Silly Things Church Members Fight Over

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

The Preciousness of Church Unity in Psalm 133

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. It looks like Abendroth, but there was a family fight, so it is Mike Abendroth, hard A, Abendroth. And we, here at this radio show, sometimes I say we because it�s the royal we, or sometimes it�s Steve Cooley and myself, or maybe my other guests, but today it�s just me.

Real time, it�s December 7, 2018, and what are we going to talk about today? In front of me, I have something by Tom Rainer, since his blog posts make pretty good radio, in my opinion. Maybe it�s �Better with Tuesday, Guy.

I�m not sure, but we give it a shot. �25 Silly Things Church Members Fight Over. Now, the thing is, we, as Christians, are far from perfect on this earth. Of course, our legal status is that of perfection because of Christ�s righteousness imputed to our account, and we have a legal standing as justified.

In other words, we are not condemned. But as we grow and work out our salvation and learn and grow and stumble and repent and confess and fall and do it all over again, we rub each other the wrong way.

And you might ask yourself the question, if I wanted to go into preaching mode right now, is there anybody at church, the church that you worship, I guess if it�s a building at or if it�s people with, that you don�t want to see when you go there on Sunday?

That if you walk past them, you�re like, �Ugh. Now, some of those people might have left, especially if you�re the pastor, right, and then people can just leave. But if you�re there, what do you do?

I�m reading Psalm 133 right now in the ESV, a song of a sense of David, �Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes.

It is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. Now, I don�t know what picturesque way you would describe unity. Maybe it would be a sunny, balmy Indian summer day in the winter.

I mean, I have no idea. But here, can you imagine all this oil, and you�ve got this figure of speech with oil all over the head and consecrated, and what does it say here in the ESV Study Bible? The expression appears in Genesis 13 and 36 where a particular region could not support brothers and their families dwelling close together.

If this is the background of the psalm, then Psalm 133 describes a situation in which the land is fruitful enough for brothers to live nearby. Interesting, since this is a song of a sense, the brothers dwelling in unity would be the fellow Israelite pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem, abiding in peace with one another.

The ideal Israel is a community of true brotherhood where the members practice mutual concern for one another. If this were achieved, it would indeed be good and pleasant. This should be the goal of church life, John 17, 20, 21, 22, and 23.

That's a good description there. You've got land that's bountiful enough, plentiful enough that people can get along, and when they had to go to Jerusalem for the different feasts, even when they were traveling, there'd be great unity.

And that's what we're looking for in the body of Christ. First Corinthians chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4 really talk about church unity, having differences pushed to the side so you can focus on the main things.

And really, if you think about it, what holds Christians together? What's the common denominator? And it's not social class or gender or race or background or political aspirations or whatever it might be.

It's that they have been, we have been, bought with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the thing we have in common. And you'll see in the Scripture, of course, will you not, Jew and Gentile, male and female, free and slave, and every other, if I want to use them as a merism, right, everything from south to north, east to west, and that means everything in between as well, we want to be able to get along.

So, I don't know if this is going to be a funny show, I don't know if it's going to be an interesting show, although my hands are full of pitch. We went and cut down a tree today and put it in the house.

My daughter's back from Israel, and so we waited to get the tree until today. So, at least it's up. Twenty-five silly things church members fight over. I'll be the judge of how silly they are. Argument over the appropriate length of the worship pastor's beard.

Wasn't there a man named Spock's beard? I thought it was going to be argument over the length of a sermon, and I was going to say, that's dumb. Over the years, I've gone from probably 40 to 45 to 50 to 55.

Maybe it's a Sunday night, 60, 65, and now I'm around 40 to 45 minutes or something like that. I think I can say things more succinctly. I don't need to have some dopey long introduction and story time or something.

I think 45 is plenty for preaching. I think once in a while, I'll probably go longer, but this last week, I was preaching and at 40, I thought, if I go to the next point, I'm going to have to explain this point.

It's just going to make my sermon ten minutes longer, and I still won't get through this particular point, so let's just land the plane. Tom Rainer said, I think I saw a verse in Scripture that indicated it is to be no more than 1 .5 inches longer than the pastor's beard.

