MISTAKES MADE BY MODERN MINISTERS--PART 1

Ministers are leaders in modern church life. I'm not saying that's the way it should be..but is the way it is. So then leadership leads. But where leadership leads can be disastrous if people follow without question. Modern day ministers, as leaders, are making some huge mistakes in my opinion and I want to gently point out a few that I believe need to be examined carefully. 

Were someone to ask how huge I believe these mistakes are, My answer is..big enough to write about them and that may be because I think too many seem to be following without question.

The first huge mistake is in viewing the role of the pastor as all important. The word "Pastor" only appears once in the scriptures [Elder and Bishop however appear over forty times each.] and out of all the letters written to churches none were addressed to the Pastor. They were generally addressed to the people as the church. 

In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the New Testament who would think of a single person as pastor [local fellowships had a plurality of shepherds/Elders] and they certainly would never make the mistake of thinking of a single person, including a pastor, as the head of the church. That place was reserved for the Lord Jesus Himself. 

No one is disputing the need or purpose for having in the body some who shepherd the flock, but in the New Testament it was never to the point of one man/one teacher/one preacher in any gathered group. [Local Church]. That's a modern day mistake made by those who lead that way and the churches that follow them.

Where it has disastrously led us is to the unbiblical place where you can find a local body [church] having "lost" a pastor to another church. They are, thus, handicapped by being "without a pastor" and cannot function in worship or training until one is "called" and sets out his "vision" for the church.

Do you see where this is going? We may not want to call a pastor the head of the church in Baptist theology but we sure live like he is the head.

A second huge mistake made by modern day ministers as leaders is to think of political processes as the way to change a society into what it ought to be.  No one would disagree that things in America are in a mess. But attempting to change society into what it should be by legislating a particular set of Christian values and ethics through the legal processes is a colossal mistake. It would have been unthinkable in the New Testament.

In doing what I just described, Ministers/leaders are forgetting at best or even possibly purposefully ignoring the fact that New Testament believers lived under some horrible and oppressive political systems and yet never attempted to shame, condemn, change, or force their society to become what it ought to be by their Christian definition. 

They, rather, spent their time in obedience to their Lord, in loving their enemies, doing good to those who used them, and, rather than attacking their enemies verbally, with grace they presented the message of redemption found in the person and work of Christ who is Himself God's Son and who came for fallen human beings. Yet, by any way you choose to measure it, they turned the world upside down with that simple theology and methodology.

I think the simple reason is they never thought of the church as a business to be developed. To them, they were the church, and the scriptures always spoke of them as being a body, a bride, a temple, a holy nation, a peculiar people, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, instructed by the Word of God, belonging to God and strangers to this earth and any era.

It simply would have made no sense to them to form protest groups or establish lobbying groups to change culture or society. That lay in the realm of a returning Lord who will make right all things in its time. 


It was in their message of the gospel that the unique power of God was presented which was sufficient to change people. And it was the deliverance of that message that would not allow any other message to capture their attention or occupy their time and energy. 


More to come.....


Paul B.