Dealing With a Beef With Your Pastor

The outline is attached at the bottom of the page. Check out these sermons as well: Dealing With Problems in the Church. Dealing With a Beef With Your Pastor I. You are supposed to highly esteem your pastor in love for his work's sake (1Th 5:12-13). 1. If you do this there will be peace in the church (1Th 5:13). 2. You should entreat your pastor like a father, not rebuke him (1Ti 5:1). 3. You should hold your pastor in high regard (Php 2:29). II. Don't despise your pastor if he rebukes you. 1. It's your pastor's job to rebuke, reprove, and exhort you (2Ti 4:1-2; 1Ti 5:20). 2. A wise man will love his pastor when he rebukes him (Pro 9:8). A. A wise man welcomes reproof and instruction (Pro 9:9; Psa 141:5). B. But a scorner heareth not rebuke (Pro 13:1). 3. Don't become your pastor's enemy because he tells you the truth (Gal 4:15-16). A. A fool will despise his pastor when he tells him the truth (Pro 1:7; Pro 23:9). B. A scorner hates his pastor when he is reproved by him (Pro 9:8; Pro 15:12; Amo 5:10). C. A scorner will not go to his pastor for counsel or advice (Pro 15:12). D. A fool will attack and accuse his pastor when he rebukes him (Pro 9:7; Isa 29:20-21). E. If your pastor tells you the truth about yourself, you should consider it and accept it, not reject it. F. The truth hurts sometimes. G. If this sermon makes you mad, you need to hear it. H. Listen to it as many times as necessary until you are ready to deal with your problem with your pastor the way that God says to. III. The proper way to deal with a problem with your pastor is to take your problem to him personally and privately (Pro 25:9). 1. The private problem you have with him is not to be discovered (revealed) to another. 2. You will be put to shame if you do so (Pro 25:10). 3. If your pastor offends you, "tell him his fault between thee and him alone" (Mat 18:15). 4. If he has erred from the truth, then convert him privately and save him from the error of his way (Jam 5:19-20). 5. If you have a problem with me, come and talk to me about it. A. Anyone who has ever come to me about anything will tell you that I am very approachable, and I will respectfully listen as you express your grievance. B. If you disagree with a decision that I have made, then talk TO ME about it. C. Don't talk to other church members about it. D. Especially don't talk to excluded church members about it. E. You should only be talking TO ME about your grievances with me. 6. Before you called me to be your resident pastor, some of you expressed concerns that you had to me. A. That is exactly what you should have done. B. I commend you for it. I. How not to deal with a problem with your pastor. 1. Backbiting, whispering, and talebearing are three wrong methods of addressing problems with your pastor. A. Backbiting i. Backbite - v. To detract from the character of, to slander, traduce, speak ill of: a. a person absent. ii. Slander - v. 1. trans. In or after Biblical use: To be a stumbling-block to; to offend; to cause to lapse spiritually or morally. 2. To bring into discredit, disgrace, or disrepute. 3. To defame or calumniate; to assail with slander; to spread slanderous reports about, speak evil of, traduce (a person, etc.). iii. Slander - n. 1. The utterance or dissemination of false statements or reports concerning a person, or malicious misrepresentation of his actions, in order to defame or injure him; calumny, defamation. iv. Backbiting is condemned by God (Rom 1:30; 2Co 12:20; Psa 15:1-3). B. Whispering i. Whisper - v. 1. a. intr. To speak softly ‘under one's breath’, i.e. without the resonant tone produced by vibration of the vocal cords; to talk or converse in this way, esp. in the ear of another, for the sake of secrecy. (See also 4a.) IV. 4. With special connotations. a. intr. To speak or converse quietly or secretly about something (usually implying hostility, malice, conspiracy, etc.); also (with negative) to speak ever so slightly, to say ‘the least thing’ about something. ii. Whispering is condemned by God (Rom 1:29; 2Co 12:20; Psa 41:7). iii. Whisperers destroy friendships and churches (Pro 16:28). C. Talebearing i. Talebearing - The carrying of injurious or malicious reports. ii. Talebearer - One who officiously carries reports of private matters to gratify malice or idle curiosity. iii. Talebearing is likewise condemned by God (Lev 19:16). iv. Talebearers reveal secrets and shouldn't be trusted (Pro 11:13; Pro 20:19). v. Talebearers are injurious (Pro 18:8; Pro 26:22). vi. Talebearers cause strife (Pro 26:20). 2. Contriving ideas about why the pastor really made a certain decision. A. This is called evil surmising, and it is a sin (1Ti 6:4). B. If I give you the true reasons for a decision that I made and you think I had ulterior motives, talk TO ME about it, not others. V. You should not listen to complaints about your pastor from a disaffected church member. 1. A backbiting tongue should be met with an angry look, not a receptive ear (Pro 25:23). 2. You should not receive an accusation against your pastor without two or three witnesses (1Ti 5:19). 3. Even if there are two or three witnesses, the pastor should be present to be able to defend himself against the charges (Joh 7:51). VI. Steer clear of them that stir up strife. 1. Scorners cause strife in a church (Pro 22:10). 2. Contentious people cause strife (Pro 26:21). 3. Angry people stir up strife (Pro 29:22). 4. Don't go with along with them (Pro 22:24).