There are loving ways to warn people about sin (and back to the aiding love of the Lord), and in an overall healthy Christian body they should prevail, but they definitely do warn about sin. They don’t just warn about not being nice. Having a godly balance is the key. A ministry that does nothing but chew people out won’t prosper very much either.
Yes, quite often standing for nothing definite means losing your reason to be there in the first place.
I agree there are loving ways to tell people that something is wrong and chewing them out usually has negative results. My pastor uses the carrot and stick approach and goes where the Lord leads him. At times he will take the congregation to task in a loving but forceful way and at times his message is the opposite. I kind of take a sermon which hits home as like when I was a kid getting spanked by my Dad. This hurts me more than it does you and if I didn’t love you I wouldn’t chastise you.
However you hit the nail on the head when you said:
“Yes, quite often standing for nothing definite means losing your reason to be there in the first place.”