If this isn’t the worst pastor job listing ever, it’s close. Although this has been written about at both the Social Gospel Coalition and Relevant Magazine, it’s time to dissect this at Pulpit & Pen. The badness of this job listing is palpable. It’s so bad that even the two aforementioned organizations lifted it to mild scorn (although reservedly).
Essentially, this is the gist.
The Rocky Mountain Church in Woodland Park, Colorado, posted a job listing at Church-Staffing.com and specifically asked for a pastor who would not preach his own material. Instead, they asked that he memorize and plagiarize – word for the word – the sermons of celebrity preachers.
No, we’re not making that up.
Rocky Mountain Church is looking for a pastor who teaches like Craig Groeschel or Andy Stanley or even a bit like Steven Furtick.
That’s how it began. I kid you not. They picked three of the worst pastors and “Bible teachers” in all of evangelicalism. Plagiarizing John MacArthur is one thing. But Groeschel, Stanley, and Furtick? Really?
This offer is going to be nothing like any other church job post. Woodland Park, Colorado is asleep because the churches are asleep. People are hungry but the spiritual food in the churches here are without flavor or life. The pastors are beautiful people and have good hearts but we need some Blockbuster Sermons.
So then, to give “spiritual food,” they’re searching for those who can imitate the juvenilization of the evangelical pulpit (although, let’s be honest, these guys don’t use pulpits anyway). Their thought is that they need to be “woken up,” not by the Holy Spirit or Scripture, but by nonsense-jibbering, skinny-jean-wearing celebrity impastors.
When you watch a sermon from Craig Groeschel, Andy Stanley or Steven Furtick, you feel like you were fed. Why can’t we have that in church without playing videos from the above pastors?
If you feel fed after watching Groeschel, Stanley or Furtick, you are a lost person. They twist Scripture like pretzels while offering bite-size portions of spiritual cotton candy.
Here is our concept. If a worship leader can take a song from Chris Tomlin and play it just like the album and that is 100% accepted in the church why can’t you, as a pastor, copy or do word per word of a sermon from Craig Groeschel and add 10% of your own style to do it just like the band does. This concept would work great mixed with your own sermons about 20% of the time.
They don’t want an expositor. They don’t want a preacher. They want a performer who can memorize lines and repeat them with enthusiasm.
Pathetic.
But don’t worry, you’ll get a significant cut of the pie.
We have everything needed for the church except the pastor. We have a great praise team. We have funds for advertising and more. Your salary is 90% of the tithes and offerings for 1 year to sustain you and we will pay all the bills. Year 2, 3, and 4 you will get 50% of the tithes and offerings. A five year contract.
[Editor’s Note: The job listing has now been deleted. You can read about it at Patheos]
