|
Has laziness become
a way of life in today's society?
A look around us
should bring anyone with a bit of sense to realize that we as a people
have become extremely lazy. Remote controls even keep us from having to
move a lousy 10 feet to change a channel on our TV sets. Microwave ovens
make preparing a meal quick and easy. Electric windows on our cars make
sure we don't get any unnecessary exercise by having to roll down our own
windows. Escalators and elevators keep us from doing too much walking.
Watch a commercial sometime and study the wording. You will hear things
like: All the bells and whistles, all the modern conveniences, etc.
Fast food restaurants have it all setup where you can drive you vehicle up
to a speaker, tell them what you want, drive another twenty or thirty feet
and someone will hand you your food all ready to go home to eat. The list
goes on and on but, well I think you get my drift. We seem to be willing
to do whatever we can to keep from having to do any more work than we have
to.
I am amazed when I talk to people
about this subject. Most everyone agrees that we are becoming a lazier
than thou society, but I see little if any effort to do anything about it.
The sad thing about all this is that nothing, it seems will be done to
change things. We have become way to comfortable with all these modern
conveniences. During my talks with people of different age groups, one
thing becomes very clear. The older the person I am talking to, the
better the work ethics seem to be. It seems that people sixty-five and
over have carried on the work ethics of their parents and grandparents.
This age group, even though retired, work every day at something or
another. Most still cut their own grass, raise their own gardens, grow a
nice crop of flowers throughout their yards and tend to stay busy. When
ask about this, the overall consensus was: "If I just sit around, I will
waste away and just die". Makes sense doesn't it? I also notices that
the younger the age group was, the more I heard comments that were of
opposing views than those of the sixty-five plus group. The younger the
person, the more I noticed that there were more overweight people, more
people who complained more about their jobs, more people who wanted a job
that didn't require as much physical labor out of them than the one's they
already had and on and on. The very young of these age groups may just
have an excuse for their laziness. These children have been brought up in
an age of remote controls, television sets in every room in the house,
radios, computers, etc., etc. I notice that even my own son who is almost
four years old, (I know, I am an old man to have such a young child)
spends more and more time in front of the television set that he does
playing outside. It has become a battle just to get him to go outside and
ride his electric riding tractor and to play outdoors when the weather is
nice. Of course he is under the watchful eye of his overly protective
daddy when he is outside. But, my point is that even at the age of four,
kids have way too many things to distract them from actual physical
activity. I dread to think what my boy will be like in ten years if I do
not change his habits before they get the best of him.
Teenagers - the
source of headaches for every parent since the beginning of time. I know,
I used to be one. To hear my parents talk sometimes I think I must have
been the equivalent of two teenagers at one time. That's another whole
different article in itself, so back to my article. Teenagers today I
fear for dreadfully. This age group has been allowed to be circumcised
into a lifestyle that has no, or it seems to be the case anyway, work
values at all unless it's a job in an office environment, working with
computers or in a management position. My fear is that if this trend
continues, who is going to do the physical work in the future? I cannot
blame the teenagers for this attitude, their parents allowed this to
happen by not living a lifestyle which portrayed a better work ethic. A
source for prayer for sure.
So, my question is
this.
Concerning our preachers and pastors, what category do we find them
falling into concerning their work ethic and pastoral efforts? Are they
like the senior citizens who work hard all the time or like the younger
group who look for the easy way out?
Unfortunately, I see the work
ethic of the teenager and the five - twelve year old group in most of our
preachers today. Now you might ask me how can I say this? My answer is
simple.
It's Easy! When God
called me into this particular ministry, I knew I had no choice but to
"grab the bull by the horns" so to speak and take the calling seriously.
I have spent endless hours watching, studying, talking to, asking about
and critiquing Preachers and Pastors so that I might learn a little about
why so many churches are not growing, why some are actually losing ground
and others it seems are getting larger and larger. What I learned
concerned me deeply and with a little research on the Internet, I found
that I am not alone in my thoughts. It seems that laziness of preachers
has been a concern for many years.
Martin Luther wrote the following: Some
pastors and preachers are lazy and no good. They do not pray; they do not
read; they do not search the Scripture ... The call is: watch, study
attend to reading. In truth you cannot read too much in Scripture; and
what you read you cannot read too carefully, and what you read carefully
you cannot understand too well, and what you understand well you cannot
teach too well, and what you teach well you cannot live too well ... The
devil ... the world ... and our flesh are raging and raving against us.
Therefore, dear sirs and brothers, pastors and preachers, pray, read,
study, be diligent ... This evil, shameful time is not the season for
being lazy, for sleeping and snoring… Reference Meuser, Fred W.,
Luther the Preacher,
pp. 40-41.
