Avoiding Abuse in the Local Church

This talk was given as a seminar at the Grace Church 20&30s Big Weekend on 3 February 2023.

In the final hours of Jesus’ life on earth, he gave his people many precious promises. He promised that he would go to prepare place for us, that he would send the Spirit to work in us, and he would return to be with us forever. And yet, there is perhaps one promise from that night that we might wish Jesus didn’t make. For in John 16:33, Jesus promised: ‘in this world you will have trouble’. As we follow Jesus in this world, live out the Christian life, Jesus told us that we should expect to get into trouble, meet obstacles, encounter difficulties, face hostility. And that is exactly what we have been thinking about in our seminars so far. How do we deal with trouble at work? Or hostility in our family? And in this last session, we will consider what it means to experience trouble in the church.

As we begin, I think we need to briefly clarify what that looks like. In what ways can churches go bad? Become hostile? Get into trouble? Well, I think you could say they go wrong in one of two ways. They can go bad in what they believe or in how they behave, in their doctrine or in their deeds. And I think all of us can think of examples of these two problems: belief and behaviour.

Take that first one, deviating in doctrine, for an example. I think that is what we see happening right now in the Church of England. The official position of the Anglican Church recently changed to allow for the blessing of same sex marriages. The Church of England now pronounces a blessing on the kind of sexual sin that God has forbidden in his Word. And so has gone wrong in what it believes. And faithful Christians in Anglican churches, who want to stay true to God Word, will be sure to now experience trouble, face hostility. And yet, it is important to realise that doctrinal error is not just an Anglican problem. Baptist churches can go bad as well. For example, if you go back a few centuries in the history of our own church, you will find that around 1800, along with many other Grace Baptist churches, we also fell into doctrinal error. No, it wasn’t over same sex marriage. But rather what is commonly called Hyper-Calvinism. The Bible teaches that God chooses who he will save. And yet, from this we wrongly concluded that we didn’t need to tell people about him. We turned God’s sovereignty into an excuse for not evangelising the lost. That’s one example of how we got into trouble over what we believe. And there are countless other examples in history of churches going bad like that, falling into different doctrinal errors.

However, churches go bad not only in what they believe, but in how they behave. We can fail to love and care for each other as we ought. Again, perhaps you can think of examples of this today. Maybe you have heard about churches where there have been allegations or incidents of different kinds. Whether it is authoritarian leadership, bullying behaviour, abuse of power, sexual misconduct, or some other kind of immoral behaviour. Indeed, I know that some of you have been in churches that have experienced these things, or you have close friends who have been in churches, where such things have happened. Again, if you look throughout church history, it is the sad and heart-breaking reality, that the bride of Christ does not always behave like Christ. That churches can go wrong both in what they believe and in how they behave.

So, what should we do when a church goes wrong? Well, that is a great question to ask. But it is not the question I want to answer in our seminar this afternoon. How to respond in different difficult situations requires a level of pastoral nuance and application that e couldn’t cover in a short summary seminar like this. However, if you do have questions about a particular situation you or someone else has experienced, then I would encourage you to talk to a mature Christian friend here about it, or speak to one of our elders at Grace Church for wise counsel.

However, in this seminar, I want to deal with a different question. Not, how do we respond to church problems? But, how can we avoid church problems? Are there steps we can take? Safeguards churches can put in place to help to avoid such situations arising, reduce the risk of the church going bad in what it believes or how it behaves?

And I want to deal with that question, because I am conscious that you may not be with us here at Grace Church forever [...]. If we are realistic, we recognise that many, if not most of you in this room will move away to another church at some point in the future. You might have to move away from us due to work, or a relationship, or because house prices around Guildford are so unbelievably expensive. And when you do move away, I want you to bear in mind some of the things that you should be looking for in another church, that will help to protect that church, prevent that church, from going bad in what it believes or how it behaves.

Perhaps an illustration would be useful. I know some of you got a lift here this weekend. And so, I want you to imagine that whoever gave you a lift, pulled up at your house on Friday night in their car. And the first thing you notice about the car is that one of the wheels is missing. The car you are going to be given a lift in, only has three wheels. And what’s more, when you open the door and go to get into the backseat, you realise that there are no seatbelts. Now I reckon that all of us at that point, wouldn’t get in the car. We all realise that it just isn’t worth the risk. Now yes, it is possible that you could arrive safely on 3 wheels with no seat belts. But you would hardly be surprised if you ended up in accident. Because those things are there to help reduce that risk, keep you safe.

