• Home
  • About This Blog
  • Contact Me
  • Subscribe
  • Comment Policy

Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

  • Westminster Shorter Catechism Series
  • Sermon on the Mount Series
Home Church Leadership Don’t play the Korah card

Don’t play the Korah card

Posted on June 26, 2013 Written by Mark McIntyre 4 Comments


BibleI have been in a couple of situations where concerns were brought to a pastor who then likened the one who brought the concern to Korah attacking Moses. While I understand the temptation for a leader to deal with a complaint in this way, that temptation must be resisted. Not only is it inappropriate, it does nothing to fix the situation (unless of course the leader’s goal is to eliminate any other opinion than his own).

Playing the Korah card is wrong for the following reasons:

  • Nowhere in the New Testament do we have any indication that pastors are on a higher spiritual plane than those they lead. To play the Korah card assumes an authority that I do not see granted to an individual elder.
  • Whenever the ruling body of the church is mentioned in Acts, elders (plural) are mentioned. It is a group of elders and not an individual that provides leadership to the church. A leadership team takes personality conflict and personal blind spots out of the equation. A group of elders can hear the complaint and assess the appropriateness of what is being said and respond to the complaint in grace and truth.
  • My own experience is that when someone complains about me, there is usually a kernel of truth in the complaint that needs to be addressed. To dismiss the complaint by playing the Korah card is to reject an opportunity to be lead into growth by the Holy Spirit. Growth requires that we own the part that is true.

Keep in mind that Korah’s rebellion was ultimately against God and it was God who dealt with that rebellion. Moses did pray for God to reject Korah’s offering but Moses did not directly do anything against Korah. We should learn from Moses’ example.

A better way of dealing with the complaint is to bring it before the other elders so that they can sort out what is true and what is not in the complaint. This speaks to the importance of having a ministry team that can work together to speak into the blind spots of each other.

So, if you are a church leader who is tempted to play the Korah card when someone offers criticism, bite your tongue, bring it to God in prayer and ask for help from your fellow leaders to respond appropriately.

Everyone will be better off if you do.


Filed Under: Church Leadership Tagged With: complaint, elder, Korah, Moses

About Mark McIntyre

A follower of Jesus Christ who shares observations about how Scripture should impact the church and the world. Mark is the original author and editor of Attempts at Honesty.

Follow Attempts at Honesty

Honesty in your Inbox

Handshake

The Ministry of Reconciliation – We Can Do Better

17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17–18 NASB) Having grown up in the church, I […]

Standard Theme

A new theme for Attempts at Honesty Christian Blog

Because an increasing percentage of traffic is coming from mobile devices, it was necessary to find a theme that better responds to mobile users.

Scary Love

Scary Love

I recently saw a pair of Tweets by @GAfamily with the hashtags #scary and #love. (For those of you who are not into Twitter, using hashtags is a way of identifying key words so that someone searching on that word will find it) It struck me that these are two words that I would not […]

God's sovereignty over the world

Grace and sovereignty

To avoid stress and burnout in pursuit of our calling, we must rely on the sovereignty of God. We cannot do it all, but we must do what God calls us to do.

Go and sin boldly

I believe it was Martin Luther who said, “go and sin boldly.” The point is not that we are to intentionally sin, but that we cannot allow fear of sin to inhibit us from living life.

Post Series

  • Westminster Shorter Catechism Series
  • Sermon on the Mount Series

Categories

Archives

Blogger Grid
Follow me on Blogarama

Copyright © 2022 · Focus Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in