Wind & Waves – “blessed be your discernment” – 1 Samuel 25:33
A Call to Discernment Part IV
Discernment is the God-given ability to distinguish Truth from “almost-truth,” and God has specially gifted some in the church with discernment for the protection of the flock (1Cor. 12:10). Today’s Church is filled with every kind of wind and wave of so-called sound teaching that is askew of biblical accuracy (Eph. 4:14). That is the danger of false teaching and the need for discernment: error is subtle and easily deceives. Why is there a great lack of discernment in today’s Church? There are four reasons. We have discussed the first three reasons: the disappearance of church discipline as taught in Matthew 18, which protects the church from error; the vanishing of antithetical thinking (having a mindset of contrasts and opposites as demonstrated in the Bible – Isaiah 55:8); and a de-emphasis on systematic theology (what the whole Bible says about any one subject, which prevents pulling verses out of context and making the Bible say something it never intended to say). The fourth and final reason for a lack of discernment in today’s Church is the liberation of the laity. The laity is the people in any given church who are not pastoral staff. To say that the laity has been liberated is to say that God-ordained, Scripture-instructed, authority of church leaders has been rejected by the common man in the pew. Hebrews 13:17, “Obey your leaders and submit to them,” leaves a very bad taste in most Christians’ mouths. What happens when the authority of church leaders is rejected? Anarchy ensues. Yes lay people are called by God to minister, but to minister under the authority of God’s appointed leaders. As it stands today, many men and women in churches take authority upon themselves and go off from the church to “do their own thing,” taking as many followers with them as they can. The church is weakened when valuable resources are drained into competing ministries that have not been sanctioned by church leadership – we call these parachurch ministries. Time, money, people, and energy are lured away from the local church and directed toward parachurch ministries – and in these parachurch ministries teachers are not accountable to any church leadership; a place which becomes a breeding ground for doctrine to be “tweaked” and adjusted to meet cultural requirements. The Church has become adept at merchandising people rather than proclaiming Christ. Ministries outside the Church directly challenge the authority of the Church because only ministries ordained by God through a local church are valid, and yet “Christian Ministry” is a multi-billion dollar industry today outside the authority boundaries of the local church. We have seen the birth in recent times of a rule of high-profile personalities who are assuming the role of leadership for the Church while operating outside Church and outside her authority. Many Christians take their “marching orders” from ministry personalities rather than from their own church leaders, and this has harmed the Church’s ability to protect her sheep and has deteriorated the ability of most to discern between Truth and “almost-truth.” Lord willing, next time we will learn how we can grow in discernment.
