CHURCH-WORLDLINESS
The modern
church is deteriorating in its need for pastors and is in dire need of
evangelists.
Author
Unknown
The church at
Ephesus faced a culture characterized by immorality. We, too, live in a culture
tolerant of sexual immorality. It is popular to be open-minded to many types of
sin, calling them personal choices or alternative lifestyles. But when the body
of believers begins to tolerate sin in the church, it is lowering the church's
standards and compromising its witness. Remember that God's approval is
infinitely more important than the world's. Use God's Word, not what people
around you are willing to accept, to set the standards for what is right or
wrong.
The doctrine
of most “evangelical churches” today is the humanist theology…the exalted
doctrine of man espoused by Erasmus, sharply defined by Arminius, made popular
by the Wesleys, and given final polish by many
religious psychologists of our time.
Duane Edward Spencer
TULIP, The Five
Points of Calvinism in the Light of Scripture, Baker, 1979, p. 5.
A
church that seeks to look more and more like the world is in danger of
presenting a God that is no longer holy because He is hardly discernible from
the world.
Bill Izard
The Sensitivity of True Worship, Christian Communicators
Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.
Because I had
been a basketball player, it never dawned on me to evaluate people on the basis
of color. If you could play, you could play. In America it would appear that there
is more openness, acceptance, and teamwork in the gym than in the church of
Jesus Christ.
Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, Zondervan Publishing
House, p. 35.
The church
used to be a lightning bolt, now it's a cruise ship. We are not marching to
Zion – we are sailing there with ease. In the apostolic church it says they
were all amazed – and now in our churches everybody wants to be amused. The
church began in the upper room with a bunch of men agonizing, and it's ending
in the supper room with a bunch of people organizing. We mistake rattle for
revival, and commotion for creation, and action for unction.
Leonard Ravenhill
The true man of God is heartsick, grieved at the
worldliness of the Church...grieved at the toleration of sin in the Church,
grieved at the prayerlessness in the Church. He is disturbed that the corporate
prayer of the Church no longer pulls down the strongholds of the devil.
I believe
that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little
influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the
church.
Quoted by Curtis C. Thomas, Practical
Wisdom for Pastors, Crossway Books, 2001, p. 131.
Used by Permission.
We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that
will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.
G.K.
Chesterton
Issues and G.K.’s
Answers, Christianity Today,
07-01-02.
The world
observes the behavior and life of the church. When the church acts no
differently than the world, it loses its credibility and authenticity.
J. Hampton Keathley III
Church Discipline, www.bible.org,
Copyright ©1996-2005, All rights reserved.
Sadly, the
influence has been in the wrong direction, as we see evidence that our culture
has begun to permeate our churches. The church is seduced by the social agenda
of wealth and pleasure, and has condoned sinful compromises. There is moral
decay within the church, with highly publicized scandals involving ministers,
and divorce statistics which are not much better than those outside the church.
Think of all that we and our churches would have to repent of if a spirit of
holiness began to captivate us. How can America be influenced by an
inconsistent and hypocritical church?
America’s Spiritual Crisis, Revival
Commentary, v. 1, n. 2, p. 11.
I believe
young people are indifferent to the church today, not because the church has
required too much of them, but because it has demanded so little.
Mort Crim
Many who say
"Our Father" on Sunday spend the rest of the week acting like
orphans.
Author Unknown
In
this past century, Christians have all but ignored biblical teaching on the
corporate nature of following Christ. Our churches anew awash in self-centered
narcissism, hyper-individualism… Jesus never intended us to be Christians
alone, and that our love for others who aren’t just like us is taken to be
indicative of whether we truly love God.
Nine Marks of a Healthy Church,
Crossway, 2000, p. 16, 17.
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 from the
size, have I not described many of our American churches?
Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Crossway,
2000, p. 172.
Church
discipline is a powerful tool in evangelism. People notice when our lives are
different, especially when there’s a whole community of people whose lives are different-
not people whose lives are perfect, but whose lives are marked by genuinely
trying to love God and love one another. When churches are seen as conforming
to the world, it makes our evangelistic task all the more difficult. As Nigel
Lee of English InterVarsity once said, we become so like the unbelievers they
have no questions they want to ask us. May we so live that people are made
constructively curious.