Oh, the worship pastor's beard. I have a problem because it's a silly thing. What's a worship pastor? If there's a worship shepherd, I think his name's Jesus, and if you want to watch your shepherd worship and say, this is how the pastor worships, that might be a good model for me.

I would think it's fine, but when you have a worship pastor, you're already off the deep end. Fight over whether or not to build a church's playground or to use the land for a cemetery. Now on a more sober note, a grave note, no pun intended, the old days, you did have cemeteries adjacent to the church buildings here, especially in New England, and it would be a sobering reminder every single Sunday or every time you came to the building and you would see loved ones buried, and it would give you that sense of visible, of course, that you were going to die one day, and these eternal matters are very important.

And it probably wouldn't go so well for the churches that like to do the five steps for easy living, and essentially they have the theology of glory, everything's great now and here's how to succeed in another week of Christian living, and a lot of clapping, a lot of worship pastor bands.

But you think, okay, where are the laments? There's time for Christian lament, and I don't know how many people sing Sacred Head Now Wounded, but you ought to sing that. I had one guy say to me once, he said, you know, I'd like to clap more in church, and I never told him he couldn't clap, he just noticed that we didn't clap a lot.

There's some clapping, but not too much. I think there's less clapping now over the years, and when somebody does something we try not to clap, maybe after a baptismal testimony or something. But anyway, he said, when I asked, why do you want to clap more, he said, well, there's clapping in the Psalms.

I said, okay, fair enough, there's clapping in the Psalms. How many times are there clapping in the Psalms? There are 150 Psalms in the Book of Psalms, and how many have clapping? I don't know, five, eight?

So if we want to use your logic, there is clapping in the Psalms, therefore we have to clap more, then maybe we should clap eight out of 150 songs? I don't think I saw him come back. Here's another one, a deacon accusing another deacon of sending an anonymous letter and deciding to settle the matter in the parking lot.

Hmm, people fighting over that. In all candor, don't do the anonymous letter. I mean, now it's harder because of email, and they know who's sending it, but I got a few anonymous letters. I was told in seminary, just don't read them, and I don't know if I forgot when I got the anonymous letter at the post office box of the church.

I think I read it and probably used it for NOCO radio or something like that. If you need to get along with people, which you do, then why don't you just call them? Talk to them. Email is a bad format, by the way, for resolving intense conflicts.

So the best thing you can do is Skype or call or go over. I knew somebody was not happy with me, and I've even ridden my bikes, my bicycle, over to people's homes, and I figured, well, what am I going to do?

Let's go resolve this. So in person is better. On the phone is not as good, but better than email. A church dispute of whether or not to install restroom stall dividers in the women's restroom. That's weird.

That is a weird one. Why would you not have that in a women's restroom? I have more comments, but I'm not going to make them. Men's restrooms, I mean, there probably should be dividers in those too, right?

Of course. A church argument and vote to decide if a clock in the worship center should be removed. Okay. Everybody's got phones now. I noticed when my wife and I went to a concert the other day in Northampton, we went to go see Echo and the Bunnymen.

It was quite a good concert. It was dark in the theater and people would show up late, and normally you would have ushers or whatever they call those folks with flashlights and getting you in your exact seats, you know, so you don't disrupt the rest of the folks.

Now everybody has cell phones with flashlights in them, and it doesn't matter. You just can find your own seat. I have here 25 silly things church members fight over, and I'm using just as a backdrop just to give you some of my wisdom.

I might have a little wisdom. I need a lot more, but I might have a little. I've been doing this for quite some time. I'm now 58, and I had my blood test last week, and the PSA, the prostate-specific antigen number was good, and I had an MRI yesterday.

By the way, the MRI, it was interesting because it's a newer facility, and I always ask can I have the bigger shaped MRIs, the bigger, they have, you know, openings that are bigger so you don't have to get smashed in there, and this time it was a nice big opening, newer machine, so I didn't feel claustrophobic at all, and I didn't want to take any medicine and then not be able to drive home and have the whole day wasted and be groggy.

