Paul Owen on Diagnosing the Church

Diagnosing the Church

January 31, 2008 by paulowen

One thing is clear to many people in Christendom today.  The Church is very, very sick.  Writers as diverse Ian Murray (Presbyterian), Doug Wilson (CREC), Darrel Hart (OPC), David Wells (Calvinistic Congregationalist), John MacArthur, Jr. (Baptist Fundamentalist), and Simon Chan (Assemblies of God) have all written about the spiritual illness which has taken American Christianity into its grip.  Some argue that the need is a return to Reformed confessionalism, others say the need is for expository preaching, others a recovery of liturgy, and others would say the basic need is more pastoral discernment.  Probably there is some truth in all of these suggestions.  What are the main problems?  I think it all boils down to evangelism and worship:

1. There is the problem of evangelism.  Somehow (no doubt the Second Great Awakening played a role) the evangelical church began to view conversion as something that can be be brought at least in part through human effort.  By persuasive appeal, a preacher, or evangelist, can persuade a person that they are a sinner whose soul requires the salvation offered to faith in the gospel.  The way that a sinner is saved is by responding to the appeal, and making a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, trusting in God to forgive one's sins on the basis of Jesus' death.

The problem with this model is it puts too much practical power in the hands of the preacher/evangelist.  It gives the impression that salvation is something that human beings can convince other human beings to accept, much like a salesman convinces a customer of her need to buy a product.  It also makes salvation too personal.  The  preacher/evangelist introduces the person to Jesus, who then closes the deal when the convert agrees to sign the contract (evangelistic tracts sometimes even have a place to put one's signature).  Whatever happened to the Church and the sacraments in all of this?  How is it that becoming a Christian has now become a matter of personal decision to accept the offer of God's gift, without baptismal incorporation into the visible Christian body?

In reality, in the Christian religion, conversion is not so much the decision to accept a gift, as it is the initiation of a person into God's family.  The gift, is the recognition of Christian identity, and all that entails, which the Church bestows upon the convert.  Initiation, not accepting a gift, is both the biblical and catholic model of conversion.  Becoming a Christian is much more like being adopted into a family, or (in the case of infants), being born into a family, than it is an evangelistic sales transaction.  Evangelical evangelism puts the burden on the individual, to choose whether they will buy the product or not; whereas biblical and catholic evangelism puts the burden on the Christian body as a whole to accept this person within their family.  Those two models create very different kinds of religion.  The question of whether or not you have "accepted" Jesus cannot be separated from the question of whether or not Jesus (in the concrete expression of his body on earth) has accepted you.

2. There is the problem of worship.  In biblical and catholic religion, worship is coming into the Temple of God and offering to God one's gifts.  In evangelical worship, all too often the impression is given that we are there to receive from God.  We are there to be uplifted, instructed, encouraged, evangelized (if need be), and so forth.  Since when did the people of God go to the Temple of God to receive things from God?  The Temple is the place where worshippers offer gifts TO God.  The Marcionist separation of OT and NT religion has drastically affected modern worship, because we no longer think of the Church as God's Temple.

Worship services are now structured, not so much with the end in view of creating an atmosphere where God is seated in his holy Temple, and we are approaching him reverently with our gifts, standing in awe at the beauty of his presence; rather, the goal of the service is to give the customers what they want so that they will return.  We have created spiritual shopping centers, and torn down God's Temple in order to build them.  And we wonder why the Church is doing so poorly in our land?

Look at the music which is offered in churches across the country today.  All too often, the music is designed to give those in attendance a "powerful" worship experience.  Is that the purpose of worship?  That kind of thinking takes God from the center and puts the idol of man on the throne, so that the true object of the "worship" is now the customer for whom the service has been designed.

3. Our defective view of worship goes hand in hand with a faulty view of the Bible.  We have taken the Bible out of its proper context in the liturgy of the Church, and made a plaything out of it.  Again, the Bible has come to be viewed as the possession of the individual, a kind of survival manual for the Christian life.  But for the ancients, the copy of the Law was shown a special reverence, and kept in the ark of the covenant in the Temple for a reason.  The worship of the Church is where the reading and interpretation of the Bible belongs (Neh. 8:1 cf. 3:26).  Nor was the connection between God's word and the Temple limited to the Old Covenant, for in the Messianic age, Isaiah predicts that the nations will go to the Temple to hear the word of the Lord, for "the law will go forth from Zion" (Isa. 2:3).  The Scriptures belong in the setting of the liturgy of the Church, which is also where the apostolic letters were read aloud (Col. 4:16), and the Apocalypse (Rev. 1:3-4), and the OT and gospels as well (1 Tim. 4:13; 5:18 cf. Luke 10:7). 

Now of course, all Christians should meditate upon the Scriptures day and night (Deut. 6:6-7; Josh. 1:8), and those who are fortunate enough to own their own copies of the Bible should make good use of them.  But the Bible is not addressed to the individual Christian; it is written for the benefit of the Church, to be heard and loved (Ps. 119:47-48) in the reverent setting of worship and prayer.  We need to take the Bible out of the consumer-driven market and put it back in the sanctuary and in the Church's morning and evening prayer and worship.  Perhaps people do not treasure the Scriptures any longer because we have turned it into an ordinary kind of book by mass publication and distribution.