Church~where are you?

[ChristnMe]

The challenge with most churches is that they look for ways to keep and increase their numbers. Yet many pastors do not go into the fields for a harvest but rather promote or worst guilt trip their congregants into bringing new people into the church.

Hence, several programs within churches to satisfy the needs of people, with social programs, making them more secular in nature with a churchly coating of spiritualism.

There is no indication from the early churches that we are to do these things, but it is not reasonable that at some level they should be provided as indicated in the bible to "remember and take care of the orphans and widows". Whether this is a hall mark of churches is debatable but if anything should be a ministry outside and towards those, not needing to be involved or signed up for such programs.

The flip to this is that the congregants have made themselves depended on the church and even the pastors, ordering their lives based on these authorities. Yet, Jesus never ordained that He be the one to listen to but pointed constantly to God. Paul, may have started churches but also indicated we are to look to God and not man much less churches. Churches are essential organizations for the spread of the Word and not the Word to spread the churches. This is why theologies and doctrine is a dangerous road.

When we appear before God, He won't be asking about the church we attended or the doctrine we followed. He will be asking did we heed His Son and were we obedient to His Word.

We are responsible as individuals for our walk (both physical and spiritual) in Christ.

 

[mkgal1]

You have never been on the inside of one of those groups. Even if people are literally dying, it is their fault for not having enough faith. And if someone does go outside for help, they are shunned by the leaders and often much of the congregation as well.

I'm confused by what you're posting.

I have been "on the inside" of 'one of those groups'---that's why I began this thread.

What you first posted was this:

I do not think those with a doctrinal avoidance of counseling arts are necessarily lazy. Just deceived.

...and that was my response (that I would think if they were "just deceived" ---they'd eventually begin to look more closely at what kept on being repeated). If they aren't looking more closely, one can only conclude that they don't desire a change. They are content with the status quo (and I see that as beyond "just deceived"). They have now moved into the "accomplice" category.

 

[mkgal1]

The challenge with most churches is that they look for ways to keep and increase their numbers. Yet many pastors do not go into the fields for a harvest but rather promote or worst guilt trip their congregants into bringing new people into the church.

I think you're, unfortunately, correct (as far as a LOT of institutional churches go).

 

[johndoo]

I suspect that my mother confided in people before she separated.
While they were separated, the pastor had conference calls ( as she was out of state) to work through some issues.
They welcomed her back when she returned.

 

[Dave-W]

...and that was my response (that I would think if they were "just deceived" ---they'd eventually begin to look more closely at what kept on being repeated). If they aren't looking more closely, one can only conclude that they don't desire a change. They are content with the status quo (and I see that as beyond "just deceived"). They have now moved into the "accomplice" category.

My experience was that they took "defeats" very hard. They dug deeper into scripture to find out where they had lacked faith or made a bad confession or whatever. They were so convinced their approach was correct that they found abandoning it unfathomable. They just needed to "get it right" and strove night and day to do that.

It ended up in one sister congregation in Hong Kong that the pastor finally concluded that the approach was wrong so he committed ritual suicide for teaching lies. (mid 1990s) A member of our congregation was there at the time working as a bible runner into mainland China.

 

[WolfGate]

DaveW and mkgal - I have run across some of those. Our church has a counseling center. Some of the center's leaders were approached by, and flirted with for a while, a nouthetic counseling organization. A definition from one such group is below. You can pretty quickly tell that they reject any training other than their own - and that they tend to go directly to the situation you two have been discussing. In practice we noticed pretty quickly that in practice the group wanted counselors that had no other training in counseling, psychology or social work. They viewed that as bad yeast in that would taint their system. Pretty scary when looked at more closely. The advocates I talked to had exactly the viewpoint you have referenced.

What Is Nouthetic Counseling?

In introducing the subject, I have indicated that it is biblical counseling. That is the fact that I wish to affirm as stoutly as possible. Many people claim to do biblical counseling, but the claim must always be examined closely to see if it stands up under scrutiny. In most instances, it does not. The use of the Bible does not, in itself, validate the claim. How the Bible is used is of critical importance. If it is used merely to back or illustrate the principles and practices of a counseling system that has been borrowed from some non-Christian source or sources, then it certainly has no right to claim either the description Biblical or Christian. Just because a Christian does counseling, that does not mean that the counseling he does is Christian.

Christian (or biblical) counseling must be biblical throughout. That is to say, it must not merely use the Bible, it must be based upon and grow out of biblical teaching at every point. It must be a biblically-derived system. In other words, truly biblical counseling must be exegetically-founded. Its principles and practices must be mined from the Bible and be systematically self-consistent with it in every respect.

"But what of Nouthetic counseling?" you ask. All that I have just said is what Nouthetic counseling stands for. Doubtless, you would want that further explained. For instance, you might wonder why we don't simply call our counseling Biblical or Christian. Either name certainly is a viable option. But the problem is that because of all of the conflicting and confusing nomenclature abroad in the Christian church, it would identify virtually nothing. A name ought to help the one who reads it to distinguish it from others that might seem to be similar. Because there are so many who use the names Christian or Biblical, those names no longer distinguish any system from any other. The word Nouthetic, on the other hand, stands out from the pack. Because only those who want to be known as such will use the name, it separates the system from others and eliminates much confusion.

