Back Where They Started

Another minister friend told me about his congregation. He said it was a good congregation and could be a great congregation with seven or eight good deaths. A couple of years later he said he had had seven or eight funerals but he said the wrong people died That comment is suggestive that most ministers believe that the church they serve would be a whole lot better if the people who oppose them could be removed. There are always some people who are not on board with what any minister wants to do.

If you can't bury those who oppose you, then sometimes you can make them angry with you and they leave. That was the hope I had in my ministries. If you could just encourage them to join another church, then both of us would be happier. Well, sometimes it is not possible to find another church so they just stay home, which works pretty well. But the delightful thing that has come to my ears with the new minister is that they are celebrating at the church that all of the people that I drove away have begun to come back in response to the new minister. Here I thought I was doing him a favor by clearing out the unproductive branches. The joy at the church is that "most of those that had left are now coming back."

That is probably why the most successful ministers are those who stay in one place for a very long time. If you stay in a place like Frank Harrington in Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta for 25 years, you drive the ones who don't like you away and they don't come back because you never leave.

It is also a great example of what the folk singer Jimmy Buffet has in mind with a song about birthdays and retiring. "The one thing that I've learned in all this living is it would not change a thing if I let go." None of us is irreplaceable and when you pull the stick out of the water, the water just flows back and you would never know the stick had been there. Churches are like that. Ministers go and the old members flow back in and it is just like it was. They are back where they started. But I had a good time while there and hope the new minister has a good time driving away the ones he does not want.