Ross Middleton is the author for Collide Leadership. He is married to, in his own words, his “smokin hot wife” Amy and has two little boys, ages 2 1/2 and a 1/2. They live in Tallahassee, FL and are campus ministers at THE Florida State University with Every Nation Campus Ministries.

I was at a bachelor party about a year ago for a friend of mine who is still currently a Christian seminary student and we were just hanging out at a restaurant/bar type place. Some of the guys started buying him some shots. No biggie. Then some other guys at the place found out it was his bachelor party and they started buying him shots also. He had also had some beer too that night if I remember correctly. He started drinking a lot and getting drunk and people were still bringing him more alcohol. By the end of the night he was totally trashed.

While I don’t have a problem with drinking alcohol, I do have a problem with getting drunk. I believe it is sin and it separates us from God. My dilemma in this moment is that I am not super close with this guy. I have known him for a while and he is a Christian brother but all of his close friends who are Christians were also there and none of them were trying to stop him from drinking any more except for one guy, who got overruled because of majority.

There were also some unbelievers there. So my problem was, I didn’t think that what he was doing was right, but I didn’t necessarily feel like I had the liberty to speak into his life when he had other Christian friends much closer to him than me also there.

I didn’t know if I should be that guy to stop it. If I had felt like I had known what to do, I wouldn’t have had any problem being that guy, so instead I just kind of sat there and did not encourage him to drink anymore. Looking back, I’m not sure I made the right decision. I would love to hear people’s thoughts on a situation like this so that I could learn if I am ever in a situation like this again.