Category Archives: Church Conflict

The time I rebuked our guest preacher

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She called to confirm that I was indeed coming to address her church’s seniors at their monthly meeting.  “Yes,” I assured her. I had it on my calendar.

Then she said, “Brother Joe, can I talk straight to you?”

Absolutely.

“The last speaker we had,” she said, “was awful.  He had promised to speak on (some subject; I forget what) but when he rose to speak, he preached three sermons–I mean he went on for an hour–and never once dealt with what he had promised.  He was harsh and hard to listen to.  Honestly, it was offensive.”

“The people are still talking about it.”

She was quiet a moment, and said, “We don’t want a repeat of that.”

I took a couple of minutes to tell her what I would be speaking on.  That satisfied her.  And a few days later, she called to say they were all pleased.

I have been where she sat.  I know the feeling, and I appreciate her boldness.

It takes a certain amount of courage–call it moxie or nerve or bravery–to confront a speaker, whether before or during or after he finishes.

Here is my story.

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What we would like to ask all church big-shots

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“…who loves to be first among them” (III John 9).

I’ve known the bigshots in quite a number of churches. They have no trouble identifying themselves as the force to be reckoned with around this church.

If you are the visiting preacher, their words to you before or after the service will be an announcement, not a comment.  You will know you have heard from the control room of the universe.  You have heard the voice of God.  This man is in charge around here.

No one has to tell you.  You just know.

This one calls the shots.  Rules the roost. Throws his weight around.  Is the power behind the scene.

He loves to have the pre-eminence.  (See Diotrephes in III John, above.)

Woe to the pastor trying to do the will of God in this place but having to deal with this millstone around his neck, this roadblock on the highway, this sandbar in the stream.  Metaphors keep suggesting themselves.  Clots in the arteries.  Bullies on the playground.

Obstinate. Headstrong. Bull-headed. Egotistical.

The only opinion that counts is his.

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You are somebody in Christ. But who exactly?

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“I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).

“But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

We are loved. We are winners.

“I’m me and that’s good. Cause God don’t make no junk.” –from a poster by a child in a ghetto.  (source unknown)

The man said, “I think my wife’s health problems go back to something in her childhood, as to how she was treated.  She seems to have trouble accepting who she is in Christ.”

It’s always fascinating to consider what gives us our identity.  And what conditions robbed us of the same.

Smart Aleck is the biography of Alexander Woollcott, drama critic for the New York Times a long time ago.   Woollcott is said to have been a master wordsmith, which is what made me order the book in the first place.

Woollcott came from an impoverished background and carried enough personal hangups and oddities to set him apart for the rest of his life.  He was overweight, oddly shaped, and egotistical.  And those, goes the old joke, were his good points! When the New York Times hired him, that newspaper was one of 8 or 10 competing in that market, and not particularly distinguished.  His pay was $15 a week, and yet he was thrilled.  The author says he loved being “Alexander Woollcott of the New York Times.”

“At last,” writes author Howard Teichmann, “the sense of belonging began to set in…. Being somebody was infinitely better than being nobody.”

This may be why while unemployment is difficult for everyone, but men in particular have a problem with it.  Their identity is so often bound up in their jobs.  When men meet, they often begin with “What do you do?”  The answer helps to define us, we feel, whether accurately or not.

Ministers who find themselves unemployed experience the same weightlessness, the sensation of not belonging and thus being nobody. For a long time, the minister had introduced himself as “Pastor of Central Baptist Church” or “Assistant Pastor of First Church.”  Suddenly, that goes away.  Now, who is he?

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The Lord takes His best church to the woodshed, too.

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“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him.  For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receives” (Hebrews 12:5-6).

The Lord Jesus was unhappy with His young churches.  Five of the seven congregations scattered across Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) were already getting off-track and needed some swift attention.  The two exceptions were Smyrna and Philadelphia.  But the other five churches received stern rebukes.

To all the seven churches of Asia Minor, the Lord gave four things (with slight variations for Smyrna and Philadelphia):

HIS ANALYSIS.  This is His report card.  His “state of the state” message.

HIS WARNINGS.  Repent or else.

HIS INSTRUCTIONS.  Remedial actions the Lord would like to see.

HIS PROMISES.  To Him who overcomes, blessings await.  Each church gets its own promise.

These four blessings–for they were that–were not given to the unbelieving world, not to pagan religions, and not to political powers.  They were gifts from Heaven to seven congregations for whom the Lord Jesus had great expectations and important roles to play.

If you are sports-minded, then think of a football coach rebuking his team.  He reserves his harshest criticism for the best players, the ones gifted with the greatest talents, those expected to give the most.  The players receiving the least attention from the coach are the bench warmers, those with small talents and little desire, players from whom he has come to expect little and receive even less.

