The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum McTrendy church growth or Biblical truth?

There was an article in today's paper entitled "McTrendy" and it shows a picture of a new McDonalds in Oak Brook Ill. In the picture you see a space age dinning area complete with an oval overhead displaying several plasma TV's that circle the restaurant. This new McDonalds has digital-media kiosks for burning CDs, downloading cell-phone ring tones and printing photos. It also has WiFi Internet access and gourmet coffee. And even though the article doesn't say this, I have found that higher end style establishments such as this one also attracts more "attractive" servers. In the article it says: "Hip young adults among McDonald's prime targets. It's all about keeping our restaurants more relevant for our customers." Not too long ago there was another article in the paper, it was about Kempsville Presbyterian in Virginia Beach, VA and more specifically it centered on Pastor Nate Atwood. If you want, you can read the article yourself: "Modern minister delivers faith with creative strategy"

But you can imagine just by the title of the article what it's focus is on. In the article it describes Rev. Nate as a traditionalist minister who banished black robes and clergy suits for a golf shirt and pleated slacks. It also makes use of words like these; "Megachurch", "PowerPoint", "CEO", "Video Technology", "auditorium-like sanctuary", "Pat Robertson", "corporate strategist", and so on.... You get the picture. These two articles and a recent study on sanctification has really led me to further pinpoint what it is that I've been struggling to try to understand better. So I just thought that I would wright a short article myself here.



<p align="center">McTrendy Church Growth or Biblical Truth?</p>

A Lost People.

In John MacArthur's book "The Vanishing Conscience", He states: "We live in a culture that has elevated pride to the status of a virtue. Self-esteem, positive feelings, and personal dignity are what our society encourages people to seek. At the same time, moral responsibility is being replaced by victimism, which teaches people to blame someone else for their personal failures and iniquities. Frankly, the biblical teachings about human depravity, sin, guilt, repentance, and humility are not compatible with any of those ideas. The church has been far too willing to embrace the fads of worldly opinion-particularly in the area of psychology and self-esteem. Christians often merely echo worldly thinking on the psychology of guilt and the importance of feeling good about oneself. The adverse effect on the life of the church can hardly be underestimated."
Here's another excerpt from Philip Ryken's book "Written In Stone": "In their book "The Day America Told the Truth," James Patterson and Peter Kim lay down the law for postmodern times. They observe that today there is "absolutely no moral consensus at all....Everyone is making up their own personal moral codes-their own Ten Commandments." Patterson and Kim proceed to list what they call the "ten real commandments," the rules that according to their surveys people actually live by. These rules include the following:

-I don't see the point in observing the Sabbath;
-I will steal from those who won't really miss it;
-I will lie when it suits me, so long as it doesn't cause any real damage;
-I will cheat on my spouse-after all, given the chance, he or she will do the same;
-I will procrastinate at work and do absolutely nothing about one full day in every five.

These new commandments are based on moral relativism, the belief that we are free to make up our own rules, based on our own personal preferences. The law is not something that comes from God, but something we come up with on our own. And our laws usually conflict with God's laws. It is not surprising that what Patterson and Kim call the "ten real commandments" generally violate the laws that God gave to Moses: remember the Sabbath, do all your work in six days, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, and so forth. We have become a law unto ourselves. One would hope to find that the situation is somewhat better in the church. Surely God's own people honor the permanent, objective standard of God's law! Yet the church is full of worshipers who do not even know the Ten Commandments, let alone know how to keep them."

In R.C. Sprouls book "Lifeviews", R.C. states: "Our viewpoints come from a melting pot. We get mixed up. Our pot has a dash of faith and a dash of skepticism. We are at once religious and secular. We believe in God, sometimes. Our religion has elements of superstition at some times and is tempered by sober science at other times. We are at the same time Christians and card-carrying pragmatists. On Sunday we say the creed. On Monday we are fatalists. We try to separate our religious life from the rest of our life. We live by holding contradictory beliefs. Living in contradictions can be exciting. Life is surely more then logic. But the contradictory life is a confusing life, a life of inconsistency and incoherence. Its bottom line is chaos. We are inconsistent and confused because we fail to understand where Christianity ends and paganism begins. We do not know where the boundary lines are. Consequently we traffic back and forth across the lines, making forays between darkness and light. We are lost in our own culture, swirling around in the melting pot while somebody else has his hand on the spoon. We're not sure whether we are the witnesses or the ones being witnessed to. We don't know if we are the missionaries or the mission field."

