The Presumptuous Pastor

Freshly graduated from Bigger Faith Bible Institute, Manny Hasnowitz was eagerly looking forward to planting a church that would be the Next Big Thing.  He was sure that God was leading him to Busted Bow, a small town in the middle of Drywood County located at the intersection of two state highways.

Manny and his wife Trulie were especially excited about a word they had been given at the Apostles’ Gathering, a church where the pastor had attended BFBI and had been affiliated with the BFBI ministerial fellowship at one time, though they had parted ways since.  The Head Apostle at the Apostles’ Gathering declared that Manny was anointed to be the It-Boy of Drywood County.  Trulie didn’t understand the terminology, so they explained to her that an It-Boy is the person to whom God has given spiritual authority over an entire area.  So any Christian activities, special meetings, new church plants, etc., would have to go through him, as he would have apostolic authority over the entire county.

Manny and Trulie rented an apartment in Drywood County and embarked on a search for a meeting place.  They found a great deal in a strip mall that was having hard times ever since its “anchor store” went out of business due to internet competition.  He picked out a name, Bigger Faith Worship Center, reasoning that “Worship Centers” were now “in” much like “Family Churches” had been “in” a couple decades earlier.  Soon he had a professional designer make his church logo, which cleverly combined a Bible, a dove, a flame, a cross, and a hands-in-the-air rejoicing person.  Then he got down to the business of putting up flyers all over town letting people know that there was a new church being planted.  This would surely draw at least the crowd that always goes to whatever the New Thing in town is (and then leaves when a Newer Thing gets started).

Before moving there, he did some minor research on the area and found that the biggest churches seemed to be First Denominational Church, Busted Bow Denominational Church, and Drywood Denominational Church.  Man, if there was a need for the full gospel to be preached, it was there in Busted Bow.  But now that Manny and Trulie were in town, the troops had arrived!  Busted Bow would surely be the site of a mighty revival that would be publicized in Christian magazines.

The first week drew a crowd of 30 people, which was a stupendous start in that area.  Manny and Trulie attributed part of this to their advertising slogan, “Bigger Faith Worship Center – a Better Church than the One You’ve Been Attending!” and part of it to Manny’s stirring first message, “Barbequing All the Denominational Sacred Cow Doctrines You’ve Heard in a Single Message.”

The first inevitable phone call wasn’t long in coming.  “Is this Pastor Hasnowitz?”  “Yes,” said Manny.  “Pastor, I’m Max Dresser, and I pastor Drywood Denominational.  I’m concerned about the approach you seem to be taking with your church plant.”  Manny thought to himself, “Yeah, I’m sure you are, pal, because your people will soon be coming to my church for better teaching so they don’t have to listen to your dumpy denominational doctrines anymore!”  Pastor Max went on, “Pastor, my concern is that your vision seems to be to build your church at the expense of the other congregations in Busted Bow rather than reaching the lost yourself.  That’s not the way we do things around here.”  Manny was in no mood to be lectured to by his inferiors, the pastors who had barns full of sacred cows behind their pulpits.  “Pastor Max, I’m sorry you don’t like it, but God has given me this county and I’m on assignment.  I am now the Apostle over Drywood County.  You’re welcome to come to our services yourself and learn the Word anytime you want.”  The conversation didn’t last much longer.

Soon after that, he got a call from Pastor Les Fuller at First Denominational.  “Would you be able to come to a meeting with some of the local clergy?”  Manny sensed a setup and quickly declined.  He didn’t need to take time from his apostolic calling to talk to pastors who didn’t know the Word.  After all, he and his Bigger Faith friends had a saying, “There are two kinds of ministers in the world – those who attended Bigger Faith Bible Institute and those who SHOULD have.”

The phone rang later that week, and on the other end was a man who identified himself as Banshee Windmill, pastor of Busted Bow Christian Assembly, a small church that Manny had never even heard of.  How he got his nickname was incomprehensible given his mousy little voice.  “Pastor Manny, I want to welcome you to Busted Bow.  There is a ministers’ fellowship here that meets one a month, and I wanted to invite you.”  Manny said, “Thanks for the invite, but I still have to work to support myself and I just don’t have time for things like that.”  “Well, please know that you’re welcome as a brother in Christ when you can make it,” said Banshee.

“Do you think maybe you should take time off and get to know the other pastors so you can work with them?” asked Trulie after the call was over.  “No, of course not!” said Manny.  “If those other churches had been doing their jobs and teaching the people correctly, God would not have sent US to Drywood County!  But when we get bigger and the other churches’ people start emptying into Bigger Faith, we will start our OWN ministerial fellowship and WE will run it by the Holy Spirit instead of by the flesh!  Of course, the other pastors will be welcome to come see how church should be done.”

