Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire (cont.)

Regarding church services, the chapter titled The Lure of Marketing. People have lowered the standards in a vain attempt to make churches look more successful than they really are. The sermons have to be uniformly positive, and the services can't go longer than 60 minutes. Even then, church is inconvenient for some, especially during football season. Showing up at church is such a burden that soon people will be faxing in their worship!

The truth is that "user-friendly" can be a cover-up word for carnality. The same people who want sixty-minute worship services rent two-hour videos and watch NBA and NFL games that run even longer. The issue is not length, but appetite. Why the misplaced desire?

Seriously, what will our children and grandchildren grow up experiencing in church? Extended times of waiting on the Lord will be totally foreign to their experience. There will be no memory bank of seeing people reach out to God. All they will recall are professionally polished, closely timed productions.

According to 1 Corinthians 14, if meetings are governed by the Holy Spirit, the result for the visitor will be that "the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God exclaiming, 'God is really among you!'" (v.25). This should be our goal. When a visitor comes in, there should be such a mixture of God's truth and God's presence that the person's heart is x-rayed, the futility of his life is exposed, and he crumbles in repentance.

I know I've blogged on marketing issues in the past. I just hate to see the the presentation of the gospel watered down to a form of entertainment, rather than a real-life encounter with the one and only living God. I think if the majority of preparation time on a sermon is spent googling the internet for movie clips, newspaper stories and other forms of cultural information to support the scripture of a message, rather than in reading commentaries, pouring over scripture, and praying, then something may be out of balance. Do cultural quips and clips prepare someones heart to receive the message? Perhaps, if they're an unbeliever.

Should every message be geared to the unbeliever? Definitely not. God intended for souls to be won outside of church by the body of Christ, and then brought to church for building up and equipping by the pastor and the body. The purpose of church services is not to win souls. That is not to say that alter calls shouldn't happen. I believe we should always give an opportunity for anyone to come to know the Lord.

If the purpose of church is to win souls and therefore every service was seeker-sensitive, how would the body then become equipped? I think if every service were seeker-sensitive, then you end up with babies being fed on spiritual milk forever, or at least until they realize they need to grow spiritually and repeated messages geared toward the seeker no longer satisfies.

But what for the new believer then? A church should have a prayerfully designed, well thought-out, strategically planned method of discipleship. A new believer's class and small group is a great way to get these folks started. Other classes and small groups and one-on-one discipleship is also needed as someone moves along to maturity.

Can God call some churches to be birthing centers and incubators while others are called to handle higher levels of teaching? He could, but I don't see that in scripture. I see God balancing the gifts of the spirit with the diversity of the body. I see balance in everything he created, from seasons, to lightness and darkness, to land and sea, to work and rest, etc. I see that he would also call every church to balance when it comes to taking someone from infanthood to maturity. Every church should be able to nurture all the levels of growth.

You can see I'm passionate about this topic. I'll get off my soapbox for now. Blessings on this very windy Thursday.