I had a discussion yesterday with more than one person about the plight of pastors today. It seems that some pastors feel if they openly preach on certain Biblical topics, they believe they will offend some people that carry past or present baggage and lose a portion of their congregation.<\/p>\n
We blame pastors for the gospel light inclusive pluralistic universalistic teaching that many of them are now spouting from their pulpits but we must also consider that there are many people sitting in the pews that will not endure sound doctrine anymore. Many are brainwashed by the liberal progressive message that prevails on all media.<\/p>\n
Today If a pastors teaches strong biblical positions where there is just a limited number of people to draw from and where most of the people get their views from media, his congregation will become progressively smaller. I am especially talking about pastors that teach in rural towns because they can only attract the local people available. They have congregations that were built over generations from families that occupied that town.<\/p>\n
In the history of most churches that are ruled by congregations there was one or more major splits due to some family feud or feud between leaders or feud over doctrine. That is why near any town of over a thousand people you will find three or more churches of the same denomination in the more popular congregational denominations.<\/p>\n
So instead of having growing vibrant churches in rural areas you generally have a lot of small mediocre churches that struggle to pay a pastor and struggle to fund other Christian programs. Any membership growth or loss usually is at the expense of some other small church within the same driving area. Its a downright plague in the Southern Baptist denomination. If you’re a pastor and your message steps on a few toes they will just take their membership down the road. If you step on a few too many toes and lose numbers, the congregation will soon be booting you down the road.<\/p>\n
Obviously if your in a big town this might not apply. For example, if your the only Calvary Chapel in the area you can preach a very strong biblical message and those that want to hear strong biblical positions will come to your church from an hour or more away. However, when your church is made up of a few score of town families that pretty much are involved in the same things as the rest of the world, how do you preach against some lifestyles and life-choices without losing the membership of one or more of these clans?<\/p>\n
You might say just preach the full Word and let the chips fall where they may. That is my position as well, but it too often is not the position of those sitting in the pews, and these people have the power of life and death for the career of their pastor.<\/p>\n
I do not envy the position that pastors are put in today at all. A typical example might be that there is some popular teaching going around the denomination that is coming from one of the more popular media evangelicals. But, you read the material and you disagree with where it is rooted and you don’t want your people going down a subtly cloaked portal to the occult. What as a pastor do you do when the people in the pews still demand something like purpose driven, personality typing, pop psychology, successful living seminars,emergent-mystical-candles-and incense youth programs designed to get them in touch with their inner selves, or even a weight loss plan program that really promotes the books and the concepts of Eastern and New Age gurus? (I will be talking about this new “Daniel Plan” weight loss program of Rick Warren in my next post). <\/strong><\/p>\n If you stand against the wishes of a signification portion of those in your congregation that want to follow every new wind bag that comes along, your going to understand persecution coming from some in your own congregation. You will also put your job at risk. If you just go along with the programs to appease those in the pews you are going to be one miserable creature if you really had a calling from God to teach the Word of truth and pastor His sheep.<\/p>\n I am open to your views on this subject, but I know what I would do. Yet, its easy for me to say, my income and means of living does not depend on those sitting in church pews.<\/p>\n I know that I could not walk on egg shells all day trying to please all that did not want their feathers ruffled. I also could not tap dance around the fact that certain Christians choose to live in lifestyles of flagellant sin. They would hear what God said about these matters whether they liked it or not.<\/p>\n I am sure if someone with my views took such a stand his congregation would soon be down to a number where he would get fired. Then he in my opinion, should take the people left, who want a true message from God, and start a non denominational church somewhere in town, even if that meant that he had to learn to live in trailer.<\/p>\n I would then advertise and get the word around town that this church will be founded on the clear teachings of the gospel and the full gospel will be taught (I am not referring to Pentecostalism or excluding spiritual gifts either). I guess finding new members would not be much worse than the effort it takes to run for political office and find new supporters. I would even bet that if your called, God would lead people from other churches and would also lead the unchurched that are open to hearing the truth and\/or fed up with the compromising messages of today’s churches.<\/p>\n I think anyone trying this would have to have to be very gutsy, but I think the pastor that does it will not only be a much more fulfilled Christian leader, he probably will have a larger church of true believers down the line than he would have by appeasing the traditional sheep (of course it will take time). Meanwhile, all the other churches will continue on their path down the downward spiral of mediocrity and compromise with the world and they will keep splitting and spitting over every church faction.<\/p>\n Pastors stay true to why you were called into the ministry. You cannot truly pastor a flock, if the sheep given to you keep following the voices of the wolves. Soon the sheep will mostly come around to drop dung on your cowboy boots.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had a discussion yesterday with more than one person about the plight of pastors today. It seems that some pastors feel if they openly preach on certain Biblical topics, they believe they will offend some people that carry past or present baggage and lose a portion of their congregation. We blame pastors for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,88,18,98,45],"tags":[352,56,167,58,51,66,76,54],"class_list":["post-5604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-movements","category-discernment","category-emergingemergent-church","category-post-modern","category-the-church","tag-discernment","tag-emergent","tag-food-for-thought","tag-movements","tag-postmodern","tag-purpose-driven","tag-rick-warren","tag-trends"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pawsE-1so","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepropheticyears.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}