There is so much in the Word about making sure you are not around the company of fools. Proverbs 14.7 says “Leave the presence of a foolish man which you perceive not in him lips of knowledge”. If you are around someone and you suddenly see they have no knowledge, leave. This is not good advice, this is an eternal Biblical principle that if you do not follow, you will always end up in a bad place.
One of the hallmarks of our society, and sadly it is reflected in the church, is people are moving their lips when they have no knowledge. It is a form of arrogance. For example, people who have never planted a church will tell me pages of information on how to plant a church. I know Bible College students or recent graduates who think they have a divine right to tell pastors how to pastor, or become the pastors of pastors. It’s foolishness!
Another thing that is foolish is to assume when you join a ministry you are a peer with everyone in that ministry. Now I know we are all humans, and all equally loved by God – and I know that good ideas can come from anywhere in a company or church, but if I employ a pastor, I am the employer and they are the employee.
We had a very sad story of foolish, where we appointed a couple to pastor a church who turned out to be fools. I planted the church, I travelled six hour round trips over and over, I made disciples in the church, I gathered people, I started a small group. And then I appointed this couple as pastors. But the second they became pastors (or maybe earlier) they presumed they were equal to or greater than me at church planting, even though I planted my first church 26 years ago, and they have never been in ministry before.
The first sign of foolishness was a confidence in their flesh and a lack of humility. During a meal with them, just before they took on the church, they said “You know this church will grow bigger than Dagenham in about a year”, I said “you seem very confident”, and they said “of course it will, we are better than you, we are kinder than you”. I didn’t say anything, as I know there is an exuberance and immaturity when people first start something, but it turned out to be much more than that, it turned out to be foolishness.
If I had known it was foolishness I would not have appointed them as pastors (Proverbs 24.7 says wisdom is too high for a fool, and a fool should not open his mouth in the gate. The gate is a reference to speaking with authority as an elder or leader in a city. Fools should never be made leaders or given influence over others!). But at the time I didn’t, I thought it was just immaturity, and of course new leaders are immature, so I let it pass, after a few months dealing with reality, that tends to mature people quickly.
Now, as they started ministering, as I do with all our pastors, I will tell them how to do certain things, and it turned out they were not listening, but doing things “their” way. You do not get to do things your way if you are working for another! Not in business or ministry. Now I am seeing a lack of teachability, a lack of openness to wisdom and experience, I am starting to realize I am dealing with fools. Proverbs 23.9 says that “do not even speak in the ears of a fool, as fools despise words with wisdom in”. That certainly was playing out before me.
Then, this couple stopped going to our pastors’ meetings, they missed our conferences, always with excuses that seemed legitimate, but they were only ever too busy to listen and learn, they were never too busy to minister and do. That again is foolish, so now they are all talk and no listening to others. Ecclesiastes 5.3 says a fool’s voice is known by many words, Ecclesiastes 5.1 says that a fool does not consider he is doing evil. I had a conference with pastors who between them (including me) had over one hundred years of pastoring experience, all of it fruitful. They did not go.
So, now it was evident. In addition, some people in the church had been the subject of temper tantrums from this couple. The one thing they presumed they had was that they were more loving and kind than anyone, and it turned out that was not true. I had made a mistake, and according to Proverbs 26.8, if you give honour to a fool, you are putting a stone in a sling. By appointing them as pastors, I was now responsible for them, and they were a stone in a sling and could be aimed at anyone. They falsely accused someone in the church of something they did not do. They did not know that I knew the person for many years, and did not realize I knew they were lying to me.
So, now I have to confront them. It’s not good to confront fools. It’s not easy. A stone is heavy, the sand is weighty, but the wrath of a fool is heavier than them both! (Proverbs 27.3). When you correct a fool, you will always face a temper tantrum. They never respond well to correction or leadership. Proverbs says that you are better off meeting a bear robbed of her cubs than deal with the foolishness of a fool (Proverbs 17.2). It also says that you will not have peace if you deal with a fool (Proverbs 29.9).
It went exactly how you might think it went, badly. I calmly and kindly explained that they need to be in our pastor’s meetings, they needed to listen to me preach at least once a week, and they needed to come to our conferences, at least two a year. If they were not prepared to do this, we would not be giving them a place to preach and minister. Now, you may think this should have been said beforehand to them, and the boundaries made very clear. I absolutely agree. But up until this moment, I had never known any of our pastors not fight down the world to be in our conferences. All our pastors listened to me every chance they had. They loved being in Tree of Life, and they loved my voice and they loved the wisdom and grace God had given me. We never saw a need to codify what people were doing anyway! This was before I had to deal with a pastor who asked if they could use the Tree of Life name but just do what they wanted. This was before I had to deal with worship leaders who wanted to come and lead worship and get paid, but leave after the worship, and not go to any meetings, or listen to God’s Word, or doing anything with the church unless they had a platform or ever be told what songs to sing or what to do in the services. This was really my first encounter with foolishness.
