Are We a Disrespectful Church? Why Honor Still Matters

A church can preach grace and still speak to people with contempt. That contradiction sat at the center of this episode of The Smith and Rowland Show.

After some light opening humor, Alan Smith and Jeff Rowland turned to a harder question: have believers lost respect for one another? Their answer was direct. When honor disappears, love weakens, restoration stalls, and the work of the Spirit gets pushed aside.

The issue is bigger than tone. It reaches into how the church sees people, handles failure, and speaks the truth.

Why disrespect is more than bad manners

Smith framed the issue in strong terms. He said love, respect, and honor are doorways to walking in the Spirit. Rowland agreed, and both men treated that as more than a social skill. In their view, respect is tied to how we assign value.

That matters because people read value in different ways. Smith said many women tend to experience value through love, while many men tend to experience value through respect. When a man is respected, he often hears, "You matter." He hears that he is not disposable.

Rowland made that personal when he talked about his own language for relating to Christ. He said the word "intimacy" does not fit how he, as a man, speaks of the Lord. For him, titles like Redeemer, Friend, Savior, and King make more sense. His point was clear. Respect is not a cold concept. It is part of devotion.

From there, the conversation widened. Both men warned that church and culture are becoming more barbaric in the way they treat people. They used that word on purpose. They meant a way of acting that strips away dignity and slides toward cruelty.

A few signs of that spirit are easy to spot:

• public mockery on podcasts and online platforms
• reducing people to labels like "idiot" or "stupid"
• treating unborn life as disposable through abortion

They pointed to abortion as a severe example. If a society will not honor innocent human life at its beginning, then respect has already broken down in other places too. In that sense, barbarism is not random. It grows where honor dies.

Rowland tied this to how he was raised. His mother taught him to respect women, and he spoke about that as a basic duty. That thread ran through the whole conversation. Not every action deserves approval, but every human being still carries worth. When the church forgets that, it starts sounding less like Christ and more like the crowd.

The church often values the wrong package

Smith then turned to the way people judge one another. His point was simple: humans care a lot about the package. God does not.

"To humans, presentation means a lot. To God, not so much."

He used John the Baptist as the clearest example. John did not look polished. He did not dress in a way that made people comfortable. He ate strange food, lived outside the accepted pattern, and carried a message many people did not want to hear. Because of that, his message was easy to dismiss.

That problem did not end in the first century. The church still uses a false measuring stick. Sometimes it is appearance. Sometimes it is polish. Sometimes it is money, class, education, or the ability to speak fluent religious language. If a person knows the lingo, people listen. If that person does not fit the expected mold, the room goes cold.

Smith said some of the strongest words he has ever received came through little children. Those moments mattered because they forced him to admit something important. God can speak through a package that people would never choose. If we devalue the messenger too fast, we may miss the word.

This is why the issue runs deeper than style. It touches discernment. James warns against seating the rich in front and pushing the poor to the back. That is not only bad hospitality. It is bad theology. It says human status can improve the worth of a person in the assembly.

The same point appears in the healing at the gate called Beautiful. The crippled man asked for money, but Peter and John offered something greater. Their encounter challenged a visible, worldly way of measuring value. In the kingdom, the person with no visible power may be standing closer to a miracle than the people passing by.

Smith also said that when this spirit shows up in the world, it is already somewhere in the church. That is a sobering thought. If public life is full of contempt, then believers should at least ask whether they helped teach that tone by example.

Honor the person without approving the sin

One of the strongest points in the discussion was this: honor is not the same as approval. That distinction is where many church conflicts go wrong.

Rowland referred to Romans 13 and the command to give honor to whom honor is due. He also made a hard clarification. You cannot honor something that is dishonorable. Sin is still sin. Evil is still evil. Wrong does not become right because we want to sound kind.

At the same time, he insisted that people often fail to make the next distinction. You can reject what is dishonorable without stripping value from the person.

You can value the person without valuing what is dishonorable.

That point shaped how both men spoke about people outside their own circle. They said Christians are called to respect all people, including Muslims, homosexuals, and transgender people, as human beings. That does not erase moral boundaries. It keeps those boundaries from turning into contempt.

This contrast helps show the difference:

The takeaway is plain. Honor does not require silence about sin. It requires that truth be spoken without cruelty.

That is why commands like "honor all people" in 1 Peter 2:17 and "love one another as I have loved you" in John 13:34 matter so much. They do not apply only when people are easy to love. They apply when someone is wrong, weak, awkward, immature, or wounded. If the church cannot hold truth and dignity together, then it will fail both at holiness and at mercy.

Failure should not erase a lifetime of faithfulness

The conversation became most pointed when it turned to fallen leaders. Smith and Rowland said there are two broad currents in church culture right now. One tries to restore people. The other tries to destroy them and make sure they never preach, teach, or serve again.

They were blunt about which spirit they believe is growing too fast.

