If Your Pastor's Wrong...How Should You Correct Him?

In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question:  “Your radio program, which I love, has been a tremendous eye opener for me.  However, it has also created new problems for me. My spiritual discernment, which was dull at best, is now being fanned into a flame, and I’m now seeing lots of things contrary to the Scriptures which I hadn’t noticed before.  What especially concerns me, is that my church is promoting some ideas that have no scriptural basis as far as I can tell.  So now, I need your advice on how to approach my pastor. And if I should deal with everything or just the most critical things?  Whatever counsel you can give me will be appreciated.”

Tom:

Dave, we get lots of letters like this, people who maybe read an article or just picked it up and started thinking about some things that have gone on, whereas before they just kind of let it slide over them.

Dave:

Or Tom, we have other people who say, Well, I was in the New Age, I was involved in witchcraft or psychology, rebirthing, whatever, and I got saved, delivered from that, and now I joined what I think is a fine evangelical church.  They are involved in the same thing, and I try to tell the pastor and he can’t see it.

Tom:

But that’s the problem, I mean, what do people do?  We don’t encourage people to just pack your bags and leave.  There have to be opportunities, there have to be approaches, at least in part we encourage people to see their pastors, talk to their pastors about these issues, do it in a right spirit, a right heart.

Dave:

Humbly, graciously, not with the idea well, I’m right and you’re wrong but raising a sincere question and pastor, can we go to the Word of God, can you show me where the Bible teaches this, and in fact I think I can show you where it teaches the contrary.  But the Bible says rebuke not an elder—this is Paul writing to Timothy—but entreat him as a father.  So that’s the attitude with which you should approach your pastor.

Tom:

Dave, there are so many things out there, some things that directly affect the gospel and there are some things that we feel, because they are not true to God’s Word, they may interrupt or reduce somebody’s fruitfulness in the Lord.  Can they pick and choose their spots, or is there a perfect church out there, is there a perfect pastor, is somebody going to have it all wired at every level?

Dave:

Well, someone has said if you’re looking for the perfect church and you find it, don’t join it because you will ruin it. Because we’re not perfect ourselves.  So furthermore, the things that I understand today ten years ago I did not understand as I do now, and can I be gracious with someone or am I going to demand that everybody must have the same maturity in the faith and the same understanding of everything that I  now have, which I once didn’t have.  On the other hand, we don’t compromise with the gospel.  The gospel is very clear, you don’t have to be a mature Christian to understand the gospel, you understood it as a sinner and came to Christ.  So that we cannot compromise on.  We keep referring to when Paul rebuked Peter, Galatians:2:14But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?
See All..., it says:  “When I saw that he walked not uprightly according to the gospel” that was it.  So anything that impinges on the gospel that corrupts or perverts the gospel, compromises it, we can’t compromise on that.  So it depends what the situation is.  

Tom:

Right, you know there are some churches that would tell you right up front that they are Biblical, and they want to be Biblical, and I think if someone is in a church like that they would have an opportunity to search the scriptures with their elders, with the pastor, and find out if these things are so as the Bereans did.  On the other hand there are some churches that are openly liberal, openly experiential, and they have no interest or basis for understanding or for sound doctrine, let me say it that way.

Dave:

They don’t even pretend to base everything on the Bible.

Tom:

Now if somebody is in the church like that they’ve got problems.

Dave:

I think they should have left the church already if it’s a church that is not Biblical and doesn’t even care to be Biblical, the pastor is not even a Christian, and there are many like that.  Some pastors don’t even believe in the resurrection, they don’t believe the gospel; they don’t believe there is only one way.  This is kind of a profession for them and there’s more politics than truth.

Tom:

Dave, now if someone says well, we don’t have a church, a basic Bible believing church in our community, what does someone do like that?  You know we get letters from, what I would call lone rangers, who just don’t want to go to church, don’t want to be a part of it, that’s the other problem.

Dave:

Well, first of all they need to examine their own hearts to make certain they are not just being straining at a gnat.  

Tom:

Or prideful.

Dave:

Right, or nitpicking or splitting hairs, as they say.  Make sure that this is a real issue and that you have gone about this in a gracious, loving, humble manner.  But now, if it’s true that there isn’t a church within range, you know, unreasonable amount of driving that is Biblical.  Then why don’t they start their own, start a Bible study.

Tom:

A Bible study at least, forsake not the gathering of the brethren.

Dave:

Start a Bible study in your own home, and invite others and win them to Christ, and develop fellowship.  There must be, although there may not be a church, surely there must be many believers in that area who are really determined to stand true to the Word God.  Well get together, fellowship together, study the Word of God together and seek to win others to Christ.

Tom:

Amen.