June 3, 2015

What do all these quotes have in common?

“People have stopped singing in church. We need to use hymnbooks again.”
“No one wants solid bible teaching anymore.”
“People used to have respect for God’s house. Now they show up late with a coffee in their hand, like they just rolled out of bed.”
“The church started collapsing when we stopped holding Sunday evening evangelistic services.”
“Pastors in this day and age aren’t preachers, they’re entertainers.”
All those quotes have two things in common. Three, actually.

First, they were all said or written by fellow ministers recently.

Second, they’re all backwards-looking.

Third, none of them are true!

The False Idol of “The Way It Used To Be”

Sure, the church of today has problems. But that’s nothing new. The church has always had problems. Half the books in the New Testament were written to address problems in the first century church – a church we’re guilty of over-idealizing to the point of idolatry, sometimes.

It’s a myth that the church was ever an ideal place of pure worship and fellowship. Not in the first century. Not when we were kids.

It’s also a myth that the way to fix the problems in today’s church – both real and imagined – is to go back to the way we used to do things.

Of course we need to constantly re-establish our faith in Jesus, our teaching of the bible and our obedience to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

But none of those things are old or backwards-looking. They are the most forward-looking, paradigm-shifting, inertia-busting principles the world has ever known.

Every car needs a rear-view mirror. So does every church. But you can’t move forward by staring into it.

The past is gone. The future is coming – fast.