Mark Dever
Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Crossway,
2000, p. 176.
The
chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side
as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us
to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is
better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God, give to us an intense cry
for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!
As churchpeople, we sometimes
assume that we are immune to the temptations of power. We don't make much
money. Society gives us so little power that we think ambition – the drive to
succeed, achieve and have prestige and influence over others – is a problem only
for people in business or politics, not for people like us. We thus sometimes
fail to see how we get caught up, for the very noblest of reasons, in the same
ambitions that motivate everybody. Eventually, the people climbing to the top
of the body of Christ can look just like those scrambling to the top of General
Motors. Often you can't tell much difference between our leaders and those of
the gentiles.
The Christian
Century, Christianity Today, v. 33, n. 11.
The glory of
the gospel is that when the church is absolutely different from the world, she
invariably attracts it.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Most church
members live so far below the standard; you’d have to backslide to be in
fellowship. We are so subnormal that if we were to become normal, people would
think we were abnormal.
Vance Havner
Perhaps the
saddest observation of all is that the spending habits of people in the church
differ little from those of the world. The lifestyles of most professing
Christians are not substantially different from anyone else’s. Too many in the
church have adopted the world’s indulgent attitude toward money. Almost every
form of materialistic extravagance and excess has found its way into the
fellowship of believers. It is as if the church has forgotten Jesus’ mandate to
invest in eternity.
John MacArthur
Investing in Eternity.
The most
basic truths of our faith have fallen victim to [pragmatic], self-centered theology.
Many modern-day evangelists have reduced the gospel message to little more than
a formula by which people can live a happy and more fulfilling life. Sin is now
defined by how it affects man, not how it dishonors God. Salvation is often
presented as a means of receiving what Christ offers without obeying what He
commands. The focus has shifted from God’s glory to man’s benefit. The gospel
of persevering faith has given way to a kind of religious hedonism. Jesus,
contemporary theology implies, is your ticket to avoiding all of life’s pains
and experiencing all of life’s pleasures.
John MacArthur
Religious
Hedonism in Our Sufficiency in Christ, 1991, Crossway Books, a division of Good
News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org.
p. 154-155.
It is common
for those that are farthest from God, to boast themselves most of their being
near to the Church.
Matthew Henry
The greatest
hindrances to the evangelization of the world are those within the church.
John R. Mott
We must face
the fact that many today are notoriously careless in their living. This
attitude finds its way into the church. We have liberty, we have money, we live in comparative luxury. As a result, discipline
practically has disappeared. What would a violin solo sound like if the strings
on the musician's instrument were all hanging loose, not stretched tight, not
"disciplined?
A.W. Tozer
The standard
of practical holy living has been so low among Christians that very often the
person who tries to practice spiritual disciplines in everyday life is looked
upon with disapproval by a large portion of the Church. And for the most part,
the followers of Jesus Christ are satisfied with a life so conformed to the
world, and so like it in almost every respect, that to a casual observer, there
is no difference between the Christian and the pagan.
Hannah Whitall
Smith
The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life. Christianity Today, v. 32, n. 11.
It is right
for the Church to be in the world; it is wrong for the world to be in the
Church. A boat in water is good; that is
what boats are for. However, water
inside the boat causes it to sink.
Harold Lindsell
Tell me what
the world is saying today, and I’ll tell you what the church will be saying in
seven years.
Francis Schaeffer
Who
can deny…that the evangelical enterprise has become worldly, that materialism
grips the church, that pleasure-seeking dominates us, that evangelicals watch
sensuality and violence like everyone else, that immodesty is de jure, that
voyeurism and pornography and sexual laxity and divorce are on the rise, and
that we, like Lot, could find that Sodom has been born anew in our own homes.
God help us if while decrying sin, we are sprinting headlong after it. We must lay this to
heart: A worldly church cannot and will not reach the world.
Kent Hughes
Set Apart, Crossway, 2003.