They suffer silently. They have to because speaking up is labeled treasonous. Even if they are treated treacherously, they are held to a standard of grin and bear it. They can be held to account and then some, but their tormentors must not be. Who am I speaking of? Some assistant pastors and other staff members in the Independent Baptist world. While there are some wonderfully happy staffs out there where pastor and staff love each other, there is a must more widespread problem than many would want to admit.

Over the last 15 years I have heard the story time and again. A pastor rides roughshod over assistants. He belittles, abuses, criticizes, over works, and treats as second-class servants the very ones the Lord has sent as a gift to help Him. The story goes that they are told they are incompetent and have everything they do over analyzed, second guessed, and often redone. Though there can be poor assistants, of course, I know men that are some of the most faithful, dedicated men I have ever known and have proved it in later ministries, and they suffered immensely in this very scenario. In some cases the wounds linger a long time and a loss of confidence must be worked through. Besides hearing this from many, and even being requested to write on this in this series, three men I know very well shared with me in great detail their horror stories. Each of them were of such character that they have never tried to retaliate by lashing out or going on a crusade against their abusers. Still, it was unjust that they should have suffered so at the hands of a pastor.

This is not the same thing as a pastor taking “the oversight thereof”, or providing leadership or vision, even if the abusers loudly want to couch the issue in those terms. As one who holds the office of pastor in the highest possible regard, I will label it for you in one word –hireling. It is one who is called to be a shepherd and give himself for the sheep using others for his own ends. He is taking when he should be giving. It was supposed to be about them and it ends up only being about self. It divests the word “pastor” of its true meaning.

Why does this happen? If you listen really closely, you will find traces of jealousy. Remember King Saul with David? It is as if these pastors must be the center of the universe, so much so than any other staff is not allowed to be loved or respected. This, of course, sets them up for failure as when they reach that grotesque of a prideful level it becomes hard to get real love or respect. Then comes the lowly assistant and everyone can’t help rooting for him. The pastor then gets more paranoid and amps up his preposterous treatment. In some cases, though the assistant has moved many miles to come their way, these pastors fire them like the most secular of companies and nothing like a church. To be sure, that becomes a source of shame to the cause of Christ.

Things Every Pastor Must Never Forget In Regards To Staff:

1. You have a shepherding responsibility to every staff member.

You are as much the pastor of every assistant and staff member as anyone in the church. What evidence could you produce to categorize them any other way? You will give an account for their souls too.

2. You pastor a church, not run a business.

A church can’t be run in the same cold fashion some businesses are. If some staff member doesn’t “produce” enough, you can’t just throw them under the bus. The reality some are missing is that a real Christian approach is the best way to run a business, not the other way around. The very best companies figured this out and make a happy, secure workforce a key component of heir business plan.

3. The church you pastor is all about Christ, and nothing about you.

You are a servant of Jesus Christ. He receives glory when local churches are what they should be, and he has placed you there to facilitate that goal. The moment you seek the glory for yourself you nullify your point of existence. What could be a greater failure?

4. Assistants are co-laborers, not inferior beings.

You just have different assignments. You work together in a great cause. They are as loved of God as you.

5. Staff members can be a place of great ministry.

What an opportunity to advance the ministry you have if you invest in them. You will never increase your influence by elevating yourself at the expense of those around you. In fact, that will render it valueless. On the other hand, the joy of old preachers is the others they have helped along the way. Mentoring, if heartfelt, is a powerful thing.

God bless the pastors who do it right. Let’s all join their number!

All other articles in this series here.

Do your eyes work correctly? Eyes, when working as God intricately designed them, are amazing. They naturally put their greatest effort into seeing vividly what is right in front of them. They prioritize carefully. That is not to say that they don’t take the longer look or look on the edges. There is, in fact, peripheral vision to catch a problem on the sides. Peripheral vision complements normal vision, but can never supersede it.

To test our theory, you could run down a trail forcing your eyes to focus on your peripheral vision. What would happen? In short order, you would trip over something and fall flat on your face. I don’t imagine you would get up, brush yourself off, and proclaim focusing on peripheral vision is the most important thing of all.

It would be nice if we could carry the obvious over into our spiritual lives. Peripheral vision is a help, but it had better not be our main focus. Yet we see it so often in our Independent Baptist world. The peripheral is given the preeminence. The main vision falls on the edges.

We see, for example, standards being given the main focus. We have some churches where two weeks can’t even pass by without some strong statements being made about standards. As you might imagine, when you stare too long at what you should only be glancing at, you will become obsessed. In that environment standards grow beyond general guidelines on the edge to a main focus that ever grows to infiltrate the most minute details of life. Dress, entertainment, and on to every facet of life we go. But our eyes are not on the trail right in front of us. We live on the margins when the trail is so nice.

