Fun with Bible Study

So I thought we'd take a week off the Wednesday Bible Study to have a little fun here.  I found and article on "20 really weird complaints pastors receive", by Thom S Rainer of the Christian Post, and thought I might share them with you, along with how I'd answer them... (apologies to Thom for replacing his comments, except on # 10...)

Keeping in mind these are real complaints pastors submitted...


1- “You didn’t send me a thank you note for my thank you note.”

Please reference Matthew 6:3.  I think you have too much communication between your right and left hands...

2- “You are too happy!” Well, they can't all be eulogies....


3- “I will leave the church if you don’t put tissue seat covers in the bathrooms!”  I hear they have them at the filling station across the street...

4- “I would be happy to take your wife to the store to help her select some appropriate clothes.”   This time I'll reference you to Matthew 3:4 and ask if you can come to our house later for locusts and wild honey.

5- “I guess I have to die to get you to wear a suit and tie to church again.”   Probably.  But as long as you're still breathing, how do you think I rock these Speedos?

6- “Every sermon you preach is better than the next one.”  As a Time Lord, I appreciate that... I think...

7- “Why do we have to follow something an apostle wrote 2,000 years ago?”  Um, you're new here, aren't you?

8- “The VBS hot dogs are too cheap.”  Yeah, well, wait'll you try the meatballs that we used as an ice-pack during the lock-in last summer.... (This is a shockingly TRUE story, BTW...)

9-  “You don’t tell enough jokes when you preach.”  Tell, me again, which Commandment was it where you have to entertain the Lord Your God?

10- “You need to stop talking about making disciples.” Yes, that criticism came from an elder.  

11- “When you changed the name from Sunday school to small groups, you took Jesus and the Bible out of the church!”  I refer you to scene II, act II of Romeo And Juliet.  No need to invoke the Lord when Shakespeare will do.


12- “You didn’t give good advice about the family vacuum.”  And that's a shame, as it's been handed down since 1901...

13- “I heard you are going to cancel Christmas.”  Well, I had to let God know we couldn't afford a Savior this year, with the drop in tithing...

14- “I don’t like the color of your beard hair.”  I refer you to Isaiah 53:2, for starters.  Jesus didn't save mankind by His good looks.  Perhaps the purple highlights ARE a bit much, but...

15- “Your hair color is too dark for someone in your profession.”   Would you believe this can really be a thing?  I actually went into "how to select a pastor" articles to say, "well I found nothing on that in the job description", but afterwards I actually found a pretty interesting and amusing article  (if I can share without being 'too happy') here, and the comments really were better than the article!  Also, I hit a search topic on Bible verses about hair color- and other than gray being a mark of wisdom (One only needs to go to Washington to cast shade on that), there wasn't anything ON hair color directly- only to not let it become a matter of vanity.  So I guess my response, were I the pastor, to this criticism, would be, "Please feel free to go to the elders and have it written into the by-laws for hiring your NEXT pastor."

16- “Just because it’s in the Bible, you don’t have to talk about it.” I'm guessing this person's only exposure to church before was watching Seventh Heaven.

17- “Your wife used the wrong spoon in the coleslaw at the church social.”   Okay, so I've heard of having salad forks and using the silverware from out to in and all that ettiquette stuff, but there's a spoon for coleslaw????  I'll bet this isn't an SBC thing...


18- “We need to throw out the guitar to the streets. The piano is the only instrument that belongs in the church.” Okay, I'm flipping to Psalm 150 right now.  Let's see- trumpet, harp, lyre, timbrel, strings- I imagine that would include guitar- pipes, and cymbals.  Not seeing a piano.  The piano was invented earliest 1698.  Do the Amish even allow them?

19- “You ended a sentence with a preposition in your sermon.”   On the bright side, you were awake during the sermon...

20- “Your pregnant wife is faking morning sickness.” Then YOU stand between her and the bathroom, and let me know how it comes out.  Well, not literally, but...


You notice, the sad thing here is that the only complaints of a spiritual nature were by people who apparently wanted to leave the spiritual OUT of church!