Response To Question - Should I Leave My Church?
A young lady recently wrote me. She was disturbed about the favoritism that her pastor had been regularly showing towards his female assistant. She basically wanted to know if she should leave the church over this issue or if she should stay. Here is my response:
Dear ________ , (name withheld for privacy reasons)
Thank you for writing. It is very typical for a modern church pastor to celebrate his assistants and workers. Of course I am not saying that such behavior is right, just that it is very common. Through his compliments to the woman you mentioned and the attentions that he is showing her, his goal may be to try to motivate other members in the congregation to be more like her so that he can get more of his plans done faster. I am not saying that this is the case for sure, just a guess. Regardless, even with grand plans and an agenda, should any pastor be doing this? No, not at all it. But the question it seems that you are asking is if this alone, the presence of favoritism in the church, is a strong enough reason to leave a congregation? Generally, I would say no, not if everything else in the church was on track, in other words not unless this behavior is part of a bigger picture of problems. If the church is on track in other areas, you might want to simply seek correction and repentance from the pastor.
Unfortunately, institutional churches are usually not on track in other areas and so there are often many much larger overall umbrella reasons to leave such a church as covered in my many articles. Let's start by asking this question: is the man you mentioned preaching the true Gospel of faith (trust) alone in Christ alone with assurance of salvation and with no possible loss of salvation for the Christian? Or is he teaching some watered-down nebulous and heretical non-gospel message where people think they need to pay for their own sins by giving up something important to them such as smoking or social drinking before they will be “worthy” of accepting Jesus? Does he manipulate the congregation through instilling fear that members will lose their salvation if they sin or if they fail in some kind of performance issue or if they fail to be “faithful” to him and his political administration?
Further, is the pastor a hireling? In other words, has he made being a pastor a financial career, as his primary or only source of income? Is he actually a CEO disguised as a shepherd running a business disguised as a church? Is he an authoritarian dictator running a mini socialistic society or cult and indoctrinating unwary people to join or remain in his little isolated world that is housed in some building somewhere? All these behaviors are totally contrary to the clear teachings of the Bible. Nevertheless, these and many related issues are typically what goes on in the majority of institutional churches today. And that is why you will not find me or my family attending any institutional church.
I have to tell you that it's a beautiful and incredibly refreshing thing to meet biblically at home with your family and any close friends who can be there as well, and not have to rush around on Sunday mornings trying to get a good parking space and good seat for a show (service). It's a cold and disconnected thing to worship with people who you do not really know or don't know well and who don't really care a thing about you. We do not see a non-relational (church) model like that in the Scripture. In fact, never once do we even see a church service or on-going weekly lecture or stage show going on or being taught as a valid church assembly in the Bible. Ironically, never once do we even see the early church ever constructing a church building, let alone for their own comfort and convenience. Yet this is usually the #1 tradition of men that we see being pushed from the pulpits today: an incredible greed for buildings, new or bigger buildings and the expansion of existing buildings. This is not the simplicity of Christ. This is men building empires for their own glory. It is clearly not God's will that Christians waste money building church buildings. The Spirit of the Lord no longer dwells in temples made by the hands of men:
However the most High dwells not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Acts 7:48
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands; Acts 17:24
I hope this helps. Please feel to write and ask questions any time you like.
May the Lord bless you in all that He has for you,
P.S. Another question comes to mind: Is the pastor possibly guilty of some type of sinful impropriety such as sexual immorality with the woman you mentioned (cheating on his wife with her). From what you wrote it doesn't sound like that is the case. If it were, and if the church were a good biblically sound church, then the proper course of action would likely be to seek the pastor's removal, not your removal.
Also, unless you are ready to embrace the far more biblical model of avoiding building-based churches, and avoiding churches that preach a questionable “gospel” or that behave like a business or cult, it would make no sense for you to leave your church, just to end up in a different but similar church. Why bother with all the heartache and pain of changing your friend-base?
I have observed over the years that Christians typically leave a church over one issue simply to end up in a different church with similar and/or some different issues that must still be dealt with. They bounce around like ping-pong balls, from frying pan to the fire, back into a different frying pan again. The names, faces and minor details change, but it's pretty much all the same thing all over again, but in just a slightly different form.
So, in a nutshell, only you can make the decision. If you are ready to put away the crazy complicated institutional church model of men and embrace the biblical church model of the simplicity of Christ, then maybe you are ready to leave and go home :)
Note to Readers: Favoritism hurts. And I think a big question that I might have asked the reader is if she would have wanted to leave the church if the favoritism she mentioned was being bestowed on her. I don't think so. I don't think the question would have even come up. The bottom line is favoritism in the church is unbiblical. It is contrary to the clear teachings of Scripture and therefore is sinful behavior if. We should therefore object to favoritism in the church even if someone attempts to make us a favorite.
[Please note that for copyright and privacy reasons, I do not re-post readers' letters, just my response which generally includes enough context to understand what is going on, but never any personally identifiable information.]
