This is the Straight Truth Podcast. Biblical answers to difficult questions from a Christian worldview. So let's say that I'm in a church that I've grown up in. I'm in a church that I love, and I love the leadership. And the pastor has decided to lead the church in a direction that I know to be theologically incorrect. We can think about this question from a couple different angles. One, let's just say the pastor is leading them into an unorthodox position on a certain topic. How would you respond to that? Do you stay in the church? Do you try to reform? Do you just speak with the pastors openly about these things? Talk to other people? And then secondly, what if it's just a shift on a specific doctrine? Let's say the church used to be a non-charismatic church, and now they decide the pastors have led them to be charismatic and continuationists. What does the person in that church do at that point? How do they respond? How do they navigate these areas? That's a good question. I think we do want to distinguish between, as you just did in your question, first order issues and then second tier, third tier matters. If you talk about first order issues, you're talking about things that define Christianity at its core. I mean, is this church faithful to orthodox doctrine? So we're talking about, for example, the truth of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, those sorts of things. If a church departs there, it's obvious. And if the leadership remains fixed in their unorthodoxy, you've got to go. There's no way to stand in a church like that. When it comes to second-tier issues, you mentioned one, our view of the gifts and whether they are all still in effect or not, those sorts of things. You're dealing with other issues. Here's what I would say in general terms. You always want to go to your leadership and talk to them about the issues that are bothering you. Take the Word of God with you, obviously, and find out whether they can be persuaded or not. I mean, if you're certain that they're off-base in their views, them with Scripture and talk to them and see if they can be persuaded. If they can't, then you have to ask, is this something that I can be supportive of because the first order issues are in place, and the church is solid there and sound there, if the church is otherwise healthy, if there's some second-tier or third-tier issue that I disagree with, can I still be supportive of the elders and cooperate in ministry with this church? So I think about, for example, Josh, our view of divorce and remarriage. It's not a first-order issue, but it's an important issue. It's gonna come into play every time we counsel someone who's going through marital conflict, or someone comes to us wanting to be married and they've been divorced in the past. It's gonna come into play again and again. Do we handle that as elders in a way that allows for people to walk with us who don't see that issue eye to eye with us? I think we do. I think we strive to do that here. But as a church member, can I walk with the leadership of my church, be supportive of them even when they have to make decisions that don't fully accord with my view? So for example, we hold a more restrictive position in our church when it comes to the matter of remarriage. There are times we have to say to people, we will not be able to officiate that or you won't be able to use our church facilities for that. And yet we're not saying to them, we don't want you to be a part of this fellowship. And in fact, we say if you end up, I mean, if we're talking about a remarriage that is due to adultery and those sorts of things, we're not gonna say to someone, you're not welcome here, you're not a member here. In addition, we're gonna fully support your marriage as soon as you're remarried. We're gonna walk with you in that new marriage and we're going to do everything in our power to help you honor Christ in that relationship. Can you as a church member walk along with us now? while we handle it this way. So I would say first-order issues, if the leadership cannot be persuaded of their sin, of their disobedience to the Scriptures, of their departure from the gospel, you've got to go. You can't stay in that situation. But if we're talking about second-tier, third-tier issues, go to them, talk to them, listen to them. And then at some point, you're going to have to figure out whether you can remain there joyfully and serve together with them or not. I think a good book, obviously, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, that Nine Marks Ministries have put out, Mark Dever. To me, those are really good summaries of what you look for in a church, what a healthy church looks like. I would get a book like that. I think MacArthur's put out a book sometime in the past about the anatomy of a healthy church. look at those sorts of books, go to the Word of God, and then evaluate your church in light of that. So don't break fellowship entirely at the beginning if it's a second, third-tier issue. Work through those things with a pastor. Obviously, you just don't want to do it in isolation. You also don't want to start an insurrection in the church. Work through the issues with a pastor, with a good book, with the Bible in hand. and then see how the Lord will lead you. Amen. That's what you're saying. Yeah, that's what I would do. Pastor, our next question comes from an online submission, and this person writes in to say that they understand that God tells us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That's Hebrews 10.25, which they wholeheartedly agree with. And they say this, my problem is not finding sound theology or sound doctrine in the churches I visit, wherever they're located. I feel like I'm at a self-help lecture. I hear very little, if any, of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I walk away disappointed. It bothers me and makes me anxious that I don't have a church. I don't want to be out of the will of God, but at the same time, I don't want to listen to unsound doctrine. Can you offer some words of