No More Pablum

July 17, 2018

There was a time when I got caught up in the fad. Like many other preachers of my generation, we found ourselves struggling to grow a church in the midst of a culture that gave lip service to Christianity but had little interest in real discipleship. That culture slowly shifted from general acceptance to apathy to hostility to the Gospel.We were trained to do ministry in a world that was passing away, and we didn’t know how to fix it. 

At the same time traditional Christianity seemed to b dying out, we discovered the occasional church that was not only surviving; it was thriving. They were inevitably led by upper middle class savvy preachers who followed business models to grow mega-churches into which flocked thousands of church-goers. Some traditionalists scoffed, claiming that they were selling out, weren’t preaching the full Gospel. After all, how could their message be true if so many people were coming to them? They rationalized their own failing ministries with, “at least we are being faithful.”

These churches did much good and served the larger body of Christ well, but after (successfully) following this teaching for a number of years, everything collapsed. Turns out, I didn’t know how to grow a church, after all. 

One thing I learned over the years is that building a church around supposed “felt needs,” (one of the foundational premises of the business model of ministry) fostered a narcissistic Christianity, where getting one’s needs met became the driving force behind preaching and ministry. If one’s needs weren’t being met, it was justification enough for leaving a congregation for greener pastures. The end result of all this tends to be lots of need-based churches that are little more than spiritual nurseries where the pastor runs around patting the spiritual babies on the back and sticking a spiritual bottle in their mouths every time one of them whimpers. It’s not a pretty picture.

Sometimes the old timers actually did know a thing or two. Christians grow when they are fed a steady diet of Scripture and when there is accountability for living it out in deeds of service, worship, and witness. A steady diet of need-based preaching rarely goes deep enough to provide the solid foundation for when life goes horribly wrong, which it tends to do on a regular basis. It doesn’t give people the tools necessary to confront  our decadent culture with the truth of the Gospel, and to stand when that culture turns on us. 

I would love to only have to preach the Bible stories. I love doing that, but am increasingly convinced of the necessity of digging deep into the Word of God for the sake of the people God has entrusted into my care. I don’t always like preaching straight through a book of the Bible. Some of the texts are complicated; most are challenging, and occasionally I even run into something that is personally convicting. But I believe it must be done, so last week I began a series on St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians with a brief overview of the structure of the book. This week we dig in. I’m thankful to have the time to do it, even though through it God keeps pointing his finger at me. I’ve often said that most preachers preach to save their own souls. I know that to be true of me; there’s a lot of saving work yet to be done. So folks, bring your Bibles; you won’t be able to follow along without them. We are about to embark on an adventure! We need it, whether we feel it or not.