THE BRIDE OF CHRIST

What does it take to attract the young upwardly mobile to church? Provide them what they want! What do they want? Community - a place to let their hair down and to even be prayed for, a place where spirituality is not measured by what you think but by what you experience.

Consequently, the young members no longer arrive at their home fellowships with their Bibles but with accounts of their weekly experiences and prayer requests.

Of course, these are helpful for building community, but is it a Christian community if the Bible is neglected? Let me try to illustrate the problem. In my first visit to such a home fellowship, I was glad to see one participant, who was living out an alternative sexuality, openly expressing his fears of going to hell.

However, no one was willing to explore this fear, let alone to address it from the Bible. However, the sufferer did receive prayer, as if that was all that was needed.

In some groups, using the Bible is disparaged and even disdained. One young man eventually informed my wife and I that he was “turned off” whenever we would speak. Since we were the only ones who were offering Biblical counsel, we assumed that the Bible was the cause. Even worse, no one came to our “rescue,” as if to say that they were in agreement with the “verdict.”

This is especially sad because these are supposed to be Bible-centered evangelical churches, which are now offering a feel-good experience instead of transformative one through the way we think (Romans 12:2).

However, our thinking and believing serve as a foundation for everything else. If I think that my mailman wants to kill me, this belief will affect everything else - my thinking, feeling, and behaving. This principle also pertains to my thinking about God. If I continue to feel guilty about my sins, even after apologizing and making reparations, I will be inclined to believe that God still holds my sins against me, unless I am grounded in His Word (1 John 1:9). If so, I will be inclined to hate and reject Him and the faith.

Many churches seem to trust their own solutions in place of what God has given us through His Word. Consequently, their preaching and teaching are not Biblically addressing the problems; nor is the pastoral staff willing to preach a sermon that is politically incorrect and that might offend. Why not? Perhaps the pastors are afraid of antagonizing and loosing attendees.

However, they are offending those who see the problems proliferating in the absence of Biblical responses from the pulpit. But this problem is only secondary. In essence, they are also offending the God of the Bible.

When I asked one group leader for his strategy to deal with the problems, he answered, “We just want to love them into the Kingdom.” However, is this truly love? The Bible offers us a different understanding of love:

• By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (I John 5:2-3)

His commandments require us to correct those who unrepentantly continue to sin:

• And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will. (II Timothy 2:24-26)

Scripture also warns us that a little sin can have a corrupting effect upon the entire church: “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9).

I warned one pastor that sexual sin, which was becoming rampant within the church, would inevitably spread to others unless he firmly preached against it. Without solid Biblical warnings, it would leave the young of the church with the impression that the pastors didn’t regard sexual sin as a big deal.

It is therefore no wonder that serious Christians are growing cynical about the church and its leadership. Please join me in prayer that our Lord would revive His slumbering bride.