Churches Can’t Afford to Think It Is 1600’s England

Mike Leake

I had an experience awhile back that was really uncomfortable.  This, I presume good-hearted, chap decided that I needed to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.  At this point I had been a believer in Christ for a good 5-6 years and was at this point a youth pastor.  That did not phase him.  He was convinced, through no words or actions of my own, that I must simply be one of those that professed Christ but did not really know him.

Have you ever tried to convince an “evangelist” that you really do know Jesus? 

It was tough.  And in fact a little frustrating.  I appreciate hearing the gospel and I wasn’t offended by him proclaiming it to me.  But what was disconcerting was when he remained undeterred and spent his evangelistic zeal on somebody (me) that really does know Jesus. 

This passionate man comes from an era much different than mine.  In the 50’s and 60’s in the Midwest and Southern US it was almost assumed that everybody went to church.  If you didn’t attend church you must massacre innocent kitties (if they exists) and sacrifice them at your Thursday evening bloodlettings and witch parties.  What kind of person must you be if you don’t attend church?  You must be the most vile, wicked, scum of the earth.  Good decent folk attend church even if they sleep through it. 

The same could be said of England throughout the Puritan era and for years after.  During one stretch of her history you could be fined and even imprisoned for not attending a Church of England service.  Though the laws were more lax by then, in 1782 John Newton would say of his parishioners:

I could wish to be useful to the people who by law are obliged to contribute to my support.  And I have still hopes that some of them will one day know what pertains to their peace.  But if they absent themselves from the church, their places are filled up by others.

Churches in this era were filled with lost people and people that were “mere professors”, just as in our day there are nominal Christians filling the rolls of many churches.  In such a context such sermons as An Alarm to the Unconverted would be expected.  In fact you wouldn’t be a faithful minister to have a host of unbelievers hearing your sermon and you never get around to passionately, faithfully, and evangelistically sharing the gospel with them.

When Church Isn’t Mandatory

Yet what does a church do whenever attendance is not mandatory?  Do you keep preaching evangelistically? 

One strategy is to continue preaching evangelistic messages while you encourage those within your church to bring their lost friends to hear the message.  Such a strategy, often called the attractional model, would require the church to be attractive to the lost world to draw them in to hear the gospel message.

That certainly is a strategy.  And in as much as these churches are faithful to the gospel message and sinners are saved I rejoice.  I’m thankfully that God uses humble servants to invite friends to church where faithful preachers explain the gospel clearly, the Spirit moves and works, and people are converted. 

Personally, I think there is a better option.  Use Sunday mornings to disciple members to “go get ‘em”.  Encourage, edify, and exhort those that are attending by choice to go and tell.  Then have them bring back more believers that can be equipped to live out the gospel and reach the lost. 

I am not in any way saying that a faithful pastor will not consider lost people on a Sunday morning.  You had better preach the gospel every Sunday.  One, because believers need to hear it every day.  Secondly, because God through his grace does bring people into a church building to hear a word from Him.  If they don’t know Christ that word from them is repent and believe in Christ.  The gospel had better be presented every time the church gathers.

Living like it’s 1642

Yet it seems that some ministers might be trying to preach sermons for a Christianized 1612 rather than a postmodern and unChristian 2012.  If you live in such a context a large portion of the people in your church are probably there because they are believers.  Yet, if you continue to pretend that it’s 1612 and the people are there because it is mandatory and they are just mere professors you will be starving sheep and not equipping them to reach the lost. 

In other words, we had better be discipling our people and not have a ministry of telling our choir they need to get saved every Sunday.  Tell them how the gospel rocks their life and empowers them to proclaim the gospel to those that need to come to Christ.  And I would just about bet that if the gospel truly informed our communities and people were faithfully discipled some of those mere professors would be so weirded-out by authentic Christianity that they’d either leave altogether or be jolted into knowing a real relationship with Jesus.

Preach to your congregation.

Today in Blogworld 9.17.12

Mike Leake

Q & A with Mike Wilkerson on Addiction and Counseling

If you have any involvement with counseling and/or addiction this by Mike Wilkerson is well worth your time.  I have benefited greatly from Wilkerson’s book Redemption and would love to begin redemption groups in our community.

