JimBo Stewart: [00:00:00] All right, here we are back at the bootcamp. Bob, hope you’re ready for the next episode. We, this is the seminary edition, Switz from the Dome to your home.

Bob Bickford: Jimbo. We are here in Fort Worth and I’ve been in Fort Worth, quite a lot recently in the last several years since my daughter lives here. But I got to take you this morning to a place that I really enjoyed, discovering here in Fort Worth.

Juan’s Burrito Express,

JimBo Stewart: Burrito Express. And we got there in an express. Oh, we did fashion. Uh, we get to the, airport last night and my rental car was not in the system. Just a boring Hyundai Sonata. Yeah. And the lady goes, I’m gonna go get you another car. And I’m like, what is she going to get us?

Like a little smart car that the two of us are not gonna fit in and what does she pull up in? But a Dodge Charger hell cat. Yeah. Which is dangerous, Bob, because you may not know this, you know this, but I mean, look, I, I used to drive muscle cars a lot and ran from the police. Got into a lot of danger. I was a scary kid to [00:01:00] give keys to a car to, I

Bob Bickford: I never knew you ran from the police. I might’ve been rethinking my allowing you to drive

JimBo Stewart: my, but you have to admit my skills are there. I can, I can handle a muscle car

Bob Bickford: You did. We, I think you punched it when we were, actually heading to the Burrito Express this morning and we did a almost fishtailed, except for the technology in the Hellcat

JimBo Stewart: Oh, it’s not the technology. That was all skill. That was all skill.

Bob Bickford: I see, I see

JimBo Stewart: Man. We’re excited to be here at Switz teaching a DN seminar. So before the seminar starts, they have graciously allowed us to jump into the nuclear Fallout Shelter podcast recording studio.

Bob Bickford: There’s an entire city under the dome that I knew nothing about.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, we had to go through special F b I clearance just to be allowed to, to come down here. but we’re excited to be here and, teach, demen seminar about church revitalization replanting together. Always love when I get to work with you. and this is a fun one for sure. but the reason we do this cuz churches are dying [00:02:00] and, it’s, if you are listening to this podcast, you’re well aware of that.

 And so one of the things we wanna do is talk about one of the reasons that you may see that.

Bob Bickford: happen. Yeah. Jimbo, this is a, a tough subject. It’s a difficult one because we see this happening to people we know. we also are part of Pastor Threads or groups on Facebook, and so the topic of forced termination is something that we do run across.

I would say not infrequently, not frequently, but somewhere in between.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, I mean, it’s not out of the norm to hear that a pastor got fired.

Bob Bickford: Right? So I was doing some research for the article that I wrote for, church, the church Replants blog. And here’s some of the research that I, I ran across of all pastors.

Jimbo. 23 to 41% will experience to force termination at least once in their career. And that could be something like, you get a note on your desk, your office door is locked. or the pastor even comes to you and says, Hey, son, I, I think it’s time for you to move on. Or if you’re the lead pastor, that was a youth ministry [00:03:00] reference, but the lead pastor may hear from a, a deacon, he might knock on the door in the middle of the night at the parsonage and just simply say, Hey, we, we’ve had a conversation and we think it’s time for you to go.

JimBo Stewart: yeah, they do.

Or the vote of no confidence, which I don’t know, man. I’ve never had to go through a vote of no confidence, but I feel like I would lose all my confidence if I had to go to and vote like, all right, everybody, let’s vote. Do you, do you have confidence that I can do this job? I mean, I get why that exists, I guess, but it feels pretty demoralizing.

Bob Bickford: you bring up a really good point, and I think this is, we might as well talk about it right now. Usually when there’s conflict in a declining church, the number of people who are dissatisfied about the pastor’s role in his leadership is pretty small. Typically, now it’s magnified when you get into a church that’s below, you know, 40 or.

60. It’s, it’s, you know, if you have seven to 10 people that are upset about something, then that can, that can really have a huge impact. But Jimbo Fit Church have a hundred or, or a little bit larger than that. There’s typically a small, group of folks who are upset about things. I’ve heard [00:04:00]anecdotally.