This peripheral vision that goes so beyond its intended scope shows up in other dramatic ways. It becomes such a habit that now it infects our preaching. We come to a passage in God’s Word that in its proper context has something so profound, so vital, to say to our Christian life and we read with our peripheral vision. We miss Christ, or some essential truth to living the Christian life, and see something on the edges that is in no way the main point. The side point becomes the main point and we fall on our faces yet again.

Let us be clear here–the Lord calls us to a single focus. As Matthew 6:22 says,

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

We need a single vision. Christ wants no rivals. Not even things about Him can have any of His place. Rules to live a way He likes can not supersede a personal fellowship with Him. When I say such peripheral vision will trip you up, I mean it. Though many Independent Baptists bristle when you mention the Pharisees, the story of peripheral vision is their biography. They went deeper and deeper into it until after a few centuries they did not even know the Son of God when they looked Him in the face! As the above Scripture says, keep a single vision and you will be full of light. Need I remind you Who is the Light of the world? Don’t ditch your peripheral vision as it occasionally will be of great help, but ever keep your eyes straight ahead.

Find all posts in the series here.

We should learn from our mistakes. We can make a big deal about something today that absolutely doesn’t rate a little blimp on the issue scale later. In fact, many Christians have done this very thing.

Take, for example, Christmas. There was once a time some years ago that several felt that celebrating Christmas was wrong. There were sermons and writings that preached against Christ-mass. It was labeled a Catholic perversion and claimed to be satanic. It was widespread enough that Dr. John R. Rice, prominent Independent Baptist and prolific writer (I use an Independent Baptist example because of my background, but many parts of Christianity have had such episodes), felt compelled to write a book entitled I Love Christmas where he argued that Christmas was acceptable for Christians and that Christmas was wonderful on many levels. I imagine that 98% or better of current Independent Baptists would agree with every word he said. It was not, however, the case then.

There was a higher and vocal percentage the other way in that day. Some didn’t go all the way. Some said that Christmas was acceptable, but Christmas trees were heathen idols. They cited a verse in Jeremiah that they felt corresponded to a Christmas tree. It was about bowing before idol trees in that day. How they got a Christmas tree from the context or even the words of the verse is beyond me! But they did.

Fast forward to today. In the last 10 years I have only met three people personally that felt Christmas was totally wrong. I met two or three more that personally felt only the tree was wrong. There are more that think even the slightest mention of Santa is an attack of Christ. In my travels or on my Facebook newsfeed where I have friends all over the country and world I see Christmas everywhere, even among groups where it was once not acceptable. You would have never guessed that anyone ever really wrestled with that issue. It still exists (I had a dear lady write in conjunction with another of these posts that her family ostracized her over her celebrating Christmas), but it is as rare as a tax-cutting liberal.

Doesn’t it seem silly? I mean no disrespect to anyone who held or holds that position. It is your right and I support your right to hold it. Still, it seems odd to me. Just a guess, but I imagine a great majority of those reading this blogpost agree with me. Do you suppose that some who held it years ago, or were forced to hold it, feel silly about it now? Again, no disrespect, but anytime you have to back away from what you now find an unsupportable position, it makes you feel a little awkward. Take it from this Smoky Mountain guy whose grandmother talked him into sitting on a chicken roost when he had chickenpox as a boy!

I imagine there have been more than a few pamphlets and sermon notes trashed from those days on the subject of Christmas. Good riddance, but do you see the point? It doesn’t pay to get on a hobbyhorse not clearly mentioned in Scripture and ride it into the ground. Words pushed that hard taste bitter later.

Christmas is far from the only such hobbyhorse. In the 1970s there was a major push to not own a TV. Many smashed them in the yard or burned them. I know of many, and I mean many, who once held a position of no TV and have one today. They probably have watched a Hallmark Christmas movie in the last two weeks! They have guidelines for what they watch and rightly so, but the fact remains that a TV graces their living room where once it did not. Once it was preached against, but now it is not.

There is still a small group that still refuses to own a TV, but their numbers are too small to even be heard anymore. I respect them taking that position if they feel they should, but most of us simply don’t feel the Lord asks that of us.

The point is neither Christmas nor TVs. It is jumping on a hot button opinion where no Scripture in context can be cited. Make it a focus of your ministry today and you may look a little foolish tomorrow. It will be like some of those high school yearbook pictures you hope never see the light of day!

Do you think maybe we have a few candidates today to be the Christmas or TV of tomorrow? Will not having a projection screen later seem as silly as preaching against a microphone today? Will some other modern technology criticized today seem as odd in 15 years as preaching against central heat and air today? Some preferences today will be as off the radar in 20 years as Christmas and TVs are today. Some sermons preached now will be embarrassing then.

