An appeal from a pastor

The pastors are already walking through a battlefield most people never see. Their shoes are worn from hospital corridors, midnight phone calls, family tensions, spiritual darkness, self-doubt, and the constant weight of “Did I do enough today?” They don’t need more stones thrown at them from inside the camp. They need brothers and sisters standing beside them, not snipers perched on their own theological hillsides.

Teachers who promote KJV-Onlyism, so-called “Perfect TR,” and rigid versions of verbal plenary preservation often don’t intend harm—but harm is happening. When a pastor is told, “Your Bible is corrupt,” or “Your preaching is invalid unless it comes from this one English translation KJV,” it tears at the roots of ministry. It burdens them with fear instead of freeing them to preach Christ. It distracts them from the gospel and dumps them into endless, fruitless debates about which English version earns God’s approval.

This is not how the family of God is meant to treat its shepherds.

Pastors today stand in an age dripping with confusion and hostility. The world mocks faith. Temptations coil everywhere. Discouragement shadows even their early mornings. Many struggle with exhaustion, depression, and private battles they don’t dare voice. The enemy knows their names. The enemy knows their weak spots. And the enemy is not gentle.

To pile on top of that by accusing them of unfaithfulness because they aren’t preaching from one particular 17th-century English Bible is not zeal for truth. It is cruelty disguised as conviction.

It’s time to stop.

It’s time for teachers who spread these burdens to reconsider what spirit they are serving. Scripture preserves the gospel message faithfully across languages, traditions, and centuries—not by perfect sameness, but by God’s sustaining care. Demanding that modern pastors submit to a single English translation as the only “true” Word of God twists preservation into oppression.

The church should be a refuge for its shepherds, not a courtroom.

So let the call go out: Pray for your pastors. Lift their arms when they droop. Encourage them when they stagger. Remind them that Christ holds them tighter than their critics do. Stop stumbling them with man-made tests of orthodoxy that the apostles themselves never required.

We are all servants of the same Master. We all march under the same grace. If we break our own shepherds, we starve the flock.

Let those who teach, teach with humility. Let those who rebuke, rebuke with love. Let those who follow, follow with trust. And let every heart grow strong and courageous, knowing that the Lord who called us has not abandoned us.

There is a bigger battle at hand. The family of God does not have the luxury of fighting each other when the world already wars against us.

Strength to the weary. Peace to the wounded. Courage to the called.