I like Matthew West's new song, "Truth Be Told." It spurs a couple of thoughts in my mind about the church today. One phrase in the song takes me all the back to the 1970s. It is the phrase, "come as you are." That message was on a sign in front of the Community Church in the small town in southern Oregon I grew up. It certainly brings back memories.
In the song Matthew West makes the point that we have not done a very good job of allowing people to come into the church and accepting them as they are. I would say that he is right to some degree. We still have many churches that are personal clubs and new people are not necessarily welcome.
But I think the church has become definitely more seeker friendly over the last several decades. In fact I think there are entire churches that their seeker friendly philosophy is the entire mission of the church. Jesus was certainly out and about and involved in the lives of people, so being accepting of new faces should be at least part of the model for the modern Church. I would say over the years we've at least made it to c+ in trying to reach people in the community. We probably do need a lot more work with this issue.
But where the church has gotten a decided F is in while we are allowing people to come and experience the church we are putting up with false doctrines and teachings that are destroying the church from within. Allowing someone to come to the church who's homeless and living under a bridge is exactly what Christ would want. But adopting humanistic, anti-biblical teachings and outright witchcraft in the church has weakened us to the place where we often struggle to be effective in our ministries.
We absolutely need lots of work in learning to accept people the way Christ did without expecting them to meet all of our personal and cultural expectations. It is very much true that still many churches are more willing to accept the semi moral businessman who makes money than they are to accept the poor family that really has nothing to offer and can only take from the local church. It pretty much shows our lack of emotional maturity and a lack of personal relationship with the Risen Christ.
The evidence of our compromise on theology is shouted in social media on a daily basis. Christians who should have even a basic understanding of the Bible are spouting views that are decidedly unchristian and anti-biblical. Their viewpoints make me wonder if they've ever picked up the Bible at all. I have studied the scripture for over 45 years and I have to say that I don't know even close to as much as I should because of being lazy in study. But we shouldn't be confused about the basic doctrines of the Bible. Any Junior High age Sunday school student of the 1950s would not be-would not be-confused about these basic doctrinal principles.
The deplorable lack of biblical maturity comes about through the following process. As the church has become more seeker-friendly we have become more accepting of others. Fine so far. But as we've attempted to love people into the church we have been tempted to keep them by compromising the basic principles of scripture in order to keep them because they're unwilling to repent of sin or change their humanistic philosophies.
Herein we fail. As a counselor we are taught that every relationship should have boundaries. And if the relationship does not have boundaries then one or both parties will not respect each other. That has certainly happened here. In order to keep people in the church or get them into the church we have been willing to compromise on basic teachings such as the Ten Commandments. The world may be confused about whether or not the Ten Commandments are necessary but the Church should not be.
Yes we should be patient and loving with folks as they move towards salvation and discipleship in Christ. But we are doing neither them or ourselves any favors by compromising the truths of God's word. They will be the proverbial pigs that turn again and rend us. When we finally wake up and realize that the only people that have made any compromise is the church we will start demanding change and acceptance of the truth. But it will be too late. The church will have watered itself down into apostasy and those who are left to cry foul will be persecuted even among these so-called seeker Christians.
Living the balance of loving people without compromising truth is an incredibly difficult one. And I have failed at these very principles on both sides. But at least we have the example of Christ who lived a perfect mixture of both. Thank God for His grace. We just need to keep trying. We have no choice. It is a matter of life or death.
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