Thursday, February 9, 2017

The Power Of The Pastor

     I am one of those guys who believes the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible, with no part of God’s Word (rightly understood) in any way conflicting with any other part of God’s Word. When something in the Bible shows my approach to serving as a spiritual leader is incompatible with the revealed truth, I have a holy obligation to alter my approach to leadership so that I might more fully conform to God’s revealed truth. To approach spiritual leadership otherwise is incompatible with spirituality and divergent from Christlikeness.
With this in mind you can imagine my frame of mind when I was discipling some of our men in the Church and arriving at Third John, the little letter of only fourteen verses written by the Apostle John to a Church member named Gaius, in which he seems to commend another Church member named Demetrius, while also offering severe inspired criticism of Diotrephes (thought by many credible commentators to be the Church’s pastor).
May I review a few thoughts off the top of my head that seem to run contrary to the ministerial philosophy of most of the independent Baptist leaders of the 20th century with whom I am familiar? First, the Apostle John writes to a Church member (how could Gaius be spiritual and not be a Church member?) about a problem that Church had with the congregation’s pastor. This is an act most IFBs would claim is beyond the pale as a violation of pastoral ethical standards. Second, the Apostle John criticizes the Church’s pastor for self-promotion and arrogance. How many pastors are guilty of the same approach in their ministries and cannot fathom any other approach to ministry? I know men who think pastors who are not ecclesiastical steamrollers are wimps. Third, this little epistle throws a monkey wrench into the notion that the pastor should be unassailable and beyond any legitimate challenge by godly members, which is, of course, supported by a right understanding of First Timothy 5.19-20. I remember once hearing a pastor claim, while I was attending Bible college, that Matthew 18.15ff was applicable only to Church members but not the pastor (effectively making the pastor a greater authority than the congregation he served). I am afraid it is a widely held practice.
My overall response to such an approach to ministry leadership is that such a philosophy is not Baptistic because such pastors exercise lordship over God’s heritage and deny Church members their soul liberty by seeking to restrict their God-given and Biblical freedom of conscience and action. I see it as no weakness or threat when a Church member seeks to hold me accountable for a perceived wrong and confronts me in private in a respectful and humble manner. Such seems entirely Biblical to me, and the pomposity and domineering spirit that I have observed so often by pastors seem to possibly be an effort to shore up feelings of inferiority or inadequacy. Such as is described in Third John 9-10 is not at all the way the Savior conducted His ministry according to Matthew 12.17-20.
Am I off base on this pastors? I ask pastors particularly because your perspective is different than that of a Church member. Feedback would be welcome.