"The most important aspect of Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to give our attention to, and it is the one thing that is continually under attack.
"
- Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
I'm reading (and thinking, and very occasionally even writing) more and more posts about how church should be done, how the Gospel fits into all of that, where to go with church worship, preaching philosophies, etc.
This post by the iMonk blew me away.
I just spent ten minutes reading something I’ve read/heard hundreds of times before: an established, traditional church, experiencing some signs of aging, goes through a process diagnosing its problems, developing/selling a plan for the future and asking the congregation to work with the leadership to bring the church through a period of decline into a future of growth and prosperity.Now, go read the rest.
In those plans are predictable words: Plans. Consultants. Marketing. Children. New Staff. New facilities. New families. Communication. Outreach. Programs. Growth.
There’s the necessary optimism. (â€Our best days are ahead of us.â€) The ever present affirmation (â€We’re a great church.â€) The spiritual assurances. (â€God is at work here.â€)
Under the words, you can feel the tension. Generational worship styles have collided. The noise of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven revolution has been heard by members of the congregation, and there is a bit of unrest in the formerly restive pews. Young people want to know why their church isn’t doing what the other churches are doing. How long are we going to stick with the suits, the choir and the organ? Where’s the band? The projection? The CCM praise choruses? The cool stuff?
The good days of the denominational past are a powerful memory, but the raw competitiveness of evangelicalism’s present is a current reality. People with families are going elsewhere. Young people are shopping around, and what do we have to offer? What if we keep declining? Does our leadership get it? Does our leadership know what “it†is? Can we change if we wanted to? Do we want to? Can we start enough alternative services to make everyone happy?
There is the confidence of previous denominational wisdom in the voice of the pastor. With new staff, a good plan, better facilities, more marketing, we will prosper. We need to work harder and do more. We need programs and outreaches and visibility. It’s always worked. It will work again.
Many of you know this song before I sing it. You could write several more verses.
Many of you know what you won’t hear in this recitation of plans and programs. You won’t hear anything about the Gospel. At all.
The Gospel? We’ve got that down. We preach it. (Don’t we?) We teach it. (Of course we teach it. We baptized 15 last year.) If we don’t have the Gospel right, what are we doing anyway?
Now there’s a question.
Tom Ascol, Director of Founder’s Ministries, has repeatedly said that the challenge facing Southern Baptists and other evangelicals is the Gospel itself. Not numbers or how to grow bigger churches, but the Gospel.
The Gospel is rarely heard in many churches. Whole movements have moved past the Gospel into “felt needs†and “what people want to hear.†Pastor-theologians are rare; perhaps officially qualifying as an endangered species. Any survey or question and answer on the gospel in the midst of our Sunday morning congregations will yield results not much different than what one might here in France or secular Europe. Oh there will be a LOT more God talk and religious chatter, but the Gospel? The core? The heart? You will be surprised. You ought to be broken.
Trackbacks:
Trackback URL: http://thinklings.org/bloo.trackback.php/3950.
1. Slings and Arrows
- 12/31/1969 6:00 pm CST
So over at Thinklings they're talking about how church should be done. It's an interesting question and one that pastors, theologians, lay leaders and all too often "Christian consumers" ask frequently. What makes "how do you do church?" such an...
Comments on "The iMonk on the Gospel and Church":
2. Jared
- 07/04/2007 11:55 am CDT
I liked what Cameron said to the SBC.
I'm not sure Cameron could articulate these concerns, or if he even had this scope in mind.
My guess is that Cameron just wanted SBC'ers to replace felt needs and "Jesus the therapist" with sin and "Jesus the Savior." That's a great and necessary message itself, and I pushed back against those pushing back against Cameron's address, but my guess is that Cameron isn't in the same building as iMonk/Ascol/et.al. when it comes to a real scandalizing of churches by the full Gospel.
But that's just my guess.
3. The Ancient Mariner
- 07/04/2007 3:43 pm CDT
Well, the dude's an actor--it's a bit much to expect him to be another iMonk. There's only one of that guy--God broke the mold after he made him. (Not that it wasn't a perfectly good mold, but hey, if God wants to break something, he breaks it.) Though someone maybe should tell him that "unrest" and "restive" refer to roughly the same thing . . .
And I didn't know I'm an endangered species; maybe that's the reason I'm having such a hard time finding a new call. (Perhaps I should stop calling churches and start calling wildlife preserves?)
All in all, a great post; unfortunately, I doubt many outside the choir will listen . . .
5. De
- 07/04/2007 4:52 pm CDT
Jen: "Isn't this what Kirk Cameron was getting at in his message to the SBC?"
Yes.
And, referring to that, all I can say is "Thanks Kirk. You said something that needed to be said."
As have iMonk and Tom Ascol and many others. They aren't in competition, so I don't want to compare them. They are in agreement, just at different levels.
6. DLE
- 07/04/2007 10:13 pm CDT
I commented with the following over at iMonk, but I thought I'd post it here, too:
I know that you know from my blog that I’m a very harsh critic when it comes to flaws in the American Church.
But I must say this: I’ve been a part of many churches and denominations over the years, from Third Wave charismatics to staunch Lutheran to Reformed to Methodist to AoG to SBC, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been to a church where they didn’t preach the Gospel.
This is not to say that they’ve all preached it well, preached it unadulterated from man-derived nonsense, preached the whole of it, or preached it consistently. But they’ve all preached it.
