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Truth and urgency
Consequently, a major feature that attracted people to the gospel in previous generations – the urgency coming from the sense that this is absolutely true… [is] much less a feature of the church. It seems that in place of urgency some growing churches are attracting people through entertainment. Growing churches generally serve a high quality programme that is attractive and entertaining. As one in involved in youth ministry, I can testify to the effectiveness of entertainment in attracting people from outside the church so that they come within the sound of the gospel.
But entertainment must always be a servant of truth. Unfortunately, given our pragmatism, we may sometimes neglect some important objective truths such as the Atonement, the reality of judgement, and the need for holiness because those concepts are not very entertaining. These doctrines don’t seem to produce good subjective feelings, and that factor may, in practise, be more influential in determining a church programme than the fact that a given truth is a biblical doctrine. So we could produce a generation of Christians who do not include many unpleasant doctrines in their worldview (their basic approach to life). The result will be an unhealthy church. (p121)
Repentance
…both John and Jesus were quite specific about the things that people need to repent of… (p124)
Specifics help people to understand what is involved in repentance. (p124)
The failure to be specific in our call to repentance could result in people not realising that Christianity cannot coexist with some terrible sins. (p124)
Doubts
Today we find that some Christians are very proud of their doubts and do not attempt to resolve them. Perhaps this is a reaction to the shallow dogmatism and easy-believism often seen in evangelical circles. Yet I believe that some people are using these problems as an excuse for intellectual and spiritual laziness. When confronted by others about their uncertainty, they say they are ‘working on it’. But in reality they are not waging an all-out battle to find an answer to their problems. That uncertainty will leave them ineffective and without a real message to give to the world. (p129)
Working with others
What if we do not like some of the team members we ‘inherit’? Say, a senior pastor is appointed from outside a church… There is one person on this team who makes him feel uneasy. Perhaps he thinks that he will have conflicts with this person or that person would not respond well to his leadership style. Perhaps he has doubts about the person’s abilities.
What should the new pastor do? Some would say that he should ask the person to leave. Such a response comes the highly individualistic theology found especially among evangelical Christians, which I believe, violates the Biblical teaching of corporate solidarity within the people of God. This theology gives certain people the freedom to change churches when they don’t like a new pastor. There isn’t the sense of being committed to a body ‘in sickness and in health; for richer for poorer.’
We can imply from the teaching of Paul in 1 Corinthians that he would have been revolted by this lack of permanence in the commitment we have to fellow Christains. In the body of Christ we do not reject people because we do not like them.
Perhaps the tragedy with the evangelical church is that feelings overcome theology very often in determining the way we decide and act. The biblical Christian says, ‘Whatever my feelings are about this person, I will accept him because God wants me to do so. And I will ask God to give me the grace to work harmoniously with him’. Our theology says that this effort at working with the person will succeed, even though our feelings may give another message. Our theology drives us to work hard at this relationship. We pray for the person and about our relationship with him. We meet with him regularly. We seek to show Christian love to him and do all that we can for his personal welfare. (p133)
I have had a few situations in Youth for Christ and at church when I’ve needed to work closely with a person whom I would not have chosen. Once or twice the person initially seemed to imply that he did not want to work under my leadership. Most often I have found, that after some time, I have come to like the person. I pray almost daily for the people with whom I work closely, and when you pray for someone so regularly, you automatically develop a special affinity with that person. Usually, after some time, I have also come to recognise great value in the person. (p134)
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