I recently opened up an account with ConstantContact to send mass email newsletters. I sent one out yesterday that many of you may have received if you put your email address into one of the boxes on the right of this screen or if you have been on my email list. They are pretty friendly and tame and I usually offer some positive news about my family and our church plant and request your prayers.
Well, within minutes of sending this one out, I received a response from one of the older, most prominent bishops in the Pentecostal church putting me on major blast for, amongst other things, being a "sheep stealer" and a potential cult leader. Ed Young has created quite a stir in the blog world with his video on "sheep stealers" and "church pirates" and when I watched it I felt concerned about Ed, but knew that his thoughts didn’t apply to me because I have not done any of what he describes.
What troubled me the most about the email from this senior bishop is that his authoritative email was so smug, haughty, and full of misinformation. He so firmly dismissed and denounced the work that we are leading without ever speaking to me concerning our church plant. His suggestion that I was a potential cult leader really took me by surprise. I joked on twitter that I didn’t know if I should be offended or feel like I must be on to something since so many of my mentors have faced the same criticism at one time or another. When I responded to him (see my Perry Noble post above this one) by showing him through facts how he was misinformed, he wrote basically saying that what I had to say didn’t matter.
His claim about "sheep stealing" is doubly ridiculous – first and foremost because I have not asked one person from my previous church to leave their church and have actually told some people that desired to work with us that I wanted them to stay at their church and not work with the Courageous Church as we prepare to launch. I publicly pledged to not "steal sheep" when I left my previous church and have stayed true to this pledge. Beyond this, I am finding this current discourse on "sheep stealing" to be pretty crazy at this point – particularly since the church I left was started with a dozen people from other churches.
My job at this point is to not internalize this type of criticism, but to continue receiving wise counsel from trusted church leaders, and to stay true to the call of God on my life with prayer and obedience.
The growing generational divide between yesterday’s leaders and the leaders of today and tomorrow cannot be repeated. Twenty years from now please remind me to remember these moments so that when some young church planter comes along I will treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve.
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Well pastor Shaun as you no being a member of Imani we have heard it all we are a cults Rev is a sheep stealer and much much more. people are always going to say something so be ready because there is more to come . you keep on doing the work of the LORD that he has put before you and all else will be taken care of. GOD IS WITH YOU
Alcendia
Shaun,
While I ain’t no pastor, I have had a few experiences in life that I believe can help you with this phenomenon. While using the language of pirate and sheep stealer in order to paint unethical behavior as sin, there is also another dynamic at work: jealousy.
But this is no garden variety jealousy. If you think about it, what is the one thing that a young man has that an older man does not have? Time. Not just chronological time, but the fresh perspective you have because of zeitgeist, the spirit of the time in which you were born. In a computer age, we can relate–there is a fear of becoming outdated and outmoded within a short period of time. Thus, I would argue that when some of the older men do what they do, they are fighting with something bigger than you–our generation, the perspectives we bring, the energy we possess, the untapped power we have not fully expressed. In the mind of a zero sum game individual, if anyone else is gaining power then they are the one’s losing it.
I’ve faced this with men I admired and who mentored me. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure it out: why they suddenly turned on me. But I do think this is part of the puzzle. Hopefully this helps.
This helps man. I am so agitated to learn that what is happening with me is happening with young women and men in leadership across the country.
Please, please, please remind me to not be this way later in life. Goodness!