advice? Yeah. If it's unsound to the degree that it's no longer the church, then I may have a different answer than what I'm about to offer. But let's just assume what we're talking about for the moment is a church where the gospel is present. So you have a church. But the preaching of the Word of God is not what our sister would desire or our brother. I can't remember if you said it was a man or woman who asked the question. but not what they would desire, not what we would desire. It's not very deep. It doesn't really engage the Scriptures in a serious way, as was described in the question. It's sort of a self-help talk using the Bible. What do we do with that? What I would remind people who listen to us of is, even when the church is not doing well, it's still the Lord's church. And we're talking about the Lord's people who have received the biblical gospel. The Word of God is there. The ordinances are there. It's still the church. And I read 1 Corinthians, Josh. I read of what was going on in that congregation. It was astounding. I mean, they're suing each other in court. They're getting drunk at the Lord's table. There is almost I don't know, a glorying in a false kind of compassion as they haven't dealt with an issue of sexual immorality that everybody knows about in the congregation. There are all sorts of things going on there that we know were offensive to God. and would not be commendable in a local church. And yet, Paul is addressing them in a letter in which he celebrates God's saving work in their lives and sees them as a congregation that needs to be corrected and is able to be corrected and is able to be straightened out. And so, we need to understand that the church is not yet glorified. And so if my choice is between a sound church and a church not as sound, that's an easy decision. Go to the sound church. Go to the healthy church. Be in a place where you're going to develop and your family is going to develop and you can serve with a clear conscience and everything is closer to as it should be. But if you're in a situation where there isn't such a sound church and the best you have is a church that is underdeveloped and not what we know the Lord would have it to be, invest your life there to the best of your ability and try to make a difference. And exhort the pastors of that church. Encourage them. Let them know that there are people who hunger for a more sound approach. Pray for them. and then wherever you have the opportunity to exert influence in a way that's not undermining. You have to be careful because what you want to do is be a positive influence, but you can't be a disruptive influence. So you have to have respect for spiritual authority and have a submissive demeanor. But nonetheless, invest your life there to the best of your ability. And then supplement in all the ways that we are tremendously blessed to be able to supplement our lives these days. So you can still download sermons from sound pastors and sound churches. You can read great books. You can do all that sort of thing. So make an investment. Love the Lord's church for what it is, the Lord's church. Pray, encourage, and then supplement as you can for your own spiritual growth. Okay, a couple of follow-ups then. First, is it okay for someone in our digital age to just say, this just isn't working for me. I'm going to live stream Founders Baptist Church every Sunday instead. Yeah, no, that's not what we want to do. Online church isn't church. So we just need to clear that up right away. I've even seen social media posts where someone will say, enjoyed church today, and they've got a picture of them watching a screen, watching a television set. Well, you haven't been to church. The church is the people of God. The church is the assembly of God's people, which is why we're called not to forsake it. We're to be present. When the Lord's church meets, we need to be present. So no, online streaming is not the church. It's not a substitute for the church. But I have heard from people who live in remote parts of the earth, remote parts of Canada, for example, that they would long to be in a healthy church. They literally do not know of one anywhere around them. And so at that point, I would suppose you worship as a family, and maybe you do live stream a church service. But what you need to do even then is acknowledge in your own mind, this is not going to church. This is not the church. This is what I'm having to do as I pray about what to do as a solution to my problem. And I would argue that if you have no other solution, relocate. Pick up your family and move. And go find a place where you have a healthy church. because the church is vital. That's a bold step, but it's probably necessary in some instances. My second follow-up is you had mentioned about ways in which this individual could encourage or exhort their pastors. And I wonder if you could elaborate on that because that feels really delicate to me. So let me just paint a scenario. Let's just say the one who wrote this is a middle-aged woman who has a desire for strong doctrine, but also understands convictionally what the scriptures say. about leadership within a church. And then in the context, let's just say this is the United States, there is definitely, for people that are strong on doctrine, a desire to really be in with some sort of reform. I would like to do anything I can to reform. And so how can they delicately navigate this? Like if you were offering advice, what would you actually say to a pastor maybe? I've been so encouraged by godly women in this church who walk up to me after a sermon or something and just talk about how the sermon has encouraged them, or, Pastor, thank you for not compromising the Word of God. Thank you for preaching. Those sorts of comments have really been an encouragement to me. And so if you remember that we're brothers and sisters, then maybe ask yourself in a way that honors your husband, in a way that reflects the kind of submission in the life of the church that should characterize godly women, How can I, as a