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.
God keeps His Word, part 2
57-0307 §22
...iver running down their back, and can shout a little, it's all over; that's all we need. And I'll cause them to prophesy a lie, because they didn't know the Word." Brother, if there's anything that a born-again Christian ought to know and study, is the Word of God. The trouble of it is, we try to build... Every man... Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. And listen, you old saints, shame on you, that's been saved for twenty and thirty years, and still know no...
There is only One Way provided by God for anything
63-0731 §47
...Spirit of God in him, wanted to rebuke it day after day. And finally, he got the message, "Rebuke him." And he turned around. He couldn't do it till God said so. Amen! Oh, if the church could only be so in the glorious presence of God... Some day, God will turn loose His power into it. Things will take place. But you can't mix your diet---you'll become a hybrid. Say exactly what God said. Stay right in the Word, and God will vindicate it to be the truth. Yes, sir.
Identification
63-0123 §83
But many times you've got God-given pastors that will rebuke it, and you still won't line with the Word. That's right---it can go the other way, too. That's right. What am I laying before you? Oh, say, "They..." I know better than that. I've passed through, myself, Phoenix for the last fifteen years, and it still looks the same as it always did---only getting worse. So don't lay it all on to the pastor. Let's just say we're all guilty, and stand up there and look at ourselves in the glass. That's right. Teenager, w...
The choosing of a Bride
65-0429E §24
...t to answer at the day of the judgment, for what I say tonight, or any other time. Therefore I've got to be dead earnest, and truly convicted. But you go into a church, and if you'll watch the behavior of that church---you just watch the pastor awhile---and you'll usually find that the church acts like the pastor. Sometimes I wonder if we just don't get one another's spirit, instead of the Holy Spirit. You get to a place where a pastor is real radical, and carrying on---you'll find out the congregation is the same...
Christ is revealed in His own Word
65-0822M §92
...'t care how well they're placed, who they come from, what denomination they come from, or how smart the man is---is to be absolutely ignored, anything contrary to the Word. If you want to put that Scripture down, it's Galatians 1:8, see. Paul said, "Though we or an angel from heaven would preach any other thing than this that you've already heard, let him be cursed." In other words, if an angel would come to you from Heaven, a bright shining angel, and would stand (boy, that would be bait for this day, wouldn't it?...