Today’s post is written by Bill Mounce and is sponsored by Zondervan. Bill is the author of Why I Trust the Bible and Basics of Biblical Greek.

The Bible makes some astonishing claims about itself. The apostle Paul tells his friend Timothy that every word of the Bible comes from the mouth of God (2 Tim 3:16). The Bible says God personally wrote the Ten Commandments with His own finger (Exod 31:18; Deut 9:10). Almost five hundred times, the prophets preface their prophecies with the claim “says the Lord.” Jesus says, “I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken” (John 12:49). Under normal circumstances, if someone says they speak for God, I doubt many of us would pay attention. But this is exactly what the Bible says about itself. Do you believe it?
We can no longer assume that people trust their Bible and believe what it says about itself. Western culture has shifted away from its Judeo-Christian heritage, and the popular media has launched such an attack on the believability of Scripture that many churchgoers have serious questions about the Bible. Questions like:

Did Jesus actually live?
Did the biblical writers get it right, or did they slant, massage, or even create the Bible we have today?
The Gospels were written long after Jesus lived; how can you trust them?
How can you believe a Bible that’s full of internal contradictions with itself and external contradictions with science and history?
Why should we believe the right books are in the Bible? Many books were left out, like the Gospel of Thomas.
Why trust the Bible when there are so many contradictory translations?

Wherever I travel in the world, whether I am speaking at conferences or universities or churches, there is one burning question. Can I trust the Bible? Why should I trust the Bible? Gone are the days of the veneer of a Christian culture where trust was assumed. Gone are the days when the Bible was given the benefit of the doubt. We live in a culture that aggressively attacks the Bible and those who were raised to trust it. University freshman are being challenged in every class. Parents often do not know what to do or how to help.
Some people feel it’s wrong to ask these fundamental questions; but if you never seriously ask them, you’ll never be convinced that the Bible is true and trustworthy. So I invite you to ask the hard questions, read the controversies and solutions, and decide for yourself whether you trust your Bible. Does it contain the very words of God?
I wrote the book, Why I Trust the Bible because people need to know the challenges of the day and the solutions to the questions raised. As is true of all systems of belief that deal with the ultimate questions of reality—Christianity, Islam, Materialism, Atheism—we all must have faith. I can’t prove the Bible is trustworthy, but I don’t have to put my brain on the shelf in order to believe in its trustworthiness. There are good answers to the hard questions being asked today, and none of the questions need to drive anyone to despair.
After forty-nine years of consistent and serious study of the New Testament, I am more convinced than ever that the Bible contains the very words of God and is wholly trustworthy.
This post is adapted from the Preface of Bill Mounce’s book Why I Trust the Bible. Order the book or find out more info.

Bill Mounce (PhD, Aberdeen University) lives as a writer in Washougal, Washington. He is the President of BiblicalTraining.org, a non-profit organization offering world-class educational resources for discipleship in the local church. See www.BillMounce.com for more information. Formerly he was a preaching pastor, and prior to that a professor of New Testament and director of the Greek Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of the bestselling Greek textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, and many other resources. He was the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version translation of the Bible and is serving on the NIV translation committee.
What people are saying about Why I Trust the Bible:
“Bill Mounce has produced a remarkably clear, comprehensive, and level-headed resource that carefully and graciously explains each type of objection that has been lodged against the Bible, and then answers each objection with convincing facts and arguments. I expect that all who read it will gain deeper confidence in the trustworthiness of the Bible.”—WAYNE GRUDEM, Phoenix Seminary
“Ordinary believers wonder whether the Bible is really true, whether we can truly trust the Scriptures. Why I Trust the Bible represents a learned and accessible response to such questions. Many, I believe, will be assured in their faith by reading this important book.”—THOMAS R. SCHREINER, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
“We live in a time when truth is subject to a person’s preferences and what is called ‘truth’ is really just formulated montage of misinformation. We need accessible and accurate information for people from all walks of life. In Why I Trust the Bible, Bill Mounce invites Christ-followers and doubters to consider the reasonable and sound answers he provides to today’s tough questions.—ERIC MASON, Epiphany Fellowship
“This excellent volume is a treasure trove of explanations of difficult texts and answers to skeptics’ questions about the Bible. With each chapter, I found my confidence in the integrity of the biblical text reaffirmed and strengthened. Bill Mounce is uniquely qualified to respond to the many arguments against the authority and trustworthiness of the Bible, and I highly commend this book to anyone who is struggling to believe that Scripture is genuinely God-breathed.”—SAM STORMS, Bridgeway Church
Go here to order Why I Trust the Bible or find out more info.