Robert Rauch was the God fearing man who discipled me to the reformed faith and he had a saying that he quoted often; "We as Christians have gotten lazy and we have checked our minds at the door." He taught adult Sunday school for almost two years at the PCUSA church I attended and introduced the reformed doctrines through his ministry there. At first I was a little uncomfortable with this concept of us being lazy and stupid. I just dismissed it as him trying to shake people up a little to make them think. But as time went on, through my experience of his classes, a new discipline of self learning and a deeper understanding of the reformed faith, it really dawned on me that he was absolutely correct. Yet, even though he preached this concept to others, he stopped short, in my opinion, of aiding people to fix this weakness in their lives. He used to tell me, "Dave, you have a bad tendency to overload people with way too much information when you witness to them." They don't like this and they won't read what you give them. You have to slowly spoon feed people in this church or your going to chase them away." He told me this after my attempts at my own adult Sunday school class failed miserably. My response was.... "well Robert, it's not my fault people in this church are lazy, they should be encouraged to want to learn their faith and sound doctrine from the pulpit." This comment made my friend pause and agree. Incidentally, he and his wife left the PCUSA church later that year.

I believe in today's postmodern culture, people are so against objective truth that it is almost impossible to present sound biblical doctrine without offending them. This leads me to believe why there is such a great temptation for a church to neglect sound doctrinal preaching and teaching in fear of being offensive and insensitive.

A Lost Church

So what has the church done to solve this problem. Has it's focus on "attracting members" and "church growth" completely overshadowed everything else? His it's focus to remain "relevant" and "pragmatic" completely stripped it's service in the "training" and "upbringing" the saints?

In his book "Hard To Believe", John MacArthur states: "The first role of successful merchandising is to give consumers what they want. If they want bigger burgers, make their burgers bigger. Designer bottled water in six fruit flavors? Done. Minivans with ten cup holders? Give them twenty. You've got to keep the customer satisfied. You've got to modify your product and your message to meet their needs if you want to build a market and get ahead of the competition. Today this same consumer mind-set has invaded Christianity. The church service is too long, you say? We'll shorten it. Too formal? Wear your sweatsuit. Too boring? Wait'll you hear our band! And if the message is too confrontational, or too judgmental, or too exclusive, scary, unbelievable, hard to understand, or too much anything for your taste, churches everywhere are eager to adjust that message to make you more comfortable. This new version of Christianity makes you a partner on the team, a design consultant on church life, and does away with old-fashioned authority, guilt trips, accountability, and moral absolutes."

He also says in his book "Ashamed Of The Gospel": "Pragmatism is the notion that meaning or worth is determined by practical consequences. It is closely akin to utilitarianism, the belief that usefulness is the standard of what is good. To a pragmatist/utilitarian, if a technique or course of action has the desired effect, it is good. If it doesn't seem to work, it must be wrong. Pragmatism has roots in Darwinism and secular humanism. It is inherently relativistic, rejecting the notion of absolute right and wrong, good and evil, truth and error. Pragmatism ultimately defines truth as that which is useful, meaningful, and helpful. Ideas that don't seem workable or relevant are rejected as false. What's wrong with pragmatism? After all, common sense involves a measure of legitimate pragmatism, doesn't it? If a dripping faucet works fine after you replace the washers, for example, it is reasonable to assume that bad washers were the problem. If the medicine your Doctor prescribes produces harmful side effects or has no effect at all, you need to ask if there's a remedy that works. Such simple pragmatic realities are generally self-evident. But when pragmatism is used to make judgments about right and wrong, or when it becomes a guiding philosophy of life, theology, and ministry, inevitably it clashes with Scripture. Spiritual and biblical truth is not determined by testing what "works" and what doesn't. We know from Scripture, for example, that the gospel often does not produce a positive response (1 Cor. 1:22, 23; 2:14). On the other hand, satanic lies and deception can be quite effective (Matt. 24:23, 24; 2 Cor. 4:3, 4). Majority reaction is no test of validity (cf Matt. 7:13, 14), and prosperity is no measure of truthfulness (cf Job 12:6). Pragmatism as a guiding philosophy if ministry is inherently flawed. Pragmatism as a test of truth is nothing short of satanic."

