This Thing Was Not Done In A Corner!
There is a scene that I will never forget from my junior high school years in the 1960s. We had just moved in the middle of the school year to Akron, Ohio, 1,500 miles from my childhood region and home. We came from Gladewater, Texas, where my father preached for about five years but was now the new preacher for the Thayer St. church of Christ. Gladewater at that time was a very small town and (still is!) one with Southern manners, genteel people, mostly good citizens and had orderly schools. In great contrast, Akron was a large northern industrial city, bustling with shift workers who were mostly second generation Italian, Polish and Irish and all very Catholic. Close to scenic Lake Erie the land would have been a winter-wonder-land except that the numerous tire plants belched out vast amounts of grimy black soot that settled on top of snow that often was over three feet deep. The landscape became a uniform colorless gray with melting snow in the spring that was so dirty it looked sort of like molten lead. The one bright spot to us was the church, which had about 200 souls then and among them some of the finest I have ever known.
My first day at school was in January a week or so after New Years. I was escorted to my homeroom by someone in the school administration and after sort of being shoved inside, the door was unceremoniously shut behind me. To me the scene within the room was unimaginable chaos. This was something as alien to me as anything could be because I had never seen anything in my schools but orderliness. To me school was synonymous with order. Inside this classroom were at least thirty kids, my age, about thirteen, and nearly all of them were milling around talking, arguing, pushing and shoving, yelling: it was unbelievable! The desks were turned in every direction. As I made my way over to the teachers desk in the front corner of the room a blackboard eraser flew an inch or so in front of my face and hit the wall. Unimaginably, no authority figure took notice of this action. The frumpy and tormented looking teacher had about five or six students at their desks pulled up close to her and was attempting to teach this small fraction of the class but had completely given up on the hooligans who made up the rest of her class. This small number was getting at least some instruction in Algebra and the rest were left out. The teacher had completely lost control of the others and had given up on them. She did not care for me because I was new and preemptorily told me to take a seat. That was the last time she spoke to me that year if memory serves correctly. I greatly suffered in my math studies because she was not teaching the whole class but only this chosen few over in the corner.
This experience taught me something about teaching in general that has stayed with me to this very day.
Maybe this is why the apostle Pauls words to Festus especially ring in my ears. Acts 26:25-26, But he said, "I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak the words of truth and reason. "For the king, before whom I also speak freely, knows these things; for I am convinced that none of these things escapes his attention, since this thing was not done in a corner. What Paul is saying is that Jesus life, His ministry and the gospel were well known to Festus even before Paul speaks to him here. This thing was not done in a corner! This is saying, these matters were not secret or hidden in some corner. Festus cannot feign ignorance or that Paul is crazy or any other reason. Festus has full knowledge of what Jesus Christ and Him crucified is all about. Knowing this always brings about the responsibility to obey.
Though I have been a Christian since the age of eleven and a preacher for many years, I can still be amazed at the attitudes of some of my brethren. From my stand point think about this: In their presence I may preach hundreds of sermons. Over time I will teach many Bible classes of both expository and topical nature in which they participate wholeheartedly. We will spend much time together socially as well and they will get to know me personally and the moral and spiritual standards I try to keep. They learn that virtually all of my extended family for many generations back have been Christians and what this must mean to my outlook on day to day living. And yet after all of this, I am still amazed when these who have become close friends will be hurt and sometimes very angry when I will not go along with them in the sins they insist on committing.
It is a common practice of many, many preachers I know to not get especially close to the local members. I well understand this. Why? Because preachers, though absolutely as fallible as anyone else, must ponder the word of God constantly to preach it and teach it as they are expected to do in their work. This usually makes each one more aware of the reality of the Lord and how serious spiritual matters really are (Heb. 12:28-29, ...we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. ). This may have the effect of making the local preacher seem a little brittle in social settings and prone to get serious or take exception easily when others wish to stay lighthearted. If he becomes too close to individuals in the local church, these may place pressure, without even meaning to sometimes, upon the loyalties of this man who is serving as a defender of the Word of God. He fully knows the gravity of what an oracle of God is. The realization of this makes him fundamentally different than most other brethren. Not necessarily better, just different. Experience with brethren shows him he may have to part with such affections over obedience to the word and this is too painful to do very many times.