Tom Rainer and some others say something like this. Usually in the church there are about seven to eight people who don’t like what the pastor is doing. Yeah. Beyond that, there’s a bunch of people that will tolerate it and follow him, and then there are some people who are really on board. Yeah. So most of the time when a pastor leaves the church, it’s typically at the hands of the activities of a small group of people.

JimBo Stewart: Yep.

Bob Bickford: Another thing that is important is to understand in terms of research. It’s estimated that over the years of vocational service, four outta 10 pastors will be forced out. Of their church by firing or some sort of pressure that leads to their eventual resignation. So these are, uh, some statistics that were, produced by, and we’ll put the, we’ll put the, uh, research article that was, or at released by Baptist Press some years ago.

and Lifeway was also involved in this study. but Jimbo, the, the fact is that some of our colleagues, some of the guys that even listening may be. have experienced that or on the precipice of that. And so we want to talk about not just the reality that it [00:05:00] occurs, but we also want to talk about some of the dynamics that, you need to understand and some things to do if you find yourself in that situation.

JimBo Stewart: Bob, have you ever been fired from a church?

Bob Bickford: No, I think I’ve been sort of frozen out and then sort of political doubt if, if I could say that. So, and it’s when it was a student p student ministry pastor.

Jamal, I’ll just say this. There is nothing more sacred in a dead and declining church than youth choir and hen.

JimBo Stewart: And I don’t know, you love hand bells.

Bob Bickford: Jimbo, I hate hand bells.

JimBo Stewart: And

Bob Bickford: I was surprised. We, you know what, you know who likes hand bells or who does some stuff with handbells? You’ll be surprised to know this.

JimBo Stewart: know. Okay. Double doc. Double docs. A

Bob Bickford: dock. Yeah.

the the dryers like double dock. And his wife and the kids, like, I think they may have had, they may have a traveling hand bell ensemble

JimBo Stewart: They’d be good at it. I mean, they, they look like a, a Hallmark family down in Key West, so it works.

They

Bob Bickford: They do. So anyway, yeah. Jimbo, came in there and here’s what I noticed and I was going, as I was going into that position, and this has some application for pastors as well. I asked the youth committee chairperson [00:06:00] for the ministry, notes the minutes from their business meeting.

Yeah. And so here’s one things I saw. The youth pastor proposed this and the committee voted against it. And Jimbo, I saw that like over and over and over.

JimBo Stewart: again. Mm-hmm.

Bob Bickford: I went into that ministry setting and I had a grace period of maybe about a year or two years. Yeah. And then Jimbo, here’s what happened. The youth choir was in decline.

The hand bells were in decline, and the power brokers in the church, again, very small group of people, rose up and basically began to work behind the scenes to kind of freeze me out.

JimBo Stewart: up.

Mm-hmm.

Bob Bickford: So that’s happened to me in, in that case, and Jim, well, that was really hard for me. And, and yeah, it’s similarly, it does, it happens for pastors as well.

they run afoul maybe of the, the trustees or the treasurer or the deacon’s wife, and something goes wrong and then all of a sudden they begin to hear about secret meetings, about anonymous letters and those sorts of things. And they find themselves either. Realizing that they’re driving by the church and their lights are on and there’s no [00:07:00] meeting scheduled and there’s a meeting taking place about the pastor, or there’s some sort of official invitation to come and hear the grievances that have been assembled to talk to you about.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, I think it’s, the thing that I wanted us to hit is, mainly we’re, this episode’s gonna be about the implications to the church when you have forced terminations.

but I don’t , I don’t wanna use the word triggering. But man, being fired is painful. I’ve never been fired from a church, but I have been fired from a, pastry shop that I worked at

Bob Bickford: I mm-hmm.

Well, it’s sort of the same

JimBo Stewart: Yeah. It was, there’s a whole long story as to why and, that we’re not gonna share on here.

but

Bob Bickford: I,

JimBo Stewart: was so painful for me every time I drove by that place to think like, oh, that’s where I got fired. That’s where I, I got canned. And so, if we have somebody listening that has experienced forced termination and they’ve been on the other end of that, whether rightfully or not, uh, that’s a painful thing.