It’s Time to Stop Being Authentic Christians

This might seem like a ridiculous statement but Stephen Altrogge makes a really good point.  His point is that “we need to identify more with who we are in Christ than our current struggles”.  Helpful points here.

Pastoral Care: Exegeting and Eisegeting Human Beings

Zac Eswine reminds us that good pastors exegete humans as well as they exegete the biblical texts.  Eswine has written a couple of helpful books on pastoral ministry that I have always proven beneficial to me.  Preaching to a Post-Everything World and Kindled Fire (help from the ministry of C.H. Spurgeon).

When Comparison Replaces Contentment

Man I wish I had written this article.  Seriously though, Dave Kraft makes excellent points.  Great reminders for those like myself that are associate pastors. 

This is pretty funny:

When God Is Your Problem

Mike Leake

Yesterday I preached on our need to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God instead of resorting to a comfortable dualism in the midst of profound brokenness.  If I had rap skills like the Ambassador or mad preaching skills like Pastor Eric Mason I would have done this:

That is rich.  Here are the full lyrics:

…A lot people blame a lot of things on Satan.
It’s easy to deal with the reality of the fact that Satan is against you and all that stuff, and he’s your problem. But there’s a whole other category and issue to let sink into you, when it’s not Satan who’s your problem, but God who’s your problem. Listen, if you’re going to walk in the implications of the gospel then you’re going to have to be married to the principle of brokenness.
Brokenness is the mark of a person that is qualified to be used by God. At the end of the day people that are actually being used by God in a crazy way- in an off the meter way, are people that have been cracked up, who have been lunged at by God, and God has done something to them. Broken can mean:
Shattered,
Crushed,
Maimed,
Devoid of arrogance,
Wounded,
Contrite,
Injured,
Smashed,
Grieved,
Anxious,
Distressed,
Crippled,
Wrecked,
Demolished,
Fractured,
Handicapped,
Disabled.
Brokenness, based on the scriptures: The spiritual state by which one is disarmed of one’s self-dependence and pride, therefore leaving one disabled and in desperate need of help, thereby making one a viable conduit for the glory of Christ.

What If Christ is False?

Mike Leake

An article I wrote awhile back, “Going All-In”, posted this morning to SBC Voices.  While preparing for the sermon this Sunday on The Good Purpose of God in Suffering I was struck by how suffering relates to setting our hope fully on the Lord.  Reading through a section of Desiring God another picture of “going all-in” emerged.  In reflecting upon 1 Corinthians 15:19, Piper says:

…Christianity as Paul understands it is not the best way to maximize pleasure if this life is all there is.  Paul tells us the best way to maximize our pleasures in this life: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (1 Corinthians 15:32).  He does not mean something as naive as sheer Epicureanism or debauchery.  That is not the best way to maximize your pleasures, as anyone knows who has followed the path of alcoholism and gluttony.  Drunks and gluttons are to be pitied just like Christians if there is no resurrection. 

But what he does mean by the phrase, “Let us eat and drink” is that without the hope of the resurrection, one should pursue ordinary pleasures and avoid extraordinary suffering.  This is the life Paul rejected as a Christian. Thus, if the dead are not raised, and if there is no God and no heaven, he would not have pummeled his body the way he did. He would not have turned down wages for his tent-making the way he did. He would not have walked into five whippings of 39 lashes. He would not have endured three beatings with rods. He would not have risked his life from robbers and deserts and rivers and cities and seas and angry mobs. He would not have accepted sleepless nights and cold and exposure. He would not have endured so long with backsliding and hypocritical Christians (2 Corinthians 11:23-29). Instead he would have simply lived the good life of comfort and ease as a respectable Jew with the prerogatives of Roman citizenship.

When Paul says, “If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink,” he does not mean, “Let’s all become lechers.” He means, there is a normal, simple, comfortable, ordinary life of human delights that we may enjoy with no troubling thoughts of heaven or hell or sin or holiness or God — IF there is no resurrection from the dead. And what stunned me about this train of thought is that many professing Christians seem to aim at just this, and call it Christianity.

So if we get to the end and come to find out the Christianity is false and there is no resurrection of the dead, do you say with Paul, “what a waste”?  Or is your model of Christianity such that it’s a means to a better life now? 

That quote by Piper and the truth therein has me on my knees this morning as I ponder the good purpose of God and even the call of God to suffer.