Answering The Critics (be very careful how you do it)

**Note .. If you receive the Shepherd's Covenant Encourager, you've already read what's posted below.  Forgive the repetition, but I believe it's important enough to restate.  And here on the blog you can comment back.  Feel free to do so.  I value your opinions.

I am under some scrutiny from self-appointed "watchdogs" regarding a conference I will be speaking at in January. I don't want to go into all the details now — I will later — but for the time being, suffice it to say I feel like I am back in the pastorate again, where your every move and decision is up for debate.

This whole scenario has brought back memories of a time when we had decided as church leadership to begin a school. To be open with our congregation, I held a meeting to discuss the pro's and con's of the new endeavor. Before that meeting was over, you would have thought we were a terrorist threat to our city, state and nation. How dare we even consider a school!!

Well, we took a step back and let emotions cool a bit, and then we moved forward with the school — and it is flourishing and creditable some 20 years later. I still shake my head when I think of that situation.

Now, I assume well-meaning colleagues are concerned that I will compromise my values and ethics because they do not agree with either the premise of the conference or the sponsoring group. Who knows?

What I do know is that the church really needs to wake up and realize that our effectiveness and creditability comes from "the church being the church" and not a finely tuned image campaign that creates a mirage. In many ways, the church is a mile wide and an inch deep. There are going to be lots of folks who have been so deluded by our "feel good" approach to the gospel that they are going to miss the "born-again" experience.

I will continue to be nice and respectful of my critics (I have learned a lot from James Dobson), but I will not allow the "watchdog" mentality to stifle a message that I believe is from the Lord.

I often agonize for you and the "power players" you must deal with on a weekly basis, but you cannot allow yourself to be emasculated or let the message God has placed in your heart be weakened, even if it does make some people feel uncomfortable.

Paul wrote, "To the weak I become weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some" (1 Cor. 9:22).

So there you have it.  Stay focused and have a great week.

Comments

[Thomas (Tom) Smith]

Ouch!
Having just gone through just such an upheaval of Biblical proportions, I can emote with you.

We too had to choose whether to do as Jesus instructed us to do, or let our church become irrelevant.

We needed to reach out to our increasingly Hispanic neighborhood, or let the church die in a leisurely manner (As many are doing today).

Most of our congregation had moved out of the neighborhood but still came back for CHURCH? on Sunday morning. When the 11:00 service was over they left for their upper middle class neighborhood and never looked back.

By working with our State outreach organization, we were able to hook up with a Hispanic group wanting to start a church on our side of town. When I brought it to the attention of the congregation they thought I had committed the unforgivable sin. We backed off for a while, however God would not let me leave it alone.

I brought it back to the congregation 6 months later, and forced a vote. The incorporation papers, and the constitution of the church, both clamed that we were a Biblical, Evangelical, Outreaching Church. They did not like it a bit that I would use these out dated documents, and told me so. I forced a vote anyway, just to see if they would go on record, as being against what they had voted on in the past, and if they would not recognize Jesus’ Great Commission.

They would not go on record and vote against the proposal, but they promptly stopped tithing and supporting the churches programs.

Since then, the majority of the old guard have left, and we are down to our Hispanic Church and our core group of Evangelicals. We know we did the right thing, but it still hurts to be going through this time of Spiritual Winter in our Church.

It hurts, and we are having a tough time paying the bills and our payroll, but God is Good, all the time. We will continue to work through this, and we will continue to reach out to the lost, and we will continue to pray for Pastor London too.

In His Grip.
Pastor, Thomas (Tom) Smith
Mountain View Southern Baptist Church
Porterville, Ca.