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Father Figure

THE CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP IN THE BLACK CHURCH

TWENTY-TWO

“While the people of Israel were still at Rephidim, the warriors of Amalek attacked them. 9 Moses commanded Joshua, “Choose some men to go out and fight the army of Amalek for us. Tomorrow, I will stand at the top of the hill, holding the staff of God in my hand.” 10 So Joshua did what Moses had commanded and fought the army of Amalek. Meanwhile, Moses, Aaron, and Hur climbed to the top of a nearby hill. 11 As long as Moses held up the staff in his hand, the Israelites had the advantage. But whenever he dropped his hand, the Amalekites gained the advantage. 12 Moses’ arms soon became so tired he could no longer hold them up. So Aaron and Hur found a stone for him to sit on. Then they stood on each side of Moses, holding up his hands. So his hands held steady until sunset. 13 As a result, Joshua overwhelmed the army of Amalek in battle.” —Exodus 17 (New Living Translation)

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There is not one eloquent voice in this place.

There’s a ton of preachers—you can’t spit out a window without hitting a “Reverend” in this town—but not one of them could be called eloquent by any reasonable or objective standard. Many of these guys sure can preach, don’t get me wrong. And many are good people, good men, who mean well, who want to do good. But they’re missing the mark by a wide margin because, in large measure, none of these men will respond to leadership or allow themselves to be led. And, that’s largely because no one here has emerged as a leader worthy of such salutation. And that is largely because, to my observation, most churches and pastors here use the world’s standard for determining who should lead, looking at degrees on resumes and job experience and checking references. When they should be praying. When they should be looking at the scriptural example of the boy David—uneducated, working is dad’s farm—who was chosen above all to lead God’s people. Or, the example of the first pastor, Peter—an uneducated day laborer. An impulsive and often quick-tempered man who acted just as often out of emotion than intellect. A severely imperfect man whom Christ chose to lead His church.

Nobody uses criteria like that to select pastors anymore. It’s all corporate 101 now, with us interviewing candidates the way the world interviews candidates. And with churches, by and large, replicating the same safe, conservative pastors they had the last time, going out and getting some joker that will perform the same function: running the church in circles on the corner it is located on.

In the twelve years I’ve lived here, I’ve not heard one black pastor say a single thing he might get shot for. If you’re never preaching anything that places you at risk, then you’re just doing an Okie Doke pastorate. The kindly-church-on-the-corner pastorate that just treads water, burying the talent the Master gave you [Matthew 25:14-30] while you cower, feed yourself and line your pockets.

There’s not one pastor in town who is *loathed* by the political establishment. Not one who makes them uncomfortable. Who stands out, as Martin Luther King did, as Malcolm X did, who eloquently cries out for change, who’s placed their pastorate on the line and their very life at risk.

Instead it’s all minstrel show. All hooping and hollering about Elijah and the false prophets without demanding anything of us. Without challenging us to be better people, better Christians. Without informing, without educating. We learn nothing. We are spoon-fed the Wheatina of toothless pap, perhaps delivered with a sing-song

No one here inspires us. No one here ignites us. No one here makes us want to drive across town to see him. No one is leading. We’re just marching in place. We’ve been marching in place since long before I got here, and, the evolution of this ministry notwithstanding, the black church here is in precisely the same ragged state it was when we began. Not *because* they haven’t embraced this ministry, but their indifference towards this work is symptomatic of the larger problem: the church’s general lack of vision. We don’t *aspire.* we don’t want to go anywhere. We don’t want to be anything. We don’t care, not one bit, about winning souls. There is absolutely zero passion here for soul-winning. For feeding the hungry. For comforting the lowly. It’s all about 90 minutes of emotional overdrive and then off to the buffet joint.

