No One Is Always Right

Bible knowledge and spiritual gifts are from God and they are good, but knowledge and gifts come with dangers. A gifted leader with excellent knowledge can become overconfident, self righteous, convinced that he is always right.

I knew a preacher with amazing bible knowledge, healing gifts and a wonderful evangelistic ministry. He was zealously devoted to sound doctrine, but this became an obsession which alienated him from other preachers who had different beliefs, even small differences of opinion.

He tried to pastor a local church, which was a mistake, because his primary gifting and calling was evangelism. His local church failed dismally, with membership declining until there was only a tiny home group left. Still he persisted, burning himself out to earn a living and missing his calling to be a full time travelling evangelist.

If you are in a church where the pastor has wonderful bible knowledge and spiritual gifts, that can be good or it can be bad.

• If the pastor believes he is always right, that is dangerous.

• If the pastor believes he knows better than everyone else, everyone in his church or even better than other ministers, that is dangerous.

• If the pastor believes he is entitled to make every decision for every ministry in the church, that is dangerous.

If you are in a church like this, there are several dangers.

• You can become overly submissive, so that you let the pastor dictate all your personal decisions.

• You can zealously adopt all the ideas of your pastor, so your pastor takes the place of God in your life.

• You can become like your pastor, believing you are always right.

• You can rebel against control, which is good, but then you construct your own understanding of truth in such a way that you disagree with your pastor, but you are infected by his wrong attitude, so that you believe you are always right.

• You can attach yourself to another prominent church member with a legitimate grievance but also with a personal agenda. This can lead to church splits.

• You can search the internet or christian bookshops for alternative points of view, which is good, but it can lead to being led astray in wrong directions.

So what should you do?
Seek out good teaching from different sources but be careful to be personally connected to Jesus.
Read you bible for yourself, not just to find confirmation for this or that teaching, but with an open mind and a questioning heart.
Ask God to show you what He wants to say to you.

Find a better church, where the pastor is not convinced he always knows better, because this is a delusion. No one is always right about everything. No one.

And if you faithfully apply all these things, you will still not always be right. You will make mistakes. No one is perfect. You are not perfect and I am not perfect.

Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. 
But whoever loves God is known by God. 1 Cor 8:2–3 NIV

 

Set Free from Childish Dependance

 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Mk 9:35 NRSV

and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.
For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Mk 10:44–45 NRSV

The senior pastor in the church is supposed to be there to serve everyone, right? There are faithful pastors who are expected to do everything. They are supposed to be available 24 hours a day. Many give up after a few years due to burnout.

For some Christians, the pastor is the all-knowing saviour and also the slave who is not allowed to have a life for himself and his family.

Our pastor once told us about a phone call in the middle of the night. A Christian in the congregation had called him.

‘Pastor. It's 2 o'clock and I can't sleep. Can you pray for me?’

The pastor replied: ‘Now I can't sleep either.’

The pastor is there to help everyone, but not like a young mother with helpless babies who don't sleep, so the mother doesn't sleep either.

The flip side of this absurd situation is that some mothers demand that their children remain dependent and submissive for years and never become independent adults. The mother always remains the mother who is always there to help, and the children must always submit.

Unfortunately, this is also the case with some pastors. The pastor works like a slave and expects permanent dependence and unconditional obedience from the members.

Most are not so extreme and there are also very good pastors.

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, Eph 4:11 NRSV

Jesus has given us gifted leaders, but not so that we should remain permanently dependent babies, nor so that we should remain like unconditionally obedient servants who are not allowed to do anything without the pastor's permission.

What is the task of ordained preachers and leaders?

Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. Eph 4:12 NLT

Jesus also wants to give you spiritual gifts so that you not only help the pastor in the church, but also so that you can be a lighthouse in the world.

Ordained preachers are commissioned by God to release our gifts of grace, not so that we can remain permanently dependent and submissive in the church, but so that we can be missionaries in the world with God's supernatural power.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Mt 28:19 NIV

And who is allowed to baptise? Only ordained preachers? Where is that written?

Once my wife and I brought a family to church. They were asylum seekers from the Middle East. They wanted to be baptised immediately, but our pastor couldn't do it just before Christmas.

The pastor asked me a radical question.

‘Why shouldn't you baptise them yourself?’ That's what we did in the ocean. The pastor came unexpectedly as a spectator and God blessed us wonderfully.