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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on December 13, 2009

A trap a lot of churches and ministry leaders fall into is jealousy.  I heard Perry Noble once say that the church and pastors are great at mourning with each other, but not very good at celebrating with each other.  We can’t be happy for another church or pastor’s success because we are leery of how they’re doing it.  Or we look for the negative to point out.  Yeah, they had to build a new building but that means they are in debt!

I have to confess that I have fallen to this temptation as well.  I would show sympathy when hearing about another ministry’s misfortune while deep inside always feeling better about myself.  It was as though if I could show they were not all others thought they were, I was somehow better.  Or if I did not like a certain pastor or church, for whatever reason, I wanted to hear bad things about them to repeat.  I now find this very funny because in college I created the ministry motives test which basically says, if someone else accomplished what you wanted to do for God, how would you feel? Is my ultimate motive to see others come to Christ, or to be the one who gets them there?

It’s silly if you think about it; to get upset because someone hundreds of miles away is doing well at something you want to do where you are.  Or that someone in the church down the street is reaching people you have never even reached out to.  Yet, I have been there.

One of the fastest growing churches in America is Elevation Church.  I found out about them at the Unleash Conference in 2008 when I saw this kid.  I then found out the kid was a pastor.  I then found out this kid was the pastor of the largest group at the conference.  I rushed home to look up info on him, as though I was going to find something no one else knew.  Come to find out the kid was Steven Furtick, pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and I had no problem with him other than he was young.  His church has grown to about 5,000 in three years and he started the church when he was twenty-six.

I was jealous.  That’s all there is to it.  I thought he was too young, even though he was doing at his age what I wished I could be doing at the time.  I thought his church was growing too fast, which I doubt he really had much control over.  I was upset with him for a lot of things that were not his fault.

So how did I overcome this?  I educated myself.  It’s easy to look down on and accuse when you are ignorant.  So I read his blog (though I refused to “follow” it) and got some of his sermons on Itunes.  I forced myself to admit when he made good points or had great ideas.  It was hard for me, but I don’t want to become some bitter preacher who becomes a critic when people get saved.  I would never want someone to waste time getting upset or jealous of me over something so shallow and pointless.

When we look at other churches, or other businesses, or sometimes even other’s lives, we can immediately get critical in an attempt to look better.  All that does is reveal our own insecurity and repel a lot of people.  That’s not what I want for my life.  Perhaps if we rejoiced with others more, they would feel more supported and not fall into situations that cause us to have to mourn with them.

Category: Churches, Emotion Issues, Ministry
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