Now I know not everyone is or will be a Martin Luther. No matter
what we may think of the Lutheran Movement, Luther was a visionary, a man
with a good work ethic who cared for the Kingdom of Christ and did
something about it. You can hear the plea in his voice, almost a sobbing
cry for men of God to do right and be diligent in their efforts. Luther
wrote this just before turning sixty years of age, therefore assuring us
that he had plenty of years to learn before saying anything.
"Lazy preachers can get by with just a
few hours work a week — they reach into their file cabinet on Saturday
night to find out what they will preach in Sunday morning and can spend
the rest of the week playing golf or reading USA Today. They never write
an article, class book or prepare any original material. Some of these men
are great at having tea parties, but they usually do not know the epistles
from the apostles." …. Why Churches Die by David Padfield.
http://www.padfield.com/1998/whydie.html
One of the things I recognized when studying the different preachers and
churches was that there are a lot of preachers who are pastors of a church
and put in approximately five to ten hours of actual work each week and
yet complain about not having any free time or are so busy they just
cannot seem to get everything done. I personally know of many of this
type of preachers and am amazed that they can sleep at night without
having nightmares. I cannot imagine what their talks with God
must be like. Imagine talking to God about your Church and congregation
and all the time feeling like you were justified in all that you do,
without realizing that God knows every jot and tittle about you and your
performance within and without the Church. How can a Minister justify to
God their feelings of being so busy they cannot keep up when they spend
more time at home doing virtually nothing and spending only five to ten
hours per week doing God's work? Now I know sometimes some weeks are
busier than others and during these weeks I suppose the hourly output goes
up to something like fifteen to twenty for the Lord's work. Preachers
today and I know this from an actual conversation I had where a Minister
emailed a Minister friend of the same denomination and ask him to email a
copy of his Sermon for Sunday to them because they did not have the time
to prepare one themselves. NoW for the Love of God!, what kind of
preaching is that when a preacher steps up to the pulpit and reads someone
else's message verbatim from a sheet of paper and never even had the
honesty to tell the congregation in advance that the thoughts and words
they were being given to believe were not even their own. This to me is
deception and borders on blasphemy. Maybe the sermon material was good
but maybe isn't good enough. Honesty goes much further than dishonesty.
There is not, barring an emergency, any excuse for not having enough time
to prepare a sermon. The reason I believe this? If you have no material
ready for Sunday morning, PRAY to the Lord that He would give you a
message of some kind that would benefit the congregation. Any preacher
worth his or her (and I am not an advocate of women preachers) salt
should know enough Scripture to be able to come up with a sermon with no
notice, especially if they were actually called of God to preach in the
first place. That itself is something that I will discuss later on in
this article.
"It is not that Christians are
"tight-wads" and refuse to support God's work, on the contrary Christians
are usually very generous, it's they do not like to support laziness in
anyone. The reason some preachers don't get the support they want is they
are notoriously lazy and slothful. Many preachers are even too lazy to
study. From listening to some preachers a few times one soon learns they
only have a handful of original messages and just "preach" variations of
them. Unfortunately, one could listen to one of these preachers five or
six times and hear virtually everything of substance he has to say; the
rest is just "filler." Mature, seasoned believers soon recognize this
laziness and are not eager to support it. On the other hand, a preacher
who is industrious and doesn't neglect study but regularly delivers
vibrant, original messages will often receive adequate or even abundant
support without ever asking for it". … From Liberty to
Legalism A Candid Study of Legalism, "Pharisees," and Christian Liberty by
Timothy S. Morton
Looking at the above excerpt one can certainly understand the concept of
not wanting to support a minister who was just downright lazy and
unproductive. But, unfortunately, there are many of these types of
preachers in our pulpits today. Just today I was chatting with an elderly
gentleman in front of our local post office and one of the things he
mentioned was that in his opinion, most of the preachers today just want a
paycheck! Wow did he hit the nail on the head! I couldn't agree more with
that statement. So many preachers today want to work on Sunday mornings
or sometimes Sunday morning and evening and collect their paychecks. That
to me is the same thing as Skyway robbery. What is Skyway robbery? The
same thing as highway robbery but stealing from the Lord instead of a
company or individual. What would a company do to someone who only put in
less than half of a week's work hours but insisted on being paid for the
whole week? I can answer that one easily. They would not accept it.
They would insist that the employee be paid exactly what they had coming
and not an dollar more.
I was involved in a particular Denomination recently and was asked by the
Pastor of the local church my family and I attended to consider starting a
new Church within the Church on Sunday evenings. I was appalled that this
particular Minister thought they needed someone else to hold services on
Sunday evening when the only service they preached was on Sunday mornings.
