Noted evangelist John Piper says that pastors who are bullying and using fear to control congregations need to be rebuked for their sinful actions.
Piper addressed a question from a listener on his podcast about abusive leaders within the church.
While Piper said the words “bully” and “bullying” are not in the Bible, the application of what the Bible calls “bad shepherds” applies in the cases of what we today would call bullying.
“Does the pastor get down and live alongside his people, giving examples to them or is he always pompously pronouncing with a domineering sense of I’m a big shot in this church and you guys ought to toe the line,” Piper said. If it was the big shot mentality, Piper stated, “That’s bullying and that’s the opposite of what God calls his shepherds to be.”
Piper also said that in some cases what is called bullying is really pastors exercising the authority given to them by God to rebuke and correct those under their teaching to guide people to be more like Christ.
Piper added if someone is unsure about their pastor’s actions, to “go to the Bible, especially the New Testament, use all of it to form a well-rounded picture of what biblical leadership and biblical shepherding is and then measure your pastor by that.”
The Seattle area megachurch founded by Mark Driscoll is disbanding at the end of the year.
The announcement last Friday sent shockwaves through the church’s multiple locations as they have only a few weeks to decide if they want to become an independent church, merge with another congregation or simply disappear.
The “Mars Hill” ministry itself will also cease to exist. They will fire all of their existing staff.
The church has been struggling through transition after the resignation of founding pastor Mark Driscoll.
Several former Mars Hill leaders expressed optimism that this news could end up bringing benefit to the Seattle area.
“God makes good out of bad: New local ‘Mars Hill’ churches: Redemption Church, Redeemer Church, A Seattle Church, Downtown Cornerstone, Reach; all these seeds have fallen from the dying Mars Hill tree. God is very much alive in Seattle,” former Mars Hill deacon Mike O’Neil wrote.
The Chinese religious freedom group China Aid has released documents showing the Chinese government is increasing their crackdown on churches and Christians.
The government destroyed churches in Wenzhou and Hangzhou on Friday. Christians in the area reported to China Aid that only one cross remains standing in the Wenzhou area where most of the government persecution has taken place.
“On [Friday], the cross of [Kaiyang Church] of Wuniu pastoral region in Yongjia County, Wenzhou was taken down,” a worshipper from Pingyang County, Wenzhou said. “[The cross on] a church in Ouhai District, Wenzhou was also taken down. Now, in Pingyang County, only the cross of Zengzhan Church has not been taken down.”
Security agents reportedly descended in the middle of the night to remove the crosses and witnesses say that at 3:30 a.m. local time the security agents left after destroying the cross.
“The authorities in Zhejiang have never stopped taking down the crosses,” Pastor Zhang Mingxuan, also known as Pastor “Bike,” said. “They have been obstructing the entry of Christian culture into China. This is religious persecution. In taking down these crosses, they resort to violence.”
The Green family of Hobby Lobby has purchased a 14 ½ acre property in the Chicago area and then donated it to Fellowship Baptist Church to build a center for the needy of their community.
Pastor Charles Jenkins said their Legacy Project is aimed at “building people, building communities.”
“As we looked at expanding (church), we didn’t just look within but we looked without. As we talk about those who are returning home from prison, we looked at the desolation, the destitution, the healthcare disparities. We looked at the unemployment rate in the neighborhood where we serve; it’s almost 70 percent. And there’s so many challenges, and that’s when we started to look at the idea to not just share the Gospel, but show the Gospel in a broader more dynamic way,” explained Jenkins to Christian Post.
Pastor Jenkins said that he was connected to the Green family through Pastor James McDonald. He told Jenkins that the Green family was all about spreading the Gospel through acts of service.
“Bless God for people like that who engage. My wife does remind me that 11 cents of every dollar spent at Hobby Lobby does go to Christian ministries, so I’m blessed when she shops there,” said Jim Liske, moderator of the panel where the donation was discussed.
A new study from Barna Group says that unchurched Americans are more hostile toward evangelism than ever in the country’s history.
The survey says that since 1993, the number of unchurched Americans who would be open to attending church if invited by a friend was down from 65 percent to 47 percent.
The study showed that most people open to visiting church did so because of personal invitations from friends they knew well. Advertising and impersonal contacts such as cold phone calls were shown to have more negative than positive impact on those who do not attend church.
“The gap between the churched and the churchless is growing, and it appears that Christian communities of faith will struggle more than ever to engage church outsiders in their neighborhood, town or city,” Barna Group President David Kinnaman told the Christian Post.
