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rwilson

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Posts posted by rwilson

  1. Good morning everyone.

    I havent been here in ages but I try to check in once in a while.

    I am writing today with a church issue that I must being before the deacons about our new pastor.

    It hurts and breaks my heart to do so, but I am only asking this seeking godly council from this of you who are pastors and deacons in your respected churches.

    In the past 12 months our church has suffers a major split, severl hurt families, teens, anger and to the point that our church family in some aspects no longer trusts or respects fellow members of our church.

    We are not a small church, but we are not huge. We were running close to 300 before our new pastor came.

    Even with Covid we still saw large numbers I attendance after we reopened.

    That was a few months before our new pastor came.

    I don't say this to seen as witch hunt against him.

    I myself and our deacons and other members truly and only want to see the Lord glorified through our church.

    Among several instances of him and other members have differences, we have discovered that both he and his wife have been making severe accusations about members of our church that  he refuses to explain to the member(s) what the accusations are before hand until he schedules a meeting with these people to discuss the accusations and then he will decide the appropriate course of action.

    We have found that of you are not available to meet with him immediately that he will leave this hanging with you and still refuse to tell you the accusations so you can at least investigate them on your own and help with the resolution.

    Most of these are serious spiritual)doctrinal or moral situations

     have seen people and families railroaded out of the church because of these actions.

    The most recent accusation involves a married woman in our church.

    She is probably one of the most respected and loved women in our church. Her children were raised in a good godly home. Her oldest is a student in Bible college while the others are still at home.The pastor contacted her and her husband, and requested a meeting to concerning inappropriate behavior suupisidky but her as reported to him by select members of the church.

    This woman has had several serious medical issues in recent months including sever siezures which were caused a traumatic head injury years ago.

    Yet this woman stillis a faithful, godly  member serving in several ministrues.

    So instead of explaining the accusations to her and her husband right then they have to wait 4 days until a scheduled meeting with the pastor. She couldn't schedule anything sooner due to her continued medical appointments to deal with her last set of siezures which left her partially paralized in speech.

    So ..she has these unknown accusations hanging over her head for the next several days.

    With that said, the subject was plagerism.

    This is very disheartening also since several members of the church have found evidence that he is getting his sermons online and reading then sometimes word for word from. The pulpit.

    So.....I come to you asking for some godly advice on how to speak to him about these things.

    Thee are people in our church scared of this man about what he might accuse them of, but they won't leave.

    The deacons have been doing some investigating on their own and have found some questionable things, but we don't know what the out come will be from that 

    So...what say ye?

     

     

  2. All,

      This is going to sound crazy, but last year we began building project to build  new building because we have outgrown our current building. During this time some weird things have happened (at least it seems that way to me). Historically, in our church since it began, 11 years ago, the deacons were elected by the pastor and other deacon(s) nominating one person for the church to vote on. The consensus being that if he was voted in, then it was God's will, if not then it was not God's will. I can somewhat understand that method if the church is really small and you don't have much to choose from, but we are a good size church now, averaging between 90-100. I asked our pastor about this a while back and suggested that we re-examine the process and have 2 people on the ballot. I used the example s in the NT where they drew lots but the idea was that there was more than one person on the ballot. I was politely but firmly spoken down to, and told that this is the way that we do it , and maybe i am just being bitter about not being asked to be a deacon. In all honesty, I have never considered myself, or felt the desire to be a deacon. I tried to assure him that it was not the case. Ever since then, it seems that the 3 deacons that we have now are all "yes" men., the 2 that we recently replaced, both had been men that would call into question something that didn't seem right until it was resolved. Now, we recently held a Sacrifice Sunday for our building fund. Another church that had never supported us before in projects "suddenly" decided to match up to $10,000.00 in the offering. The wierd thing with this is that only our pastor knows who the other church is. The decaons don't know, at least that was what I was told by one of them. He thought that it was odd in itself, but he said that it "must be something that the pastor of the other church requested." Could be, but I have my doubts.  Something just doesn't seem right in all of this.  Any suggestions?

  3. Hello all.

         I know that it has been a long time since I have posted here or even stopped by to visit, but I want you all to know that I still love coming here on occasion, when time permits. I have a very heart breaking question for the pastors here in this community. How do I approach my pastor and try to lovingly explain to him that he is holding a grudge against another brother?

     

        Thank you.

           Bob Wilson

  4. First of all, let me clarify, that "by scratch" I mean that it was started under the support of 10 other IFB churches. Our church just became self supporting this year.  I will be the first to admit  that I don't know much about reformed baptist. I usually try to stay away from things that are not doctrinaly sound. So being hit with this is kind of left me searching and praying for guidance. I so much appreciate the council and direction that you all have given me. Keep Praying!!

  5. Hello everyone.

       I don't normally post, but I do try to follow along when time allows. I have a very heavy burden on my heart for my church, and I am afraid that there might be some false doctrine creeping in.

    First of all, let me explain. I was very active in these forums about 10 years ago, and I am sure that there are many of you now who don't know where I stand. First of all let me say that I, as many of you, are 100% KJV. I firmly believe what an IFB would usually believe. I say "usually", because in the last 10 years, I have seen a "pulling away" from these Bible based doctrinal beliefs.

    I am going to give you some examples of things that I have seen in this church in the last 2 years. I will also give you a brief history of this church. All that I am asking for is some pastoral guidance and confirmation of what I am seeing and hearing. I have been searching my heart and the scriptures and seeking the Lord's direction in this. So before you say; "go talk to your pastor", let me say that I intend to do just that, but I just want to be sure that I am on the right track in this.