So they give you these glasses, and these glasses were really big, and they were essentially huge glasses, eyeglasses, that were tilted at 45 degree angle, and they were all mirrored reflective, and that there was a movie playing on the wall behind me, and it was upside down when I was looking at it, when I was getting into the tube, MRI tube, but then with these glasses, you're laying there, and then you have the headphones on, you're watching this movie of underwater, there's porpoises, porpoise, and turtles, turtles, turtle eye, anyway, so far so good.

I'll get the results back. It's been 18 months since the therapy, the brachytherapy for the prostate cancer, so if I was a pagan, I would say we're crossing our fingers. A 45-minute heated argument over the type of filing cabinet to purchase, black or brown, two, three, or four drawers.

Now the fascinating thing was when I got here, that's one of the first things I ordered was a cabinet, a filing cabinet, and I do have a filing cabinet at home still for tax purposes and stuff like that, not because it's tax deductible, but because I keep my taxes inside there.

A fight over which picture of Jesus to put in the foyer. Who took the picture? That's the good question. You know, this lends itself to talk about should we have pictures of Jesus, and some people think that the best movie about Jesus was The Robe because you couldn't see His face, and we have, I think, some books here at the Church that have pictures of Jesus but only far off or distorted, or you could see Him from behind or something like that, or just a shadow, so you don't have a picture of Jesus to violate any commandment.

But I don't know why I would have to have a picture of Him in the Church. A dispute over whether the worship leader should have his shoes on during the Church service. Yes. My brother used to have a guy, I don't think he attends anymore, let's hope not, at Omaha Bible Church, and he'd sit in the front row, even in the winter, and he'd just take his shoes off, and he'd just have his feet just right there, you could see them.

You know, there's about ten different people that attend churches, and the same ten kinds of people attend Omaha Bible Church and Bethlehem Bible Church, they just have different names, right, that we just all fit into one of those ten different people.

A big Church argument over the discovery that the Church budget was off ten cents. Someone finally gave a dime to settle the issue. All right. A dispute in the Church because the Lord's Supper had crayon grape juice instead of grape juice.

Well, if I had to do it over again, or if I started a new church, I would prefer alcohol to be used, real wine, I think I can make a good case for that, and if you had outer row, inner row for grape juice and alcohol, then you could choose whichever one you wanted.

Now, you have gluten-free, you know, you have leavened bread, unleavened bread, you have gluten-free bread for communion, people need all different sorts of things like that. I wouldn't do it again, but when I did a wedding a long, long time ago, the couple asked if they could have their first communion together.

Now, I wouldn't do that today, because then we'd have a big fight over it, and then I'd be in Thomas Rainer's 26 Silly Things Church Members Fight Over. But communion is for the church, it's not for the newlywed couple.

The next time the church gathers, whether that's the next week, next month, a few times a year, whenever the church gathers for communion, the Lord's Supper, that's the first time then they'll take it.

They don't take it together. I don't know where we got that, but that's just, I just don't do that. I don't let couples write their own vows, because they don't write them asymmetrically and biblically, and they write them usually emotionally, sometimes very sweetly, but I just don't like that.

And I also don't like it when people have their first communion together. But this was early on in the ministry, and I got to the church, lots of things going on for weddings, fairly stressful. It's getting better these days.

Just because I'm older, I know what to do, but I didn't want to ruin anybody's day. I mean, I still don't, but now I just know what to say and how to say it, and I can be kind of grandfatherly or fatherly, not in the Roman Catholic way, but just, you know, in tenor and demeanor.

And so I wasn't planning on communion, right? I mean, I was just planning on a wedding, so the checklist, you know, is do I have a nice shirt, and do I have a nice tie, and do I want to just look professional, do I have a razor, you know, the shoes shine.

I mean, that's what I do. Do I have my notes? But I didn't think, oh, I should probably have some juice and some bread. And so they said to me, Pastor Mike, it's time for communion, you know, they want communion.

What do we do? There's nothing here. They're out. We're out of stock. Now, once in a while when I'm here at the church and I have some tuna for lunch, I don't have anything to put it on. I might go get a few of the crackers that we use for communion if I'm really desperate, because then that's the showbread, David's showbread allowance.

Every time I eat those, that's what I think of. Is there anything more dry than just plain tuna? Today I had that small little can, 60 calories, and it took me about a half an hour to eat it because I was going to choke, right?

