When I look at all the churches around today, I sometimes wonder why so many of them are into weird stuff and weird people such as "clucking like chickens," "holy (?!) laughter," "hissing like snakes" and Kenneth Copeland, T.B. Joshua and many other weird and wonderful fads.
It is not always easy to come to such a conclusion, especially when there are many different reasons why this could happen to the church.
I personally believe that there must be an overarching reason that can include almost all other reasons.
This reason, I believe, is the neglect of a remembrance of the Reformation brought into the light by Martin Luther. On October 31, 1517, he nailed his 95 Theses against the door of the Wittenburg church in Germany, mainly against the selling of indulgences in the Roman Catholic Church. Luther wanted dialogue with the church concerning this abuse. However, soon indulgences became a small speck on the wall of the great doctrines to be restored by the Reformation.
Many churches today, with pastors supposedly trained theologically, don't even know when Reformation Day is! Some are very concerned with Halloween, yet have NO alternatives to celebrating Halloween! Hellooo! What about Reformation Day? Reformation Day is the same day as Halloween. Traditionally Reformation Day is celebrated on the last Sunday before October 31. This year that Sunday is October 30.
The church is losing and indeed forgetting the important doctrines of the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ, and I fear it is going to end up in the same state as the Reformation time Roman Catholic Church! The people are no longer taught about the fundamentals of the gospel and why those fundamentals are so very important. Today it has become more important for pastors to preach feel-good sermons than teaching their people the fundamental truths of the gospel. To many of these churches the wonderful essential doctrines of the gospel have simply become passé. What do these people believe? Many of them probably believe that they are Christians, but yet have never heard a sermon on what defines a Christian theologically.
If we can start remembering why the Reformers fought so hard to bring the church back to the truth, then just perhaps we will start teaching that same truth. Many Christians tend to minor on the majors and major on the minors. However, many of them don't even know what the majors are, so how can they ever not major on the minors?
The reason why people do not get into the tough stuff of the Bible is because pastors keep feeding them byte sized, scaled down trinkets of "minors!" People are being treated like babies that cannot chew solid food. As a result when you dish up the solid food of the Scriptures to them, it is too tough to chew.
It is for this reason that we need to start highlighting the fundamentals of the gospel that the Reformers battled to bring back to the church.
What are you going to do about Reformation Day? Is it going to go by once again without mention, or are you going to make people aware of this day that can help us return to the important doctrines of the gospel?
Just thinking...
1 comment:
Not only have I come to comment, I have read your post. It is very good and I agree that the fundamentals of the gospel have been largely lost by far too many "minister-types."
Post a Comment