So we might ought to shore up the list of items we make a really big deal of. We should ask: does the Bible actually say this or am I in a fad that won’t stand the test of time? It’s a worthy question, wouldn’t you say?

So as you enjoy this Christmas–and I sincerely pray you have most blessed Christmas– you might want to ponder Christmas as a case study to decide where you really want to be.

May God bless you one and all as we stand victorious in the Christ of Christmas!

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This was originally part of IBTR series–you can find all articles in the series here.

It is a strange phenomenon. With free access to the Bible still available to us, you wonder how it could be. Perhaps you have seen it yourself in some places within our Independent Baptist world. I speak of the peculiar feature of a pastor having the full reign for every decision we make. Then there is the stranger feature of people giving them that right. God’s people were not created to look to another man for all of life’s decisions, nor were His pastors created to make them all for everyone else. The weight of omniscience is more than any man can bear.

Since I have the call of pastor on my life, I am pro-pastor all the way. When the Lord discussed giving gifts to men in Ephesians 4:11-16, He listed pastors (I believe “pastors and teachers” refer to one office). Specifically, He gave pastors,
“For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:” (Ephesians 4:12). That is pretty heady stuff. He even gave them an authority in church matters (1 Peter 5:2-3). But let’s not get carried away!

The Lord didn’t leave us to wonder about other aspects of pastors either. Most telling is what He said in 2 Corinthians 4:7,
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” Did you get that? A pastor carries the treasure because he handles the Word of God, but he is not the treasure. That is a key distinction that we must never fail to make.

He has a gift to teach and preach the Word of God, but with his feet of clay he is just like everyone else too. He sins, he fails, he makes stupid decisions, he argues with his wife, and he is bewildered by parenting at times. He sometimes doesn’t know what to do and has to pray and seek the Lord like you, he has no more access to God than you, and even with his gift and best efforts he sometimes misinterprets the Bible. Hopefully, he can guide you to the right Scripture for your issue, and perhaps can give some decent counsel, but what biblical evidence is there that he can better determine God’s will for your life than you?

Let me be more blunt–he has no special insight into what career you should pursue, whether you should be in the ministry or not, or where you should live. He especially has no idea whom you should marry or what car you should buy. He might point out a Scripture if you are pursuing a sinful choice, but out of the non-sinful options he is far behind you in the ability to decide that for you. You have a much more vested interest in your future than he does. You probably thought and prayed about it more than him too. If he has a real pastor’s heart, he will be serious about praying for you, but he doesn’t have special knowledge beyond the Word you too possess.

If he is honest, he will tell you there are many categories in life he knows less about than you. He wouldn’t dare pass himself off as an expert on every subject. If you ask him who to marry, besides biblical prohibitions, he will say you figure it out yourself since you will be the one that has to live with them. If he lives up to his calling, he will as his greatest work equip you to seek the Lord and not be dependent on him or any man. He is a failure if you can’t go right on with the Lord if something happens to him.

Watch out for the so-called pastor who wants you to be dependent on him. In light of the Scripture cited above, if he tries to convince you that you must run all decisions by him and let him decide them for you, he is a dishonest user. Whether he is lying to himself or to you only God knows, but he is lying none the less. He is not a shepherd, but a wolf; he is not a pastor, but a hireling. John 10 tells you mess you will be in if you follow a hireling. Just when you need him, he will not be there! If you have such a pastor I have one word for you: run!

Can I give a word to that sincere pastor who has been inundated with this teaching and feels a failure? Your feelings are telling you the truth–you can’t do this! The good news is that you were never asked to. Your marching orders are “feed the flock of God.” You can do this. So move to the real work of a pastor because you will never bear up under the weight of omniscience.

All posts in this series here.

Have you met one of them yet? Or read one of their articles? You know, a self-appointed guardian of the truth for the Independent Baptist world? Surely you have as we have so very many of them. I am not referring to those who write about issues or trends (like this very blog!), but those who review individuals, churches, and organizations. Nor am I referring to those who address scandals that reflect on the entire movement (as I have done–see link below), but those who with the keenest eyes and most intense scrutiny keep a watch like Big Brother on us all.

Over the years I have seen articles, or heard even as a rabbit trail in a sermon, how this preacher is bad, or how this school has gone liberal. What was the issue? Did the preacher start denying the Virgin Birth of Christ? Did the school start criticizing the Blood Atonement? No, likely it was that he hobnobbed with a blacklisted preacher, or the school sang a song that could be traced to an unacceptable songwriter. These are presented as dangerous trends that are going to destroy us. With all the real dangers to our faith in this world, my first thought is that these guys need to get out more!