The next weeks still saw decent attendance, though it tapered off some from the first week.  Manny started to learn some things about pastoring that they didn’t teach him at Bigger Faith Bible Institute.  He had to handle a situation where the drummer was backstabbing him and there were repercussions.  He faced a situation where one of the other new people was living in blatant and unrepented sin and tried to “hit on” others in the congregation.  Some people complained that the music was too loud while others in the same service complained that they had to turn up their hearing aids to hear the music.  Some wanted more traditional hymns, others wanted Southern Gospel, others contemporary music, others Christian Scream Metal and one even wanted to do Amazing Grace in Gangsta Rap style.  Some older people complained they were too cold while younger people sitting next to them complained that they were too hot.

Then there was the seemingly endless stream of phone calls from telebeggars, some of whom might have had legitimate needs but who could have been looking for cash to support their crystal meth habits or alcohol addictions.  Surely they couldn’t expect Manny to stop working during the day to screen out who was legit.  Then there seemed to be a looming power struggle over who would get to be the associate pastor when the time came.  Manny wished that the classes had covered THESE kinds of things.  The thought even flashed across his mind that maybe those other pastors in town who had many years of pastoral experience could give him some tips, but then he remembered his take on “positioning” – he didn’t want to come across as someone lower on the ministerial totem-pole when he knew that he was the county It-Boy.  He was there to GIVE advice, not TAKE it.  After all, HE had been to Bigger Faith Bible Institute and the others had not.

After some time, Manny announced a special Healing Service.  He hoped to get more people from other churches to come see that a much better church was now available.  Some actually came out of curiosity because healing wasn’t being preached over at the denominational places.  Banshee Windmill actually showed up with some of his people.  Manny got to see that he was a scrawny little fellow whose body matched his voice.  Honestly, he looked like the kind of guy whose idea of fun would be reading trigonometry tables at night, or maybe counting the instances of the letter “e” in today’s newspaper.  But he actually raised his hands and sang exuberantly when the time came, to Manny’s surprise.

“God doesn’t give and take away!” declared Manny as he started his sermon.  “Job was wrong!  God isn’t an Indian giver!”  The place got eerily quiet all of a sudden.  Suddenly Manny realized that something that he said had irked people.  Then he thought that maybe some “politically correct” people objected to the word Indian.  Perhaps some in the crowd belonged to the group “White People Who Are Perpetually Offended on Behalf of Other People,” which had recently gotten Native American references removed from the Busted Bow High School football team’s logo.  “Okay, God isn’t a NATIVE AMERICAN giver, for you snowflakes in attendance!” said Manny.  Suddenly people started filing out the back door without saying another word until only Banshee was left.

“Son,” squeaked Banshee, “you ought not to have said that.”  Manny realized that something was wrong, of course.  “You see,” Banshee continued, “Busted Bow was named over an incident in this county involving a great Native warrior.  The people here are proud of their heritage.  At least half of them have some Native blood.  They don’t take kindly to the idea that white men made treaties that gave them things, but then they took back what they promised, and then they called people who do that Indian givers.  More like White Man givers, I’d say.  You made a mistake.  But God’s not done with you.  Why don’t you come to one of our night services sometime, seeing as you don’t have one.”

Manny wasn’t about to put himself under another ministry even for a night, so he declined the offer, but he suddenly found that no one wanted to come to his church anymore.  Not only that, but his boss found an excuse to fire him almost immediately.  Now paying his rent was going to be an issue.  He needed some money, and fast.  He took what little money he had and put it into a new thing he saw on the internet that let Melvin Merlitz of Lafayette, Indiana turn $300 into $5,630,132 in a year using a retired nuclear physicist’s proprietary “naked shorted stock options trading secrets.”  Manny lost all his money without ever reading the disclaimer that the trades cited were done on paper as hypothetical trades with the benefit of hindsight, and it turned out that the marketer had never placed a real trade in his life.  Desperately, he made a loan against his credit card using a “convenience check” (so named because the fee involved was very convenient for the bank) so that he could pay hundreds of dollars for an “initiation fee” to get into a multi-level marketing organization that a fellow minister was part of.  It was too late when he realized that the only “product” really being sold was the “initiation fee” for people under him for which he got a cut, and the whole thing was nothing more than a glorified chain letter.  Manny owed everyone in town after that – the electric company, the phone company, the cable company (which never even got the chance to jack up his rates astronomically after the initial 12-month teaser period), the landlord, the credit card company, you name it.  After he got his eviction notice, he realized that he was done in Drywood County and he would have to leave in disgrace.