But you will want to know precisely what the word Nouthetic means and how it is I choose that name to describe the biblical system of counseling I espouse. The word comes from the Greek New Testament. It has, within it, three elements-concern, confrontation, and change. Nouthetic counseling is counseling that involves face to face confrontation by one person to another, out of loving concern for him, in order to bring about the changes God desires in his life. That in a nutshell, is what Nouthetic counseling is all about.

 

[Dave-W]

Nouthetic is ok - it is good bible study and all. But IMO to REALLY get to the root of things you need certain charismatic gifts being in operation by the counselor, including word of knowledge and word of wisdom. Perhaps even discerning of spirits. Nouthetic rejects those.

 

[WolfGate]

Nouthetic is ok - it is good bible study and all. But IMO to REALLY get to the root of things you need certain charismatic gifts being in operation by the counselor, including word of knowledge and word of wisdom. Perhaps even discerning of spirits. Nouthetic rejects those.

I have no problem with bible studies. My problem with the nouthetic counseling groups is they create a silo that they believe contains the only way to do counseling which denies that any other experience, training or gifts has any value whatsoever.

 

[mkgal1]

I have no problem with bible studies. My problem with the nouthetic counseling groups is they create a silo that they believe contains the only way to do counseling which denies that any other experience, training or gifts has any value whatsoever.

I agree with that being a problem. It keeps things to one limited perspective. With such a tunnel-vision way of looking at things....I think that's how false teaching continues unchecked (there's nothing else being held up against it).

 

[mkgal1]

I just came across this open letter to pastors. It'd be great if ALL pastors took the time to read this:



Dear Pastor: The evil of domestic and sexual abuse is in our midst. By “our,” I mean our conservative, Bible-believing churches. Churches just like the one I have pastored for nearly 20 years now. We are not doing well in confronting the perpetrators nor in effecting justice and kindness for their victims. None of us learned about this evil in seminary. As a result, we are largely blind to it. Lest you think that you surely would see it if it were in your church, and that for the most part your church is free of it, let me assure you that those very thoughts reveal our blindness. The evil of domestic and sexual abuse either was – is – or is going to be in your church. And even more frightening is the confirmed fact that when it comes to your congregation, you (like me in the past) will not deal with it rightly, if you even see it at all. None of us would like to think that we would ever be an ally of evil against an oppressed victim. Yet this is what will indeed happen in your church and ministry unless you prepare yourself. Permit me, if you will, to share my story with you in the hope that you can learn from it, and that we might all then bring the glory to Christ which we desire to. How Our Church Did Things First, let me share with you some of the lessons the Lord has had to teach me over the years, and which I am still learning. It took some really hard “knocks” from Him to get my attention. In seeking to reform this church, myself and our elders wrote a new book of church order (bylaws). In what we believed to be faithfulness to Scripture, we instituted the following practices: 1. Women could not vote. The men, as the head of their families and wives, voted. 2. Women could not pray aloud in prayer meetings. Only the men. Our church was, and still is, virtually entirely home school families. Men were to be the head of their homes and women were to be in submission to their husbands. Books such as “Me Obey Him?” and child-raising materials from ultra-conservative organizations circulated among us (the kind that basically say: homeschooling is God’s will for every Christian family, etc).

We truly desired to do “better” in following Christ than all the other typical local churches around us that were, in our opinion, largely compromised with the world. No one sat down and mapped this all out. We embraced these things over time. The Lord Arrested Our Attention And then the Lord blew the lid off of our pride. I won’t give the details, but a terrible incident of sexual abuse of a child occurred among us. At the same time we found ourselves being recruited by an abusive man as allies against his wife. These are the things that divide churches! These events propelled me into the study of abuse, domestic and sexual, in an effort to better understand how these things had crept up on us and what we needed to repent of. I wanted to know if there were signs we could look for that would help us detect abusers and their victims much earlier. And so I began to read. Over time, and by no means at my own doing, we came to realize that we had created an environment in our church that was abuser-friendly. Evil-friendly. We, as leaders, had encouraged our men to lord it over their wives and families rather than loving them. We had created an environment that was unbiblically oppressive to women. Myself and our elders, over some period of time, began to realize this – by the Lord’s mercy in showing us – and we began to make some changes. Implementing some Positive Changes Women in the church can now vote. Women can pray aloud in prayer meetings. In the course of preaching my sermon series on abuse, I acknowledged to our church (and I have continued to do so) that we had not done enough when teaching and preaching on the subjects of marriage, headship, and submission. We had failed to clearly describe what headship is not, and what submission is not. We came to the realization that abuse – a pattern of coercive control employing any one or more of emotional, verbal, sexual, spiritual, physical, financial and social mistreatment of the other spouse – is indeed biblical grounds for divorce and that we would no longer insist that a husband or wife was required by the Lord to remain in a relationship in which the marriage vows had been habitually broken. We rejected what we consider to be unbiblical and exaggerated patriarchy that is promoted so widely by books and organizations within our conservative Christian circles. We still cling solidly to the position of the inerrancy and infallibility of God’s Word and thus are by no means getting on some liberal “band-wagon” to make everyone happy. We are calling upon other conservative, Bible-believing churches and pastors to do the same things and to stop creating abuser-friendly cultures in our churches. It is important to become educated and wise in regard to the mentality and tactics of abuse. [continues here: https://cryingoutforjustice.files.w...ppen-open-letter-from-a-pastor-to-pastors.pdf ]