The first step down for any church is NOT when it decides to mix hymns with contemporary worship music. But you ask, “Won’t the contemporary music drive the older generation away?”
The first step down for any church is NOT when it does not hire a full-time youth group leader. But you ask, “Aren’t the young people the future of our church?”
The first step down for any church is NOT when it does not provide childcare for parents. But you ask, “How will parents come with no childcare?”
The first step down for any church is NOT when it forgoes having a week-long Vacation Bible School in the summer. But you ask, “How would we reach the children in our community?”
The first step down for any church is NOT when the worship service ceases to be user-friendly, seeker-senstitive and culturally relevant. But you ask, “Won’t that decrease attendance?”
“The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.”
A.W. Tozer
Did you get that? In other words, the first step down for any church is basically when it has a low view of God and thus a high view of man. The first step down for any church is when it abandons a lofty view of God and elevates man to the position God alone should occupy!
Surrendering a high opinion of God is tantamount to rejecting God and thus worthy of the wrath of God!
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. …they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”
Romans 1:18, 25
So how does a church know if it has taken that first step down of surrendering its exalted view of God? Let me give you 3 litmus tests.
First of all, when a church seeks to please people rather than God, it is guilty of abandoning a high view of God. The apostle Paul was not going to tamper with the truth of the gospel because as a slave of Christ he was not seeking man’s approval, but he was seeking to please God(Galatians 1:10).
There are churches today who do not base how they run the church on what God says in His word but what people have said they are looking for in a church. There are pastors who planted churches based upon surveys and demographics, not based upon the church’s manual, the Bible.
The next litmus test of knowing whether a church has taken that first step down of losing its exalted view of God is when it will not practice church discipline. This is really a corollary of the first one because church discipline is what God says in His Word, while people say it is harsh and unloving.
Jesus Christ delineated the process of church discipline(Matthew 18:15-17). The first example of which occurred in the early church is a very dramatic death of a couple that brought about fear(Acts 5:1-11).
But why church discipline? For the purity of Christ’s Bride, the Church.(Ephesians 5:25-27). Unrepentant sinners must be purged(1 Corinthians 5:13) because a little leaven leavens the whole lump(1 Corinthians 5:6) and for the sake of warning others(1 Timothy 5:20).
The third and final litmus test is when a church abandons the preaching of the Bible. This again is a corollary to the first one because the reason churches abandon the authoritative preaching of the Word of God is because that is not what people’s itching ears want to hear(2 Timothy 4:1-4).
“The moment the Church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her.”
-Spurgeon
Expository preaching is preaching the Bible, not preaching about the Bible. And unlike much of contemporary preaching…OOPS…I mean talks, expository preaching is a herald of King Jesus coming with an authoritative “Thus says the Lord!”. Rather than bringing the Bible times into our contemporary culture, expository preaching involves bringing today’s people into Bible times to know how the original audience understood it.
What the church today needs most is to reclaim a high, lofty, exalted, biblical view of God.
“Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be,” declares the Lord.”
Isaiah 66:1-2
And then, and only then, will the church exist for its true purpose, the glory of God.
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Ephesians 3:20-21
