Are People Who Are "Wounded" by the Church Self-Centered Church Shoppers Who Didn't Get Their Way?

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01:26

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

01:33

We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we will seek to answer the age -old question, are people who are wounded by the church self -centered church shoppers who didn't get their way?

01:45

Now Tim, I think normally whenever someone's talking about anyone hurting anyone when it comes to the church and its members, normally it's the other way around, where people are typically talking about how the church hurt them.

01:59

So it might be kind of surprising for some people to hear us talking about people actually hurting the church.

02:06

So maybe let's just start by just addressing the title question head on, and hopefully that'll kind of get people up to speed with what we're even talking about, because I don't think most people even really have a category for church members being anything other than victims by the church's hands.

02:29

So why don't you go ahead and answer that question for us. Are people who are wounded by the church self -centered church shoppers who didn't get their way?

02:38

Yeah, when you think about a question like that, we're obviously living in a victim society right now. Right now, pretty much, it's very popular in the broader evangelical world to talk about deconversion stories and about church abuse stories, and the church hurt me, and I need to take some time and detox myself from the church and all this stuff, and take a break in order to heal, and I just am damaged and broken and all this stuff.

03:10

And so the standard way that most people think about this kind of topic is fundamentally to think about the church always being the one who's at fault in these kind of interactions.

03:25

And then you combine that with just the standard, right now, pop psychological approach to victimization, and essentially you believe the victim, you don't shame the victim, you don't blame the victim, and everything else.

03:40

And so as you think about something like that, when someone shares their experience, their experience has to be validated, it has to be affirmed, it has to be basically considered to be true.

03:53

And so you basically have a narrative that is used to handle every single conceivable interaction between church members and church leaders and church as an organization, or however you want to say.

04:08

And typically the standard way that we view most of these encounters is to basically view them as the church is fundamentally at fault in every single one of these encounters, and there's little to no tolerance for the opposite being actually considered as a valid option.

04:28

Meaning, it might very well be that you're in an environment where due in large part,

04:36

I think, to just the prevalence of megachurch culture and seeker -sensitive movement and church shopper phenomenon in general, it might be that there's a wide variety of situations where you have self -centered church shopper people who really conceive of the church as being fundamentally all about them and their own desires and their own wants, and then they go into a church situation and basically try to impose all of their self -centered preferences on the church, and then when the church fails to live up to their expectations, then they basically cop a victim persona and basically then adopt all the normal posture that comes with victimization.

05:17

But I think it all kind of depends on where your location is in large measure, so depending on what kind of church background you're from.

05:25

But in standard faithful church that's doing expositional preaching and doing its best to try to have some sort of regenerate church membership and not just filled with all the programs and everything else,

05:39

I think those kind of churches, by and large, they get a lot of people who come in, and they're coming from a church shopper background, and very often it is the case that you just have self -centered people coming into the church and causing a lot of problems with their own selfishness, and that's not an uncommon phenomenon at all.

06:00

But then in different kind of traditions, it could be different stories, so there isn't a one -size -fits -all approach to who's to blame in any one of these encounters.

06:11

But right now, though, if you even ask the question, maybe it's, is it just the church member, it's inappropriate to even ask at this point.

06:19

Oh, yeah, yeah, big time. You cannot even hint at the church member being involved having any fault in the issue.

06:34

Otherwise, you'll be labeled as an insensitive monster, right? Right, but I can tell you story after story after story of situations

06:42

I know where I just change the details a little bit and not give out any names, but I can just tell you story after story, situation after situation, where you have church members who just, they are coming into a church situation, or they've been there for a while, and they get their heart set on something, and they're just unwilling to consider the possibility that they might just be being entitled brats about something.

07:14

So I'm just reminded of a situation where a girl felt like the

07:20

Lord was telling her to lead a female Bible study at the church. And it was a scenario where she really felt like God was telling her this, like somehow, in her feelings.

07:35

And the problem was, I mean, it's just like, she's just not the kind of girl that anyone at the church would think, would even want her to do a

07:44

Bible study. So no one showed up, right? So no one showed up to her Bible study, because it's like no one recognized her as having the gift of teaching or being in any way someone that individuals would want to go to for that.

08:00

But then no one showed up, and then it's just like, then she feels like she's hurt by the church, because church leadership didn't want to promote it.

08:08

But it's just like, you're not someone that the leadership at that church felt like was qualified to be in a teacher role.

08:19

And what do you do in that kind of scenario if you're church leaders? You just let everyone start a Bible study, you promote it, you basically put pressure on everyone to go to it when you don't think you're going to be getting anything good.

08:31

And then no one really wants to show up, and then it's, well, it's your fault for not supporting me. And then you fall into the standard victim narrative that you've been hurt by the church and abused by the church.

08:42

And it's just like, hey, maybe it's a little more complicated than that. And maybe God didn't tell you that.

08:48

Maybe you made that up, and maybe you should become teachers because you'll receive a stricter judgment.

08:55

And maybe there's qualifications for that, and maybe you don't fit. And that's leaving aside what kind of church structure you have in general and what kind of expectations you have as it relates to those kind of things.

09:09

But that kind of individual couldn't conceive of the fact that there might be any reason why the church wouldn't support that other than just them failing her and letting her down and not listening to the

09:21

Holy Spirit and all that. But that's not uncommon. That's just standard fare.

09:27

I don't know, Tim. I don't know. But to me, that just sounds like the church hurting another victim.

09:34

Yeah. Church just threw another one under the bus. I mean, refused to utilize their gifts and didn't support them and didn't support their sense of calling.

09:50

But I mean, it's just like, church is messy, man. There's situations like that that you just, like, what do you do?

09:58

Yeah, you really are caught in between a rock and a hard place because like you said, you either go along with it and then it goes down in flames because that's not their gifting.

10:13

And so it inevitably just gets torched. Or you say no on the front end and save all that heartache on the back end, but then you've got to deal with the, well, you don't want to support me and whatever.

10:30

Or you hate women. You hate women. You don't think they need to teach no matter what. Yeah. I mean, it's all that kind of stuff.

10:37

I mean, there's just scenario after scenario that I can think of in churches I've been to and been a part of.

10:46

The guy with an axe to grind at the church who didn't get the job that he wanted and now is just deeply troubled by the direction of the church, wants to start a prayer group or whatever.

10:58

But then when you let him pray one time in the congregation, he threw everyone under the bus and complained about it.

11:04

Then it's just like he wants to start a prayer group and you don't support it. And it's just like, well, I guess you're anti -prayer.

11:11

I mean, obviously you're anti -prayer. I mean, he's praying over all these issues that he sees in the church and you're trying to shut that down.

11:18

Come on. All those issues which seem to personally have affected him. But it's just like there's some, if you were to listen, you can listen to the narrative.

11:29

And the Bible says the first to plead their case seems right until another one comes along to examine it. So you can listen to those kind of narratives and it sells.

11:38

And there's a market for it. There's a market to destroy the church in that kind of way and paint everyone as victims.

11:45

Oh, yeah. But then the problem is you often can't tell the other side of the story.

11:52

You just can't. You can't just sit everyone down and explain this is what the thought process is.

12:03

And so there's a lot of situations like that you just have to take. But then it's just one of those things where it's just a lot of times life is much more complicated than that.

12:13

And then when you have church shopper culture that essentially breeds the type of individual who thinks that the church is fundamentally all about them and supporting them and validating them and everything else, then you're in a situation where a lot of people, they just go from church to church until they muster up the courage to basically finally tell the church their deepest desires.

12:40

And they put them out there like that dish that they labored over for 12 hours, hoping that you would enjoy it kind of thing.

12:51

And it's just like, man, we can't support that. And then it's just like, oh, how dare you? You just rejected all of me.

