Honesty on the Church Scaffold

"Ministers are placing themselves at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to getting a church if they are too honest at the interview stage," a minister told me recently.  This was the advice he was given when he was seeking God's will for his life.

"Being economical with the truth" is the best policy, it appears, within the church today.  The minister who told me this was appalled at such advice.

But this seems to be the way church life is being conducted - always try and pull the wool over the other man's eyes.  I can understand that for an evangelical to get into an anti-Gospel congregation can be very difficult, though it happens at times.  But to advise a ministerial candidate not to be too truthful says much about both the minister who proffers such advice and the church into which he is seeking a call.  To what degree can either of them be called 'Christian'?  Indeed, it also says a lot about a denomination that operates in this way - though of course this will be vociferously denied by evangelical ministers.

What makes this painfully worse is that very often this is precisely the advice given by evangelical ministers to their younger colleagues.  Evangelical, nay, reformed, ministers encourage younger colleagues to be 'economical with the truth' when seeking a call.

Does that tell us something of how these same men exercise their ministries in the church?  Is that why what could be called 'sharp practice' is systemic within churches today?  Is there a particular way of behaving when with church members and others, and an altogether contrary way of behaving when dealing with ministerial colleagues? 

I think this goes a long way to explaining why some ministers get up to ecclesiastical politicking within their denominations.  Consistency of treatment finds no place in their thinking and behaving within various scenarios.  Because these men hold the church, that is, their denomination, in such high regard, they will 'do whatever it takes' to get the desired goal.  If, for example, an undesirable minister is to be got rid of or pulled into line - such a minister is almost exclusively and evangelical Gospel man - these church politicians will do whatever is needed to neuter that man, and thereby destroy him.  'Dead wood' ministers, regardless of their theology, are much more welcome in the churches of these men than are true evangelicals.

The fact is that these 'purveyors of dishonesty' are involved in 'playing church,' a game I used to play at home as a child.  This game has no concern whatever for the eternal destinies of the people to whom they preach, so long as they can present a church that is at peace - with the devil.  I find it very difficult to view such men as sincere servants of Christ who do not have or maintain an eschatological perspective to their ministries.