The greatest compliment the coach can give is his undivided attention, his closest scrutiny, his best analysis.

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Beware of religious people who do not know God

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“An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).  “Deceiving and being deceived” (II Timothy 3:13).

I wrote something on this website calling for transparency and integrity from churches, using as a jumping off point the billboards up and down the Mississippi Gulf Coast where casinos glorify the fun, the shows, the money, the jackpots, etc., they offer without once mentioning the addicted souls, broken lives and destroyed homes that accompany these enticements. In the piece, I was wondering what if the government’s “truth in advertising” laws required them to tell the full story.

That article was directed to the churches. But someone who found it on the internet jumped all over it (and in ALL CAPITALS!) and accused me of worse things when our churches ask people to give money.

When people cannot see the difference in a church and a casino, forget about trying to reason with them.

The mental capacities of some people have been so skewed by their calloused souls and hardened spirits that they look at black and see white, look at evil and see good, look at Jesus Christ and see darkness.

We should not let such people intimidate us. They have been around from the beginning and are instruments of the evil one, deceiving and being deceived. (In Second Timothy 3:13 Paul says, Evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. A profound observation.)

On the night before He went to the cross, the Lord Jesus, seeking to prepare His little flock for all that lay ahead, said, “An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).

That’s as bad as it gets, yet we see it happening all the time.

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Playing these little games with Scripture

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“John to the seven churches which are in Asia….” (Revelation 1:4).

Did you know if you take the seventh letter from the 7th chapter of each book of the Bible, it forms a secret message?  I didn’t either.  But it’s no weirder than some of the schemes people come up with to make Scripture say more than it was intended.

The cults are notorious for finding secret messages in Scripture.

God’s faithful children must be careful not to fall for such schemes and not to try to read hidden messages into God’s Word.

His Word is sufficient.

I’ve been studying the first three chapters of Revelation, for the umpteenth time in my life.  There is so much here.

This introduction to the entire book of Revelation opens with seven letters from the ascended reigning Lord Jesus to the seven churches of Asia Minor.  The cities were real, the churches were genuine, and the messages are solid.  And yet, over the years, that was not good enough for some of the Lord’s expositors.

Surely there is more there, they said.  And proceeded to insert things never found in Scripture and I believe, never intended by the Author.

For reasons only the Spirit of God can discern, some enterprising teachers decided that these seven letters actually represented seven ages of the Church through the centuries. And yet, there is not a word in Scripture–not one–indicating God had this in mind.

According to this so-called pattern, it all began with the Ephesus age which had lost its first love, it continued with the Smyrna age which was a time of persecution, and so forth.  And guess what age we are in now?  That would be the Laodicean age, of course, since everyone knows that our generation is the culmination of everything the Lord had in mind, that we are the apex of His hopes and dreams and prophecies, that all the world has been waiting for you and me to arrive on the scene.

That, as much as anything, is what makes me reject this interpretation of those seven letters as seven ages of the church:  We are the final age.  We respond: “Oh yeah?  Who said?  What if the Lord has planned another thousand years before His return?  What will those poor people of the future do without a church age of their own?”  I can hear them now:  “Poor us! We had hoped to have a special term for the church in our time, but the church in the 20th-21st centuries fulfilled it.

Forgive my rant here. The more I read and study of Revelation, the more convinced I am that this final Book of the Bible has been the victim of a host of unhealthy teachers with their kooky interpretations.   I definitely do not want to encourage people who do not have patience with God’s Word the way it was given and who keep reading into it  their own thoughts.

The book Revelation: Four Views, Steve Gregg, editor, outlines this problematic interpretation for us…

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Why is it so easy to mislead God’s people?

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“See to it that no one misleads you….. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many” (Matthew 24:4,11).

Our Lord knew His people.  He knew that there was something about their makeup which would make them susceptible to being misled.  By “being misled,” we mean being conned, scammed, hoodwinked, deceived, tricked, lied to, fooled, and abused.

In Old Testament days false prophets came through the land, preaching half-truths and whole lies and filling God’s people with false expectations and pagan ways.  The New Testament church, just beginning to find its way and choose its methods, quickly became the target of these scammers and con-artists.

In Matthew 24, our Lord cautions His people to keep their guard up concerning prophecies about end times: His return, signs of the end, fulfilment of certain prophecies, apostasies, portents and omens.

And yet, the false teachers keep arising and God’s people go right on swallowing their poison. Now, I have little confidence in those who build their ministries around interpretations of prophecy.  Generations of these teachers have published their books, drawn their charts, persuaded entire segments of the church, and taken no prisoners from those who disagreed with them, only to be shown by time as false teachers (that is, when their interpretations proved wrong). And then, a few minutes later a new generation of prophecy experts steps up to fill the gap left by the departure of the last group.

