You yourselves know, dear brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not a failure. You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. (1 Thessalonians 2:1-2)There are some churches who are balms to weary preachers. When they go there, they feel good and loved.
Unfortunately, churches will slice a minister up. Their ideas of what church ought to be like and his are different and rather than give in or even compromise, they will eviscerate him and even his family. Many a good man, one ordained by God, has left the ministry because a church has just cut them to pieces.
Why this is, I really do not know. And after almost forty years of preaching, I still do not truly understand it. I mean, I understand the basic principles, the idea of who is in control, whose idea of ”church” is supposed to be dominant, all that. And there are people who wan their idea of “church” to be dominant to the point that they will tear the church up to get it.
It was the same all though the Bible. God sends his prophet to a group of people who have already decided how things ought to go. He preaches God’s word and people sometimes even kill him to make him shut up.
They have made up their minds and no one, not even God, will tell them otherwise.
But then you see churches that have had a pastor for a long time. They are a happy church, one which seems to be doing things and accomplishing a lot for the Lord. The pastor is happy, the church is happy.
Of course, there are problems. There always are when there are people involved, but some churches seem to be able to work it out.
Other churches go through pastor after pastor, always looking for “the right man” and never finding him.
It is like an many times married woman who cannot find a “good husband” or a man who has been married a lot who feels he has to go out of country for a wife because there are no good women around here.
It is not that there are no good men or women to marry, it is that they are all marrying you. You are the constant in that situation. A church that goes through pastor after pastor has a real problem. And if they have left a trail of disillusioned pastors, they need to quit and die as a church. They are doing far more harm to the kingdom of God by existing than they are helping.
The apostle Paul was glad for the Thessalonian church. He had come there hurt and they healed him. That is a good church.
May God give us more like that. And may God close those who are harmful.
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