Category Archives: Church Conflict

How to solve church problems before they happen!

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The number one reason most church problems do so much damage is that the people in the know, those charged with leadership, have not anticipated these things and done the hard work necessary to head them off.

Good preparation will end most church problems before they arise.

Here are 10 rules–principles, suggestions, guideposts, lifelines, call them whatever you wish (call them anything except “laws”)–which, if implemented, can stop the next church split in its tracks and allow this healthy church to go chugging on down the tracks while the devil sits there scratching his head, wondering, “Wha’ happened?” (Old comic book image there)


1. Get your people to praying. 

Prayer is not brackets with which we open and close meetings. Prayer is not tipping our hat to the Almighty to let Him know we are aware He is eavesdropping the proceedings. Prayer is not a formality to be gotten out of the way so we can get on with the good part.

Prayer is calling on the Lord of Heaven and earth to help us, to guide us, to protect and fill and use us. Prayer is accessing Heaven’s power and God’s wisdom for earth’s work.

Once a war breaks out, it’s not too late to pray. But it almost is. It’s never too late to pray, but far better to have been earnest in our praying when matters were in hand and nothing ominous loomed on the horizon.

Prayer for believers is like weight-lifting for athletes: you do it faithfully in the inner room so when you face the opponent you are strong and ready.

This is not a one-time act by a preacher to turn his church into a prayer/powerhouse. It will require many sermons, his example, changes in the order of worship, constant teaching and reminding, and creative plans and challenging reminders for his people.

2. Update your church constitution and bylaws.

These documents are not a strait-jacket to limit the church. Not a shackle to hamper a congregation from doing what it wishes. And definitely not simply a legal document to be turned over to the lawyers in the congregation.

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Ugly behavior in the name of Jesus

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I’m remembering an incident some 15 or more years back which seems to have set the pattern for all the years (and politics) since.

President Obama’s health care plan had been passed by Congress and a lot of people were unhappy about it.

What stands out in my memory is how ugly some people were even while presumably occupying the high ground morally. (Let your mind dwell on that for a moment.)

As congressional leaders worked their way through the crowds surrounding the U.S. Capitol building–security and police were everywhere–curses were being spat in their direction by these champions of the unborn.

The gay congressman heard, “Fag!” yelled at him. The N-word was hurled at Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the Civil Rights movement if one ever existed. And we’re told that in the House of Representative itself, a congressman yelled out, “Baby killers!” to those voting for the health-care legislation.

I was in Springfield, Illinois, watching this on television from my hotel room in between worship services at one of our churches. The pastor and I were discussing the behavior of the demonstrators.

This reminded him of the time a deacon hit him in the face and “busted my tooth.”

I said, “I have to hear this story.”

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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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