12:58

And at that point it's just like how can they possibly face to be in your presence anymore when you just totally rejected everything?

13:06

It took them all this courage to share. But I mean, there's just so many situations that I know about personally and have heard about and been in tangential ways.

13:19

And it's just more complicated than that. And there's no simple answer to that.

13:25

An accusation doesn't constitute proof. You have to hear both sides of the story.

13:33

And often it's just like there's reasons why you can't share everything too. Yeah, I'm reminded a lot.

13:41

It does seem like it is really popular to try and take down the church and try and air out the church's dirty laundry all the time.

13:54

I think what comes to mind immediately is probably John MacArthur and his church.

14:01

And it seems like, especially these days, it seems like there's some sort of claim against them once every three months, it feels like now.

14:12

And it's funny because it seems like it kind of comes from the same people over and over again. Yeah, I mean, Julie Roys is doing one a week, you know.

14:20

Desperately hoping that something will stick to the wall. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, what's silly about it is you have a church like that where I think he's been the pastor there for over 40 years, going on 50 years now.

14:35

And it's like, you can't tell me that in the course of 50 years of being a pastor and doing ministry that it's not conceivably possible that maybe perhaps there was one situation that came up along the line where they could have handled it a little better if they had more information that they weren't privy to in the moment, you know.

15:00

It's just, it's like even if, you know, I mean, so there's scenarios where you don't have enough information to know how to proceed.

15:10

A lot of the accusations go along those lines. And there are situations where even with the information you have, some of you may, like, didn't pick the wisest outcome.

15:20

And it's open to criticism later on. But my goodness, like, I mean, in thousands and thousands of pastoral interactions over the years, if you're scraping the bottom of the barrel and trying to find some sort of dirt on someone that happened 20 years ago and that's the best that you can do, it's just like you have a problem, you know.

15:38

Right. You know, and with individuals like Julie Roys, I mean, her agenda is that she hates, like, biblical gender roles.

15:45

And, you know, John MacArthur is an example of that. And she's actively trying to destroy him for those reasons because she feels like she's a woman who's called to preach.

15:53

And, you know, he told Beth Moore to go home. And so now she doesn't like him, and she's trying to figure out any way she can possibly can to destroy his reputation.

16:01

But, I mean, those are dime a dozen. And, you know, a lot of these stories, you have to understand, there's other agendas that are behind these things that you don't hear about.

16:11

You know, and so you can't just take the accusation at face value. What's motivating it, right? And there's false accusations that come in plenty of situations, but what is it about, you know?

16:22

And often, you know, just in life, it's not always about the thing that they're talking about, you know? It's often about something else, like there's something else motivating it.

16:32

Yeah, I think I've had plenty of personal interactions as well where I've met, you know, we're in a college town, so we meet new young students every year.

16:48

And I can't tell you how many times I've heard them tell me that at some point in their life, the church hurt them along the way.

16:59

And that's probably one of the top, you know, two or three reasons why they, if they aren't in church right now, that's one of the top reasons why they aren't in church right now.

17:12

They might, some of them say, well, hey, I just haven't found a place. But it's like, you know, they're a junior in college, and it's like, what do you mean you haven't found a place?

17:21

It's been three years. But a lot of them, they do say, hey, look, the church hurt me in some way. And I'm, basically, they're still not over it.

17:29

And a lot of, it's a weird situation to be in, because as a person who's being told this, you don't really have a lot of info to go off of.

17:39

And so they're kind of, sometimes they're ready to just, like, put it all out there for you.

17:45

And they kind of expect you to just form your entire opinion on the whole situation based around that.

17:53

And there's been a few interactions where I've had to say, like, oh, wow, you know, if that's true, that's bad.

18:01

But, you know, I don't want to, like, comment, because I don't know everything. I wasn't there.

18:06

I wasn't there for the conversations. And that's kind of like, they'll kind of take that as, like, an assault, you know, on themselves.

18:15

Me just saying, like, hey, I'm going to kind of try and stay neutral here and say, you know, like, if that is exactly what happened, then, yeah, that's really bad.

18:26

That's you re -victimizing them in the moment, you know. Right, right. And so it seems like it's really popular to have an experience like that.

18:38

And there's really not any fear to even just, like, air it all out for everyone. You know, and it's kind of like you want everyone, you want as many people as possible to know about it.

18:51

Yeah, I mean, the thing, what's motivating it in a lot of cases is you have individuals who are not, like, connected to a church right now, and they need some sort of rationale to explain their functional apostasy, essentially.

19:04

So the Bible says they went out from us because they were not of us, but they left that it might be demonstrated that they are not of us.

19:11

Now, like, the only way to get out of that, you know, and like when you're the person who's neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of them, you know, like, when you're that person who is treading dangerous ground, then what you need is you need some story that puts you in, like, the position of the victim in order to make it all make sense.

19:31

Because right now, I mean, you're living in a society that basically, if you claim the victim status, like, there's no accountability for you whatsoever.

19:42

Right, you get immediate affirmation. You get, like, instantaneous, like, Catholic Church sainthood, you know?

19:48

Like, once you claim that victim label, that's what you get, you know? But then the problem, though, is that, like, in case after case after case, like, you know, when you really think about what they're actually saying, like, you know, often it's just like, you know, like,

20:02

I was on the media team or something, and, you know, and I kept on not showing up, and then, like, you know, the person basically asked me to commit to showing up when

20:16

I'm on the schedule or, like, quit, like, just step down from the role, you know?

20:22

It's just like, how dare you, you know, not, you know, understand that, you know, I'm a, like, a college student who, you know, is unreliable at this point in my life, and I'm going through things emotionally and don't know how to process, you know, things.

20:37

So, I mean, it's often, like, things like that, or it's often, like, you know, like, stories of, like, you know, some sort of church discipline process that was started, you know, whether or not it was just someone confronting them of some sort of sin in their life.

20:52

You know, often it doesn't even go near the third step. It's often just the first step kind of things that are just basic individuals trying to encourage, like, accountability in their life to some degree.

21:03

Like, hey, you know, you might not want to, you know, dress with a see -through shirt on, you know, or something like that.

21:10

You know, just basic kind of stuff like that, you know, that, you know, it's just how dare you, or, you know what, you're dating someone and they're not a believer, you know, and they're a drug addict, you know.

21:24

Like, they never go to church. They, like, they're, like, they use recreational marijuana every week, you know.

21:31

They're obviously high every time I'm talking to them, you know, and it's just, like, have they ever, like, they don't have a spiritual thought in their brain.

21:38

You know, the Bible says don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers, you know. It's that kind of thing, or it's like, you know, you're spending the night at your boyfriend's house every week, you know.

21:48

We need to have a conversation about it. It's like, how dare you, you know. So, I mean, but then, like, the thing is, it's like the scandal is that, like, that victim label became the excuse that validated their sin, right?

22:03

And you take it away and it's like all that's left is just, oh, like,

22:09

I'm the one to blame here, you know. And it's like people can't, like, they don't process that.

22:15

I mean, that's just the way that relationships work. You always are looking for someone to blame for your problems, you know.

22:20

Right. And, like, once you get that, then you get this all -purpose excuse to basically not deal with life anymore, you know.

22:30

Yeah. So, when it comes to, you know, say you're in that situation where you meet the person who is saying, hey, you know,

22:40

I'm a victim. Look at how the church hurt me. Should we, if we want to honor

22:47

God, should we immediately believe them as a victim?

22:55

The issue is not whether or not we believe victims. The issue is who's the victim, right?

23:02

So, like, so, like, I want to believe the victim. The question is who is it, you know.

23:07

Is it you? Like, are you the victim? Are you the villain in this scenario? And, you know, often, like, life is a little more complicated than that.

