How to Judge God’S Way: The Dynamic Core of Your Sanctification Ministry

By Ron Fandrick

At last, Christian churches and colleges throughout the United States can begin the basic training of their church judges and helpers as the training manual, How to Judge Gods Way, clearly describes how church judges fulfill all of their necessary tasks according to Gods values.

This book defines the key components of each task, guides the judges through typical scenarios, warns of common errors, and teaches self-evaluation methods in order to maintain Gods highest standards constantly.

This book lays out the biblical foundation for the salvation and sanctification ministries of the church and offers practical ways to apply Gods message into the churchs daily activities.

As a bonus, this book includes handouts and forms so that churches and church judges can expediently expand their God-directed and God-pleasing sanctification ministry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499084542

Ron Fandrick

Ron Fandrick is a trained and experienced pastor, exegete, teacher, author, domestic-violence therapist, marriage and family therapist, and church judge. He has initiated, designed, and directed several church organizations. His last three books are The True Face of Domestic Violence; Eliminating Domestic Violence; and Church, Be the Church. The third book shows churches how to use church judges in all of the churches’ endeavors.

Book preview

How to Judge God’s Way

The Dynamic Core of Your Sanctification Ministry

Ron Fandrick

Copyright © 2014 by Ron Fandrick.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/04/2014

Xlibris

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Contents

Chapter 1Judging God’s Way

Chapter 2Investigate Thoroughly

Chapter 3Investigation Barriers

Chapter 4Seek The Truth

Chapter 5Truth Twisters

Chapter 6Proclaim Salvation

Chapter 7Salvation Stumblers

Chapter 8Apply Discipline

Chapter 9Discipline Diverters

Chapter 10Design The Plan

Chapter 11Complex Plans

Chapter 12Design Dysfunctions

Chapter 13Enact The Plan

Chapter 14Action Errors

Chapter 15The Highest Bar

Chapter 16Sanctification Foundation

Chapter 17Sanctification

Chapter 18Romans

Chapter 19Corinthians

Chapter 20Matthew

Chapter 21Luke

Chapter 22Example

Chapter 23God Opens Eyes

Chapter 241 Corinthians 6:1–8

Chapter 25Church Judges In The USA

Chapter 26Obedient Church In Action

Chapter 27God’s System

References

CHAPTER 1

Judging God’s Way

If you meet the basic requisites of a church judge (1 Corinthians 6:11),

if you are determined to obey God’s command to judge (Matthew 18:17, 1 Corinthians 6:1),

if your only purpose is God’s purpose (Matthew 18:13–15),

if you want to be a church judge or a helper of a church judge, and

if you have read and understand Church, Be the Church, then you are probably ready to study How to Judge God’s Way.

A S A CHURCH judge, you do not judge for man but for Yahweh who is with you in a case of judgment (2 Chronicles 19:6). Your only and absolute standard is the Word of God (Exodus 18:20, Psalm 119:160). God transforms you and renews your mind so that you adhere to His good, acceptable, and perfect will (Romans 12:2). You shall judge with righteous judgment (Deuteronomy 16:18).

Therefore, you never think like, act like, or conform to the world in any way (Romans 12:2). You never do injustice in judgment. You do not lift up the face of the poor and do not honor in favoritism the face of a great man (Leviticus 19:15). You will not distort justice and will not take a bribe (Deuteronomy 16:19).

Your simple and overarching goal is to save and sanctify everyone in the participating systems (Matthew 18:14–15, Ephesians 1:4).

Always think in terms of the following three questions: What is the problem? What is the solution? How will all the participants continue to improve in sanctification?

Of course, in general, the problem is sin. The solution is Jesus Christ who died on the cross and rose afterward to save us from all our sins. The church judges’ restoration plan spells out how the people in all the participating systems will grow in sanctification with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Your task is to investigate the matter thoroughly. Seek the truth, and find the root problems. Separate the root problems from the observable symptoms and the misunderstood stylistic variations.

Engage with the participants to learn how they function, gain their trust in God and in you, and discover to what extent they are able to follow the restoration plan.