One of the customs of our church is to thoroughly evaluate the men we call to be pastors and elders. Once we identify a candidate for the office, and once he has indicated his interest, we complete a thorough evaluation of his life and character. We work through a document that describes the qualifications the Bible holds out and asks whether he meets them or falls short. The prospective elder and his wife complete this evaluation first before the existing elders and the entire congregation do the same. By the end of the process we feel confident that the men we call are also qualified. (And, to ensure those men remain qualified, we repeat this process every six years or so.)

It never fails to fascinate me that when the Bible describes the qualifications of an elder, its focus is almost entirely on character. There is one qualification related to skill (he must have the ability to teach) and one related to desire (he must want to serve in this way), but beyond that, there is an extensive list of traits of character: he must be gentle, he must be hospitable, he must be generous, he must be devoted to his wife, he must be a faithful father, and so on. Where we are so easily swayed by accomplishments and raw ability, God’s foremost concern is for character. When it comes to the leadership of the church, God demands they be men of upstanding character, men who are above reproach in the eyes of their family members, their church, and even their community.
I recently took some time away from being an elder—a sabbatical that followed more than a decade of constant service. Upon returning, the members of the church re-evaluated me in light of those qualities, a process that is humbling but also encouraging, for Christians love to identify strengths more than weaknesses and graces more than faults. It was a blessing to receive their affirmation that they believe I am qualified to continue to serve among them. Meanwhile, we have just gone through the process of identifying a new elder and examining his suitability for the office. Through those two contexts, I found myself pondering character.
I have often heard it said that character is who you are when no one is looking. This is a well-worn phrase that communicates an essential truth: You tend to be on your best behavior when you are in the public eye. But if you wish to know who you truly are, and if you wish to know what your character is really made of, you need to look at yourself in those times when you are alone and those places where no one is present to spot your behavior or stand in judgment of your actions. You need to consider the situations in which your mind is free to wander and your hands are free to act. The truest gauge of your truest self is known ultimately only to you. Hence, character is who you are when no one is looking.
But as I considered the character of an elder, I also found myself challenged with this: Character is who you are when only your family is looking. I consider this equally important when gauging strength of character, for family knows who you really are just as much as solitude does. After all, when no one is looking, you are not being challenged by other people, you are not being sinned against, you are not being forced to practice courteous conduct and gentle speech. You are not practicing or neglecting discipleship through Word and prayer, you are not failing or succeeding to lead others through trying circumstances. It’s just you and the silence, just you and the screen, just you and your own thoughts. In that way, you learn a lot about yourself when only your family is looking.
One of the elements of my life that concerns me most is my ability to be on my worst behavior around the people who are most important to me. You would think I’d always be at my very best before the people I love the most. Yet somehow I can put on airs before strangers and then let down my guard before my family. Somehow I can live to impress people I barely know while being apathetic toward people I know the best and whose lives are deeply intertwined with mine. There is something about home life that can breed arrogance and apathy, entitlement and hostility.
But before God calls me to serve the church he calls me to serve my family and before he calls me to love the people of my local congregation he calls me to love the people under my own roof. Long before I think about laying down my life in service for my brothers and sisters, he calls me to lay down my life in service for my wife and children. My family knows who I really am in a way neither the crowds nor the solitude do.
Who am I? What kind of man am I? What kind of character do I possess and display? I will learn that in the darkness, in the solitude, in the times when no human eyes sees me. But I will equally learn that when I am before those people who see me constantly and up close, for character is who I am when only my family is looking.

