Authority

I'm a big fan of message boards. Family Life Forums is one of my favorites. They have good Marriage & Family threads that I learn from and sometimes get to share with & minister to people.

One thread got interesting. Without going into detail, it was about criticizing church leadership. I believe you are walking on thin ice if you choose to take this route. Specifically, the unbiblical route. Matthew 18 gives pretty clear direction on the best way to handle conflict resolution.

The safe bet is to always respect and honor the authority of our pastor or pastors! If we disagree with a decision that was made, we must give them the benefit of the doubt that they made the best decision with the information that they had. We must also have faith that they were led by God's Spirit! I realized once that if my opinion was truly important in the decision making process, than somebody would have invited me to the meeting. But, since I wasn't invited...........

What I think is most important is the spirit in which you handle the situation. Its pretty bold to assume our church leadership is just wrong without understanding the process of how they made the decision. Check this out:

James 3:16-18
For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

If we have a question, it should be asked gently to learn and better understand the decision making process. It should be asked in mercy to sow peace. We know when our spirits are right or wrong. When we ask a question in a self-seeking way to support and strengthen our critical spirit and enable confusion, then that's operating in the wrong spirit. If we ask questions to get understanding and re-establish peace and unity, then that's probably the right spirit.

Oh, by the way, we may want to be prepared to hear this answer, "It's really none of your business." OUCH! I guess that's the "willing to yield" part.

I'm not saying blindly follow. But, we need to make sure we check our spirits and have our ducks in a row before we go sowing seeds of division by challenging the authority of Christ's Church.