Compose the restoration plan. It outlines how everyone will work together to resolve the root problems and to support everyone and every system in growing in righteousness and holiness.

Seek, add to the mix, and supervise resources that will fully support the achievement of the restoration plan.

Ceaselessly apply the Word of God to every phase of the judging process in order to effectively and at the right time intervene with God’s love, discipline, grace, and mercy.

As much as possible, at every step, encourage the participants to employ self-discipline where they directly answer to God Almighty. On the other hand, do not dismiss so many observers and helpers too early so that the participants will inevitably fail.

The participants

As a believer, you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God. Jesus is God incarnate and is God dwelling among us. Jesus died on the cross for all of your sins and rose three days later to give you eternal life. As He promised, He sends you the Holy Spirit to teach, enlighten, empower, and sanctify you.

Being a believer, you are part of the body of Christ; and God authorizes you to judge the whole world (1 Corinthians 12:17, 6:2). You may have opportunities at various occasions and for varying lengths of time to serve some of the people in the restoration plan with the gifts that God has given you. Church, Be the Church gives you many examples of such opportunities.

You daily examine yourself by God’s standards in the Bible. Where you have sinned, you immediately confess those sins (1 John 1:8–9). You correct those situations as much as possible. You revamp your patterns to oust the sin permanently and to remain in righteousness continually.

Being a church judge, you were formerly in the group with those who were unjust, unrighteous. However, God washed, justified, and sanctified you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of God. He also gave you the wisdom and ability to thoroughly judge every matter and fulfill all the tasks of church judges (1 Corinthians 6:11, 5).

Sometimes you may handle a matter individually. Sometimes you may operate as part of a team of judges who coordinate their unique abilities in order to handle complicated or difficult matters. Sometimes you may pass a matter onto a judge or a team of judges who have the experience and array of gifts to handle the arduous matter.

Strictly examine yourself and correct any sinful situation. Eliminate any appearance of evil and maintain an example that pleases God and that inspires other believers to copy your good pattern. Constantly review God’s commands so that you can accurately apply them to your life and the lives of others.

The participants who need help may start with one or two people whom sin attacks or who face difficulties beyond their current capacities. The instigator of the sin may be the person’s sinful flesh, the world, or Satan.

The numbers of these participants may swell with the addition of complementary accomplices or people who are present in the events of concern but who commit sins that are not directly a portion of the problems of the original participants.

Other participants could include people who unknowingly are dragged into the problems, who unwittingly support the problems, who unintentionally hurt the original participants more than help them, or who deliberately burden the original participants.

Some of the other participants may be witnesses who have no other connection to any other participants except that they saw and heard something relevant to the matter.

The participants may or may not believe in Jesus. They may or may not appear to be religious. They may or may not be professionals.

As a church judge, start by joining with each participant, especially those who need help. Love the person with the Lord’s love, learn the person’s capabilities and disabilities, build a cooperative relationship with the person, strengthen the trust between you and him, and form a functioning therapeutic system.

All of the participants above operate in various systems. A system may be limited to one person and God or to two people. On the other end of the spectrum, a system may consist of thousands of people or more.

A family is a system. A given familial system may consist of husband, wife, brothers, sisters, children, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, stepparents, stepchildren, pseudofamily members, some of these people, or all of these people. Pseudofamily may include boyfriends, girlfriends, or close friends who are treated like family.

Other systems could include school, work associates, various businesses, health-care providers, neighbors, interest groups, the government as a whole, or various agencies of the government.

All systems possess an operating base that includes a mission, a set of values, and an array of basic patterns. All systems influence the members of the system and drop inputs onto other systems that are near. The influence and the inputs may be destructive or constructive to the participants in the matter at hand.

For example, a child fights another child on the school bus. The bus driver stops the fight and reports the incident to the school. The school staff meets and figures out a way to avoid future disruptions. The principal calls in the parents and concerned friends of the family. The school orders the parents to take their child to a counselor and a doctor. The doctor prescribes drugs to alter the behavior of the child. The parents force the child to consume the drugs every day. These actions adversely change the way the other schoolchildren view this child and the way the child views himself. Since the child does not learn how to manage his own behavior, the school eventually cuts the child’s attendance to half days.