sister in the Lord, go to my pastor and just let him know that whenever he makes the choice to dig deeply into the Word of God, whenever he makes the choice to lead us boldly in a way that's in accordance with the truth, though it may be unpopular with the culture, whenever he exhorts us to live lives of prayerfulness and seriousness about the things of God, I want him to know there's someone in this church that appreciates it, that prays for him, that delights in it. So if you can think about how to make comments like that, I think that goes a long way. If it's a sister writing this question to us, then I would also encourage my husband to have that kind of influence. If my husband's a believer, I would encourage my husband to have that kind of influence on our elders and the leaders in the church to make similar sorts of comments. In the husband's case even, or the husband and the wife go together, ask questions of the elders. Here's some things that we've noticed. Can you just explain to us what your thinking is on this? Not in a way that's accusatory, not in a way that's tearing them down, but in a way that is exhorting them. What I don't like, Josh, and I've heard people do this before, is sort of try to operate behind the scenes in a church and lead a reformation undercover. Don't do that. Be above board in everything that you do. Go straight to those who are in authority and deal in a way that you have a clear conscience and no one could ever accuse you of sowing discord in the congregation. And then if there's no movement and you have a healthier option around you, go take that healthier option. And if you don't, then love the church for what it is and process and pray for those leaders and continue to exert influence as you can. Pastor, we had a question come in from another pastor friend and had made a couple of comments on this. I thought I would ask you this for this podcast. If there's a believer who has experienced, let's say, some trauma or maybe some hurt in a church in the past, You know, what are some questions you would ask if you were that believer, if you were maybe moving and going to a new church, what sort of questions would you ask of that church and their staff to see if it's a, they use this phrase, safe place to be known and loved? You have a lot of thoughts when I hear that. First, we want to acknowledge people are hurt in churches. There's no doubt about it. People are, at times, they have unfaithful shepherds. so they're not handled rightly, treated rightly, responded to rightly. That's reality, it happens. God's people are hurt by fellow believers. So not thinking now about leadership, just thinking about church members. People can be, even God's people, can act in ways that grieve the Spirit of God and hurt their brethren. So we never diminish that or deny that or anything else. But I will say, I believe we're living in a time where people have never been more sensitive to their own mistreatment, more sensitive to their own hurt, as it were, than right now. It just seems like we're very self-aware when it comes to how other people treat us. And I wanna say that people are not as fragile as we want to imagine that we are. So we hear that word trauma used a lot, traumatized. We're not as fragile as we want to imagine that we are, and yet we are more fragile than we want to imagine that we are. So let me explain. People are more fragile than they want to imagine that they are. We are creatures. We are one breath away from eternity. We don't sustain our own lives. So every day there are people living in this world who want to imagine they're not fragile. They want to think that they dictate how long their life is going to last. You'll hear people talk about things like beating cancer and that sort of language. And there's no doubt, there's a fight involved when it comes to getting healthy and all the rest. But nobody gets well without God, ever. No one has ever beaten anything from that point of view. The Lord made you well if you got well. So we want to imagine we're stronger than we actually are. We're very, very fragile creatures. But on the emotional front, you read what God's people have gone through throughout the ages, Old Testament and New. I think about Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, wrongly accused by Potiphar's wife, and he ends up in prison. I mean, you think about ways that God's people have been mistreated throughout the ages, and yet you see how they shine to the glory of God on the other side of it. In that sense, we're not as fragile as we imagine. With the Lord's help and the Lord's strength, we can overcome a whole bunch of stuff, including grievous mistreatment. So I long to see God's people reflect the kind of strength that is explained by the God whom we serve. And a lot of what's going on in the church today in the name of weakness and hurt and trauma and all the rest, it grieves me because with the Lord's strength, we're stronger than that. We're not that fragile. Again, acknowledging we need the Lord's strength to be strong, but we're not that fragile. So what would I say to a person who came out of a hurtful situation and now they're looking for a new church? One, you need to adjust your expectations. You're going to be hurt in life. And it's going to be not just by God's people, it's going to be by people outside the Lord's church as well. So you need to adjust your expectations. There is no place in this world that is safe. Heaven will be safe, but we're not in safe territory right now. We're in another country on our way to our homeland. We're missionaries. So adjust your expectations. What that means is, what I'm looking for in my next church is the same thing I would be looking for in any church. It's doctrinal faithfulness. Is it faithful to the scriptures? Qualified leaders. Does it have qualified shepherds? Et cetera, et cetera. That's what I'm looking for. Third, even when I'm in a healthy church, I'm going to meet with things that are not pristine. I read Paul's introduction to 1 Corinthians, and I'm amazed