ChristiansFree.com
A young lady recently wrote me. She was disturbed about the favoritism that her pastor had been regularly showing towards his female assistant. She basically wanted to know if she should leave the church over this issue or if she should stay. Here is my response:
Dear ________ , (name withheld for privacy reasons)
Thank you for writing. It is very typical for a modern church pastor to celebrate his assistants and workers. Of course I am not saying that such behavior is right, just that it is very common. Through his compliments to the woman you mentioned and the attentions that he is showing her, his goal may be to try to motivate other members in the congregation to be more like her so that he can get more of his plans done faster. I am not saying that this is the case for sure, just a guess. Regardless, even with grand plans and an agenda, should any pastor be doing this? No, not at all it. But the question it seems that you are asking is if this alone, the presence of favoritism in the church, is a strong enough reason to leave a congregation? Generally, I would say no, not if everything else in the church was on track, in other words not unless this behavior is part of a bigger picture of problems. If the church is on track in other areas, you might want to simply seek correction and repentance from the pastor.
Unfortunately, institutional churches are usually not on track in other areas and so there are often many much larger overall umbrella reasons to leave such a church as covered in my many articles. Let's start by asking this question: is the man you mentioned preaching the true Gospel of faith (trust) alone in Christ alone with assurance of salvation and with no possible loss of salvation for the Christian? Or is he teaching some watered-down nebulous and heretical non-gospel message where people think they need to pay for their own sins by giving up something important to them such as smoking or social drinking before they will be “worthy” of accepting Jesus? Does he manipulate the congregation through instilling fear that members will lose their salvation if they sin or if they fail in some kind of performance issue or if they fail to be “faithful” to him and his political administration?
Further, is the pastor a hireling? In other words, has he made being a pastor a financial career, as his primary or only source of income? Is he actually a CEO disguised as a shepherd running a business disguised as a church? Is he an authoritarian dictator running a mini socialistic society or cult and indoctrinating unwary people to join or remain in his little isolated world that is housed in some building somewhere? All these behaviors are totally contrary to the clear teachings of the Bible. Nevertheless, these and many related issues are typically what goes on in the majority of institutional churches today. And that is why you will not find me or my family attending any institutional church.
I have to tell you that it's a beautiful and incredibly refreshing thing to meet biblically at home with your family and any close friends who can be there as well, and not have to rush around on Sunday mornings trying to get a good parking space and good seat for a show (service). It's a cold and disconnected thing to worship with people who you do not really know or don't know well and who don't really care a thing about you. We do not see a non-relational (church) model like that in the Scripture. In fact, never once do we even see a church service or on-going weekly lecture or stage show going on or being taught as a valid church assembly in the Bible. Ironically, never once do we even see the early church ever constructing a church building, let alone for their own comfort and convenience. Yet this is usually the #1 tradition of men that we see being pushed from the pulpits today: an incredible greed for buildings, new or bigger buildings and the expansion of existing buildings. This is not the simplicity of Christ. This is men building empires for their own glory. It is clearly not God's will that Christians waste money building church buildings. The Spirit of the Lord no longer dwells in temples made by the hands of men:
However the most High dwells not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Acts 7:48
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands; Acts 17:24
I hope this helps. Please feel to write and ask questions any time you like.
May the Lord bless you in all that He has for you,
P.S. Another question comes to mind: Is the pastor possibly guilty of some type of sinful impropriety such as sexual immorality with the woman you mentioned (cheating on his wife with her). From what you wrote it doesn't sound like that is the case. If it were, and if the church were a good biblically sound church, then the proper course of action would likely be to seek the pastor's removal, not your removal.
Also, unless you are ready to embrace the far more biblical model of avoiding building-based churches, and avoiding churches that preach a questionable “gospel” or that behave like a business or cult, it would make no sense for you to leave your church, just to end up in a different but similar church. Why bother with all the heartache and pain of changing your friend-base?
I have observed over the years that Christians typically leave a church over one issue simply to end up in a different church with similar and/or some different issues that must still be dealt with. They bounce around like ping-pong balls, from frying pan to the fire, back into a different frying pan again. The names, faces and minor details change, but it's pretty much all the same thing all over again, but in just a slightly different form.
So, in a nutshell, only you can make the decision. If you are ready to put away the crazy complicated institutional church model of men and embrace the biblical church model of the simplicity of Christ, then maybe you are ready to leave and go home :)
Note to Readers: Favoritism hurts. And I think a big question that I might have asked the reader is if she would have wanted to leave the church if the favoritism she mentioned was being bestowed on her. I don't think so. I don't think the question would have even come up. The bottom line is favoritism in the church is unbiblical. It is contrary to the clear teachings of Scripture and therefore is sinful behavior if. We should therefore object to favoritism in the church even if someone attempts to make us a favorite.
[Please note that for copyright and privacy reasons, I do not re-post readers' letters, just my response which generally includes enough context to understand what is going on, but never any personally identifiable information.]
ChristiansFree.com