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Guard Your Flock … Even From Other Christians

It may seem ironic, but some of the people from whom you have to most tenaciously guard your church are other believers.

If you don’t, the focus of the ministry is to respond to the special interests of customer Christians. And, that means your ministry (and its boundaries) will be focused on keeping customers happy—and no boundaries will exist.

I wrote about this in another blog post titled “Why I Have No Problem Helping Issue Christians to Move On.” It generated over 100 comments in two days. Some people were retweeting it and praising me for my words, and others were coming just short of calling me the antichrist. (Note: Most pastors were the ones who were supportive of the article as they have dealt with the “issue Christians.” Yet, some people—who thought their issues would not get the attention needed—were upset. Take a look at the comments and you decide.)

The inspiration for the post came from an incident after a service at Grace Church, the church I planted and pastor while continuing to work full-time at LifeWay Research (something, by the way, that I could only do with a lot of boundaries).

I basically encouraged a first-time visitor who was clearly well-versed in Revelation prophecies (and enjoyed sharing his interpretations with everyone he met) to move on from our church and find another that was going to best meet his passions and beliefs.

Now, let me clarify my thinking behind my actions.

If someone in my congregation came up to me after the service saying, “I’ve been doing some reading and I have some questions about prophecy. Could we talk about it?” I would take some time right there for discussion.

But that clearly wasn’t the case.