Skip to main content

Itching Ears and a Christian Leaders Mandate.


Itching Ears and a Christian Leaders Mandate.

2 Timothy 4:3-5

3For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

Over the last few weeks I have been confronted, again, with some of the most outrageous excesses of the Christian Church. Where really silly things are said and done all in the name of building the body of Christ up.


The late Leonard Ravenhill said "I am told that there are people with itching ears. That is all well and good, but God has not given me a mandate to scratch them"

I came across one church that has a Prophetic night every Wednesday, where people come and practise their prophetic gifting. The congregation on Sunday morning is about 40 but on these nights the congregation doubles. The problem I have is that people are coming week after week to hear from God and live one week to the next on whatever prophetic utterance they receive. They forget to live according to the word of God. They would rather have their ears tickled than their hearts changed. The other issue I have is that the leaders don't seem to discourage from this rather weak and unbalanced Christian lifestyle, are they really discharging their ministry duties.

The great and wonderful hope of the church is that Jesus is coming back. It is not the hope of the unsaved, they are not interested. So I often wonder why preachers spend hours and hours advertising and scratching the itching ears of congregation members and visitors from other churches, speaking about the latest interpretation of 'End Time prophecy.'

If you know someone with itchy ears suggest a doctor they may have an ear infection.

The Bible says; what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but loses his soul.

Surely our mandate is to preach the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Food for thought, maybe?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 1970's Christian Coffee Shop

I remember as a new Christian being invited into a Christian Coffee shop in the town where I grew up. It was clean and tidy, the table tops were all brightly painted in different colours,  but mainly yellow and scattered on top were a random selection of Christian tracts. Fish symbols and Christian posters proclaiming that there was but 'One Way' to heaven were everywhere. The music playing out of the stereo was The Bill Gather Trio or Dolly Parton singing Gospel. The crockery, was a mixed assortment of coffee mugs, donated by keen supporters of this outreach to the unsaved sinners and ungodly people living in the city. The coffee was a local brand heavily mixed with chicory. In all the years the Coffee Shop operated, I never saw a non-Christian go in and I never heard of a person coming to faith through having coffee there. I never really understood its purpose. Fast forward to today, when I was asked recently, to advise on helping a local community church open a c...
Post a Comment
Read more

The myth of Ministry Leadership.

The myth that all leaders are leaders. Not everyone who leads in church is a leader. I think it is wrong, for Church leaders to believe that those they train up to take various ministry leadership positions, are in fact leaders in their own right. They are not. At best I would categorise these people- that many churches call 'ministry leaders' as ministry managers.                 "At one level there is nothing wrong with title inflation; it is a cheap way of recognising people who work hard and make serious contributions" Jo Owen. I am of the opinion that this title inflation undervalues both the leader and the ' ministry manager' and can often bring about confusion and mismatched expectations. Many churches have ministry training evenings for their volunteers. Many use the reason for this training is "to make a person a better leader," when in fact the only thing actually happening is that th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Christian leaders and how to fire a Christian employee.

This weeks ramblings. I was asked this week if it was OK for Christian employers to fire other Christian staff.  Firstly let me state that it is always important to follow the laws of the country that you live in, but the question should be; Do I as an employer have the right to fire other staff Christian or not. The short answer is YES! Let me give you two examples I have come across; Case Study 1; The CEO of medium sized Christian organisation dealing in books and other Christian Literature had a problem with one of their staff. The person concerned, let’s call him Pete, seemed to push everybody’s buttons. Pete had been with the company 2 years, his first six months were just great but after that everything went downhill. He always complained, he bad mouthed his managers. At company social gatherings, when sport was played, he never played with any great sportsmanship; it seemed that every decision was wrong or somebody had a beef with him. But, Pete went to the same c...
Post a Comment
Read more