23:13

Often, like, we're all of us victims in certain ways and villains in certain ways. And life doesn't seem to divide up so neatly like that as if, like, the, like, you know, every person you're dealing with is, like,

23:27

Anne Frank and then the person that they're accusing is Hitler, you know. Like, often it's…

23:33

Yeah, it's not all Jedi and Sith, huh? I mean, it's not, you know. It is, like, it's often, like, even in situations where, like, the individual has a legitimate, like, beef, you know, with the other, like, there's…

23:51

It's more complicated than that. They probably fail to handle, like, how to deal with, like, they probably didn't suffer very well and weren't very, you know, long -suffering and weren't very patient and humble and, you know, everything else.

24:04

So, it's just complicated, you know. So, like, the issue is not whether or not we believe victims. It's who is it. But then the

24:09

Bible tells us the first to plead their case seems right until another comes to examine it. And, like, when you're listening to one side of the story…

24:15

Like, there has never, ever been a situation where I've listened to one side of a story and then got the other side, and the other side wasn't incredibly illuminating, right?

24:29

Like, I've never been in that scenario. And, you know, being involved in counseling, you know, you can listen to the woman, like, and it's like, man, she's just, like, messed up.

24:40

And, like, this guy is a horrible monster and, you know, just, you know, Satan incarnate. And then you listen to the guy and it's just like, oh, wow, like,

24:49

I get it. Yeah, that's a little more complicated than what you're making it out. And then you listen to the guy and it's like, she's, like, literal, you know, just a vicious life -sucking abyss from which there's no escape.

24:59

You know, and then you listen to her and it's just like, yeah, you know what? Like, he comes home every day and, you know, plays on his phone for, you know, eight hours.

25:08

And then, like, then he wants to, you know, have sex with me at three in the morning, you know, after he ignored me all day long.

25:15

It's like, dude, what's your problem, you know? Right. You know, but it's just, like, that's the way it works, you know, even in these church situations where, you know, like, even when there's, like, some sort of, like, you know, kernel of truth there, it's just a lot more complicated.

25:31

So, yeah, I mean, I think what you have to do is you have to suspend some sort of, you know, judgment, you know, and often you can ferret it out pretty easily, like, in those kind of things by saying, hey, you know, like, would you mind if I go talk to your church about it and get their side of the story?

25:50

Yeah, I think if you want to see, like, a really bad example of what could happen if you just immediately believe the first side that you hear is just look at this, you know,

26:01

Amber Heard, Johnny Depp court case going on right now. I mean, for a while there, everyone was ragging on Johnny Depp because, you know,

26:11

Amber Heard came along and was essentially insinuating that Depp was, you know, beating her and abusing her verbally and physically.

26:21

And then here we are now and it's like, everyone's kind of acting like they were never on Amber's side to begin with, you know, because you're finally getting a lot of, you know, over the last year or so, however long it's been, you've been getting a lot of Johnny Depp's side and all of a sudden it's like, oh, whoa, this is not what

26:46

Amber Heard made it out to sound like. So it seems like if you want any sort of extra biblical sort of example of, you know, not believing the first person that claims victim status, then just look at this court case going on.

27:04

I mean, look at all the police shootings too. I mean, the police shootings are also examples of that kind of thing to where, like, the problem is that like once the narrative is set, then like, you know, literally it's just like, you know, hands up, don't shoot, you know,

27:20

Michael Brown, that kind of stuff. And it's like, you know, the forensic evidence shows that he had gunpowder on his hand, you know, how does he get a gunpowder on his hand?

27:28

You know, and there's evidence that he charged the police officers bashing his head. And it's just like, you know, like there's two sides to every story.

27:36

And one of the things that we have to do, like almost especially in an age that has like video evidence, is like there's been situations where you just like you see a clip, you see a brief moment and you jump to a conclusion.

27:48

It's just like you gotta hold off a little bit. But then, you know, that's especially true with just dealing with testimony, you know, like these narratives are already set.

27:58

So like the narrative is set that the church is just this monstrous, you know, abuser of its authority. And people are ready to believe that and hear that.

28:08

And part of what's happening is that like you're living in a culture and society right now that basically hates all authority.

28:16

And a lot of like the abuse like claims are coming from like a culture that is hostile to the very idea of authority across the board.

28:27

And so that's a lot of what's happened in the church too, movement, Me Too movement, all that is you have like a narrative that all authority is bad.

28:36

And then like it's by definition bad. And so then the church has authority structures within it.

28:42

And so you have like people who are just jumping to conclusions, but then like the Johnny Depp Amber Heard thing, you know, it's just one of those things where I guess just a great example, like what you're talking about, the first to plead their case seems right until another one comes along to examine it.

28:57

And, you know, like there's obviously like two sides to every story. And, you know, you can selectively portray certain bits and pieces of a story and not have the full picture.

29:10

And it just shows you that like, you know, if you give an answer before you hear it's following shame, like that you have to like be patient and listen to both sides.

29:18

And, you know, if a lot more pastors, like what happens a lot of times is pastors, they don't want to do the work of like actually getting the other side of that story.

29:27

And then what happens is the disgruntled church member goes to their church and they're the next like victimizer, you know, like, and it's just like, but really what's happening is you have like, in a lot of cases, like individuals who are just like doing, they're doing the same thing they do in their own marriages and their own relationships.

29:46

You know, it's just, it's all about them and it's about what they want, you know, and they go into a relationship and it's just like, you know what, like she doesn't, you know, respond to my every desire exactly the way

29:57

I want, you know, she doesn't live up to all my fantasies and, you know, and everything else. And so I can't trust her and she, you know, wounded me and all that.

30:05

And then on the other end, it's just like, he's not loving me well and, you know, anticipating flawlessly all my desires and needs and knowing, you know, at any given moment exactly what

30:16

I want and validating all my feelings. And, you know, you take that into a church and like, you've learned to do that relationships and it's the same thing that's happening at the church level is just now it's like, you know, the church who is not validating their desires and giving them everything they want and doing everything, you know, idea they have and you just have a mess.

30:37

Right. And I think when it comes to, you know, we've been talking about, it's really popular to claim victimhood status and people are kind of, they're jumping at the chance really to claim it for themselves, get that coveted label.

31:01

But doesn't it seem like it's kind of a sissy thing to do? I mean, don't you think of like if a guy came along and I know some people like this who guys who are constantly like everybody's out to get me and I always kind of think like, man, that's a little sissy, isn't it?

31:28

Well, I need, what is that guy's name? Jesse, Jesse Lee Peters or Jesse, what is the guy's name?

31:37

Who? The black dude. Oh, I don't know.

31:43

You've mentioned him before. Beta, the one who's always saying Beta. Beta. Beta. No, I mean, it is, it's very emasculating to be that kind of person who's just like, you know, everyone hurt me and everyone's out to get me and everyone's so mean to me and it's just like, it's emasculating, yes.

32:05

I mean, I just, I don't know, man. I've been in churches that I thought like, they got some problems, man, but that's not my impulse.

32:17

I've been in situations where I've been under leaders that I thought, hey, they're not qualified to be a pastor, they need to step down, everything else, and they're not handling things well,

32:28

I don't know what they're doing. But there was never in my mind this thought like, this is,

32:36

I'm wounded and I'm hurt and I'm not validated. I've been in situations where I've been qualified to teach and not being utilized with my gifts, but I have no expectation that I'll be used.

32:52

I consider it like a privilege. I've been in those situations and there's no expectation that you're going to give me some position and give me some, who am

33:03

I? I'm nobody. If God wants me to have a way to be useful, then he'll make me useful.

33:10

If there's situations where I can be helpful, I'll be helpful. I'll just look to serve in the ways that you'll let me.

