One of the best songs written in the last 50 years (this is my opinion of course, but I’m the one expressing the opinions today)!

Several times in the past months I have written about the tendency among evangelicals in America today to shun orthodoxy in favor of pluralism. 

Pluralism denies the exclusivity of the gospel and says that all religions are basically the same and all roads lead to heaven.

Dr Albert Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky and one of the leading theologians in evangelical life today has written on this subject here.

What is to be the focus of a pastor’s preaching in our day?  Should a pastor speak on contemporary issues and topics in the news?  Can a pastor be relevant if he does not preach on sociological and pop culture issues? 

These are questions that all pastors must answer and questions that church members must wrestle with as well, as they seek men to fill their pulpits and stand before them week after week.

Dr John Piper, one of the leading pastors of our times speaks to this crucial issue in this video.  His viewpoint might surprise you.

There is a widespread belief among some in the church that evangelism is simply a matter of “good sales technique.”  This philosophy teaches that if you take the same methods used to sell cars then you can persuade people to “buy the gospel.”  They will believe your sales pitch, make a profession of faith, be baptized and live happily ever after. 

Several years ago I read an article by one of the most successful mega-church pastors in America.  In the article he stated that his family had been selling produce for years and he simply took the methods they had used to sell tomatoes and began selling the gospel.  Using this method he built the largest church in North America, though now he has admitted that it did not work quite as well as he first thought. 

The problem with this approach is that it is simply not Biblical.  Evangelism is not the job of a salesman who persuades people to believe in Christ.  Evangelism is nothing less than the raising of those who are dead in their trespasses and sins (Eph.  2:1). 

In Luke 7:7-11 we find the story of Jesus raising a man from the dead.  It is interesting that every time Jesus raised someone from the dead He did it the same way, by the power of His word.  He spoke to the corpses and they came from the dead. 

Since the miracles of Jesus are also signs to us (according to the apostle John) we can conclude that what is required to bring people to life who are spiritually dead is not clever sales techniques, or marketing prowess but the life giving word of God found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

It is our task as Christians to proclaim the gospel, it is God’s task to raise sinners to life by the power of that word which we proclaim.

Much of the confusion that exists in the church today is because of competing agendas about what constitutes real growth.

One of the most influential persons in the church growth movement in the middle of the 20^th century was a man by the name of Arthur Flake.  His books were required reading in theological seminaries for years and he had a profound impact on Southern Baptists.  One of Flake’s principles for growing a church’s Sunday School could be summarized in the words “build it and they will come.”

Flake assumed that Sunday School would always be the primary means of outreach for churches.  For decades, he was right, especially in the post-World War II baby boom years.  In growing suburbs across America, virtually all you had to do was build a church building, throw open the doors, and find yourself in need of even more space very shortly.  Whole generations of pastors and educators were trained in that paradigm of church growth.

Someone has pointed out that Flake’s formula failed to take two major factors into consideration. For one, a day was coming in the post-modern world where, in many places, Sunday School would cease to be the most effective way of reaching people.  The major flaw in Flake’s paradigm was that church growth was too narrowly defined by how many people you could get into the church building on Sunday morning, a standard most Baptist churches still use to define the success of their professional leadership.

Another factor overlooked by Flake’s formula was the natural tendency of church people to become territorial.  After a few weeks in the same room, that room becomes the exclusive domain of the people who meet there for one hour a week.  The result was the billions of square feet at a cost of uncountable billions of dollars have been built since WWII that sits empty for seven days a week, except for one hour on Sunday.

This way of thinking also overlooks the fact that numbers of people have very little if anything to do with whether one is doing the will of God.  Frequently, in the Bible, the majority is wrong.  If ones agenda is simply to fill a building then it matters very little how you go about doing it.  That explains some of the ridiculous and carnal methods that are employed in the church today.