As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than stewardship from God that is from faith. (1 Timothy 1:3-4)
Sometimes pastors must charge people in their churches to stop doing things.
Some pastors are timid about exercising this level of authority. They allow false teaching to creep into their churches because they’re afraid of conflict. Or they let their people become obsessed with nonsense because they don’t feel it’s their place to say anything.
Other pastors are authoritarian. They command their people all the time, about both important and unimportant things.
We want to avoid these extremes. We want to humbly exercise the authority we’ve been given for the good of our people. This means gently, but firmly insisting no one teach false doctrine or promote distracting speculations in our churches.
Is anyone in your church teaching different doctrine than what’s been handed down to us in the bible?
Is anyone devoting themselves to ideas that promote speculation about what we cannot know rather than stewardship of what we know for certain, the gospel?
If so, you must charge them to stop. It is your pastoral duty and God has given you the authority to do it.
One Response
Mt. 18 contains the church disciple passage. Note that the person who does confrontation is the Childlike humble person. If a person cannot confront, it is because the are not humble or childlike.