Before any motorcycle came along, major changes transpired in the church of which I was a member. The vote on the new constitution, about which I have written elsewhere, finally took place in mid-January. Lacking the two-thirds majority required for adoption, the constitution was defeated.

What the vote was ultimately about, however, was not the constitution; constitutions are necessary but relatively unimportant documents in a church. The vote was a referendum and conclusion to something that began before I ever arrived at the church.

The referendum involved the path that some of us sought to follow and, hopefully, lead others down. Our path was one of believing in the authority of Scripture and submission to it; one of the elders of the church, in contrast, said that he was not going to be bothered by what the Bible says, that he had his tradition and religion, and that was enough for him. Others referred to the Old Testament as “sharia,” a disparaging dismissal of the OT and a misappropriation of a term used for the code of law derived from the Koran. The things Paul wrote were true for Paul, another said, but were not God’s word to us. It goes on and on.

In short, the philosophy apparently subscribed to by the dominant group in the church was a mixture of Catholicism – wherein the church has greater authority than Scripture – and humanism, which winds up practicing the tragedy of the Book of Judges: “In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right” (Jdg 21.25, NET). Without an absolute authority, people are left to their own morality – a dangerous path that winds up wandering – or sprinting – away from God.

The vote was also the final act of a purge that had begun a year before and six months before I arrived on the scene. A popular pastor who taught the Bible from the pulpit had been removed by many of the same people who were instrumental in defeating the new constitution. Whether or not the pastor needed to be removed or not is moot; what resulted following his dismissal was the departure of many of the people who had begun attending the church when the pastor had come to the church. Some of those desirous of biblical teaching and submitting to the authority of the Bible remained, however, and it was these who were finally purged with the vote. The schism in the church was not about personalities but authority, the Bible, and the raison d’être of the church.

One night after the vote a group of us, representing a dozen families or so, met and decided to leave the church and start a new one. Thanks to diligent work by a few, we were able to meet the following Sunday for our first church service. We were roughly organized and it showed in our service – but it was a beginning.

Shortly thereafter, a decision was made to select a formation committee who would do the work necessary for pulling the church together and pointing it in a biblical direction. I was named to the group along with four other men, tasked with doing something none of us had done before: found a church.

Towards the end of last year I had run across a book by Aubrey Malphurs entitled Ministry Nuts & Bolts, which provided a general overview of what he had been teaching (at Dallas Theological Seminary) and practicing for over twenty years. Impressed by what I read there, I quickly ordered seven or eight of his more specific, more detailed books and began reading and studying them. These books became our guide for the work we were about to undertake.

That work, which (I think) was one of the most important things I’ve done in thirty-plus years of being a believer, and which (I know) was one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in ministry, will be the subject of my next post.


2 Cor 1:13