Some, sadly, have made a so-called ministry out of it. I have seen several and they claim it is a “discernment ministry”. That is instantly offensive to any thinking person because it presupposes that we are incapable of having discernment ourselves. Even worse, if they must do our discerning for us, it also means that they think we have no access to the Holy Spirit ourselves.

If you want to write what you think about issues, go for it. It is wonderful to jump in the arena of ideas and in this day of blogging you never will have a better opportunity. On the other hand, the rest of us don’t need you to label every preacher, school, or organization good or bad for us.

I read some in preparation for this post and came across an article that analyzed several songs sang at a well-known church and found them wanting. (One of the songs lambasted was “In Christ Alone”. Am I allowed one little rant on my blog where I am trying to be gracious? You are a nut if you find evil in that song! Sorry, I will get back under control now). The article tried to make a connection that this was, more or less, a step straight to the Antichrist and a one-world government!

Also recently I learned of a situation where a church had someone in for some special music and a well-known organization that feels it has a mandate to project its discernment on everyone else actually called the church and scolded them! My first reaction there was, who do they think they are! Where are the apostolic credentials to act this way?

This is done under the guise of “earnestly contending for the faith”. I am all for that as our faith is under vicious assault, but don’t confuse peripheral issues for the majestic pillars of our faith. If I have to be in a big fight, I want it to be for the name of Christ or the truth of the foundational elements of Christianity. Substitute “traditions” for “faith” and you will be more accurate for where we are today.

This behavior continues because we let them get away it. I think it thrives because if we speak up, they will likely turn their guns on us and blast away. We will be labeled a liberal compromiser for the crime of disagreeing with them. Perhaps if we worried only about the opinion of the God we love instead of that of overreaching colleagues, this issue would waft away on the next gust of wind. It is time we tell them to go find real work in the cause of Christ as we will take over discernment ourselves going forward.

Related Posts:

Mentioned above — The Tsunami of Jack Schaap

Find all articles in the Truth Revolution Series Here

How often have we heard within the Independent Baptist world the claim that we are on “the old paths”? Or better yet, have often do we hear of sermons on

Jeremiah 6:16
Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

in periodicals or at conferences? No matter the preacher, the sermon is usually the same. We must stick to “the old paths.” Since that is a verse of Scripture, that verse, of course, must mean something we ought to know. My question is simple. Could the passage given in the time of Jeremiah mean what we are told it does? Are we hearing a reasonable application of the text?

Well, what are we often told it means? After the admonition to stay on “the old paths”, we are given a list of points to define the old path. The list rarely varies from things like worship styles, or shouting, or clothes, or music, or acceptable entertainment. Strangely, the great fundamental doctrines, except maybe the Blood and the Book, are never mentioned, just these peripheral things. Are we only defined by these things? Are these things what Independent Baptists now are? Sadly, some are starting to think that very thing of us as we become just a caricature instead of what we should be for Jesus Christ.

If this weren’t bad enough, these “old paths” aren’t that old! If you look closely, they resemble the 1950s. In that I have known several people in my life that were pre-1950s, I find it a little laughable that I am asked to follow these “old” ways. If you don’t believe me, just find some pictures from the 1950s and see the resemblance! How did that time period become the standard? How did it become tantamount to the old paths of the Bible?

Do you suppose Jesus might be the better standard to determine “the old paths”? I mean He is both the Ancient of Days and the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Did you know that He often had the charge, in one form or another, leveled at him that He didn’t follow “the old paths”? Those “old paths” of Sabbath regulations, or tithing of something as small as little herbs, or hand washing regulations, and on and on, enraged many against Christ. He ignored them as you would a fly on the wall.

He followed something better, something far older, something truly timeless–His revealed Word. Nothing hatched later and passed off as His Word would ever detract Him from following the real “old paths.” No matter what anyone else says, I think it is time we follow these old paths of love, redemption, truth, and grace. This is “the good way”. This is the way we should walk. This is where we will “find rest for (our) souls”.

Those other paths? While they are called “the old paths”, we find they are at best a detour. Despite what we are told, they will not take us anywhere desirable to go. Even if you want to argue they aren’t actually bad, just remember they won’t take us where we desperately need to go–the arms of Jesus Christ.

I want “the old paths”! I want nothing less than “the old paths”! I just don’t want someone to switch the signs and find we are on the wrong path after all. In many cases in our Independent Baptist world, the signs have been switched. I appeal to you today to look at Jesus, to what His Word actually says, and ask for those “old paths”, and start walking today!

FIND ALL POSTS IN THE SERIES HERE: