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 20^th 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.

Has the Church got the back bone?

‘Rise in reports of children sexually abusing children’ 

 

So went the headline on the BBC NEWSBEAT page of their web site for 23^rd May 2013  

It went on to say; “A growing number of children are being sexually abused by other children, say charities.  They say their helplines have seen a big increase in calls from young people who are being abused. freedom of information figures obtained by the NSPCC say more than 5,000 children were reported to police in England and Wales as abusers over the last three years… Some of those reported were as young as five. More than half of the offences were classified as serious and included rape.”

We encourage little girls to dress up in provocative clothes.  We use ‘celebrities’ as the life-model we wish to follow, many of whom have dubious moral behaviours.  TV before the watershed becomes ever more explicit as we continually move the goal posts of what is acceptable, and we continue to sexualise our primary school children with sex-education classes of a yet more graphic nature.  In some cases we even allow just-pubescent girls to go on the pill so that they can be safely sexualy active.  Does it not occur to anyone that such allowances sanctions early sex amongst our children?  We then become shocked to read the headline concerning child-on-child sexual abuse.  When did two and two stop making four?  Why cannot the left hand see what the right hand is doing?  In part at least I put the fault for this firmly at the door of the Christian church.

I was asked by a colleague recently whether in the light of all the moral, social and spiritual liberality going on in the country today whether I thought we had any hope as a nation any more. 

For me at least, it is without question that this nation through consecutive political leaderships of all parties has wilfully and increasingly turned its back on God. I believe the word “wilfully” is the most damning word in that statement. Abortion, easy divorce, euthanasia, sex-education in school, attempts to rewrite the basis for marriage…. All these and much more have been ways which an increasingly decadent society led by increasingly liberal, immoral leaderships over decades have led us to the place we are today.  God is not mocked, and we think we can get away with our current depravities – not so.

 

Like an incoming tide I expect the waves of God’s judgment to increase year on year, whether that be financial brokenness or natural disasters.  There maybe brief respites to allow us to reflect, the bible says:  “(God) is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. “ (2Peter 3:9) but if we do not listen to God’s repeated warnings we are indeed in big trouble.

Can the church of Christ turn things around in this country? Clearly that is a possibility under God’s divine sovereignty. But will it?  Now that is a different question.  Given the increasingly liberal and often divided stance taken by our denominations on a whole host of moral and social issues I doubt whether frankly it has the back bone for the fight!  It has been a long time since we had any true ‘leaders’; watchmen (and women) who speak up with power and conviction.  Indeed I am not sure the church wants to even hear them anyway!  Into that vacum will step cheap champions.  Remember, we have only got where we are today because the church has not stood up and said, “thus far and no further”.  Martin Luther once famously said “Here I stand, I can do no other”.  It is not a sentiment which has found resonance in the heart of the church in this country for many decades.

It all sounds rather depressing I know but frankly I cannot see a solution to our dilemma.  The odd ‘ark’ of refuge may appear as in recent stories of revival at Cwmbran in Wales but I would be surprised to see a national turn around. 

My one ray of hope is that maybe, beyond our sight, God is at work. I am heartened by God’s words to Elijah when he felt he was all alone and there was no hope; “I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him." (1 Kings 19:18) I pray that God’s “thousands” are being prepared by him to rise up.

A Tsunami of God's Judgment

This week has been a sad one for British politics and a disaster for British society.  It was the day when a secular government chose to go head to head with the Living God and overturn his model for marriage partnerships.  I fear for the nation!

Scripture speaks in the letter to the Ephesians of a time when immaturity will be the mark of a nation:  “… infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men.” (Eph 4:14 NIV)  The vast majority of the Christian church in this country today sits firmly in this category.  It allows for every ‘bright idea’ and ‘feel good’ idea to be adopted, virtually without question.  In the shallowness of its biblical knowledge the subversive teaching of situational ethics often rules as a god in our church meetings and conferences – if it feels good and is loving, do it.   It seems the underlying necessity to attract attendance at church or Christian conference today is to entertain, not to teach.   People come, not hungry but bored with there superficial faith and require yet more sugar coated niceties to bring them back for a repeat visit.  As A.W. Tozer wrote: “Popular evangelicalism has been selling out to the worldly spirit and worldly methods to a point where Hollywood now has more influence than Jerusalem ever had….the  chaste dignity and sparkling purity of true Christianity has been displaced by a cheap hillbillyism wholly unworthy of our Lord Jesus Christ.” [Christian Life magazine August 1954]  The sad thing is that in the 59 years that have passed since those comments were made the church has listened less and learnt so little!  Its head may be full of knowledge but its heart echoes ever more empty of any meaningful relationship with God. 

 

The church, like society at large, has largely become proudly unshockable; anything goes, if you don’t like what this church does, go down the road and they will be able to accommodate you.  Pleasure has become our god, superficiality and biblical compromise is now packaged as so-called ‘love’ as we lower our moral and spiritual expectations and standards to accommodate any who may come near.  So bereft are we of any significant growth in our churches that we happily compromise our faith in order to accommodate anyone who shows an interest.

Secular society has rightly pointed the finger at us and shouted, “The emperor has no clothes!”  The shallow insipid witness of the church with its conflicting ‘good ideas’ and moral alternatives has caused society to understandably choose to separate from the church’s largely valueless offering.  The church, convenient as it is as a contributor to good charitable works, is none-the-less understandably seen by the world as having nothing of great value to follow.  Why follow the church’s teaching when its moral behaviour largely reflects the same statistics as a god-less world.  Society, now also anchorless and rudderless, continually revises its own morals and ethics downwards in a desperate attempt to find some agreed point at which social cohesion would become noticeable.  But it is a downward search which leaves this drifting boat of British society to be dashed on the rocks of moral and spiritual bankruptcy.

This week on the radio a primary head teacher was commenting on our children’s growing inability to physically communicate given the electronic alternatives.  To this I would add the growing problem of being unable to think for ourselves.  We have become a headline seeking, easy-read culture that does not wish to listen to argument and debate.  Reasoned logical discussion seems too much for many people to cope with, especially among our younger non-literary rising generations.  Even in terms of news, although bombarded with 24 hour news channels, we simply wish to be titillated and entertained, but not informed.  “Tell us what to think, tell us what to do” seems to be the underlying cry of vast swathes of modern couch potato society.  It is in this largely non-thinking moral vacuum of ‘instant tell’ ‘non-conversational society’ that the marriage bill finds it can easily sail.

The debate has been vigorous but largely shallow, the reasoning confused and the issues cross-pollinated to the point where the discussion of treating people with equal value (I agree) has become blurred with the different issue of the institution of marriage.  Staggeringly most politicians seem mentally and morally blind to this confusion.  In the bible, in the book of Isaiah God speaks in judgment and says: “I will make boys their officials; mere children will govern them.” (Isaiah 3:4 NIV)  Commenting on this verse one writer says: “when competent and capable men are removed from position of authority in government it is to be expected that incompetent and capricious rulers will take their place.” (Commentary by E. J. Young on the book of Isaiah) One only has to view the petty party politics, the childish point-scoring and the blindness to moral values reflected in the debates in the House of Commons by many (not all) to realise how profoundly true those words of Young have become.

Equality has little to do with sameness.  Indeed godly heterosexual marriage is about the union of two very different types a people; a man and a women.  You could not expect to find two more different people, physiologically, behaviourially, or emotionally.  Yet it works splendidly when equality is brought to the partnership.  Even the government recognises equality does not mean sameness; that same sex marriage will not be recognised in law as a the same as heterosexual marriage.  For example, in same sex-marriage adultery will not be grounds for divorce.  Bizarrely promiscuity will not be a moral crime in same sex marriages!  Why then claim that in order to give equal rights to same sex couples they need to be allowed to marry when clearly equality is missing from the outset?  Already the government has made distinction before the Act even becomes law.  Should we then, for the sake of equality, expect the State to remove the crime of adultery from heterosexual marriage also?

God’s judgment

The Roman Empire of old foundered on the rocks of wanton hedonism as its moral fibre was increasingly left in tatters.  Over the past few decades we have been subject to God’s warnings as increasingly large waves of financial crisis have washed ever higher over us.  Did we learn?  Far from it! Instead we patched up our boats and in the pursuit of evermore comfort paddled out into the sea of capitalistic selfishness and greed.  Ignoring God’s warnings for our moral and spiritual behaviour we now face the mother of all tsunamis as God’s wrath comes crashing down on an unrepentant society that now dares tamper with his moral structure for partnership, a partnership that was always intended to echo and mirror the relationship between Christ and his church.

This year? Next year?  I know not when, but this government’s pursuit of moral decadence for the expediency of winning a few votes has, I believe, called forth a trumpet shout from heaven that will shake this nation to its knees.  The pictorial images of the book of Revelation show how mankind’s disobedience of God is relentless (Rev 9:20,21; 16:8,9; Rev 16:21)  The warnings have gone unheeded, we shake our fist at God, curse him and shout, “Business as usual”. The outcome however is certain.  If you are willing to look through the picture language of Revelation chapter 18 the clear hand of God’s retribution on a world that thought it could play God can be seen.  God is not mocked!  I finish as I started, I fear for the future  of this nation.