Forget faithful exposition of God's Word!

Better make sure the potty is clean!

From the Wall Street Journal...

Department stores hire mystery shoppers. Restaurant chains bring in undercover diners to rate their food and service. Churches enlist Thomas Harrison, a former pastor from Tulsa, Okla., and a professional mystery worshipper.

Mr. Harrison -- a meticulous inspector who often uses the phrase "I was horrified" to register his disapproval of dust bunnies and rude congregants -- poses as a first-time churchgoer and covertly evaluates everything from the cleanliness of the bathrooms to the strength of the sermon. This summer, Mr. Harrison scoured a megachurch in Cedar Hill, Texas, and jotted down a laundry list of imperfections: a water stain on the ceiling, a "stuffy odor" in the children's area, a stray plastic bucket under the bathroom sink and a sullen greeter who failed to say good morning before the worship service. "I am a stickler for light bulbs and bathrooms," he says.

Now this shouldn't surprise me, after all we live in an allegedly capitalistic system and the church has embraced it. Religion has become a commodity and the church is many places is just a merchandising mechanism, a way to deliver the "product". When we start wondering what sinners want from church instead of what God demands from His worshippers, we have a problem. It is little wonder that people church hop when what they hear and experience on Sunday mornings is so trivial. Look for example at his report on a Texas megachurch and what he said about the sermon.

CATEGORY: Sermon

COMMENT: "The message is appropriate and meaningful. It is challenging and inspiring."
GRADE: Green Light

Well that is reassuring, it was relevant and inspiring. I wonder what sort of grade he would give to "Sinners in the hands of an angry God"? I am assuming he wouldn't find it inspiring or appropriate. Does he have a category for "Confronting sin", "God's Law" or "Hell"?

There was at least one voice of reason in the article...

Some theologians warn that mystery-worshipper services will drive "spiritual consumerism." Evaluating churches as if they were restaurants or hotels might encourage people to choose their church not according to its theology, but based on which one has the best lattes or day care, says Paul Metzger, professor of theology at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, Ore. "We tend to look for religion or spirituality that will give us what we want, when we want it," Prof. Metzger says. "There's a pressure for the church to be something that the church is not."

But that was followed by this...

Others say that church shopping has become necessary for churches seeking to compete in an increasingly mobile and consumer-oriented society. "My competition is Cracker Barrel restaurant down the street," says Pete Wilson, pastor of CrossPoint Church in Nashville, Tenn., who regularly enlists a secret shopper to evaluate his 2,000-person congregation. "If they go in there and are treated more like family than when they come to CrossPoint Church, then it's lights out for me."

See I thought that what Paul says is right:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

Apparently this guy wrestles against grits, John Deere merchandise and free coffee refills! Two thousand people come on Sunday's to hear a guy who thinks that he should be competing with Cracker Barrel. Cracker Barrel. The church should absolutely be kind and welcoming, but what people should desire is to hear Christ and Him crucified on Sunday morning. I would rather sit in an uncomfortable pew with no A/C and less than delightful bathrooms and hear God's Word faithfully declared than I would sit in a comfy pew with a Starbucks and clean restrooms where fluffy heresy disguised as "preaching" is going on.

My pastor talked about the motivations of people coming to church on his blog. He somehow failed to mention a clean restroom in his blog post. I am sure it was just an oversight but it better be cleaner next week or I am taking my family to Cracker Barrel!

Is it time to abandon ship?

Evangelicalism is a mess. Anyone who is paying the slightest attention to it realizes that it is broken from a human standpoint. He is still sovereign and in control, but we have made a mess of the church. Our churches are full of people who don't know Christ, who couldn't find the book of Genesis without referring to the index. Our pulpits spew all manner of trite and fluffy heresy designed to appeal to sinners instead of confronting them. Many, if not most, churches have lost or abandoned the Gospel. That may sound harsh, but spend a couple of Sundays in a random church and you will probably agree.

That things have gone wrong is unquestioned. The question is how to respond, and that is where things get dicey and people go in every direction. The direction is pretty much never to go back to what the Bible says but rather to figure out what we think, what makes sense to us.

