Balance: Avoiding Ditches on Either Side of the Road
Satan wants you to drive into a ditch rather than progressing straight down the road. He doesn’t care which side of the road you veer off as long as you go off the road. We can sometimes overcompensate trying to stay out of one ditch and end up in the one on the opposite side. This discussion handles some “ditches on opposite sides of the road” to avoid. This is definitely not a comprehensive list; you can probably think of plenty of other examples.
Not Preaching Healing and Faith vs. Not Preaching Anything Else
Ditch #1: Never bring up healing and faith so that you don’t offend those who aren’t good with them.
This is anti-biblical. Paul didn’t hold back anything that was profitable, and neither should you. Hearing about healing and faith is certainly profitable for the listeners! It is part of preaching the whole counsel of God. You have an obligation as a preacher to let people know what Jesus did for their healing.
Acts 20:20:
And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you publickly, and from house to house,
Acts 20:27:
For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
It doesn’t matter if Milton Moneybags wishes you’d back off about the Holy Spirit because he’d like to be in a “dignified” church suitable for “professional” people. (There are plenty of such people out there, as you will learn if you haven’t already.) Real church is not always religious people’s idea of dignified. You MUST NOT be ashamed of the Holy Spirit or try to quench Him (1 Thessalonians 5:19).
Ditch #2: Preach only healing and faith.
As important and exciting as healing and faith are, people need to hear about a LOT of other topics. If you’re a traveling minister who specializes in healing, preaching healing and faith most of the time makes sense. But if you’re a pastor, you have to feed the sheep a balanced diet. They need to know how to walk in love and keep the flesh under. They need to know what the Bible says about handling money. They need to be trained to be led by the Holy Spirit. They need to know about flowing in the gifts of the Spirit. They need to be taught who they are and what they have in Christ. They need to know the right way to relate to others. They need to know how to pray properly. They need to know how to worship. They need to know about end times.
Not every message can be a shout-and-hang-from-the chandeliers revival message. People tend to like messages about “upbeat” topics like faith and healing. Try preaching the Bible on a topic like fasting or prayer and see how quiet it can get in a hurry. But people will be lopsided if you always preach on one topic. You cannot preach to please people; you must preach to please God!
Galatians 1:10:
For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
Preaching Grace Without Faith or Faith Without Grace
Ditch #1: Talk about God’s grace all the time without bringing up the need for faith.
Even though grace came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17), it is a very under-preached topic. Most churches try to live under Old Testament rules. “Be good and God will bless you. Be bad and God will punish you.” People desperately need to hear about everything God has provided by grace (including healing) with no personal merit requirements on our part. Instead of trying to be good to get things, we must wake up to the fact that everything we need is already ours (Ephesians 1:3).
However, faith must access what grace has already provided (Romans 5:2). Jesus did not shy away from teaching on faith and we must not do so either. People would rather hear about grace than personal responsibility; it is “easier” to try to fob everything onto God and His will. But that won’t get people healed!
If you talk about nothing but grace, you’ll also have the problem of a lot of sin in the camp, as some churches have demonstrated. As shown elsewhere, the New Testament writers warned against specific sins, and if they did, we have an obligation to do so as well. This flies against the erroneous teaching that if you preach grace, grace will lead people away from sin by itself.
Ditch #2: Talk about faith but not God’s grace.
If you stress faith all the time, people will end up asking themselves, “How big is your faith?” instead of “How big is your God?” In some circles, faith has turned into a “works treadmill” where people become preoccupied with “building their faith” but lose their focus on God. Many of them have been taught that Mark 11:22 means to have the God-kind of faith as opposed to having faith in God, which can lead to trying to have “faith in their faith” instead of “faith in God.” Faith is actually easy but the church has come up with a lot of ways to make it seem difficult.
Quickie Services vs. Marathon Services
Ditch #1: Have short services to attract people who don’t want to be in church long.
