A pastor’s wife had asked a question about what to do about a “sweet lady” in their church who does something very distracting and embarrassing each weekend during their Sunday morning services.

Here are some of the powerful thoughts that emerged from the mind of Pastor Joe Champion of Celebration Church in Austin, Texas in regards to that question.

Worshipers in a public worship service- especially where unbelievers may be present- must see their public acts of worship as an interstate; meaning they must merge with the flow of worship of the rest of the congregation. If they do something extreme compared to others (i.e. running, falling to their face in the front, waving flags, playing tambourines, etc…) they will simply become a distraction and others will think that the entire experience is weird and may not allow themselves to encounter God.

Leaders must confront those worshipers who are going against the flow of worship traffic in order to be sensitive to the others there- especially the unbeliever so that they may encounter God.

Leaders mustn’t be afraid of offending that one person because that one person may be hurting everyone else.

As the pastor and leader of your church and its services, you make the call as to what is out of order in the service.

If you want to know what kind of spirit is behind the extreme (or bizarre) displays of worship, confront the person. If they respond with humility and sorrow for disrupting the service, they have the right spirit. If they respond with offense and anger, they have allowed the enemy to use them to hijack your services and the spirit behind their extreme displays of worship was evil.

Champion made this statement;” God is more concerned about your stewardship than He is your friendship.” In other words, you can’t be afraid of offending your friends when it comes to leadership decisions at your church. You must be more concerned for the spread of the Gospel and the advancement of the Kingdom. This is what God cares about, not whether or not you offend your friends.

And through all of this, the people who leave your church, are the people who think that church is about them- not Christ and others.

The other  people in your church are waiting to see if you are a true leader who will confront the problems in your church. They are trying and waiting to see if they can trust you to not allow someone to hijack the church service that they want to be a part of and that they want to invite their friends to. If they can trust you, THEN they will invite their friends.

A final statement that ties all of these thoughts together so well: Your greatest strength (loving people) can also be your biggest weakness (people pleasing). If you love people so much that you are overly concerned with pleasing them and not ruffling any feathers, your ministry and your life WILL suffer for it.

• The Holy Spirit wants us to do a lot more than speak in tongues!
• The Holy Spirit is not weird, people are weird! And ‘those’ people will go from church to church being used by the enemy and will destroy the church with their (the insistence of the usage of their pet- my addition) bizarre gift.
• Church’s often don’t grow because their pastor’s vision has been hijacked (by the people mentioned above).
• Just because you (the pastor/church) know how to do every spiritual gift doesn’t mean that you have to ‘do’ them every Sunday morning when the lost are there to hear of the grace of God.
• People want to come to church and find out about Christ but they don’t/can’t because they can’t find a ‘life-giving’ church (where Christ and His new life is focused on in services over the showing off of Spiritual gifts- my further explanation).

2.Your congregation is aging

3.The unsaved are not there

4. Staff or Volunteers have ‘staff’ infection : not motivated, stuck in the same place

5. Even the pastor (s) don’t want to invite people to their church

6. When you’re (the pastor) hoping to get a lot of outside speaking gigs

7. When your city/neighborhood doesn’t know you’re there

8. Pastor appreciation crowd is bigger than your Easter crowd

9. When the the un-influential (in the world) are your most influential  (in your church)

10. When your flaky people are in control

“Am I giving them (people that visit/attend your church) something they would come back for?”

“More importantly; am I giving them something they would bring their friends back to?”

Not knowing your destination is worse than being lost.