Matthew Stuckey here from Verity Baptist Church Manila and Verity Baptist Church Pampanga.
And I wanted to make a quick video talking to you about loyalty to pastor, loyalty to
pastor.
Now, when I talk about loyalty to pastor or loyalty to your church leader, overall I think
that's a good thing.
I do believe that you should be loyal to your pastor and loyal to your church leader, loyal
to your church.
But there are some limits to that.
Here in the Philippines, there's this cult-like mentality with the Baptist churches, and they're
training them at a young age that you need to be loyal to your pastor no matter what.
And what you see in the Philippines is there's a lot of pastors that have committed adultery
on their wives several times, and it's known, and yet they're still the pastors of those
churches and people are taught it would be wrong for you and a sin for you to leave that
church.
They say, well, he was still ordained by God, even David made mistakes in the Bible, he's
the one who's chosen by God, he's ordained by God, and just because he makes mistakes
doesn't give you a right to leave that church.
And they basically say, well, he's done so much for you in his life.
He's taught you, he's trained you.
Even though he's committed adultery on his wife, even though it's a big scandal, even
though his kids are a bunch of homosexuals, even though that he's an extremely worldly
or ungodly or wicked person, you have to stay loyal to that church.
And this is the cult-like mentality taught in the Philippines.
Now, not only that, but a lot of these churches, the pastors teach repentance of sins for salvation.
Almost every Baptist church teaches that, and almost every single one is our five-point
tool of believers, Calvinism believers, they believe in those doctrines.
And so there are a bunch of heretics and so many people at our church, before they came
to Verity Baptist Manila, before it existed, and then even also after we had already started,
people have left Baptist churches that taught those things, whose pastors committed adultery,
whose pastors taught repentance of sins for salvation, whose pastors were five-point Calvinists,
and they left those churches to come to our church.
And whenever they do that, those pastors in those churches always try to make them feel
guilty about coming to our church.
They accuse us of being sheep stealers, which I think is a stupid accusation, because I
never try and I never message people and say, hey, start coming to our church.
But they'll accuse us of being sheep stealers, and they'll tell those members basically that
they're not right with God, they need to be loyal, and they make them feel guilty and
not right with God.
And basically they do that, and it's this cult-like mentality of being loyal to your
pastor no matter what.
Now I believe in general in being loyal to your pastor, that even if he preaches something
wrong from time to time that is not major heresy, or even if he makes some mistakes,
even if he has a bad attitude, I believe you should be loyal if it's a good church that's
teaching the truth.
But when you're talking about these Baptist churches in the Philippines, it's very rare
to find pastors who go soul wedding.
And oftentimes with these pastors, these pastors are not even married, they don't have kids,
and then when people leave to go to a real church, they say, well, you gotta be loyal
to your pastor no matter what.
Now this has been kind of on my mind recently, because just in the past couple weeks, there
have been several different accusations given to our church from various sources I heard
from, different situations of us being sheep stealers, because people have left their churches
to come to our church.
Look, it's not my fault that their church teaches repentance of sins for salvation,
and you say, Brother Stuckey, do you feel guilty about these people coming to your church?
Do you think they should just be loyal to their pastor?
Well, absolutely not.
You have to understand that in the Bible, yes, the concept of being loyal is there,
but you have to understand that there's requirements for being a pastor.
First off, people have to meet those requirements, they need to be saved, they need to be married
with multiple kids, but even after that, there's requirements to still be ordained as a pastor.
And if people break that, and people commit adultery, and people do these wicked things,
and people are not saved, or if pastors or church leaders are not feeding the people,
because that's one of the big requirements, and why even the Bible says that they were
worthy of getting paid, is the fact that they were actually teaching the people.
And in a lot of these churches, people are learning nothing.
So look, even if there was a church here in the Philippines, right nearby us, whose pastor
was saved, but if he didn't go soul winning, and he never actually taught anything, and
you never learned at that church, I don't think you should be loyal and just stick at
that church no matter what.
And I've been in that situation before with Baptist churches where the pastor was saved,
he wasn't a bad guy, but he wasn't really teaching anything.
And so I made the choice to go to a church where I was actually learning, because if
you're not being fed, and you're not being taught, you're going to basically kind of
die out in your zeal for God.
And you know, I didn't want to make that mistake with myself personally, with my family.
So I said, I want to be somewhere where I'm being taught the Word of God, and I'm being
fed.
And so this idea of loyalty to pastor, or loyalty to your church leader, or to your
church, hey, you know, it's a good idea.
It makes sense.
And I agree with it to a certain degree.
But look, if the pastor of the church is failing you and not doing their job, you're not required
or obligated to stick in that church, and you should not feel guilty if you leave that
church.
In fact, you should leave that church if they're not doing what they're supposed to, and there's
a good church close by.
Thank you, and God bless.