Another truth about fools, and really, this is the lesson I learned through this situation was this: “It is senseless to pay to educate a fool, since he has no heart for learning” (Proverbs 17.16). For me, and for every other pastor I had appointed since then, the only problem was not knowing enough. So the more we learned, the more the Word was put in front of us, the more good, experienced pastors were put in front of us, the better we did. Now we had a couple who refused to get in front of wisdom and when they were forced, didn’t learn anything or care for it.
Now after this situation, this is still my number one way of recognizing a fool: they do not learn. They just are not growing. They miss church on Sunday, and you ask “did you listen to the recording in the week”, and they do not just shake their head, they look at you as if you are insane by suggesting they need to hear a sermon. I had one person tell me “I am the smartest person in Tree of LIfe, everyone else is stupid, why would I ever listen to any of the pastors in this church”. Later in that conversation he raised his fists at me, so I am not sure that man was that smart.
Teachability is an essential start to wisdom. If you cannot see that, if you see someone pontificating about things they clearly have never experienced, they are a fool. When someone who was given a church of 100 and they took it to 50 tries to explain church growth to me, that’s a fool. When someone “doesn’t do conferences”, “doesn’t do listening online”, “doesn’t do small groups”, then you are dealing with a fool. When someone is never too busy to preach or lead worship, but is too busy to listen and be part of the congregation, you are dealing with a fool. When someone is not involved in some level of self-development you are dealing with a fool.
And the couple lost their temper, I got some very nasty voicemails, and was told they will run the church their way, the way they wanted and there was nothing I could do about it. I was attacked verbally, my wife was insulted (fools always seem to come at family) and they started gossiping about me. They even mocked a death in my family, saying it was really not a big deal. Fools always want others in their foolishness, they want others to share their offense, they want their offense to turn into a mob of offended people leaving the church, rather than ever deal with the offense.
Now when that happens the temptation is to come down to the level of the fool and argue with them, but the Word is clear – Answer not a fool in foolishness, or else you will become like him (Proverbs 26.4). I just plainly explained the Scriptures and why it was impossible for them to continue as pastors, I even created an off-ramp for them, and an opportunity to come back. I did everything I could to treat them with honour and dignity. They told me they would stay at the church a few more weeks and resign when they wanted, not in my time.
Proverbs tells us that “the legs of the lame are not equal, nor is a parable in the mouth of fools” (Proverbs 26.7). Fools think they are giving divine wisdom in parables and principles, but it’s just more and more foolishness. They thought their resigning and working out a month’s notice was honourable, but it wasn’t, it was just more sharing of foolishness. I had to go up there myself, and take back that church.
Now the story ended well, we now have a pastor there who is very teachable, we now have a thriving and growing church. The couple tried to persuade a few people to leave our church by lying and meddling with people (Proverbs 10.18 says that he who hides hatred with lying lips is a fool. Proverbs 20.3 says that it is an honour to cease from strife, but every fool will be meddling. There’s another way to perceive a fool, they get involved in situations they have no business being in. Pastors – that deacon in charge of one department who is sticking his oar into other departments, that man is a fool) but thankfully the majority of our church are rather wise and didn’t listen. Before they left the church, I gave them a large sum of money to bless them. They used that money to travel around the country telling people how evil I am. That’s foolish.
But now we are separated from the fool and we are doing well. Imagine if I had kept them in place, imagine if I was scared to confront a fool because I was scared of their temper, or their lies, or their influence. Imagine I decided to ignore the Bible and just for the sake of a peace that was no peace stay the companion of fools. I think that the whole Tree of Life would be infected by now, and it would be dying.
I do not beat myself up for not seeing it earlier. I am still growing and learning myself. Also, the Bible tells us not to harvest things too early, and sometimes things have to harvest before you can definitely tell what kind of crop they are. But if there is foolishness around you, if you do not deal with it, there will always be trouble. The Bible tells us that the father of a fool has no joy (Proverbs 17.21). Now, if your son is a fool, that does bring sadness, but also this is referring to people you raise up in ministry. If they are foolish, you are going to be constantly putting out fires.
Do not try and live a life apart from Biblical principles. Just because we are in a culture in the 21st century that celebrates fools, that honours them, does not mean we have to. We do not celebrate people losing their temper and giving them what for. That’s not godly. We do not celebrate people who get offended at church and stop going. They are not heroes, they are fools. We do not honour people who only want the platform of the church as misunderstood, they are fools.
Selah.
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