Fired Pastor #2

The articles were written by my wife and posted here in hopes that someone else who may be going through a similar issue will be encouraged....

The process of church discipline lasted around 3 months and finally concluded with Will advising the church to remove this woman from membership. This was obviously voted down by the church body, but it also made public an opinion in the church that "We fire pastor's not church members" a statement that was made to me by a member of the church. It was now we learned that two of the last three pastors had been fired or were forced to resign and the one preceding our ministry had "reached an agreement" with the deacon who was coming so hard against us and causing most of the issues. Many of the issues we were dealing with were blown out of proportion by this wayward leader who would visit people after Will had resolved a problem to undermine him. These visits were not known by us until after the fact and often done illicitly. Scripture teaches (2 Tim 3) that one way a person shows they are a false teacher/leader when they are not open about their visits to people in the church body.

We dealt with other issues including a situation with a prospective member unwilling to publicly confess their allegiance to Christ for Baptism (xref Matt 10:32-33), a situation with a baptism that was complicated by family problems and also gossip that was happening amongst the deacons. It began to become painfully obvious that the people of this church truly did not want to follow the Word of God. Their ideology truly made Will and I realize how satan really doesn't care if we go to church or if we let Christ roll off the tongue, what satan cares about is if we act like we have been bought at a price, if our lives are constrained by Christ's love, if we actually FOLLOW Jesus. “Faith is only faith in the act of obedience” (Bonhoeffer) also 1 John 5.

We began to see how the majority of people in the churches around us had bought into the line that many evangelists and pastors profess "it will only take five minutes for you to get saved" or "just pray a prayer and you will go to heaven." To say to a person that all the Christian life entails is a "sinner's prayer" or five minutes is like telling someone the only thing involved in cancer treatment is a small needle prick. The Gospel cannot be dialed down to make it convenient to fit in a five minute span in our lifetimes. The gospel is ALL Consuming.

One Sunday in early spring a former pastor, now a member of this church, usurped the pulpit and began heckling Will about his preaching. Will had recently begun a series on salvation and it obviously struck a chord with this member and he was greatly incensed. This man was allowed to argue openly against scripture and wasn't stopped or confronted on this action, although many members of his family were in the congregation that morning and three of them Deacons. Many people openly agreed that he had the right to overtake the pulpit and declaim the Gospel and the scripture. I knew from the pew, with my three little boys beside me, that we were currently sitting in a gospel-rejecting church. Any group that allows people to openly desecrate the Word of God and the preaching of the truth, has no fear of God and without fear of God one cannot have holiness (2 Cor 7:1). And without holiness was their "gospel" the Gospel? I have never been in or even heard of a church allowing anyone to simply go up to the pulpit and punish the preacher publicly and afterwards not offer any form of church wide apology.

It was after this that some of the deacons met with Will and during this “put it all on the table” discussion stated that they believed Jesus' words only applied to those he was speaking to at the time he spoke and this included (but was not limited to) the great commission and also Jesus’ statement to Jairus "do not fear, only believe." Many things were not biblically mandated because Jesus only meant what he said to the select few he was speaking too. Only one deacon disagreed with these statements and another one went so far as to resign because he didn't believe Jesus meant for us to do those things he spoke to others about in the New Testament. Will was then threatened not to preach certain portions of scripture, he was bullied, intimidated, and asked to just fill the pulpit for several more years. What is the value of your preaching when you elevate it above the Gospel and above the truth? But isn't that the issue really, when you give over the truth then people know that you really don't think it's absolute anyway, right?!

They had been kind to us in the beginning but now they were openly intimidating and punishing my husband. Most would smile at your face while gossiping behind your back. This time was the most confusing to me as to how I was to behave (not biblically, but practically—they don’t have classes for seminary wives on what to do when a church is scheming against your husband and yourself). I knew that they were by this time enemies to me, because of Christ, but added to that, they were becoming liars. Any person who presents themselves as one thing while simultaneously being something else, whether public or private, is a lie. How does one bless those who curse you, pray for those who shamelessly use you? I was learning how this looked in real life, in the moments when I would see people looking daggers at my husband while he preached and then smile at my children after the service. I felt in my flesh this righteous indignation, and yet my spirit knew that I must view them as Christ viewed me prior to my salvation. The whole message of the Cross is that while we were yet sinners Christ died for the ungodly. But to watch people hug my children while they plotted my husband’s termination was personally sickening to me. To know that they would hug the children they wished to see homeless was abhorrent to me.

I was fighting with my own desire to hate and OH MAN did I ever want to hate them! How the hate would well up within me, only ever beaten back by my vision of the Cross and the message it communicates. Without the cross I would have delighted in hate and oh how my flesh desired to do so! The reality of this truth, this desire to hate in my heart--the reality of my own sinfulness and my continual need of grace that justifies the sinner, was so humbling for me. Do not be deceived, humility isn't cultivated by us; it is something that the Lord causes to be wrought in our hearts and lives, especially in the midst of persecution. My own desire for hatred and also my desire to vindicate myself and my husband and children reminded me daily, sometimes hourly, about my reliance on the cross, that without His work I would be less than nothing before him! I could never have cultivated this understanding of my own violation.

What also encouraged Will and I to keep on persevering in our constant battle for the authority of Scripture and the centrality of the Gospel, was the bad advice of two pastors (though the majority of pastors Will sought advice from encouraged him to stand as a true shepherd, not a hireling). Both shared with Will and told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to compromise. He needed to “give the church whatever they wanted because he would lose his job” if Will didn't stop calling these people to repentance and obedience to God and His word. Both Will and I were appalled that two pastors would tell another minister of the Gospel to lay aside the truth in favor of “peace” and in reality meant a paycheck and security. "The truth is too important to kill it in the streets for the sake of peace."-R.C. Sproul. Is there any peace apart from peace rooted in the Gospel? And if the only peace possible is simply an armistice, is that really peace? John MacArthur says that the Cold War was cold but it was still a war! We knew when other men admitted to sacrificing the truth in favor of an absence of conflict that we would rather suffer for the truth than abandon it. Even if it meant Will lost his pastorate. What would we say to the Lord? "God, I just wanted the conflict to end." Or “It just got too hard to trust that the words of Christ really were applicable to all people.” Or the more practical side "How will we survive God? How does a family of six live without an income?" Somehow that didn't seem like an option, not after what Christ did for us and all that He promises us at salvation.