A friend lost over half his church to a new “quickie church” in his town that PROMISED IN WRITING that you would be in and out of their service in sixty minutes. This was designed for people who wanted to fulfill their obligation in Hebrews 10:25 but really wanted to do other things more than be in church. Between the hurry-up schedule and the people who didn’t value church, there was no anointing in manifestation there. If success is numbers, they had it. If success is having a church GOD is excited to attend, they flunked.
A variant is to have fewer services. I know churches that went from 2 or 3 services a week to only a single service and this proved popular with the people. Then another church in town started having “once every two weeks church” and drew a sizable crowd on alternate Sundays. Not to be outdone, I heard of a church in another state trying to start a national “once a month church” movement. This is an awesome “deal” for uncommitted people and it would probably drain the members from a “once every two weeks church” in a hurry. I suppose someone could start a “twice a year church” (Christmas and Easter) that would cater to people who attend based on that model and it would steal the crowds from the once-a-month churches. But catering to people’s desire to spend as little time in church as possible does NOTHING to promote healing or moves of the Holy Spirit, without which the church will be dry as toast and generally useless.
If you are a guest speaker, the service length is the pastor’s call and you need to honor his instructions. If he says to be done by noon no matter what, you need to be done by noon no matter what! If you’re not good with that, don’t preach there.
Ditch #2: Routinely have marathon services.
On the other hand, having services that last for hours can just wear people out and drive them elsewhere. It’s one thing to have a service go long because God is moving, and if He is, it’s a mistake to cut Him off. But good luck getting nursery and children’s workers if you go long all the time. I worked in the nursery a lot in a church that routinely ran over 3 hours – because not many people wanted to be in there with the babies who definitely didn’t like being away from Mommy that long. (They let us know!)
Such services have “fat” that can be cut. Do you HAVE TO have a separate ten-minute giving sermonette before the offering followed by a group “confession” about your money? Do you HAVE TO have special music every service before the preacher gets up? Do you HAVE TO have seemingly endless worship followed by a ninety-minute message followed by drawn-out altar calls for just about everything? Do you HAVE TO have a barrage of long announcements by people who think it’s amateur preachers’ time? Do things HAVE TO be so long that there is a stampede for the rest rooms when the service is dismissed because everyone has been uncomfortable “holding it” so long?
I don’t mind long and good as long as the Holy Spirit is doing something powerful. Long and dull is just excruciating.
Democracy vs. Dictatorship
Ditch #1: Church decisions should be made by majority votes.
You can justify a couple different church government setups through Scripture, but a democracy is not one of them. The majority is usually wrong! Consider in Joshua’s day that good spies were outnumbered by bad ones 10 to 2. The people went with the majority and died in the desert instead of the promised land. Another majority wanted Jesus dead, and it wasn’t because they were considering the plan of salvation that was involved with His punishment. One king had a slew of false prophets and only one real one, who was the only one who was right in his prophecies.
Ditch #2: The Pastor rules with an iron fist, and don’t you dare question him.
We need to let pastors lead their churches, but you can go the other way where the ministry leader makes all decisions alone and you are called on the carpet if you dare oppose any of his decisions, even as a fellow board member. Dictators take disagreements personally and punish those who don’t agree with them. While we have never led a democracy, we do seek people’s input, sometimes with a non-binding referendum, especially on non-spiritual issues like those involving a building. We don’t confuse differences of opinion with personal attacks.
Apathy vs. Burnout
Ditch #1: Don’t care about the lost and the sick; think only of yourself.
Too many Christians fall into this category and live for themselves like the world does. It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). We have a Great Commission that is an order, not a suggestion (Mark 16:15-18 and elsewhere). If you reflect on the eternal misery of hell, you will be willing to inconvenience yourself to reach the lost.
Ditch #2: Do nothing but ministry and feel guilty if you do anything else with your time.
Jesus said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). He even ordered His disciples to rest a while:
Mark 6:31:
And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.
God invented families before He invented ministry. He knows that you need to spend time with your family, and He doesn’t want you to feel guilty about doing so. (Just don’t use “I need family time” as an excuse to never be in church, as some do. You can go to church with your family!) He also knows that most people have to work to make money. He does not expect you to spend every spare minute evangelizing. There will always be one more sinner or one more sick person, but the Great Commission was given to entire Church, not only to you, so there are others who can reach people. Everyone must do something but no one must do everything.
