Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.
Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.
Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.
For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.

• Titus 2:1-15

Note: If you take the title literally, the church is empty due to it not being Sunday morning.

I was thinking and praying about how the new pastors are being taught to do things that were unthinkable in my youth.  They make no decisions on their own.  They refer any request to the ruling body of laity.  They defer pastoral care to the laity.  They will take out time to counsel people during their office hours, but there are rarely any pastoral visits to hospitals, nursing homes, shut-ins at their homes, and hospice care.  They even authorize the laity to administer communion (Lord’s Supper) which requires two elders.  And a tenth of their sermons is taken up reciting the footnotes of their sermon.  Where they got the idea, who said it first, etc.  I cannot remember that detail from the sermons of my youth, but I thought they just talked on their own authority as an ordained pastor.

But those things aside, the second chapter of Titus is not about the pastor doing things.  It is not really about the lay leaders doing things.  It is about people of God doing for one another.

Some of the instructions in the chapter are to simply be civil, nice, and loving to one another.  But those with knowledge and skill need to teach the next generation.

So, why are our churches empty?  Why are the congregations grumbling?

Well, the liberal elements in denominations are making some of the denominations extremely close to apostate.  When the higher ups are demanding that the pastors perform same-sex marriages, when it is clearly not marriage of one man and one woman, thus not a marriage at all, and introducing sin, can a congregation be a Christian congregation when they are told that they must celebrate sin?  All for inclusion?  And when the secular progressives want inclusion, except they do not want Christians to show up to the meeting – just send your money.

But those very real reasons of church failure, with heresy knocking at every door, are not what I am getting at.

Where are our older men who stand by to give sage advice?  Few are teaching Sunday school.  Few attend Sunday school.  Some have told the ruling body that if they have to attend a Bible study or Sunday school, they will not attend the meetings of the ruling body.  Yet, they did not say that when they were placed on the ballot.

And the problem that I have with the pastors passing along ideas to the ruling body and not making decisions themselves is that the ruling body loves burying things in committee or disrespecting the wise old sage who wants them to live by faith.  You want to have a special prayer for the persecuted because it is the international day of prayer for the persecuted.  All the ruling body has to do is shelve the idea until the date is past.  Oops!  Not oops, when it was intentional.

And I have been part of ruling bodies and told that “faith” and “God” are not allowed here because this is a business meeting.

So, the pastors do not do as their predecessors did, and we blame the pastor and the seminary who taught them that.  The ruling body does not live by faith, but by a budget and a trigger finger to fire employees when a shortage in funds occurs.  But then, each of us were supposed to pick up the slack and help one another all along.

The biggest problem with empty pews in the church is that we blame everyone else instead of looking in the mirror.

Lord, have mercy on me.  I could have done more.  I am now a weak old man, who still drags to the church to teach Sunday school – often teaching against decisions made by the ruling body.  But then, there are so many others that have left the pews or grumble while in the pews, waiting for someone else to do something.  Have mercy upon us.  In your name I pray, Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.