Few people are truly aware of the constant requests, complaints, and criticisms pastors and other church leaders receive. I must admit, however, I was surprised when I asked church leaders on Twitter to share some of the more unusual comments they have received. I was first surprised at how many responded. But I was most surprised at the really strange things people tell pastors and other church leaders.
Many of the comments related to using the Bible too much or to being too evangelistic. I should make those a blog post by themselves.
I narrowed my selection to twenty-five, but it could have been much higher. I left off many great comments to keep this post manageable. I’ve only made minor wording changes to some of these. For the most part, I received these quotes just as you are seeing them. The parenthetical words after each comment represent my off-the-cuff commentary.
- “We need a small group for cat lovers.” (I guess they could serve Meow Mix as a snack.)
- “You need to change your voice.” (Yes ma’am. I’ll try to have that done by next week.)
- “Our expensive coffee is attracting too many hipsters.” (Yep. You don’t want too many of those hipsters in your church.)
- “Preachers who don’t wear suits and ties aren’t saved. It’s in the Bible. (I should have known that’s what Jesus and Paul wore.)
- “Your socks are distracting.” (I understand. I’ll stop wearing socks.)
- “You shouldn’t make people leave the youth group after they graduate.” (It’s going to get really weird by the time they turn 70 years old.)
- “I don’t like the color of the towels in the women’s restroom.” (I don’t understand. They match the towels in the men’s restroom.)
- “We need to start attracting more normal people at church.” (So, you will be leaving the church, I presume.)
- “I developed cancer because you don’t preach from the KJV.” (Major medical announcement! New carcinogen discovered!)
- “Your wife never compliments me about my hair or dress.” (There could be a reason for that.)
- “Not enough people signed up for the church golf tournament. You have poor leadership skills.” (I’m so sorry. I expected more since most of the deacons play golf on Sunday morning)
- “I think you are trying to preach caffeineism.” (Probably Reformed theology with an extra kick.)
- “If Jesus sang from the red hymnals, why can’t we?” (I think you are mistaken. He sang from blue hymnals.)
- (To a pastor who married interracially). “You are living in sin. You shouldn’t be married to each other.” (That one is not worthy of commentary.)
- “I don’t like the brand of donuts in the foyer.” (It’s better than Meow Mix.)
- “You didn’t wrap the hot dogs in bacon for the church picnic.” (I understand that one. Bacon rules.)
- “You shouldn’t drink water when you preach.” (At least not simultaneously.)
- “The toilet paper is on the wrong way in the ladies restroom. It’s rolled under.” (My guess is that it is still functional.)
- “Why don’t you ever preach on Tim Tebow?” (Be patient. I will be preaching a six-week expository series on him in the fall.)
- “You don’t have ashtrays in the fellowship hall.” (Yes we do. They are right next to the spittoons for your chewing tobacco.)
- “Did you see me waving in the back of the worship center? You preached too long. It was time to eat!” (Who needs a clock when I have you?)
- “The eggs were not scrambled enough at the senior adult breakfast.” (We thought you could jump up and down after you ate them to finish the job.)
- “You don’t look at our side of the worship center enough when you preach.” (That’s because you are on that side.)
- “We are leaving the church because you have a red cross on the building. That’s the color of the devil.” (I understand. It’s in the same verse that describes his pitchfork and horns.)
- “Your sermon needed more calories.” (Okay. I’ll feed it one of those donuts in the foyer.)
Pastors and other church leaders must have great patience and strength. They are faced with these and many other comments and demands every day. I love these church leaders, and I thank God for them.
Share with me what comments you have received. And tell me what you think of the twenty-five comments that were shared with me.
Posted on August 19, 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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I started a blog with some thought about being the wife of a youth pastor. I got a good laugh at the comments made…Thanks for sharing them!
I served a part-time pastorate from 2004 to 2010. I soon found out that only 10 of the mostly senior citizen membership had heard of the internet. Five of them thought it was the work of the devil, three others were indifferent to it. The couple who actually had the ‘world wide web’ used it to send me notices of what Madelyn Murray O’Hair was planning to do (even though she had died years earlier).
When my daughter left for the mission field in China, we published her mailing address and email address in the bulletin. The worship leader looked at it quizzically, and said “Look at that email address. I used to run a teletype machine. That’s the same thing as email.”
Our denomination had assigned their first African-American church planter to start a congregation in a large city. To publicize his effort, we scheduled him to perform a concert (he was an amazing piano player) at a nearby college. A retired pastor in our church was announcing the concert during morning worship and made sure that the audience knew “he’s a black man.” He followed that up with “Well, I guess black people need pastors too.” I had to hold back the urge to say, “So do white self righteous bigots.” After that, he never was allowed to make announcements in front of the church.
