3 Times I Lost Respect For Pastors

December 2, 2021

I’ve written before that there often comes a time in the deconstruction process when you need to remove religious leaders from the pedestal you once put them on. This can be a tricky situation because oftentimes these pastors aren’t bad people and didn’t do anything wrong. They are living the best they can and trying to help others in an earnest manner despite the box of religion they happen to be in.

But other times, some pastors knock themselves right off the pedestal by doing and/or saying ridiculous things and you can never look at them the same way again.

Here are three stories from my Christian days where three different pastors did or said something that made me instantly lose a chunk of respect for them.

1. The Facebook Mafia

When I was in college, I worked “security” for one of my church’s locations in the city. “Security” goes in quotes because I was far from an actual security guard. Between choir practice, the women’s Beth Moore seminar series, and Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, there was something going on pretty much every night of the week. After all that stuff was done, I’d go through the entire church and turn off all the lights and lock all the doors. Simple.

I had a lot of time in the church office after hours. There was a night when something in one of the teaching pastor’s outboxes caught my eye, there for the secretary to mail the next day. It was a letter addressed to the “Facebook Mafia.”

I just couldn’t help myself.

This teaching pastor, who gave sermons most Sundays and who many in the congregation looked up to as a dependable source of spiritual wisdom, had penned a letter to Facebook that read like the ravings of a paranoid lunatic. Basically, he declared that he did not have a Facebook profile by choice and was deeply perturbed by other people who did have Facebook profiles being able to post pictures of him on their profiles. He was writing to them demanding they remove all pictures of him, threatening legal action, and calling them a long list of colorful names.

After reading the letter, I had a quiet “WTF” moment to myself before putting the paper back where I’d found it. I never could look at that pastor the same way again.

2. The Talking Parking Lot

Back when I was a Christian, email lists weren’t quite what they are today. At least, my church hadn’t upped its email marketing game at the time. They’ve improved today (I’m still on the email list and get the weekly email update) but back then, it was quite rare to receive an email from my church.

So it caught my attention when I had an email from them one day. The subject line read: “The Talking Parking Lot.”

One of the pastors had written a lengthy short story from the point of view of the church’s parking lot. In it, the parking lot agonized over its potholes, cracks, and bumps. It understood and accepted that these things were expected to happen over time, yet felt sad that no one was willing to take care of it.

But most of all, the parking lot was upset because in its current state, it could not provide the best possible first impression for the guests who came to church for the first time. And that was a huge problem.

At the bottom of the email was a call to action: please donate money (to a separate fund that doesn’t include your regular tithes) to help repair the church’s parking lot.

This whole email left me scratching my head. Despite these pastors always claiming that it only looked like they exclusively worked on Sundays and that they were actually busy all week long, this guy had put a lot of time and effort and thought into this bizarre narrative. I couldn’t help but feel like the same request could’ve been made in a far less strange way.

I didn’t donate toward repairing the Talking Parking Lot.

3. I Need Your Football Tickets

There was a period in my life where over the course of several Sundays, the college pastor’s sermons were just resonating with me. You probably remember the feeling. He was saying all the stuff that I felt I needed to hear at the time. Of course I believed God was speaking to me through him.

I thought it would be nice to let him know and give him some encouragement and edification that his messages were benefitting someone. So I pulled him aside one Sunday after the service and told him. I was very honest, earnest, and thankful for his sermon series that had meant so much to me over the past couple of weeks.

He responded with, “Thanks man. Hey bro, while I have you here, are you planning to go to any of the home games this season?”

He told me he planned to do ministry to college students in the student section during the football games, but he needed volunteers to transfer their student section football tickets to him and some of the other pastors.

I was completely flabbergasted. I chose to be open and vulnerable with this guy, and in return he tried to hustle me out of my football tickets.

And no, I never did transfer him my football tickets. A part of me had a strong inclination that he wasn’t going to get much evangelizing done during 4^th and goal.

Bonus: My Baptism Didn’t Count

I wrote an article about the time I sat through an entire sermon telling me that my baptism didn’t count and that I needed to redo it. In short, I was furious and adamantly refused. You can read about it here.

What about you? Did any of your pastors do strange things similar to these that caused you to look at them in a different light? Let me know in the comments!