But imagine this church: It is huge and is still numerically growing. People like it. The music is good. Whole extended families can be found within its membership. The people are welcoming. There are many exciting programs, and people are quickly enlisted into their support. And yet, the church, in trying to look like the world in order to win the world, has done a better job than it may have intended. It does not display the distinctively holy characteristics taught in the New Testament. Imagine such an apparently vigorous church being truly spiritually sick, with no remaining immune system to check and guard against wrong teaching or wrong living. Imagine Christians, knee-deep in recovery groups and sermons on brokenness and grace, being comforted in their sin but never confronted. Imagine those people, made in the image of God, being lost to sin because no one corrects them. Can you imagine such a church? Apart form the size, have I not described many of our American churches?
Mark Dever
Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Crossway, 2000, p. 172.
4 comments:
You quit describing mine at the "the music is good."
But the thought was good anyway.
very happy our church is not like this one.
Desi,
Two American Mega-Churches took surveys recently. The results were astounding. In one of the "Churches" the stats were as follows:
47% of the congregants did not believe in salvation by grace alone.
57% of the congregants did not believe in the authority of the scripture.
56% of the congregants didn't believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to eternal life.
These are "churches" with thousands in attendance. You would hope that they were doing something right. Seems they're just "tickling itching ears" and creating programs to keep them coming.
that is sad......
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