Dear pastor: I heard you say that your primary responsibility is to your members, rather than to all who attend or to people in general. I don’t understand. Where did Jesus or any of the apostles or authors of the New Testament ever mention anything about “their” churches or “their” people? Did Jesus ever refuse anyone, even non-Jews? Yes, he told the Ciro-Phoenician woman no at first, but he did heal her daughter. Can non-members receive crumbs from your table?
Where does the territorial thinking come from? You don’t like people to change churches. I understand that when members change churches it can be bad for business, and I understand that it can also mean people hop from one place to another without any dedication or commitment, always seeking the newest or most interesting thing, and that isn’t good. But neither of these are reasons for ministering only to a select few. If you are called, are you not called to serve all believers… or all people you come in contact with, depending on your perspective?
In response to these questions, I’ve heard one response too many times. “We don’t want problems.” I take issue with that. People aren’t problems, though all people have problems. How can anyone who doesn’t want problems consider himself a pastor? How can any pastor give that response? What about the rest of us?
Dear Pastor, Part One
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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