To think through. It’s hard not to feel like a failure. We talk about how our [00:08:00] success and our identity is not in our vocation, and I think we would all nod our head and say, amen. Yes. But still, as men, usually there’s something in us that finds a lot of identity in our vocation, and when we get fired, we’re like, oh, what does that mean about me?

Bob Bickford: Yeah. I mean, ultimately it feels like the people that you have been called to love, serve, and sacrifice for no longer love. You no longer want your sacrifice and no longer wants your service. Yeah. Cause

JimBo Stewart: church is supposed to be a family, and now all of a sudden it feels like your family fired

Bob Bickford: Yeah, Yeah, that, I mean, that’s hard. It, it’s difficult. Now, getting back to something you said, what is the impact on the church? Mm-hmm. . there’s a, a retired d o m from Chattanooga, Tennessee, guy named David Myers, and he writes in this article that we’ll put in the notes, and here’s what he says about, it’s the force termination and the impact on the church.

He says this, what a forced termination does to the soul of the congregation is significant in and of. But the practical logistical impact is also significant. The church may lose members who are unhappy with what has occurred and how it was done. The loss of [00:09:00] financial support may result from membership decline or withholding money.

The name and the reputation of the church is marred in the community and beyond hesitant, reserved, or negative recommendations of the church are given to prospective new ministers for that church, and many ministers are reluctant to consider relocation to a church that has terminated its previous minister.

JimBo Stewart: minister. Mm-hmm. and

Bob Bickford: just lays it out right there.

JimBo Stewart: there. Yeah.

Bob Bickford: so I, I think that’s super key to understand. Jimbo, when we consult churches, and I, I will ask you this question, it’s been my experience that when we look at a 20 year trade line, if we see some significant drops, typically what we, we, we do see in the history of that church are difficult transitions or terminations.

Or resignations that took place that have a big backstory to them. And anytime that has taken place, there are departures and there is decline.

JimBo Stewart: yeah, absolutely. It’s when there’s a pattern, you know, there are certainly situations where a pastor should be fired and he, usually that’s gonna involve [00:10:00] immorality. Mm-hmm. , right. it’s, it certainly could encompass incompetence,

Bob Bickford: but,

JimBo Stewart: and I think that would be the excuse that usually, or I shouldn’t say excuse.

The reason churches would give sometimes when they terminate a pastor is incompetence. But the, the challenging thing for a church to consider is if you’ve got a pattern of hiring incompetent pastors, some, something’s falling apart here, right? Either, either your onboarding, hiring process is broken and you’re not weeding out all the incompetent.

Competent guys out there, or you have different expectations than one you’ve communicated to that are biblically required. and because he’s not hit your preferences or styles in a certain way, he doesn’t preach exactly the style that you like or he doesn’t, lead in the. In the way that you want him to lead.

They’re not unbiblical ways, they’re not even necessarily bad ways, they’re just not the ways you want. When you start to define that as incompetence, that is actually a symptom that you have allowed [00:11:00] Infrastructure and preference take priority over the identity and the purpose that God has given us as the body of Christ, and that’s that’s something the church has to fix or they’re just gonna keep hiring guys who are probably.

And are probably godly, God-fearing Bible teaching men that come in. But because they don’t fit into that box, they’re just never gonna last long enough to really see change happen.

Bob Bickford: Right. Jimbo permission to make an analogy.

JimBo Stewart: Come on, let’s do it.

Bob Bickford: So, when I lived here in the Dallas Fort Worth metro, I lived on the east side in North Garland.

So if you’ve ever seen, king of the Hill, the town Garland, that was Garland, right?

Uh, is is Richardson Garland area, you

know, cells, a lot of propane cells, a lot of bug treatments, a lot of boom howers. It was really one of my favorite. , yeah. Mm-hmm. . That’s what I’m saying. one of the things that, that is true about homes in Texas is the soil is not good for a concrete foundation.

And so with the, the wet and the dry and the contraction and all those sorts of things, it creates [00:12:00] foundational issues. And so when I was purchasing a home, you would always look at. The cracks over the doors or were there cracks over the doors? Was there tape along the ceiling and wall lined was, did it look clean and all that?

And so some people who were getting ready to sell their house or flipping their house would go in and sand everything down and paint over everything and make it look smooth. Somebody would buy that house. And then what they would realize over time is that the foundation had issues. This is a foundational problem in the church, right?

