The Separated Church – Part IV

In the first part of the twentieth century many liberal Protestant churches abandoned their biblical roots by acceptance and incorporation of humanistic tenets into their liberal social gospel. God became irrelevant as the liberal church focused on saving society as opposed to saving man. Social life, good deeds, and membership replaced sin, salvation, and death to self. In 1930, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the face of the ascendant liberal, progressive Protestantism that he observed while completing a Sloane Fellowship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Anyone who has seen the weekly program of one of the large New York churches, with their daily, indeed almost hourly events, teas, lectures, concerts, charity events, opportunities for sports, games, bowling, dancing for every age group, anyone who has heard how they try to persuade a new resident to join the church, insisting that you’ll get into society quite differently by doing so, anyone who has become acquainted with the embarrassing nervousness with which the pastor lobbies for membership—that person can well assess the character of such a church. All these things, of course, take place with varying degrees of tactfulness, taste, and seriousness; some churches are basically “charitable” churches, others have primarily a social identity. One cannot avoid the impression, however, that in both cases they have forgotten what the real point is.[1]

As progressive Protestantism took center stage in many of America’s mainline churches during the first three decades of the twentieth century, those dissenting churches (fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals) effectively went underground with their creedal doctrines. They developed a fortress mentality and substantially abandoned their biblical role to influence and inform society of truth and morality including government, education, economics and business, the arts and media, and popular culture in general.

Although the life-changing message of Christ is always relevant to fallen man in a lost and dying world, by mid-century the faithful church had comparatively few voices carrying an unadulterated gospel message to a hostile culture that no longer deemed itself fallen. As the Boomers gained prominence in the late 1960s, the humanistic influence began to seep into what we have loosely labeled as fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals.

As the once humble conservative Christian churches attained a measure of social acceptance during the last half of the twentieth century, many began to replace the power of the gospel message with man’s market-driven ideas as a means of accomplishing Christ’s charge to make disciples. As a result, many in the faithful church gradually substituted man’s ideas and methods in place of unchangeable biblical truths and authority. When the church moved into the last decades of the century, the biblical message of these churches was increasingly compromised and/or softened, the churches began finding common ground with the unbeliever (mixing the light with the dark), and nonjudgmental love was substituted for repentance and turning from sin.

In 1998, the late David Wilkerson described the cultural seduction of the modern church in the United States by what he called the gospel of accommodation.

Accommodate means to adapt, to make suitable and acceptable, to make convenient. A gospel of accommodation is creeping into the United States…sweeping the nation, influencing ministers of every denomination, and giving birth to megachurches with thousands who come to hear a non-confronting message. It’s an adaptable gospel that is spoon-fed through humorous skits, drama, and short, nonabrasive sermonettes on how to cope—called a seeker-friendly or sinner-friendly gospel…The gospel of Jesus Christ has always been confronting—there is no such thing as a friendly gospel but a friendly grace.[2] [emphasis added]

An accommodating gospel is the way of cheap grace. Wilkerson spoke to the leadership of churches and warned of the consequences of their deception.

It’s cruel, pastor, to lead sinners to the Cross, tell them they are forgiven by faith, and then allow them to go back to their habits and lusts of the flesh, unchanged and still in the devil’s shackles.[3]

In The Market Driven Church, Udo Middelmann wrote of the worldly influence of modern culture on the church. He captures well the sad state of many American churches.

In the course of a very few decades much of the church has embraced the way of mass culture in its drive to reduce everything to play and attractive entertainment. It has bowed to the demands of a consumer society and offers a message that more often detracts for the moment than comforts for the long run. Adjustments in content and form to match the perceived needs of future possible converts eat away at the content necessary to understand God, the fall of man, and redemption. Marketing priorities preside. The product is matched to the customer’s expectations. There is little room for…God to set forth judgment and conditions for redemption.[4]

The market driven church has adapted its methods and message to appeal to modern man, whose whole perception has been altered by a culture that allows him to expect entertainment, fun, and easy success.

It appears that many modern accommodating church leaders must believe Christ’s ministry could never be successful in the twenty first century. They assume the way of Christ is too hard, too narrow, and too dull for the modern generation. It offers little to maintain their congregants’ interest or capture the attention of a post-modern generation. Therefore, the Bible’s old-fashioned, austere message is judged to be out-of-tune with the times and must be modernized to win friends and make converts. Christ would have to revamp his message by softening the rhetoric to make it seeker-friendly. His ministry must be overhauled and reorganized around sound business principles. It should identify its purposes and be driven by specific goals whose achievement in numbers and dollars can be properly measured and success gauged. He must also replace that scruffy band of disciples and hire a first-rate public relations firm to survey the market and construct a ministry theme to best attract and connect with the community’s wants and needs. Next He must hire a hall, employ a well-educated and socially acceptable ministry team, and mount a multi-faceted media campaign to enlist members into His new church—The Church of the What’s Happening Now. In time the spiritual side would take care of itself if we can just get them in the doors and make them better adjusted. Then the Holy Spirit will be free to do His thing as long as He doesn’t lay any guilt trips on them.

But as Bonhoeffer wrote, “…they have forgotten what the real point is.” The point is that the church must declare the eternal truth of God and His relation to man. This was done in every generation from the first century church to the present in cultures that were uniformly hostile to the message of the church. Instead of evangelizing the world, the world is evangelizing the church. To a large degree the value systems of the church and the world have become indistinguishable. The church has abandoned its role as “…a holy, powerful remnant that is consecrated and available to God…”[5]

With church attendance in decline and agnosticism and atheism on the increase, the modern church must do something other than market their services in competition with what the world has to offer. “The Christian community has to return to absolute dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who made the early believers such a powerful witness for Christ in the pagan Roman Empire.” Through unequivocal dependence on the Holy Spirit and the powerful proclamation of the Word of God to a hurting, lost, and dying generation, people will be transformed which is the prerequisite for transforming society.[6]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer-Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 106-107.
[2] David Wilkerson, “The Dangers of the Gospel of Accommodation,” Assemblies of God Enrichment Journal. http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/199901/078_accommodation.cfm (accessed September 2, 2014).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Udo W. Middelmann, The Market Driven Church, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 124.
[5] Jim Cymbala, Fresh Power, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001), p. 22.
[6] Jim Cymbala, Storm, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2014), p. 76.