By the Editor-in-Chief
Concern over this nation’s drift into economic chaos has been a frequent discussion topic in the blogosphere. I admit to spending a great deal of time over the past two to three weeks emailing everyone I know about the crisis over gasoline prices and illegal immigration. Yet, even though I know we are all quite rightly concerned over these and other issues, they are tragically only symptoms of a deeper problem.
They are symptoms of a nation that has lost its way; those issues and social ills are symptoms of a nation that has been at war with itself and at war against its Christian heritage. They are also symptoms of a deeper problem that lies embedded in the country’s churches.
The state of the Christian Church in the United States seems to be hanging in the balance. The Boston Globe had a story on Sunday, 15 June about declining churches in Massachusetts.
If the truth be told, only a few churches are growing; the rest are either barely holding on or slowly fading away. As study after study has proven, the growing churches are growing through changing demographic trends, which is only an academic sounding way of saying the mega churches are sheep rustling. Few of these mega-churches are growing because they’re winning the lost.
The reality of the situation has prompted a lot of hand-wringing and analysis from a number of the West’s best Christian scholars. Theologians and writers Alister McGrath, Marva Dawn and David Wells have spent time evaluating the “Church” in the United States. I know I’ve shared this quote before, but in his book, Spirituality in an Age of Change, Alister McGrath quotes a critic of the American church who remarked, “American evangelicalism may be three thousand miles wide, but it’s only six inches deep.”
In other words, the Church in the West is shallow.
Marva Dawn writes in her book, A Royal Waste of Time that many church services in America are without point, focus or purpose. Dawn believes passionately that the average evangelical church in America offers up pabulum, serving no Biblical meat whatsoever. In fact, she writes on pages 88 through 94 of her book, A Royal Waste of Time that worship in many of today’s churches reflects neither the glory of the Lord nor the majesty of Christ’s sacrifice for us. It’s more like a glitzy ad to attract shoppers.
Her observation reflects the point made by the critic in McGrath’s book: America’s churches have little depth. In his book, God in the Wasteland, Wells points out that many American preachers have sacrificed truth in their preaching for platitudes and warm-fuzzies.
Maybe the reason for this decline in America’s churches is a lack of solid teaching on the nature of Christ, His Church and the need for substantial worship. The lack of Biblical truth in our churches is reflected in George Barna’s 2007 surveys. Barna reports that almost half of American Born Again Christians don’t belief in the devil. Thirty-seven percent believe a person can be “good enough” to get to heaven and over one quarter of the same respondents believe that Jesus sinned while living on the earth.
In a recent sermon series, John MacArthur rightly declares that many of America’s so-called evangelical churches are now preaching the Gospel of Personal Fulfillment. In this series, MacArthur went on to say that there is deep reason to believe that many sitting in our pews may not even be saved if they haven’t gone to the cross and forsaken their worldly ways and repented of their sins.
The Scripture for reference here is 1 Peter 4.17-18…
17 For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And “If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinners?”
We can’t neglect the importance of this passage. The Lord is telling us that He wants to send revival, but that His people need to get their act together first. Judgement will begin first in the Church. God’s people need to be held to account and to a higher standard.
The Lord says, “’I want a pure and holy bride. I want a Church that reflects My beauty and My grace. I want a Church that loves Me first. I want a Church that has its priorities in order. This means, My people, that you have to die to self and let Me be the true Lord and Love of your lives.’”
It comes down to this: We need to bow down before the Lord in earnest repentance and ask Him to break our hearts. We have to fall down on our knees and weep. As mentioned earlier in this article, the pastors and priests must lead the way.
We need to repent of the shallowness of our spiritual lives, our being so easily distracted by just about anything. We need to repent of those hidden sins that are known only to ourselves and the Lord!
Then we need to repent of the fact that when we really get down to it, we don’t care about how many lost people there are! Our lives are wrapped up in our own lives!
This must change. This must change because this lack of focus is hindering revival.
So, there is only one way for revival to come. We have to allow the Lord to bring us to our knees in true repentance—to repent of the shallowness of our worship, to repent of the shallowness of our commitment and to let the Lord have His way with us.
This means that we have to let His priorities be our priorities. This means we have to let the Lord have His way even if it makes us uncomfortable. We have to let the Lord have His way even it means we have to do something we don’t like or don’t want to do.
This means we will have to be changed to the point that when the Lord looks for us, He will recognise us because He can see His pure and holy reflection in us.
This is the only way.
Posted under News
This post was written by mcarl on November 25, 2008
