When Majoring On The Majors Becomes A Major Problem

I’m a big believer in majoring on the majors.

For a local church, majoring on the majors means loving God and people and faithful obedience to the Bible while we’re pursuing our one God-given mission of making disciples.

For a denomination, majoring on the majors probably means helping its churches to be what I just described.

Another popular way of expressing this passion for staying focused is “keeping the main thing, the main thing.”

Amen. I’m all for it. Entire denominations are committed to it. Good for them.

But consider these questions:

• When has a minor issue become a major issue?
• When do we have to address this formerly minor issue?
• When does a minor issue become an elephant in the room which threatens to injure people and damage property?
• When must we take a position on an issue on which we’ve merely had a tradition or occupied a position?

Now consider these examples:

(1) King David tried to pretty much ignore the presence of his trouble-making son, Absolom, in Jerusalem (II Samuel 14,15). They had reconciled on only a superficial level and Absolom was quietly building a following of those loyal to himself. You know what happened.

(2) In a church where I served as senior pastor, I once led a change effort which went over poorly with a number of people. They were talking amongst themselves and I tried to avoid it – as a minor distraction – until it became a major   I’d love to have a “do-over” on that one.

(3) For several decades, thousands of American churches were divided over the “traditional” vs. “contemporary” music debate. Some churches addressed it bravely and carefully. Many churches ignored the issue until they divided into two congregations.

(4) More recently, many evangelical churches have been disturbed, distracted and divided (I’ll return to these three words below) over issues such as: The MAGA movement vs. Progressivism in the political realm, the details concerning the return of Christ in our eschatology, and the roles of men and women (complementarianism vs. egalitarianism) in our polity.

Let’s zero in on these three (just above). In our zeal to keep the main thing the main thing and major on the majors, many churches and denominations have tried to play down or even ignore these issues:

“They’re minor issues,” some are saying.

“They’re not in our doctrinal statement for a reason,” others are saying.

“We’ve always left these matters to our individual churches,” some have commented.

“We expect our people (or churches) to be able to disagree agreeably on these matters,” we typically tell ourselves.

I get it.  Those statements seem reasonable.  But here’s the problem:

It’s not a minor matter for the congregation’s or denomination’s leaders if a minor matter becomes a major matter to a substantial number of the followers. If a minor matter is ignored, it can spiral quickly into a major matter. Like an untreated infection, a threatening dog on the other side of a flimsy fence or an untended “idiot light” on the dashboard, if you don’t deal decisively with these matters, they just might deal decisively with you.

As mentioned above, and as I’ve written about before, an elephant in the room can be very dangerous.

It’s easy to say that “We’re not taking a position on this today because we’ve never taken an issue on it in the past; we’ve always left it up to our people” (or “we’ve always left it up to our churches”).

But if we didn’t take an issue on it in the past, it’s probably because it wasn’t an issue in the past. (Think about our illustrations: politics, polity and eschatology, none of which were issues for several denominations just a few decades ago.)

Now that these have become divisive matters, they are problems for our people and our churches, and as their leaders, if we offer no guidance, we’re pushing these matters down into their laps; we’re leaving our sheep with intractable, complex problems with no option of saying, “While it’s not in our official statement of faith, in our denomination, we do it this way.”

A denomination which didn’t take a position in the past on what were non-issues then and what are big issues now is functionally much broader than it was in the past; broader than many of our people would opt for. Having not voted for the change, they vote with their feet.

If our people are changing, our churches are changing; if our churches are changing, our denominations are changing. We can say that we haven’t changed, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that we have.

In our defense, we’ve dealt with some of these “new and uninvited issues” quite well in the not- too-distant past:

• Abortion and the related sanctity of life issues (infanticide, euthanasia, etc.) weren’t mentioned in our paperwork until at least the 1970’s. But we’ve tackled these matters Biblically and added material to our statements of faith or other church documents accordingly – and it didn’t destroy our churches to do so.
• Homosexuality and transvestitism weren’t in our doctrinal statements either, but we, similarly, brought clarity and unity to our churches by dealing with these matters Biblically and carefully.

I think we can and should take heart from this, and speaking of the past, think about how well the early church tackled the new and uninvited issue of legalism in Acts 15. They met, prayed, talked, wrote a position paper, distributed it broadly and boldly and dispensed with the issue at hand quite nicely. With the Holy Spirit’s help we can do the same.

As I wring my hands over the controversies mentioned under # (4) above, I often think of how difficult it must have been for churches in the past facing the divisions created by crises such as: the revolutionary movement in the thirteen American colonies, the expansion of slavery in the American border states in the 1850’s, the demand for loyalty to the fascists and fascism in 1930’s Germany. And we think we have unity problems!

Pulling this all together, here’s what I’m suggesting: If a minor issue is disturbing, distracting or dividing your church or denomination, you – as leaders – should probably deal with it before it destroys your ministry. It will not do to say, “We have never taken a position on this so we’re not going to now.”

History suggests that leaders who choose that type of response may well find themselves presiding over a substantially diminished church or denomination.

History also suggests that church or denominational leaders who face divisive issues with humility, grace, and submission to the Scriptures, are likely to reassure their followers and strengthen their ministries.