In this example, the systems include transportation, the school, the school administration, the teachers at the school, the family, friends of the family, counselors, health-care providers, and the schoolchildren.

Being a church judge and understanding how systems operate, do the following:

determine which systems have been involved in this matter,

decide which systems need to be involved in the future,

join with the systems to learn their strengths and weakness,

join with the systems to gain their cooperation,

gauge what therapy or training is necessary to make each system more helpful,

conduct some of the therapy and training, and

evaluate how well all the therapy and training is proceeding.

Notice that judging takes time because a given situation can involve many people. Thus, promptly begin the various tasks of judging. Delaying works against everyone.

The helpers

The helpers include paid professionals, volunteer professionals, experienced people, church leaders, and church members.

Paid professionals may include marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, specialists who work with developmentally delayed people, life coaches, financial management specialists, doctors, and nurses. Volunteer professionals are professionals who charge the participants no fee. Experienced people have not completed formal training programs but have helping skills by virtue of their character, life experiences, or some training. Church leaders may be pastors, education directors, leaders of various groups in the church, or lay leaders. Church members may not hold an office or position in the church. They informally serve another person once or more than once.

Notice that the church is a system. A congregation is a system. A selected group in a congregation is a system. The more that you train these systems, the greater help the systems can be to you and to the participants.

For instance, teach the church to resolve every matter as soon it arises (Matthew 18:15). In the beginning, the matter is still small; and it involves the fewest number of people. The longer people wait to solve a problem, the more complicated and difficult the solution becomes.

Motivate the church to improve in Jesus. Help train the church members to motivate the participants, to insure that the inputs to the participants are helpful, and to communicate well with you and other church judges. Continually evaluate how well the church resources contribute to the successful fulfillment of the restoration plan, and adjust the resources appropriately.

Most importantly, notice that judging deals with real people. God creates and desires to save each person. Each one is precious, important, and valuable. Therefore, take the time to treat each person as precious, important, and valuable.

CHAPTER 2

Investigate Thoroughly

T HE FIRST TIME you meet everybody, forge four foundational frames as follows:

1. The Lord loves you.

2. The Lord cares about you.

3. I love you.

4. I care about you.

Be sure to communicate these messages with your choice of words and sentence structure, your voice inflections, your soft eyes, your gestures, and your body language.

Explain who you are, what church judges are, how they fit into the Kingdom of God, and what your purposes are in the meeting today.

Within this framework, start by asking the obvious questions like:

Who are you?

What is happening?

What do you think about that?

How do you feel about that?

Once the person rolls into the story, he or she will fill your plate with the well-rehearsed rendition that racks a rationed response from you. He or she may talk for minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months.

When he or she repeats portions, leap over this contrived novelette. Tap into the person’s spontaneity and exhume the greater context of the matter by relying on the time-tested interrogatives: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Especially lean on who else and what else. Use why only as a short version of for what purpose.

Find out whom the person trusts the most, who influences the person the most, and who else is involved in the matter of concern.

Find out specifically what each participant does, when he acts, and where he is at the time. When the person throws out only generalities and abstractions, ask for details and examples. To dig in between the lines, pound the how question.

To open the curtain that covers the engine behind the scene, ask the purpose question.

The results of asking who leads you into the systems that embrace the person. From there, accurately name the systems and paint their primary patterns.

After meeting with each participant individually, meet with the participant and selected members of one or more systems simultaneously. Notate how the person acts differently in different group settings.

Literally ride on the results of the where questions by going to the named locations whenever possible. While there, carefully note how the features of the physical setting aid or hinder the participants.

Forensic evidence can sometimes stimulate more questions and can stage confrontations that are difficult for the participants to dodge. Otherwise, in God’s system, only the testimony of two or more witnesses carries the weight of proving guilt and assigning the corresponding punishments according to God’s Word.

