I’ve actually assembled more than ten things church members have told pastors immediately after they preached. But these are ten responses where pastors have had the most visceral reactions.
- “I am going to be late for lunch because you preached so long.”
- “You must not have had much time to prepare that sermon.”
- “My former pastor preached a much better sermon from that text.”
- “I wish {fill in the blank} would have heard that sermon.”
- “You act like you weren’t feeling well while you preached.”
- “I’m sorry I fell asleep while you were preaching. Your voice just puts me to sleep.”
- “Your subject/verb agreement was incorrect three times in your sermon.”
- “I wish you wouldn’t preach from the Old Testament.”
- “Let me tell you what you missed in your sermon.”
- “Are we ever going to be done with this sermon series?”
Pastors often take 10 to 20 hours to prepare a sermon. They pray for God to speak through them. They preach with conviction and fervency. And then they hear one of these sentences.
These ten responses are close approximations of what pastors have actually told me. I am sure there are many more. Let us hear what they are.
Posted on March 2, 2015
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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231 Comments
One I got once was ‘You know (insert the name of a well know Bible teacher) disagrees with you.”.
Pull out the violins!! Its all about the pastor, isn’t it?
Now maybe you know how some of us pastors feel when church members think it’s all about them. “I’m not getting fed!” “My needs aren’t getting met!” “I’m just not happy here!” Many times we feel like saying ,”Pull out the violins!”. I can just imagine how you’d react if your pastor said that to you: “That pastor is so insensitive! He shouldn’t be in the ministry! He ought to be fired right now!”
Gee, you were really good today.
our board recently got a complaint that I preach the gospel 52 weeks a year. I took it as a compliment but it’s hard to hear that from a longstanding follower of Jesus.
Common sense isn’t so common. As a lay person, I couldn’t imagine saying these to the preacher or ss teacher, for that matter.
I would further add, that if any of these thoughts zipped into my head, I would have to ask myself, “was it the preacher, or was it me?”
From a fellow staffer: “I wouldn’t have picked that message for a Sunday morning, but I learned that when a person is anointed, people will respond.”
Translation: “I didn’t like your sermon, but at least God still used you.”
Unfortunately the critiques don’t only come after the sermon. My husband is a phenomenal teacher and preacher, and he’s recieved criticism the night before and even the morning of. What incredibly poor timing to tear someone down (whatever the intention) or even to raise other issues and concerns to be resolved. It is distracting and disheartening. After ten years perhaps I should not be surprised anymore, but I always am. Oh, how we are all in need of amazing grace!
This was very good. I have heard chatter from people in the congregation before. I think people look for the enthusiasm in the service and miss the mark on what they are suppose to take away from the sermon.
I agree that is discouraging for preachers to hear such remarks. At same time I believe that it would be a good idea to publish an article on what do members of the congregation say when the preacher is not accurately representing what the Scriptures say on a subject in the sermon that he just preached, when do they say it, and how do they go about doing it. I am not talking about passages of Scripture that are open to different interpretations. I am talking about passages that if someone took the time to read them, it would be quite obvious that what the preacher is saying is not what the Bible says. What the preacher is essentially massaging Scripture to say what he wants it to say. If he accurately represented what the Scriptures did say on the subject, it might affect the conclusions that he wanted the congregation to draw from what he represented Scripture as saying on a particular subject. Sometimes it is just sloppy preparation or inattention to accuracy. While it might be nice to think that everyone in the congregation on Sunday morning read their Bibles and were familiar with its contents, the reality is that is not the case in most churches. Most of the Scripture folks are exposed to is second-hand–whatever the preacher represents the Scriptures as saying. If he does not accurately represent what the Bible says, they have a distorted view of the content of the Bible and its teachings.