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Those who would serve God should expect opposition.

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“A great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries” (I Corinthians 16:9). 

“Is this vile world a friend to grace to help me on to God?”   (Isaac Watts, “Am I A Soldier of the Cross?”)

This is a quiz.  Name the enemies George Washington faced in the Revolutionary War.

If you answered, “The British,” you’d be only partly right.

Washington did fight the British, as the thirteen colonies asserted their independence from the Mother Nation.  But Generals Howe, Cornwallis, and Clinton and their armies were only the most visible of the forces Washington had to contend with.

He had to fight the weather.  Think of Valley Forge and even without knowing the full story, your mind immediately conjures up images of a harsh winter with all the snow, ice, sleet, and freezing temperatures that includes.

Washington had to deal with starvation and deprivation.  No one knows how many thousands of his soldiers perished from the cold and starvation at Valley Forge and how many deserted in order to save their lives.  Many surrendered to the British at Philadelphia in the vain hope that the conquerors would feed and clothe them.

Washington had to deal with a Congress that was either ignorant, misinformed, or outright hostile to his situation. He wrote letter after letter detailing the misery of his army and pleading for help.  Finally, a delegation came from the national capital, temporarily at York, PA, to see for themselves, after which congress began to act.

Washington fought disorganization, a country that made impossible demands but gave minimal support, and criticism on every side.

Washington even had to fight certain members of his own staff, including several generals. Every schoolchild knows the name of Benedict Arnold, one of his generals who betrayed the cause.  There was also General Horatio Gates, forever undermining his own commanding officer in the forlorn hope that Congress would appoint him to Washington’s post.  Time and again, Gates was shown to be a coward who ran from battle, but blamed his failures on others.  There was General Charles Lee, another pretender to Washington’s position as commander in chief.  Lee, called “a carbuncle of a creature” by historians Drury and Clavin (book: Valley Forge), was known to run from a battle and then brag about how he had won it.  Some years after his death, a letter was found in Lee’s handwriting giving British General William Howe detailed plans for defeating Washington.  Drury and Clavin write, “That Charles Lee was a traitor surprised few.  That he had refrained from boasting about it shocked many.”

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The problem of immature church members

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“Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).

“By this time you ought to be teachers, (but) you need someone to teach you the first principles of God, and have come to need milk and not solid food” (Hebrews 5:12).

A church leader was venting.  “We have so many immature members.  And the problem is, they want to stay that way!”

The leader said, “How do we deal with our discouragement?  How can we keep from becoming Pharisees who constantly see their faults and not their potential?  And how do we love those who cause so much trouble in the church by their immature actions?”

The letter concluded, “I feel like I’m in danger of becoming like the Ephesus church, the one which had lost its first love.”  A reference to Revelation 2:1-7.

My first thought upon reading the question was: “You’re not alone, my friend.  Every spiritual leader fights that same battle, although not to the same extent.”

Let’s do a quick Bible study on the subject, then allow me to make some observations….

Paul saw the Corinthian church split asunder as a result of immaturity.  He said, “I could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to infants in Christ.”  (I Corinthians 3:1).

Well.  That was pretty plain.  Wonder how they took that. (Paul was safely at Ephesus, and thus insulated from the barbs of the worst of the bunch.)

Paul continued, “I fed you with milk and not solid food….  For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?” (3:2-3)

‘Their immaturity showed up in a number of problems which are dealt with throughout this epistle:  lawsuits among members, immorality, splintering into cliques, favoritism, pride over spiritual gifts, etc.

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Solitary conceit: “I can do this by myself! I don’t need help.” (Famous last words)

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C. S. Lewis was fielding questions from his audience. Someone asked how important church attendance and membership are to living a successful Christian life. From his book “God in the Dock,” his answer:

My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about 14 years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and of course, I found this meant being a target.

It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house.

If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament (John 6:53-54), and you can’t do it without going to church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it.

I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t worthy to clean those boots.

It gets you out of your solitary conceit. It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a layman, and I don’t know much.

Yeah, right. C. S. Lewis doesn’t know much. Oh, that I knew as little as he.

Solitary conceit. That one has snagged my attention and will not turn me loose. I see it in Christians who stand aloof from church attendance, in pastors who will not associate with other ministers, and in myself.

The Christian who stands aloof from identifying with a specific church suffers from solitary conceit.

“The churches today just don’t meet my need.” “They aren’t as warm and welcoming as churches ought to be.” “I find I can worship better at home with my Bible sitting in front of a blazing fire in the fireplace with a cup of spice tea at hand.”

Then you are smarter than God.

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