Over the past few months, as we have been visiting churches to find a new church home, I know now why it takes some people so long to join a church. I can empathize with those who would visit off and on for months at one of the churches I pastored before they eventually joined. There are some wonderful churches out there. But, I have also learned as I talk with members of other churches that it seems that today two out of every three churches are experiencing some kind of conflict among the members. Those are churches we have avoided visiting. Having pastored three churches over 18 years, and serving on the ministerial staff of five other churches over 10 years, for a minister and his family your church is your life. It’s your job as well as your church family, and it is pretty much the place where you and your family spend the most time other than your time together at home.
Other than my first pastorate, I have had a longer than normal tenure at the churches I have pastored. The main reason I left the first church I pastored after three years was to pursue a doctorate because a church located in the city where I desired to work on a doctorate called me to be their pastor. Had I not felt compelled to pursue a doctorate, I might very well still be at that first pastorate. At the most recent church where I was senior pastor, my six years there were twice the tenure of each of the previous three pastors and long enough to put me at the fourth longest pastoral tenure out of eleven men who have served the church as senior pastor. A local church is the body of Christ who join together to meet in a particular location. As I have stated often from the pulpit, the facility in which a local church meets is not really the church. Each member is part of the church wherever he goes. A facility becomes the place where a local church is known to meet, but the body of Christ congregating there is what makes that place become a church.
What causes the conflicts which are too prevalent in churches today? Well, I don’t want to devote much space in this particular blog to that subject, but the Blame Game sometimes puts the blame on the pastor and sometimes the Blame Game puts the blame on an individual, one or more families, or a group of members within the church. I went to one church knowing that the previous two pastors had been forced out under pressure by a group of church members, but I went in with the intent that problems were to be faced head on and worked through. After all, we are the body of Christ, and if we are who we claim to be as Christians, in Christ, we are not to sever part of our body. Any part of the human body that is not working properly, whether due to injury or improper use, affects the entire body and keeps it from working to its greatest effectiveness. What happens when you are hammering a nail and you accidentally hit your finger? You start hopping around holding your finger and trying not to say something you shouldn’t say! A knock on the finger affects your whole body. A pain or hurt within a church body affects the entire church. Our first priority should always be to heal a pain or hurt within the body of Christ, not remove the body part.
When I was in junior high school one of the top songs one year was “The Name Game.” You would take someone’s name and say, “Bobby Bobby Bo Bobby, Banana Fana Fo Fobby, Fe Fi Mo Mobby.” Well, “The Name Game” is an extension of “The Blame Game” in most churches experiencing conflict. In my previous blog on “Integrity in Ministry Principles I Live By” one of the integrity factors was to face up to it and don’t try to cover it up when you make a mistake that needs to be addressed or a decision which is being challenged. But, too often, where conflict could be resolved if one or more individuals would simply own up to their being the cause of the tension that is building up because they messed up, they try to deflect the criticism away from them toward someone else, often about a completely different matter, to take the critical focus off where it should be. That leads to sides being taken, and where someone may not have had previous conflict with others, they do now because the real source of the conflict has caused people to turn on someone else. There are three sides to any conflict, your side, the other side, and God’s side. God’s side is the side that all in the body of Christ must make sure they are on.
This past Easter Sunday, Wanda and I attended the late morning worship service at Sevier Heights Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was a powerful service from beginning to end. Bro. Hollie Miller preached from Acts 17 and the account of Paul in Athens. To explain to the Athenians, who were very religious and had statues throughout their city of many gods, Paul used their statue “To The Unknown God” (Acts 17:23) to proclaim to them the one and only true God. When Bro. Hollie read that verse, he then held up a copy of the most recent Newsweek Magazine with the cover story on the front titled, “The Decline And Fall of Christian America.” Bro. Hollie then said that the God we had come to worship on Easter Sunday was now the “unknown God” to most Americans. Hundreds of us groaned out loud in sad agreement with what he had just stated. I couldn’t help but think at that moment of all the churches going through conflict and how that is a major contributing factor to the fall and decline of Christian America. Who wants to join a church where the members are fighting each other rather than fighting the devil. What’s so sad about this is that their conflicts are usually over something that makes no difference for all eternity while many souls are on their way to an eternal hell because church members are giving each other hell.
In a recent visit to a doctor’s office, as I was leaving and about to get into my car, I saw a lady I know who motioned that she wanted to talk to me. She knew that I was a minister and she said, “Bro. Bobby, please pray for our church.” I asked what was going on, and she said that people were telling lies about one of their ministers. She said that he was incapable of doing and saying what was being said about him. I knew the minister and asked her what others were saying about him that she believed were lies. When she told me the specifics, I responded to her that I was sorry to have to say it but what she thought were lies about the man were true. I had personally observed the minister’s inappropriate actions and conversations. And, that’s another factor in the decline and fall of Christian America. None of us lives a life of sinless perfection, and to say a minister or anyone else, other than Jesus, is incapable of doing and saying something that is out of character for a Christian to do or say sends the wrong message to the lost and unchurched, when we fail to deal with a situation seriously and directly because we may naively believe that person is above such conduct. I did confront that minister privately, but he denied any wrongdoing. He went on the attack against those in his church who had brought up concerns about him, sides were taken, and that church is in a royal mess.
There are other factors contributing to the fall and decline of Christian America other than the couple I have mentioned, which we’ll eventually get to in another blog, but to quote the comic strip character, Pogo, and a phrase used by him in reference to pollution and conservation, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I don’t believe the Church’s greatest downfall today, in not impacting the world for Christ as we should, is from what’s happening outside her walls, it’s from what’s happening within her walls. We are our own worst enemy.
Well, as Bro. Hollie Miller came to the time of decision at the end of his message on Easter Sunday, he mentioned how Christ was our mediator for salvation and how He was like a lawyer on our behalf in getting us freed from the penalty of our sins. During the invitation time I focused on one adult man walking down the aisle toward the front of the worship center, wiping the tears from his face while another man had his arm around the man who was crying. I’m sure that man who had his arm around his crying friend had witnessed to his friend, maybe even convinced him to attend that church worship service on Easter Sunday, and as a result, the man’s friend passed in that moment from darkness to light, from death to life, from hell to heaven in professing his faith and trust in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. As Bro. Hollie was about to close the worship service, he informed us that a lawyer from Middle Tennessee, who attended the early morning worship service, came forward at the invitation and said that she was a lawyer who needed a lawyer, Jesus, to save her from her sins. She, too, at that moment passed from darkness to light, from death to life, from hell to heaven. Bro. Hollie also shared that a man had just come forward at the end of that second morning worship service on Easter Sunday and said that he needed a lawyer, Jesus, to help to save him from the penalty of his sins. I felt that Bro. Hollie was talking about the man whom I had watched walk broken, tearfully, but joyfully down the aisle during the invitation.
Oh, Church, that’s what we need today to reverse the decline and fall of Christian America. In the churches where the Blame Game has taken over, it’s time for individuals who are the source of conflict in churches to own up to their mistakes, shortcomings, and sins, confess them, repent, become a better person because of it, and move on beyond it. Be a real man or woman of God and quit trying to blame someone else for what you have done and caused and don’t be a factor in driving people away from the Church, but be the kind of example in word and deed that draws people to the Church and to Christ. Quit playing the Blame Game and make known the Unknown God to many but True God for all to those who don’t know him by leading the lost to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and adoption into God’s family as His sons and daughters.