Well at least not for the reasons John Calvin was. There was a time while we were in Kenya that the surrounding inter Tribal warfare became so severe that I had to arrange our evacuation from the village via an armed military escort. Also another where I was the speaker at a small Pastors conference at the same time as some tribesmen were fighting nearby (less than 1km) with bows and arrows, swords etc. But I have not yet been shot at for something I’ve said or done as a Pastor. But, the day isn’t over yet!
C. J. Mahaney continues his series on criticism in pastoral ministry with an account of some of the experiences faced by the European Reformer John Calvin.
“I have lived here amid continual bickerings. I have been from derision saluted of an evening before my door with forty or fifty shots of an arquebus”*, an arquebus being a large muzzle-loaded rifle that emitted a boom and a large cloud of smoke with each firing.
* John Dillenberger, John Calvin: Selections from His Writings (Anchor Books, 1975), 42.
Note Calvin’s own commentary on 1 Timothy 5:19:
The more sincerely any pastor strives to further Christ’s kingdom, the more he is loaded with spite, the more fierce do the attacks upon him become. And not only so, but as soon as any charge is made against ministers of the Word, it is believed as surely and firmly as if it had been already proved. This happens not only because a higher standard of integrity is required from them, but because Satan makes most people, in fact nearly everyone, over credulous so that without investigation, they eagerly condemn their pastors whose good name they ought to be defending.
Calvin, The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon (Eerdmans, 1996), 263.
As Jesus indicated, opposition and criticism is a positive sign of God’s blessing and guidance (for you – not your detractors!).
Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
Luke 6:26
Or as two pastor friends said to me recently – you must be doing something right if people are getting (sinfully) cranky.
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