I guess you should expect articles like this once in awhile because part of the title of this blog is “Church Trends”. In case you do not know, a Blog is a personal journal. It is where I get to publicly express my views on topics that come to my mind. People are free to read them or not read them, and to agree or disagree.\u00a0 If this post upsets someone they need to realize that there are other views in the world besides their own.<\/p>\n
A pastor claims that he wants a revival in his church but he says he cannot find any evangelist that will teach a clear message of salvation every night during the revival. My own view is that most real evangelism takes place outside of church building centered activities anyway. Revivals that just reach church goers and a few non attenders that came because they were pressured by friends or relatives usually do not bring revival at all.<\/p>\n
That kind of revival is just not going to get much of a response from people in your community. If you really want to have a revival in your local church bring in someone that has a relevant message to people in America, as well as the gospel of salvation. It will attract both Christians and non Christians. Just bringing in a “saving” evangelist without a relevant message will mean that your revival will be dead on his arrival.<\/p>\n
Real evangelists are gifted to present the gospel message in such a way that it will reach people that are being drawn by the Holy Spirit to hear. I can fill every seat in a church with an evangelist that has a relevant pertinent message for America. Of course, your church will need to pay the cost to get him there and give him a reasonable wage for his service so that he can support his family for that week. You will also need to do some local advertising so that the community will know the subject of his messages.<\/p>\n
You will get plenty of people responding from outside of your congregation if you make known that someone is coming that will speak on a topic that is relevant to the interests of the people. I can give you a list of names that will fill your church with people, give the gospel of salvation, and also give a message that many in your church need to hear, and some in your community want to hear. However, if you think the list that I will give you will not shake up your own church you are wrong. It might even upset the whole church board of directors.<\/p>\n
Would you dare have someone like Eric Barger, Mike Gendron, Brannon Howse, Dr. David Reagan, Ray Comfort, Dave Hunt, T.A. McMahon, Roger Oakland, Dr. Norman Geisler, Ken Ham, Ed Decker, Joel Rosenberg, etc., come and tell your community the realities of the times that we are living in and the real state of America and the Church today? Do you really want someone that will have a relevant message for those searching for real answers to the problems that they see in the world? Do you want someone that will preach the truth even though some of your own members might be offended and leave your congregation? I thought not! Then what you probably want is a revival for old time revival sake. In that case, just pull a name out of a hat.<\/p>\n
I don’t think much of the latest revivals that I have attended. There seems to be this “have-it-and-they-will-come attitude”, or the pastor will try to pressure Christians to pressure people to come to the revival so they can be saved by the evangelist’s message. It gets more weird when pastors that claim to believe some of the main points of Calvinism, then lay on their congregation the guilt that people will go to Hell if the congregation does not drag people to the revival. Is God really sovereign, or dependent on our own performance?<\/p>\n
It seems that all small churches must have their revivals and they must make it an evangelistic effort where somehow you pressure your friends, relatives and neighbors into attending your church so that maybe someone will hear the evangelist’s message and get saved. (Where is that example in the Bible?) Meanwhile, for years these same friends, relatives and neighbors rejected messages from you or the Christian message that used to saturate our country. So, because they reject the message, the answer seems to be to bring in a professional “saver”, that knows how to pressure people into responding to altar calls. That along with bullying your congregation into almost kidnapping them and bringing them to your church, is how you will convert unbelievers to Christianity??<\/p>\n
If somehow we can get some to the “revival”, the professional “saver” might even get them to respond to the altar call out of emotion or peer pressure. But, chances are they won’t be around your church for long in the future. Most of those “saved” in these revival rallies and crusades soon disappear until someone else pressures them to come to church and get saved or recommitted. In some churches people are getting re-saved about as often as others are getting lost.<\/p>\n
Revival could start outside of the church building if Christians actually spoke about Christian topics outside of church. Why is it that inside churches the leaders have a Christian message but when they get outside the church building the Christian message is totally lost in continual small talk about anything except the Christian message? It never ceases to amaze me that most American Christians talk about everything except Christian topics in all social settings outside the church building. Want a local revival? Christians should have one in their local conversations and then they might not even need to bring in the professional “saver”.<\/p>\n
Polls tell us that the majority of the people in the United States have responded to some altar call or confirmation of faith some time in their life. However, only 25 percent of Americans even attend church regularly and we also know that more than half of the churches that they attend never give them the word of God. So it seems that the so called saved are not really saved, more often than not.<\/p>\n
The great commission is to tell the gospel to all creatures through word and deed (salt and light). Those that will hear and see what we say and do and believe the salvation message will be saved. The Church is an assembly of believers by definition.\u00a0What may happen if you pressure or gimmick unbelievers into your local churches is that the unbelievers may soon take over if you become really successful at it. Seeker churches just get them in the doors by every trick and program that can be conceived by man and somehow that brings them to Christ? No, it does not. It opens the door for that church to be overrun by Christianized heathen.<\/p>\n
Every single large seeker church that I am aware of, has now gone beyond “whatever works” to bring them in, and postmodernism with its downplaying of biblical doctrine, to now also promoting either religious plurality, social justice (socialism), contemplative spirituality (find the Jesus or Christ consciousness made up in your own mind), or the health and wealth gospel, or dominionism. How did that happen if unbelievers did not take over??<\/p>\n
Besides, we all know that it will be mostly the same people that attend almost all services, that will also attend your traditional church revival. So the “saver”evangelist is mostly preaching to the choir and maybe a few that the choir dragged in. Houston we have a problem. These revivals in every local church are not really reaching the community for Christ at all.<\/p>\n
