Missionary Problems: Failure of our Brethren discusses how others’ failure affect those who are trying to be faithful, as well as the Lord’s work in general.
Contents
The Most Persistent Problem we Deal With
I have been a missionary for more than 40 years now, and the most persistent and bothersome problem that I have had to constantly deal with is that of the unfaithfulness of my Christian brethren. Now I am not claiming to be perfect myself, but I do try to continue forward, working the Lord’s work whether it is difficult or not, and a very important thing to me, whether “we succeed” or not, I am not worried about that really. My main objective is to be faithful to the Lord’s calling for me personally.
I have gotten very discouraged in the past because our work is not growing like I would like it to grow. Can I study church growth works and make it grow more? Yes. I have studied those works, and no they do not work. The kind of success and growth I am targeting and praying for is that our people are victorious Christians in their own lives first, and then they contribute to our church work such that it is victorious. But victory in the eyes of the Lord and not the world. We can use church growth tactics to “get more people in the building”, and they work. But those tactics only work to get warm bodies in the building, but they are spiritually cold. Once they are in the building, then what? You can preach until you are blue in the face, and frankly they are obvious to you. You offer free give aways to those that are in the building, free meals, old clothes, all kinds of stuff that attract people, but you will never build a congregation that loves the truth. They only love materially what you give them. They take offense at you trying to meddle in their lives spiritually.
2 Thessalonians 2:10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
When you realize that this goes all the way down the foundation of what we are doing, preaching the gospel of salvation, then you realize that church growth miracles are not any kind of miracle nor is it the will of God.
Matthew 7:20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. 21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
So we can in our human strength and our geniuses can direct the growth of the church so that we have outwardly people, money, buildings, and fame, but in analysis, these people are not even saved. Those that promote God’s work in any other way other than what God says is not really doing God’s work, because they are not doing God’s will. These “ministers” in this passage in Matthew 7 were not even saved themselves.
What is the key then? That we do God’s will. For me as a minister, a pastor, a missionary, it focuses on moral change in my people but beginning in me, in my life.
Understanding our Christian Faith and Its Life Application
The concept of faith is an essential concept both for salvation and ministry, but it is a concept that many people use it, but few understand it. Faith does not start with man, but God. God is faithful. His faithfulness is important. When you really boil things done to their most basic parts, salvation is all about trusting God for whom He is, and that hinges on His power and wisdom, but also on His track record. God never lies, God never fails. He is consistent and always fulfilling His promises and threats. And there is the great problem.
What does God ask of man in order to live and enjoy the grace of God? The answer is only one thing in the Bible. Faith. We “do” nothing to be saved. We only believe. But this thing, believing or having faith, is hard to pin down for a lot of people. They claim to be saved, but do they really have faith? In the Matthew 7 passage we see ministers probably greatly sacrificing of their own lives to do “a ministry” for God, and God rebuffs them as not even being saved. What was their problem? They did not do the will of God, but they conceived another plan of operation that was outside of God’s will.
Matthew 12:48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? 50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.
I have come to greatly meditate on this simple verse in recent months. The way we identify who are our true Christian brethren is by their lives. If a person confesses Christ and does not do the will of God, I have a hard time accepting that person as a brother. I know that they are a lot of false brethren, a lot of tares or weeds among the good grain, that Christ said let them be, do not try to root them out, because you will damage the growth of the good grain. But the identification of these people is so very important. If you do not recognize them and take caution with them, they will do you spiritual damage anyway.
But the key point is doing the will of God. When I look around among our people, I want to see people, who out of pure motives, are serving God faithfully. That is how they show their faith to God by being faithful. This translates into being right (obeying God’s will) and doing right constantly. To be an on and off again Christian doesn’t cut it.
What is worse, when I depend on these “brethren” to be faithful, and they just unilaterally fail time and time again, it throws the entire church into chaos. I am talking about men who take upon themselves (because I gave them the opportunity) to preach, teach, minister in someway, and they just don’t even show up, much less tell me ahead of time that they are not going to be there. When I eventually find them and ask, “I forgot”. The next in line to these types are the ones that get into the pulpit and do a lousy job. I am very forgiving in general, but when you announce a verse of Scripture to proof some point you are making and you get the wrong verse, why? Did the guy even read to review what he was going to say before he got to church? To me, this is inexcusable behavior of a green preacher. You write your sermon, and then you practice your sermon. You take the patience and time to actually reread each verse you are going to mention. In most preachers’ sermons, they can cut out probably a third to half of the verses they have written down and it would make the sermon even better. But the idea is that they are doing a spiritual sacrifice for the Lord, and quality is very imperfect, not good from even what they can easily do better at.
The Failures of our Brethren Affect all
The problem with our brethren unilaterally failing like this is that it affects all of us. When we pray and encourage an unsaved person to come to church, and they decide to come to the meeting with a brother who really messes up his sermon, they paint EVERY CHRISTIAN IN EVERY CHURCH with the same brush. That is very unfortunate. It is unfortunate because the unsaved soul turns from probably the only spiritual witness that is near and capable to bring him to Christ. It discourages those who are praying for his soul. But as a pastor, it discourages me from allowing him another opportunity. I have allowed some men to preach, and even though they have been brought up since being a child in Independent Fundamental Baptist Churches, they slaughter the sermon. They leave the Bible to one side and start storytelling about their own personal experiences, and really, those experiences have no point in the sermon. They do not illustrate anything that the sermon was supposedly about. After dragging the congregation through unending “me’s” and “my’s” and “our family’s” and ever other kind of boasting you can think of, they go over their time limit and turn off the brethren from hearing sermons.
But as a minister in charge of a church (as a pastor), and also as a missionary, it has been a constant discouragement to see the on and off again attitude of my Christian brethren. We cannot have a successful church without faithful people. People who minister who are faithful, and the congregation who faithfully attend our services, supporting things where they can.
I have preached on faithfulness, and part of the congregation didn’t come that Sunday. I preached again and again, with different sermons and the same theme. But it is discouraging to preach something so important, and then to see people asleep in their chairs.
We will ALL Give an Accounting to the Lord
What makes this even more difficult, is that my plans and attempts to serve God are frustrated by the unfaithfulness of others, none of us are really important in the larger scheme of things. God is doing His work, and there is where our failures frustrate the work of God. This is Satan who is causing this. This is one of his spiritual traps, as much as the lack of faithfulness in the brethren as the effect that has on others that are faithful. This is sad that we allow Satan to have the upper hand in assailing the work of God.
Missionary Problems: Failure of our Brethren