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.
The god of this evil age
65-0801M §87
Her long hair, Nazarite vow, shows that she's vowed to God. Her beautiful gown of His promised Word for the age that she's living in wrapped around her, vindicating her with Himself of Hebrews 13:8: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. As she is a part of the Word Groom, true to Him in every point... Now look. If a woman goes out here and is married to a man, and she goes out and makes love with another man and has affairs with him, and come back to her husband, he should kick her out. Is that righ...
Taking sides with Jesus
62-0601 §100
...ehovah Witness is loyal to what they believe; the Baptists is loyal to what they believe; the Presbyterian is loyal to what they believe, and they're just as loyal to their pastors. Can't we be that loyal to the Word? See? Now, if those... I want to ask you something. You say, "Well, Brother Branham, how do you know they're not?" Now, if those Pharisees and Sadducees and leaders of that day would've got away from their creeds and their dogmas and listened to what the Word said and what Jesus was telling them (just...
Questions and Answers on Hebrews, part 1
57-0925 §110
Now, if you're baptized in the name of "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," feel like that that's all right, amen. If it's a good answer to God towards a clear conscience to God, amen. Go right ahead, see. But as far as I am concerned, as far as my part, if you'd ask me, say, "Brother Branham, should I be baptized over?" I'd say, "Yes," for my part. The little woman come here the other day, said, "The Lord called me to be a preacher." I didn't believe that, not no more than I believed that she could jump over the moon. I...
Hebrews, Chapter 7, part 2
57-0922 §23
And if the congregation votes, "Forgive him, and let him go on yet," that's the way it has to stand, see. Isn't that fair? Ain't that the way to run a church? That's what the Bible said. We have no bishops and overseers and boards and so forth, moves this one in and got a lot of authority. There's nobody got authority here but the Holy Ghost. That's right. He does the moving. And we take Him as the majority of the people, the way the people go. And then if one side wants to do this, and the other side wants to do t...
Revelation, Book of symbols
56-0617 §33
If a boy would run up to the door, and knock at the door there and tell the usher, "I have a telegram here for Mrs. So-and-so or Mr. So-and-so." He would be a messenger, a earthly angel. Your pastor, when he stands here on the platform, ministering the Word of God, he is God's angel to the church, messenger to the church. Therefore, a pastor should never leave that Word, but stay straight with the Word, because He's feeding ... the shepherd's place. The word pastor means "shepherd." Look it up and find out if that...