Thursday 5 December 2013

After Christmas we will be into the Christian conference season.  Across the country it is possible to go to this or that event.  Adverts will declare that they have the anointed technique of how to ‘do church.’  It seems to have escaped most people’s attention that up until now the claims have largely rung hollow. Bright spots have not translated into glorious light.  Glowing embers have not translated into the roaring fires of revival.
But what is the fundamental issue in question?  It all boils down to who we are and what we have to proclaim.  A watching country, more open to spiritual things today than for decades, looks at the life of the church, hears the message it has to proclaim and says,  “you do not have what I need.”
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church and said:
“You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”  (2 Cor. 3:3)
 But society in this country reads our letter and says, “There is nothing here for me.” This is not a new problem; the church has been faced with this dilemma for some considerable time.
 
In 1970 (thirty years ago) David Watson wrote:
 
Christians in the West have largely neglected what it means to be a Disciple of Christ”.  The vast majority of western Christian are church-members, pew-fillers, hymn-singers, sermon-tasters, bible-readers, even born again believers or Spirit-filled charismatics - but not true disciples of Jesus.”
 
In 1984, (twenty seven years ago) Francis Schaeffer’s last book was published entitled ‘The Great Evangelical Disaster’.   Schaeffer was writing of the way the message of the gospel which is preached and lived by today has changed much for the worse over the last 40 to 50 years.
 
In 1991 J.I. Packer writes, in his book on the Puritans entitled ‘Amongst God’s Giants’ that:
 
“The most urgent task facing evangelical Christians today is the recovery of the Gospel.”  We have during the past century,” writes Packer, “bartered that Gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar in point of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing.”
 
He goes on to say,

”the new gospel conspicuously fails to produce deep reverence, deep repentance, deep humility , spirit of worship, a concern for the church....it fails to make men God-centred in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts.”
 
In 1996 John White in his wonderful book simply entitled, ‘Holiness’ grieves for the many in the church who have been converted to Church whilst not being converted to Christ.
 
Also in 1996 Rick Joyner in his prophetic book, ‘The Final Quest’ describes a vision of countless crowds, seemingly in the army of the Lord. But at the front are just a few regiments of dread warriors followed by countless masses partying and having fun oblivious to the real task which they are about.
 
These are sobering words indeed from some of our spiritual giants of the 20th Century.
 
We often find ourselves talking about ‘being a Christian’ or someone ‘becoming a Christian’.  Whilst in one sense this is quite appropriate terminology the use of this phrase has also given rise to a strange duality of thinking in our faith journey.  Part of the reason is our evangelicalism.
 
We rightly respond to the call of Christ to take the Good News of Jesus into all the world.  And the evangelical wing of the church has rightly declared that each man and woman is personally held to account for themselves.  Nevertheless, recent church history has caused the proclamation of the Gospel to take an unhelpful twist.  History shows us that the current system adopted by many of us of ‘preach and response’ (the alter call) was basically invented by Charles Finney in the 1820's.  Not necessarily wrong in itself.
 
It was Finney who invented the evangelistic campaign and the ‘anxious seat’.  Prior to Finney the Puritan view held sway.  That is, that salvation is wholly a work of God in which man profoundly comes under the conviction of the initiating work of a mighty and awesome God.  For such a person the words of scripture, “It is an awful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God” (Hebrews 10:31) come profoundly real.  Finney’s approach threw wide the gate for mental agreement but it was a message that was still able, at its worst, to leave heads hot but hearts cold.  It is a system that many unquestioningly hold to today as can be seen from the spread of Gospel tracts and much ‘methods-teaching’ of evangelism.
 
Thank goodness for a merciful God who meets us in our stumblings.  But the fact that Christ meets with some should not make us complacent about asking the question, have we got it right?
 
J.I. Packer writes that Finney saw the work of the Spirit at conversion in terms of moral persuasion i.e. making clear to our minds good reason for laying down our lifestyle and surrendering to Christ.  However, Finney and this modern form of Evangelicalism at this point has given rise to two problems
1.     It can lead to an emphasis on personal commitment to the detriment of commitment to the corporate body - the church.
 
2.     It can lead to an emphasis on ‘decision’ to the detriment of discipleship’.
 
I again quote J.I. Packer:
 
“The most urgent task facing evangelical Christians today is the recovery of the Gospel.”  “We have during the past century,” writes Packer, “bartered that Gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar in point of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing.”
 
The fact is in the whole of New Testament, the word ‘Christian’ is found on just 3 occasions.
Acts 11 tells us, “....The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.” (Acts 11:26)   Then only in Acts 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16.  However, the verb ‘to disciple’ is used 25 times in the New Testament and the noun ‘disciple’ is found 264 times.   We need then to ask ourselves what it was exactly Christ is calling us to.
 
We now live in an era where, for many church-goers, making a decision to be a ‘Christian’, and being a ‘Disciple’ is no longer the same thing.  Amongst evangelicals often a ‘decision’ is necessary, whereas ‘discipleship’ is the optional extra if you have the time and inclination.  Furthermore, this approach of convicting only the logic; only the mind of man, and not his heart has led to the situation where even many Christians continue to stumble.  They come under the conviction of God’s Word on a Sunday simply to leave the church building to go off and try harder.

Ingrained now in the spiritual psyche of many is the reasoning, “Salvation was my decision, by my effort, so growth is also my decision and by my effort.”  It should be, “Salvation was Christ at work in me, so growth should also be about my response to Christ at work in me.”  Sadly, there is a yet more profound problem.  This moral logical approach means often fruit is picked before it is ripe.  What I mean is that a reasoned acknowledgment of the truths of the Christian faith can be made without having actually met the Saviour.

These men and women, young people, and sometimes even children, are plucked before ready; then follows years of nominal faith and dissatisfaction, or even worse, hardened hearts.  Sadly, there are literally thousands of people in this country alone who today have ‘tried’ the Christian faith; who now say, “I’ve tried it is does not work.”  What they don’t know is they never tried it in the first place! 

Thankfully, God also graciously blesses even when error is present, but we should not sit complacent on God’s grace.

The fact of the matter is much damage is done when Charles Finney’s methodology is unquestioningly used without correction.    The fact of the matter is that Christ was a revolutionary who called his followers to join his revolution.  Che Guevara, South American and Cuban revolutionary of the 1950s once said, “If our revolution is not aimed at changing people, then I am not interested.”  But the one thing revolutions cannot change is the heart of men.

But true discipleship is indeed about just that - a revolution that changes the heart of man in order that, with Christ in him, he might change the world in which we live.

Times of revival are times in Church history when the church is dragged kicking and screaming back to its roots, back to an engagement with Jesus Christ.  It is a time when the church once more comes vibrantly alive. During times of revival a common factor is the conviction of sin.  This holds true whether we are speaking of Revivals in the time of Jonathan Edwards in the 1700's, the Cane Ridge Revival in America in the 1800's, the Azusa Street Revival or Welsh Revival of the early 1900's or the Hebridean Revival in the 1940’s.

Until we, God’s people, can be the Gospel message that people read, such conviction will be absent, and with it in significant or credible work of God.
 
We are not so much in need of Christ to come to us this Christmas as we are in need of the church to come back to Christ and his message.