So when I read that we’re not preaching it, I simply can’t agree with that statement. That’s the kind of statement that stifles all thought about how to fix the problems of our inconsistencies and mistaken notions. You can’t build reform out of that statement. You simply can’t.
The solution is not to broadly insult the Church as a whole, but for people in each church to come together to see what’s being overlooked, then restore it to the message. It’s sitting down as a community of believers and going before God with the intention of being true to the Gospel at all times and in all practice of it. How that will be done will vary from church to church, denomination to denomination.
But to blanket condemn accomplishes little.
I would also say that more than not preaching the Gospel, we’re failing in living even the little we do understand.
Kierkegaard once wrote:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?
Therein lies the real problem. We preach the Gospel. We know the Gospel. We just don’t want to live it because it means our little worlds will go up in smoke and we’ll be forced to radically transform how we work, play, and live. And we’re simply not all that interested in making that change.
7. De
- 07/04/2007 11:22 pm CDT
DLE,
Thanks for your comment. Your last paragraph is very good and very convicting.
I want to make clear that I love the Bride. The Bride is beautiful. I didn't intend for this post to be a blanket condemnation of the church (I certainly don't think it is, but if it appears that way please let me know). I don't think the iMonk's post was meant as a blanket condemnation either.
In addition, you and I can both pull anecdotal evidence about whether or not churches are preaching the gospel. I would just ask that you don't dismiss, out of hand, the thoughtful posts of people like iMonk, Ascoll, Jared, etc on this. They aren't making this up.
You may have a widely different experience.
For instance, the assumption that "we know the Gospel". I don't really think in this conversation that I will be able to sway you from the belief that the Gospel is well-known and oft-preached in our churches. I'd just ask that you don't dismiss opinions to the contrary out of hand.
Also - you use "we" in the final paragraph of your post. I don't know that I'd include you in that - you are, from all I've seen, very interested in making that change.
8. Bryon Scott
- 07/05/2007 2:11 pm CDT
Hiya guys,
Long time, no comment--You may remember me, I once ran a blog one of you read on a regular basis: slingsnarrows.com
I came by today and was struck by this post as I have for the last two years been pastoring a church that falls directly into the above definition.
I am finding that the "pat answers" to the questions aren't so easy as to be "just preach the gospel." What is the gospel?
Stupid question, right? Maybe not. Is the "gospel" a simple 4 step formula like the Bible tracts map out or is it something more? DLE points out that we "We preach the Gospel. We know the Gospel. We just don’t want to live it..." It's almost as if the Gospel and the living are two different things.
Part of the problem with the American church today is that most Americans believe they can be Bible-believing Christians without believing what the Bible teaches. Where I live & minister, 90% of the people will tell you they are Christian, yet they won't darken the door of a church, they won't pray on a regular basis, and they make decisions based on what society believes is right instead of what God has said is right. They "know" the gospel (ie: "Jesus died for my sins and I accepted Him as my savior.")
I ramble but I guess what I'm asking is, can we preach the gospel without living it? Can a person believe Jesus has saved him from his sins and yet not experience continual life-change? Somehow that's the gospel that most people seem to understand and accept. I'm not sure that's the gospel that the Bible teaches, however.
I guess what I am saying is that stating "we just need to preach the gospel" may be over-simplifying things just a little. Yes, we need to preach the gospel; but it must be the whole gospel.
9. Bryon Scott
- 07/05/2007 2:20 pm CDT
Okay...
Me again.
I just read the iMonk post and this part struck me:
We need the Gospel of Jesus in America. We need it to be the kind of message that divides the world, stakes claims in the enemy’s territory, overturns the idols in our houses and sends our children into inner cities instead of to the suburbs. We need a gospel that addresses racism, abuse, excess, narcissism, corruption, sexual sin and the passive acceptance of poverty.
That's what I'm talkin' about!
10. De
- 07/05/2007 3:30 pm CDT
Bryon!!!
Man, how have you been? Are you blogging anywhere now? We've missed you, dude.
11. De
- 07/05/2007 3:34 pm CDT
And, to your point: "I guess what I am saying is that stating "we just need to preach the gospel" may be over-simplifying things just a little. Yes, we need to preach the gospel; but it must be the whole gospel."
Yes! Well said. A few notes:
1) I think that the word "gospel" means different things to different people. To his credit, I think DLE's disagreement with us and the iMonk has to do with his interpretation of the word "gospel" as something trackish, 4point-ish, basic. It's almost an apples/oranges thing.
2) So, yeah - the whole gospel!
And, finally
3) My post and supporting comments aside, the whole gospel scares the crud out of me . . .
12. DLE
- 07/05/2007 4:18 pm CDT
De,
No, I'm not thinking of the Gospel "as something tractish, 4-point-ish, basic." I'm definitely talking about the Gospel in all its depth and richness. Truly, that's the reason I can make the claim that I've never been to a church that didn't preach the Gospel. BECAUSE the Gospel is so rich, people can wind up preaching bits and pieces of it--and that's still the Gospel. It's just not all of it.
Therein lies the problem. Beyond the issues of praxis, most churches, even the hardest-core "Bible-believing" church doesn't preach the whole Gospel. They may preach that God hates sin and that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, but what about being merciful to the poor or esteeming others better than ourselves?
Churches flail between the wide limits of the Gospel, but rarely do they stray from one side of the Gospel territory into another. That's why I believe you almost have to jump around denominations to hear the whole of the Gospel, because each denomination stresses its own little portion of the Gospel it's latched onto to the exclusion of the rest of it.
Isn't this what Kirk Cameron was getting at in his message to the SBC?