33:17

Picking up chairs and moving them. That's my attitude about it.

33:26

I could tell you about a church I was at where they had a lady, this church

33:34

I was at, and one day I discovered that after I rejoined it, that there was an older lady who was leading an adult

33:43

Sunday school class full of all the deacons. And so I went and I talked to the pastor about it and I said, what's going on?

33:56

And his answer to that was, we're just going to let this one die off. I just thought, oh, what a wimp, man.

34:10

What a wimp. Hey, what do you want me to do? They'll call me a woman hater if I shut it down. The way

34:17

I responded to that was I thought, alright, I'm not going to cause a big stink about this. I'm not going to try to destroy this place.

34:23

I'm going to find a new church. No hard feelings. You let it die off. I just can't follow that.

34:30

But I didn't think to myself, oh man, I was wounded and I was damaged and I have to justify myself.

34:37

Dude, that was a golden opportunity, man. You should have jumped at it. I didn't go there with it. I just don't get it.

34:46

There's churches that are unfaithful and you try to help them be faithful. But if they don't want to listen, you shake the dust off your feet and you find somewhere that's going to be solid.

34:58

You don't have to turn it into this big old, I'm wounded, I'm damaged, I put myself out there. I don't get that.

35:05

I don't get that kind of mentality. It's not masculine. The guys that are doing that, they're doing that because they don't even know what it means to be a man.

35:17

Big surprise, the ladies in their life don't want to be intimate with them. It's because they're pansy. Even that terminology is really kind of weak and sissy -like.

35:30

I'm weak, I'm damaged, I'm broken.

35:36

I can't even say them all. When people use those words,

35:44

I'm pulling back the curtain a little bit. When people start using those words and they're not being facetious or sarcastic or something,

35:54

I have one of two responses. The first one is to just totally roll my eyes and think this is the dumbest thing ever, like you're being a sissy.

36:05

The second one is to just cringe as hard as I can, basically.

36:12

The words themselves are just so weak. It's like confessing that you have a therapeutic peacock or something in order to do it.

36:23

It's like, whoa, we're really there. Therapeutic peacock.

36:29

That's where we are. Part of what's happened is you're living in a matriarchal society and men haven't been taught these basic temperance and control of their emotions and fortitude.

36:46

They haven't been trained to have control over their emotions. They've been taught that in order to be a man you have to express your emotions just like a woman might.

36:58

Whatever that is, it's not being strong, it's not being courageous, it's not acting like men, it's not strength, it's not courage, it's not any of that.

37:10

It's like a surrender of all the masculine virtues when you start speaking that way. There's a reason why you shouldn't expect any sympathy from that.

37:20

You should expect people to say, hey, man up. Get control of yourself. Because if you can't even handle mild pushback on your ideas, you can't handle those kind of situations, how are you going to do anything that the

37:35

Bible actually calls a man to do? The zombie apocalypse comes and you're reduced to tears because the zombies are hurting your feelings.

37:41

What in the world? We need you to get out your club here and go to work.

37:49

That's what we need. I find it repulsive and repelling. You ought to obviously have compassion on people who are caught up in that kind of thing.

38:02

But we don't need to normalize that as a normal manly response to dealing with conflict.

38:11

Part of these church issues, it's about dealing with conflict. It's about learning how to interact in difficult situations with difficult people.

38:24

I don't know. For me, I've never had those kind of expectations. I've always been humbled and thought, man,

38:32

I've gone into every church I've been at since I became a Christian. I basically say, hey, if there's any way

38:40

I can be useful, then I'd like to be useful. If they didn't give me anything to do,

38:48

I'd find things to do. No one's going to complain if you help take up the chairs and do things like that.

38:55

You can find a way to be useful if you want to. I've just never approached church in a way that I've just thought to myself, man, you need to validate me.

39:08

You don't. That's not training up masculinity when you're thinking that way.

39:15

This is kind of going off topic. You see, everyone kind of makes fun of the masculine guys who are always saying they never open up about anything.

39:32

Maybe there's a little bit of validity to that, but then we've pushed things so far the other way that we're essentially training men to be as effeminate as humanly possible, which is really bad for us because now everyone's coming after the church with all the

39:52

LGBTQ stuff, the abortion stuff, a lot of the environmental stuff that's going on,

40:10

COVID, all of these different things. The church really has to take a stand and be able to say things like, hey, no, the government can't just shut down our churches.

40:20

We have a right to gather. No, you can't take our kids and teach them how to have gay sex.

40:34

But if you're training people to use this kind of language and think this kind of way, if they think that victim status is something to be desired, then you're never going to have men that actually stand against those things because that's going to be mean and hurtful and harmful.

40:51

The thing is, I think no one wants a pastor who is doing that himself.

40:59

Doing what? No one wants a pastor who's just fussing and complaining, like no one loves me and no one treats me well and they don't care about me and they always fight everything that I'm trying to do and woe is me and eeyore.

41:15

I've seen pastors go that route and it's just like, man, this is really odd.

41:24

Hey man, man up and have courage and show us an example of what it looks like to suffer well.

41:33

And that's what people expect out of a pastor. You get up every week and the pastor's just fussing about no one loves me and no one cares about me and everyone's mistreating me and misrepresenting me and I'm just wounded and I'm damaged and I need to go take a sabbatical because I'm so stressed out.

41:50

There's nothing that results in a vote of no confidence like that. But then the thing is, the pastor is an example to the flock.

41:59

So if that's weird for a pastor, that should be weird for men too. That should be weird.

42:09

Think about how society actually works and society actually functions. When the men are strong and they handle difficulty well, everyone else can handle difficulty well and be strong.

42:22

You can go through some very hard times if the men have courage and have strength and have fortitude and don't take everything so personally and turn into an emotional mess of tears when they don't get everything they want.

42:40

You can go through very tough times because you're looking to your leaders to be an example of strength.

42:49

But when they go, then everyone goes. So we're in a situation now where all the men have basically turned into wimps.

42:57

There's no example of what does it look like to handle criticism. Right, have thick skin.

43:05

Right now in church society, the standard church member at the standard church, basically if they have one person criticize them, they literally don't ever want to see that person again and feel perfectly justified in avoiding them and never thinking about them and never talking to them again.

43:26

We're that thin -skinned as a society. So then it's just very hard to look at all these stories of abuse and wounding and actually hear them out.

43:35

Most of them are pretty petty. They're not what you think they are.

43:43

Right. But isn't it, maybe some people are hearing what we're saying and they might be thinking, well, okay, sure, maybe a lot of people err on the side of the church member every single time, but it kind of seems like you guys are just wanting to err on the side of the church every single time.

44:09

Isn't it possible that the church can actually do things that harm its members?

44:17

Yeah, there's two responses to that. First, which side do you err on, right?

44:25

Right. So right now we're told, like I said, as a demand, you err on the side of the member, right?

44:32

Right. Well, the problem is the Bible says you don't receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses.

44:38

So the Bible doesn't go that route, right? So there is a biblical principle to say, godly man and godly church, give them the benefit of the doubt, and you need testimony of more than just one person.

44:55

One accusation doesn't a guilty verdict render in that way. So that would be a scriptural position there, right?

45:04

Meaning, if there's a way, where do you lean typically?

45:11

You lean towards the church, is where you lean. Biblically speaking, you don't receive an accusation except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

45:21

That tells you where to lean, like your sympathies. But then, basically, the substance of the question, though, is aren't there real situations where churches are, you use a loaded term, abusive, right?

45:37

Mm -hmm. Well, yes. I mean, it's just a horrible term.