For some the response is to turn the church, quite frankly, into a circus. Whatever it will take, WHATEVER it will take, to get people to show up and give. It doesn’t matter if it makes a mockery of the worship service and by proxy makes a mockery of the God who ought to be exalted. The Gospel is a product to be marketed, programs need to be developed, evangelism is a system designed to appeal to the emotions. Being God honoring is getting decisions from people who never show fruit and are clearly not regenerate. Any of the rough edges (which Christianity is full of) whether talk of judgment or wrath or miraculous events are filed down, and what is left is slick, comfortable and empty.

Some go in the opposite direction completely, and flee the church entirely, choosing instead to stay home and either worship in a “house church” (which to be unkind I think is a code for a couple of disgruntled families gathering because no church is perfect enough for them) or just get their spirituality from TV shows or the internet. If you have watched virtually anything that passes for “Christian” TV lately and have even a single discerning bone in your body, you will know that heresy has found a new method of propagation, one that is far more effective than the old creeping heresy. Now it is packaged on TV and beamed right into homes, often the homes of the most vulnerable and desperate among us.

If I am straying into heresy, and I am in my house just doing my thing, who is going to check me? Who is going to rebuke me? My cousin Eddie who worships with me?: "Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you." (Titus 2:15) I have been proven to be a pretty poor example of self-rebuking in the past, so I need someone and we all need someone to hold us accountable, for our walk, our piety and our doctrine. As I know all to well that applies to laity and pastors alike.

Just because the church doesn't always work the way it should, it doesn't mean we should abandon the church and just stay home. That is a recipe for disaster and heresy. Sure I could stay home and read or listen to sermons from Piper and MacArthur and Sproul and get solid, Reformed preaching. But that cannot, and should not, replace the gathering of the saints. The church body is more than fellowship meals on Sunday afternoon and VBS. It is the sheep gathering together, to hear the Word proclaimed and to worship Christ. Most importantly it is how we are commanded to assemble together with one another, because God's people should want to come together with their brothers and sisters in Christ and worship Him. If you can't stand to be around other Christians, if you have no desire to gather with them, what does that say about your heart as a Christian?

It is the foolishness of preaching that God has determined to use to propagate the Gospel message. It may not seem like the best method, but it is how God has ordained it precisely because when done properly, Biblically it leads to salvation for the elect that can only be attributable by God. No one will stand before the judgment seat and hear “My good and faithful servant” because of a clever presentation or a snappy music service or a PowerPoint presentation, but only by the Word of God.

The same is true of the church. Like it or not, God has ordained the church to be the gathering place for worship of His people. The fact that the people of God gather together in what is visibly the church, to exhort, to preach, to pray, to baptize, to partake of the supper, to support and love on another, to be under authority and rebuke and correct one another when needed. We don’t get to change the model because it is hard, frustrating or we just don’t like it.

The church is a wonderful and flawed institution. It will never be perfect; it will never be completely pure until He returns with His threshing fan to separate the wheat and the chaff. We should constantly strive to rein in the church, because man by nature will constantly seek to tweak and remold the church into our own image. The need is there to constantly go back to the Word to make sure we are being faithful. The same institution that giants of the faith like Edwards, Whitefield, Spurgeon and Calvin labored in still works today. It is not the church that has failed us, we have failed the church. You may say "Well those were different times, people were different. Today people are selfish, greedy, sinful! How can we have a church today?" Guess what, the people were no different in Spurgeon's time or in Calvin's time. They were sinners who were self-centered, prone to idolatry who needed to hear "Repent!"

The church stands or falls on Christ, and Christ is revealed in His Word. His Word must take center stage, every moment and every service in preaching, reading and singing. We must insist on the Word preached not preaching that mentions the Word in passing, Christ exalted in the songs and the Sunday schools, leadership that is Biblical (i.e. plurality of elders) and leadership that is Biblically qualified. We must accept nothing less than frequent and somber celebrations of the Lord's Supper, and Biblical baptism of professing believers coupled with integrity in membership including loving, restorative church discipline.

Don't abandon the church, because Christ hasn't and never will.

On being religious...

Is there anything you can be called today that is worse than "religious"? It has become a supremely negative term, a term dripping with disdain.

I would suggest that the reason being "religious" is such a negative is because we have reinterpreted what being religious means.

Religion has become what we do, not who we are. Even being called “religious” carries a negative connotation with it. Emergent types rail against “religiosity” to the point that a popular video was circulating a year or so ago, a take off on the Apple vs. PC videos, that showed a dorky guy carrying his Bible around in contrast to the hip, cool “Christ-follower” who listens to U2 and wears sweatshirts to church. Now we see stuff like this that makes me cringe:

For more than two years, staff and volunteers at CedarCreek Church’s Whitehouse campus have spent countless hours carrying, setting it up, taking down, and storing the sound, lighting, and other equipment used for its services in Anthony Wayne High School.

