What happens when your faith collides with practicality? I realized that claiming to be "christian" and living out and believing it whole-heartedly are two completely different animals. We're going through a difficult time in our church right now. And if i can give you some background it might help you grasp the fullness of what's going on. Awhile back we hired our pastor to be our senior interim pastor...(he's been on for about a year now). He's a solid guy, great teacher and mentor. Before he even applied for the position he made it very clear that he was a calvinist in doctrine. So a month ago (maybe more) he started to preach on ephesians line by line. And because people had asked him to become our permanent senior pastor he thought it would be good to teach the doctrines of calvinism to the church at whole. So they had a weekend where they invited a speaker to explain what this was. Unfortunately things went south very fast - people misunderstood what they were teaching and there began a huge ordeal. It got so bad to the point where i was asked not to teach on calvinsim to the youth and to pull all my documents off the youth website regarding these things. Fast-forward 3 weeks and we're at a meeting and 2 very emotional folk said "i don't know why we're talking about calvinism...this is NOT what we believe as a church...we don't need to learn this stuff" So this is kinda the climate of the church right now. You have members in the congregation saying, "this is who we've been for all these years...and we don't need to learn anything new" and the rest of the congregation not really knowing anything about this stuff. Here are my opinions:
1. You must teach the full counsel of scripture. The bible is not there for us to pick and choose what we like and what we don't like. By them telling me not to teach on certain topics or words such as "predestination" and "election" they're cutting a bulk of scripture and saying "it's too controversial to discuss". So you're telling me to teach a watered-down version of what our hope and faith is based on?
2. You have to be willing to learn history. Many of the people really heard the phrase "calvinism" for the first time in their life this past month which tells me several things - one, we're not doing a good job as teachers teaching them about our scriptures and about our history. two, these people are not willing to learn on their own and to grow deep.
3. Primary/Secondary issues: Primary issues are those that you leave a church over - salvation, Jesus, the bible, God, trinity. Secondary are differences - methods. Although calvinism/arminianism are secondary issues for a lot of people i find it hard for to make it so as a pastor of the church. On the congregational level it is ok to disagree over secondary issues. However, on the pastoral level...you MUST be united in doctrine and philosophy of ministry. Why? because you can't have one pastor teaching one thing and his convictions and another teaching their views. The church either splits in doctrine or "maintains" status quo.
*it puts me in a hard position because if the church decides to avoid both sides then i'm limited to what i can/cannot teach...which ultimately i'm not teaching the full counsel of scripture. And in the end God will be the one who holds me accountable...which is far scarier than offending people. This might seem like an over-reaction but i think once you understand these doctrines you'll understand that i see everything through the lenses of scripture...that it affects how i do ministry and teach. And it's not calvinism on one side and arminianism on the other...i'm telling you to take scripture as a whole...examine it and let the text be the text. This is why you have to read your stuff...this is why you have to study.
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