What If I Disagree with My Pastor?
1) Direct answer
Stay with the Word, keep your spirit right, and handle it in God’s order. Pray, search the Scriptures, speak to your pastor privately with an open Bible, and seek peace. If it’s only preference, submit and keep unity. If it is clear doctrine or practice against the Bible and he will not receive the Word, obey God rather than men and step away quietly without causing strife.
2) Scriptural explanation
- Test everything by Scripture: The Bereans “searched the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11). “Try the spirits” (1 John 4:1). If any preach another gospel, “let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8–9).
- Respect the office and approach rightly: “Obey them that have the rule over you” as they watch for your souls (Hebrews 13:17). “Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father” (1 Timothy 5:1). Don’t receive accusations lightly—“before two or three witnesses” (1 Timothy 5:19).
- Handle it in order: Go to him “between thee and him alone” first (Matthew 18:15). If needed, take witnesses, then the church (Matthew 18:16–17). “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40).
- Keep unity when it’s not sin or false doctrine: “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).
- Separate if the Word is rejected: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). “Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine…and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). “A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject” (Titus 3:10). “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3).
3) Simple clarifying logic
- God sets pastors to feed the flock, but the Bible is the absolute. A true shepherd points you to the Word, not away from it.
- If your disagreement is about taste, timing, or non-essential procedure, lay down your preference and keep peace.
- If the issue is clear Scripture—who will you follow, a man or the Word? If a leader asks you to do or believe what the Bible denies, your loyalty belongs to Christ.
- Don’t gossip, don’t rally people, don’t split the church. Speak face to face, with Scripture, in meekness. If there’s no agreement around the Word, step aside quietly and keep your heart clean.
4) Short reinforcing statement
Stay humble, stay Scriptural, and keep the sweetness of Christ. God defends His Word and guides the sincere who put the Bible first.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Questions and Answers, Part 4
64-0830E §113
QUESTION: Brother Branham, the Bible tells us that a wife should obey her husband. I am a Christian and my husband is a sinner. He persecutes me in every way that he can, for me not to go to church, and read my Bible, and denies the Word. What should I do? What should you do? Now, listen, you're supposed to obey your husband; that's the Word. Now, if he tells you and refuses you to read the Bible, go to church, or something like that, you don't have to obey that, because, "He that will---won't forsake his father, m...
God's Wrapped Gift
60-1225 §49
The churches didn't want Him because He disagreed with their creeds. He told them that they were ... said, "You generation of vipers, you whited walls." He called them everything that could be thought of. Told old Herod, said, "Go tell that fox..." And what is dirtier than a fox? What is more stinking and low-down than a dirty old fox? Jesus said, "That's what he is." So, He called black, "black," and white, "white." He called wrong, "wrong," and right, "right." So, they didn't want that. The churches today don't w...
Why are we not a denomination?
58-0927 §102
...Let your women keep silent in the churches: for it's not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience,... Have you a marginal reading on that? If you are, run it back and see if it don't take Genesis 3:16: when God told Eve, because that she had listened to the serpent instead of her husband that he'd rule over her all the days of her life. How can the woman come and rule over a man, be pastor or deacon, when the Bible said "let her be obedient" just like it was in the beginning when G...
Church Ages, part 3: The Ephesian Church Age
60-1205 §69
...cost again]; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of [h-i-s ... see who it is, don't you?] his place, except thou repent. Other words, if you got a God-filled pastor, filled with the Holy Ghost, and you try to hold him under your finger, say "Well, if he says anything about us having a robed choir... If he says anything about us wearing makeup, we'll just excommunicate him." Don't you worry, God will do it before you get a chance to. He'll go out and preach to stones on the str...
Hear ye Him
60-0712 §55
He's the tutor of the church. He's the One. Let the Holy Spirit live in the church and make way. That's when you'll have real meetings. Listen to your pastor. Let him not, let... See, if the devil can't keep you from seeing the real thing of God, he will push you off the deep end with it, like that. He will make you go to a fanatic. You don't have to be fanatical. There's too much real and real genuine to have to be a fanatic. My, the whole Pentecostal skies are full of it. But listen to your pastor, a good God-sen...