     

    Our church was started 10 years ago from scratch. I and my family have known the pastor for about that length of time, and have watched this church grow from a small church plant meeting in a rented conference room, to a church which became self-supporting, independent baptist church. We were members of another local IFB church about 25 miles from this one, and about 2 years ago we believed and still do believe that the Lord was leading us to this church. We have since seen the Lord move our housing and my job location to proximity to this church and we have a genuine burden for the area around our church. Over the past year, I have seen and heard somethings that give me concern. We have a family in our church that is charter members. To be brutley honest, they are not faithful in attendance and they send their children to a christian school that leans more to the charismatic side that to a traditional, KJV christian school. To top it off the husband is a deacon of our church, and in reality his wife runs everything, and it appears that she is running our church also. She gets appointed to different tasks and commitees. Her father has recently become our new song director, and he is a retired IFB pastor but still holds ties to the GARBC. How and why you would want to do that is beyond me and a topic of another discussion some other time. Her family and the pastor and his family have been friends since the beginning. The Bible says that "......ye shall know them by their fruits." Since she seems to be the obvious leader of her home, and apparently the church now, I might be wrong in saying this, but based on doctrinal and scriptural beliefs, there is no way that she is right with God. I firmly believe that is the case with her and her family.

    Our pastor has a huge heart for missions. That is a great! But I must say that I have concerns. Although he preaches and teaches from the King James and uses the King James, we are considered a  KJV "preferred" church. Not a KJV "only" church. As I look around to different members in our church, I cannot think of more than a handful of people that are there as a direct result of the ministry of this church. The rest of us, and I include myself and family in this, came from other churches. The majority of them came from a couple of Bible churches that have "really departed the faith" in recent years. With that being, the churches have gone contemporary in doctrine and beliefs.These people, themselves mostly do not use the KJV, or hold to some other standards of and IFB church. (ie: dress) These people are far from being poor financially, and I firmly believe that the church building is God's house and that you should dress like it. I believe that some of these people get dresses better to go out on the town, than they do to God's house. I get it that Wed. night is more of a "casual dress night, but Sunday?? No way!

    There have been several different signs that I have seen that thigs are amiss, but I am just highlighting a few of them. Recently, our pastor started teaching the men's Sunday School class with a book entitled: "Feeding Your Soul: A Quiet Time Handbook." First of all, it's wriiten by a woman, Jean Fleming. It might might be fine for a ladies SS class, but not a men's class. Secondly, the author and her husband are part of an organization called "The Navigators". Personally I had never heard of them until now, but from what I have researched online they would not be considered IFB, KJV or anything remotely associated with a IFB Christian. They quote scripture on their website using the NIV, and they seem kind of like the "tree hugger", don't preach hard you might offend someone" kind of mentality.

    I invited him and his family to accompany myself and our family in attending an old fashioned prayer conference that is held every year by our old church back home about 3 hours away. It's the kind of prayer conference that has only one purpose; to seek the Lord in both prayer and preaching. There were a total of 12 different preachers who faithfully peach the word with conviction, and passion, and who wholey seek the Lord in all that they do. He kept putting me off as to when and how to go, but 2 weeks later hops on a plane to attend the Bible Conference at Bob Jones. There's another subject. I am not a BJU fan. Once again, that's another argument for another time.

    Our theme this year is Matthew 6:33. With all that is going on and all that I have seen, I feel that our pastor is falling into the Kingdom doctrine philosiphy that I see going around now a days. I have heard him mention Ravi Zacharias from the pulpit, and I know that he does listen to the local "christian" radio station  which as far as preaching is concerned does not coinside with your typical IFB doctrine. I know that I need to talk to him about these things and not cut and run to another church. I also feel that this is where the Lord has us, but I really don't know how to approach this. So I am asking you all for your input, prayers, and advise in this matter. I want to see this church on the right path and do not want to be the cause of a church split. If so, it wouldn't be the first time that I have had to call a pastor and talk to him concerning issues. I want to say this, that I have been thorouhly been searching the Lord's direction,and have made sure that my heart was right with him before coming here with this matter. So the question is.......What say ye?

  6. Praise the Lord!!!!  He allowed us to purchase a 2006 Ford E350 15 passenger van for exactly the amount that we had been praying about! Also, He worked it out that of all of the vans out there that this one in particular was owned by a missionary family that had been serving in Mongolia, and are transitioning to Montana to continue as missionaries to an indian reservation. The used the van for deputation. Amen and Amen!!!!!

     

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  7. Thanks everyone!!! I hope that I didn't sound harsh in my previous response. If I did, I deeply apologize. We are going tomorrow to see a van down near Cinncinatti. It belongs to a missionary family. So please pray that God's will be done in this matter. If any of you are ever near Marysville, we would love to have you visit us at Heartland!!!

  8. Hey everyone!

       I wanted to send out a resuest for a little help in locating a 15 passenger van for our church, Heartland Baprist Church (www.heartlandbaptist.us in Marysville, Ohio.  We are a fairly new church plant having just celebrated our 9 year anniversary. We had a van in the past but it finally died, and we really want to restart this ministry. I myself am a big fan of buses and not vans but the size that we are now, a van would be a good addition. What we are looking for is a 2005 or newer 15 passenger van with 100,000 miles or less. If you know of any could you please let me know?

     

          Thanks!!

     

  9. IFB Biblical Issues and IFB Lounge. Here is a screen shot of what I get.

     

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