P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

SOME THISTLES DO NEED THUMPING

He’s not as infamous as his former boss: Jim Bakker. But Pastor Richard Dortch, who worked with Bakker as a former president in the failed PTL organization, and who also went to jail for his part in the scandal, has emerged from the pain and the punishment to write a couple of excellent redemptive books. In Fatal Conceit he describes an experience he once had as the executive presbyter of the Assemblies of God denomination for a Midwest region. A church in his territory was having troubles — political turmoil — and the pastor asked Dortch to come and attend a board meeting and see if he could help.

Well, that wasn’t his favorite thing, but Pastor Dortch agreed to drive down and sit in on the meeting. And as they got started that night, he could just sense an attitude of division, of unrest, in the room. “This church doesn’t have things together,” he thought to himself. And sure enough. Not too far into the agenda, the group voted to spend a certain amount of money for some project in the church.

However, as people were lowering their hands, Dortch heard a large man sitting at the end of the table say right out loud: “I won’t write the check.”

Dortch had already figured out that this guy was the treasurer of the church, so this was a rather interesting statement to make. And after an awkward silence that kind of hung right there in the room, the visiting Christian leader turned to him and said, “Excuse me. I thought I heard you say that you wouldn’t write the check.”

“Yes, I said it,” the treasurer said. “I won’t write the check to give that money they just voted on.” And he stared insolently at both Dortch and the pastor.

Wow! It was a heavy moment and the other board members held their breath. Maybe they were thinking back to this Matthew 13 parable by Jesus, where sitting right there in the board room, or “field,” as the Savior put it, there was a poisonous weed or thistle among the wheat. Many good members and one rebel. And Jesus said to His listeners, “But the owner of the field told the workers to just leave the weed right there. Let him co-exist with the wheat until the time for harvest. Then, and only then, would the tares be gathered up and destroyed.” So maybe the board members were thinking with a sigh, “This man’s a stinker. He’s always been a stinker. He disrupts everything. He ruins our harmony. He’s holding us hostage to his every whim. But we just have to live with it until the end of time.”

Well, what do you think happened? Dortch paused for just a moment as this man’s rebellious statement hovered over the group like a cancerous cloud. “I won’t write the check . . . and what are you gonna do about it, big shot?”

Finally Pastor Dortch spoke. There was no anger in his voice, no screaming, no tantrum. But this is what he said: “Well, sir, if that’s the case, then we would be willing to accept your resignation. Your unwillingness to follow what the board has decided makes you unqualified for the office.”

The man at the end of the table heard these strong words. They hit him in the face. They stung his pride. And after flushing red in anger, he stood up, pushed in his chair, and exited the room. He was gone. The weed was gone. The problem was gone. The division was gone. And the pastor said after the meeting, “Thank you, Pastor Dortch. That man had been bullying everyone on the board long before I became the pastor.”

Well, do you know something? The human side of us says, “Right on! Go, Pastor Dortch!” to that story. We relate to that kind of good power, that quiet strength that pushes the bully to the side of the playing field.

But the Christian side of us, the Bible-reading side, the side that listens to the parables of Jesus, says, “Wait a minute! Why didn’t that weed just get left where he was? Aren’t we supposed to be patient with sinners, including the big, overbearing, check-writing kind?”

We observed the other day that — parables or no parables — no Christian church is going to install a pedophile as a Sunday School teacher. A pastor who has rampant, promiscuous affairs isn’t going to be kept on — or shouldn’t be kept on — as a marital counselor, or as a man assigned to tutor young girls. There are some things that wisdom and common sense dictate. But in the ranks of every church in the world today, friend, are believers who struggle with lust, with alcohol, with pride, with tax improprieties, with chronic lying, with bossiness. How does the Body of Christ know when to pull up a weed, and when to leave the weed right there in the field where it can do some lasting damage?

If you think this is a tough call, let me make it even more difficult. Over in the book of First Corinthians, chapter five, the apostle Paul writes to scold the young, fragile church there. How come? There’s a man in the church, holding office in the church, sitting there in the church Sabbath after Sabbath . . . and this man is having an affair with his own mother-in-law. “That’s a kind of sexual immorality that doesn’t even occur among pagans,” Paul writes in plain anger. And what does Paul say about letting this poisonous weed stay in the field? No way! “Get him out of there!” Paul writes, almost shouting in his penmanship.

Here’s his response, as modernized in The Message paraphrase by Dr. Eugene Peterson. And be thinking about the wheat and the tares.

“I’m telling you that THIS IS WRONG,” Paul advises. “You must NOT simply look the other way and hope it goes away on its own. Bring it out in the open and deal with it in the authority of Jesus our Master. Assemble the community — I’ll be present in spirit with you and our Master Jesus will be present in power. Hold this man’s conduct up to public scrutiny. Let him defend it if he can!” And now notice this next line: “But if he can’t, then OUT with him! It will be totally devastating to him, of course, and embarrassing to you. But better devastation and embarrassment than damnation. You want him on his feet and forgiven before the Master on the Day of Judgment.”

At the very end of the chapter Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 17, where the children of Israel are told:

“Expel the wicked man from among you.”

Well, friend, what do we make of this? Kick ‘em out. DON’T kick ‘em out. Get rid of the weeds. DON’T get rid of the weeds. What’s going on here?

We have to be wise in reading stories, and here are two careful conclusions we can make. First of all, when a church kicks out an adulterer or a cheater or a rebellious treasurer, that is not in a par with bundling up a pile of weeds to be burned. When the weeds are burned — an act reserved for God alone — that refers to eternal lostness. A weed that is burned up is a soul that is damned to be lost. You and I couldn’t do that if we wanted to, although there have been tragic periods in the history of the Christian Church when it tried to take on that role. But here, in contrast with that, Paul says explicitly that a man who sins in this flagrant, defiant way needs to be sent away from the church in the hope that he can eventually be redeemed. Verse five:

“You need to condemn this man’s actions because, in so doing, you may be able to wake him up, turn his life around and save his soul.”

So the Bible teaches us that a Christian isn’t to be permitted to coast along in a precarious way where his or her soul is in jeopardy. A person can’t flagrantly live in adultery, for example, with the church — by its silent assent — saying to him, “You’re all right, man. Grace is cheap; obedience isn’t required; witnessing to others through our holy living isn’t important. Sin away.” The church cannot send that kind of message, either to its own people, or to the watching community.

And of course – point #2 – it’s also true that the fragile flock in the church, the helpless lambs, do need to be protected. As much concern as we might have for a particular “weed” in the church, if it really is already to the point of poisoning others — through pornography, or abuse, or even just wrongful use of power like that treasurer was doing — then this principle of First Corinthians five needs to be invoked. All through the New Testament, the church is warned that false teachers will come along. Jesus Himself, in Matthew 7, warned about this; He called them “ferocious wolves in sheep’s clothing,” and said to watch out for them. We have a responsibility to make sure the lambs in our care are taught the truth and protected from lies.

Well, friend — as we shut the barn door here on Friday — we still aren’t sure what to always do with the weeds. We need an extra measure of wisdom; that’s for sure. I guess, just as farmers in their blue denim overalls, are often out in the field on their knees, those of us working in the spiritual garden need to be on ours a lot too.