In a previous post (Church Work’s Governing Principles), I explained how church work or the ministry should be governed by some “working principles”. These principles are rules, internal yes, personal definitely, but none-the-less established procedures for doing what you do in the ministry. These rules should be based on biblical principles explicitly understood and stated by the pastor as the how and why we do what we do.
I want to expand on this concept and apply it to various areas of the ministry, not-the-least being ministry ethics. But I will wait until a later post to develop ministry ethics.
This commentary explores the development of your own personal philosophy of the ministry. How you do it, why you do it, what it is that you do.
Whereas a good church is a pretty focused thing, a bad or unbiblical church can take many different forms. Because of this we need to divide our study into areas. First of all, we need to separate what would be a “church” from a sects, cult, or false religion. Although really there is not much difference between them, I would consider a “church” that would identify itself with solid biblical doctrine something different from a cult. Some “Fundamental” or “Baptist” churches would officially hold to correct or biblical doctrine, but actually practice or secretly believe in unbiblical things. There may also be some groups that would do things as a biblical church would do them, but they hold tightly to some doctrine that is not biblical. Usually these groups always have some defective concept concerning salvation. So these characteristics are a composite of a whole bunch of bad and erroneous churches, sects, abusive churches, groups, etc.
The list of marks of a bad church (Marks of an Unbiblical Church) on this page therefore should be understand as a bad church can have this or that characteristic or mark, but it is defined as bad by any one, and not necessarily by all. Also let me add that some good churches are good on most things, and they may fall into one or more of these marks of a bad church. I do not pretend to know all churches, all situations, and how a person should act or the decision a person should take in such cases. I think soul searching your own heart in order to find what God wants you to do is most important in any situation, and it is essential in these cases. See my thoughts on Getting out of a Bad Church.
What to do after you make contact with a candidate
The best way to deal with a pastoral candidate is with being direct and having an abundance of information both from him, and given back to him. That means you need to supply the candidate with a lot of information about your church. Here a church history, recent events, and lots of photos help the pastor to know who you are. If you feel you do not want to “print up” so much information, open a page on some website with photos like flicker (free), and upload church photos of the people, the buildings, outings, etc.
Things that ruin a Church: Dominating, Controlling, Manipulating Dictator-Pastor is a study on the destructive types of leadership styles that are spiritually counter productive to a nurturing spiritual environment that one needs in order to grow spiritually.
