The Pastor's Inbox

My Nephew Bilchly,

I am concerned about your patient’s church. I reviewed some recent sermons and find very little to like. I believe it’s time to initiate a campaign targeting your patient’s pastor.

Most of these so-called “pastors” got into their loathsome profession because for some undiscoverable reason they like people, and, more to our purposes, like being liked. This is an obvious opening.

I once knew a demon who led a textbook campaign against the pastor of a small congregation. For two consecutive months, the demon enticed a different member of the church to send an angry, disappointed, or emotionally distraught email to the pastor after each sermon. Many were just a few lines with rampant misspellings. They still devastated the fool.

Finally, the tempter had one of the congregants send an irate email to the entire church elder team, excluding the pastor himself. A delicious stroke! At last, the pastor enjoyed a Monday of peace, only to have the elders forward the message to him the next day.

That pastor never spoke a hard truth from the pulpit again. He is now a mere prophet of the obvious, endlessly rehearsing only the safest universalities. I can report with satisfaction that we’ve also carried off most of his congregation since then.

When the Enemy Above came to earth during that revolting little sideshow they call the “Incarnation,” his sermons were rarely crowd-pleasers. I am proud to report I personally stirred up the mob that nearly stoned him in Jerusalem. Why would pastors expect good reactions to their sermons? Have they met their congregants? What makes them think that repeating the Enemy’s absurdities (or “truths” as they call them) would be popular?

Pastors are responsible eternally for the souls in their congregation. One would think that this would be enough to drive them to ever-greater efforts for the spiritual edification of their flock. But no. We must remember that these time-bound creatures forget the stakes quite easily, even the spiritual “professionals.”

With a flock of several hundred, it should be easy to find some tempter who is still capable of something as simple as enticing a nasty email out of his patient. Pastors everywhere should live in fear of their email inboxes on Mondays. That they do not is a sign of the general decline around us.

Promptly become part of the solution, Bilchly.

Yours,

Mulcifer