April 09, 2008
Uninvited
In the church it’s easy to exclude someone from serving or keep them uninvolved in ministry by simply not asking them to participate. Once, when our regular Sunday school teacher and his substitute were both ill, there was a search high and low for a warm body to fill in and teach the lesson. Only a couple hours before the class started and no one willing to take it on short notice, someone called Bill and asked him to teach. The class went well, but sitting in the back of the room a member of the staff kept watch. If he was hoping to detect some political fodder, innuendo or subversion, he must have been terribly disappointed. It should come as no surprise that Bill hasn’t been asked to fill in during any more ‘emergencies’. Uninvited, indeed.
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----I am heartbroken for those from whose care your church was stolen. I am sad for those who have come to your church since, looking for spiritual direction, but finding spiritual subterfuge. I am entertained by the minions of your ministers whose capitulation to plans of partisanship enable the destruction of what was once a loving church. Now I hear the past elder of stratospheric arrogance is being teamed with the past elder of pinhole, “missions only” vision to fill the vacant stewardship committee. As I see the same plate of partisan vomit pass from one table to the next, I am amazed at how often it can be served in all its variant forms without drawing suspicion from those coming for spiritual nutrition.
-----I know many of you feel my language is now over the top (and has been.) Remember, of this partisanship that has destroyed your church, “But if you show partiality, you commit sin, and you are convicted by the law as transgressors.” (James 2:9). “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without favor, doing nothing from partiality.” (I Tim. 5:21.) Yet, after delivering a wonderful sermon on the necessity of compromise, your little minister refused to compromise with those “grumbling in the dark corners” of your church about the partisanship being served. Too proud of their own efforts to serve the Lord, your ministers and their minion elders either do not know the Word, or do not care about it, because their partisanship has increased, not decreased. Little would they dare increase their partisanship if they understood, “Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them, ‘Behold, I Myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad. I will save my flock, they shall no longer be a prey; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.’” (Eze 34:20-22.) And “’But you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi,’ says the Lord of Hosts, ‘and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, in as much as you have not kept my ways, but have shown partiality in your instruction.’” (Mal 2:8-9.)
-----The Lord God is seriously against partiality, because He is serious about love. It was for love that Jesus Christ died, it will be against the selfishness of partiality that He will soon judge. It is of no doing of mine that your little ministers and their minion elders have chosen a path of partiality for your church, but it is in my doing to speak truthfully about it. And shame upon me if I try to sugar sprinkle the vomit plates. So I will reference them with fitting terms.
We can reason together with the Lord,
Steve Corey
Man Steve, how’d you come across that verse in Ezekiel! Those pages in my Bible are so unused they’re still stuck together as though they were new. Great verse by the way. I can see I need to pull myself away from the New Testament a little more often.
Gail
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