He said that secular society has taken aggressive steps to make Christians seem “increasingly alien and difficult to understand.”
Rick Warren spoke to a group of church planters and told them that building a church is more important than drawing a crowd.
“You must be very careful how you build. Some build with gold, silver, precious stones even wood, hay and straw but the day will come when fire will reveal the quality of your work and if what you build survives, you will receive a reward,” Warren said on Thursday of the three-day conference.
“The success of your ministry isn’t about size or speed, regardless of those ‘large church lists.’ God isn’t going to judge you based on those things because those are human measurements.”
Warren said that church planters are too preoccupied with church trends or what is “currently in or hip.”
“I could show you how to get a crowd but a crowd isn’t a church,” Warren said. “Most church planters spend an entire year planning the first service and none planning the second.”
Warren said more than anything church planters need a pure heart and clear purpose.
Seven California churches have filed suit against the state because they are being forced to pay for abortions.
The California Department of Managed Health Care sent letters to seven insurance companies that refused to offer abortion coverage.
“Abortion is a basic health care service,” director Michelle Rouillard wrote to the seven insurance companies that refused to offer coverage.“All health plans must treat maternity services and legal abortion neutrally.”
The Life Legal Defense Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom are defending the churches, claiming the state’s mandate is a violation of the federal Weldon Amendment, which says a state can be forfeited of certain funds if they discriminate against a healthcare provider who does not pay for abortions.
“Forcing a church to be party to elective abortion is one of the utmost-imaginable assaults on our most fundamental American freedoms,” ADF Senior Counsel Casey Mattox also stated in a press release about the matter on Thursday. “California is flagrantly violating the federal law that protects employers from being forced into having abortion in their health insurance plans. No state can blatantly ignore federal law and think that it should continue to receive taxpayer money.”
Survivors of an Islamist attack in Kaduna State, Nigeria say that at least 46 people have been killed including two pastors.
Church leaders say the Islamists stated their goal was to “cleanse” the area of any Christians.
The two pastors were killed along with 31 other Christian s in Karshin Daji. The attack left 15 injured and at least 15 homes of Christians burned to the ground. The slain pastors were Pastor Ezra Ibrahim of the Evangelical Church Winning All and Pastor Julius Jako of ECWA who was butchered beside his wife and daughter.
Danjuma Awe, 60, was one of the survivors of the assault.
“Suddenly we heard sounds of gunshots around our village,” Awe said. “The pastor was still in the pastorate when the Muslim Fulani gunmen forced their way onto the church premises. They cut him, his wife, and a daughter with a machete, and then tied the hands and feet of the three of them before setting the house on fire. The three of them were burned to ashes in the living room of the pastorate. We only found the charred remains of the three of them the following morning.”
Residents say the Nigerian authorities did nothing to stop the Islamists from their assault.
Over a thousand pastors took to their pulpits on Sunday to say that Christ controls what they say to their congregations, not the government.
The Pulpit Initiative, part of the Alliance Defending Freedom, organized the 7th Annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday. The goal is to have pastors “speak truth into every area of life from the pulpit.”
“Pastors should decide what they preach from the pulpit, not the IRS,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley, who oversees the observance. “Churches should be allowed to decide for themselves what they want to talk about. The IRS should not be the one making the decision by threatening to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status. There’s a growing chorus of pastors’ voices calling for a solution to this very real constitutional violation.”
The event had pastors participating from all fifty states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The move is to point out the “Johnson Amendment” of 1954 that says churches cannot “participate in or intervene in” political campaigns.
“The real effect of the Johnson Amendment is that pastors are muzzled for fear of investigation by the IRS,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb. “Rather than risk confrontation, many pastors have self-censored their speech—afraid to apply the teachings of Scripture to specific candidates or elections. As in years past, the participants in Pulpit Freedom Sunday 2014 are taking a stand against being intimidated into sacrificing their First Amendment freedoms.”
A Hebrew wedding – this was a blessed event with an End Times message for the Church encapsulated in every detail of the festivities. There is no more poignant picture of love anywhere than a bridegroom standing at the altar, looking lovingly at his bride as she approaches. That’s the way Jesus looks and longs for His bride, the Church.
As we study the End Times, let’s be sure to remember that we are getting ready for a wedding – our wedding – as we become the Bride of Christ that He longs for, that He died for, that He now lives for.
It’s time for the Bride to get ready NOW. Continue reading →
