to cross -examine you about God's word if you can't respond to Joe who sits in the second pew and thinks he's smarter than you?

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I want this to be encouraging to the real pastors. I want this to be encouraging to real pastors who really love the

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Lord. I want this to be completely discouraging, and I wanna encourage you to quit for all the hirelings out there.

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The hirelings should quit, and I want them to. And I want their jobs to be as difficult as possible because they're not doing it for the right reasons.

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They're not doing it for the right reasons, and so they should quit because they're not equipped for it. But the real pastors out there,

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I want this to be encouraging to you. The next time you get an email from Sally or Joe or Steve in your congregation, and it's critical of something you said on Sunday, right?

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Remember this, that the Bereans were more noble than others. Do you think that the

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Bereans kept it to themselves? Like, they were checking the scriptures, but nobody knew that they were doing it. They just kept silent because, you know, that Gospel Coalition guy told me not to email my pastor.

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Like, no, the only reason people knew the Bereans were more noble is because they came to them and challenged them and were asking questions and saying, yeah, but the

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Bible says this. Can you help me understand that? And they were willing to help them understand it. In fact, they called it noble.

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So if you're calling people who are doing the same thing the Bereans were doing evil instead of noble, that's a problem for you.

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That's your problem, not theirs. That's your problem, not theirs.

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And so I want to encourage you to get in line with the scriptures. Have the attitude that the

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Bible says you ought to have. Instead of going to your little diaries and your online blogs and stuff like that and complaining, how about counting it a joy, praying to God, especially if you have those feelings of anxiety.

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Because I don't know about you, but when I'm in a conflict with somebody, I've got feelings just like everybody else and I don't like it.

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It's not like my favorite thing in the world. Sometimes my blood pressure will get elevated. My heart rate will get elevated and things like that.

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It's not comfortable, but I'll tell you what, every time I have a conversation and I have it out with somebody afterwards,

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I feel 10 times stronger than I did before. I told you guys about my controversy with Kirk Kennedy, right?

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That conversation, man, I hope I never have a conversation like that again, right? Except for the fact that the result was so positive that if I get results like that but I have to go through the reps in the meantime,

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I'll do it. I'll do it again. I'll do it as many times as I need to do it. I think

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I've made my point. I think I've made my point. Now, there's a part two to this because I wanna show you what happens to a man when they don't grow up and they decide that they're gonna continue to say, well, he's poor me, his sheep are horrible.

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I'm gonna show you what happens to a man when they do that because this weekend on Twitter, we saw that exact thing.

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We saw that exact thing. And I wanna show everybody, I wanna signal boost it because the guy who did it ended up deleting all his tweets because he's terrified of men.

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And quite frankly, I think it's because he knows he was lying. But anyway, we'll talk about that in a minute. Again, here is the message of this video.

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If you're not going to grow up and grow a pair as a pastor, then quit.