The title is taken from that old joke about people leaving church, going to their favorite restaurant and having “roast preacher” for lunch! The best thing about doing that might be that roast preacher is low in calories and contains no bad cholesterol!

The idea for this post is taken from Jonathan Herron’s blog, where he quotes Charles Spurgeon about the fine art of criticizing the preached. Do yourself a favor and read the whole post – here’s the bottom line.

Judge the preacher if you like, but do remember that there is something better to be done than that, namely, to get all the good you can out of him, and pray his Master to put more good into him.”

Of course there’s no more fertile ground for criticizing a Pastor than during a transition. He shouldn’t leave, he should have left a long time ago, he’s leaving the wrong way, he’s taking to long to get here, he changing things to fast, he’s not changing things at all, he’s changing the wrong things, he’s changing the right things the wrong way or he’s changing the right things in the wrong way, he doesn’t preach like our old Pastor or he preaches too much like the old guy, etc., etc., etc.!

Sheesh!

In some ways transitions are no win situations. No matter who you are or what you do it’s absolutely certain that you’ll lose some people and you’ll gain some others. I was told yesterday by a friend who doesn’t go to CCR that a married couple he knows told him as soon as I leave here they’d like to start attending!

Gee – how big of them! What swell headed pharisees!

The truth is if you attend or don’t attend a church because of people – you are already wrong! Church is about Jesus first and everything else second!

As usual Spurgeon had it right. If you disagree with your Pastor tell him – just do it in love! Listen to him when he explains why he’s doing what he’s doing. Who knows? You might end up realizing he’s a Pastor not only because he loves Jesus, but because he knows what he’s doing!

All things are possible you know!