Handling Criticism
- one of the things every pastor would face in their ministry is criticism. Some constructive some destructive. Since planting our church in Greenhills we have received a number of criticisms. Some good, some bad, some meant to be ignored, some meant to be considered.
- After 4 months of church, we have some interesting suggestions and criticisms. But what stand out the most are the criticisms we receive from other Christians who attend a different church. Here are some of the feedbacks we got:
- Make our sermons longer and add more points.
- Have hymnals in our services. (maybe sometimes)
do a BOOK STUDY of the Bible during the week like how they did it in their church before because it would attract more people.
- someone criticized us for having too much fun during Praise and Worship when we had balls bouncing around Music Museum during the 1st 2 songs of our Service.
- This Sunday we got another visitor commenting that the pastor (that’s yours truly) shouldn’t be entertaining and amusing because a “credible, experience and spiritually mature” pastor should be serious. and she ended with these words: I THINK THATS THE REASON WHY WE CHRISTIANS NEED A CHURCH”
Here are my thoughts:
First, the church was not designed to be “FOR CHRISTIANS ONLY” The goal of the church is to GO AND MAKE DISCIPLES and not GO AND ATTRACT OTHER CHRISTIANS and sing KUMBAYA!
Since starting the church we have received criticisms from people from other churches. Does it bother us? We did not plant a church to cater to Christians ONLY but to people who need the Lord.
Christians usually want the deep stuff of the Bible. Question..WHAT IS DEEP? Is teaching people to read their Bible and pray everyday not deep? Is preaching that you must love Jesus and love your wife and kids not spiritual? Is preaching of repenting of your sins and making Jesus the Lord of your life not spiritually deep? If you expect people’s lives to be changed, you don’t have to tell them how good your Greek is, or if you can explain all the symbolisms in the book of Daniel and Revelation. In fact most of what we consider deep is really shallow and SO NOT life changing.
Here is what we communicated to our leaders since the start of the church plant. OUR TARGET ARE THE LOST PEOPLE. We want to see a church with sinful people encountering Jesus. Jesus called us to reach the lost and make disciples. SO when critics complain about church not meeting their spiritual needs then something is definitely wrong. Jesus said “I came to seek and save the LOST”
On my next blog – when to listen to criticism. We did listen to a lot! Till the next blog!
PS: I told my wife I was not affected with the criticism I received this Sunday, but on second thought , I am! I just don’t get religious people! Love you all
17 Responses to “Handling Criticism”
Leave a Reply
About Me
Dennis Sy
- Senior Pastor
Dennis Sy is the Senior Pastor of Victory Greenhills. Husband to Thammie Sy, and father to two beautiful girls. A clueless church planter, a frustrated sociologist and an aspiring missiologist.
CHURCH PLANTING, LEADERSHIFT, and MISSIONAL LIVING
clueless ranking
Hahahaha!!! Great blog bro… Galeng
Nice post pastor.
I’m not quite sure with this statement though:
“First, the church was not designed to be “FOR CHRISTIANS ONLY” The goal of the church is to GO AND MAKE DISCIPLES and not GO AND ATTRACT OTHER CHRISTIANS and sing KUMBAYA!”
Certainly, the “Church” IS to cater to the Christians, ‘coz it is the Christians who are to congregate with themselves. If you are talking about the place of evangelism in church organization, then I think evangelism in preaching must not take a larger role than preaching to edify the saints in the knowledge of God, but still evangelism has it’s place as well.
In the question of what is “deep”, well, I remember a post by teampyro back in October:
“I think of it another way. Here are these people, who’ve stopped everything else that they do. They have come to where I am going to speak, they’ve sat down, and they’re looking to me to say something. Maybe there are ten of them, maybe there are hundreds, it doesn’t matter. And what shall I say?”
I think it’s just right for doctrines and theology to have their place in preaching. Wouldn’t it be sad to think that our discipleship groups are more powerful than the pulpit? Rather isn’t it sad to think that the pulpit has less power than our discipleship group?
Well, this is an awfully broad topic to just pick and critique. Since every pastor does a different job from the other.
I’ll just leave it at the thought or prayer that we may adhere to the call of the Puritans, to always reform. Reform and reform ’till we have truly comeback to the original New Testament church.
I’m proud of you Pastor. I always get “DEEP” (hehehe) whenever I read your simple but meaningful blogs. ^_^
Very Steven Furtickish… haha! Good Blog and of course, Great Job @ Greenhills!
nice pastor dennis. can i repost this? thank you.
