The “Saul” Experience

The Israelite king David was anointed king long before the existing king Saul had died. So, to say there was some real tension between them would be a great understatement. You can read their story beginning at about 1 Samuel 16 and ending with Saul’s death in chapter 31.
Though Saul continued to try to kill David, David refused to kill Saul. And David let Saul know that he had had more than one opportunity to kill him but didn’t. In fact, 2 Samuel 1 tells the story of David’s grief over the loss of Saul. David only needed to know one thing: Saul was anointed by God and therefore once God had laid his hand on him, only God himself should take action against him. David’s own words on the subject can be found in 1 Samuel 26 especially verses 9 through 11.
I tell all of this in order to help the reader understand where some of us who have had a “Saul” experience are coming from.
Now, I have never had a pastor or anyone else trying to kill me and neither has any of my friends in ministry (except one). However, I do know what it is like to be subservient to someone who so obviously did not have my best interest in mind. Working for a pastor is like working for anyone else. We are all different. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We all have gifts and talents, but we also have a human side. And the human stuff is bone deep.
In Georgia I worked for a gifted man who was in way over his head. He had never pastored a multi-staffed church. He had never been surrounded by a board of deacons who were so adept at business and organization. And he had never had to head an explosive church.
On top of all that, we were almost forced into a building program within his first two years of service—a building program that would more than double the facilities. Anyone will tell you that a building program can overwhelm the most seasoned pastors. Frankly, I think he felt claustrophobic in the straight-jacket of administration.
He would stay away from the office for weeks—sometimes months—at a time. But that didn’t work for the deacon businessmen to whom he answered. So every now and then he would show up to micro-manage every aspect and department of the church. But that would only last for a short time. And during the long stretches in between, the rest of us on staff would have to fend for ourselves, make our own decisions, do the best we could, and lean upon one another. Eventually, we learned that many of his inadequacies were being blamed on us.
So, I had a choice to make. If I wanted to properly defend myself and preserve my job, I could have mounted a convincing campaign to have the guy fired based on so many things—things like incompetence, deception, and gross negligence. But I knew the experience of David and what the scriptures had to say about touching God’s anointed, no matter how unscrupulous he had been. Ultimately, I decided it was time to go rather than rat him out or continue to tacitly condone his behavior.
We left Georgia, returned to Oklahoma, took a $22,000 a year cut, and walked away. Not long after that, the pastor left the church and left the pastoral ministry. I was praying that this would be my one and only “Saul” experience. It was. This bad relationship was followed by several very good ones. I learned much from the next three pastors I worked for. They turned out to be very different from the first.

First Churches

Every person who lives as long as I have has a long list of experiences that contribute to the totality of his knowledge and understanding. For people who spend years in the profession of ministry, those experiences are usually associated with churches and pastors for whom they have worked.
Now, I don’t have the resources or the inclination to do a survey of any real significance or sample size like George Barna. But, considering the anecdotal evidence I have collected from the people I know, often the most difficult experience in anyone’s ministry is their first church.
I don’t know if it’s some kind of ongoing weeding-out process that God does or if all my friends and I are special, but so many guys I know had their worst experience of their whole ministries at their first church.
My experience was not the exception.
The first church in which I worked full time was a place in Atlanta, Georgia. I will not name any names in order to protect both the innocent and the guilty. But it was the best and the worst—great people, beautiful city, priceless opportunity, huge budget, and incompetent administration.
First of all, in Atlanta, church is big business. The competition is ruthless; the churches are huge; and the pastors and even some of the parishioners are bigger than life. Names in that city include: Dr. Charles Stanley, Bishop Earl Paulk, Andy Stanley, Dr. Paul L. Walker, Mylon LeFevre, New Song, Babbie Mason, and many others.
Amazingly, the little church I went to work for decided to throw its hat in the ring. We decided to try and compete with the big boys.
I was hired as a music minister. But I joined a huge staff considering the size of the congregation—Pastor, Christian Education Director, Youth Pastor, Music Minister, and Minister of Recreation (yeah, I know) plus several fulltime and part-time support staff. This was for about 250 people. But the way they pulled this off was the fact that the church and its members were very wealthy. Some were household names that you would recognize. But I said I wouldn’t.
When we came in, it was a dying church. My first choir rehearsal was with 14 people.
Now, beginning there and continuing for many years, I found that it really helps to follow someone who is incompetent. It makes you look good. That goes for pastors too. The new, young pastor who came in and hired me was an amazing “pulpiteer.” In other words, he had a command of the language and a knowledge of the scriptures that mesmerized people. Unfortunately, his organizational skills and his one-on-one people skills sucked.
Due to the fact that the pastor and I followed people who were lacking, plus factor in our youth and exuberance, add the wealth and pride of the congregation, a children’s minister and a business administrator, and the place exploded. Little did I know that this would be my “Saul” experience.