Every one of us has become familiar with the pattern. Every one of us has seen church members becoming dissatisfied and then disgruntled, missing church occasionally and then consistently. Every one of us has seen the pattern and begun to dread the nearly-inevitable conclusion. This is especially discouraging when the reason for the departure is not an area of essential theological disagreement but something much more common and much less important—hurt feelings, petty squabbles, matters of preference.

This pattern is so common that we should all assume we ourselves may at some time fall into it. This being the case, what should you do when you begin feeling discontent at your church? What should you do when you feel that yearning to pick up and move on? What should you do when you find yourself eager to slip out of one church and into another? I’d like to offer just a few suggestions that I hope you’ll consider and put into practice.
Pray through the directory. Find yourself a copy of the church directory and commit to praying through the entire thing at least once. Pray for each person or each family by name. Pray what the Bible models and pray what the Spirit prompts. Prayer is one of our core responsibilities toward one another and has a way of stirring up our affections. As you pray for those people may it remind you that you’re not just walking away from a club or institution, but from a community—a family, even.
Commit to serving. The temptation when disgruntled is always to stop serving—to remove yourself from whatever ministries you’ve been involved with. Before you leave, recommit to serving others for a period of time—several months at least. Love tends to grow cold when we stop loving others and it tends to be rekindled when we start loving again. Plus, it’s as we serve that the Lord reminds us that he has gifted us specifically so we can use his gifts to bless our fellow Christians.
(Parenthetically, it is almost universally true that when people leave churches for reasons that are poor or inadequate, they have stopped praying for their fellow church members and have stopped serving them. Rarely do people leave when they are constant in prayer and diligent in service.)
Remember the good, not just the bad. In times when we are hurt or discouraged we usually find ourselves fixating on what others have done wrong, not what they have done right. So as you consider leaving, force yourself to remember not only the church’s failings, but also its blessings. Remember not only the bad times, but also the good, not only the times it fell short, but also the times it rallied to the cause. Remember all the times it blessed you, expressed kindness to you, and supported you. You may find this side of the scale by far outweighs the other.
Think it through. There may be many good reasons to leave one church for another, but there are certainly many bad ones. The worst reason of all is allowing unidentified or unrepentant sin to be the determining factor. Hence, before you leave any church, think carefully about whether sin or sanctification is leading the way—whether you feel the need to leave because you have grown in holiness or because you have diminished in holiness. Too many people allow sin, not the Spirit, to lead them out the door.
Pray it through. The only way to adequately think it through is to pray it through. You need to labor in prayer to become convinced that your departure is consistent with God’s will. Pray for God to expose your heart, to guide your feelings, to make your motives clear. Pray that your deepest desire would be to honor and glorify him, whether that means leaving or staying.
Talk it through. It is possible that the church is in error, but it’s also possible that you are in error. It is possible there is a sore problem with the church’s leadership, but it is also possible that there is a sore problem with your sanctification. Have the character and honesty to ask someone, “Am I making a wise decision?” And make sure that individual is the type who will challenge you if you need to be challenged. Don’t leave if trustworthy men and women are telling you to stay.
The fact is that in a consumeristic culture like this one—a culture in which the customer is always right—too many people leave too many churches too easily. It’s unlikely that any of us is above the temptation to depart for poor reasons and to leave behind us a trail of hurt and confusion. So before you make that decision, pray for the people of the church and diligently serve them. Ask God for wisdom and ask others for guidance. And then, only then, leave with confidence that your departure is God’s will. As you do so, you will have honored God, served others, and modeled how to leave a church well.