Three pastors talk about church-killing gossip

Pastors Kent Hughes, Dan Philips and Ray Ortlund talk about a sin that commonly runs through the church: gossip.

An excerpt from Ortlund:

Gossip is our dark moral fervor eagerly seeking gratification.

Gossip makes us feel important and needed as we declare our judgments.

It makes us feel included to know the inside scoop.

It makes us feel powerful to cut someone else down to size, especially someone we are jealous of.

It makes us feel righteous, even responsible, to pronounce someone else guilty.

Gossip can feel good in multiple ways. But it is of the flesh, not of the Spirit.

Gossip is a sin rarely disciplined but often more socially destructive than the sensational sins.

Connect to these three pastor’s posts on gossip here.

 

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Killing gossip

   “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases. As charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife. The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body. Like the glaze covering an earthen vessel are fervent lips with an evil heart.” (Proverbs 26:20–23, ESV)

Dan Phillips gives some advice on how to kill gossip and its nasty kin:

Gossip kills churches. If you’re reading this blog at all, odds are I don’t want your church to be killed! So here’s what you do.

First, understand what gossip is. Gossip is spreading harmful information in an ungodly manner — without love, and thus to no positive end. Its bastard stepchildren are the triplets: Strife, Dissension, Division. Once again, my focus is the life of the local church.

Second, do any or all of the following steps, as needed. Some of them help identify whether you’re actually hearing gossip or not. All of them will stop it dead. But none will work… unless used.

Read Dan’s five suggestions here.

 

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When are we going to learn?

Bill Mounce asks a penetrating question after another young man leaves the ministry because of the devastating impact of. . . . . gossip.

“When are we going to learn? When are we going to preach Ephesians 4:29-5:5 and hold people to account? When will we view gossip and slander and criticalness as the dark and ugly sins that they are? While we do hold a few sins as really bad — I will let you fill in the blanks — I suspect that the sins of the mouth have done infinitely more damage to the cause of Christ than, say, adultery.”-

Convicting. .  .Read the rest of “Here We Go Again!”  and let’s all watch our tongues more carefully.

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God, gossip, and grief

Mark Lauterbach shares a word of wisdom:

Few things are more a grief to God than gossip.

I have found benefit for myself in this quote by a man who lived in a sea of gossips.  I find it helps me guard my words and helps me guard my ears.  Simeon was a pastor in Cambridge in the last 19th and early 19th centuries.

The longer I live the more I feel the importance of adhering to the rules which I have laid down for myself in such matters. First, to hear as little as possible what is to the prejudice of others. Second, to believe nothing of the kind until I am absolutely forced to. Third, never drink into the spirit of one who circulates an ill report. Fourth, always to believe, that if the other side were heard, a very different account would be given of the matter.

I consider love as wealth; and as I would resist a man who should come to rob my house, so would I a man who would weaken my regard for any human being.

-Charles Simeon, on Gossip

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Does God hear our whispering?

The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels;
they go down into the inner parts of the body.  Proverbs 18:8

Let’s all admit it.  We love gossip.  We love negative information about other people.  We love controversy.  We love “Have you heard the latest?”  Each word is a delicious morsel, an irresistible delicacy.  We gulp these words down with relish.  They make us feel more alive.  What proof of our corruption within!  And each new contagious word we swallow goes down deep into us with a lasting impression and leaves us even sicker than we were before.  Truly, God is not mocked.

We are always speaking, even whispering, and listening, before the face of God.

–Ray Ortlund

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