Stayers and Drifters - 01
Stay in your community if you want to be trusted
Our church is very welcoming to newcomers. We are eager for God to add to our number in Alto, WI. However, we have also learned that you cannot trust everyone who comes into your Church. People come and go. While some may come innocently having just moved into the community, or they’ve searched for a church that resonates with their Scriptural understanding, others come seeking money, or are fleeing from another church, or they come thinking they will be given an opportunity to teach and leave their “mark for Christ” upon the Church.
A newcomer is like Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter.1 You don’t know what you have in the person or what he or she has in store for you. Sometimes you get “a lifer” who learns how to pursue God while loving His people. At other times, it does not go so swimmingly. It is never a wonderful experience to have the newcomer (of five weeks or five years) move on only after working hard to make your Church look and feel like Hell.2
Thankfully, in Alto, we have longtime members who’ve been part of the community most of their lives. And we want our elders and church families to remain on-guard, against drifters, for the sake of the sheep. It is not as if we don’t open ourselves to new people. It just means we’re cautious about it.
Drifters might otherwise be called transients or vagabonds. And sometimes the drifter is an outright charlatan.3 In each instance, their first concern is usually not the Church, but themselves. They want the Church to fit into their mold, not the other way around.
The true test of a good member is staying power.
If you come for money, the chances are that you will be gone within two Sundays, as our church will only help someone to get on their feet. We will never pay to keep a person upright. In other words, we may help a newcomer to fill a gas tank, a belly, or a couple of nights in a hotel, but we expect to see effort from anyone we assist.4 We expect the same from one another.
If you come fleeing from another church, we want to understand, “Why?”. “Why didn’t you stay?” we ask. We also wonder, “Was it really the other church that had things wrong?” And then we ponder, “How will this person or family respond to us over time?”
If you come to leave your mark, understand, we are not quick to provide a newcomer a platform to teach. We are delighted to welcome Christians into our fellowship to share their faith with us and we with them. However, we are cautiously slow to let them take to a podium or lead a bible study or teach in a Sunday school classroom.
"High Plains Drifter" is a 1973 Western film directed by Clint Eastwood. It follows a mysterious gunslinger who arrives in a troubled town, helping its residents defend against a group of outlaws, but his true identity and motives remain enigmatic as he enacts a harsh form of justice.
You will need to watch the Eastwood movie to see what I mean.
I’m straining the use of the word a little here. A charlatan is a person who falsely claims to have special knowledge or skill. He is attempting to gain confidence from the gullible in order to extract from them money or honor or some other undisclosed gain. The newcomer to a church (who behaves like a charlatan) will often pretend great holiness or love and Scriptural insight but the end game is to gather a following.
2 Thessalonians 3:10-12 says, “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.”