The quickest and surest way to bring about change in a society is to instill a sense of panic. In a nation, in a community, and yes, in the churches, if you can convince people that we are in peril, that their very survival is at stake, that things have never been worse, they will welcome many changes that under more normal conditions would not be tolerated.
For some time now church leaders have been hitting the panic button and issuing dire warnings about the future of the church in our society. “We must get our heads out the sand, see what is happening and above all else respond with appropriate change. We can’t do things the old way, we must either confront or retreat, transform our doctrine or change our practice.”
The statistics regarding the number of churches closing and the rate of declension in membership among American bible-believing churches should certainly have our attention.
Some time ago I came across these words on the internet written by a prominent pastor. This is what he said to his congregation, “Our lot is cast in an age of abounding unbelief, skepticism and, I fear I must add, infidelity. Never, perhaps, since the days of the early Roman persecution of the church was the truth of revealed religion so openly and unblushingly assailed — and never was the assault so speciously and plausibly conducted.”
And then carefully consider this warning given by another prominent pastor, “It is come to be taken for granted by many people, that Christianity is not even a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length assumed to be fictitious. And accordingly, they treat it as if, in the present age, this was an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of…ridicule, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.”
Ready for a pop quiz? What prominent pastors wrote these dire warnings and when did they write them?
The first prominent pastor I quoted is J. C. Ryle. He wrote those words in 1879. The second quotation is from a man known as Bishop Butler who wrote in 1736.
When Paul wrote to Timothy he exhorted him to be steadfast in the faith and to faithfully preach the Word. These exhortations came against the prospect of great changes coming to the church. People would not want sound doctrine. They would heap up for themselves teachers who would give them what they wanted to hear. If Timothy continued to simply give them sound doctrine he could anticipate that some of the flock would likely go elsewhere and find preachers and teachers to give them what they wanted.
To be sure, there are churches that need to change. Some need to change drastically. The Bible calls for repentance and for reformation. Churches who are unfaithful to their calling and commission must change. Churches that become aware of sin in their midst and compromise in their doctrine or practices must change. But we must not change due to fear of irrelevance and we must not alter our course due to the pressures of society. Every pressure we feel to change must be produced by the weighty pressure of exegesis and not the enormous pressure of an empty pew or ministries that are growing by some other means. Before we push that panic button, let’s remember that button has been there for a long time.
Jim has been with RBC since 1990. He was set aside by the church for full time ministry in November of 1991. Jim was brought to faith as a teenager and soon began to experience a desire to preach God’s Word. He trained for the ministry at Columbia Bible College in Columbia, SC (now Columbia International University) and at the Trinity Ministerial Academy in Montville, NJ. He married his wife, Becky in 1989 and they have been blessed with three daughters and one son.
