Healthy churches need Christ’s truths, not gimmicks

Pastors at some evangelical Christian churches are asking themselves a tough question these days: What have we wrought?

People told us they want church to be entertaining, so we built churches that do a marvelous job entertaining people.

Others want a church that feels more culturally relevant, so we’ve built churches that exhaust themselves fighting political causes.

Yet others want a place where they fit in and are accepted, no matter what they believe or how they live, so we’ve created churches where sin is ignored and the truth of Scripture is not followed.

What have we wrought?

Well, consider this: Lots of American Christians are bailing out of the faith they grew up with.

It’s a trend that has been noticed, but not necessarily measured, until a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The survey results, reported in newspapers across the country last week, are sobering: One in four adults leaves the faith of their childhood. Some switch religions; most stay away from organized religion entirely.

As one New York Times writer put it, “When it comes to religion, it seems, Americans prefer a buffet of the spirit.”

So much for giving people what they want.

What have we wrought? Well, we’ve wrought a wonderful opportunity to steer the church back to its simple, biblical mandate of making disciples of Jesus Christ.

The Bible tells us that the church is the body of Christ, the expression of Jesus in the world today. As people repent of sin and accept Jesus as their Savior, they’re enjoined to his body, and divinely equipped to do their part in helping the body grow and mature.

When Christians mature privately, each becoming more like Christ, the body itself matures and is healthy. A healthy flock is an obedient flock, taking seriously Jesus’ mandate to “Go, therefore, and make disciples…” (Matthew 28:19 – NKJV)

A healthy flock will reproduce; gimmicks just get in the way.

Church growth is God’s design, not man’s. And it’s high time we returned to God’s way of doing things.

Happily, even in the so-called mega-churches of our day, a wake-up call is being heard. That’s noteworthy, considering evangelical Christian churches (mega-churches included) are those growing most rapidly, according to the Pew Forum.

Willow Creek Church near Chicago draws about 20,000 people each Sunday, and boasts 12,000 sister churches with its Hollywood-meets-Wall Street model for growth.

But late last year, the church’s founder, Bill Hybels, confessed that his wildly popular method for “doing church” has been a mistake.

Praise God for the courage it took to make such a confession. It proves, as World magazine reported last December, the difficulty of swimming against the current of consumerism and self-centeredness that is so much a part of our culture today.

In the book of Acts we find a simple foundation for a healthy church: “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. A deep sense of awe came over them all … and each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-43, 47 – NLT)

Isn’t simplicity refreshing? The early church grew without big screens, shuttle buses and movie clips.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those things. But they are merely tools God may or may not use as he builds his church his way.

A recent editorial in Christianity Today put it plainly: “Our ongoing concern about seeker-sensitive churches is … when such churches uncritically accept the metrics of marketing culture, and let consumer capitalism shape the church’s theology.”

Jesus did not command the church to embrace the world’s methods in order to draw people in, or become relevant. No, Christian friends, the saints who went before us simply loved God, loved his truth, and loved each other.

And there is nothing more appealing or relevant than a life forever changed by Jesus Christ.

I pray America’s churches lose interest in whistles and bells and fall in love again with Jesus.

After all, it’s his church.