While I am on this unusually pretty broad rant about how or how not to evangelize the community, I will tell you that the Church should not be pressuring little kids to get saved either. They do not have the capacity to be able to make a rational choice. Children are easily convinced to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and they will confess it just like they will confess Jesus. However, we should not assume that they will believe in the things that they were told as a child when they can rationalize for themselves.<\/p>\n
Where in the Bible are children talked into being believers? Until they reach the age of reason they are under their parents. I suggest a simple test be given by all churches before children claiming to believe that Jesus is Lord are made voting members of a local church. Ask them if they believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Obama or in other fictional fantasies. If they say yes, then they are still too young to make a rational commitment to Christ.<\/p>\n
I am not saying that we should discourage and not encourage kids to confess that Jesus is Lord, but we should not think that teaching them to say the right words saves them either. Heck, why not go all the way and become Lutherans and have the faith of their parents save them at their infant baptism? What you are doing is really much the same thing. That is why most of these kids that become members of your church before they can even reason for themselves are often not seen in your church once they are allowed to make rational choices for themselves.<\/p>\n
Even the Catholics and the Jews do not confirm children in their faith before their instructors in doctrine, their parents and the child believe they have reached the age of understanding where they can make such a serious confession of faith. Usually that is shortly after puberty or about 12 years of age. On the other hand, in most Baptist churches they often see how early they can get kids to say the magic words and rack another one up on the big membership scoreboard? Who is playing games here? Certainly it is not the kids.<\/p>\n
Why don’t people come to your revival? Because some people are just fed up with “evangelists” that generally are not very successful pastors that cannot even grow their own local church, if they still are the leader in one. Some often play evangelist without the gift of evangelism just to make some spare change.<\/p>\n
It is not that real evangelists are not out there. The problem is that the box your church is in only allows someone that came from the same litter. You say you can’t afford the people that have a message that will attract outsiders? But somehow you can afford to bring in Christian bands to entertain?<\/p>\n
No. It really is not a matter of the cost. Someone with a relevant message that will really attract people will also attract donations to pay most of revival expenses (although you might not want to call it a revival because people have already been turned off by the abuse of that word and they might get the wrong idea). One problem is that many churches now think that evangelism is an altar call.<\/p>\n
God forbid, if someone came to your church with a meaningful evangelistic message that is relevant to this generation. Yes, that message very well might include some Bible prophecy teaching. Bible prophecy conferences are packed because people want to hear what these people have to say. People know that the world is in big trouble and they are looking for Christian answers. Many unbelievers get saved through Bible prophecy — believe it or not.<\/p>\n
Even so, you don’t want to take a stand on anything as controversial as premillennial Christianity, the Jews, the Harlot of Revelation 17 or the evils of demonic cults and Islam. It might offend someone. You also would not want someone to inform your church or community in your revival about the evils that the government and social education agenda has brought upon us with its abortion, homosexual promotion, sexual promiscuity, destruction of marriage, religious pluralism and postmodern relativism. Its all prophetic but these issues are not something that you think your community or church should reject in order to have a true revival?<\/p>\n
Of course, who wants to hear that evolution is a crock and our education system is a satanic indoctrination system in your revival? Then with the psychology courses that you probably have under your belt you really would not want anyone to teach against the the evils infiltrating the church through philosophies and psychologies of demonic men, now would you? We cannot upset some professional members and big givers.<\/p>\n
Yet, you think your church is going to have a revival?? Do you really think that there is going to be a big revival in your church, or your community, or America without dealing with the evils that the once Christian majority allowed to happen because they either also wanted these evils or because they were apathetic?<\/p>\n
Then pastors you wonder why people in your community and church could care less about your type of revival with your type of “saver” evangelist and your altar call? Some of the best pastors\/teachers that I have ever known never had altar calls at all. They and I can’t find any such practice in the Bible.<\/p>\n
These pastors did not need an altar call to give people the salvation message and people still got saved. Where is the altar call even found in New Testament Church instructions? And you know as well as I do, that most people got saved before your altar call, but you want to give your altar calls the credit. I cannot even find where elders (yet, pastors) are suppose to be preaching from podiums in the front of a church building that they claim is God’s altar? It all sounds like something out of Rome rather than the Bible to me!<\/p>\n
And while I am digressing about many church practices. I think you pastor’s need to start using proper exegesis.<\/strong> You remember, they taught you a course in Hermeneutics in most conservative Bible schools, where I would think they would also have told you to use the historical-grammatical method of interpretation of scripture. Instead, scripture is used out of its proper context to fit whatever it is that you want it to say to the congregation.<\/p>\n Many Old Testament passages are directed specifically at the nation of Israel or have nothing to do with the New Covenant Church, but they are being applied all too often to Christians without any good reason to do so. Try interpreting the Old Testament through the New, instead of digging through the Old Testament to try to find something out of context to justify your message. The instructions for faith and practice to the New Covenant Church are given in the New Testament. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, but when it is incorrectly applied, it becomes whatever “truth” that you teachers want it to be.<\/p>\n I think some head pastors need to get over themselves. You are not on a higher spiritual level than the rest of the Church, and in a congregational church you were chosen by a vote of the membership to be the conditional<\/strong> leader in a local assembly of believers. There is no instruction in the New Testament for just having one elder over the local assembly anyway. When the New Testament was addressing the leaders of the Church in any local assembly in the New Testament it is always addressed to the elders (plural). Pastors are not the congregational infallible vicar of Christ in the local church. We should not be kissing your ring.<\/p>\n It used to be that pastor\/teachers were the most knowledgeable in the scriptures. However, today that is no longer true in many churches. Most today coming out of Bible Colleges are programmed to drive out leaders and members that do not see things their way, especially those in the congregation that are inflexible about literal\u00a0historical-grammatical biblical interpretation.<\/p>\n