Presented July 4, 2010
A dozen or so years ago a woman visited our church and said words like these: You’re not like my pastor where I use to live. He was a GOOD preacher. He gave us the dickens from the pulpit.
So I tuned into that churches web site and this is what I heard her old pastor saying with a tone of severity and authority: Now it’s time for the preaching of God’s word. There will be no moving. No one is going to the bathroom. The ushers have closed the doors. You will remain seated and you will listen to the word of the Lord. The feeling of the message was one of oppression — one that said, “If you so much as look at your watch, you’re not worthy to be here!”
If you find yourself in that kind of place, you are probably sitting under a spiritual abusive preacher.
Everyone is familiar with abuse. Physical abuse. Verbal abuse. Psychological abuse. In Jesus’ day there was a group of people who engaged in a different kind of abuse. It was an abuse of power. It might be thought of as spiritual abuse. Spiritual abuse is the kind where a position of spiritual leadership is misused to influence of further the self-centered interests of the leader rather than to help the one or ones in the leader’s care.
This podcast takes Jesus’ words about such people and helps us to both avoid becoming abusers and avoid being influenced by them.