If they don’t respect, first of all, scripture.

JimBo Stewart: Mm-hmm.

Bob Bickford: and as scripture talks about authority in the church that Christ. Chief Shepherd, that the pastors are the under shepherds. That part of what a congregation does is follow the loving lead of a good shepherd who leads them towards Jesus. And on mission, Hebrews talks about that, you know, that word, obey your spiritual authorities or your spiritual leaders, those who have leadership over you.

It doesn’t mean. that they are dictatorial, but it means follow their lead as they follow Jesus. Right? Yeah. And, and follow them with trust that they are God’s anointed person. And so [00:13:00] this always was a mystery to me that a pastor could see, receive a 90 plus percent affirmation in his call to the congregation, but at some point, 90% of those folks were not following him any longer.

Yeah. Or they were frustrated by him. And so it’s, we want you to be our pastor and we’re gonna follow you as long as we agree with what you

JimBo Stewart: what you do.

Yeah.

Bob Bickford: And how you do it. Now, I, I don’t want to overstate. The simplicity of that in terms of saying, you know, you should always just follow without question. I’m not saying that whatsoever, but if your pastor is loving Jesus, he’s a moral man.

He’s God integrity. he’s leading you well, but he’s also preaching the word of God to you and challenging you if you resist that. It’s not an issue of preference. Perhaps it’s a, an issue of obedience.

JimBo Stewart: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So, okay. So if a church has a pattern of this at one, it will contribute to their decline. and not just because firing pastors makes you decline, but because that’s a firing, pastors over and over is actually a symptom of, a foundational issue. so what can be done?

What do we do? if our [00:14:00] church is in that pattern, a caught in that pattern, you know, a church caught in that pattern, you’re part of a church caught in that pattern, what are some things you could do to bring that church to a healthier place?

Bob Bickford: Let me, let me suggest four things.

The first one is you really gotta go back and address the wrongs that were committed to previous pastors and their families who were undeserving of forced terminations. There’s nothing more scarring than a forced termination, not only to a pastor, but to his family and his children. Right. And so

JimBo Stewart: stop for just a second and just acknowledge that, I mean, how painful that’s gotta be for the family. Uh, it was hard for my kids to leave redemption and we left on good terms. we left on really good terms and it was, it’s still, they, it’s hard for them to go, man, I.

It was, that was family. That was who we were. And that’s a big change. Imagine, I can’t imagine attaching to that you were made to leave. Yeah. That’s gotta be hard for a kid to understand.

Bob Bickford: Absolutely. Well, they don’t understand it and, and sometimes they can’t and sometimes you can’t get into details with kids. Right. You don’t want to wanna, give them information about people that they know and love that Yeah. Diminishes the [00:15:00] relationship they have with them.

But I think, Part of this addressing the wrongs is there are times when you need to address those wrongs publicly and repent personally, and even invite those who, who’ve been wronged back to the church to receive that apology and receive that repentance. Yeah. Uh, that is so important and, and where I have seen churches do this, it’s actually done A wonderful work in the life of that congregation cuz they’ve acknowledged wrong. Now, here’s what we also know. Sometimes the people who committed those wrongs are long gone. They’re either passed away or they’re no longer there. But if, we have a group of people that are listening to, our podcast that are thinking, and our church has this in its history, I mean, go back and deal with that by repenting for the actions of the church body corporately.

Not just a few individuals personally. Yeah. And I think God can bless that. Here’s the second thing. Remove those who were involved or, instigated unfounded in unreasonable, forced terminations from leadership positions within the church. Yeah, this is a hard one. Right. But if you have some [00:16:00]gatekeepers, you have some bullies, you have some controllers who are drumming up false accusations who are involved in behind the scenes campaigns, you cannot allow them to persist in positions of leadership.

Yeah, you can’t excuse their behavior. I was reading, one of the pastor threads that I follow in, in some of the pastor groups, and there was a, a comment about, a conflict between deacons and a pastor. And the deacons had withheld the pastor’s Christmas bonus and it was just turned into this incredible thread and so many people were commenting and

JimBo Stewart: they, they withheld it in pretty dramatic fashion. Yes. Not just, not just, Hey, you’re not gonna get a Christmas bonus.

