The following should be intently watched and listened to by every person — EVERY PERSON — professing faith in the LORD Jesus Christ. If a pastor, or anyone attending a church, if in any institution or organization professing to be a Christian one…

Anyone. Everyone. All can use this. To hopefully, prayerfully build a firmer, stronger, discerning spirit, a critically thinking mind, spiritual wisdom, and walk with the LORD.

Forget denominations. Forget what degree the pastor at your church holds. I’m tired of hearing, “Well, pastor ________ has a masters degree, you know.”

So what.

What does that really mean or say about the pastor?

What is the degree of his faith and obedience to God’s whole inerrant word?

What does pastor so-and-so truly believe? How did he become the pastor of the church he preaches in? By his desire, a power struggle, or was he pulled into the ministry like every prophet, apostle, godly person, as our example throughout God’s whole inerrant, infallible, unchangeable, eternal, living Word, kicking, screaming, running away, saying, “Not me! Why me!?” as none sought it. Unlike so many today on stages behind pulpits.

I’ve been in churches where the desire of an associate pastor, and his wife, was palpable and easy to the keen observer to see it was their desire, their will, to overtake, to become senior pastor in that church. And that is not how a church prospers and is alive in the Spirit of God. It isn’t about QUANTITY, how many buttocks are in the cushioned seats, how much the treasury takes in each Sunday. It’s about the QUALITY of the messages, are the people attending having their spiritual needs met, and are they living out their faith and being truly discipled to become fruitful disciples? Or, showing up weekly to get their attendance gold star [showing my age as I remember the posterboard attendance thing hanging from the wall in Sunday school and if there, another gold star — for just showing up — ingraining that into the heart and mind rather than what should be planted] and to leave “feeling good” about themselves due to the nothingness of watered-down words from the stage?

There are heretics, false teachers, prominent men on stages, in “churches,” “preaching” to audiences of anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 weekly.

Not about numbers. About the quality of the sound teachings from the pulpit, the small groups, the Bible studies, about spiritual maturity and spiritual discernment, spiritual growth of those attending. Are they disciples of Jesus? Or just people showing up every Sunday? Spending more time watching dung NFL football this time of year on Sundays than in God’s word, in obedience to the LORD.

There is not one prophet, not one godly person used by God, for God that raised their hand and said, “Ouu, ouu, ouu, pick me, pick me, pick me!”

Moses ran away for 40 years.

Familiar with Jeremiah? Jonah? Isaiah? Elijah? Ezekiel? Daniel? Habakkuk? Joel? And the list goes on…

They were reluctant. It was God’s will be done — not their will be done.

Yes, Jesus’ disciples dropped what they were doing instantly and followed Him, to later continually question Him, eventually turning and running from Him, denying Him. To only after seeing Him resurrected from death and being filled with the Holy Spirit later on to grow and establish God’s church. Not establish a denomination of man — God’s church. Jewish believers in the LORD Jesus Christ who, by their example, spread the gospel — the true, sound, Biblically historical gospel, shed light into the Gentile darkness, bringing Gentiles into believing and salvation in the precious shed blood of Jesus and His resurrection.

They didn’t believe the women who saw the Risen LORD. [A cultural thing, one they soon realized they should abandon and take heed of what the women saw and spoke].

Beware those so eager to stand at a pulpit. Are they truly called, truly led to that station by the Holy Spirit, God’s will — or their will? Where did they learn what they believe? First, foremost, within God’s Word and a seminary of the principals and Biblical standards, such as Southern Evangelical Seminary, or one of the myriad fallen away, heretical seminaries passing itself off as being well grounded in Scripture?

Loyal to a denomination, a church, a pastor, or loyal above all else to God, to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit, to the whole Holy Bible?

Really. Seriously.

American churches, American seminaries are a shambles, a disaster, an abomination. And they have been for quite some time. How about becoming aware, objective, thinking — thinking critically according to the whole Holy Bible. For God. With God. In obedience to God rather than a pastor, a church, a denomination, a man, a woman, because, well, it’s where you grew up, where you’ve gone for years.

What does your pastor truly believe? What is he truly teaching? Where did he acquire what was poured into him before being set loose upon a congregation?

How about a Q&A from the congregation to the pastors of America for a few minutes before every service?

“Do you believe ____________?”

“What seminary did you graduate from? ”

“Where in your class did you graduate?” [Because 50% of them graduated, but they did so in the bottom 50% of their class.]

This is what I’ve asked every surgeon wanting to cut me open and operate on me. I believe every person in such a situation needs to ask that question.

And ask such questions of their pastors.

Ask…

“What do you truly believe reagarding _________________, ______________, ______________, ____________, _____________, and ____________?”

Then go to the Scriptures, as a Berean, to compare if what the pastor who becomes idolized and believed is truly sound and in God’s word or elsewhere. Because so many, oh, so many, so subtle, so convincing, so followed in these times are elsewhere. Not soundly, firmly, faithfully, obediently in all of God’s word.

The times require this, demand this of us, if we are truly His.

Watch on…listen on…apply…live it out from what is renewed and discerned well and wisely from within, from the Spirit of God…

Ken Pullen, Sunday, September 7th, 2025

How to Guard Against Mission Drift, with Judge Phil Ginn

Why Southern Evangelical Seminary Took A Stand

August 31, 2025

Alisa Childers

With Judge Phil Ginn

From Alisa Childers Podcast

VIDEO

How can Christian institutions stay faithful in a shifting cultural landscape? In this episode, Judge Phil Ginn—President of Southern Evangelical Seminary—joins me to talk about the danger of mission drift and how SES works to stay anchored to its biblical foundation. We discuss the importance of clear theological commitments, why SES drafted a position paper on social justice in the wake of the George Floyd riots, and how intentional steps like these can help churches, ministries, and schools remain on track with their God-given mission.