Never Mentioning Demons vs. Always Mentioning Demons
Ditch #1: Never mention demons in church because that makes people uncomfortable.
Demons make people uncomfortable, too, and they have to be dealt with. Jesus said that in His name, you will cast out demons (Mark 16:17), so you’d better instruct people about doing it.
Ditch #2: Demons, demons, everywhere!
If you think everyone has a demon, claim that every sickness is a demon, or you’re always talking about demons and so-called spiritual warfare against them, you will actually attract demonic activity, and you will certainly glorify Satan’s kingdom. Demons like attention. Satan likes it when you pay attention to his agents instead of Jesus, who defeated them all and whose name they must obey.
All Word vs. All Spirit
Ditch #1: Preach the Word but Don’t Flow in the Spirit
This will produce some results because the Word is a seed that produces a harvest. However, if you don’t make room for the Holy Spirit to move in your service, people will feel shortchanged even if they can’t put a finger on why they feel that way. The church may be doctrinally outstanding but will still be as dry as toast.
Ditch #2: Flow in the Spirit but Don’t Preach the Word
If you try to make every service a “Holy Ghost blowout service,” there will be excitement, but things will get wacky in a hurry. Any “move of the Spirit” that isn’t Word-based will flop. The Word causes people to grow. If there is not plenty of Word preaching, people will end up excited but starving at the same time. They will also be unable to discern a true move of God from a manifestation of flesh.
Constant Prophecies vs. No Prophecies
Ditch #1: Teach People to Blurt Out Whatever Comes into Their Heads
I’ve been places where everyone is expected (or even required) to have a word for other people and some “prophecies” that come forth are dubious at best. It’s easier than some people realize to “prophesy” out of the soulish realm rather than the spiritual realm. Sometimes, in the name of taking away the fear of missing God, people teach that you should just blurt out whatever comes to mind. Unfortunately, when this is combined with failure to judge prophecies (it usually is), some silly words go forth uncorrected.
Ditch #2: Make Everyone So Afraid of Missing God That No One Will Prophesy
It is not useful to point out that in the Old Testament, people who prophesied anything that wasn’t from God were to be put to death. (Deuteronomy 18:20 says, “But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.”) We are not under that covenant, which is a good thing! If we make people afraid that we will be mean when we publicly judge their prophecies, no one will want to prophesy. I have “let some things go” that were doctrinally off; it is possible to correct such words privately if the “word’ is not overtly harmful. On the other hand, if someone said, “Thus saith the Lord: I have had it with your sin and I’m going to kill you,” you would need to intervene immediately. You don’t want people to be paralyzed by fear of missing God, but you can’t have it be open season on any word, especially ones from immature believers who might not know where their “words” contradict Scripture. We are commanded to desire to prophesy and we are commanded to judge prophecies.
Other Ditches
You can shirk political issues out of fear even though the Bible speaks about them, or you can think that politicians are supposed to be the saviors their campaigns purport them to be and spend too many services discussing the latest political issues.
You can try to be “nice” all the time as a pastor and end up with sin throughout your church because you refuse to invoke biblical church discipline, or you can run the church like a military boot camp and end up with no one left.
You can constantly harp on people about money and make it your most-discussed topic (by featuring a money mini-sermon every week), or you can fail to teach your people biblical money principles and shortchange both the church and its members.
You can get puffed thinking you’re better than everyone else, or you can fall into false humility (another form of pride) where you do Satan’s job by tearing yourself down to prove you’re not in pride, and not accept sincere compliments from people.
Another pair of ditches is covered in the separate article Should I Ask God to Use Me or to Make Me Usable?.
It is possible to stay out of ditches. One good way to do it is to have good friends in the ministry who love you enough to tell you if they think you’re in a ditch, as it is quite possible that other people will notice it before you do!
Proverbs 27:6:
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.