Friday, April 18, 2014
Battling For Church
Ron Edmondson lists "Seven Ways Satan Tries to Destroy a Church":
Trying to pretend like they can be eliminated is a diversion from the essential question of what to do when they happen.
There are no set answers for each situation is different, but trouble usually begins when a church attempts to hide its foibles rather than confess to them.
church confession problems
Church conflict – Satan loves business meetings that get out of hand or when two church members have disagreements outside of church. He loves when church members argue about trivial things, such as colors of the carpet or big things, such as whether to add another service. Doesn’t matter to him. Show him a good argument potential and he’s willing to stir the fire.OK, ideally, I think he is right, but we live in a fallen world and all of those things are inevitabilities in a fallen world. They cannot be eliminated from our churches. The key question is, "How do we deal with them?" These forces, bad as they are are only destructive on a church wide scale if we make bad choices in handling them.
Burnout – Satan loves to burn out a church volunteer, staff member, or pastor. If he can make them feel they are no longer needed, their work is not appreciated, or that they no longer have anything to offer…he feels he’s winning part of the battle.
Rumors – Satan is the stirrer of dissension. He likes to plant little seeds of a juicy story, about someone in the church or community…sometimes even the pastor or staff…and watch them quickly spread through a church congregation or community. The version, of course, usually grows to a larger portion than reality. Satan likes that too.
Busyness – Satan loves to distract church goers with a plethora of activity that produces little results in Kingdom-building.
Lies – Satan attempts to interject what he calls a “half-truth”; just a hint of false doctrine and then watch it disrupt or divide a body. Of course, we all know that half-truth is really just a cleaned up version of a bold face lie, but Satan is clever enough to disguise a lie in a way where false teachers gain entry and do damage before being discovered.
Scandal – Satan loves a good, juicy, gossipy news headline in the local paper. If it will split, divide or destroy a church body…even better. If it will destroy someone’s Kingdom calling or work…he’ll take that too.
Marriage and family disruptions – Satan loves to destroy any relationship, but he also goes after key leader’s marriages; even the pastor’s marriage. He likes to encourage prodigal children. He wants to cause families to fight within the church and fight with the church. Satan knows if he can destroy a home, he has a better chance of destroying a church.
Trying to pretend like they can be eliminated is a diversion from the essential question of what to do when they happen.
There are no set answers for each situation is different, but trouble usually begins when a church attempts to hide its foibles rather than confess to them.
church confession problems
