Fat Cat Christian Leaders

Fat Cat? Skinny Cat? Definitely Cool Cat!I have had the opportunity to serve with some great people over time. I have developed many friendships. A great example is John (that's him to the left). He and I met when he wandered into church after a long stint away from the Church overall. From there we went on missions, he encouraged me as I sought God's answer about the pastorate at Northwest, he was called to be an Elder, he has learned to lead our Worship Team - he is a pretty consistent friend and partner in serving the Lord.

I have also had the opportunity to travel quite a bit throughout the years. I was travelling back and forth to Haiti to build, take teams and teach pastors a couple of years back. I went about every 6 weeks for a year or so. In that time I met many pastors that I really admired. These men worked for little or nothing and scraped together support to not only evangelize and lead believers but to educate and feed their communities. After meeting and teaching sixty or so pastors in that impoverished land, only one stuck out in my mind in a negative way. He was what I call a "Fat Cat Christian Leader." In a world of impoverished people, in the world's poorest country, this man was simply fat. His wife was fat. His cousins were fat. His kids were fat. Jesus said the first will come last and the last first. It seemed that the people he "served" were suffering while he prospered. I kept trying to convince myself that the obvious was not true.

I never want to judge someone because people have given Karin and I some pretty large gifts because they can and want to give those gifts. There have been people who have really judged some of our luxuries - even when they know we are committed to taking only what we need from the Church. God does bless us and we find ourselves in times of plenty and God does bless us and we find ourselves in times of want. Clearly though, we should not be materialistic, greedy, use the Church for gain (remember the magician) or work our ministry to our benefit through asking or through leadership.

Crazy models are used in the American church for determining support. Average salaries of congregations are often determining factors in oversupporting or undersupporting a leader. Average salaries of similar sized congregations fail to account for productive, busy works in a sea of similar sized inactive works. Few pastors work long for free, many have side businesses that compromise their ability to be seen as a Christian leader only interested in delivering the gospel (yes, like water filters, AMWAY - or whatever it's named today), plan trips for their congregations so they get free trips, and work budgets to their favor.

Fat Cat Christian Leaders - all of them. Using God, the Church or their contacts because of a trusted calling of God to exploit, profit or exhalt themselves. There is a rule called Occam's Razor which says - in layman's terms - "all possibilities are the same - the simplest answer is usually the right answer. So it was with the Haitian pastor - he was skimming off the food provided for the people (to be distributed by his church) a portion for his family and then selling another large portion while only providing a smaller portion to the community in need.

I tried to fight the very apparent answer with that pastor in the same way that I try to fight the very apparent answer with most of the ministers I know today who complain that they are not supported enough or that clearly live a lifestyle that is fat in a world full of need. To each their own but slick clothes instead of economical ones may make you attractive to a different class of people but those same lifestyles will render your teaching about good stewardship ineffective to their ears. You will find it hard to teach lessons of sacrifice, avoiding greed and the like when you live the very life that the Bible teaches is wasteful.

Appearances and profit really have no place in the church and despite all of the equal possibilities that we can come up with - perhaps the most apparent is true - many Christian leaders are simply Fat Cats who care more for themselves than those they serve. It is interesting that a poor, ex-carpenter who had no bed or pillow and paid his taxes from fish's mouths was able to reach the entire world.

Perhaps we can do the same if we love the call and the people more than we love ourselves. Now what was that that we needed to get?