Most black churches here are economically challenged, barely able to meet obligations and always in fundraising mode with lots of spurious Annual Days and musicals and special celebrations. These are almost exclusively designed to be fundraising events. Most insidious among them are Pastor’s Anniversaries, which can often drag onto several days plus a special banquet or what have you, with guest speakers and all the flourishes. Congregants may be assessed a certain amount of money and/or oppressed at offering time to meet certain fundraising goals (upwards of ten thousand dollars is not unusual) as a “blessing” for their pastor. Typically, all monies collected during these events goes directly to the pastor, and/or some big-ticket item (a car, a cruise) is awarded him. It is not unusual for these events to stretch over three days or more, with some going a full week. One pastor here routinely celebrated his anniversary for an entire month—with all monies collected at the nightly offerings going to him.

There is simply not a biblical model for this behavior. This is simply nonsense the black church has either invented or embraced, and I tend to regard with suspicion any pastor who allows this overboard and embarrassing flock fleecing. I cannot even begin to imagine the Apostle Peter or Paul or, most certainly, Jesus Christ Himself, sitting there, night after night, allowing this carnival. Watching as deacons go back two and three times for offerings, guilt-tripping the congregation and prying more money out of them. Seriously, fellas, what on earth are you thinking? And what are we, the black church thinking, to behave in such a way that lacks any biblical model or scriptural foundation?

It is precisely this ignorance that stunts our growth, that keeps us dwarves reaching for the shelf here, lost in the ever-larger shadows of Latino churches and Korean churches and white churches—all of which are experiencing explosive growth even as the black church, here, continues to spiral in attendance. Lavishing our church pastors with gifts and cash, while our buildings crumble and deteriorate and ministries struggle, is as bad as the huge multinational corporations that reward their CEO’s with billion-dollar excesses even while the companies and stockholder lose money. And it fuels the ongoing exodus from our doors to the huge Entertainment Churches. If we put the same drive, the same emphasis on soul-winning, on church-building, on sacrifice, as we do at these pastoral cash-grabs, our churches would be far healthier.

In our tradition, in our Baptist and COGIC circles, there is not even a single voice—out of dozens of pastors and hundreds of preachers—who will stand for the truth. Not one who will say anything even close to what is being said here on this site. And I find that puzzling, that there isn’t one black man prescient enough to hold up the word of God and compare it to the transactional workings of the church. For, if someone were to do that, they’d be compelled, by the mercies of God, by the blood of Jesus Christ, to speak the truth. A truth so startling and so simple, and yet one I’ve never heard, here: that much of what the black church does here is simply nonsense. Much of it is simply unbiblical. Much of it is not in agreement with the scriptures or with the personal example of Jesus Christ.

I suspect, if there was even one man in this city with sufficient backbone to say that, I’d never have to write another word, here. I have a hard time believing there isn’t one black man in town who *believes* this, as I’ve heard many, many black men express this to me privately. But none have the courage of their convictions to preach it publicly. To risk being ostracized from the Old Boy Network.

Eddie Long, one of the new breed of "Mega" bishops, made news

in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a questionable charity Bishop Long set up in 1995 and dissolved in 2002. The main point of this charity, from financial papers obtained by the Journal-Constitution and published on their website, appears to have been to launder money from Long’s New Birth ministry to Long himself. According to the Journal-Constitution, Long’s charity, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc., took out a $1,160,000 mortgage to purchase the home in March 1998, according to DeKalb County property records. The mortgage was paid off by 2003, records show. In October 2002, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries notified the IRS that the charity was dissolving and pledged to transfer all of its assets to New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. The house was never transferred.

Instead, a year later, Long signed papers relinquishing the charity's interest in the home, making himself the sole owner. The same day, Christmas Eve 2003, Long took out a $300,000 loan using the house as collateral. If proven true, this is a sad development for Long and the New Birth family, and it portends potential disaster for many of these Mega Ministries and Mega Bishops who, while perhaps beginning with the best of intentions and the strongest anointing, have apparently become terribly self-absorbed, megalomaniacal and comically blind to the civil and criminal peril they and those who enable them are in. All of that, and hell to look forward to.