45:44

Maybe I'll give you three responses. One, the abusive stuff is just a horrible term. I mean, like right now, when you talk about someone abusing someone, it can mean anywhere from the guy beats his wife with a chainsaw every night to something as trivial as the wife is literally screaming in her husband's face, and spit is dripping out of her mouth as she is berating him, and a spit droplet falls into his eye as she's berating him for the 10th time that night, and he shoves her away from him, right?

46:25

It's just like, those are two very different scenarios, all right? Right. I mean, we even think about verbal abuse, right?

46:34

Verbal abuse is a category that now, if someone verbally abuses you, meaning even as much as fails to agree with you or slightly raises your voice, then that calls for divorce in the minds of many people.

46:50

So, anytime that word is used, it's just so charged, you don't even know what it means, right? You have no idea what that word means, but once it's put out there, it's like you have to believe the person and sympathize with them, and it's just like, what are we talking about?

47:02

Are we talking about the chainsaw incident? Are we talking about after yelling and screaming at someone, someone slightly raises their voice and says, you need to calm down, you know?

47:15

Like, what are we saying? Put that into the discussion, like that's just a word that's unhelpful, that we should put a moratorium on and probably never use.

47:25

Just use different words that are more helpful. What are we talking about? But, leaving that all aside,

47:33

I think as you read the Bible, one of the things you'll find is there's errors that can go both ways.

47:43

Meaning, as you think through, I was listening to Numbers this week, and it's really amazing how many times the

47:50

Israelites challenged Moses' leadership unjustly. Like, it's just over and over and over again.

47:56

It's from the very beginning of the story in Exodus. When you get to Numbers, it's like you have the rebellion of Korah, you have

48:03

Miriam and Aaron who are essentially saying, is it only to you to whom

48:10

God has spoken, Moses? Didn't he also speak to us? And God basically takes Moses' side in the case of Miriam and Aaron giving

48:18

Miriam leprosy in order to shame her, and caused her to go outside the camp. In the rebellion of Korah, God causes the ground to open up and swallow those individuals bringing those accusations against Moses.

48:30

As you think about it, Paul, Moses, all the faithful guys, they were all falsely accused.

48:38

Jesus says of his followers, if they spoke evil of me, they're going to speak evil of you, a servant that's not greater than his master.

48:45

If they malign me, they're going to malign you. Paul, throughout his whole ministry, had threats from the outside, threats from the inside, two -per -apostles, false prophets.

48:54

Everything else, like church members, that's just the nature of the beast. It's that way, but then you also have plenty of examples in the

49:02

Old Testament of when the kings go bad, when Eli's sons go bad and start robbing people and sleeping with women.

49:12

Then you have examples in 1 John of situations where essentially you have these leaders, in the epistles of John where you have leaders who are kicking people out of the church unjustly and everything else.

49:27

It can go either way. I think depending on your faith tradition, these things can...

49:33

I'm using that squishy expression, but you know what I mean. Depending on the kind of church you're in, the errors go in different ways.

49:41

In your standard charismatic prosperity church, I'm much more sympathetic to those kind of things in general.

49:52

In those kind of scenarios, I understand what we're talking about. Like in terms of just the man with the anointing that no one can challenge and that is motivated by greed and everything else.

50:07

But there's other things that are feeding into that kind of basic distrust of the scenario too, like the fact that he's receiving direct divine revelation and he's teaching a false gospel.

50:18

So it's not shocking that there are some other crazy stuff going on too. I think in your standard mega church culture, part of the thing is you're just...

50:30

Standard mega church culture is really training people to be self -centered, petty church shoppers.

50:37

I think probably most of your standard big church scenarios, probably what's happening is the guys aren't just...

50:45

They probably don't deserve all the flack they're getting, but it's just like when you train people that church is all about them and you have thousands of people who think that this thing's all about them, at some point you're in an impossible situation because the church can't be about a thousand different individuals.

51:01

Something's got to give, and that's kind of the way it works. But then what's happened is I think you have a lot of faithful churches who are basically picking up the church shopper stuff and then getting a lot of the same kind of self -centered, me first kind of stuff.

51:19

And so I think that's by and large what's happening in the main, but then there are real situations where people are using their power and authority irresponsibly, and those things happen for sure.

51:36

So shouldn't we just expect the church to just come out and be like, Like if Moses had just said sorry to Miriam, wouldn't that have...

51:48

Don't you think maybe she wouldn't have had to get leprosy? If he had just said sorry to the sons of Korah, maybe the ground wouldn't have swallowed him up.

51:59

I'm sorry that we hurt you. That's the expectation. Or even

52:05

MacArthur coming out and just saying, Hey, look, you know what? Sorry. My bad. Just say you're sorry.

52:11

Their feelings are hurt. That one's on me. That one's on me, guys. Pat your chest a little bit.

52:17

Part of the thing is we just don't believe people are responsible for their feelings is part of the problem.

52:24

But the issue is the Bible says that we're responsible for even how we think and even how we feel.

52:31

So when Cain was mad at God for not accepting his sacrifice, God looked at him and he said,

52:38

Why are you angry and why has your face fallen? God didn't accept his sacrifice and so Cain starts to pout.

52:47

And God didn't just say, Hey, sorry. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, Cain. I understand how you could think that that was kind of mean, but you have to understand

52:56

I have rules that you have to follow. That isn't what he did.

53:02

Why are you angry? Why your face is falling? And if you do well, will not your sacrifice be accepted?

53:09

The same thing with Jonah. It's just like God looks at him and he says, Is it good for you to be angry? The implied answer is no, it's not.

53:17

Our feelings are not neutral. We can get our feelings hurt because we have listened to a bunch of gossip.

53:24

We can get our feelings hurt in a metaphorical sense because they're immaterial and all that.

53:30

But you understand what I'm saying. You can get yourself all upset and frustrated because you're jumping to conclusions.

53:37

You're making poor assumptions. You're listening to poor information. You have unreasonable expectations. All those things are live and on the board.

53:44

And so you can't just in some simplistic way come along and say, Hey, yeah, I'm sorry you're hurt. It's like, no,

53:50

I mean, is it good for you to be hurt? That's what God frequently says to individuals who are playing the hurt card.

53:57

Is it good for you to be angry? Is it good for you to be hurt? Often that hurt word is just code word for bitter and you had your idol thwarted and everything else.

54:08

And so the issue is what is true about this scenario? What is true about it? Do you actually have reasonable cause for distress in this moment?

54:18

Or is it unreasonable? And even if it's reasonable, is it in proportion to the nature of the offense? And so there's not just this simple,

54:26

Hey, I'm sorry you're hurt kind of thing. That doesn't do anything. All it does is tell people that they're entirely justified in feeling everything they're feeling and acting the way that they're acting.

54:36

Okay, so don't say I'm sorry you're hurt. What if I say, All right, sorry you decided to let yourself be hurt.

54:46

Is that better? Is that more accurate? I say with a smirk on my face.

54:55

Sorry you decided to be a victim. I think you take God's approach.

55:00

Is it good for you to be angry about this? I'm not angry, I'm hurt. What's the difference? It's funny you bring that up because I actually had an interaction with a student of mine.

55:15

Really, it's kind of been like a prolonged one where it's been an issue.

55:23

They constantly get themselves in trouble because of what someone else is doing that is close by to them.

55:35

That student's actions will get on this student's actions nerves and then it ends up making the student angry.

55:47

They respond in some way that inevitably is going to get them in trouble. I've had to have several conversations where I say,

55:54

Hey, look, when you let yourself become angry at other people's actions, who's in control of you at that point?

56:06

What I'm trying to get them to understand is that they're not in control anymore.

56:13

If someone else can do something consistently and make you angry, make you feel like you're a victim, make you feel like you've been wronged in some way and there needs to be justice for you, then ultimately

56:26

I don't really think you're the one in control of your own actions. I think you're letting someone else be in control.