Philip Ryken has this to say in his book "City on a Hill": "Meanwhile, we are moving faster and faster, always buying more products and constantly demanding better entertainment. And as we live in this Late Great Planet Hollywood, we are too distracted to notice what is happening to us spiritually. The new barbarians do not look very threatening, at least from the outside. They do not wear animal skins or bang on the cultural gates with wooden clubs; instead, they talk on their cell phones and drink designer coffee. And, of course, they would not think of themselves as barbarians. But what is on their minds and in their hearts? Whether they admit it or not, their minds reject absolute truth, and in their hearts they love themselves more then anyone else, especially God. To use more precise terms, these post-Christian times are characterized by relativism and narcissism. And this is barbaric to the extent that it signals the death of a culture based on objective truth and civic virtue. Relativism is radical skepticism, the rejection of absolute truth. It is the view that reality itself depends upon one's perspective."

I believe that one of the main problems that we face today is our basic concept of love. In John 13:34-35, 15:11-17 we are commanded to love one another. We are also taught more about love by Paul in 1 Cor:13. This is where I believe a we need a much better grasp of what love is. I believe that love is absolutely essential to the life of a Christian, but it doesn't mean that we neglect biblical authority in fear of being "unloving." If we continue on in our bibles to 1 Cor 14: We read that Paul tells us to "Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy." Here prophesy is meant to teach sound doctrine. We also read in Romans 12 "Therefore I urge you, brethren, present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."

Francis Schaeffer talks about how our society has slipped into a individualistic, specialized and compartmentalized trend. In other words we have gotten into the habit of only learning what we need to in being successful in our chosen career path. Businesses, universities, hospitals, corporations have specialized so much that each person only focuses on their area of knowledge. Where specialization is certainly good, it becomes bad if it is taken to a point where people can no longer communicate with each other because they can't understand each other. So you see a breakdown of communication and effectiveness across the spectrum. This I believe has happened in the church today. There has been so much focus on certain areas of doctrine and knowledge that other areas are getting less attention. When this happens we no longer get the "big picture", and I believe this has weakened the church a lot. Christians don't take bible study and doctrine seriously and they have a tendency to not study and or forsake certain areas of study because they might seem to hard or they just aren't interested.

When I first came to this discussion board, Pilgrim introduced me to Greg Bahnsen's book "Always Ready" At first I really didn't see the need for me to try to understand Van Til's presuppositional apologetics. But I trusted Pilgrims counsel and so I bought it and have read most of it. But this concept of presuppositional apologetics really opened my mind up to understanding the importance of the authority of Scripture and for Christians to focus on the Bible and the God of the Bible. It started to occur to me that this is where the battle field is. This is the front line. Christian education and sound expository preaching is in my opinion essential to the life of the church and the reformed faith.

But there was still a missing piece of the puzzle for me and it wasn't until I developed a better understanding of the meaning of sanctification, that the answer was answered for me. I was talking to a couple of friends of mine in the PCUSA church and I was telling them of my opinions on the lack of sound doctrinal education. I told them that It was my opinion that every member of the church should be required to attend adult Sunday school. They didn't agree with me of course and told me that there was no way that a church could make people attend classes. I said why not? Why is it that we spend hours and years attending secular school for education in science and history and so on, but we don't want to spend any time educating ourselves about our Christian faith? They told me that if a church "required" it's members to attend classes that this would be legalism. That's when I thought of the doctrine of sanctification. How it is a "co-operation" between ourselves and God and how we have a responsibility to work at our own sanctification. We can't just sit back, call ourselves Christians and rely on the Holy Spirit to sanctify us automatically. Heck no! We are told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. God expects us to work and learn. He expects us to guard against error and to teach and admonish each other and to train each other up. This should be a primary role of the church. To educate each other in sound doctrine. Paul tells us in 2 Tim:4 to "Preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Paul also instructs us as people of God to [/i]pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith, take hold of the eternal life to which we were called"[/i]We are also told that "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work."

So it is my opinion that we need always to guard against "dumbing down" the church and the gospel and we need to be constantly "renewing our minds." Yes, it's hard and yes people aren't going to want to do it. But I believe it's essential and necessary. We need to also "know the whole counsel" of God and get away from only learning what interests us. Each time we pick up an edifying book or listen to sound doctrinal preaching we are being sanctified and conformed closer to the image of Christ. I say we make people aware to take this charge of "working out their salvation with fear and trembling" seriously.

I hope you find this post edifying and helpful.

Y.B.I.C,

Dave.