Best Pastors To Listen To

Who are the best pastors to listen to? That’s it. That’s what you’re searching for. I’m Joel Fieri. I’m going to give you my answer. Stay tuned.

Like as I said in the intro the question comes to us. Who are the best pastors to listen to? When I first saw that question, I assume it means which online pastors should I be listening to because that’s pretty much the stream we all swim in. I don’t quite swim in the depth of most online pastors, but it’s the same stream. So if you’ve listened to me at all, you would probably know the pastors I like, and I could give them to you, Voddie Baucham, Paul Washer. I like John MacArthur. If that answers your question, that’s fine, but I’m going to take it a little bit deeper, and a little bit different track to answer this question. And I want to do it by telling you my personal story of how I decided recently who I was going to listen to, which pastors I was going to listen to. As of this taping we’re coming out of, hopefully, we’re coming out of a two year trial period for not only the church, but society as a whole, the pandemic, lockdown, shutdowns, mandates, church closures. I don’t have to tell you about it.

And the story of how my wife and I, our journey through this is what I want to tell you. I want to put it in terms of what I call a tale of two churches and a tale of essentially two pastors. So we’re talking about which pastors to listen to. I want to use them as an example. Both pastors, I’ll be right up front, I respect immensely. They’re good men, good godly men, they have great churches, but the church we were attending at the beginning of the pandemic, like I said, a very dynamic church, like most other churches at the very beginning when everything was shutting down when we had two weeks to flatten that curve, you remember that? They took the mindset and the argument of Romans 13, obey the governing authorities. The governing authorities are set up by God and we’re supposed to be under their authority. So like most everybody else, they shut their church down.

Now at the beginning, I couldn’t really argue with the Romans 13 argument, but I was like, “They’re telling us to shut our church down, and that sounds an awful lot like going against a command of God,” which is the other argument that has emerged in this whole time period of Acts 5 where the disciples and the apostles when they were persecuted for preaching in Jerusalem said, “We obey God, not man. Do whatever you want.” So this church, understandably, for the first few weeks decided they were going to close down. They were going to love their community, and they were going to do everything they could to make sure that their community was safe, and this virus got under control. Couldn’t blame them. So having a very strong online presence that’s the way they went.

And my family and I, my wife and I watched online church for a few weeks until we realized this isn’t gathering together. This isn’t church. We both had been going to church most of our lives, and this really wasn’t making it. Online church is not the same as gathering with believers. About that time we heard of some other churches in the area that were opening up. They were outside services. So we started going to some churches that had some outside services. Our original church still wasn’t opened up. And then we heard of a church that was having an indoor service locally in the area. And we decided to go there. And they were, they were indoors. They were taking all kinds of precautions. They had fog machines, social distancing, all that kind of stuff, shorter services. And we decided to go to this church and it was really a blessing to be in this church. God was really moving. They were really excited to be together meeting as believers. The spirit was obviously moving in this church, but we were still in touch with our original church.

We still loved our original church and we wanted to stay in touch online, so we kept listening to the sermons. And at one point, the pastor of this church was under some pressure to reopen because it was obvious that it was way past two weeks to slow the spread. And the old argument of obeying governing authorities it was quickly becoming obvious that it was now becoming a matter of obeying God and not man and not forsaking assembling together. So we watched a sermon that he did and he got up and said, and this is pretty much what he said, he said, “We have talked to local authorities. We’ve talked to city officials. We’ve talked to health officials. We’ve talked to the police. We’ve talked to mental health experts, all these community leaders. And we’ve decided that this virus pandemic is too much. We have to stay closed until they get this virus under control.” So they decided they were going to stay closed.

The other church we went to shortly after that they were open and they were under pressure to close. The pastor there people were telling him, “Why are you open when this pandemic is so bad?” So he was facing the opposite pressure. He got up one Sunday and said this, and this is true. He said, “I want to tell you the reason why we’re open now.” He said, “We have talked to city officials. We’ve talked to health officials, mental health experts, the police, all kinds of people in our community. And we have decided that these lockdowns are so harmful to people spiritually, emotionally, physically, psychologically.” He said, “We have to be open.” And right there, I realized the divide of biblical worldviews. The divide that this time of trial and stress in the church has created.

There are pastors and churches who will lead out of fear. And there are those who lead out of obedience. And, again, as I said as much as I love that first church, the church leadership and the pastor, especially, were leading out of fear and letting the governing authorities tell them to do something that God had, let’s face it, commanded us never to do. He said, “Do not forsake the assembling of the saints, assembling together as some are in the habit of doing.”

And then there was this other church with this other pastor who was saying, “The church has the answer to what is hurting people now. This lockdown, this pandemic is hurting people. It’s causing all kinds of damage in our community. I’ve always maintained, and you can make a very good argument that the shutdowns and the lockdowns had every bit as bad an effect on society as the virus itself.” So he said, “We’re the church. We have the gospel. We have what people are looking for. We have no choice. We have to be open. We have to be obedient to God and stay open.”

So, what has that got to do with the original question of who are the best pastors to listen to? Well, I have two answers based on what I just said. The first answer is the best pastor for you to listen to is a local pastor of a local church that’s meeting together. Now most churches, I think now, or a good number of churches now, many more are open and have gotten past all the lockdown requirements, so you can find a church that’s open now. Try and find a church that wasn’t shut down for most of the time, for most of the last two years. Find one that was leading out of obedience. Find a pastor who was preaching the gospel while his church was open and telling people, “We will not live in fear. We will obey God and not man.”

Now if you find a church that was closed, like this first church, and I have to say, like I said, it’s still a very dynamic church. And from what I hear it is now open and they are trying to go the other way with things. And they’re very unlikely to get sucked into the lockdown thing again, so that’s good. So find a church that has either learned its lesson and is going to be open and not going to lead and preach in fear, or find one that has all along been open and preaching the gospel obedient to God without fear. Those are the best churches to go to, and those are the best pastors to listen to. That was my experience. It was a blessing to me. I think it will be a blessing to you.

I’m Joel Fieri. This is Christian Podcast Central. If you liked this video, please hit the like button down below. Share it with someone else. There’s a share button right down there. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. And as I always say, go to christianpodcastcentral.com. There’s all kinds of good content just like this. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening.