What is the problem with evangelism ministry? Part 1 Church Discipline

     I love evangelism. It is in my blood. Ever since I got saved, I wanted to be ‘out there’ telling other people about Jesus. I was that guy that offended friends and family members because of my passion for Jesus and the way that he saved me. I look back on that guy and I want his passion, but I also realize that the passion that I had needed to be tempered and taught and fashioned, because in some ways it was zeal without knowledge. This is not to say that we do not know enough as Christians to be able to share our faith and the truth that I am a sinner and God saved me through Christ, I am simply saying that discipleship helps us grow, mature, and temper our methodology. And a little Bible knowledge never hurt.

    I tell this little story because there is one more aspect that is true about passion for ministry. Passion for ministry in my life has taken me down a road where no one could speak to me about the unbalanced life that it created. It put me on an island that split me from some friends, family, and, I believe, contributed to the destruction of my first marriage and a total breakdown of my relationship with my oldest child. These are problems that were created by me being fooled into thinking that ministry is the most important, that serving God and following Jesus means that you must abandon all else that God has placed into your life, indeed, that certain Bible passages did not apply to me because I was serving God.

    Herein lies the problem: The institutional church that I was pastoring practiced church discipline, but it was a strong, passionate Pastor (me) with a strong personality of influence. The elders in the church did not see a problem until it blew up in their faces. My story is a cautionary tale because it took an overseeing body to come in and remove my mantel of leadership and practice the discipline that our little church could not. Here I sit, nearly four years later, a little wiser following a divorce where my ex-wife left me, I lost the church where I was pastoring, and I am no longer in formal ministry.

Church discipline worked. I repented of my sin, I sought and still seek out help. I was restored by the Church, and now have a little better understanding of who I am and why I failed. This came after much pain. I had to go through it in order for God to mold me into the person He wanted. I am now qualified again to minister, however, I am still trying to find that balance that does not take me over the edge.

My story is important, because it demonstrates the grace of God in church discipline. It is also important because it is indicative of a subculture within the church that is coming to the forefront today in a movement of evangelists. These are passionate men and women, like me, who want to tell the world about Jesus. However, within the movement there are many who, like me, abandon their God- given responsibility of their family. There are some that abandon the church as well and create their own churches simply because the church they were a part of does not move quick enough to respond to their passion. Others abandon any friends and family members who do not subscribe to or understand their own particular brand of ministry. Most become part of bands of preachers, para-church ministries, and event evangelism  which  have little or no church oversight. Even those who have strong church oversight do not have sufficient oversight in the lives of the evangelists to determine if they are truly fit for ministry.

What is the problem that is at the center of the culture that is evangelism ministry? I can only speak for myself; In my case, it was spiritual pride, followed by a good dose of respect in the eyes of my peers. When I was teaching, training, preaching, and writing in the context of discernment and evangelism ministry, I was at the top of my game. My saying after days of ministry that sometimes lasted sixteen hours or more was that you could sleep when you were dead. There were times that my motives were pure, to be sure. I believe that God used me, my teachings, and writings. People got saved hearing the message. Brothers and sisters were built up and encouraged to press forward in the ministry. But evangelism ministry was like a powerful drug to me, and there were times that it reared its ugly head in the form of sarcasm and less than gracious speech. It also caused me to be blind to the needs of my ex-wife, my family, and sometimes even my young church plant. I was spread too thin. But I found respect and excitement and amazing camaraderie of fellowship with those of like mind. My church and family relationships were dying, but I never felt more alive.

My other problem was that I believed that the proper hierarchy was loving God then wife than family than myself. In practice, this looked like that loving God was doing ministry, and therefore, if evangelism was doing ministry, it was in truth more important than my wife and my family.  I am afraid that while I knew and we could say that this is not the truth, that in practice it was the truth. Ministry, in my case, became idolatrous as it had become synonymous with God in my practice. It also was a false picture of God, because the word of God tells us that we are to love our wives in the same way as Christ loves the church. That means we are to lay down our lives for our wives, in the same way that Christ laid down His life for the church. We are NEVER told in scripture to lay down our lives for the church- Christ has already done this. When ministry supersedes the husband-wife relationship, it is in wrong position. When the family is in trouble, necessarily, you are not qualified to be in biblical church ministry. And while it is the call of every believer to share their faith, when the sharing of faith is done to the detriment of your primary responsibility in the family, you are in fact blaspheming God by misrepresenting His character and nature.

