FundaPreference – Thought for the day Pastor, Evangelist, Preacher, Teacher

If you teach your preferences, then have enough guts to tell those in your spiritual care the difference between preferences and fundamentals. -FUNDAPREFERENCES-

Pastors and Evangelists come and go, but the damage poured out upon a church and those striving to learn God’s Word is long-lasting. By the way, when Pastors, Teachers, and Evangelists come and go, so do the preferences! Oh, boy, now another Pastor or Evangelists has entered the scene and chomping at the bit to spew their own preferences upon the Church. FUNDAPREFERENCES

Frankly, your preferences are of no consequence if you cannot support it completely by God’s Word.

Hey, Church, you should be willing to confront a Pastor, Teacher, or Evangelist who harps on THEIR preferences and treats those as fundamental doctrines. Be aware that the next Pastor, Teacher, or Evangelist that heads your way will have another unique set of preferences that they want to force-feed you. FUNDAPREFERENCES

Fundamentals Fundamentals Fundamentals! Learn them and learn them well, and then you will quickly and astutely recognize a Pastor, Teacher, or Evangelist who is trying to sway you to THEIR convictions.

Yes, oh yes, it is necessary to have standards and spiritual boundaries in our lives. God expects Holy and clean living. He expects us to be in the world, but not of the world. There is, indeed, spiritual wickedness in high places. The point is this, however, those in authority in the church need to separate Biblical doctrines and fundamentals from their own convictions and preferences. FUNDAPREFERENCES

Pastor, Teacher, Evangelist — You are doing a great injustice and disservice to the Church when you harp on YOUR PREFERENCES! How you maintain your home and your life is your business. I caution you to not set yourself up as the standard for the Church. — The Church, the organism that Christ died for and gave Himself for! — Be careful! If you love the Church, spew the fundamentals, and not your preferences. FUNDAPREFERENCES

Let God do the cleaning up of a person’s life, and that change will be long-lasting. If you expect a Church member to spiritually clean up for you — shame– this change will be short-lived. Curtis Hutson, when referring to a fundamentalist, said “In later years many have expanded the definition to include things they wanted to place special emphasis on. The result of this has been much confusion about the term and it’s definition. If we are going to use the word and be understood when we use it, we must not adapt its definition to include our own distinctive or preferences.” “Who Is a Fundamentalist.” Who Is a Fundamentalist?, by Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord, 1982, pp. 18–18.

For your thinking:

NOT ESSENTIAL

Preferences (will you give your life for these?)

1. music
2. methods (church polity)
3. modesty
4. movies
5. cards
6. sports on Sunday
7. men wearing ties as the ticket to participation
8. pink shirts
9. wire-rimmed glasses
10. women, only dresses or skirts as the ticket to participation
11. divorced men can’t preach or be Pastor
12. ticket to NO participation in a Baptist Church is if you have a tattoo (what if this person is a new convert?)

ESSENTIAL

Fundamentals (will you give your life for these?)

1. Virgin Birth
2. Deity of Christ
3. Substitutionary Death of Christ
4. Resurrection of Jesus
5. Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures
6. Second coming of Christ

Subject Continued