And I think it is the same in the local church. There are certain safeguards, seatbelts as it were, that help churches stay out of trouble. Avoid accidents. And these are the kinds of things that you should look for when picking a church . Just as you check that a car has wheels and seatbelt before you get in it, you want to check that a church has certain things before you join it.

Now just to be clear, there are some other questions you will want to ask that are even more important than the questions that we will speak about this afternoon. You need to ask: Do they believe the gospel? Teach the Bible? Take prayer seriously? Do the leaders and church members look like, live like, Christ? Are they going to try and baptise my baby when I’m not looking? […] However, if you are thinking about what you need to look for that can help to avoid church problems, then I think these three questions we are going to look at are what you need to as: (1) Is the church independent? (2) Is the congregation in charge? and (3) Are there multiple leaders? Now I think all three of these questions point you to truths that are found in the Bible, things that are commanded and modelled to us in the New Testament, and we will touch on that a little bit as we go through them. However, what we are mainly going to focus on, what I really want you to see, is not simply that these things are biblical, but that they are also good and wise. That they are safeguards that Jesus Christ has given to his church, structures that act as seat belts, to help keep us safe, and stop congregations falling into erroneous beliefs or immoral behaviour.

1.     Is the church independent?

You want to make sure that the church you are joining is not controlled by or under the authority of another group or organisation outside that individual local church. But it is independent, is able to stand by itself, is autonomous and free. Now, when we say that local churches should be independent, we don’t mean they should be isolated or remote. When you read through the New Testament, you see that the local churches planted by Paul and the other apostles all related to each other, had relationships with one other. For example, we see individuals and letters constantly travelling between different churches (Acts 11:19-30; Rom 16:1-2; Col 4:6), as they helped each other in ministry and missions. We also see they provided financially for poor churches who were in need (1 Cor 16:1-4; Gal 2:10). And they even asked each other doctrinal questions and discussed difficult issues at times (Acts 15). The New Testament paints the picture of a large network of local churches working alongside and supporting each other. Which is what we try to replicate at Grace Church in our involvement in different partnerships and associations.

However, what you never see in Scripture, is one church dictating to or determining the actions of another church. Nowhere in Scripture do you get the idea that one church is in charge of another church, or that the leaders of one church also lead lots of other churches. Which is what you see in Anglican, Presbyterian and many other denominations and church groupings today. Instead, in the New Testament, cooperation between churches is always voluntary, and it never involves a church giving up control or handing over authority to a group or body outside that individual church. Someone outside a church can’t decide or determine what people believe or how they behave inside that church. In this way churches are independent, they are not controlled by those outside that particular church, who are too remote for there to be proper accountability, too far removed to be challenged or changed when they go astray.

Why is this so important? Well, apply it to what is happening today in the Church of England. Do you see how independence would help to protect our faithful brothers and sisters in Anglican churches. Take the situation an evangelical Anglican congregation now finds itself in. The people who attend the service, and leaders who care for them, don’t think same-sex marriage is permissible or that it should be blessed. And yet their church belongs to a larger structure that has now decided the opposite. They don’t personally believe it as an individual church, but they can’t really do anything about it. Because within Anglicanism, an individual church doesn’t have the ability to challenge or change the overall position of the wider church. They are stuck officially believing what they are told to believe. And to the extent they want to publicly believe something else, they have to all leave their church, which also means leaving their buildings and bank accounts behind, to go start a new church, where they can obey God in the way that he asks them to! However, if their church was independent, they wouldn’t find themselves in such a situation. That’s why Grace Church, and other Baptist and free churches, haven’t been directly affected by these changes in the Church of England. Because we are independent, the fact that a group of bishops somewhere has decided to no longer believe what the Bible teaches makes no difference to us. We are independent from any decisions they make. We aren’t controlled by any group outside our own local church. And that’s the first safeguard, seatbelt, you should look for. Ask yourself is this church independent? Or is it under the control of some other body, whether bishops or a denomination.

2.     Is the congregation in charge?

This follows on from the first point. After all, somebody has to make decisions on what a church believes and how it should behave. We have seen that it shouldn’t be anyone outside the church. However, who exactly inside the church should be in charge of these decisions? Who is it that has been given the job, handed the authority, to decide what our doctrine should be and how we should live together? Perhaps your first thought is that it should be the leaders, the elders or pastors of the church. They are often among the godliest and wisest members of the church, surely they should have the job of deciding what to believe and how to behave. And yet, when we look through the New Testament, what we find is that this is actually the job of the congregation as a whole. It is the congregation who are in charge of the church. It is the membership, not the leadership, that decides what we believe and how we should behave.

