What If I Disagree with My Pastor?
1) Direct answer
Stay with the Word, keep your spirit right, and handle it in God’s order. Pray, search the Scriptures, speak to your pastor privately with an open Bible, and seek peace. If it’s only preference, submit and keep unity. If it is clear doctrine or practice against the Bible and he will not receive the Word, obey God rather than men and step away quietly without causing strife.
2) Scriptural explanation
- Test everything by Scripture: The Bereans “searched the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11). “Try the spirits” (1 John 4:1). If any preach another gospel, “let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8–9).
- Respect the office and approach rightly: “Obey them that have the rule over you” as they watch for your souls (Hebrews 13:17). “Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father” (1 Timothy 5:1). Don’t receive accusations lightly—“before two or three witnesses” (1 Timothy 5:19).
- Handle it in order: Go to him “between thee and him alone” first (Matthew 18:15). If needed, take witnesses, then the church (Matthew 18:16–17). “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40).
- Keep unity when it’s not sin or false doctrine: “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).
- Separate if the Word is rejected: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). “Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine…and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). “A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject” (Titus 3:10). “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3).
3) Simple clarifying logic
- God sets pastors to feed the flock, but the Bible is the absolute. A true shepherd points you to the Word, not away from it.
- If your disagreement is about taste, timing, or non-essential procedure, lay down your preference and keep peace.
- If the issue is clear Scripture—who will you follow, a man or the Word? If a leader asks you to do or believe what the Bible denies, your loyalty belongs to Christ.
- Don’t gossip, don’t rally people, don’t split the church. Speak face to face, with Scripture, in meekness. If there’s no agreement around the Word, step aside quietly and keep your heart clean.
4) Short reinforcing statement
Stay humble, stay Scriptural, and keep the sweetness of Christ. God defends His Word and guides the sincere who put the Bible first.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
God's provided way of approach to fellowship
60-0709 §23
...d. And when there is no more molecules or atoms, You'll still be God. You're from everlasting unto everlasting, Thou art God. Now tonight, we have ... seem like, feeling in my heart, that I would read quite a portion of Your Scriptures. I pray that You'll help me and send the Holy Spirit and interpret the Word, that it might bring a settled basis of the eternal God. And upon the basis of receiving Him, that we might get ourself positionally ready for a great meeting that we're expecting to break here, that it'll no...
Believest thou this?
50-0716 §71
That's the reason... (Friends, I'm out of time.) And now, if you'd send to your pastor, and he didn't come and pray for you when you were sick, well, you'd say, "The old hypocrite, I will go over and join Jones' church, or somebody." That's the reason your pastor can't do nothing for you. You've got to have faith in him, and confidence in him as a man of God, and know that all things work together for good to them that love God. That's right. Now, your pastor didn't tell me to say that either. But I know this: you'...
Jezebel Religion
61-0319 §11
There's been so many things you've done for me, and I appreciate it. Now if I can help you towards giving you a prayer cloth or something... Now, don't ask me doctrine, because I don't desire to do that. So many people writes me questions about marriage and divorce and so forth, which is a tangle in the church. I always refer them back, and say, "Ask your pastor." People's wrote me letters here and say, "What about this? And what about that?" I refer the letter back, you'll get it. See your pastor on little things...
Be not afraid
61-0311 §9
...hen they went up before the servants of the Lord to ask council. Well, now, I want to ask you, what about you, when you get all messed up and troubled, don't you go to your pastor? Is that right? You should do it. If you get in trouble, you should go to your brother and tell him, say, "Brother, I did something wrong, I shouldn't have did that. I pray you to help me now to pray through till I get over this thing, or help me in my troubles." Isn't that the scriptural way to do it? Well, that's because he's your pasto...
The Godhead explained
61-0425B §12
...tion. And usually, anything that's unusual springs up, it is called into question, and I think it is no more than right. It should be called into question. And I think that pastors sometimes are suspicious of things that they hear, and I think they have a right to be. Because if I understand the translation of the word pastor, it means "a shepherd," and therefore he is a feeder or herder of a group of men and women of which the Holy Spirit has made him the overseer of. And he has a right to know what kind of food h...