Bob Bickford: give him an empty envelope at the front of the church and he doesn’t open it until he gets home and realizes it’s empty. Yeah. And so, I mean, can you imagine the heartache and I mean, amazing. So fast forward, here’s what, here’s some of what’s happened.

We’ve got some of those deacons have actually left the church as they were confronted. and, some have repented and,

uh, even better. So you just can’t allow individuals who. [00:17:00] Uh, involved in such thanks to persist in leadership. The other thing I would do is, that does need to be addressed is you have to address informal campaigns to force the pastor out through biblically based bylaw supported church discipline.

Yep. Right. I think Jimbo, every set of bylaws that I’ve seen from a church has two, either one or two things. A member conduct clause or pledge or covenant and a church discipline. You know, bylaws in the church discipline, here’s how we’re gonna do

it. Yeah.

What I also realize is most churches that have those things have never done them.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, I mean, confrontation is so hard and it feels counterintuitive to the idea of, oh, we’re, we’re a family and this is, you know, church is this happy place where we are nice to each other.

And so we, we typically are very conflict avoidant and that ends up enabling. Continued sinful patterns and behaviors to, to happen because we don’t address them. Cause we say, well, you know, there’s a church I’ve been working with that um, there was someone [00:18:00] who did a kind of an underground campaign and got rid of the last pastor who was honestly doing from everything I can find and assess through interviews and everything else, doing a pretty good job.

Bob Bickford: But

JimBo Stewart: His doing a good job, pulled power from

somebody .and

so they did this whole underground campaign and got rid of the guy and nobody has dealt with that yet. and one of the things I’ve tried to help them see is we have to deal with this or else we’re gonna bring in some other guy and he’s gonna do a pretty decent job.

It’s gonna start to pull power from these people and they’re gonna do the same thing over and over again.

Bob Bickford: Absolutely. They’re emboldened. Yeah, right.

JimBo Stewart: They,

they

Bob Bickford: won.

Yeah. You know, and Jimbo, this, I, I didn’t, I didn’t get into too many fisticuffs on the playground when I was young and my total fight record was probably one in, one in two, or one in. Actually, I saw won one fist fight, lost two, so I’m not gonna, I’m not getting a fist fight.

Right. But my, my sense is that if you were in five fist fights, you probably won five of them.

JimBo Stewart: Me, yeah. I mean, there was, [00:19:00] I lost. Two, because I got jumped by multiple

people. Oh,

Bob Bickford: Well that doesn’t count. I’m just talking one-on-one. Mono I mono. Right. Mono

JimBo Stewart: I I usually came out on

Bob Bickford: top.

See, that’s exactly right.

Right. So I just get sense that about you is why don’t start a fist fight

JimBo Stewart: me

Bob Bickford: you .

JimBo Stewart: I hope that’s not the only reason you haven’t started a

Bob Bickford: a, well, I don’t wanna get fired from my job either, so I also don’t wanna get beat

JimBo Stewart: up

I also hope you haven’t wanted to punch me in the face,

Bob Bickford: but

no, not

JimBo Stewart: often.

Not

Bob Bickford: often.

all that to say it’s, this is if you have a bully in the church and the bully bullies people and gets away with it, guess what they’re gonna do? They’re gonna bully

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, they’re gonna keep going.

Bob Bickford: keep going. So you gotta get that outta there. You gotta clear that out. I mean, think about what Paul says to Timothy.

Command certain men to not teach. Yeah. False doct. Yeah. Right. So Timothy, we know had a timidity problem, right? He was, he was a timid guy and, and Paul’s like, tell ’em to stop, right? Yeah. You know, tell ’em to stop. So not, it’s not only a doctrine issue, but it’s a behavior issues. So [00:20:00] it’s a lack of demonstrating the free of the spirit issue.

And if you’ve got it in your membership covenant, in your bylaws, then you have

JimBo Stewart: biblical

Bob Bickford: and you’ve got legal grounds to, to tell them to stop. Here’s, here’s the last thing I would say. This is gonna be important specifically for the church as it seeks to remedy. this kind of history for its future.

