Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

• Matthew 18:18-20

“Agreement in purpose on earth must not be taken to mean a predetermination to agree together to storm God’s fort doggedly till He yields. It is far from right to agree beforehand over what we want, and then go to God and wait, not until He gives us His mind about the matter, but until we extort from Him permission to do what we had made up our minds to do before we prayed; we should rather agree to ask God to convey His mind and meaning to us in regard to the matter. Agreement in purpose on earth is not a public presentation of persistent begging which knows no limit, but a prayer which is conscious that it is limited through the moral nature of the Holy Ghost. It is really ‘symphonizing’ on earth with our Father who is in heaven.”

• Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (October 5, from The Discipline of Prayer – Christian Discipline Volume 2)

“Be yourself exactly before God, and present your problems, the things you know you have come to your wits’ end about. Ask what you will, and Jesus Christ says your prayers will be answered. We can always tell whether our will is in what we ask by the way we live when we are not praying.”

• Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (October 5, from If Ye Shall Ask…)

I added a category many years ago, or so it seems, about “Ill Conceived Notions.”  When I wrote two or three posts, I thought there were so many such notions that it might come up again.  And it has, years later.

But have you ever been in a Session meeting, or a Session Committee Meeting, etc. and someone comes up with a hairbrained idea.  They get two or three people in the decision-making group to agree with them, no matter how hairbrained the idea was.  They invoke the verses from Matthew 18 that are quoted above.  They call for prayer.  And they pronounce their idea golden because if you believe God’s Word, He has now placed His rubber stamp on the idea, “APPROVED.”  Hey, when God approves it, there are all kinds of rubber stamps that apply – “The Angels are Singing!”, “Glory and Honor for Coming Up with this Wonderful Idea.”

Let’s use some argumentum ad absurdum to illustrate this “Angels are singing” concept.  Or is it reductio ad absurdum?

The Worship Team is in a lather.  The preacher has been preaching about sin, and the congregation is getting nervous.  Doesn’t the pastor know that “sin” is a four-letter word?  If we don’t stop him, the congregation will move to the church across the street.  We hear that pastor preaches about hugging puppies all the time.  But it is an unpardonable sin – Oops, the preacher even has us saying that four-letter word!!! – to suggest what a pastor preaches about, so we have to kill him.

What?!  I said it was either argumentum ad absurdum or reductio ad absurdum!  Besides, I told the pastor once, decades ago, that many people in the congregation wanted a sermon on something other than The Great Commission.  They were worried about layoffs and wanted to know how God helps you through something like that.  I think the pastor said four or five things to me over the next year until I got the idea, he wanted me to move to a new church.  Hey, I was just the messenger!  And there was a massive layoff about three years later.

Anyway, if you went to God with that prayer, He is not going to rubber stamp it!

But if you decide to buy the apartment building across the street and turn it into homes for the homeless, and your “tenants” wreck the place and the church goes bankrupt, do not turn to God and quote Matthew 18 because a committee of six people, twice what was needed, had decided and God had to do His thing.

Providing homes for homeless people is a good idea, but is that what God wants for your church?  You can be caught by the paralysis by analysis or you can, as Rev. Chambers suggests “Doggedly” push your idea through.  But I like Rev. Chambers second bit of writing on these verses.  Are you living the proper life when you are not praying?  But then again, if we are continually praying, do we ever stop?

I would ask if you have been guilty of what I have mentioned here, but I think most people in church leadership has done it at least once.  Umm.  Not the part about killing the pastor…

No, we have all made a decision, agreed upon by others on the team or committee, and then it became “up to God” to make it happen.

It is not an idea of whether we have done it, but the title above applies… How many times … have we done it?

I have seen the paralysis by analysis used when the team leader did not like your idea…  “Thank you for bringing that up.  We will appoint a committee to discuss it.”  Of course, the committee is made up of no one, who will never meet, in a meeting room that does not exist, thus your great idea died because the leader did not like it.

But when we have both of these going on all the time, does God simply ignore everything the church decides or fails to decide?  When do we become a social club that says that they believe in Jesus?

I have used a few terms here: argumentum ad absurdum, reductio ad absurdum, and paralysis by analysis.  And I have asked a lot of questions, even making a lot of accusations…

But for each church, we make some mistakes, but the biggest mistakes church leaders too often make are: 1) Thinking their ideas are golden and 2) Not praying and waiting for God’s answer.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.