56:36

I think there's something to be said about the person who can go into a situation and say,

56:49

Hey, look, even if there is a legitimate wrong done to me in some form or fashion,

56:58

I'm willing to say I'm not going to let that define me. The fruit of the

57:04

Spirit is love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control.

57:12

Once you get that victim label, you put that on the situation, there's no category for fruit of the

57:18

Spirit at that point anymore. It's just like, but hey, wait a minute, did you see

57:24

Jesus walking around basically just complaining about all the ways in which His disciples hurt His feelings? It's like, no, you still have a responsibility to have love, joy, peace, even in difficult situations.

57:37

The nature of the offense shouldn't be so personal. It's not about you, it's about God, it's about His glory.

57:44

For most people, that's where the whole the church hurt me kind of thing, it's just like, you wonder, even if in the situations where there's a legitimate concern, it's like, why is this so important to you?

57:55

Have you never learned to accept wrongdoing in your life? Proverbs tells us it's a man's glory to overlook an offense.

58:04

You've never learned to overlook an offense, you've never learned to be mistreated. Even Paul says, why not let yourself be defrauded rather than going to court to sue someone, right?

58:16

There's this whole, in the Bible, consistent teaching of just let yourself be defrauded. Like, blessed are you when you are persecuted, despitefully used, for great is your reward in heaven.

58:28

Think about that and think about this church victim culture thing that we're talking about. In that moment, if you really are being despitefully used, you should be rejoicing and exceedingly glad because great is your reward in heaven.

58:42

What we think is the appropriate response is just to wallow in a ball and just refuse to go to church for months and months at a time because you're so damaged and you're so hurt.

58:52

No, the appropriate response was to rejoice and to be exceedingly glad. That was the appropriate response, but you can't even say that because it sounds so crazy to people because they have no category of suffering for righteousness sake.

59:07

The problem, though, is their marriages go that way, too. Their relationships go that way, too.

59:13

They've never learned to suffer for righteousness sake. They've never learned to do good to those who persecute you and despitefully use you.

59:21

If your enemy hungers, feed him. If they thirst, give them drink. For in so doing, you'll reap quotes of fire on their head. They really are all about them.

59:29

I'm not trying to say there's no place for grief and sadness and everything else, but it shouldn't be the self -focused, self -pitying kind of sadness.

59:37

Right, all -consuming. Yeah, like, I can't believe people were mean to me. They were so mean to me and it's just so hurtful.

59:44

It's just like, oh, come on. How do you live life in a fallen world?

59:51

The problem is they don't. The problem is that once you start going down that road, it's just like you've just broken relationship after broken relationship after broken relationship because everything is just so personal and you have to be validated and you have to be affirmed and you have to be told you're wonderful.

01:00:08

It's just like that isn't the path to peace and love and joy and long -suffering.

01:00:15

Right. Long -suffering, right? That's not long -suffering. That's like copying a victim personality.

01:00:21

That's not self -control, control of your emotions. Ultimately, what people should be doing in these scenarios is grieving that God's purposes are not fulfilled.

01:00:34

It's about His kingdom come, His will being done. It's not about us, man. We need to get our eyes off of ourself.

01:00:42

Right. When you see Paul, he's crying over the state of the church because he loves these people more than he loves himself and he doesn't want them to go to hell.

01:00:51

Right. It's not about him. It's not about, oh, you guys are treating me bad.

01:00:58

Paul literally wishes that he could go to hell so that his Jewish brothers would avoid hell.

01:01:06

That's how much he loves people. We're so far from that, man, in this kind of discussion that it's not even funny.

01:01:12

I think that there are legitimate situations where church leaders can let people down and fail, but man, you should be praying for that person who did that and so grieved for them.

01:01:26

It should be about grief for them because you love them and you care about them and you're so concerned for them more than it's just like, how dare you treat me this way?

01:01:36

You're never in the right when you're that way, man. Right. Imagine if Jesus had the same response to us.

01:01:43

Right. We sin against God. We totally reject all of his authority.

01:01:51

Imagine if instead of saying, hey, in spite of all this, I'm going to send my son to be crushed in your place.

01:01:56

He's like, well, you know what? They wronged me. I'm going to let them get exactly what they deserve.

01:02:03

He would have been totally justified in doing that and he didn't do it. Right. You read through the

01:02:09

New Testament, you don't see this pitying, self -focused, you guys are so mean to me and you never follow me very well and all you want me to do is magic tricks for you.

01:02:23

Even the times where he's like, couldn't you pray with me for an hour? The reason why he's saying that is because they literally just boasted of their loyalty and faithfulness to him.

01:02:33

Right. He's trying to let them know that they're going to all be scattered this night.

01:02:40

None of them are going to stick with him and he's doing that for their benefit, not for his. It's not like, oh, you guys let me down and I was depending on you and you betrayed me and how dare you.

01:02:50

Right. Whenever God's mourning, he's not mourning himself, he's mourning us.

01:02:56

Right. When Jesus says, I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her brood, talking about Israel, he's literally –

01:03:06

Mourning the hardness of their heart is not – Yeah. It's not self -focused, it's not self -pitying, it's none of that.

01:03:14

Right. But that has to go into this kind of conversation to where you can even have legitimate situations where leaders fail and fail big time.

01:03:26

There isn't this just category of just everyone is so mean and they treated me so bad and I'm just so damaged and so wounded and so broken.

01:03:37

It's not a thing, man. It's not a thing. That's not to say that everyone has the spiritual maturity to be there instantaneously and you need to just go in and be absolutely callous to that.

01:03:51

You have to have some mechanism to say, hey, we've lost sight of what we're doing here.

01:03:58

Yeah. So I think whenever you have a discussion about people being hurt by the church,

01:04:07

I think people probably have in their mind a pretty good idea of what it is that the church might have done.

01:04:13

And normally it typically involves some sort of quote -unquote abuse of power, right?

01:04:21

If you were to use the phrase like we are people hurting the church,

01:04:28

I don't know that everyone would immediately have something pop into their mind as an example of that.

01:04:35

So could you give us some specific examples of what a church member hurting the church might look like?

01:04:47

When you take your own self -centered preferences and read them into the church.

01:04:55

There's plenty of scenarios where a church member doesn't like something that the pastor is teaching and basically goes on some crusade to discredit the pastor and turn everyone against them and turns to gossip and complaining and to slander and to all that.

01:05:15

Based on some sort of misunderstanding. There's been plenty of situations that I could think of where individuals didn't like something that I was saying and it's just like they didn't read it.

01:05:27

They just don't understand it. Those are scenarios to where a church member can do a lot of harm, can do a lot of damage.

01:05:36

A church member has certain expectations about how the church should be run or how it should operate.

01:05:47

A lot of big churches train people to think that they need to have ministries for every age and every stage and all these programs and all these events and that kind of stuff.

01:05:58

A church member can go into a church that isn't doing all that. It's just faithfully teaching the

01:06:04

Bible, feeding the saints, mobilizing for mission, that kind of stuff.

01:06:09

You can go in there with all these expectations about what you think should be happening. A lot of church shopper focus is event focus and so people want more events, more activities, more things to do.

01:06:25

Give us a children's church, which is an oxymoron. Give us all this stuff.

01:06:31

We want entire singles ministries, we want all these women's ministries, we want all this stuff.

01:06:39

What that means is just extra teaching that's specifically geared towards certain demographics.

01:06:46

They can go into churches that aren't doing that kind of thing and just cause a lot of problems and basically level a bunch of accusations.

01:06:54

It's just like, hey, are these biblical expectations or are these just things that your big church did that were maybe wise, maybe unwise.