“You shouldn’t make people leave the youth group after they graduate.” (It’s going to get really weird by the time they turn 70 years old.)”
This is the one I would reconsider. Why do churches train our people to split up and separate and then expect them to enter the company of people who are not invested in them in the least? This is the group to start an new church plant with–them and their peers! Most of these kids are dropping out and after high school, we don’t see them any more.
I could not live with that anymore, so after 16 years of youth ministry, I finally decided to take my last group of graduated youth and form a church! We now work with youth and we have members from birth to age 61 who worship together, learn together, stay together–we do everything together! Our middle school kids we’ve brought in from our Campus Life Club love being in a bible study with the adults!
If you grow them all together, they will stay. You separate them, you will have a back door that is more busy than you’d like. I’m not 70, but I look good in the youth group!
I’d say this is a pretty sad testament to today’s professing church. No wonder I no longer go to church! But you guys should be pretty thankful for these comments since NT prophets and evangelists who witness online and in the streets are cursed, slandered, hit, hated, despised and we get death threats, and much of this from the so-called church! But pastors are also adored by many people so they get compliments and praise every week, if not everyday. So you guys don’t have it so bad. 😉
Spoken like someone who has never been a pastor….
I served for several years as the director of Christian education for my small church. During my time there, we had a very dynamic pastor from Ghana. As a result of his appointment, many Ghanaian and other African families joined our congregation, but many of the older, mostly white people were less than happy. Most of the comments I heard were critical of the style of worship (the new pastor had the audacity to install a screen to display hymn and CCM lyrics!), but many, unfortunately, were overtly racist:
After I announced that we were short one Sunday school teacher: “Why don’t you get some of these black people to teach Sunday school? They’re not doing anything!” (At that time nearly half the Sunday school teachers were black.)
In the church office after our VBS swelled to record numbers: “Look at the names of these kids! They don’t even go to our church! I bet they’re not even from (name of town)!”
In an administrative board meeting: “That screen is a disgrace! Some of us paid good money to hang that marble cross and you can’t even see it when the screen is lowered!” (to which a wiser woman than I replied: “No one paid a higher price than Jesus Christ and it is he, not the cross that we worship.”)
I think people make these sorts of comments because they think of church as *their* safe place and they feel threatened when their idea of safety is challenged, either by wrinkled khakis or people of a different ethnicity. But discipleship isn’t safe at all, and I think a lot of people miss this.
I was asked to baptize a family … of cats. Apparently they were just like humans and that was close enough.
When I playfully asked how they felt about dogs being baptized she looked at me like I was out of my mind. Dogs were the Devil’s animal.
I learned a lot that morning.
Yes, she clearly had her theology mixed up. Everyone knows real Christians love dogs, and that cats are of the devil…. 😉
I’m a pastor.. We had a newly married couple in their twenties in the church, and the new bride would call my wife, then in her forties, for guidance and wisdom…on anything… One day my wife got an urgent call from her…she got right to the point – In an anguished and plaintive voice, she blurted out, “Hello, ________? “I can’t get an orgasm.” She was sincerely expecting my wife to come up with the solution. I know it says to “be all things to all men”, but …..
That’s where I would cover my ears and scream, “TMI!!!”
(TMI = Too Much Information)
1. Don’t call it a stage, it’s a “Raised Platform.”
2. I preached a series on legalism and preached a message in jeans and clown shoes. The very next day a gentleman comes into my office. “I don’t think you need to wear clown shoes again, they should not be worn in church ever.”
3. John Wesley was Wesleyan and didn’t drink. We need to celebrate that heritage.
4. Salvations cannot happen if you get rid of the pulpit
5. Drums are not Biblical
6. A guitar is an instrument only to be used as an compliment to a piano
7. We attend church here but when we need help or encouragement we ask the Mormons. They visit us weekly and are so loving and thoughtful.
8. I can’t believe we are supporting missionaries when there are plenty of people to help right here.
9. The cans of beans were for the funeral dinners only, I expect the church to pay for them today or we are leaving the church.
10. (After I removed a pedophile from leadership) “Why did he leave? Didn’t you show him grace and forgiveness? You need to call him right now and ask him to come back.”
11. While you were on vacation I felt let to make some phone calls and make sure people were still happy here.
12. Some days I feel like a woman in a man’s body. Did you still need me to usher this Sunday?
“Pastor, I couldn’t hardly pay attention to your sermon seeing you in those high heels. I was just sure you were going to fall over.”
