We
sometimes sing the hymn by Isaac Watts, the closing stanza of which exclaims
what should be a prayer of everyone in this congregation: “We long to see thy
churches full/That all the chosen race/May, with one voice and heart and soul/Sing
thy redeeming grace.” This is a noble longing and not in any way to be
despised. The Scriptures are filled with the concept of people flocking to the
place of worship to join in a foreshadowing of the heavenly assembly when a
vast multitude which no man can number will exclaim the absolute worthiness of
Christ to reign over and receive all things. The first church had over three
thousand people (to which many were added each day) who were devoted ‘to the
apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers’
(Acts 2:42).
Clearly
then, God has no problem with a crowd, but when the crowd becomes the object of
our attention, and drawing one is an end in and of itself, then the goal to
which we strive is no longer the glory of God in the exaltation of Christ and
we have made an idol around which our faith and practice is centred. Instead of
building the body of Christ we end up catering to the wishes, wants, and ‘felt
needs’ of individuals losing sight of both our message and our mission. H. B.
Charles Jr., Pastor of the Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville,
Florida, recently made the point:
"There was a
time when church saw itself as pilgrims travelling together through a foreign
land on their way home. Now we are more prone to view ourselves as tourists who
just happen to be on the same bus with different and competing interests,
priorities, and agendas. As a result many worldly philosophies like
individualism, relativism, subjectivism, and pragmatism now dominate church
life...There are so many pastors and churches these days that seem to be
willing to do virtually anything just to draw a crowd. Leaning over to reach
the world, the church has fallen in."
The problem
is not being pragmatic, by which I mean wisely discerning what opportunities
can best be exploited for gospel proclamation. The problem is pragmatism, when wisdom and discernment are often
discarded together with any clear presence of the gospel in order to draw a
crowd. Drawn they may be - but to a show, not to the Saviour and a life of service.
All of this is done in the name of so-called ‘relevancy’ and ‘cultural engagement’,
terms that the people who use them don’t even seem to understand. In the quest
to ‘be relevant’, churches have actually become irrelevant as people are given
what they want not what they need and are made to feel comfortable rather than convicted.
How can something be described as ‘relevant’ if there is no challenge to the
norm, no counter-culturally transformative impact, no clear word that gets into
people’s hearts and lives and calls for radical change? And as for cultural engagement, an outsider observing
many churches might be forgiven for thinking that this refers to that stage of
a romance preceding marriage, not the clash of battle that comes with war. However,
all that the Bible tells me about spiritual warfare leads me to say that truly
engaging culture is not about putting a ring on it, but thrusting a sword
through it, that sword being the Word of God prayerfully proclaimed in the
power of the Holy Spirit to a demon-enslaved world. Only then is our end
achieved. The end is not that the church is filled with spectators. The end is that God is glorified as the church is filled with servants joyfully singing his redeeming grace. To this end we
must strive.
This was printed in the worship bulletin of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) on 29 June 2014.
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