01:07:07

A lot of people can get real event focused. A lot of it's related to kids and stuff like that too.

01:07:16

You have a lot of parents who are basically in the process of losing their kids to the public education system and then they look at the church.

01:07:24

They basically turn their kids over to pagans for eight hours a day their whole life and then they end up pagans.

01:07:30

They're like, hey church, I never had Bible studies with them, I never prayed with them, but it's your job to fix them. Basically, go play baseball with them and maybe slip in 10 minutes of Jesus talk with them and that'll do it.

01:07:42

It's like if a church doesn't want to go that route to entertain their pagan kids in that way, then it's just like, well, the church hates kids and the church is failing them.

01:07:54

It's just like, our job isn't to entertain pagans. There's just a lot of church shopper expectations that you can have there.

01:08:06

When you just feel like you have some sort of gift that you have, whether it be teaching or whatever, you have these ideas about how to revolutionize everything and fix everything.

01:08:19

Then you come into a church and want them to do all your plans, most of which are just nowhere to be found in the

01:08:25

Bible. There's just examples like that. Just gossip and slander and discontent and complaining and your normal stuff.

01:08:35

That isn't helpful. You are going to war against Christ's pride.

01:08:43

I've been at churches where someone gets on a kick that this is the only translation that's divinely inspired or something like that.

01:08:55

They go to a church that's teaching a different translation and they go to war against it. It's just like, what are you doing?

01:09:03

Just go to a church that does that. Why are you trying to change that? You know on the front end what they're doing.

01:09:10

They're not doing that. There's just things like that. You can multiply examples.

01:09:18

I could give tons of personal examples, but I'm trying not to to protect the guilty.

01:09:24

Okay, so those are a bunch of examples of ways that people can hurt the church itself.

01:09:34

I guess in closing, why don't we talk about… Well the truth though is that Christ will build his church in the case of hell and will not prevail against it.

01:09:42

You're not going to destroy the true church and God's going to get the churches back. Ultimately God's sovereign and he's in control and everything happens for a reason.

01:09:55

But his sheep will hear his voice and they'll follow him. He's got a building project.

01:10:01

He's going to finish it so we can rest confidence of him. But there are people who seek to do it harm and are actively doing everything they can to destroy it.

01:10:12

Hinder the church. It's funny that Julie Roy went on a crusade against MacArthur and now she recently got cancelled and he's still going.

01:10:23

Did she get cancelled? I didn't know that. She basically told a story in her book, 2017 book, about her basically falling in love with a girl.

01:10:40

Basically falling in love with a college girl that she was ministering to and then basically violating all the principles of the

01:10:50

Me Too culture and the way that she blamed the girl for it and everything else. So now all the survivor folks are on her case about it.

01:11:00

But it's funny, God has his servants back. Live by the sword, die by the sword

01:11:07

I guess. In closing, why don't you just walk us through,

01:11:14

Tim, some… Scenarios on the other end. Well, I was going to say, basically, yeah, like a proper way.

01:11:24

So, you're a church member at a church, right? You feel like the church has done something that's hurt your feelings or it's made you upset.

01:11:39

You feel like you're not valued. You feel like you're not heard. Whatever it is, you've got a problem with something the church did.

01:11:50

You listed a bunch of examples of what people actually do and how it can hinder the church in certain ways.

01:12:01

Not ultimately, obviously. So why don't you just kind of walk us through what should the general response be from someone who feels like they are hurt by the church in some way?

01:12:19

Sure. I guess you have to maybe talk about scenarios that could happen. I could just talk about myself for a minute, but I've been in churches that haven't been precisely biblical as far as it goes.

01:12:38

So most churches are somewhat of a mess, man. There's categories of doctrinal error that you have to think through.

01:12:44

Is this something I can put up with? So you think in terms of churches, every church has doctrinal error to some degree.

01:12:56

And if they knew what it was, they'd probably change it for the most part. But some people are hardened in it and that's the way it goes.

01:13:02

So you think there's doctrinal error. Part of what you want to do is you want to go into a church and learn what they believe about things and prioritize their doctrinal stances on things.

01:13:16

So an informed church member is a good church member. You go into a church, you might want to know on the front end, what do they teach?

01:13:22

And the churches that have better statements of faith, that are longer and more comprehensive, may help you avoid a lot of that kind of thing.

01:13:28

If I were to go to a PCA church or a Presbyterian church of some sort, I think that I could go to some.

01:13:34

But I wouldn't go on some crusade against infant baptism as an individual who does believer's baptism.

01:13:41

It'd just be one of those things where it's just like, alright, we're on a different planet here. Can I overlook this for the sake of broader faithfulness?

01:13:48

There's probably plenty of Presbyterian churches I'd go closer to than plenty of Baptist churches. So I think part of how you deal with doctrinal things like that is to learn on the front end, what are their stances?

01:14:02

And try to figure out in your own mind, in your own way, what are non -negotiables that I see in the

01:14:08

Bible? And that may be a little bit subjective, but you need to know that beforehand. What are the non -negotiables for me?

01:14:15

And have those kinds of conversations with leaders beforehand, so you're not surprised about what you're going to find.

01:14:22

And ask very specific questions in whatever membership process that you have. So part of it's that.

01:14:28

Now related to usefulness, a lot of people get really frustrated with churches because they don't feel like they're being used appropriately.

01:14:36

They can't start their puppet ministry. They can't start their puppet ministry, man.

01:14:42

Puppets are creepy, but I'll leave that aside for a minute. What is it?

01:14:48

Puppet phobia. Whatever that is, I have it. But no, I went to seminary and I think

01:14:57

I have a gift of teaching that many older, wiser people have affirmed in me.

01:15:02

And I don't think I made it up in my own brain. But if there was a scenario where I was at a church and I have no way to utilize that gift,

01:15:14

I can imagine getting restless and thinking to myself, man, I think

01:15:19

I want to, if God will open a door to pursue a place that would allow me to be more useful with that spiritual gift,

01:15:27

I think there's nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, it's like you can't just, someone like me, let's say our church were to shut down or whatever, something like that.

01:15:43

Terrorists were to bomb the place and everyone dies but me. That kind of thing. You would go on like a

01:15:51

John Wick kind of rampage. Imagine that kind of scenario. But imagine that kind of scenario.

01:15:58

What would you do? You'd have to go and just find a faithful church somewhere and they don't know you.

01:16:04

So not the John Wick rampage. Not the John Wick. They don't know you, man.

01:16:10

They don't know you from anywhere. They don't know you. They don't know anything about you. And what you'd say is, hey,

01:16:17

I've been a pastor at certain places. I've taught Bible study at certain places. You don't know me.

01:16:23

I'm happy to be useful if you need anyone at any point. I'm open to that.

01:16:30

But my goodness, you don't just get all frustrated and bent out of the shape and angry at them.

01:16:37

It takes time to build trust. When you put people in positions of authority and leadership and you don't know them very well, they can do a lot of harm.

01:16:46

They can undermine you every week in their lessons. It's just a mess. You don't lay hands on people hastily.

01:16:53

That's what the Bible says. So you need to have some sort of realistic expectations about what that looks like. And if you're at a place...

01:17:01

I was going to say, it might be a normal response to say, hey, wait a minute, what do you mean your entire church died and you were leading it?

01:17:10

You're the only one, the lone survivor. Hang on. We've got some questions for you.

01:17:17

How did you survive and everyone else didn't? Well, you see, I had

01:17:23

COVID all week. How did the terrorists find you? Yeah, well, I tipped them out to it.

01:17:30

But no, I mean, in that kind of scenario, I'm just trying to say there's times where you feel restless and you feel like you'd like to be more used.

