I DO NOT LIKE RELIGIOUS LABELS

I try my best to avoid using religious labels to describe my friends and peers who are involved in ministry. I do not like to label ministries, churches of even people who are involved in church work of any nature or type. I am not talking about labeling people by the church affiliation or organization they are involved in, but I am talking about labels that judge each other.

I was in a session recently and we as preachers and pastors were filling out questionnaire forms to be turned in and used for many different venues within our organization, the UPCI.

The questionnaire wanted us to class ourselves by putting a check in the box that best described the church we were pastoring, (Very Conservative, Conservative, Liberal, Very Liberal)…The questionnaire also wanted us to describe our personal ministry by putting a check in the proper box that best described us (Apostolic, Pentecostal, Charismatic, or other). I thought how sad this is we are all member of the UPCI, what is wrong with us all being called and classed as United Pentecostal Preachers and United Pentecostal Churches. I did not check any of the boxes, because I refuse to label myself anything other than United Pentecostal.

The problem in our Pentecostal ranks today is we want to label every church and every preacher or pastor as less than we are. No one is as holy, pure, near and close to the Lord as we are and for sure no one is as balanced as we are so therefore we begin to use labels to describe others.

We who class ourselves as being so perfect want to label all of our Brothers and Sisters and the other churches around us as liberal or Charismatic. How tragic this is. Instead of us just accepting one another as Brothers and Sisters we place others under a label that says to others we are classing them as less than we class ourselves.

I have noticed that we class a church that is having rapid church growth as being Charismatic or liberal. We do this because the new converts do not understand all of our Pentecostal traditions and surely do not understand and in most cases do not line up completely with these things we class and call standards. Why don’t we allow these pastors who are having this wonderful experience of growth the right to lead these new converts into a deeper relationship with our Savior instead of cutting them down with our label’s.

I realize that the churches that have no growth are classed as very conservative or ultra conservative. If we are going to use labels let us call them what they really are, stagnate or dead. But we want to make it look like they are the only ones who are holding to the old paths and preaching the old time message of the faith. No friend the old paths lead to reaching people with this gospel truth and teaching people to reach others with this gospel message of salvation. The old time message is about evangelism and salvation or seeing many receive the Holy Ghost.

 If I must say so I dislike the religious labels we put on our Brothers and Sisters. These labels are tainted and identify our personal insecurities and our lack of giving our brothers and sisters the liberty of reaching the world around them with this message of truth. These labels place us all in a box so to speak and cause us to judge. Labels tend to divide us into competing groups or camps of certain teachings and beliefs. Labels give us no liberty to change our methods or to have greater vision.

Going back to the statement above where I filled out the questionnaire but refused to check the labels that would best describe me or my church, I received a call on my cell phone that evening and the lady told me that I failed to check these boxes. I told her I was United Pentecostal in my doctrinal beliefs and in my preaching. I said and my church is United Pentecostal in name, doctrine and standards. She said but we need to know a little more about you so we can put you in the proper camp. To make a long story short, she ended up classing me as Charismatic and my church as very liberal. How sad this is that she did not even know me and has never been to the church I pastor, but is labeling us.

This is what I told her about my ministry and the church I pastor. I told her we are a practical, middle of the road, Bible believing church. We believe there is only One God and His name is Jesus. We do not practice of believe there is such a thing as the trinity. We believe in the Apostles message of salvation through repentance, baptism in Jesus name for the remission of our sin and the infilling of the Holy Ghost, evidenced by speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gives us the utterance. We believe in signs, wonders and miracles and feel these things should happen in every service. We believe in reaching the lost at any cost and that evangelism and church growth should be taking place in our life and our church at all times. She told me that I would be labeled as liberal in my thinking and my church would be labeled as Charismatic because we actually believed in the operation of the gifts of the Spirit in our church and we were into numbers.

With all this being written let me clear up one fact for you. You do not have to use labels if you do not want to, as I do not want to. But this will not stop others from labeling you and your church. There is not much we can do about the box, category or camp they label us in, but we do not have to accept their label, we must just be who we are and let the church we are involved in be the church and together we are to fulfill the will of God and God will label us as His and this is the only label that counts.