Church Work’s Governing Principles

Church Work's Governing Principles

Church Work’s Governing Principles is a review of my concept of my philosophy of the ministry reviewing how to attack a good philosophy of ministry. When I was working on my masters in educational administration, I had to take a class called “Philosophy of Education”. Essentially it was a complete “philosophy” of how to educate, and the purposes behind this philosophy. Over the years of ministry (30 some to date) I have many times “figured out how and why” to do something in church, and I have made kind of informal rules.




Governing Principles in Church Work

By Pastor-Missionary David Cox

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Reasons for Church Decline

Reasons for Church Decline is about churches are in decline across America and the world. The big question is why, and the even bigger question is how do we fix what is causing this? I am reacting to a post I read on the Internet. I didn’t bookmark it, sorry.

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Marks of a Real Man of God

Marks of a Real Man of God. What are the marks or appearance of a real man of God? We need to begin this study by throwing away and cleaning out thinking of what the world and religious hypocrites say he is. We go to the Bible, and look at what the Word says.

1Tim 6:11 But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. 12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. 

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Abusive Churches

Abusive Churches
By David Cox

Perhaps I should comment on the idea of an “abusive church”. An abusive church is a church that perhaps has orthodox doctrine but has practices and conduct that is not biblical, un-Christlike. Most commonly abusive churches are seen by their refusal to believe in and practice Christian liberty. In order for these people to control the brethren in a way that is advantageous for them, they also use unscriptural church discipline. By this I mean that they use tactics like public shame over issues that they do not have strong scriptural basis for, and they do it in an unscriptural way.




Let me digress with an example. For example, a pastor says that his members have to attend ALL church functions, and can only miss if they ask their pastor for permission first, and he grants it. A valid reason is that you are sick and dying in a hospital. Family reunions out of town, visiting another church, etc. are all invalid. The person ignores this imposed asking-permission structure, so the pastor now publicly says embarrassing things about the family, revealing private matters or joking in such a way as to cause the family shame, embarrassment, or discomfort on some level. Perhaps he removes the man from the deacon board suddenly, or removes either husband or wife from responsibilities or service in the church, because the pastor “has doubts”. The point is to use press to cause wayward members to tow the line. This psychological pressure is what makes them abusive. (Here I would exclude members who are serving, but the pastor or leadership removes them because of serious problems, such as marital separation, infidelity, or drinking/drug/sex problems. Also doctrinal heresy that comes to light would be a legitimate reason for removal.)

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