Starting and leading a local church
By David Cox
2 Corintios 3:1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
Paul founded the church at Corinth. But later on, when he was coming back through that area, we see that the Corinthians had a very distinct concept of their relationship with Paul, and that they were limiting who would speak in their church, and even the Apostle Paul himself needed their permission to speak.
By Pastor David Cox
Summary: Satan’s useful idiots is a blog post on how some Christians are useful to Satan’s purposes, yet they are idiots as far as furthering the kingdom of God.
I have come across the phrase “useful idiots” in my wandering in books and news. As I understand the phrase, it is used of people in an opposing position, yet being the enemy, they mess up things on their own side, and therefore they are useful to “us” even though they would seem to not know what they are doing or how they are harming their side of things.
Getting the right Church Focus. In overview of what a local church does or getting the right church focus, because at times we need to “take a step back,” and look at the bigger picture and keep a focus on that.
I think that every church and every pastor has a lot of problems. I cannot conceive of a church or a pastor that does not deal with problems, and many times serious problems. For example, almost everybody has some kind of budget and finance problems. There is never enough money coming in, and even if that was to happen temporarily, where to spend it would be a problem and accompanying problem.
The point is not that we have problems, but that we have a purpose, and that purpose must be fulfilled. Getting the right church focus is what is important here. The purpose of a local church is to do the work of God, and to do it effectively. This work of God has to be defined NOT as the continued existence of that particular local church, but that of God bringing sinners to salvation, and disciplining them into mature, fruitful Christians who are not entangled in sin, but live in holiness.
So the problem comes in most forcefully when a particular problem becomes “so large” to the pastor or the congregation, that they miss the greater picture (doing God’s work) and micro focus on their particular problem (which has to be done, but not out of context). Here I think that the point of getting the right church focus is that we forget what our particular needs and wants are (as servants should do), and we focus on correctly and efficiently doing God’s work even though we suffer in the process of fulfilling our purpose. For example, the pastor has an illicit affair. Many times the church loves the pastor, and they ask him to stay on (forgiving him). While that is warm and cuddly, it is not doing God’s work. A tainted man of God will not do the work of God correctly. The testimony outwardly and inwardly cannot be maintained if you ignore what he did. We need to forget about the microscopic part of this, a single person and his problem(s), and look at God’s work, and what is best for accomplishing God’s work. Let him go and find another. What will be the impact on the work of God that is done through that particular church? What is right church focus and how are we accomplishing that purpose and focus.
See my tract, CH42 Destitution of a Pastor
By Pastor David Cox
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (posts 5/1/20)
Although this would seem silly to ask, the answer might be surprising. Why do we preach on Sunday morning to a group of people? If we don’t understand what we are doing and why we are doing it, then we can never really do it right nor excellently. Without getting too involved in the whole of the Bible, let’s try to clarify why we preach a sermon.
“People ” ruin a church? People make a church. Yes and yes. A church really has nothing to do with the building, money, resources, history, nor any other thing that people attribute to a great work of God. What makes or breaks a church is the people that make it up.
Good churches are people functioning in the Body of Christ. Ruined churches are businesses designed to look religious. There is a great difference between the two. When a body functions, especially a spiritual body, it rebounds and bends, is flexible according to the needs of the moment. A business has rules that are never broken. The bottom line of a business is profit, so what is the spiritual “bottom line” of your church? If it is glory, power, control, submission of the people, worldly success, etc. then the church is ruined. A body functions and serves, and at some point, grown ups reproduce. Is your church reproducing? Is it training its offspring to be adult and mature? That is the purpose of the church in capsule form.
Good churches are churches that have good leaders steering the group always into the will of God. Its relationships between its leaders, and between its leaders and members, and between the members is healthy, productive, and spiritual.
Tract: Church14 Finding a Good Church
