How seeker-friendly churches hurt America
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Bryan Fischer - Guest Columnis
The plain truth of God's Word – when America's pastors no longer have the courage to preach it, America begins to drift from its moorings. It loses its moral center.
Many churches in America, sadly including many mega-churches, pride themselves on being "seeker-friendly," by which they mean they are not judgmental and mean like those angry fundamentalists. Carrie Underwood famously supports same-sex marriage and attends a church whose pastor has so blurred the edges on the issue of homosexuality that his parishioners likely are confused about whether God is concerned about the issue at all.
Such seeker-friendly churches typically try to appeal to the unchurched by giving short shrift to the hard sayings in the Scriptures and the firm, fixed, and unalterable moral standards that are found there. This is because they fear seekers will find them too harsh, too difficult, and too out of phase with contemporary culture. Because such controversial truths might run seekers off, it's best to avoid them entirely and talk endlessly and exclusively about how nice, kind, and understanding God is.
And so, as G.K. Chesterton observed, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."
Now there is nothing wrong with being friendly toward those who are seeking the truth. Of course we want to have open hearts to all, and patiently explain the truths of Christianity to all who have a sincere desire to find out more about God. But patiently explaining the hard truths of Scripture to seekers is much different than avoiding them altogether or so twisting them that they are explained away.
It's one thing for a man to be a friend of sinners, but it's another for him to be such a friend of sinners that he becomes an enemy of God by betraying His word. Such a "friend" of sinners may only be paving their way to a Christ-less eternity....
...When Paul met with the Ephesian elders, he reminded them twice that he had declared to them the full revelation of God, even those parts that were hard for him to preach and hard for them to hear. "I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable ... I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God." (Acts 20:20, 27)
The fact that Paul said twice he did not shrink back indicates that he had to think about it and was tempted to do it. There was risk of blowback involved, and Paul was as human as anyone else. He had to make a deliberate decision to take a deep breath and teach things he knew would be controversial, even to leaders in the church of Christ, let alone to outsiders and to seekers.
The word translated "shrink" (Greek hupostello) literally means to "withhold under or out of sight." Yeah, it's there, and we have to keep it in stock, but we're going to keep it under the counter where nobody will see it and we're gonna hope we don't have to bring it out and actually show it to anyone.
But Paul steeled himself to teach not only the pleasant things of God's counsel but its difficult and challenging parts too. Why? Because the hard parts are "profitable" just like the fun parts. Truth-hungry people benefit from hearing them, and conversely are deprived of something important and valuable by not hearing them....