My friend, Pastor Rob, resigned. He called to inform me and to say I would not be leading the revival we had scheduled in his church.

“What happened?” I asked.

The story Rob related was the back end of what he had told me some months earlier when he became the pastor of that church. A couple active in leadership roles had been living together as man and wife for several years, but without having ever married.

Scripture calls this fornication.

When my friend Rob had agreed to become their pastor, he did so on the condition that the deacons would deal with this issue and not foist it off on him as the new shepherd. They agreed to do so. Less than a year into his ministry, nothing had been done and the pastor was being attacked by the man and woman as a trouble-maker. They and their supporters in the church griped that all was well until this new preacher came, and he’s stirring it up.(Understand that I’m abbreviating the story and omitting a great deal.)

When the pastor asked the deacons if they intended to act, the chairman said, “Preacher, I guess we’re just cowards.”

So, my friend resigned and moved away with no new church in sight.

He did a courageous thing.

Those who allowed this situation to fester did the cowardly thing. (One could make a case for the previous pastor being a coward too, since he left that situation intact for the next preacher to deal with.)

The ultimate test of a deacon is whether he has the courage to take a stand against a hypocrite who is doing great damage in the Lord’s church; whether he is willing to stand up for his church, for his Lord, for the calling of God. (Granted, this is true also of pastors. But we are addressing deacons here.)

Courage simply means one has the heart, the willingness, to do the right thing in a most difficult situation.

The core of “courage” is the Latin word “cur,” which literally means “heart.” Scripture speaks of those who do not have the heart to do something, who lose heart, or have their heart strengthened.

The kind of courage of which we speak looks like this:

But  a certain man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property and kept back some of the price for himself with his wife’s full knowledge, and bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles’ feet.

But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back some of the price of the land? …. You have not lied to men, but to God.’

And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came upon all who heard of it. (Acts 5:1-5)

The courage to confront is a rare thing.

The hypocritical church member was seeking status within the congregation as one of the elites (see Acts 4:34-37) without earning it. In confronting him, the Apostle Peter did three things:

a) He asked Ananias why he had done it? This is about the motive.

b) He identified the act with Satan. This is about the source.

c) He put it into context as something done against God, not man. This is about the effect.

I’m not sure if that’s the pattern we should always use, but it’s not bad. I particularly like steps one and three: ask the individual why he did what he did and at some point in the larger discussion, frame the act in the context of its ramifications.

Ask: “Why?”

That’s not a bad way to approach someone whom you are calling to account for his deeds (or misdeeds). If there is no question on what he did, then asking “why?” is logical. It gives the individual the opportunity to explain himself.

There will be times, however, when you may want to begin, not with “why have you done?” but with “what have you done?” Ask the individual to tell you what he did.

Identify: The source

This is the work of Satan. God is not the author of confusion or division.

If the one confronting is uncertain of the nature of what the individual has done, then he probably does not need to be having this conversation. The whole point of the confrontation is that someone is openly violating God’s Word and causing great damage to the Lord’s work.

Explain: “What you have done.”

Toward the end of the conversation, the confronter should inform the perpetrator of the true nature of his misdeeds. I can almost guarantee you he thinks his sin was a private matter between him and someone else, and nothing more.

The Prophet Nathan confronted King David with his sins: adultery with Bathsheba, the subsequent manslaughter of Uriah, and the continuing coverup of the whole business. After David confessed, Nathan wanted him to know the full scope of what he had done. His sin was not just against one man and his wife. David had rebelled against God Himself, and was dragging God’s good Name into the mire. Nathan said:

Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? …. Now therefore, he sword will never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife….. By this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme…. (II Samuel 12:9-14)

The hypocritical leader who openly and proudly flouts God’s Word is doing the same three things David did: a) despising the Lord’s Word, b) despising the Lord Himself, and c) delighting God’s enemies by giving them reason to laugh at Him and scoff at His teachings. These are highly serious matters.

When the time comes to confront the hypocritical leader–be it a deacon, a teacher, or the pastor himself–you will have to make a tough decision.

“How much do I love the Lord and His church?”

If you are a coward, if your love for the Lord and for His church are weak, you will take the hard way out and do nothing.

Doing nothing is the more difficult way.

To do nothing when someone is flaunting their sin before the world and ruining the church’s reputation in the community–not to say dishonoring God and delighting the world!–is to choose the way of pain and failure.You abandon your church to years of misery and decline. You betray those who enter that church hoping to find God, truth, and salvation.

The deacons in Pastor Rob’s church who refused to deal with the hypocritical leader and his live-in lover sentenced their church to a pastorless interim, denied the Lord who entrusted them with the care of His flock, betrayed the trust of the congregation, and held the church up as the laughingstock in the outside community.

They fear the offending church member more than they fear God.

They fear the hypocrite and the slander to which he would subject them more than they want to please the Lord.

They are unworthy to be called deacons and should resign immediately.

Better that the church have no deacons than to be sentenced to live with this bunch.

I sometimes suggest to pastors and deacon chairmen that they create hypothetical situations which they present to the deacon body for their reaction. Only after some deep discussion should they reveal that this was a made-up story, that nothing of this sort is going on in our church, but we need to know you will do the right thing if it were to occur.

To build courage within your deacons, we suggest….

1) Incoming deacons should be informed by the older, godly leaders the nature of courage, the temptations to act cowardly which they will face, and that the Lord and His people are counting on them. If they sit back and wait for others to speak up, they are choosing the way of fear.

2) You tell the deacons up front that from time to time you will be role-playing with them, giving them troublesome situations to test their response. Then, do not mention it again. When you (and your immediate leadership–do not try this alone!) present them with the kind of situation faced by Pastor Rob and his church, they will have no idea whether it’s actually going on in their church or not. Therefore, their reactions will be genuine and their responses will tell you how prepared they are for troublesome times.

3) The pastor tell of the time a church member confronted him over something he was doing wrong and how it helped.

As a beginning pastor barely out of my teens, in my exuberance to connect with my hearers, I was using slang in the pulpit. One day, the lay leader of that small church asked me to meet with him. When he told me the nature of his complaint–that “gee,” “golly,” “heck,” and such were substitutes for profanity and unworthy of the pulpit–I was offended at first, but quickly recovered and realized he was right. The next Sunday, my language was cleaned up. To this day, I’m grateful for a godly layman who did the courageous thing.

4) Once in a while, a denominational leader (in Southern Baptist churches, the “director of missions” would be ideal) should be given a slot in the monthly deacons meeting to talk about courage in faithful leaders and to tell of situations he has seen where courage was lacking. (Negative stories often have a greater impact on listeners, particularly when followed by discussion times in which people answer, “What would you have done?”)

In the office when the boss is given a difficult choice to make, someone will quip, “That’s why they pay you the big bucks.” And it is.

In the Lord’s family, those of us who are called on to do the hard things (such as confronting cancers within the congregation) do not do these things for the paycheck. We have a much higher motivation than that.

We love the Lord Jesus and want to please Him.