Great blog, pastor Dennis. We can’t please everyone. . . Your fruitfulness is inspiring lot of people. You have a great church.
I’m proud of you classmate ! A quality of a great ENFORCER ! keep up the good work Pastor Dennis !
Pastor Tito Almadin
Go Pastor Dennis, Let’s go Greenhills! As Pastor Mark’s bilin to me b4 I left Alabang to join Greenhills, “TRUST and PROTECT your Pastors”, we’re behind you guys all the way for God’s glory.
galing!!!! =)
i can’t wait to visit VCF-greenhills when i gets back..
btw, what is KUMBAYA???
of course i couldn’t help but read your blog and published comments…
if you will allow me, you may want to consider a balance between delighting the first-timer and depth for the church-goer. considering that the new visitor today will be a part of the congregation tomorrow. having said this, don’t just consider the lost but the ones in church (not just those who’ve transferred) who’ve been faithful.
thanks RD! well we do try to balance things. I am for good Bible teaching and teaching the important doctrines of the Bible. I did the post to just issue in on how to handle criticism. I would try to blog on the next step for church planters when the people gets saved.
c’mon bro… d ka nag iisa
naranasan din ni Jesus yan hehehe… i believe that the most important thing is that lives are TRANSFORMED not just reformed, Jesus is HONORED & GLORIFIED, Lost are getting SAVED & being discipled, & disciples are MAKING DISCIPLES… woooooooh c’mon… JESUS ROCKS!
Churches are like families they are not all the same. for one like families they don’t all start at the same time – a family that is 25 years old (like mine) has very different needs from one that is 2 years old.
Then there’s the matter of ministering to different kinds of people. The church I pastor has 8,000 people coming to 6 services on weekends. The 9AM service ministers to older, mixed group that include expats, ceo’s, ministry heads and a typically more conservative group.
The 11 is a mixture of families, singles and internationals. The 1 and 3Pm services ministers predominantly to the masses which has a completely diferent flavor – the 5 and 7 to yet again a different target group. The point is even in one church location there are varieties in the way one ministers let alone 64 services which Victory churches in Metro Manila have every weekend in 14 locations with over 30,000 in attendance. Churches are not menat to be clones but are unique and should minsiter to the same way God made people – a very wide and varied variety.
Take this to the world and then you realize doing church in Dubai and the Middle East in general which meets on Fridays gives church a very different flavor. Add Japan, China, Kyrgyztan (did I spell that correctly), Vietnam and others and you realize there is not one way to do church.
Again like familes each one is in a different season with different realities. The key is not to follow other people’s models (i.e. act like, preach like, dress like Rick Warren who is in Orange County when you are pastor in Buffalo New York – you would freeze in his Hawaiian shirt) or to compare a pstor who minsiters to squatters in tondo to one who is reaching out to residents of Forbes Park and Das Ma.
God wants His church to be unique to reach many while at the same time growing and maturing as a body.
God has called you to lead your own congregation the way he sets fathers in families. It would be the arrogant and immature to teach another father how to run his family without knowing the realities that his family is in or is going through. And even if one did – the correct posture is to encourage and pray for one another.
The key is that Jesus is exalted and peolple are growing in His knowledge.
Hi Pastor Dennis. My home church in the Philippines is VCF Alabang, but I’m now involved in an underground church in Saudi Arabia. It is not an EN-church, but it is a born again church nonetheless. Yes, it’s true that Mid-Eastern churches meet on fridays and ours is more clandestine compared to open countries such as UAE and others. How we do church here in Saudi is different as our preachings need to cater to the needs of fellow OFWs. My point is, God has called you to pastor a local church and God gave you specific directions on how it’s best to meet the needs of those who are within and yet to come in. I encourage you to continue doing what you know is God’s leading for you. In Arabia, we say “YALAH ALATOOL!” or Go on straight. God bless!
Pastor Dennis.. you’re a hilarious preacher and honestly, we love it that way! Younger generations tend to shy away from serious type(solemn) of church… So keep up the good work that God has given you! =)
Benjo
Just wondering…if people suggest to do things the way they did in their previous church…why did they leave it in the first place?
[...] before entering a romantic relationship (32) How to be an Expert in your field in 3 years (19) Handling Criticism (16) THE NEW MOON MOVIE CONTROVERSY [...]