The Silencing of the Church’s Prophetic Voice, and the Hope the Church Will Find It Once Again
When I pastored a country church, a farmer didn’t like the sermons I preached on hell. He said, “Preach about the meek and lowly Jesus.” I said, “That’s where I got my information about hell.”
—Vance Havner—
Part 1 is available here.
Last time we examined two historical shifts that set the stage for a decrease in the church’s effectiveness. We now will highlight eight specific trends that have helped to solidify this diminished effectiveness, which has been accompanied by a loss in the church’s prophetic voice. These items overlap to some degree, but each also is distinctive.
- The church has focused on attracting people and keeping people, and it has failed to challenge them. Chuck Swindoll said, “Some time ago a group of church leaders decided that they didn’t want to be hated. They focused just on attracting more and more people.”1 He also said, Today, “many churches masquerade as entertainment centers, where the leadership primarily concerns itself with making people feel good.”2 Ironically, Islam is attracting people, particularly men, because it is unapologetically challenging them.3 Christ didn’t water down His message for anyone, and as Christ’s ambassadors, we in the church must not do so either.
- The church has equated loving people with not offending them. True compassion, however, compels us to convey the truth, even at the risk of offending people.4
- The church has emphasized God’s love to the point of effectively neglecting His holiness and wrath. Ironically, we esteem classic messages on God’s holiness and judgment, sermons such as Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”5 Even so, most of today’s evangelical preachers rarely address these themes. We must balance our presentations, giving people opportunities to hear about God’s holiness as well as His grace and love. Only against the backdrop of God’s holiness and wrath will the good news of His grace be most clearly understood.
- The church has endeavored to win converts and failed to make disciples. Only as we, with God’s help, make disciples will we be able to follow the command Paul gave Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2: “And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” No wonder we are losing the next generation.6
- The church has upheld the benefits of salvation and avoided talking about its demands. Certainly salvation is free; we receive it by grace alone. However, it isn’t cheap. Consider these few verses, where Scripture makes clear that salvation commands of every believer unyielding allegiance to Jesus Christ: Matthew 7:21,24-27; 10:37-39; Luke 6:46; 9:23-26,57-62; 14:25-33.
- The church has presented Christianity in terms of its implications for individuals alone and overlooked its benefits for the culture. The church also has shunned its own responsibility to impact the culture. If it has sought to address social issues, it has in many instances spoken to those issues that the culture at large believes should be addressed. In other words, the church has avoided controversy in much of its cultural engagement. In his new book, A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture, David Platt, a former pastor and a bestselling author, challenges this approach: “In this day when social issues are creating clear dividing lines in society, moral and political neutrality is not an option for those who believe the gospel. It’s simply not enough to focus on only those issues that are most comfortable—and least costly—to us. But what if the main issue is not poverty or homosexuality or abortion? What if the main issue is God? What if the same God who moves us to war against sex trafficking also moves us to war against sexual immorality? What if the same gospel that compels us to combat poverty also compels us to defend marriage? What if all these cultural hot-button issues are connected to our understanding of who God is and how he relates to everything around us?”7,8,9 While I haven’t agreed with Platt’s perspective on a number of issues, I believe the modern evangelical church needs to hear and heed him on this important subject.
- While recognizing that Jesus was compassionate, loving, and kind, the church has largely ignored the fact that He was controversial. Being like Jesus will mean, at times, being controversial. We never should seek to stir up opposition or conflict, but we also shouldn’t avoid it when taking a stand for Christ requires it. Jesus said, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me” (John 15:18-21; see also Matt. 5:10-16).
- The church has failed to understand and acknowledge that the followers of Christ are at war with the forces of evil. Warfare, you see, isn’t a popular topic. Moreover, the church’s understanding of the true nature of spiritual warfare has been lacking. Effectively waging war requires offensive as well as defensive strategies and tactics. Largely, the church has played defense, and when it has trained believers, it has trained them to play defense also. When Jesus said the gates of hell would not be able to prevail against the church (see Matt. 16:18), He indicated that the church would, at least some of the time, be taking an offensive posture against evil forces. The modern evangelical church needs to regain a biblical perspective on spiritual warfare.
In 1 Peter 2:9-12, the apostle Peter wrote this to his persecuted brothers and sisters in the faith: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy. Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.” As Peter’s readers knew all too well, this process sometimes was difficult to endure. Yet hopefully, many who were currently treating them with hostility would be won over when they saw their unwavering faithfulness to Christ. Even in instances when their persecutors didn’t come to Christ, Peter’s readers still had a responsibility to stand strong. We as believers in the 21st century have that same responsibility.
In whatever ways He chooses, God will use our faithfulness to influence others’ lives. As D. Martyn Lloyd Jones astutely observed, “When the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first.”10
Copyright © 2015 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture has been taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Notes:
2Charles R. Swindoll, Hope for Our Troubled Times, (Plano, TX: Insight for Living, 2009), 8.
3http://churchformen.com/uncategorized/why-men-flock-to-islam/
4https://wordfoundations.com/2015/04/23/compassions-mandate/
5http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons.sinners.html
6Ken Ham and Britt Beemer, Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can Do to Stop It, (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2009).
7David Platt, A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture, (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2015), flyleaf of dust jacket.
8http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/family-talk/listen/living-counter-culturally-456188.html
9http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/family-talk/listen/living-counter-culturally-ii-456189.html
10https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/894185-when-the-church-is-absolutely-different-from-the-world-she