Month: January 2019

Fig Leaf Fellowship

I fully understand that a local church should be judged on vital and important things like the nature and character of its ministry more than on its name.  But I wonder about the trend toward local churches employing generic names.  Names like The Storybook, The Happy Place, or Fig Leaf Fellowship.

The Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, shows this trend toward generic church names.  The new president of the SBC heads a megachurch that does not call itself by a name that includes the word Baptist.  Several “wacky” seeker friendly/attractional megachurches were begun as SBC churches but don’t use the name and manifest nothing of traditional Baptist teaching.  I’ve noted that most SBC congregations in my community  now present themselves by a generic name.  The trend is by no means limited to the SBC or to Baptists.  There are several start-up churches in my rapidly-growing locality, and most have a generic name; I have no idea what they might believe.

My background is in, gasp, independent Baptist churches.  Few groups are more maligned, often rightly so.  I’ve experienced independent Baptist churches that were, at best, not very good.  Nevertheless, I’ve in recent months attended three independent Baptist churches in my community, one small and relatively new, one older and somewhat larger, and one perhaps the largest and most effective Baptist congregation in the state.  All were different in style.  All were warm and welcoming, and would have been so even if I hadn’t been an appropriately dressed middle-aged White guy.  The messages from the pulpits were worth listening to, and two especially show a commitment to systematically teaching and preaching the Bible.  The churches were each very different in style, but the services in all three were more than worth attending and I could recommend all three.  I knew what I was getting when I attended the service; the commitment each church showed was consistent with the best of Baptist tradition.

I’m sure many generic Fig Leaf Fellowships are doing a good job.  But I have to wonder, what are they hiding?  What are they ashamed of?  What is wrong with an identifier like First Evangelical Free Church or Second Baptist Church or Faith Bible Church or Third Community Church?  Likely the rationale is that the audience the church seeks to somehow attract doesn’t like Baptists, or Presbyterians, or church, or the Bible.

The 1980’s television sitcom “Cheers” was set in a fictional Boston bar named “Cheers.”  The characters came in to the pub to have a drink and chat, to unload their problems, to be amused, to enjoy friends, to perhaps hear some sage words of advice.  The lyrics of the show’s theme song expressed this:

Making your way in the world today
Takes everything you got
Taking a break from all your worries
It sure would help a lot
Wouldn’t you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
The troubles are all the same
You want to be where everybody knows your name
You want to go where people know
The people are all the same
You want to go where everybody knows your name.

It occurs to me that many local churches want to use something akin to the thought behind these lyrics to characterize their church.  And that is where the issue becomes more than just eye-rolling trivia.

A local congregation should be accepting, warm, and welcoming to visitors and new people.  The church should actively seek to reach out to people outside of the church, and when new people come to a service or event they are to be welcomed.  Congregants should become friends.  They should be concerned for one another, share in each other’s lives.  But a church should never pattern itself after the corner bar or a lodge or benevolent society.  Church services should be enjoyable for congregants to attend, becoming more so as they grow in their faith, but should not become patterned after the entertainment of the day.  Rather, church services should, gasp, reflect the purposes noted in the New Testament; services should reflect regulatory principles from the New Testament.  Services should include careful systematic consideration of Scripture, prayer, reading of Scripture, and appropriate use of “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.”  The vast majority of attendees are believers, part of the congregation, and come to be instructed from Scripture and to be a part of corporate worship.  Thus, unchurched people visiting a church may not feel completely comfortable.  The church should teach, preach, and sing doctrine and truth from Scripture.  The church in all of its activities and certainly in its services should clearly present and adhere to the Gospel.  And here, I think, is the problem of the generic church.

“Cheers Church” increasingly is becoming more “Cheers” and less “Church.”

I Corinthians 2:14 reminds us, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”  The church can never moderate to be completely inoffensive to the unchurched and still declare the Gospel.  When it dumbs down to be inoffensive and affirming, never teaching doctrine and truth from Scripture that might offend, it ceases to be the church.  Instead of church “equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry” so that church members can grow in their faith and reach people with the Gospel, the church focuses on numeric growth through things like fun, entertainment, benevolence, community, or motivational talks with a few verses thrown in.

