Young, docile, ambitious, uneducated, financially dependent, inexperienced, and insecure men (who are also in need of father figures) are the politically-safest kind of men for pastor-kings to promote in their kingdoms. (Why do you think so many corporations prefer in-house training?)
The fattest carrot of all that pastor-kings offer to young men (or women) who feel a call to the ministry is ministry opportunity itself e.g., teaching a church class; sitting on the platform; preaching on Sunday night; traveling with the senior pastor; preaching in a sister church, team-teaching with one of the elders, etc.
In the kingdom of the pastor-king, it is communicated in various ways that those who kiss the ring of the pastor-king obtain the big carrot – ministry opportunities; those who do not miss out on the same opportunities as well as promotions. (I declined becoming an elder in my home church more than once and it was clearly not appreciated.)
Jesus said, "I am the door…" (application only) but in the kingdom of the pastor-king, it is the senior pastor who is the door to all ministry opportunities (of course, as "ministry" is narrowly defined and expressed in the confines of that pastor-king's kingdom).
As one of my former pastors told me when I pressed him as to why he was hinting to me that I should quit my teaching position in his Bible College that I had successfully held for about nine years and go to another church:
"If you will become more like us; I will open up more ministry doors for you; if you won't become more like us, then I won't open up anymore ministry doors for you."
Young men expend too much time and energy – even compromising their personal convictions and swallowing their sincere questions and doubts – getting on the good side of their pastor-kings so that he will give them opportunities to “minister.”
All these ambitious men really have to do, if they would just take a lesson from Jesus with the masses or John Wesley with the coal miners as they lined up to go work, etc. is open their front door and go preach to their neighbor or on the sidewalk or someplace there are needy people.
Instead, the Yes Men of the pastor-king's court seek the honor and approval of men. They choose comfortable pulpits (with flowing water falls or rotating globes in the background), honorariums and choirs who will applaud their shallow, topical messages even though they lack originality and are filled with hackneyed clichés of the politically-correct traditions of their pastor-kings.
One Sunday evening, I preached a controversial message in my home church; one to which I no longer hold. It was a sermon that supported Postmillennialism (the belief that all of the nations will gradually become Christianized before Jesus returns). Before the message, I playfully told the congregation that the pastor should feel free to correct me after I finished!
My comment was not appreciated. After I ended my message, instead of the pastor getting up to the pulpit and saying something like, “It sure is great that Christians don’t have to all believe the same thing on the End Times,” he tapped the elder who was sitting in front of him on the platform and asked him to dismiss the service; which he did very clumsily.
The next morning, the pastor called me into his office. He told me that he was the only one in the church who defined doctrine and it was not going to be me!
I asked him, "Why can Ern Baxter (now deceased) come into our church as a guest speaker and preach Postmillennialism from the pulpit and get away with it but I can't?" He said, "It's because Ern Baxter is not a member of this church; neither is he on staff here. What he says will be heard today and gone tomorrow. Anything Ern says that I choose not to re-emphasize, I just allow to fall through the cracks. In your case, however, since you are on church staff, it is an entirely different story.”