Granted that particular Minister was responsible for two services on
Sunday morning in two separate towns which were approximately ten miles
apart, but Sunday morning was the only services held and that left the
entire week with no services and only visitations and such to handle. Now
both of these churches together barely if ever went over 100 persons
combined total in both congregations. This was the only "job" this
particular pastor held and for the life of me I couldn't understand why
they couldn't handle a couple extra hours each week. Well, I turned it
down, and to this day there are no Sunday evening services in either
church. The pastor made it plain to the Pastor Parish Relations Committee
that she needed Sunday evenings to be with her husband. That my friends
is DISGUSTING! There is no other word for it! This pastor had many hours
each week to spend with her spouse. Besides that...accepting the Call from
God to the Ministry is a life long commitment and should be approached as
a FULL TIME 24/7 calling. A call from the Lord is in no way comparable to
any other "job" one could have. Lazy! Just plain lazy! That's what this
preacher was and still is. That may sound harsh, but wait a minute...I
cannot call it any other thing but what it is. What would it profit any
of us to call it something else just so it sounded a little more
politically correct. No commitment is what it all boils down to. One area
where I am convinced that preachers are just plain lazy in is COMMITMENT.
There just isn't any commitment anymore. Preachers want a paycheck, free
housing, free utilities, vehicle expense, fuel expense, phone expense,
continual training expense, and many more perks, but never even think
about how the scales are tipped. I remember talking to a
Baptist preacher one time who said with a sad heart that while visiting a
Seminary he asked a lot of the students there about their calling and far
too many said it was a good job. Show me in the Bible where God says,
follow me and I will give you a good job. But, lazy preachers do not care
about what the Bible says, they care much more about what they are getting
out of their position than what they are putting into it.
CALLED of GOD or of Man?
Now back to the statement made earlier.
"Any preacher worth his or her (and I
am not an advocate of women preachers) salt should know enough Scripture
to be able to come up with a sermon with no notice, especially if they
were actually called of God to preach in the first place".
I am firm in my belief that the
majority of the preachers today are not called of God but are called of
man by man. What man you might ask? The preacher himself! Far too many
of the preachers in the pulpits today decided to become preachers because
their dad was a preacher and/or their grandfather was a preacher before
him. It is unfortunate but far too many churches have become family
businesses. Take for example
Lakewood Church in Houston Texas.
Joel Osteen, son of John Osteen
took over the reigns of the Church when his father passed away.
With his father sick in the hospital, John asks his son, Joel, to preach
for him that Sunday. Initially Joel balked at the
idea and said “no.” He then relented and here are
Joel’s own words concerning his preaching that day:
"I just got up there and told
stories.
I was so glad when it was over, I said, ‘I’ll never do this again in my
life". but as we all know, Joel did take over the pulpit because
someone had to. This was his dad's church and somehow they had to keep it
going. My question would be this. Why not set out to look for a
preacher to fill the vacancy created by the passing of John Osteen. There
are many qualified preachers around the globe that God could have chose
from if Lakewood Church had made the position available to someone
other than a family member.
Here we have a perfect example of a preacher who was not called by
God but was called by himself. Not only called by himself but a man who
didn't even want the position and would rather not have taken it. Now
don't get me wrong and jump to any conclusions here. I am sure there are
many men who God called to the Ministry who would rather have done
something else. That is an entirely different ideal. Sacrificing for the
Lord's work is one thing, sacrificing for one's own family business and
calling it a work of and for God is another story indeed. I applaud any
and all men who have sacrificed for the Lord's work. That is a wonderful
and beautiful thing. But, when a person takes a position as Sacred and
Holy as a Call from God, just because no one else is available immediately
to fulfill it is just down right wrong!
All of this adds up to show what a horrible condition our churches
and pulpits are in today. Lazy preachers. Selfish preachers. Preachers
who never were called by God to preach anything. Preachers looking for a
good retirement plan. Preachers looking for a cozy job where they won't
have to get their hands dirty or their clothes a little sweaty and yet
still receive a nice paycheck with all the bennies..
Conclusion: There are some
wonderful preachers of the Gospel in this old terrible world. Preachers
who heard the call from God, answered it and sacrificed everything they
had without a second look back. Preachers who preach the Word as God
wants it preached. Many souls are being saved today by these preachers
but sad to say, there are FAR TOO MANY men and women who are lazy, no good
for nothing persons who need to get on their knees and ask God for
acceptance of their repentance for their deception. These lazy preachers
need to see what they have become. I say become, because no man was born
lazy, he elected to become that way. No man was born selfish, he elected
to become that way. No man was born a deceiver, he elected to become that
way. It's not too late. Jesus is waiting. If you are reading this
article and feel in any way that you fit even a part of this mold,
Change. Change my friend while you still can. Call or email us. We
will do anything we can to help you. We love every one of you.
Blessings,
Robert Wise
|