There is a great and growing hostility toward Christianity.  Many people want nothing to do with organized religion, and we don’t want to give the unchurched any more reason to reject attendance or identification with church.  Perhaps an individual has had a bad experience or otherwise has gained a bad impression toward a definitively-named church.  (One wonders what might happen when that person has a bad experience at Cheers Church or Fig Leaf Fellowship.)  In truth, I’m less concerned about the name than I am about the nature, character, and faithfulness of a church.

Again, I’m sure many generic Fig Leaf Fellowships are doing a good job.  But more than questioning what they are hiding, I have to wonder if in fact they are not hiding anything because there is nothing there to hide.  Do they believe lost people are really lost and in danger of eternal loss, or do they believe that their task is to help people have a better life in this world by sparking something good that is inherently in the heart and mind of people?  Have they walked away from the Gospel and the rather harsh truth that lost people are lost and need to come to Christ in repentant faith or face eternal judgement?  Have they removed the essential nature of the New Testament church?  Have they become focused on positive thinking, motivational speeches, relationship advice, keys to success, generationally-focused entertainment, benevolent and charitable acts, etc.?

The name of a church may not matter.  The real issue, though, is that many evangelical churches regardless of their name or brand are becoming not just generic, but placebos.  A  generic pharmaceutial should have the same effective ingredients as a name-brand medication, and if so it will be effective.  A placebo medication, on the other hand, is a pill, medication, or procedure that is administered for perceived or psychological benefit but has no real therapeutic benefit.  It lacks effective ingredients.  It may please or calm, but it doesn’t cure.  A church that in its services does not hold obviously and tenaciously to Scripture (all of it), truth, and the Gospel, is a placebo.  A church that substitutes a sense of community and “doing life together,” relational advice, keys to success, human reasoning, or empty talks referencing a verse or two, but is devoid of doctrine, is a placebo.  A church that shuttles real content off to discussion groups that too often become chat groups, and never engages in authoritative teaching from the Bible, is a placebo.

People don’t need a placebo church.  They need a real church that convinces them of their true need and points them to the One Who is truly the Cure.

 

On Faith and Repentance

In Luke 13, Jesus said, “There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things?  I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.  Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?   I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

I once heard the speaker at a local attractional megachurch reference this passage.  He noted that the world is imperfect, and we should stop asking why and recognize that in this imperfect world, mistakes happen.  Builders make mistakes; the tower fell; and bad things continue to happen in a broken world.  He explained that to repent means to stop and rethink the way you think about God and suffering.  We should align our life toward God, recognize that suffering is not God’s will, and He is not just waiting for you to screw up so He can punish you.  God’s desire is to leverage our suffering, and so we should rethink our thinking about God.  A well-know hypercharismatic personality has said that repentance means to go back to God’s perspective on reality, since “re” means to go back, and “pent” is like the penthouse, the top floor of a building, and so repent means to go back to God’s perspective on reality.

While change of mind toward God is certainly involved in repentance, it strikes me that these are inadequate expressions of the idea of repentance we find presented in Scripture, and further it strikes me that failure to understand true repentance undermines the doctrine of salvation and the very nature of the gospel.  Repentance is an essential part of salvation.  It is essential for a sinner who has offended God to turn from that sin.  The repeated message of the Old Testament prophets centered on the need for repentance.  The first recorded words Jesus preached, in Matthew 4:17, were “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”  True repentance comes from the awareness that by nature we are fallen and we have done wrong, and repentance produces a desire and commitment to turn from our sin.  The requirement for entrance into the kingdom of God is to repent and believe in the atoning work of Christ; repentance accompanies regeneration.