For example, the church judge takes to the house one key witness who says, I saw Jim open the door and go in. A minute later, he came out with a hammer in his right hand. He smashed the glass in the door and ran.

The judge asks, Where were you standing when you saw all this?

The witness says, On the sidewalk out front.

The judge says, Now that we are standing on that sidewalk, what do you see?

The witness says nothing and drops his head. Between them and the door is a twelve-foot fence that totally hides the door.

• Out of everything that you learn about the participants, hold on to the points that will bolster the solutions in the restoration plan. •

If professionals and nonprofessionals assist in the investigation, consider their findings but personally experience their insights as much as possible. For example, the assistants report that Samantha is hostile and defensive. This surprises you because she cooperates with you every time. To expand your experiences, you switch to a new topic by asking about her forgiving her older sister. Suddenly, she defends herself and attacks you verbally.

While you are learning more about each person, meticulously investigate how well a person can follow directions. First, give the person a few simple steps to complete immediately. Next, request steps that are more complex. Then, instead of stating steps, give a goal so that the person must develop the steps, and observe how well he exercises them. Advance to higher stages by pressing for actions that must occur further and further into the future.

Some people cannot correctly repeat a list of simple steps. Some people can accomplish a few simple steps but not many complex steps. Some people can follow direct orders but cannot organize themselves enough to accomplish a general goal. Some people can fulfill one goal that is their only desire but cannot focus on one goal when many are available. Some people can accomplish a task but cannot schedule a future time to act and act precisely at that time.

After you learn what a person can do, find out what inhibits that person from completing directions that are more advanced. Of course, start seeking ways to help the person overcome his or her limitations. You will need all of this information when you develop the restoration plan.

Remain faithful

While you are investigating, you are accumulating a large library of information about each participant. You, God, and the participant may be the only ones who know much of that information; and the participant may not want that knowledge to go any further than you. Therefore, to be faithful to God and to the participant, never reveal what you know unless you first ask the participant for permission; and he or she explicitly gives you permission. Even with the permission, tell no more than what you promised to tell and reduce your words to only those that will benefit the participant first, foremost, and always.

Guard your mouth from verbal diarrhea. Do not ramble on because you like to hear yourself talk to an audience. Do not throw out personal information about the participant because the audience is demanding or forcing you to say more.

Sometimes you might need to inform your fellow judges. Again, ask permission first. If the participant refuses to allow you to share what you know, have the participant directly voice the information to your fellow judges.

Likewise, if a fellow judge or a professional transmits data about a person to you, never relay that data to anyone else unless you first receive permission from the one who told you and clarification on what you will repeat and who will receive it.

If a participant displays a propensity to commit an immediate sin, remember that you are the church judge. Quickly take the necessary steps to render a righteous judgment, compose a restoration plan, call in the church to inhibit the participant from sinning, and lead the person toward repenting and submitting to God instead of to sin.

You may decide to include the potential targets of the participant in this process in a way to protect them and to boost the confrontation of the participant. Of course, if violence appears to be on the doorstep and ready to erupt, call in the secular authorities to whom God has authorized the sword in order to protect and to punish (Romans 13:4, 1 Timothy 2:1–2).

Root problem

The thoroughly feature of investigate means you keep digging deeper into the secret chambers of each individual and each system until you excavate the root problem. This root underscores and generates the superficial problems and the visible symptoms of the systems. When you correct the root problem, the other dysfunctions fall much easier. The following indicators sample common root problems:

I resent my father for that.

I could never do enough to please my mother.

I felt that my parent(s) abandoned me.

My father rejected me.

Although my parents provided me food, clothes, and other things, they were hardly ever there.

I sexualized my confused identity.

I have no reason to live.

Nobody ever told me that I did something good.

I have no other options.

If a participant is unable to track down a root problem, call on your skills and experience as a therapist. Most of all, ask for God’s help (John 14:12–14).

One approach is to combine a time search with emotions since emotions are indicators that flag important occurrences. Starting today, take the person back one year at a time. At each viewing point, ask what events in that year shaped or changed the way