The truly sad thing was that I was so deceived that I believed God needed me in ministry so badly, and that evangelism was so important that it was my wife and my children that were the ones who were sinning when they told me to come home and get my priorities in order. It was my ex-wife who was seen as wrong by the evangelism community I was a part of when she rightly recognized that my priorities were out of balance. This is a dangerous precedent when the church and the family see things out of balance but the para church ministry welcomes the participation of people who are in sin. There is no excuse for ministries to welcome a person who is under church discipline.

I am vexed at this problem because of what it says to the world about Jesus. In my case, nobody knew what was going on behind the scenes with my family, least of all me. I knew very well, but I didn’t see it because I did not want to see it.  Everybody knew that I had a family and a church and several jobs to keep it all afloat. I would hear things like “man you are gone a lot” “how does your family do it” “don’t your kids miss you” but I did not listen. All warning signs. I can only imagine the tongue wagging that was going on behind my back in the town when my ex-wife abandoned me. I did not have to imagine it because it happened in public after I was restored and I returned to evangelistic  ministry. When people mocked, they used phrases with knowledge. Even though I had been restored in the church, in the eyes of the world, I was still a failure because I failed at the most important human relationship. Restoration can be a powerful testimony, when done in the context of good church discipline in the midst of a loving church and good relationships.

The word discipline is a lot like discipleship, and that is what Biblical church discipline is. Many people upon hearing discipline immediately have a negative connotation of the word. However,  Biblical Church Discipline is for the purpose of the building up and edification of both the one being disciplined as well as the rest of the Church. Indeed, the primary role of the Church is to create disciples. The starting point is repentance and belief in Christ as Savior. Through justification by faith and redemption, people become adopted children of God. Discipleship is the process by which people in the church, according to their gifts, and  in concert with the Holy Spirit, train Christians in the faith with the goal of conforming them to the image of Christ. This, in turn, builds the church into maturity. Discipleship allows the power of the Gospel to change lives for the better, bringing glory to God through these changed lives. This also separates the church from the world as an agent of real and permanent life change, and this brings the Church to a new place of honor and respect in the community. This simply cannot and does not happen within para-church organizations or within most ‘event’ evangelism. Anybody who desires to sign up and has a modicum of knowledge how to answer the questions that some actually ask are given entrance to participate.

The textbook that must be used for discipleship is the scripture. After all, we are not interested in building followers of a specific church, theology,or even the individuals who are doing the discipleship. Least of all, we are not building followers of the culture. We are building followers of Jesus Christ. It is from within the scripture that we find what the Christian walk is to look like. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16:

16All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

The location for discipline and discipleship is in the local church. The main problem in the para-church or event-evangelism community is that they are not the church, and they are not walking in the lives of the people who are participating in the events. In my case, many of these events were hundreds, even thousands of miles away from my community, family, and church. I would see these people for a week at the longest. And though they were friends of mine, I could hide truth from them long enough to complete the event. So the participants in the event may not be qualified to minister even in the streets. The discipline and discipleship is not the focus of the para church or event evangelism ministry, so people are not being discipled to walk in the light, because the leadership of the event is either fearful of man, or the organizers and leaders fears man more than they fear God. all that they can see is the pragmatic need to minister, all while they bring shame to the name of Christ.

 

    I was part of a para church ministry that did great work, but was nearly destroyed some three years ago from within. There was a great deal of sin within the leadership that was not exposed until someone was brave enough to bring the sin to light. They had no idea how deep it had gotten. The reality was that the leader, the pastor, had no real accountability and had almost a cult leader like power over his leadership team. It was a real situation of spiritual abuse and warfare, all because proper Biblical leadership was not in place. Discipleship and discipline could be practiced, but out of the oversight of a true church. This turned into spiritual abuse of a kind that I do not want to speak about here. Though the ministry is on a path to healing and growth after church discipline was applied, they, like other ministries, are in the cross hairs of those who wish to bring them down. Now, more than ever, evangelism ministries must be above reproach and very careful about self-examination and vetting of their participants. The stakes are too high to take shortcuts when it comes to the reputation of Christ and His Church.

 

It is my desire today to warn individuals and ministries when I see the warning signs that I wish people would have seen in me. I also hope to help them divide the right from the wrong. The glory of God is of primary importance. The gospel being proclaimed rightly in the home, the local church, and on the street  bring glory to God. When one is not taking care of business in the home or the local church, all the proclamations suffer, and the reputation of Christ is brought into ill repute by those who claim to love Him and the people observing the disaster. The warning in Luke 8:17 is pertinent here: For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. The longer the sin festers the more destruction happens when it is brought to light. I am fearful that ministries that I have participated in and contributed to will be destroyed from within if they refuse to use discernment or discipline within their membership.

The next blog post will be on the qualifications for evangelistic ministry.