Faithful in a little, faithful in a lot

"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. (Luke 16:10)

Very interesting article on WorldMag, comparing what is known as the broken window syndrome to the state of the church. The author, Tony Woodlief, is referring to another article by a man named Anthony Esolen. His observations are as follows (Esolen's quote is in orange, Woodlief in red):

“For several decades the hierarchs of our churches — men who have assumed the responsibility for governing their people — have failed to discipline those who in some way deny the faith of their church’s confessions, or ignore the disciplines, or modify the worship to please the secular, or encourage their people to discard those parts of the Christian moral teaching, usually having to do with zippers, they may find ‘unrealistic’ or ‘outdated.’”

By failing to fix our own broken windows, Esolen is suggesting, we are allowing the future disintegration of the Church. It’s an interesting idea. I think of Church dissolution as the consequence of errant decisions by misguided (or wicked) people in authority. This church ordains homosexuals, that church tolerates gossipy cliques, and virtually every church in Protestant circles tacitly encourages “church shopping.” The broken-window theory, however, suggests that by being slack in small things, we make it more likely that we’ll err in big things.

I don’t know if that’s true, but it sure does trigger some thought. Does it matter if our teenagers come flippy-flapping into the sanctuary Sunday morning wearing their sandals and shorts? Or if meaningful hymns are edged out in favor of whatever happens to be popular on the radio? In those examples I reveal some of my biases, and I’m hesitant to call them broken windows because maybe it’s just the case that I don’t like them due to the fact that I am a stuffy curmudgeon. It’s a routine sin of mine, and perhaps for some of you as well, to search for how my likes are Biblically justified, and my dislikes Biblically condemned.

Still, I’ve got the nagging feeling there’s something to this broken church-window idea. When the preacher tells everyone to call him “Pastor Joe,” when we care less and less about what we wear to church, when the hymns (and sermons) get tailored to our tastes and other time commitments, I wonder if we ought to be hearing the sound of shattering glass in the background. On the other hand, sometimes a broken window lets in more air. If only we knew whether the changes we make (or allow) led to good or ill.

This is insightful, mainly because overt heresy doesn’t spring forth whole cloth typically. The truth suffers a slow death, a death of a thousand cuts.

Look at mormonism, Joseph Smith starts off by a declaration of this new scripture but really the Book of Mormon has very little in it that is all that awful. Certainly it is heresy to claim it is scripture but most of the teachings are just crude rehashing of what already appears in the Bible. It is not until later, as his followers get more and more sucked into his cult of personality that he started introducing the weirder doctrines: men becoming gods, polygamy, temple worship. If he had shown up in upstate New York preaching polygamy and men becoming gods, his following would have died a quick death.

I liked this comment on the article from “Klasko”

“If you see a broken window and want to comment on it, you should also bring with you a pane of glass and offer a solution. ”

It is easy to poke at the problems, it is harder to get back to the Word and be part of the solution. The whole house church movement is dedicated to tossing rocks at the church and smugly feeling pious because they are not "steeplehouse people". You can’t reform the church from the outside, throwing rocks at the church building and breaking more windows. If it is true that the vast majority of those attending and in membership in local churches are unregenerate, then preach the Gospel to them! Confront them with their sin and point them to the cross. Why will some preach the Gospel everywhere BUT the church?! Does the Holy Spirit stop at the church door? Do the unregenerate in the church frighten and cow the fearless evangelist?

What is the solution? Well that is a deeper question than a simple blurb can answer. Window dressing or slappin’ lipstick on a pig is not going to change the core problem. We can go on doing church for decades like Europe until churches become nothing more than social clubs and places for marryin’ and buryin’ folks. But that is not what we are called to do. So what is this core problem?

We have lost our first love, we have abandoned Christ by casting aside His Word.

Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. (Rev 2:4 KJV)

Even in some very conservative churches, Christ has been replaced by an idol, an idol that bears the name “Jesus” but is a figment of our imagination. Our worship is trite, our music exalts man and not Christ, our prayers are often frivolous. There are a number of steps that need to be taken before more windows are broken.

The saints must be discipled and edified. The primary place this has happened in the past was in Sunday school and the sermon. The sermon today is often void of doctrine, because it is void of Scripture. Sunday school is even worse. A cursory look at the normal Sunday school fare demonstrates why the laity are clueless about doctrine. I was looking for Sunday school material on the life and ministry of Christ that would be Scripture saturated. That should be easy to find because it is so basic. Good luck, most stuff is so inane as to be shameful. One of the biggest issues is that the average lay person knows nothing of doctrine, so they have no idea if what they are hearing and seeing in church is proper. So they just go along with it because the pastor must know what he is talking about.

Restorative church discipline obviously must be a part of a renewed church. Church discipline is a tricky subject because it can easily stray into a club to beat people into submission to legalistic standards. The goal of church discipline should always be to see people recognize their sin, repent and restore themselves to fellowship. In more than a few churches, it turns into a witch hunt, a modern day Inquisition. But that is the exception rather than the rule. The rule in most churches is to exercise virtually no discipline. People are holding to heretical views and no one challenges them. People, especially women, come to church dressed like they are going to a nightclub or worse and no one says anything. “Members” are not held to any standards and are free to attend or not as they choose.

The solution ultimately is unapologetic Bible preaching. Not preaching about the Bible, not using the Bible to support what “The Lord has laid on your heart”, not preaching Bible stories to make a point but opening the Word and preaching, expositing and applying the text. The Word needs to be declared and we really can't have too much Bible in our preaching, in the worship before the preaching, in Sunday school.

The solution is NOT to abandon the church. We need to insist on godly men to lead the church and then hold those godly men to account by the Word. Even in the Reformation, Luther sought to reform the church and when it became apparent that Rome was beyond reform, he worked to raise up Biblical churches. If we are all under the authority of the Word of God, from the pastor and the elders to the lay person in the pew, we may not see explosive numerical growth. In fact we may see the numbers shrink as sinners are called to repent and Christians are expected to act like Christians. But when we are more faithful, we will be blessed in ways that are not evidenced in the attendance numbers or the offering plate.

(HT: James Lee)