01:17:40

But you need to pray for that. Ask God to open an opportunity. If God wants you to have opportunities, He'll give them to you. And ultimately, there might be a scenario where you say, hey, there's a greater opportunity to serve in this other like -minded church.

01:17:54

And there's nothing wrong with taking that. But you should be able to do that without all the hard feelings, without all the emotional baggage.

01:18:00

You should be able to do that in a way that your church leadership thinks, hey, we're happy to send you out.

01:18:05

You're right, we don't have a place for you here. There's an opportunity here. And without it just being,

01:18:12

I'm so mad at you and everything else. So I talked about doctrinal differences.

01:18:22

On the front end, figure out what you're talking about, what you're getting yourself into. If you find out after you're there, you might do the approach

01:18:29

I did, where you talk to the pastor about it, you realize it's not going to be something that's changed. You wait them out for a little bit.

01:18:35

If it's not very significant, if it's just something you think is so significant that it's inappropriate, you don't have to cause a bunch of division and be divisive and do all that.

01:18:46

You can just find somewhere else, man. And I'm not trying to say that there's not a place for public rebuke and all that, but you do have to think about where you're at with those things too.

01:19:03

So I think if you start noticing someone shift into doctrinal error, if the pastor's going woke,

01:19:13

I think you need to have conversations with them. You need to confront them. You need to go Matthew 18 with it.

01:19:19

Bring an accusation against it. There are steps and ultimately they refuse to listen to you.

01:19:26

It's not a priority for the church. It might be that you just find somewhere else to go. So I think there's a variety of situations like that.

01:19:36

If it's just about ministries that you think should exist and preferences that you have, you do need to go to the

01:19:42

Bible and ask yourself, is this a sin issue? Is it a wisdom issue?

01:19:48

Or is it a preference issue? And I'm not responsible to lead the church if I'm not in that position. Is this wisdom?

01:19:56

Is it sin? Or is it a preference? And a lot of people are just making their preferences like these non -negotiable, you better validate it or else.

01:20:05

And a lot of them are even wisdom issues where it's just like, hey, there's a lot of different principles in the

01:20:13

Bible that are coming to the head in one kind of issue and you might want to hear them out a little bit and not just think to yourself that your opinion about the wisest course of action in any given situation is directly from the mouth of God.

01:20:27

So I think that there's a lot of different situations you can have. But let's say that the church really is in the wrong and they're handling things poorly.

01:20:37

And this is a real scenario where they're just running a rough shot over everyone and cramming down their throat on biblical ideas.

01:20:46

You can pray for them. Often with those kind of guys, they go through churches every three years because they're church climbers and they're looking to the next one and you can wait them out too.

01:21:01

So you don't have to leave right away. You can wait them out and wait for the next one and see if the next one's any better.

01:21:10

But there's patience, man, and praying and praying and praying. And if you haven't been praying for your church intentionally and specifically about an issue for a long period of time, you're probably not going to handle it right.

01:21:23

Right, right. Well, I think that's probably a good place for us to end on.

01:21:30

I really wanted to get to some good like, all right, what do we do instead? So before we end the episode,

01:21:37

Tim, is there anything that you've got that maybe we didn't cover or you want to clarify or just expand on a little more?

01:21:43

Sure, yeah. I think the idea of, just to summarize some of the things we talked about, there are clearly situations where church leaders abuse their authority and abuse their power and sometimes in significant ways.

01:21:59

And when they do, it's obvious, I think it's obvious that particularly immature believers should be very unsettled by that.

01:22:09

And I trusted you and I thought you were giving me the truth and it went wrong and I'm not quite sure what to do with that.

01:22:16

And so I'm not trying to say that anyone who's remotely unsettled by that or put off by that is just automatically inherently at the wrong.

01:22:24

But at the same time, we overuse the victim language and we need to move on to maturity and we need to be other -centered and not just be focused and all that.

01:22:37

And so even in situations where church leaders let you down in a very significant way, you have to understand that God will,

01:22:46

God's going to hold them to account and a few should become teachers because there's a stricter judgment and that should chill your blood.

01:22:54

And it should free you up from this expectation that up to you to fix everything.

01:23:01

It's like sometimes it's not. And God's going to, we're living in a society right now that demands instantaneous judgment and justice and perfect justice in this life.

01:23:14

And there are some times where you just don't have the information you need and there are some times where it's just like you just have to wait. God's going to, like one day every secret of every man's thoughts is going to be revealed and ultimate justice will be done and it may not happen in this life but it will happen eventually.

01:23:30

And this is about God's church and God will, if there are those things, they'll come out.

01:23:37

There's a reason why Mars Hill imploded the way that it did. And what was funny is that the reasons that actually imploded at times were not the reasons that you would think a biblical faithful church would be.

01:23:52

And that's just a funny scenario where it's just like, man, that church went under for that. There's so many other problems that it went under for that.

01:24:00

And like, my goodness, but nothing that is hidden will not be revealed one day and God will, ultimately, true justice will be done.

01:24:13

But the best thing we can do is just love the church and there's never a good reason to separate ourself from the church.

01:24:21

There's never a good reason. There's never a morally justified reason. God has composed the body in such a way that each part supplies what's lacking.

01:24:28

And we're all members of the body and if you're a lung laying on the ground, you're not getting any oxygen.

01:24:34

I tell people this when they are considering church membership. They're like, hey,

01:24:39

I'm just trying to be careful. And it's like, yeah, you'd be careful all day long, but the thing is, if you're a lung laying on the ground and you have a choice between a smoker body and no body, you know what?

01:24:53

You better take the smoker body because yeah, you'll get cancer with that, but you know what? You're going to decay if you're laying on the ground without any blood and arteries and veins and everything else.

01:25:04

So you're in a worse state when you're just sitting there apart, isolated from the body.

01:25:09

That's much worse than being in the smoker body that you're so afraid of. And it's not the worst thing in the world to be defrauded and despitefully used and persecuted.

01:25:18

It really isn't. And if you can't learn to do that in a church setting, you're not going to do that in your relationships either.

01:25:25

So we need to put some kind of perspective on some of this too that's helpful.

01:25:32

I think one thing, just kind of thinking back on this conversation, one thing that it seems like it's safe to say is it would do everyone involved a lot of good if everyone just kind of approached these issues with as much humility as possible and as much thought about the other people involved, thought and prayer towards the other people involved in the situation as possible.

01:26:05

And I think that's probably for a lot of us in a lot of different ways, at past points in our life or maybe even for some listening right now, that's a good reminder to say, hey,

01:26:19

I need to go and I need to repent of that. No, I'm not thinking about the other people. I'm only thinking about myself and the wrong that I think

01:26:29

I've experienced. So I'm really appreciative of that. Hopefully that's been helpful for you guys and this is stuff that you can apply.

01:26:38

Not just apply for yourselves, but even take what we're talking about and then use that knowledge to minister to the people in your life.

01:26:47

And it really should lead us to know what is a biblical church and go to the Bible and figure that out.

01:26:54

What am I supposed to be looking for here? What are the signs of a biblical church?

01:26:59

And that should push you into the Bible to figure that out. Not just the expectations you have from church shopper culture.

01:27:08

Yeah, certainly have. In order for us to really navigate this well, we have to actually know what

01:27:15

God expects of a church and what He doesn't expect of a church so that we can align our expectations with His instead of the other way around.

01:27:25

So hopefully that's been helpful for you guys. Again, we want to thank all of you for taking the time out of your day to listen to us.

01:27:32

Hopefully it's helpful and it equips you guys for the works of ministry. We thank you for the support and we look forward to having you guys on the next one.

01:27:40

This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

01:27:54

Please reach out to us with your questions, pushback, and potential topics for us to discuss in future episodes at BibleBashedPodcast at gmail .com

01:28:03

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01:28:14

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.