As more Americans open their Bibles and are looking to start attending church in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s atrocious assassination, they are faced with an important question — and BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is asking the founder of Watermark Church and the 1613 Project, Pastor Todd Wagner, for answers.
“A lot of people are trying to figure out, ‘What is the test for my pastor?’” Stuckey explains on “Relatable. “Because they understand being a pastor — you know more than anyone — is hard, and they want to be gracious and they want to be understanding with their pastor, but sometimes they might get the nagging feeling that ‘I don’t know if my pastor is meeting this moment. I don’t know if he’s boldly proclaiming the word of God.’”
“So how should we think about our church leaders? And how do we decide, yes, I am in a church that is glorifying God?” she asks.
“Figure out what your pastor thinks the purpose of his church is. They’ll probably say something, you know, maybe from Matthew 28, go and make disciples,” Wagner responds. “I’m like, great, well, what’s a disciple? Like, can you define a disciple?”
“And disciples are not people that attend his services,” he continues.
“Most pastors, even the ones with good doctrinal statements, they cut a deal with their people. It’s like, ‘You come here,’ right? ‘You validate me with your presence,’ you know, ‘you give me enough money to keep the lights on. And I won’t ask too much of you, and we’ll both tell each other we’re doing what God wants us to do,’” he explains.
Wagner does not believe this is anywhere near enough, noting that Jesus said “that his church — that the gates of hell won’t stand against it.”
“Too many pastors are frankly just saying, ‘Hey, we’ll do the ministry; you just come support the ministry.’ That’s an unbiblical church,” he says.
And this is what he calls the “deceitfulness of sin.”
“The deceitfulness of sin is that it makes a life that is not faithful look faithful or attractive, right? So the worries of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, the concern for many things — this is what chokes out faithfulness,” Wagner says.
“If your church is collecting you and isn’t calling you to greatness and doesn’t see their job as setting you up so that one day, when you stand before the Lord, you’re going to hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ you’re in an unbiblical church,” he explains.
“If your church isn’t actively confronting the gates of hell, speaking out against hellish things,” he warns, “you’re not in a biblical church, because that’s what Jesus says his church will do.”
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