Three Churches

During the time when we were all reading the subversive materials that Earl Creps (Motto: “With a name like Creps, it’s got to be good.”) recommended to us, we talked at intervals about what we were reading. Finally one day, Pastor Phil said, “You know, I’ve done things this way for almost thirty years. I can’t see me changing everything at this stage of the game. Besides, I love this church and its people. This is home. It’s where I grew up. I just can’t bear the thought of what such a change would do to so many of them.”
I had to agree that it would take a huge paradigm shift and a painful and bloody battle to turn such a big ship at full speed. However, we did think it would be nice to see some different churches and how they operated. Maybe we could tweak things a bit. So, I was given a short sabbatical in the month of June 2004 in order to visit some churches that we thought might be able to teach us something.
I called a couple of friends who are well traveled, told them what we were doing, and asked them where they would recommend that I go. Besides a couple of places locally, we decided to go to three churches: New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Fellowship Church, and Prestonwood Baptist, both in the metro Dallas area. Thus, on two different weekends in June of 2004, my family and I made the trips to Colorado and to Texas to observe and evaluate what we saw and heard.
Now, keep in mind, I was still the associate pastor over music. So, I was primarily going to check out the music programs as well as going to assess the overall church experience. We had very little idea of what to expect. But, each one of the experiences blew our minds.
New Life Church was a well oiled machine. It was big and still growing. They were building their current sanctuary while we were there. The music was great; the preaching was above average. But the two things that impressed me the most were the small group concept and the large umbrella concept under which each of its different congregations operated.
New Life was, at one time, several different congregations meeting at different times with different pastors. Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Saturday nights, and each of the age group churches (youth, young adults, kids) were given equal standing. And, it seemed, that little care was taken to see that they overlapped each other. Whether or not it was that way behind the scenes, was not clear.
Prestonwood Baptist in Plano, Texas was huge! The sanctuary seated thousands. The choir loft alone seated 350 people. That’s twice the size of the average church. Its gargantuan size alone made it worth seeing. But, here again, I saw the multiplicity of ideas at work.
During the Saturday evening service we attended, under the same roof, but far enough away from the main sanctuary and parking lot, there was a wedding taking place in their “small” 400 seat chapel. Other than our curiosity and our roaming after the service, we would never have known that something so significant was going on in another part of this giant edifice.
Finally, we saw Fellowship Church (just seven miles from Prestonwood) in Grapevine, Texas. (Yes, just across the highway from the huge outlet mall.) Its pastor, Ed Young, is something of a celebrity. He writes books and gets asked to speak all over the place. Not many people start a church and within 10 years have 14,000 people. I have no idea how big it is now.
What I saw there that I took home with me was the relevant teaching and the visual message that the whole experience was. It was the first time I had ever been in a church where the two main speakers sat in big leather chairs and had a conversation in front of the whole crowd. Blew my mind.
When I went back to work after three or four weeks, I had a report prepared, but I wasn’t sure who to give it to. I knew we were never going to go there. So what was I supposed to do with all of this mind-blowing information?