Jude24
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2023
- Messages
- 12
- Reaction score
- 28
- Points
- 13
- Faith
- PCA (Currently attending SBC)
- Marital status
- Married
Hello, all. I am humbly asking your advice for how to deal with a current issue at my church of membership. I will be intentionally vague to not reveal the identity of who I am speaking, and I have also removed my location from my bio. I am not coming into here to complain or slander, I would just like to see these issues fixed as I have very deep concerns for the state of the church. I am at the point where I have began praying for guidance if I should leave this church or not. You can skip down to main issue if you would not like to read the lengthy post.
If you have read my intro post on this board, you know that I came from a legalist, IFB background that by the grace of God I escaped from. I am currently reformed Presbyterian but attend a reformed Baptist church. When I first started attending the reformed Baptist church, it seemed to be very doctrinally strong with a few minor errors. The main error of relevance here is the practice of seeming to only have one lead pastor in charge of the church. Although there is another person that is an elder in name, this individual seems to actually hold no authority and only plays a very small role. I know this might not seem like an issue to many of you, but the reformed faith holds strongly to the importance of the plurality of elders to avoid authoritarianism on the part of one person.
BACKGROUND: When I began attending, the church held corporate prayer meetings every other Sunday evening. Basically, about an hour where topics to pray for were written on a board and individual members would voluntarily take turns praying through each topic. Although these meetings were encouraged, they were not taught as absolutely necessary for the Christian life/church membership, and was looked at as an encouraging/mostly optional time of church fellowship to gather and pray together. After a few months of this, the pastor decided that we would move this prayer meeting to the Sunday morning service and push the service time to start earlier, as well as make it weekly (no big deal to me, but I could see how this made it more difficult for those with children or trouble getting to church). This was stressed that it would only be temporary during the Summer to see how we felt about it and we could go back to how we usually did it. Throughout this time, no scriptural reason could be given for why we were doing this, but it was insisted that the Bible demanded corporate prayer in this way and that we must be a people of prayer. At this point, the talk of the change being temporary seems to have completely disappeared as if that was never said, and it is now a permanent practice. The church was never evaluated on how we felt about this.
MAIN ISSUE: My pastor seems to have fallen into an un-biblical, legalistic obsession with corporate prayer meetings. Although I will not at all deny the importance and necessity of praying together as a church, the Bible does not command that we do it in the form of early morning, weekly special times of prayer. Every week the sermon has now turned to the application of not regarding God correctly in our lives because many members no longer attend these meetings (it is emphatically stated that the way to please God is to attend these meetings). The pastor has made comments about how the utmost priority in our Christian lives should be attending these times of corporate prayer, and the statement has even been made that we should just close the church if these are not regularly attended. Now, membership vows have even been brought up, and he is suggesting that we are breaking our vows by not attending. It has even gone so far that the pastor appears to only interact with those who regularly attend. In my view, corporate prayer is performed every time there is prayer together during worship (before, during, and after the Sunday worship services). Special prayer meetings are encouraging (even necessary during times of great need), but it is not a matter of Biblical command as it is being treated. I confess that I have not been attending prayer meetings because I despise the piousness and legalism surrounding it. When I do go, I feel as if it is only to please my pastor.
How should I address this? I know I should approach my pastor about my concerns, but it is hard when he is the only person of authority in the church. It is also difficult to speak about this with him as this is genuinely the only thing being taught and pushed in the church anymore. How do I state that the only instruction he seems to be pushing for is based on un-Biblical, personal/legalistic views?
If you have read my intro post on this board, you know that I came from a legalist, IFB background that by the grace of God I escaped from. I am currently reformed Presbyterian but attend a reformed Baptist church. When I first started attending the reformed Baptist church, it seemed to be very doctrinally strong with a few minor errors. The main error of relevance here is the practice of seeming to only have one lead pastor in charge of the church. Although there is another person that is an elder in name, this individual seems to actually hold no authority and only plays a very small role. I know this might not seem like an issue to many of you, but the reformed faith holds strongly to the importance of the plurality of elders to avoid authoritarianism on the part of one person.
BACKGROUND: When I began attending, the church held corporate prayer meetings every other Sunday evening. Basically, about an hour where topics to pray for were written on a board and individual members would voluntarily take turns praying through each topic. Although these meetings were encouraged, they were not taught as absolutely necessary for the Christian life/church membership, and was looked at as an encouraging/mostly optional time of church fellowship to gather and pray together. After a few months of this, the pastor decided that we would move this prayer meeting to the Sunday morning service and push the service time to start earlier, as well as make it weekly (no big deal to me, but I could see how this made it more difficult for those with children or trouble getting to church). This was stressed that it would only be temporary during the Summer to see how we felt about it and we could go back to how we usually did it. Throughout this time, no scriptural reason could be given for why we were doing this, but it was insisted that the Bible demanded corporate prayer in this way and that we must be a people of prayer. At this point, the talk of the change being temporary seems to have completely disappeared as if that was never said, and it is now a permanent practice. The church was never evaluated on how we felt about this.
MAIN ISSUE: My pastor seems to have fallen into an un-biblical, legalistic obsession with corporate prayer meetings. Although I will not at all deny the importance and necessity of praying together as a church, the Bible does not command that we do it in the form of early morning, weekly special times of prayer. Every week the sermon has now turned to the application of not regarding God correctly in our lives because many members no longer attend these meetings (it is emphatically stated that the way to please God is to attend these meetings). The pastor has made comments about how the utmost priority in our Christian lives should be attending these times of corporate prayer, and the statement has even been made that we should just close the church if these are not regularly attended. Now, membership vows have even been brought up, and he is suggesting that we are breaking our vows by not attending. It has even gone so far that the pastor appears to only interact with those who regularly attend. In my view, corporate prayer is performed every time there is prayer together during worship (before, during, and after the Sunday worship services). Special prayer meetings are encouraging (even necessary during times of great need), but it is not a matter of Biblical command as it is being treated. I confess that I have not been attending prayer meetings because I despise the piousness and legalism surrounding it. When I do go, I feel as if it is only to please my pastor.
How should I address this? I know I should approach my pastor about my concerns, but it is hard when he is the only person of authority in the church. It is also difficult to speak about this with him as this is genuinely the only thing being taught and pushed in the church anymore. How do I state that the only instruction he seems to be pushing for is based on un-Biblical, personal/legalistic views?
