How would you handle......

What would you do if you had a "troublemaker" in your church?

At my old church we had a member that was disruptive during sermons, and bible study. He made outrageous points. He would talk over the pastor.

He was also very dedicated to the church. He never missed a service. He was always the first to arrive and the last to leave.

Several times the pastor and the senior member of the church sat down with him and explained they appreciated his commitment and his enthusiasm, but he was being really disruptive. These talks never seem to accomplish anything.

We were a small church and had very few members and were constantly trying to get new members. We had several visit but never joined and part of the reason they decided not to join was because of this one member.

After lots of prayer and heartache the pastor and the senior member asked this person to leave the church. This really hurt the pastor, but everyone agreed it was for the good of the church.

Do you think these actions are correct? How would you handle the situation?

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Stogus Maximus †

>>Several times the pastor and the senior member of the church sat down with him and explained

Several times is not enough, some people like me are slow learners. I remember once a boss was trying to explain to me how to fill out an invoice. He said this is the fifth time I have showed you and I will continue to show you tell you get it. He never had to show me again after that. But I know there are people who learn in one, two or three repeats, but for me, it can take as many as 5 or 7 times before I get it.

There are things the pastor in our church will repeat 100, 200 times. There are things in the Bible that are repeated 2 or 3,000 times & I still had people who will try to tell me it's not in the Bible at all. We are just slow of learning. Thank God He is patient with me. I would have given up on me a long time ago. I just do not have the patience God has, but I am getting there, line upon line, precept upon precept. A little bit here and a little bit there. Thanks, JohnR7

By several times I was refering to 7 or 10 times.

These "sit downs" with this person were not to get him to understand a topic or a procedure, they were to get him to behave.

Should he have been given 300 times to learn to behave?

Would it have been the right thing to do by keeping this member in the church and lose all the other members?

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Stogus Maximus †

Hey John,

Is that your boy, or do you just look really young for your age?

That is quite a smile ...

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Stogus Maximus †

Running a member off is never fun and I personally do not think that this situation was handled correctly. A man like that is waiting to be humbled by
God and when he is he can be a great asset to a congregation, but we musn't put time limits on God. In my opinion a continual prayer would have been affective here, and continual meaning until he changed.
A similar situation happened to my dad, only he wasn't disruptive. My dad was a loyal member of a church down the road form our house. He decied to join the NAVY during times of the Vietnam Conflict, and the church turned their back on him. They told him he was no longer welcome at church. This scarred my dad horribly, and he didn't understand how a gorup that supposedly loved him dearly could stop due to service to our country. Well now my dad is still faithful to God, but is out of fellowship with the church. He strongly dislikes attending church becasue all he can see are images of those that stabbed him in the back before. Though he knows he is not perfect he dislikes the politics of the church.

Your church may have scarred this man much the same way my dad has been scarred. My advice for your church is to plead with the man to come back and express your apologies to him. No one should be turned away from a church, but instead possibly counciled by the elders or deacons of the church body. This is only my opinion!

FOMWatts<><

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I was not an active participant in this process, so I do not have all the details of the situation. I am posting what I know.

This man was counciled by the elders and the pastor of the church. He was not asked to do anything that was beyond his power. He was not asked to do anything that was against his nature, he was simply asked to keep quite during the service, and then he could discuss whatever he wanted after the service.

He refused to do so and was asked to leave. This was not a light, simple decision by anybody. The pastor is probably the kindest most holy human I have ever met. I was a witness to the toll this decision took on him.

Another question.

The total membership of this chuch was 12 people including the pastor. If keeping a troublemaker in your church meant that the other members would leave, what would you do? If even a few of the members left, the church would disolve. What is the right thing to do?

Is it more important to keep the church alive and growing, or to have the church destroied by one person?

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Stogus Maximus †

There must be order in the church. If this individual was a destraction and was keeping the church from growing, then he should have been shown the door.

It is one thing to be disruptive in a bible study but when it keeps people away,

"Out the door or through the window"

Z

Tough call...but I agree with FOMWatts. If Jesus has called us to forgive others infinitely and to love others unconditionally, and you feel strongly that your church was dedicated to God's will, then nothing was gained, only lost, by dismissing this guy.

God will bless any committment to His love beyond our imagination - perhaps, when the church dwindled down to three members, some serious change might have been brought about within the man...and THEN it might have grown by leaps and bounds And maybe not...but the point is that the church would have acted in love, in accordance with God's unconditional, unending love and understanding. Not something to be taken lightly

Of course, the church isn't responsible for the man's reluctance to become involved in any other church from here on out...but considering the preciousness of every soul to Jesus, I think the decision could've been made in a different direction.

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"So take a new grip with your tired hands and stand firm on your shaky legs. Mark out a straight path with your feet. Then those that follow, though they are weak and lame, will not stumble and fall, but will BECOME STRONG!!" -Hebrews 12:12-13

What would have been the more appropriate solutions?

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Stogus Maximus †

Hey, doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible that we are to go after the one lost sheep. My dad is a youth pastor and I know what it means to have disruptive people in youth. We have a small youth group that can run anywhere from 20-40 students, and we meet in a small chior room. Disrupptions occur all of the time, and even when the youth go in the sanctuary they are still loud and rude. What we do in youth is have one of the youth sponsors watch for disrupptions and if anyone acts up they are taken outside. They get three chances and after the third cahnce their parents are called, and if nothing else will help they will be taken into talk to pastor. My question is, how old is this man, and does he have any learning disabilities, or is he just rude, that can have a lot to do with it to... The best thing to do is pray and counseling is another thing, the only way I would think would be a reason to ask someone to leave the church is if they were teaching false doctrines or were a danger to the other members of the congregation.
RayNay

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