Those weekend chores will become a thing of the past when the church moves into a permanent home at its Whitehouse campus next year.

CedarCreek announced that it has purchased a nine-acre parcel on State Rt. 64, just north of Finzel Road, where it will break ground on a 25,000-square-foot church this summer.

The Whitehouse campus will be the anchor tenant of a 160-acre, $150-million retail and residential development being built by JCT Enterprises, Inc.

While most retail developments are anchored by department stores, JCT’s Whitehouse Square will have a radically different look.

Ray Wood, project manager for JCT, said CedarCreek’s size — the total attendance at its three locations averages 8,000 — and a full schedule of activities throughout the week make the church a perfect fit for the new development.

“We’re doing something totally different than anything else that has been done in northwest Ohio,” he said. “We’re trying to keep a small-town feel in Whitehouse, and make the development a destination and a place for entertainment.”

He said the number of members and visitors heading for CedarCreek for weekend services and weekday events should help give a boost to the artisans and local businesses he is lining up for the development. The church also plans to tie in with senior programs and youth activities to be held in Whitehouse Square’s facilities, he said.

“All these things kind of knit together,” Mr. Wood said.

The church, CedarCreek, is an "anchor tenant"? Like a Macy's? Clearly the developer looks at this as a cross-selling opportunity, people show up for church and while they are there they can get some shopping in. As a business man, I say to the developer: Brilliant! As a Christian, I have to ask the church: What are you thinking? I guess I know what they are thinking. A quick perusal of the pastors blog page will exhibit what their focus is on: attendance and new buildings:

First of all if you are reading this between April 13 & 22, I am sitting in the sun vacationing in Florida with my wife.

I thought you might want a Toledo update. The attendance has held strong at over 2,500. This is way beyond what we expected! In addition we are very close to signing a contract to build our own building in Whitehouse. Keep praying.
---
Please make this "goal" or "idea" part of your prayer life. Here is how it breaks down:

We currently have 3 campuses all carrying the CedarCreek DNA. We want to start six more like these, one per year beginning with 2010.

But what is new for us is that we want to start (or support in a significant way) six church plants that are not CedarCreek satellites. Rather they will be, God willing, independent of the Creek and may or may not be like us. We expect that these six church plants will probably be outside of our current reach but that is not a must
----
Dear Creeker,

Many of you have expressed interest in being updated regarding the weekend attendance now that Toledo is online, so here it is:

Easter weekend total was 12,892 (Toledo was 2,950!)

This past "Big Push" weekend total was 9,182! (Toledo was 2,638!)

We expect attendance at Toledo to settle in at around 2,000.

Well at least they have their priorities in line. I watched a clip of a "sermon" and it starts off with a video of the pastor clowning around in a seventies disco outfit; followed by a string of announcements, followed by a story of a blind kid from a TV show who was speaking. About a third of the way through, I just couldn't take anymore of it. The whole thing was a carnival, an assembly allegedly designed to worship the Creator of the universe and it came across like a comedy club presentation. I get the occasional moment of light humor in a sermon but when there is no Gospel and nothing but entertainment I have to cry foul.

The Truth War

I just finished reading John MacArthur's book, The Truth War. Pretty decent read. It isn't heavy reading, a far easier read than The Courage to Be Protestant which I am still working through. His writing is like his preaching: straightforward, not fancy, right to the point and hard hitting. Brian McLaren is the only individual he really names very often but his feelings about the entire emergent movement are pretty clear.

I really liked one of his analogies near the end of the book. He compared the modern church with Western Civilization. We know that there are terrorist among us, but out of fear of seeming judgmental or mean we refuse to take the steps to keep terrorists out or to root them out once they are in. And those who pervert the Word of God, who water down the Gospel, no matter how well-meaning they may be, are spiritual terrorists who oppose God and put His Son to shame. But many churches, out of a misplaced desire to get along for the sake of "Christian unity" will tolerate all manner of foolishness rather than take a stand.

All in all a worthwhile read. Nothing really new here, and it has a bit of preaching to the choir to it, but his clarion call should help to jar a generally apathetic church into contention for the truth.

Now if he would just rethink that whole dispensationalism thing...