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.
Church Order
63-1226 §40
QUESTION: Who should be the teachers? There you are, that's up to you to vote your own teachers in. And you ought to do that, put them in there, get somebody. And meet with the church, and say, "Who's... Who here feels led of the Lord?" And then get a qualified teacher. And then let it be done. It's got to be strictly business, brethren. If the teacher can't qualify to it, then change teachers. When the time comes, as under God, if I feel like that Orman Neville can't no more qualify to be pastor here, I'm going to...
Questions and Answers (God being misunderstood)
61-0723E §40
If a person is sitting in a congregation, a spirit can fall upon that person, and yet you know that they are wrong and they don't live the right kind of life. Be careful what you say about that spirit. It might be the Holy Spirit. Don't judge the spirit by the person. The person may be wrong. But now does not the Bible say, "The rain falls on the just and the unjust"? Did not Jesus say, when the fields was planted, "Let them all grow up together, the tares and the wheat, together. Don't you try to pull up the tares...
Hear ye Him
56-0930 §28
But sometimes ministers are... It's meal tickets to pastor a church, instead of thinking of Heaven and what we'll answer for at that day. We better preach the truth because God is going to... If He give us this great sacred office, He is going to require it at our hands. So, if you're inspired... Notice, the tutor brought the message to the father and said, "The child is progressing right or wrong." Then if it came up... Now, no matter what the outside people had to say about this child, what the servants on the fa...
Questions and Answers
54-0515 §81
If Jesus told the disciples, "go do this," and they went and done something over here different, and yet God blessed it, and all through the Bible. Now, did they do what Jesus told them not to do? If they did, they disobeyed, and God will never honor disobedience. If He would, He would have honored Eve and stopped the whole thing in the beginning. When God says anything, He's got to keep His Word, He's sovereign. So then either Peter made a mistake... "Oh," said, "that's what the apostles said." One fellow said, "T...
God keeps His Word, part 2
57-0307 §30
Did you notice in the Bible (a few minutes now), Paul didn't have any trouble with the church of Ephesus. They were scholars. They were men who understood. But his trouble wasn't with the Roman church, and he exalts them before God, and talks of their faith. But the trouble he had was with Corinth. Corinth was the place that he had the trouble, for they could not take the Word. Each one wanted a sensation. Said, "Why is it when I come among you, one's got a tongue, and one's got a psalm, and one's got a this, got a...