The new pastor had outrageous plans!
Imagine opening the church to provide shelter for homeless people!
Who wanted those people in the church?
What if they damaged the building?
“I’m sorry,” said the chairman of the building and grounds committee, “I just can’t agree with you, Pastor.”
The room was crowded with parents and family watching their teenagers in the church’s high school variety show. They clapped. They laughed.
Halfway through the show, the pastor stood up to ask for donations to fund the youth group mission trip to South America.
“Isn’t this an intermission?” asked a parent as she joined the line leaving the room. “I know what the pastor’s going to say anyway.”
The committee on church reorganization held a special meeting. The chairman of the committee, a man in his seventies, stood.
“Here is the plan,” he said.
“We have a lot of people in this church with many years of experience. We need to listen to them. As you will see all the committee chairs I have selected are at least in their 60’s.”
“Frankly I don’t know what we can learn from someone who is 30 or 40.”
“Also, note that we are cutting our infant and child care program. So few people come to this church with young children, it’s really a waste of our time and money. We have a high school youth group isn’t that enough?”
“Pastor, we tried things your way, but you’ll be gone in 6 years anyway. We’ll still be here. This is our church. We just don’t agree with you.”
“Your sermons are excellent,” she told the pastor.
“I try to read my Bible, but it’s so hard to understand what God’s telling me.
I’ll just listen to your messages and take advantage of all your training.”
Disagreeing with the pastor–so much safer than disagreeing with God.
Exodus 20:19…they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die!”
Note: All of these events happened in the last few weeks at a church attended by a friend.
This post is one of three posts about hearing and following the voice of God:
To read the post about a woman ready to take her own life, until she heard God’s voice click here
To read the post about a mother who taught her son an unexpected lesson in discerning which voices of authority to follow, click here.
2 thoughts on “Don’t Read your Bible! Just Listen to the Pastor!”
I think this is why we need elders in place. The pastor isn’t the only one leading. The elders should lead as a team.
With that said, we should also respect our pastor (but not follow blindly). We should hold him accountable by what he teaches.
-Justin
Yes. Don’t you also think that not reading the Bible is handy way for us to escape coming face to face with what God wants us to do?