I was recently at a preaching conference in Louisiana on expository preaching and the keynote speaker for the plenary sessions was Dr. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Seminary. At the closing of one of his sermons he was talking about preachers being good and faithful servants and he made the statement, “As long as you are doing God’s will it does not matter how many churches you are ran off from.” I understand the whole concept of doing God’s will and not being concerned about the thoughts of people but what troubled me was the seemingly accepted idea of churches running pastors off whenever they wish. I am not bashing Paige Patterson in this blog but am sharing a concern of what I saw when this statement was made. It seemed that everyone at the conference, about 200, totally accepted being ran off from a church as “just part of ministry.” However, I believe that this is shameful and should not be so among professing Christians. We teach Scripture that commands unity yet we show very little of that unity among the intimate fellowship that we try to recruit people to join. How are we to ever reach the world if we cannot cultivate togetherness in the body of Christ? I do not blame the local congregation for being naive to the Scripture but the pastors who are being ran off from these same congregations. I have seen many pastors teach about how the church is the body but few of them would ever think of helping another local expression of that same body. They discuss the importance of fellowship yet how many of them invited me into their homes? They speak of Christ-likeness yet blast their personal agendas from the pulpit. This should not be!
Ephesians 4:3 says that we should be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Eph.4:12-13 “[12] to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, [13] until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Eph. 5:20-21[20] giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, [21] submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Phil. 2:4 [4] Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Gal. 3:28 [28] There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (italics added).
Just think, what if we the leaders of the body were to truly grasp the fullness of unity and learn to put others before ourselves, what could we do for the kingdom? Many times we speak of unity but we do not truly mean unity. We want to be left alone and we agree to not disturb others as long as they do not disturb us. This is the reason for pastors being ran off, they begin to disturb people. Now how do we fix this? First, we cannot take issues personally. If we truly believe that the church is God’s then why do we get upset with change? If the church is God’s why are we angry when things do not go our way? We may claim that we know the direction God is leading the church and the people are going the wrong way. However, it is our job to proclaim the way of the Lord not to make people follow it. We as leaders MUST fight for unity no matter how much pride we have to swallow. This unity cannot stop at the doors of our local expression either, it MUST proceed to the next church, denomination, culture, economic status, and country or we will continue to struggle with this accepted status quo of what we call ministry.
Seth L. Green
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