by it. You go on and read the rest of that letter, you had people getting drunk at the Lord's table. You had a man living in open immorality with his stepmother, and it wasn't being disciplined in the congregation. You had people who were taking each other to court and suing each other, and Paul's counsel was not to disband. Right? His counsel was, deal with the sin in your midst in a way that honors the Lord. I mean, he's bringing apostolic correction, but he doesn't call for everybody to leave that church. And so, again, we're not as fragile as we imagine. What do we do? We deal with the sin issues. So if you start jumping from church to church every time you get hurt, you start jumping from church to church every time there's some sort of failure that occurs in the life of that church, you're going to be church hopping the rest of your life. So what I want to talk to that person about, if I'm talking to them, what is your view of what it means to be a Christian? What kind of world you're living in? Your view of the church. What is your ecclesiology? What is your view of the Lord's church? Is it a perfect place? A safe place, as it were, where you'll never deal with any kind of controversy? Of course not. a right view of God, a right view of humanity, a right view of what salvation guarantees and doesn't, a right view of our strength in the Lord versus our weakness, a right view of dealing with sin issues. These are the sorts of things someone has to learn when they've been hurt. in the church. So that would be, from your perspective, as a shepherd pastor, and they came and they wanted to consider membership, say, in a church like Founders, and you would give them that sort of instruction. Absolutely. Does the question itself inherently tell you anything about that individual other than the fact that they were hurt before? Yeah, it tells me they need teaching about these things. Again, I would never diminish how they've been treated, it's wrong. When anybody's mistreated, it's wrong. And in 1 Corinthians, Paul is addressing wrongs and calling for things to be made right. So I wouldn't diminish that. I even think though, Josh, that we're living in a time when even wrongs are exaggerated, and our remedy for those wrongs doesn't match Scripture. So how do you remedy wrong in the life of the church? Answer, confession of sin, repentance, forgiveness. We live in a church where there's constant repentance and constant forgiveness, just like your family at home. I remember one time there was a man who decided, in this church, he left the church, decided to take his family on a year-long tour of the country in their RV, and his concern was worldliness in the youth group here. That was the concern. And I believe the man loved the Lord. He was just not thinking rightly. I told him, your children are going to deal with sin when they go home with you. They're not just going to meet with sin issues with other teenagers. They're going to meet with sin issues in your RV. And I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I heard years later that one of his sons had turned out to claim to be an agnostic. So apparently he dealt with sin issues on the year-long journey. I mean, what is our expectation level that we're never gonna sin against someone else? We are never gonna have to ask for forgiveness? And so the whole mantra of late, the last few years, has been justice, justice, justice. Brother, if God dealt with us according to what our sins deserve, we would all be undone. If the Lord should mark iniquities, the Bible says, who can stand? We live in a world, the Christian world, the church world, in which grace is needed not just on the part of other people, and we're extending grace. Grace is needed for us to exist. Other people have to be gracious to us. That's the atmosphere at home and in the life of the Lord's church. acknowledgement of sin, seeking forgiveness, granting forgiveness, moving forward, living with one another, fellow redeemed sinners, not ignoring sin, not excusing sin, dealing with sin, but then in a way that allows us to get to the other side of it and walk together. That's God's plan. Do you think there's anything wrong in asking the question to begin with of church leaderships? If somebody a scenario would be if somebody said, I've been a Christian all these years, but when I was 12, I was abused by so and so. And so I just want to know, what's the protocol here? Not wrong at all. And churches need to have a protocol, and we have one here. And you do your very best. But people need to know that even in churches that do their very best on those issues, you can't guarantee that every member of the church for the rest of time will behave in a way that's right. You just can't guarantee that. Just like sin issues emerged in the New Testament churches and then had to be dealt with, so sin issues will emerge in New Testament churches today and have to be dealt with. We can't promise anyone that this will be a church where we will never have a sexual abuse case or something like that. We can never guarantee that. What we can say is, we will do our very best with the Word of God to address each of those situations if they were to arise, as they arise, in a way that is both in keeping with the law of our land and in keeping with the New Testament instruction we've been given. And as faithful shepherds, that's the best we can promise. Maybe we'll be faithful then. Yeah, maybe we'll be faithful to that end. Thanks again for joining us for this episode of the Straight Truth podcast. Now, Straight Truth is listener-supported, so if you'd like to find out ways how you can help us to continue to produce this podcast, you can go to our website and find out ways to do that, straighttruth.net. At that website, you'll also find links to all of our previous episodes and our social media channels, so be sure to check it out. Straight Truth is a production of Walking in Grace Ministries, the preaching and teaching ministry of Pastor Richard Caldwell. For more information, go to walkingingrace.org.