Starting and leading a local church
By David Cox
Summary: I examine the tendency that I see in some preachers to not apply Scripture, just talk about it, explain it, and leave it at that. An application of Scripture means making it very clear how the scriptural principles involved are applied to the believers’ lives.
By David Cox
2 Corintios 3:1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
Paul founded the church at Corinth. But later on, when he was coming back through that area, we see that the Corinthians had a very distinct concept of their relationship with Paul, and that they were limiting who would speak in their church, and even the Apostle Paul himself needed their permission to speak.
By Pastor David Cox
Summary: Satan’s useful idiots is a blog post on how some Christians are useful to Satan’s purposes, yet they are idiots as far as furthering the kingdom of God.
I have come across the phrase “useful idiots” in my wandering in books and news. As I understand the phrase, it is used of people in an opposing position, yet being the enemy, they mess up things on their own side, and therefore they are useful to “us” even though they would seem to not know what they are doing or how they are harming their side of things.
Getting the right Church Focus. In overview of what a local church does or getting the right church focus, because at times we need to “take a step back,” and look at the bigger picture and keep a focus on that.
I think that every church and every pastor has a lot of problems. I cannot conceive of a church or a pastor that does not deal with problems, and many times serious problems. For example, almost everybody has some kind of budget and finance problems. There is never enough money coming in, and even if that was to happen temporarily, where to spend it would be a problem and accompanying problem.
The point is not that we have problems, but that we have a purpose, and that purpose must be fulfilled. Getting the right church focus is what is important here. The purpose of a local church is to do the work of God, and to do it effectively. This work of God has to be defined NOT as the continued existence of that particular local church, but that of God bringing sinners to salvation, and disciplining them into mature, fruitful Christians who are not entangled in sin, but live in holiness.
So the problem comes in most forcefully when a particular problem becomes “so large” to the pastor or the congregation, that they miss the greater picture (doing God’s work) and micro focus on their particular problem (which has to be done, but not out of context). Here I think that the point of getting the right church focus is that we forget what our particular needs and wants are (as servants should do), and we focus on correctly and efficiently doing God’s work even though we suffer in the process of fulfilling our purpose. For example, the pastor has an illicit affair. Many times the church loves the pastor, and they ask him to stay on (forgiving him). While that is warm and cuddly, it is not doing God’s work. A tainted man of God will not do the work of God correctly. The testimony outwardly and inwardly cannot be maintained if you ignore what he did. We need to forget about the microscopic part of this, a single person and his problem(s), and look at God’s work, and what is best for accomplishing God’s work. Let him go and find another. What will be the impact on the work of God that is done through that particular church? What is right church focus and how are we accomplishing that purpose and focus.
See my tract, CH42 Destitution of a Pastor
