When good ministers leave...

It’s always sad when a minister leaves a church, particularly a church where he has set up a lot of Bible-based work, and where God has blessed his ministry by using it to bring people to trust in Him. It’s also an important moment in the life of any church. It’s a time to pray that the Bible work would continue, and that a replacement who will teach the Word of God clearly and faithfully will be found.

History shows us that sometimes when a man who has done much great work, teaching the Bible and setting up a new church or service, leaves, a church which was once a good, Bible-teaching church stagnates and stops teaching properly. There’s an example of this happening in the Bible, right at the beginning of the life of the Christian church. It’s worth looking into because it teaches us much about the reality of church life:

In Acts 19, Paul, the greatest preacher and church planter of them all, set up a church in Ephesus, on the west coast of Turkey. We’re told that ‘the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power’ (Acts 19:20). It was a good church, a church which loved God and His Word.

But when the time came for Paul to leave, in Acts 20, he gave them a warning. He told them that ‘after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spread the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth…So BE ON YOUR GUARD’ (20:29-31). Paul knew that even though he had ‘not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God’ (20:27), in other words taught them the Bible well and faithfully, there was a danger that afterwards the church would stop teaching the Bible, and that the truth about Jesus would be distorted.

An interesting point to note is that Paul describes these men as ‘wolves’; perhaps he was deliberately thinking of Jesus’ words, in which he described people who didn’t teach God’s word properly as people who ‘come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves’ (Matthew 7:15). These people were nice guys, good people, who were friendly and funny and great to have around – but they didn’t teach the Bible properly, and that’s what mattered.

And so Paul told the church he was leaving to be on their guard – to WAIT and to WATCH what happened to the church.

The tragic thing is that the church in Ephesus didn’t remember Paul’s warning. Years later, when Jesus gave His Revelation to John, part of it was a letter to the church in Ephesus, in which Jesus said to them; ‘You have forsaken your first love (ie Jesus)…Repent’ (Revelation 2:4,5). The church had forgotten to base everything on Jesus, and learning from His Word; and now Jesus threatened to ‘come to you and remove your lampstand’ (2:5) – in other words, remove His blessing.

The warning is clear; if a church that the apostle Paul set up could stop teaching the Bible and stop loving Jesus after he left it, then it can happen to any church when a minister who has set up lots of Bible-based work leaves. That’s not to say, of course, that it definitely will, and we must all pray that it doesn’t; but we must also remember to listen to Paul’s words to that church in Ephesus, and ‘be on our guard’.

We must be watchful, making sure that that minister’s replacement loves the Bible too, and that he will teach us well too, and that the church will continue to be centred on God’s Word and nothing else. No church is too good for it to go wrong if its people do not keep watch; and no church is important enough for those who do love the Word to stay there if its leaders do not.