On their way out, Manny and Trulie decided to finally stop at a night service to hear Banshee Windmill in action.  After all, he’d always been nice and supportive to them.  Banshee started out with his mousy little voice but suddenly he started preaching so loudly that the new sound man kept trying desperately to turn him down until he realized that Banshee’s microphone wasn’t turned on.  He started waving his arms wildly and prancing around and putting “ah” after every few syllables – “I’m talking-ah, about-ah, the mighty Holy Ghost-ah!”  Manny didn’t know what to make of it, but Trulie had seen it before.  “This is what they call Old-Time Pentecostal Preaching,” she whispered.  Manny was almost mortified when he realized that in between the “ah’s” Windmill was preaching the same kind of message Manny had been taught at Bigger Faith.  Manny had always assumed that NO ONE in all of Drywood County preached “faith” messages that agreed with what Bigger Faith taught, and that was why God had sent him there – to educate all the other poor ignorant preachers who didn’t have his training.

At the end, Pastor Windmill started waving his hands over people and they started falling over.  More interestingly, some of them were getting up and testifying that they were healed.  Now Manny was really perplexed.  At school he had learned about the gifts of the Holy Spirit by watching the people on the platform flow in them, but he never got to flow in them himself.  Here was a guy who had never attended Bigger Faith Bible Institute having miracles that Bigger Faith Worship Center didn’t even see, though Manny had preached about miracles.  So there WERE miracles going on in Drywood County, but not at the very church pastored by the county It-Boy!

When it was all over, Banshee Windmill asked Manny to come over for a “talking-to.”  Manny figured that he’d better listen this time.

“Son, if you decide to pastor again, I’ve got some advice for you.  When you go into a new town, try to get to know the ministers who have been laboring there for years.  Now you might know some things that they don’t about the Bible, but I can guarantee you that they’ll know some things about ministry and handling people that you don’t know.  And they will DEFINITELY know some things about the people in the town and the history of the area that you don’t know.  You got yourself into trouble because you didn’t know these people and you didn’t make any effort to learn about them.  You didn’t really act like you cared, either.  You just wanted your platform to preach and build your own little kingdom where you were the top dog.

“You came in here with an attitude that you couldn’t learn from any of us.  Son, you can learn from just about ANYONE because none of us knows it all.  We all need each other.  You were like a hand saying to a foot, ‘I don’t need you.’  We do know a thing or two about miracles around here.  And by the way, I learned faith reading books from Bigger Faith Ministries.  The reason you don’t see my name on their church listing is that it’s limited to pastors who actually ATTENDED Bigger Faith Bible Institute.

“I got to see an unfortunate attitude when I went to the National Bigger Faith Conference one year.  People kept asking me if there was a Bigger Faith church in Busted Bow.  I told them no, but I preach the same things they teach at BFBI.  That didn’t matter to them.  If it wasn’t a church pastored by a Bigger Faith graduate, it didn’t count, so a Bigger Faith church was needed in our town.  I hope that since then the Bigger Faith alumni have come to realize that they don’t have a monopoly on the Holy Ghost.

“I’ve seen Bigger Faith people with the attitude that other pastors should support their meetings, but they never went out and supported other pastors’ meetings unless they were fairly far away and hosted by fellow Bigger Faith grads.  That drove people away after a while.  The other pastors just gave up on trying to network with them.  I’m telling you, blowing into town and just starting up your own thing in isolation from all the other ministers in the Body of Christ is a mistake.  You made it once; don’t make it twice.”

Epilogue

When I finally pastored my first church, I was glad that I did the opposite of what Manny and Trulie Hasnowitz did, especially after serving under another pastor who did what they did (despite my protests) and had their horrible outcome.  I made it a point to network with the other pastors in the area.  I quit my local town group because they let a gay-rights-champion fake minister posing as a Christian in as a member, but I was part of a county-wide group of ministers who were real believers for years.  I made some good friends who were denominational pastors who did not preach the Baptism with the Holy Spirit.  I DID learn things from them.  We enjoyed fellowshipping around what we could agree on.  They even listened to my healing testimonies and were supportive of my decision to follow God into healing ministry even though their churches did not practice divine healing.  I was the guest speaker at several events put on by one of those denominational churches, including Christian school chapel services, a Thanksgiving service and a community Easter sunrise service at which I preached Christ and gave an altar call.  Folks at that service even said that they felt a “whoosh” when I did it, though I’d call it the anointing.

We all need each other in the Body of Christ.  Don’t ever forget it.  Pride goes before destruction (Proverbs 16:18).