For example, we see it is the congregation as a whole who are to decide cases of church discipline (Matt 18; 1 Cor 5). Similarly a few weeks ago in Acts 6, Jamie reminded us that it was the church as a whole who came together in a members meeting to select deacons. In the same way, in Galatians 1, Paul tells the whole of the Galatian church, that they are to be on the look out for false teaching, be ready to correct it if they hear it. That isn’t the job of leaders, it is the job of members. Students, that is why we have spent the last two Wednesday evenings working through our statement of faith, so you are familiar with it and can protect and promote it. Because in the Bible, we see that it is the congregation that is in charge of the church, that it is the membership who decides what we believe and how we should behave.

Again, I hope you see how this acts as a safeguard against the church going wrong. If you want to draw Grace Church into doctrinal error, into believing that Jesus is not the Son of God for example, you don’t simply have to convince Jamie and 2 or 3 elders. No, you would need to literally convince hundreds of members. Because it is the whole membership, not just a small leadership, that is in charge of what the church believes. Now of course, it is possible that could still happen. Indeed, that is exactly what happened 200 years ago when our church embraced Hyper-Calvinism. Just because a church is independent and congregational, doesn’t mean that it won’t fall into error. However, it does mean that it is much harder for it to fall into error. And to the extent that it does, the congregation is always able to undo the mistake, to change what it previously believed. As our church eventually did, by rejecting the false teaching of Hyper-Calvinism and once again affirming the importance and necessity of evangelism.

It is important to see how the congregation being in charge is also a safeguard against abuse, bullying, or sexual misconduct among the leaders of the church. Because the leaders aren’t just accountable to each other, but to the whole congregation. And so, if something goes wrong in the life of a leader, it is much harder for it to be hushed up, covered over, dealt with secretly behind closed doors. Instead, it usually has to be brought out into the open and dealt with in a way that is accountable to the whole congregation. Because the leadership doesn’t have the authority to exercise church discipline. Only the congregation do. And leaders don’t have the power to hire or fire people, only the congregations do. Indeed, if the leadership want to make significant changes, or investigate a certain problem in the life of the church, the congregation have to be involved. Just as we saw in Acts 6 with the widows being overlooked. And that is a safeguard against abusive or immoral behaviour. It provides a layer of accountability. That’s why the second question you should ask when considering a church, is who is in charge of this church? Is it the congregation?

3.     Are there multiple leaders?

Thirdly, and finally, you should ask, are there multiple leaders in this church? Is this church being led by one pastor by himself, with little accountability or support around him? Or is there a body of faithful brothers, a plurality of elders, who all lead the church together, overseeing and holding each other to account while they do so?

Now we have heard that leaders aren’t in charge, but rather it is the congregation that decides what the church believes and how it should behave. And yet, leaders still lead the church in making those decisions, guide the church through the issues and teach them from the Bible. Godly elders lead a congregation in the same way that a godly husband lead his wife. Not forcefully or flippantly, but lovingly, gently, talking about and walking through the decisions together, rather than making the decisions by themselves and expecting their church to simply fall into line.

And the more elders there are, the better this leadership is likely to be. There will be more wisdom to draw on in deciding how to lead the church through a particular decision, and there will be more shepherds to go around to care for and chat to individual sheep. There will also be more brothers who are able to easily correct and challenge one another. When you have a single elder or single pastor in a church, there is a real danger that there will be nobody who can balance out their mistakes in leadership, or provide a different theological perspective or point of view.

As it is says in Proverbs 11:14, ‘Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counsellors there is safety.’ Or in Ecclesiastes 4:9, ‘ Two are better than one… For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.’ That’s why we shouldn’t be surprised that throughout the New Testament, whenever we are told about the leaders of individual churches, they are always described in the plural. It always speaks of ‘elders’, not simply a single elder, because where possible, it is always better for a church to be led by multiple leaders. It is wise to have a plurality of elders, because it provides a safeguard against things going wrong, the church being led to believe the wrong thing or behave in the wrong way.

Conclusion

How can we try to avoid church problems? What safeguards should you look for in a church that might help to prevent hostile and trouble in the future? Well, we’ve heard that you should ask yourself three questions: (1) Is the church independent? (2) Is the congregation in charge? and (3) Are there multiple leaders? Those are three questions that you should ask when you are thinking about joining a church. […]

For their provide safe guards, seatbelts, that reduce the risk of something going wrong. Now of course, something may still go wrong. Even if a car has four wheels and seatbelts, it can still get caught up in an accident. But it is less likely to do so. And the same is true for these these things. They may not be sureguards, but they are safeguards against the different problems and difficulties that can arise in the life of the church.