I guess you could put it on some matzah or something. But anyway, I didn't know what to do. We had the bread, but we didn't have any juice. So it's time. I mean, everybody's there. It's time to start.

And they said, well, what are we going to do? And so we...I just tried to find a dark liquid, because far away you wouldn't know. And so I had to tell a couple, hey, by the way, that dark liquid over there in those two little cups, it's Diet Coke.

So, if it's crayon, grape, or alcohol...actually, churches do fight over the alcohol, non-alcohol issue. And my suggestion to anyone who thinks you should use alcohol, don't make the change. If you're starting a new work, it's a church plant and you want to have inner rings, outer rings, fine.

But I wouldn't go from grape juice to grape juice and alcohol. It just causes trouble, and I don't really need the trouble, and I don't mind. I would prefer that we'd use wine, but things here at the church don't always have to be based on my preference.

Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio. We're looking at 25 Silly Things Church Members Fight Over. Oh, let's see. An argument on whether the church should allow deviled eggs at the church meal. And Rainer was funny when he said, only if it's balanced with angel food cake for dessert.

Well, at the church here at Bethlehem Bible Church, we don't call it potluck. We call it pot province. That's just kind of fun. So now everybody knows it's called pot province. The one we had last week was pretty wild.

If there's a theme, by the way, pot province are always better. And so if you have a theme, some kind of food, you know, a Mexican food theme or something like that, the food's better. You know, chili cook-off or something like that.

And we did have some deviled eggs, and so they called them, what'd they call them instead? I had a friend, Jack, and he had a dog, a big Doberman Pinscher, and he named it Diabolos, Devil. And so then when he got saved, not the dog.

When Jack got saved, he had to change the dog's name, and the dog he changed to Gabriel. So that was pretty good. I think I kind of like that. So what do we do here with these deviled eggs? Why do we even call them deviled eggs, angelic eggs?

Huh. An argument over who has the authority to buy postage stamps for the church? Oh, here it is. A disagreement over using the term potluck instead of pot blessing. What kind of pot blessing? A pot blessing?

Now, see, I lived in Santa Cruz for long enough that there's pot blessings there. I don't think we want pot blessings. Pot providence is much better than pot blessings to me. A church member was chastened because she brought vanilla syrup to the coffee server.

It looked too much like liquor. Okie dokie. Some church members left because one church member hid the vacuum cleaner from them. Okay. An argument over whether to have gluten-free communion bread or not.

See, I told you. A fight over whether or not to sing happy birthday each week. An argument over whether the fake dusty plant should be removed from the podium. And one that we had here, when I got here, the American flag was up on the platform.

Not next to the pulpit, but up there. And so I just moved it to the back. I don't need to have the American flag in the worship service up on front. What if I had Palestinian Christians? What if I had Iranian Christians?

What if I had North Korean Christians? I mean, I'm pro-America, and I love America, and I regret not serving in the military. But the church isn't America. And to me, America is irrelevant when it comes to worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ.

Anyway, the person wrote, grace to you, and complained that I moved the flag. I did move the flag, but I just don't need the flag up on the stage. I don't call it the stage. That's why we should have another one, 27 Silly Things Church Members Fight Over, Whether You Call the Stage a Platform or a Stage, right?

I mean, if we're going to fight over things, let's fight over sound doctrine, and I think that is important, right? We are going to contend earnestly for the once-delivered faith, excuse me, Jude 3. If you're fighting over weird things, dumb things, minuscule things, silly things, how about not even at church but at home?

Why don't you just defer? Why don't you just overlook? Why don't you just say, it's not that big a deal? Why don't you say to yourself, you know what, what's the bigger deal? Whether I get my way or whether there's church unity.

And then that way we can just kind of move forward. I mean, some people have the gift of conflict, spiritual gift of conflict in their marriage and at work, and there's always some kind of issue. Everything's a DEFCON 1, and everything's Code Red, and everything's 10 at the scale of just drama.

I think in light of what the Lord has done for us, we can just get along, can't we?

Contending for Sound Doctrine Instead of Fighting Over Trifles

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.