What do pastors do when Sunday morning is barreling down on them and they realize they have absolutely nothing to say from the pulpit?  Women-in-the-pulpit theology aside, I’m awfully glad I will never be a pastor. The burden to create life-changing sermons week upon week must weigh on a man, especially if he is naturally a shepherd, a hand-on-the-shoulder guy, or just rhetorically average.

Inspiration is a tricky cat. If you believe in the Holy Spirit—and I do—you want to believe that God can zap our intellect, give us supernatural insight, and use his Holy Scriptures to shape our teaching. Yet I’m pretty sure God didn’t deem sacred the seven-day cycle of insights, where the Holy Spirit punches his time clock at certain intervals just in time for the church secretary to print the sermon title every Wednesday for the church bulletin.

This is sad.  Another pastor taken down by sin.  Now, I think these cases are the exception.  Our churches are largely filled with good men and women who lead.  But the fall of pastors is still too prevalent and it has me thinking about the "Senior Pastor" model.  The liabilities are many:

#1 - The senior pastor is looked to primarily for leadership that reflects charisma rather than character.  When there’s a single primary pastor, whether consciously or unconsciously, he alone is relied upon to be the “face” of the ministry.  And in our culture, it’s charisma not character that makes a lasting first impression on people.  Therefore, many churches depend upon his celebrity status to represent their ministry.  New attenders, enamored by a personality, choose to join a church primarily on that basis.  Indeed, in many cases a senior pastor’s character is an afterthought.

#2 - The body of believers is much more susceptible to the development of an unhealthy co-dependence on the senior pastor.  The “Senior Pastor” model, when combined with the widespread dysfunction found in American culture, encourages a co-dependent relationship between pastor and parishoner that is detrimental to the spiritual health of the body.  Thus, the typical believer experiences an unhealthy need to connect with the senior pastor on some level before he or she can connect to that particular church.

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