It’s possible human beings are simply not wired for fame, that fame inevitably corrupts even the best of us. It must be a lot like crack, where, no matter how strong an individual you are, sooner or later the chemicals involved will overpower your sense of self and you end up as yet another bony liar hustling drivers with a squeegee.

The real peril of the failed Mega Preacher or Mega Bishop is, even more so than local pastors, they set themselves high and above us. They are better than us. Most certainly holier than us. They have tens of thousands of followers. Followers whose faith is injured, diminished, or, most tragically, lost when these men become so utterly full of themselves that they can’t possibly imagine being in the wrong.

To my knowledge, Jesus owned absolutely nothing. He owned, maybe, the clothes on His back. He relied on the generosity of others as He, “Went about doing good,” (Acts 1). And Jesus never, in recorded history, spoke boastfully of Himself. His major boast was to equal Himself to God, which, in retrospect, wasn’t a boast at all.

Mega Bishops: The recent trend among these mega ministries is to elevate most any preacher with a huge congregation to Bishop. It's as if head count somehow translates into a bigger hat. These days, in the black church, everybody's a Bishop, a political title traditionally reserved for overseers of groups of churches. Modern denominations such as The Church of God In Christ and the African Methodist Episcopal Church have well-defined hierarchies in which a Bishop serves a specific and definable function, and it is an office attained through well-established paths of erudition and study, service and spirituality. The office is authorized by and subject to a governing body, and the office has a well-defined scope and serves a specific and definable purpose. These men, as a result, have credible authority as Bishops.

Almost none of which applies to the Mega Preacher or Mega Pastor who is elevated to Bishop. I'm about as well informed as the average person on the street, and I can't define, in any real terms, what these Bishops are “Bishops” of, what their specific authority is, what their role is, who they report to, or what qualifies them to be “Bishop.” The path many mega preachers take toward Bishop is less well-defined and operates within a very loose structure that seems to rely more on popularity and head count than any definable or credible structure. Elevated either by the zealousness of star-struck followers unsatisfied with the mere title “pastor” (or who wrongly assume that, over a certain head-count, their pastor should be called “bishop"), or by their own egos, many of these mega-pastors have loosely allied themselves in self-envisioned ecumenical associations and have voted one another as “Bishop” of this or “Bishop” of that. These choices are likely based on head count and bank account and overall popularity, and apparently use the apostolic definition of episcopos—an overseer—rather than the political distinction of most organized Christian faiths.

In apostolic times, there was no difference as to order between bishops and elders or presbyters ("licensed” or “ordained” ministers; Acts 20:17-28; 1 Pet. 5:1, 2; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3). The term bishop is never once used to denote a different office from that of elder or presbyter. These different names are simply titles of the same office, “bishop” designating the function, namely, that of oversight, and “presbyter” the dignity appertaining to the office. Christ is figuratively called “the bishop [episcopos] of souls” (1 Pet. 2:25).

As a result, these are, in large measure, “Bishops” who more or less decided they would start calling themselves Bishops, as there is only a flimsy and easily defied legal or political structure that supports their title. The man or woman on the street, however, usually doesn't necessarily know this, and assumes their mega preacher has been awarded the title of Bishop through erudition and study, years of service, submission to a governing body or authority and, above all, the will and purpose of God—none of which are necessarily true. Most also assume their own church pastors are somehow less anointed than and fall somewhere in the chain of command of these Mega Bishops, which is also not necessarily true.

MISSING IN ACTION? Paul Morton, Juanita Bynum, Creflo Dollar

Even the contentious and largely useless National Baptist and National Baptist USA conventions can't exercise any measurable authority over the church on the corner. The national conventions' main purpose seems to be to collect money for the sake of collecting money as these national organizations are, a week into this [Hurricane Katrina] disaster, entirely invisible, having spent not one dime, to my knowledge, helping anybody do anything. [Editor's note: the only bishop with visible boots on the ground: T.D. Jakes, who personally assisted in loading and handing out supplies. If Jakes could get there, why couldn't Morton? Also, Jamal Harrison Bryant conducted a major fundraising effort and flew to New Orleans as well, but he's not a MegaBishop. Yet.]

