So it's kinda personal with you, huh?
Did you submit to the authority of your pastor? When you found out that you could not submit to the authority of your pastor, did you sew dissention or did you leave?
My pastor has chosen some paths that I have thought were wrong headed and questionable. Yet it is not my place to sew dissention. It turns out that most of the stupid things he has done have been pretty smart after all.
Your pastor chose to lead you down a different path than you wished to go. But he was the pastor. Your choice was to leave the flock or follow the shepherd. I suspect you chose to leave. Well, I suspect that you have a new pastor now and that you are happy with him and that you are following him. So why do you continue to sew dissention in the flock you left?
When the pastor is disenfranchising godly men who challenge him to support his positons from scriptures (very gently and respectfully) is he a pastor at all?
Cyrano might have more to say regarding this since he was punished without even being asked what was going on, in spite of having good rapport with the pastor for years. But in a nutshell, authority in a church is only extended to those who submit to the authority of the Word, from whence they derive their authority.
IN the aftermath, several upstanding men who have always been gentle and respectful with the pastor have left, because they saw me pull the curtain away from the wizard.
I may have crushed balaam's foot against the wall, for which I apologized, but my apology was not accepted until I agreed never to speak anything against the leadership in any form, ever again. There was no effort to reason with me from the Scripture.
That should read "UNLESS" I agreed. I never agreed.