Smith pushed back against the habit of calling every failed minister a false prophet or false teacher. He said that over decades of preaching, he can look back and see things he taught years ago that he would now correct. By his own admission, some of those things were false. Yet he does not believe that makes him a false teacher in the full sense of the term. His heart was for the kingdom then, even where his understanding was incomplete.

That is a needed distinction. A person can teach something wrong and later repent or grow. That is not the same as living a false life from the start.

They also challenged the narrow way churches talk about failure. Public ministry often reduces "falling" to a short list of major scandals, usually sex, money, drugs, or alcohol. Yet both men said there are many more ways to fall. Pride can wreck a man. Harshness can wreck him. False judgment can wreck him. Spiritual arrogance can do as much damage as a public scandal, even if it draws less attention.

Smith used the phrase "spiritual Alcatraz" to describe what some believers want for anyone who falls. In that mindset, repentance is never enough. Shame becomes the sentence, and the sentence has no clear end. That approach may sound strict, but they argued it is actually disrespect dressed up as righteousness.

This issue does not stop with leaders. The same pattern hits ordinary believers. Once someone fails in public, many Christians act as if one moment should cancel every year before it. That is not how honor works, and it is not how grace works either.

When someone falls, grief should come before judgment

Smith called failure in the church a sad situation for everyone involved. If a leader falls, the damage spreads. It hurts husbands and wives, children, friends, congregations, and the person's own soul. That sadness should shape the church's response.

His concern was not only about the fall itself. He was troubled by what happens next. When a person has repented and is trying to stand again, some believers keep piling on. They add shame to sorrow. Smith said he has little patience for that because it heaps sin on top of sin.

Rowland agreed, and both men argued that this kind of treatment can drive people deeper into the very thing they are trying to escape. A fallen brother does not need spectators with stones in their hands. He needs truth, yes, but he also needs a path back into life.

That is where Rowland brought in one of Scripture's strongest restorative ideas. God says, "I know the plans I have for you." He spoke that over a broken people. If God can speak hope into a fallen world, then believers should not speak as if another Christian's story ends at the point of failure.

Smith added a personal picture from his life as a dairy farmer. When another dairy farmer goes broke, he does not feel smug. He feels sad, because he knows that loss leaves him one step closer to the same danger. He applied that to the body of Christ. When one brother falls, the right response is not pride. It is sober grief, because we all stand in need of grace.

That thought led to one of the strongest lines in the discussion. Smith said he wants to keep grace from getting rusty. He gives grace because he knows he needs grace. That may sound self-protective, but it is also honest. A church that stops extending mercy should not expect mercy to stay lively in its own life.

They also said the capacity to love is already present in believers because the Holy Spirit is in them. The problem is not that Christians lack the ability to love one another. The problem is that pride, fear, and anger can suppress what the Spirit is already urging.

Scripture calls the church to a higher way

Near the end of the discussion, the biblical case came into full view. Rowland quoted Romans 12:10, "Be devoted to one another in love, honoring one another above yourselves." Smith added 1 Peter 2:17, which commands believers to honor all people. Rowland also pointed to John 13:34, where Jesus commands His people to love one another as He has loved them.

Those texts do not leave much room for a ministry of exposure as a way of life. Smith said he sees no scriptural basis for making it a calling to search out everyone's sin and display it in public under the banner of helping them. He compared that impulse to someone proudly showing off a rash on his leg. His point was sharp and memorable. Not everything needs public display, and taking pride in exposing rot says something unhealthy about the exposer.

Rowland then raised 1 Timothy 5:17, "Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine." He lingered on two phrases. What does "rule well" mean, and what does "double honor" look like? His point was not that leaders should be protected from correction. His point was that "rule well" cannot mean "rule perfectly," because no leader is perfect.

That matters because many ministers spend decades laboring faithfully, then hit one point of failure, and people erase the whole record. A lifetime of service disappears overnight. The church knows how to remember scandal. It often forgets how to remember labor.

Both men said the answer is not weaker doctrine. It is a better value system, one ruled by the Word of God. That value system includes mutual submission, esteem for others, and a willingness to receive from people who do not look impressive.

A healthier church would act differently in plain, visible ways. It would listen before dismissing. It would correct without humiliating. It would honor older laborers instead of sidelining them. It would stop equating polish with truth. It would refuse to reserve dignity for the people it already likes.

Smith and Rowland continue teaching on themes like these through the Kingdom Prophetic Society, where restoration, prophecy, and church life remain central topics. Yet the heart of this episode was simple enough for any congregation to hear. Love each other. Respect each other. Value one another as Christ has valued you.

A church of honor can still tell the truth

A church that speaks grace with contempt weakens its own witness. That was the burden of this conversation, and it is hard to ignore.

The answer is not soft standards. The answer is holy honor, the kind that tells the truth about sin while still treating people as precious before God.

When believers recover that kind of respect, restoration becomes possible again. Then the church can correct without cruelty, lead without pride, and love without pretending that sin is harmless.