They need to make careful note of the actions taken above. If they take those,

JimBo Stewart: like

mm-hmm.

Bob Bickford: public repentance, removal of leadership, you know, um, from, from the bullies, you know, all those sorts of things, they need to take careful note of that, of any redemptive actions that would be taken. They need to note that in the business meeting notes, and they need to be able to have a demonstrated record that the church will not allow this to happen in the.

JimBo Stewart: allowed. Yeah.

Bob Bickford: So therefore, like if you are a, a pastor, a re planter revitalizer, and you are interviewing with the church and you find a trail of pastors that have been terminated, and if you see that they’ve never dealt with it, here’s what I would say. Run like the wind.

JimBo Stewart: don’t, I would not accept a call to a church that [00:21:00] has a pattern of that unless I met with the AMS or state convention or somebody that said, we recognized it. We addressed it. We’ve taken ’em through X, Y, Z process to resolve these issues. Those people are taken out of leadership.

They’re now placed in employees and ready to head in the right direction. At that point, I would, I would be willing to consider it, but. I would encourage you, listener, if you’re considering going to a church, that’s one of the things you need to figure out is do they have a trail of firing the last several pastors?

And if they do, if it’s, if it’s more than one, if they fired one guy in the history of their church and it’s an old church, then that’s probably legitimate. But if like the last five guys were asked to leave, you’re just gonna be number six.

Yeah.

Bob Bickford: If it happened to them.

And it’s gonna happen to you. Yeah. Right. and I think that’s what, where some of us who have that redemptive. Drive in us to, to redeem broken things. We think, man, me and Jesus and the whole spirit, we got this. Yeah. Like I [00:22:00] can do it. Right. I’ve read some books. I’ve read Mark Clifton’s book, I’ve listened to the podcast, you know?

Yeah. I’ve been to the Replant Summit. I’m good to go. I got the hat , right? Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m good. Well, friends gonna, I love that enthusiasm and I love that you feel equipped and encouraged and empowered.

JimBo Stewart: empowered.

Bob Bickford: The, the deal is you are like a fresh coat of paint. Mm-hmm. and a new patch of Sheetrock. Until you deal with that foundation issue, it’s gonna crack again.

And it doesn’t matter how, how devoted, how clear, how capable you are.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah. And just to clarify, it also doesn’t matter, like if you sit down and you interview and you ask them and they say they’ve dealt with it,

I’m

not gonna trust

that.

No.

That’s why I, I need, an associational leader or a state convention leader to tell me, not only they’ve addressed it, but I wanna know speci, like how have you, and if they’re addressing it has not at some level involved outside perspective, then it’s probably not been dealt

Bob Bickford: with.

Absolutely. And if it’s not, created in them brokenness and repentance mm-hmm. , [00:23:00] then you have a, a, you have activity that has taken place that may have been.

you know, suggested or required by, uh, an outside leader or consultant. The other thing too, and I, I would just, you know, in, in, with this, in that case of if you’re, if you’re investigating and making careful study to see if they’ve repented and actually taken actions and it’s in the business meeting notes, man, call those former pastors and talk to

JimBo Stewart: talk. Yeah, absolutely.

Bob Bickford: just go have they have,

JimBo Stewart: do that regardless. I think no matter what situation you’re walking into, you should do

Bob Bickford: have they taken steps to be repentant and redemptive with. And how did that go, right and understand that. Now here’s the challenge. There are a lot of churches that have this in their history and for whatever reason they’ve not dealt with it.

Maybe some of the doms, if we have Doms, listened to us AMS leaders, maybe they’ve been hesitant to deal with it as well. And what I would say is somebody’s gotta stop the merry-go-round, Somebody’s gotta stop the dysfunctional cycle and why not you?

JimBo Stewart: Yep.

Absolutely. Man, this has been great. Thank you to this being unofficially sponsored by Switz and our [00:24:00] unofficial audio engineer, Adam Covington there in the booth watching over us and, giving us a thumbs up.

hey, we’re, we are on Amazon now, you can go to your Echo and say, ah, hey, echo. or Alexa, play Replant Bootcamp podcast. I hope that me saying that, and you were listening to it in your house just caused your echo to do it, and it’ll play the latest Replant Bootcamp podcast for you.