{"id":1111,"date":"1995-02-28T07:32:42","date_gmt":"1995-02-28T07:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/february-qthe-church-will-prevailq\/"},"modified":"2014-02-02T02:26:52","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T02:26:52","slug":"february-qthe-church-will-prevailq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/february-qthe-church-will-prevailq\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church Will Prevail"},"content":{"rendered":"

The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine.<\/span><\/p>\n

G.K. Chesterton<\/p>\n

If I wanted to arouse animosity among many Christians and Christian leaders today I might say something like, \u2018\u2018Let it be clearly stated that there can be no service acceptable to God in this age that does not center in and spring out of the church.\u2019\u2019 And I might surprise many of them by noting that I had just quoted A.W. Tozer, a renowned Alliance Church pastor. Such statements, earlier in this twentieth century, were easily received and practiced by believers of varied denominational stripe. At the end of this century, however, many Christians cringe at such a forward statement.<\/p>\n

In 1994, David Briggs wrote an article for the Associated Press titled, \u2018\u2018Study: Americans spurning their religion.\u2019\u2019 He began by saying, \u2018\u2018In the high-stakes game of denominational musical chairs, the big winner of the 90\u2019s may be no church at all . . . It\u2019s become quite acceptable these days to be nothing throughout your life . . . It doesn\u2019t really matter what you are anymore.\u2019\u2019 In a telling admission Briggs noted that liberal Protestant denominations, to stop the attendance decline, \u2018\u2018can\u2019t go out beating the bushes with the old-time Gospel.\u2019\u2019 Why? Because, of course, they don\u2019t believe it! He called these \u2018\u2018inherited religions\u2019\u2019 because church life is handed down, not accepted by faith.\u00a0 The point of the article was that to keep these \u2018\u2018inherited religions\u2019\u2019 going, churches were \u2018\u2018updating\u2019\u2019 statements of faith and church policy to \u2018\u2018a new kind of realism\u2019\u2019 in an attempt to \u2018\u2018keep its culture strong.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

This is not new, of course. In 1990, Newsweek ran an article titled \u2018\u2018A Time To Seek,\u2019\u2019 in which churchgoers said, \u2018\u2018Instead of me fitting religion, I found a religion to fit me;\u2019\u2019 \u2018\u2018Unlike earlier religious revivals, the aim this time is support, not salvation, a circle of spiritual equals rather than an authoritative church or guide.\u2019\u2019 No wonder a Gallup poll reported that two in five unchurched adults say they have \u2018\u2018made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ,\u2019\u2019 but not, obviously, to the church which He built. Louis Harris said that religious faith \u2018\u2018is contained within the individual rather than reflected in slavish loyalty to church attendance or to the letter of the dogma of a particular religion.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

It is becoming increasingly difficult for churches to keep a local church emphasis without feeling the squeeze put on by both the Christian and non-Christian culture. We have been familiar with \u2018\u2018para-church\u2019\u2019 organizations for a long time but it is not so much an issue of \u2018\u2018para\u2019\u2019 as it is \u2018\u2018multi\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2018dis\u2019\u2019 as in multidimensional, multifarious, multifaceted and diversity, diversion, divarication. I find myself coming back to this often in my reading and thoughts. Our generation is busily \u2018\u2018celebrating diversity\u2019\u2019 but has little to no clue about what it is that unites people (whether a belief in God that unites human beings or a common intellectual doctrine that unites Christians). It is no surprise that an emphasis on a unified local gathering seems out of sync with today’s view of the church.<\/p>\n

The supreme example of balance between unity and diversity is the Godhead. Ravi Zacharias recently wrote, \u2018\u2018A proper understanding of the Trinity not only gives us a key to understanding unity in diversity, but also brings us a unique answer to the great struggle we face between races, cultures, and–for that matter–even genders.\u2019\u2019 It should also help us to keep a balance and not go overboard in one direction or the other. The pendulum has swung to both extremes for sure but now it seems to be swinging away from the gathered emphasis and far toward the scattered.<\/p>\n

The one group, the one method, the one picture of believers we find in the New Testament is the church. It cannot be everything our culture wants it to be nor should it. Yet, it is truly amazing what we can find in the New Testament to qualify as business of the church.\u00a0 And the more it takes us away from a simple, unified gathering the more popular it seems to be. Somehow our gatherings have come to be seen as a boring tradition which, because it is biblical, we must continue to perform. But we can\u2019t wait to get away from that assemblage and on to more exciting and diverse things!<\/p>\n

Now if you know me you know I don’t advocate turning the clock back nor ignoring all new ideas or methods. If we have let our assemblies grow cold and stale we need to recognize that and deal with it.\u00a0 No doubt, it is easy to keep our churches from being diverse enough in ministry and make-up.\u00a0 It is our mission to take the gospel outside the walls of the church but in the process we cannot abandon the most common and obvious biblical model we have. We don\u2019t abandon the car when it runs out of gas. We fill it up again.<\/p>\n

One thing is sure in this present cultural climate–if an alternative can be found to the local church assembly, people will take it! If problems can be solved in a psychologist’s office rather than at a church altar, if service can be performed at a coffee shop rather than in a classroom, if character can be learned in a stadium rather than in a pew, if learning can take place with entertainment rather than with concentration, then there is no further ethical mandate needed than that! Even for God to ask otherwise would be recalcitrant.<\/p>\n

In C.S. Lewis\u2019 second Screwtape Letter, Screwtape (the master demon) says to Wormwood (his nephew), \u2018\u2018One of the great allies at present is the Church itself. . . All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. . . Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like \u2018the body of Christ\u2019 and the actual faces in the next pew. . . Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool. . . He will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. . . Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The catch is, of course, that it is not the gates of hell that will prevail!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[143],"class_list":["post-1111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-church"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Church Will Prevail - Aletheia Baptist Ministries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/february-qthe-church-will-prevailq\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Church Will Prevail - Aletheia Baptist Ministries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. 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