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How to Deal with the Preacher-Eaters

Here are my suggestions to the pastor who finds himself in this snake pit:

1. Spend a great deal of time on your knees.

2. Protect your wife from much of the stress. If she can continue loving the SODs and their families without reservation, all the better. She will need to know some, but not everything.

3. Remember the Lord’s instructions of Luke 6:27ff. In loving your enemies–those who hate you or curse you or threaten you–you are to do good deeds for them, bless them, pray for them, and give to them. Among other benefits, you will make sure that ill will and resentment will not linger in your heart.

4. Minister to the SODs faithfully as though they are your biggest supporters. Otherwise, you are giving them material to use against you.

5. As you gain the trust of the rest of the congregation, in God’s timing, you will be able to withstand the SODs more aggressively and with greater success.

6. Remember that a short-term pastorate plays right into their hands. If you leave after only a few years, they are vindicated that their leadership is needed to save the church during the interim, and they will be lying in wait for the next pastor. You will have done him no favors.

7. Vengeance is not yours. (See Romans 12:9-21 for a manual on dealing with everyone in the church, including the Sons of Diotrephes.) Your job is to preach the Word and love the sheep and stay close to the Lord.

There is one more method, a quick one, that ends the Sons-of-Diotrephes’ hold on the church. Other laymen inside the congregation can rise up against the SODs and put them out of business anytime they please.

The SODs have the pastor in a hammerlock. This is his job and he needs an income to feed his family. If he gets run off from this church and finds himself unemployed, he will find it difficult to get another church. Pastor search committees are understandably wary of flockless shepherds. “If you’re so hot, why aren’t you leading a church?”

However, the SODs have no such control over the other laypeople. That’s why they try to work behind the scenes with the other men and women in the congregation. They use friendship, gifts, thoughtfulness, appointments, and honors to curry favor with the deacons and teachers and officers of the church. The laypeople are so trusting of these (ahem) wonderful people, they “just know” they couldn’t possibly be doing all those terrible things to the pastor. And so, like sheep, they go on their way, allowing the wolves to harass the shepherd.

The remedy: in a church business meeting, stand up and ask important questions. “Who decided this?” “Pastor, was this what you wanted?” “Who is on that committee?” Two things the SODs cannot stand are exposure (everyone finding out what they’ve been doing behind the scenes) and accountability (insisting that decision-makers report to the congregation on what they did and why).

Sons of Diotrephes have contempt for the laity in their congregation. They know the great mass of the members want to be left alone and protected from the inner workings of their church. This provides them with a field on which to do their work. Hold them accountable. Ask questions of them in public. Turn on the lights. Let fresh air into the inner workings of what used to be known as smoked-filled rooms. You might end up saving your church and rescuing an embattled pastor.

There is no one-size-fits-all plan for dealing with self-appointed church bosses. But I hope my analysis provides some assistance to God’s pastors. Don’t forget, friend, to mobilize your prayer support team. In good times and bad, you’ll need a cadre of intercessors regularly entering the Throne Room on your behalf.