{"id":6805,"date":"2019-11-07T20:05:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T02:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=6805"},"modified":"2019-11-07T20:16:01","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T02:16:01","slug":"4-members-who-tear-down-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=6805","title":{"rendered":"4 Members Who Tear Down the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Healthy churches are a powerful and attractive witness. In a recent article, I described <a href=\"https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/article\/6-kinds-of-church-members-that-build-up-the-church\/\">six kinds of members who build up the church<\/a>. Unfortunately, even in a healthy church, not every member pursues unity.<\/p>\n<p>What kind of members wound our witness? What kind of members do <em>not<\/em> build up the body of Christ? Consider these four:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. The member who loves to be armchair critic.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>These days, cynicism seems cool. In a world dominated by social media and self-expression, cynicism is easily mistaken for wisdom and enlightenment. In Christian circles, people build entire ministries on cynicism; their purpose is to tell you what&rsquo;s wrong with everyone else. And in our self-deception we manage to veil our critical spirits as wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>Armchair critics are bent on finding fault with what others are doing while doing nothing themselves. They&rsquo;re apathetic to things that are going on and are disappointed when you succeed. They&rsquo;re quick to condemn and slow to commend. They falsely place themselves as judge, and you never hear them admit wrong. Cynics can never be pleased nor satisfied.<\/p>\n<p>More often than not, cynicism hides the wounds of bitterness and even hatred. This type of member can destroy the unity and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All these members have a common thread: self-centeredness. They\u2019ve missed the very essence of salvation; they\u2019ve failed to love God and love people with every ounce of their being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[339,331,315],"class_list":["post-6805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-church-membership","tag-membership-discipline","tag-pastoring","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6805"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6807,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6805\/revisions\/6807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}