However, we continue to hold these Mega Bishops in high esteem. We also, therefore, have a right to expect an extraordinary standard of leadership from these men in times of crisis, which makes Bishop Morton's “stranded in Jersey” claim a particularly hard sell (how does someone with his own private jet get "stranded" anywhere?). It's been fun to call these guys “bishop,” and they look great in the robes and hats, but while we're hanging the Bush Administration out to dry, we also need to take a good hard look at our own spiritual leaders, holding them to the same standard. As a body of believers, we have paid billions, with a “B", into these Mega Ministries. It is reasonable that we hold them accountable to God for failures to look after the flock or to live up to the principles and precepts they so elegantly proclaim.

BISHOP EDDIE LONG'S COMPENSATION
Between 1997 and 2000, Long received $3.07 million in compensation from Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc.

$1,450,000 — House
$1,037,992 — Salary
$350,812 — Use of Bentley
$195,145 — Home improvements, including $135,560 for landscape improvements,
$3,286 for a parsonage pool table, $35,169 for a built-in hutch, plus other items.
$13,074 — Property taxes
$16,000 — Expense account
$9,600 — Benefits, deferred compensation
$3,072,623 — Total

Sources: From 990 income tax returns filed by Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc. and DeKalb County tax records.

The Journal-Constitution’s report goes on with damaging quotes from Long himself, on the defensive and offensive, “We're not just a church, we're an international corporation,” Long said. “We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.

“You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering.”

Tax and property records show that New Birth accounted for more than half [of Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc.],'s income in 1997. Fulton County property records show the church gave Long's charity 13.7 acres of land that year. The charity later reported selling the property for $1.4 million. Also, a single donor accounted for 90 percent of the charity's income in 1999 and 2000, tax records show. One donor gave $1.9 million in 1999 and one donor gave $1.6 million the following year. As allowed by law, the records do not identify the donors. Long would not say whether New Birth was the donor nor talk about the church's decision to donate land to his charity. 6JOHN BLAKE/ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

It's unlikely Long or Morton or any Mega Bishop or Mega Preacher will be censured or even criticized for their slow response to Katrina in any meaningful way. This is due both to the fact that there really is not much in the way of a recognizable governing authority empowered to remove them, and, even if there were, it's likely they'd just ignore them anyway (a precedent set famously by Jimmy Swaggart). There is no standardized regulating body that holds these Mega Bishops responsible for the multi-millions of dollars we've donated, and it doesn't seem to bother many of us that, thus far in the relief effort, we're seeing a pitiful return on that investment.

And, perhaps, that's the product of this terrible disaster: the unmasking of the black church. A call to move from pretend ministry, from joke faith, to real ministry. A wake up call to living room couch Christians, the chandelier and bling-bling Christians catching vapors with Creflo and Juanita, that the cause of Christ requires real sacrifice and real investment. I am, of course, hoping for a swift evolution of investment from these mega ministries and Mega Bishops but, as of this writing, the tepid response has been shocking and should be a wake-up call to the African American church— though I doubt it will be.

We, as Christians, as believers, look to see the best in our leaders, and eagerly anticipate the “stranded in New Jersey” spin, being easily as gullible for our leaders' sake as the hardiest Bush supporters are for the president's sake. No matter how utterly ridiculous the excuse is, they buy it because they love their guy. And we buy it because we love ours.

No matter how clearly nude our emperors are, you can spend day and night scouring the Internet looking for black Christian voices to criticize or question these men and find fairly few. The great majority of black believers will continue our tradition of further enriching and empowering leaders who desert us, time and again, where the rubber meets the road.

Christopher J. Priest
17 June 2007
15 September 2005
editor@praisenet.org
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