Guest Speakers Gone Wild
A lot of first-time church visitors don’t pay much attention to guest speakers for various reasons:
- It doesn’t tell them much about the regular pastor
- The service flow and timing can be quite different than normal
- There may also be a guest worship team
- The visit may not benefit them in determining much about the church
The bottom line is that visitors usually need to attend a 2nd week to really learn anything useful about what a normal Sunday is like. Most people just won’t even bother to try again; first impressions and all that.
However, I believe that guest speakers can be very beneficial for church visitors (and even regular attenders). They have certainly been helpful to me. This past week, for the 2nd time in as many years, I walked out on a church service because of the guest speaker. Each time I was a relatively new visitor to the church. Both times were my last visit to that church. These speakers saved me a lot of time. Here’s why…
Guest Speakers Often Express Leadership’s Unspoken Beliefs
Most churches don’t dictate to their guest speakers what they can or cannot talk about. But leaders usually have a pretty good idea what the guest speaker will discuss. By inviting a particular speaker and allowing them to speak freely, the church is sanctioning the teaching taking place from their pulpit. This has been key for me. In both instances mentioned above, the guest speaker dished out ridiculous counter-biblical teaching to the congregation that I had not heard a pastor or elder previously mention. For as long as I could, I stayed, stomach churning, waiting for a pastor/elder to step up and end the heresy that was being spewed forth. Both times, the leadership did nothing, except clap and encourage them on. This quickly confirmed for me I would not be attending that church again.
Friends have said “but it wasn’t the pastor”, “you can’t judge them by a guest speaker”, “what were they suppose to do about it”. However, on both occasions eldership was present, encouraging the teachings. If they did in fact not condone the teaching and instead believe as I did, that the speaker was feeding poison to the sheep, then by their inaction they were complicit in that poisoning and grossly delinquent in the responsibility God has given them for that congregation. Either way, it was not a church whose authority I was willing to be under.
So what should a leader do if his guest speaker is doing violence to the scripture in his church? End It! It doesn’t have to be a production, he just needs to simply walk up to the speaker, thank them for their time and take over the teaching. I’ve never seen it happen, but have heard of a few situations where responsible pastors have done just that.
Let us not overreact
Of course, not every word out of a guest speaker’s mouth is accepted by the local church as “the way”. Nor should we go overboard and not allow guest speakers. Guest speakers can be quite beneficial in providing unique perspectives and bringing needed relief to a teaching pastor’s schedule. Talking about non-essential differences in ministry and method are not cause for calamity. The issue arises exclusively when a guest speaker teaches falsehood. For we must “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” and not allow anyone to teach different doctrine within the church.
This latest situation just further reinforces for me the absolute necessity of diligence in determining a local church’s doctrine and ministry practices. I am so thankful to God for these two occasions because it brought awareness to me about hidden beliefs within each church and likely saved me from weeks of ignorant and harmful attendance.
Comments
4 Responses to “Guest Speakers Gone Wild”
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I am currious to know what the heresy you speak of was. It seems that you are very emotionally charged in your comments and obviously feel that The Gospel was miss-communicated, but it would help me to see your point if I knew what was said. thanks
i think it’s unfair to assume that guest speakers say crazy things and the leaders affirm the guests because these are the secretly held beliefs of the leadership. there are a lot of other reasons for an occasion like this. (granted poor reasons) but reasons other than complete (secret) affirmation.
> Eric: Thanks for the comments. Don’t want to get into deep specifics, but I’ll email you.
> Sam: Thank you for your feedback. There could indeed be other (poor) reasons as you said. For example, the leader just may not recognize the danger or be too weak to stand up to it. Both very scary other considerations.
I attended a church a couple decades ago where the pastor was on the board of directors of a Bible college. He frequently opened his pulpit to these students. Sometimes the students would said or did some fairly off-the-wall things, but most of us realized they were students and extended a little grace to them for their gaffs.