The Puritan writer Thomas Brooks wrote, “One of the devices of Satan is to persuade the soul that repentance is an easy work.  . . . But repentance is a mighty work, a difficult work, a work beyond our power. . . . Repentance is a turning from darkness to light.  It affects the sinner’s whole heart and life.  It changes the heart from the power of sin unto God.  Every sin strikes at the honor of God, the being of God, the glory of God, the heart of Christ, the joy of the Spirit, and the peace of a man’s conscience.  A truly penitent soul  strikes at all sin, hates all, and will labor to crucify all.”  Second Corinthians 5:17 says,  “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  Another Puritan, John Owen, reflecting on this passage, wrote that “Regeneration does not consist in a mere moral reformation of life.  It requires the infusion of a new, real, spiritual principle into the soul and its faculties.  It brings spiritual life, light, holiness, righteousness, and the expulsion of the contrary, inbred, habitual principle of sin and enmity against God.  This alone enables true acts of holy obedience.  The principle of true regeneration always, certainly, and infallibly produces the reformation of the life intended. . .  . Regeneration and reformation are inseparable.”

In Luke 18:13, a repentant tax-gatherer pleaded, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.”  Pastor and author John MacArthur (“The Gospel According to Jesus,” page 32) reflecting on this passage wrote that “Repentance as Jesus characterized it in this incident involves a recognition of one’s utter sinfulness and a turning from self and sin to God (cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:9).  Far from being a human work, it is the inevitable result of God’s work in a human heart.  And it always represents the end of any human attempt to earn God’s favor.  It is much more than a mere change of mind – it involves a complete change of heart, attitude, interest, and direction.  It is a conversion in every sense of the word.”  Further, “The Bible does not recognize faith that lacks this active element of active repentance.  True faith is never seen as passive – it is always obedient.”  In a sermon in 2000, MacArthur noted “What the sinner needs to do is not accept Jesus Christ or make a decision for Christ, but to repent and cry out and ask Jesus Christ to accept him in spite of his sin.

Failure to understand the necessity of repentance and the nature of the gospel of  repentant faith has brought all sorts of problems.  Many have been deceived into thinking they have been saved when really they have not.  In recent decades, emotional manipulation was often used to invoke a response from people who really did not understand the gospel but responded to maudlin invitation hymns after being warned of the danger of Hell.  It is relatively easy to “make a decision” to walk an aisle, sign a card, or repeat a repeat-after-me prayer after being handed a tract; it is another thing to acknowledge one’s sin and inability and call out to a Holy God in repentant faith.   While some who responded to such appeals fell away, thankfully many did indeed understand and believe, and many later came to acknowledge the truth of the gospel and were truly born again.

But perhaps of much more danger is the total disregard of the idea of repentance we see today.  Part of the issue is doctrinal; doctrine is seldom taught.  Belief in original sin and the sin nature of humans is not an often-considered topic in the American church today and seems to be doubted by an increasing number of evangelicals.  The holiness and just wrath of God is as likely to be downplayed or ridiculed as it is to be taught from the Bible.  Positive thinking preachers are not likely to call people to repent and believe; they are more inclined to remind people of how much God loves them just as they are and try to motivate them to reach their full potential and be happy and not worry about much beyond that.  Prosperity theology also centers more on human worthiness than on human sinfulness.  The seeker-friendly and attractional church movement are loath to mention sin and judgement; that might offend and won’t help attract a target audience.  People need to be attracted and have fun and be comfortably entertained so they keep coming.  Maybe they’ll be inspired to make a decision and live a better life.

But Jesus came to seek us and save us from our sin.  He did not come merely to save us from the consequences of the bad actions of others.  He did not die on the cross just to aid us in overcoming our problems or circumstances.  He did not die on the cross to make us happy, successful, or wealthy.  He came as the One True Saving Plan of God.  He came to die on the cross to atone for the sin, and the sins, of any and all who would repent and believe.  He came to call us to stop loving sin and start loving God.  He came to call us to both a changed mind and a changed life.

Thus, a repentant sinner should manifest brokenness and remorse over sin, and not just the consequences of sin.  Repentance and renunciation of every sin should become an attitude and a way of life.  Repentance calls us to turn from sin and embrace God.  And when we do that, we will know the life of purpose, joy, and fulfillment God intends for us, both eternally and in the present.