Tuesday, September 14, 2021

CHURCH RENEWAL AND REVIVAL

 


 

I pray for renewal/revival. We certainly need it. However, a faulty understanding about today’s Church might be leading us to needlessly “modernize” the Church and its message rather than to return to preaching repentance.
 
A new study from Arizona Christian University shows:
 
·       Of an estimated 176 million American adults who identify as Christian, just 6% or 15 million of them actually hold a biblical worldview.
 
·       Some 62% of self-identified born-again Christians contend that the Holy Spirit is not a real, living being but is merely a symbol of God’s power, presence or purity. Another 61% say that all religious faiths are of equal value, and 60% believe that if a person is good enough, or does enough good things, they can earn their way into Heaven. https://www.christianpost.com/news/most-us-christians-dont-believe-holy-spirit-is-real-study.html
 
What’s going wrong? While it is tragic that the beliefs of Church-goers have increasingly departed from the Biblical revelation, it might not be as bad as it looks. George Barna and this recent study demonstrates that while Biblical beliefs seem to have deteriorated, the fact that 6% still retain a Biblical worldview has remained stable for about as long as I have been reading barna.org studies.
 
Barna’s studies have shown that only 4-6% of the USA population has had a Biblical worldview over the past 20 years. Only approximately 9% of those call themselves “born again” qualified as having a Biblical worldview.
 
This suggests that the doctrinal slide, which we often read about, isn’t among those who have a Biblical worldview, but among those who might be going to church, but never really took the Bible seriously. Although they might have talked the Christian talk 20 years ago, today there are more acceptable PC alternatives, like “all will be saved.” For them, this trend doesn’t mean a change of heart but a change of apparel.
 
I do not wish to diminish the importance of this slide. It represents the deterioration of the Christian consensus, but not the beliefs of the Christian core of believers. The consensus, which had once been the glue to hold us together as a nation, has dissolved but not the faith of the embattled 4-6%.
 
This conclusion also accords with the assurances of the Bible that hell itself cannot prevail against the true Church:
 
·       For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
 
·       “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)
 
While many young Christians have drifted away, they will return by the mercies of the Lord. Why? Because God guarantees this:
 
·       “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)
 
·       “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. (1 John 5:18)
 
Even the Apostle Paul had to address the apostasy of his own day:

·       But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” (2 Timothy 2:19)
 
God’s “firm foundation” needs to be revived through the uncomfortable matter of preaching repentance from sin. We have work to do, but it’s not the work of refiguring the Gospel to make it acceptable to itching ears, but rather to preach and promote the Gospel. It is our sins that have deceived us and blurred our vision. Repentance must be preached.
 
The late theologian, Jonathan Edwards, correctly observed that the surest sign of a God-sent revival is repentance, not innovation. This is the only pattern we find throughout the history of Israel and the Bible - a return to God through His Word.

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