“Pastor, you always wear flats. Surely you could dress up a little for church.”
“You should come to our church, our pastor is the best looking one in town (only female one too) and at least she’s good to look at.”
“I know I have a hearing problem and I’ve done nothing about it, and I was sitting in the back of the church…BUT I COULDN’T HEAR YOU.”
In my first church, on my first Sunday, after the service a man came up to me and said, “I just wanted you to know that I voted for the other candidate.” Six months later, upset about a decision the board and I had made, he came to tell me he was leaving the church. I told him I was proud of him for following his inner wisdom and wished him all the best.
While funny, these are symptoms of the long-term neglect of church discipline. Some of the people who say things like these may need patience. Others, like the racist condemning people for inter-racial marriage, need to be disciplined by the church.
Just as when you don’t pull weeds in a garden, if you don’t drive the goats out of the sheep fold, you get a herd of goats, not a flock of sheep.
John wrote. “…these are symptoms of the long-term neglect of church discipline”.
Yes, these are “symptoms”. What’s the “root” cause for these “symptoms”? And, is it possible to “discipline” someone who isn’t a “disciple”?
Call such people who spew weird/inappropriate things at pastors and other church leaders what we may, bottom line, they are “hypocrites”!
The dictionary defines a “hypocrite” as a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.
So, what is the “root cause” of “hypocrites” within the church? Could “hypocrites in the church” be of our own making?
Many believe today’s church and the biblical New Testament church are the same. I do not believe they are and here’s what I believe to be the root cause…
In verse 19 of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) Jesus instructs us to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”
Q: Go and make WHAT? Baptize WHO?
A: Go and make and baptize DISCIPLES!
Q: So, what are we doing baptizing converts?
Yes! Thank you!
Why would you run all the goats out to protect the sheep? As Christians, are we supposed to “preach to the choir?” I thought the idea is to help sinners come to God.
It bothers me to read these stories where a congregant comes to the pastor/preacher/minister (or his/her spouse) with a complaint/comment and the person relating the story has something quick-witted to say and they follow up with a smug sounding ‘they left the church a week later,’ or some such remark. That makes me sad.
I no longer attend any church due to being excluded by not only ill spoken church members, but also ill-meaning pastors.”
The pastor at the last church I attended barely listened to me as I described some very mean spirited bullying of a 9 year old special needs child by some of the “adults” who were leading VBS.
One of these Christian hearted women also informed me that because I only wanted to bake Christmas goodies, not deliver them to the shut-in members of their church, I needed to adjust my attitude.
At another local church (the one in which I was baptized and raised my two sons) I called the pastor to come to the hospital the day after my mother had had open heart surgery and the day her only brother had killed himself in the home of their 80 year old parents. He came and the first thing he wanted to know was why I called him. I was completely gobsmacked. Due to the fact that my sister, father and I had our hands full with caring for my mother who was essentially helpless for a few months post surgery, and her parents, my church attendance was sketchy. Not one person in this church family came to me with even a word of condolence.
The next year when my grandfather died, the same thing occurred. When I mentioned it to a long-time member, her response was that “he wasn’t a member of our church.”
These are not the only anecdotes I could share, but enough to make my point; which is, we are all human, make mistakes, faux pas and speak when shouldn’t. Yes, some of these stories are ridiculous, some funny. Most just make me sad.
What makes me saddest is the people who seem to take personal satisfaction in retorting to some of these misguided, lost sheep, rather than helping to see a true Christian message.
As many have said, what we see here are pastors sharing their stories. Most of the “quick witted” responses that were share here were not said to the people involved. Why? Because we know that in many cases it would be unfruitful and , maybe, even inappropriate.
The only other thing I would say is that one can not “sound” smug in print. The difficulty with something like this on the Internet is that the tone of what is written is determined by the reader, not the writer. It is clear that you have experienced some terrible things in the church. This that should not have happened. I fear that the way you interpret what has been written is clouded by your experiences.
The last thing I would say is that as you read the stories shared by these men and women remember that we are all human, make mistakes, faux pas and speak when shouldn’t.
At a church that I was leading worship there was a woman that went to the pastor and told him that unless I started singing a hymn every Sunday that she was going to quit paying her tithes. I was thankful that the pastor didn’t respond to blackmail.
I first heard this poem from W.A. Criswell. I think he said it was an inscription on a tombstone. Maybe the pastor should quote it to her:
“When God gits his and I gits mine
Then everything will be just fine.
When I gits mine and keep God’s, too,
What do you think God will do?
I believe He’ll collect, don’t you?”