I may understand this attitude and behavior but I have not personally heeded it. As a result of this I have been close friends with Christians whom I thought knew me well who would then do something like go out and do a silly thing like buying lottery tickets and then when others bring to their attention what they did as being wrong, these have expected me to look the other way, or to defend them and either ignore the wrong doing or right out let them get away with it without the need for repentance even being mentioned.
After preaching many sermons on moral issues and including a large amount on, for instance, what modest apparel and immodest apparel happen to be according to Scripture, they then either wear ungodly clothing in public or allow their children over the age of accountability to wear short skirts and other revealing and sinful clothing. Their sin exposed, these will then reveal the shallowness of their faith with some tired old remark like how short is short or going further with their sins everyone occasionally has a drink in private or well everyone sees R-rated movies and classic remarks like, well who doesn’t like to boot-scoot-and-boogie?
Then comes to mind, these things were not done in a corner; You know something? I know I preached on these subjects clearly and publicly and often from the pulpit for all to hear. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think I am a schizophrenic Or did they simply put me down as double-minded, or play-acting? That’s just what preachers say. He doesn’t mean it! They have to say that kind of stuff! Oh, really?
Well, for whatever reasons they go ahead and without regard to God’s word they do what they do. For the sake of a good time, to seek popularity or to belong to some social group or whatever, they just really wanted to do it! If good old Marc doesn’t like it, so what? He didn’t really mean all that stuff he preaches, anyway!
Not only have they not been paying close attention to the sincerity of my words, they do not grasp where my allegiance really rests. To put this in terms anyone can understand, I believe the main thing they have not thought about or they forget is that, after all, I don’t work for them. That’s right, I don’t work for them! If I did then they would own me. It is true. I don’t work for them. I work for Jesus Christ. With full knowledge that I belong to Him only I realize certain things apply directly to me. 1 Tim. 6:11-12, But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I am the servant or employee of Jesus Christ and no other. Not any church or eldership is authorized to handle me like I work for them to the exclusion of the Lord. I may (humbly and thankfully) receive financial support from the local church where they are members but that does not make me the employee of the local church except for the sake of some tax forms. If it is otherwise, the words of preachers are worth nothing. Why do I say that? Because then, we preachers can be compromised by brethren who choose to manipulate us with money!
This metaphor may have limited application but the members of the local church can think of me as a company man if they want to. I work for the corporate head. I can be counted on to give the company line on everything. I am not in the role of local preacher to fill some denominational concept as the local pastor, or to head up a sort of glee club to make the local church a warm and fuzzy feel-good kind of place. I am not the resident master of ceremonies for any social event. Nor am I to make them happy in unspiritual ways or to fulfill them somehow or to be a scapegoat or a whipping boy. If I from time to time fulfill any of these and I guess at one time or other I have fulfilled all of them, it is only incidental but not my mission. I work for Jesus Christ and must please Him and Him alone.
From time to time I will get close to various fellow Christians and this is only natural. Preachers should not be in this work if they don’t love people. But no matter how close I become to others, our friendship if tested by them may disappoint them. They may force me to choose between my Lord and them. If so, they are going to lose every single time. I may shed tears, and have, over the loss of such friendships and be truly broken-hearted over this to the actual detriment of my own health but my choice will always be Him.
These may not listen to my teaching from God’s word or take it seriously but I know one thing for certain. I always know that the Lord never fails to listen to me. No matter how many amusing stories or jokes I may tell in the pulpit to tickle the ears of my listeners, He takes me seriously every time! I am not really accountable to the ear-tickled listeners even if they think I am a true scholar and a gentleman. I am accountable to Him alone for what I preach. So that the Bride of Christ, the church, can remain pure, this must be.
Those who have been shocked by my apparent consistency to what I preach must finally realize where my real loyalties lie. I, as most faithful preachers, highly revere what is taught in 2 Timothy 4:2, Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. After all, this is all there really is to being a preacher. Of course, there is a price required if the preacher adheres to this, but, oh, what a reward awaits! Aren’t all gospel preachers the same?
Sincerely, I can still say, this thing was not done in a corner!